Desert Hearts

Chapter 1-3

“What’s your name?” I asked.

A blank, pale stare, followed by a shake of the head. His eyes were a startling green against the sun-ravaged skin. “I don’t have one.”

Maybe he was a little more addled by the sun than I’d thought. “You mean you don’t remember?” I’d heard of cases like that — people wandering in the heat and the sun until it cooked the memories right out of their brains. But he seemed a lot more lucid than that.

“No. I don’t have a name.”

It was probably best to humor him. “Okay, Kaspar,” I said.

His head tilted slightly, confusion obvious in his expression.

“Kaspar Hauser,” I explained. “A young man who appeared out of nowhere. He — ” I broke off at the look of confusion on the stranger’s face. “Never mind. We can save the history lessons for later. How about some soup?”

“Yes, please.”

I essayed a half-hearted smile before heading to the pantry. Well, he might be a wacko, but at least he was a polite one. Luckily, the soup was the type you could just pour out of a carton into a bowl; a minute in the microwave, and it was ready. I used a pot holder to pull it out, dropped a spoon into it, and went back to the living room.

The stranger hadn’t moved, but I noticed at once that one hand now rested on Gort’s head, fingers just barely stroking the soft fur between his ears. The man had an odd, bemused expression on his face, as if he hadn’t been quite sure what the dog’s coat would feel like. Gort’s eyes were half-closed. Clearly, whatever misgivings he’d had about the stranger had evaporated as soon as he realized the man was willing to participate in ear-scratching.

Green eyes looked at me questioningly as I approached with the soup.

“It’s roasted pepper corn chowder,” I offered, and held out the bowl to the man.

He took it in both hands, sniffed once, then nodded and took up the spoon. Although I guessed he must be starving, he ate neatly if quickly, with no slurping or dripping. Within a minute, he’d cleaned out the bowl pretty thoroughly.

“More?” I asked, trying not to sound resigned. Most of the time, I didn’t keep my pantry all that well-stocked, since I lived alone. More often than not, I ate takeout down at the shop because I didn’t have the time to do anything else. If the stranger stayed with me for any length of time, he’d end up eating me out of house and home.

Well, that was assuming a lot. My intention had only been to get him hydrated, get a little food in him, clean him up, and send him on his way.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” I took the bowl from him and went to refill it, ignoring Gort’s pleading doggy eyes. My fault that I’d spoiled the dog by giving him more table scraps than I should. I knew he was expecting to get the bowl to lick, but I wasn’t about to do that in front of the stranger. God knows what he’d think of me.

The second bowl didn’t disappear quite as quickly as the first, but the man still made short work of it nonetheless. With some food in him, he looked — well, maybe not exactly better, but the sheen of sweat had disappeared from his brow, and his eyes seemed a little more alert.

What he really needed was a hot shower and a change of clothes. I’d have to hope he could manage the former on his own, because I drew the line at sponge baths. Clean clothes — well, he was taller and slimmer than my grandfather had been, but I still had an old foot locker with some of his clothing, items I hadn’t quite been ready to get rid of. Anything would be better than the foul-smelling, ragged jumpsuit the stranger had on.

“Can you stand?” I asked.

He seemed to consider, then set the bowl on the floor and pushed himself upward. Gort immediately set to on the empty soup bowl, and I somehow managed to refrain from sighing. At least the stranger didn’t seem to notice, probably because he was too busy trying to keep his balance. He swayed for a second, but then seemed to regain his equilibrium.

Standing, he was even taller than I had thought. I wasn’t short, standing a little more than five-seven in my bare feet, but the top of my head barely reached his chin.

Somehow, that height seemed a little intimidating. I looked away from him, down the hallway. “How about a hot shower?”

“Yes, please,” he replied. Something that might have been the beginnings of a smile touched his cracked lips. “I smell terrible.”

I bit back a smile of my own. “Follow me.”

Fortunately, the ranch-style house had two bathrooms, one as part of a suite in the master bedroom, and the other only a few steps down the hall, between the living room and the other two bedrooms. Since it was the bath designated for guest use, I made sure it was always stocked with clean towels. And because it had been Kiki’s bathroom before she moved out, there were still a few bottles of shampoo and some soap in the caddy in the shower.

