Strangers

said sympathetically. "Darlin', I can't help if you won't tell me what's wrong."
        She would not be the daughter of Jacob Weiss if she failed to respond warmly and eagerly to the slightest sign of kindness in others, and the policeman's concern finally affected her. She opened her eyes and looked up at the topmost brass button on his coat. The sight of it did not bring the hateful darkness upon her. But that meant nothing, for the ophthalmoscope, black gloves, and other triggering items had not affected her later, when she had forced herself to confront them again.
        In a crackle of ice, the cop pushed between the bushes. She said, "They've killed Pablo. They murdered Pablo."
        And as she spoke those words, her distress over her condition was made worse by a rush of guilt. The 6th of January would forever be a black day in her life. Pablo was dead. Because he tried to help her.
        Such a very cold day.
        

    5.
        

    On the Road
        
        Monday morning, the 6th of January, Dom Corvaisis cruised his old Portland neighborhood in a rented Chevrolet, trying to recapture the mood he had been in when he had left Oregon for Mountainview, Utah, more than eighteen months ago. The rain, as heavy as any he had ever seen, had stopped near dawn. Now the sky, though still cloudy from horizon to horizon, was a particularly powdery, dry-looking shade of gray, like a burnt field, as if there had been a fire behind the clouds that had forced out all that precipitation. He drove through the university campus, stopping repeatedly to let the familiar scenes stir feelings and attitudes of times past. He parked across the street from the apartment where he'd lived, and as he stared up at the windows, he tried to recall the man he had been then.
        He was surprised at how difficult it was to recollect the timidity with which that other Dom Corvaisis had viewed life. Though he could bring to mind the way he had been, there was no intimacy or poignancy to those memories. He could see those old days again, but he could not feel them, which seemed to indicate that he could never be that old Dom again, regardless of how much he feared the possibility.
        He was convinced that he had seen something terrible on the road the summer before last, and that something monstrous had been done to him. But that conviction generated both a mystery and a contradiction. The mystery was that the event had wrought in him an undeniably positive change. How could an experience fraught with pain and terror effect a beneficial change in his outlook? The contradiction was that, in spite of the beneficial effect on his personality, the event filled his dreams with horror. How could his ordeal have been both terrifying and positive, both horrible and uplifting at the same time?
        The answer, if it could be found, was not here in Portland but out on the highway. He started the engine, put the Chevy in gear, pulled away from his old apartment building, and went looking for trouble.
        

    ***
        
        The most direct route from Portland to Mountainview began with Interstate 80 north. But as he had done nineteen months ago, Dom took a more roundabout trail, heading south on Interstate 5. That special summer, he had scheduled a layover in Reno for a few days to do some research for a series of short stories about gambling, so the less direct route had been necessary.
        Now in his rented Chevy, he followed the familiar highway, keeping his speed down to fifty, even as low as forty on the steeper hills, for he had been pulling a U-Haul trailer that last day in June, and he had not made good time. And, as before, he stopped for lunch in Eugene.
        Hoping to spot something that would goose his memory and provide a link with the mysterious events of the previous trip, Dom looked over the small towns that he passed. However, he saw nothing that made him uneasy, and nothing bad happened all the way to Grants Pass, where he arrived shortly before six o'clock that evening, right on schedule.
        He stayed in the motel where he had been a guest eighteen months ago. He remembered the number of the room - ten - because it was near the soft drink and ice machines, which had been the source of irritating noises half the night. It was unoccupied, and he took it, vaguely explaining to the clerk that it had sentimental associations for him.
        He ate at the same restaurant, across