4.

The most difficult thing about being a drunk, Roger discovered, was the awful stuff you had to drink to achieve that unchartered state of blessed oblivion. Liquor wasn't so bad when it was tempered with other things. Orange juice, tomato juice, tabasco, pineapple juice, water, club soda, salt, pepper, celery stalks, other liquors-all of it was preferable to drinking straight from a bottle. But having no facility for mixing cocktails either popular or of his own concoction had left him with no choice but the bottle.

Being a drunk, for reasons he could not bring to mind at the moment, had seemed to be, evidently, a good idea at the time, whatever time that had been when he'd started being a drunk.

But then, so had accepting the position at the university.

He grunted a bitter laugh.

University. Las Vegas. A hell of a combination, or so he had once believed.

What he hadn't counted on was the city beyond the Strip. Which had turned out to be about as mundane as a city could get without being buried in the Midwest. What he hadn't counted on was how utterly, horrifically boring life was once the neon and the billboards and the constant music, the constant noise had eroded excitement's edges to something less sharp than a butter knife.

What he hadn't counted on was the reaction: "You work at UNLV?"

"That's right."

"Say, what's with the Running Rebels anyway? They let Wyoming whale the tar out of them again, it's getting to be a bad habit."

"I-"

"Never used to be that way, you know, nosir. Number One, that's what we were. Number One. Nobody could touch us. Nobody."

"Well-"

"Disgrace, that's what it is. A goddamn disgrace. What kind of school you got there anyway, letting them slip like that?"

Basketball was not his sport. As far as he was concerned, it shouldn't be anyone's sport. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was slightly shorter than average and therefore completely dwarfed by any third-string freshman; it had everything to do with the fact that running-and-dunking for however long it took a clutch of ungainly young giants to run-and-dunk, all night long, was ... boring.

Yet, as a faculty member he was expected to be a basketball expert, a basketball fanatic, a rabid follower of the, for crying out loud, Running Rebels, give me a break, I need another drink.

What he hadn't counted on was living in a place like this, a has-been development soon to be yanked out from under him, populated by people who didn't seem to want to read, didn't seem to want to think beyond how to survive from one dismal paycheck to the next, didn't seem to care that the world was falling apart around their ears.

They lived their lives, moved in, moved out, listened to music loud enough to deafen him, and didn't have the vaguest idea what a decent, intelligent conversation was like.

They didn't care about the world outside what Trey once called the dragon's valley; they didn't care, perhaps didn't even think about, all the hospitals overflowing, the clinics filled to the gills, the . . . ah, the hell with it.

He took another drink.

But he couldn't stop thinking.

Those who hadn't fully recovered from last year's famine had been the first to succumb, too weak to fight against the virus that should have been, had in fact been declared to have been eradicated years ago.

The rest had little more than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the fever, the dehydration, the debilitation.

They called it the Sickness because no one wanted to say smallpox. No one wanted to admit that it was back, and it had changed.

Not that it mattered; they died anyway.

He sat on a lawn chair behind his house, facing the mountains he could no longer see. His only clothing a T-shirt and bright green boxer shorts. A bottle of De-wars. Gooseflesh breaking out along his arms and legs. His free hand made a futile pass through thick, shoulder-length wavy hair, then tugged at a neatly trimmed beard kept short to minimize the appearances of the occasional grey.

He took another drink, immediately spat it out, and said, "Christ, Rog, you're pathetic."

He then slid to the ground to his hands and knees, crawled ten feet away, and threw up.

Wept.

Threw up again.

Wept again.

Jesus, he couldn't even make a good drunk.

He rocked clumsily back onto his heels, gulped for a breath that didn't make his stomach queasy, and stood. Blinked heavily. Sideswiped the ground with one bare foot to cover the mess. The stench and movement made him gag, and he turned away hastily, clamped a hand to his stomach and gulped air again. Only when he was positive nothing else would come up did he stagger toward the concrete back stoop and the kitchen door. As he passed the chair, he glared at the bottle, not at all tempted to take it with him.

One step up, and he paused, shuddering at a sudden chill that reached his skin from the inside, as if streaming from his marrow.

A second step up, and he paused, swallowing hard to bear the stench of himself. The imagined stench.

The top of the stoop-no welcome mat, just weather stains and food stains and liquor stains. And cool beneath his soles.

He reached for the screen door, tugged, and after a long second let his hand slip away.

He looked at the stars.

"Well... shit!"

One more time, just to be sure, before he scratched through his hair, his beard, across his chest, and put his hands on his hips. He looked at his feet, wriggled his toes, and grinned.

"You are in your skivvies, my boy," he said, sniffed, and hiccupped. Swayed. "You are a little drunk, you are. locked out, and you are in your skivvies. Now what have we learned from this? Aside from the fact that you're an idiot, that is."

He was fairly certain the front door was still unlocked. All he had to do was walk around the house without killing himself. Use the walls as a crutch and not fall into his cactus garden. Make sure no one was out there to see him-please, God, don't let Judith be on her porch-and sneak in. No one any the wiser. An embarrassment only to him and his shadow.