“Here you go,” I told the stranger, after I reached into the room and flipped on the overhead light/fan combo. “There are towels, and shampoo and soap. I’m going to see if I can rustle up some clean clothes for you.”

He watched me for a second, and nodded. “Thank you.”

In reply, I only lifted my shoulders, then went down the hall toward the spare bedroom — which in actuality was more of a storage room and general dumping ground. Behind me, I heard the door to the bathroom shut, and a short time later, the water came on.

I hadn’t bothered to tell him about the inadequate hot water heater, figuring he’d know it was time to wrap things up when the water began to get tepid. Still, I knew he could probably get a good fifteen to twenty minutes of decent showering in before the hot water supply began to dwindle. Plenty of time to find something for him to wear.

The foot locker was the one my grandfather had brought back from Korea, and so it had seemed fitting to use it to store the things I couldn’t quite bear to give away to Goodwill: the most obnoxious of Grandpa’s beloved Hawaiian shirts, some well-worn chinos, the package of underwear he’d bought only a few weeks before he died. He’d never even opened it.

Even now, the sight of those things made my throat close up a little, although it had been six years since my grandfather had passed away. Resolutely, I reached in and pulled out the least garish of the Hawaiian shirts, the pale blue one with the dark blue and red hibiscus flowers all over it, along with a pair of pants and the package of underwear. Coiled at one side of the foot locker was a belt, and I picked that up, too. Maybe the stranger could pull it to the tightest notch to keep the pants from sliding down.

I wondered then what my grandfather would think if he saw me now, calmly raiding his old clothes for some stranger who’d wandered in off the desert. Grandpa would have probably taken it in stride, actually. He’d always been the open-minded one of the family, whereas I….

Temporary insanity, I decided. The only possible explanation.

Back in college, my nickname had been “Careful Kara.” Kara, the one who would only allow herself a single drink at frat parties, who collected keys and drove my drunk friends home. Careful Kara, who never pulled an all-nighter to finish a term paper or hooked up with guys at parties. People had teased me, even as they took advantage of my perpetual designated-driver status. I’d never bothered to explain why. Who wanted to hear about a mother who’d taken off when her children were only eleven and three, a mother who left her eldest daughter thinking she had to be responsible for her little sister and everyone else around her?

Careful Kara, who was now running a UFO shop and conducting tours to see orbs and the occasional passing spaceship. Life could definitely throw you some curve balls.

Mouth thinning a little, I piled up the clothes, then stood. The clock over the daybed ticked away. Almost ten o’clock. I kept late hours, especially if I had a UFO tour lined up, but it had been a long day. And if I was tired, I could only imagine how the stranger must feel.

No pajamas were forthcoming from the trunk, but shoved away on the top shelf of my own closet were a pair of men’s sweats that had somehow gotten mixed up with my stuff when Alan and I divided our household, just before I’d come back to Sedona to take care of my grandfather. God knows why the sweat pants hadn’t ended up in the charity donations, but they would do well enough for the stranger to sleep in. A T-shirt was easy; I had stacks sitting on the daybed, just waiting for me to silk-screen them and take them down to the shop.

Since the spare bedroom was a disaster, he’d either have to sleep on the couch or in Kiki’s old room. The latter made more sense, although I somehow felt as if I was defiling my sister’s space by letting the man sleep there. Silly, really. Kiki had moved out almost a year ago. It wasn’t as if she needed that bed.

The room was more or less untouched, as I hadn’t quite been able to bring myself to convert it to a second office or studio the way Kiki kept urging me to. The bright turquoise walls glared at me as I flipped on the light switch. God knows what Kiki had been thinking, going with that eye-searing combination of turquoise and lime green, but at least the space was clean and uncluttered, and the bed a queen, not the twin bed Kiki had slept on until her senior year of high school. There was no way the stranger could have ever squeezed himself into a mere twin.

I set the clothes down on the dresser but kept the sweatpants and T-shirt, along with one pair of underwear. When I emerged in the hallway, I noticed that the water had been turned off. Pausing outside in the hall, I gave a diffident tap on the door and said, “I’ve left some things for you on the floor out here. You can sleep in the room right across the hall. Okay?”

For a few seconds, there wasn’t any response. Then I heard him say, “Okay. Thank you.”

“No problem,” I replied automatically, and turned away from the door.

What a lie. I had a feeling my Good Samaritan gesture was going to turn into the mother of all problems.