“I can’t find a job.”
“I thought that was a good racket to go into, engineering. I heard there’re lots of jobs available.”
“You heard wrong.”
The two of them talked for awhile about how hard it was to make a living these days—“Although, I’m pretty sure it always has been,” McDaniels said—and then Ross got up and said he had to go.
“Well, nice talkin’ to you,” McDaniels told him. “And if you or your cousin ever need some work done…you know where to find me.”
“Here.”
“Most afternoons.”
Ross drove back to the ranch. He decided to prepare early for the farmer’s market tomorrow and get things ready, so he put the sign and the folding table in the truck, boxed up a dozen jars of honey and counted out ten egg cartons, about half of the amount in the cellar. On a whim, he decided to check if the hens had laid any more eggs, and when he went out to the coop, he was surprised to find that they had. He collected nearly two dozen, in fact, all of them normal looking. As it was getting late, he took them down to the cellar and left them in the baskets, intending to sort them tomorrow. Not only had none of the chickens attacked him this time, most of them had been hiding, and while that was definitely weird, he was not complaining. It was better than being pecked.
The fear returned after nightfall. He’d left a light on in the kitchen of the Big House to let potential burglars know that someone was home (as though a burglar would drive all the way out here on that horrible dirt road in the middle of the night to steal Lita and Dave’s TV), but that single light somehow made the house seem creepier than darkness would have. He closed the drapes in the shack to block all views of the world outside, but it made him feel claustrophobic, and he found that not being able to see outside made him think there was something out there. So he partially opened the drape on the front window, enough to let him see if anyone—
anything
—was coming, and he popped in a DVD of The Larry Sanders Show in order to take his mind off the morbid track on which it was headed.
The comedy was distracting, but not distracting enough. He was always aware of his isolation and the night outside, and even as he was laughing at Gary Shandling’s neurotic self-obsession, Ross kept glancing toward that partially exposed window. He didn’t know what he was afraid of, exactly, and wasn’t sure what had put him in this mood, but his mind kept drifting to that black thing he’d seen in the sky and the way the hens had spied on him before that one had attacked him, and he wished Lita and Dave would hurry up and come back.
He’d never been a devotee of Ben Franklin’s philosophy. That “early to bed, early to rise” aphorism had never made much sense to him, but since coming out here, Ross always seemed to fall asleep before ten o’clock. It was probably the lack of things to do at night—he understood now why those pioneer families on the prairie would go to bed soon after the sun went down—and tonight he was grateful that he was starting to doze in front of the television. He didn’t want to be awake when midnight rolled around, and though he was no longer watching, he left the TV on for company as he got ready for bed, using the remote to turn it off before curling up and pulling the covers over his head.
He slept through the entire night, undisturbed.
And dreamed.
It was the most realistic dream Ross had ever had, so real that even for a few seconds after he’d awakened, he still thought it might have happened.
He was here, in the shack, and Lita had come back from Las Vegas alone, leaving Dave to tie up all the bureaucratic loose ends resulting from his parents’ deaths. Ross was lying on the floor when she walked in, on his back, reading a magazine that he held up at arm’s length.
Lita said nothing as she closed the screen door behind her, and when he put down the magazine and glanced over at her, Ross saw that she was naked.
“What are you doing?” he said, panicking.
Smiling, she said nothing, striding across the room until her bare feet were on either side of his head. She squatted over his face. Her vagina was gorgeous—pink and perfectly formed, the delicate slit framed by roseblush labia—and she dipped lower, lightly brushing his mouth, her sweet juices dripping onto his lips.
He awoke with a powerful erection, a tent-poler that raised the covers above him. His lips were wet and tasted slightly salty, and it took him a moment to realize that he’d bitten his bottom lip and it was bleeding. It had all been a dream. Patting his lip with the palm of his hand, Ross saw a small spot of red, and he continued to dab at the cut with his palm until the bleeding had stopped.