By the light of the moon

to
Lordsburg, north of the Pyramid Mountains, then to the town of Road
Forks, New Mexico, and eventually across the state line, she
brooded about the past, trying to understand where she'd gone wrong
in each failed relationship.
    Although prepared to accept the blame for the implosion of every
romance, second-guessing herself with the intense critical analysis
of a bomb-squad cop deciding which of several wires ought to be cut
to save the day, she finally concluded, not for the first time,
that the fault resided less in herself than in those feckless men
she'd trusted. They were betrayers. Deceivers. Given every benefit
of the doubt, viewed through the rosiest of rose-colored lenses,
they were nonetheless swine, three little pigs who exhibited all
the worst porcine traits and none of the good ones. If the big bad
wolf showed up at the door of their straw house, the neighbors
would cheer him when he blew it down and would offer him the proper
wine to accompany a pork-chop dinner.
    'I am a bitter, vengeful bitch,' Jilly declared.
    In his quiet way, sweet little Fred disagreed with her.
    'Will I ever meet a decent man?' she wondered.
    Though he possessed numerous fine qualities – patience,
serenity, a habit of never complaining, an exceptional talent for
listening and for quietly commiserating, a healthy root structure
– Fred made no claim to clairvoyance. He couldn't know if
Jilly would one day meet a decent man. In most matters, Fred
trusted in destiny. Like other passive species lacking any means of
locomotion, he had little choice but to rely on fate and hope for
the best.
    'Of course I'll meet a decent man,' Jilly decided with a sudden
resurgence of the hopefulness that usually characterized her. 'I'll
meet dozens of decent men, scores of them, hundreds.' A melancholy
sigh escaped her as she braked in response to a traffic backup in
the westbound lanes of Interstate 10, immediately ahead of her.
'The question isn't whether I'll meet a truly decent man,
but whether I'll recognize him if he doesn't arrive with a loud
chorus of angels and a flashing halo that says GOOD GUY, GOOD GUY,
GOOD GUY.'
    Jillian couldn't see Fred's smile, but she could feel it, sure
enough.
    'Oh, face facts,' she groaned, 'when it comes to guys, I'm naive
and easily misled.'
    When he heard the truth, Fred knew it. Wise Fred. The quiet with
which he greeted Jilly's admission was far different from the quiet
disagreement that he had expressed when she'd called herself a
bitter, vengeful bitch.
    Traffic came to a full stop.
    Through a royal-purple twilight and past nightfall, they endured
another long wait, this time at the Arizona Agricultural Inspection
Station east of San Simon, which currently served state and federal law-enforcement agencies. In addition to Department of
Agriculture officers, a few flinty-eyed plainclothes agents, on
assignment from some less vegetable-oriented organization,
evidently were searching for pests more destructive than fruit
flies breeding in contraband oranges. In fact they grilled Jilly as
if they believed a chador and a submachine gun were concealed under
the car seat, and they studied Fred with wariness and skepticism,
as though convinced that he was of Mideastern origin, held
fanatical political views, and harbored evil intentions.
    Even these tough-looking men, who had reason to regard every
traveler with suspicion, could not long mistake Fred for a villain.
They stepped back and waved the Coupe DeVille through the
checkpoint.
    As Jilly put up the power window and accelerated, she said,
'It's a good thing they didn't throw you in the slammer, Freddy.
Our budget's too tight for bail money.'
    They drove a mile in silence.
    A ghost moon, like a faint ectoplasmic eye, had risen before
sundown; and with the fall of night, its Cyclops stare
brightened.
    'Maybe talking to a plant isn't just an eccentricity,' Jilly
brooded. 'Maybe I'm a little off my nut.'
    North and south of the highway lay dark desolation. The cool
lunar light could not burn away the stubborn gloom that befell the
desert after sundown.
    'I'm sorry, Fred. That was a mean thing to say.'
    The little jade was proud but also forgiving. Of the three men
with whom Jilly had explored the dysfunctional side of romance,
none would have hesitated to turn even her most innocent expression
of discontent against her; each would have used it to make her feel
guilty and to portray himself as the long-suffering victim of her
unreasonable expectations. Fred,