Strangers

Corvaisis' gentle but confident voice, and included him in her fantasy. If Corvaisis was the one for her, imagine what her father would say when he learned she was marrying one of those flaky, drunken writers who held their wives by the heels and dangled them out high windows!
        She scrapped that particular fantasy soon after the plane landed, for she quickly perceived that Corvaisis' heart was already claimed.
        At four-thirty in Elko, half an hour before sunset, the sky was plated with dark clouds, and the Ruby Mountains were purple-black on the horizon. A penetratingly cold wind, sweeping in from the west, was ample proof that they had come four hundred miles north from Las Vegas.
        Corvaisis and Dr. Ginger Weiss were waiting on the tarmac beside the small terminal, and the moment that Jorja saw them, she had the odd but reassuring feeling that she was among family. That sensation was something of which Corvaisis had spoken on the phone, but Jorja had not understood what he meant until she experienced it. And it was quite separate from the feelings she had for Ginger as her roadside savior.
        Even Marcie - bundled in coat and scarf, her eyes still puffy from the nap on the plane, the album clutched to her chest - was stirred from her moody trancelike state by the sight of the writer and the physician. She smiled and answered their questions with more enthusiasm than had marked her speech in days. She offered to show them her album, and she submitted with a giggle when Corvaisis scooped her up in his arms to carry her to the parking lot.
        We were right to come, Jorja thought. Thank God we did.
        Carrying Marcie, Corvaisis led the way to the car, while Jorja and Ginger followed with the suitcases. As they walked, Jorja said, "Maybe you don't remember, but you provided emergency treatment for Marcie that Friday evening in July, even before we checked into the Tranquility."
        The physician blinked. "In fact, I hadn't remembered. Was that you and your late husband? Was that Marcie? But of course it was!"
        "We had parked along I-80, five miles west of the motel," Jorja recalled. "The view to the south was so spectacular, such a wonderful panorama, that we wanted to use it as a backdrop for some snapshots."
        Ginger nodded. "And I was driving east in your wake. I saw you up ahead, parked along the shoulder. You were focusing the camera. Your husband and Marcie had stepped over the guardrail and were standing a few feet farther out, posing at the edge of the highway embankment."
        "I didn't want them standing so close to the brink. But Alan insisted it was the best position for the best picture, and when Alan insisted on something, there was no use arguing with him."
        However, before Jorja had been able to click the shutter, Marcie had slipped and fallen backward, over the edge, tumbling down the thirty- or forty-foot embankment. Jorja screamed - "Marcie!" - flung the camera aside, vaulted the guardrail, and started down toward her daughter. Fast as she was, however, Jorja had just reached Marcie when she heard someone shouting: "Don't move her! I'm a doctor!" That had been Ginger Weiss, and she had descended the slope so rapidly that she had arrived at Marcie's side simultaneously with Alan, who had started down before her. Marcie was still and silent but not unconscious, only stunned, and Ginger quickly determined that the girl had not sustained a head injury. Marcie began to cry, and because her left leg was tucked under her at a somewhat odd angle, Jorja was certain it was broken. Ginger was able to allay that fear, too. In the end, because the slope was rock-free and cushioned by bunchgrass, Marcie came through with only minor injuries - a few scrapes and bruises.
        "I was so impressed by you," Jorja said.
        "Me?" Ginger looked surprised. She waited for an incoming single-engine plane to pass overhead. Then: "I did nothing special, you know. I only examined Marcie. She didn't need heroic care, just Band-Aids."
        As they put the suitcases in the trunk of Dom's car, Jorja said, "Well, I was impressed. You were young, pretty, feminine, yet you were a doctor - efficient, quick-thinking. I'd always thought of myself as a born cocktail waitress, nothing more, but that encounter with you started a fire in me. Later, when Alan walked out on us, I didn't fall apart. I remembered you, and I decided to make more of myself than