An extraordinarily simple, straightforward plan, which he implemented before he had even finished thinking about it. He only wished he hadn't left all the damn lights on, blasting out of the windows like Eula's awful music. There was no dark here, nothing to hide in, nothing to conceal the way his legs, every few steps, decided to go their own way and had to be fought back into position. Nothing to keep the others from watching him fall on his ass four times before he reached the front corner.

Anger at himself gave way to the giggles.

"Hey, Senor Prof, you okay?"

What he hadn't counted on was every damn human being on the planet calling him "Prof" just because he taught at a university.

Thank God he hated sports; otherwise they'd probably call him "Coach."

He squinted, barely made out Hicaya in the street, and waved grandly, "Just making my way back home, Rick," he said, grabbed the porch post and hauled himself up.

"How come you're not dressed?"

Using his left hand to keep from falling, he took small steps toward the door. "It's a professor thing," he explained, and covered his mouth and tried to fake a cough to hide a belch he couldn't stop. "It keeps my brain from ..." He blinked rapidly. "Fogging up."

"Ah. You eat yet?"

He found the door, found the knob, prayed, turned it, and sighed when the door opened. "No."

"Next time, then, when you drink, Senor Prof, eat something first. It don't hit you so hard, then."

Roger stared as the man laughed and headed on down the street, shaking his head. He tried to think of something to say, something witty, something so far over the jerk's head he'd get whiplash trying to catch up, then stumbled over the threshold, closed the door, and turned the lock in the fake brass knob. Anger born of humiliation made him grind his teeth.

"Bastard," he whispered, suddenly thought of the perfect retort, and hurried back to the porch, slamming the door behind him.

"Hey, Rick," he called, but Hicaya only waved a hand over his shoulder without looking back.

Roger opened his mouth to shout it anyway, and froze.

"Well," he muttered, "shit."

He didn't have to turn around.

He knew the door was locked.

Which probably wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't seen Lillian across the street, sitting on Eula's front step, smoking a cigarette, and grinning.

"Nice shorts," she called, and laughed so hard she began to choke, all the while weakly waving her cigarette hand in a not terribly sincere apology.

He hugged himself, feeling the night's chill inside and out, and pressed his knees together when he realized how full, and how eager to be emptied, was his bladder. To make matters worse, Lillian flicked her cigarette into the street, grabbed her crutches, and stood.

"No," he said automatically. "It's all right, Lil, honest."

She ignored him.

He belched, groaned, and leaned against the jamb. Not wanting to watch and unable to stop watching as she hauled herself toward him, the breeze that began to freeze him slipping her hair in and out of her eyes. She nearly fell once, and he finally closed his eyes, snapped them open instantly when all the lights behind his lids began to swirl like a tornado filled with sparks.

"No key, huh?" she said as she climbed the steps.

He shook his head, not daring to speak.

"You don't keep a spare out here somewhere?"

"No."

Her expression took a moment to register, and he still wasn't sure if it was pity or disgust or isn't that just like a man.

"Some woman dump you?" she asked idly as she examined the lock as if actually planning to pick it.

"Me?" His laugh was quick and hoarse. "No, not me."

"So why do you drink, then?" She backed away from the door. "You don't seem like the type."

He didn't want to answer. It was none of her business. "The city," he said anyway, "my job, the world, my life, take your pick."

"I see." She scanned the porch floor. "You have renters' insurance?"

"No."

"Too bad." She raised one of the crutches and smashed the front window with a single sharp blow.

He was too astonished to react, didn't even flinch when she patted his cheek as she headed for the stairs. "I'm not climbing in," she told him. "You'll have to do that yourself."

She was halfway down the walk before he looked at the glass-littered porch, looked to her and said, "My...my feet are bare."

"Tough," she answered without looking back. "It's the end of the world, Rog, or hadn't you noticed? A couple of lousy cuts here and there aren't going to make a bit of difference either way."

"You're crazy," he said, but not loud enough for her to hear. Then he looked at the glass, at the shattered window, and couldn't decide which to do first-throw up or cry.

He did neither.

Rage overwhelmed him, and he kicked the door viciously with the sole of his right foot, lost his balance and fell on his back, and watched helplessly as the door swung slowly inward.

He would have screamed, but he heard Lillian's voice, high and sweet, singing one of Eula's godawful gospel songs as loud as she could.

When his eyes closed, the sparking tornado returned, and he couldn't really tell as he passed out if he were crying, or throwing up.'

5.

She had gotten used to the pain.

She had gotten used to the crutches.

She had gotten used to the physical therapist who came out three times a week to torture her good leg and scold her for not doing the exercises on her own, what was she thinking of, did she want to use the damn crutches for the rest of her life?

She had even gotten used to the way people looked at her, either when they thought she wasn't looking, or with those sideways glances that tried in a split second to figure out what was wrong.

She would never get used to not riding again.

Never.