Strangers

the window, out there on the roof, something with a dark, featureless, shiny face. Even as Ernie recoiled in surprise, he realized it was a man in a white helmet with a tinted visor that came all the way down over his face, so darkly tinted that it was virtually black.
        A black-gloved hand reached through the window, as if to grab him, and Ernie cried out and took a step backward and fell over the edge of the tub. Toppling out of the tub, he grabbed wildly at the shower curtain, tore it loose from several of its rings, but could not arrest his fall. He hit the bathroom floor with a crash. Pain flashed through his right hip.
        "Ernie!" Faye cried, and a moment later she pushed open the door. "Ernie, my God, what's wrong, what happened?"
        "Stay back." He got up painfully. "Someone's out there."
        Cold night air poured through the open window, rustling the half-wrecked, bunched-up shower curtain.
        Faye shivered, for she slept in only a pajama shirt and panties.
        Ernie shivered, too, though partly for different reasons. The moment the pain had throbbed through his hip, the dreaminess had left him. In the sudden rush of clear-mindedness, he wondered if the helmeted figure had been imaginary, a hallucination.
        "On the roof?" Faye said. "At the window? Who?"
        "I don't know," Ernie said, rubbing his sore hip as he stepped back into the tub and peered out the window again. He saw no one this time.
        "What'd he look like?" Faye asked.
        "I couldn't tell. He was in motorcycle gear. Helmet, gloves," Ernie said, realizing how outlandish it sounded.
        He levered himself up on the windowsill far enough to lean out and look across the full length and breadth of the utility room's roof. Shadows were deep in places, but nowhere deep enough to hide a man. The intruder was gone - if indeed he had ever existed.
        Abruptly Ernie became aware of the vast darkness behind the motel. It stretched across the hills, off to the distant mountains, an immense blackness relieved only by the stars. Instantly, a crippling weakness and vulnerability overwhelmed him. Gasping, he dropped off the sill, back into the tub, and started to turn away from the window.
        "Close it up," Faye said.
        Squeezing his eyes shut to guard against another glimpse of the night, he turned once more to the in-rushing cold air, fumbled blindly for the window, and pulled it shut so hard that he almost broke the pane. With unsteady hands he struggled to secure the latch bolt.
        When he stepped out of the tub, he saw concern in Faye's eyes, which he expected. He saw surprise, which he also expected. But he saw a penetrating awareness for which he was unprepared. For a long moment they looked at each other, neither of them speaking.
        Then she said, "Are you ready to tell me about it?"
        "Like I said… I thought I saw a guy on the roof."
        "That's not what I'm talking about, Ernie. I mean, are you ready to tell me what's wrong, what's been eating at you?" Her eyes did not waver from his. "For a couple of months now. Maybe longer."
        He was stunned. He thought he had concealed it so well.
        She said, "Honey, you've been worried. Worried like I've never seen you before. And scared."
        "No. Not scared exactly."
        "Yes. Scared," Faye said, but there was no scorn in her, just an Iowan's forthrightness and a desire to help. "I've only ever seen you scared once before, Ernie-back when Lucy was five and came down with that muscle fever, and they thought it might be muscular dystrophy."
        "God, yes, I was scared shitless then."
        "But not since."
        "Oh, I was scared in Nam sometimes," he said, his admission echoing hollowly off the bathroom walls.
        "But I never saw it." She hugged herself. "It's rare that I see you like this, Ernie, so when you're scared I'm scared. Can't help it. I'm even more scared because I don't know what's wrong. You understand? Being in the dark like I am… that's worse than any secret you're withholding from me."
        Tears came to her eyes, and Ernie said, "Oh, hey, don't cry. It's going to be all right, Faye. Really it is."
        "Tell me!" she said.
        "Okay."
        "Now. Everything."
        He had woefully underestimated her, and he felt thickheaded. She was a Corps wife, after all, and a good one. She had followed him from Quantico to Singapore to