The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie…except in your mind. In there, it’s still going on, isn’t it?

She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruth’s voice without self-consciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it.

Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after I’ve taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just-

“-shut the fuck up,” she finished in a low whisper.

Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know there’s something or someoneinside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimesuses my voice-it’s a great ventriloquist, no doubt about that-but it’snot me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kepttrying to stay in touch as long as I did…because I loved you. And,I suppose, because us high-riding bitches have to stick together.

Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw.

Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard.

Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolled-up card jutting out of her mouth like FDR’s cigarette holder.

Please God, I’m begging you…let this work.

Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadn’t been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolled-up subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose.

She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mother’s teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seats and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husband’s water-glass, was the apogee of her life.

Don’t drink it all, Jess-save some for later.

She didn’t know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didn’t matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteen-year-old boy half-mad with six months of heavy petting that it didn’t matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didn’t have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the mind’s advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as well-giving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief.

Jessie went on sucking through the rolled-up card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway.

What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Gerald’s glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolled-up blow-in card was dark with moisture.

I could get what’s left, though. I could, IfI could turn my hand alittle farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to gethold of the miserable glass inthe first place, I think I can stick my necka little farther forward and get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can.

She did know it, and later on she would test the idea, but for now the white-collar guys on the top floor-the ones with all the good views-had once again wrested control away from the day-laborers and shop stewards who ran the machinery; the mutiny was over. Her thirst was a long way from being entirely slaked, but her throat had quit throbbing and she felt a lot better… mentally as well as physically. Sharper in her thoughts and marginally brighter in her outlook.

She found she was glad she’d left that last little bit in the glass. Two sips of water through the leaky straw probably wouldn’t spell the difference between remaining handcuffed to the bed and finding a way to wriggle out of this mess on her own-let alone between life and death-but getting those last couple of sips might occupy her mind when and if it tried to turn to its own morbid devices again. After all, night was coming, her husband was lying dead nearby, and it looked like she was camping out.

Not a pretty picture, especially when you added the hungry stray who was camping out with her, but Jessie found she was growing sleepy again just the same. She tried to think of reasons to fight her growing drowsiness and couldn’t come up with any good ones. Even the thought of waking up with her arms numb to the elbows didn’t seem like a particularly big deal. She would simply move them around until the blood was flowing briskly again. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she had no doubt about her ability to do it.

Also, you might have an idea while you’re asleep, dear, Goodwife Burlingame said. That always happens in books.

“Maybe you will,” Jessie said. “After all, you’ve had the best one so far.”

She let herself lie down, using her shoulder-blades to scrunch the pillow as far up against the head of the bed as she could. Her shoulders ached, her arms (especially the left one) throbbed, and her stomach muscles were still fluttering with the strain of holding her upper body far enough forward to drink through the straw… but she felt strangely content, just the same. At peace with herself.

Content? How can you feel content? Your husband is dead, after all,and you played a part in that, Jessie. And suppose you are found? Suppose you are rescued? Have you thought about how this situation is going tolook to whoever finds you? How do you suppose it’s going to took toConstable Teagarden, as far as that goes? How long do you think it willtake him to decide to call the State Police? Thirty seconds? Maybe forty? They think a little slower out here in the country, though, don’t they t might take him all of two minutes.

She couldn’t argue with any of that. It was true.

Then how can you feel content, Jessie? How can you possibly feel content with things like that hanging over you?

She didn’t know, but she did. Her sense of tranquility was as deep as a featherbed on the night a March gale filled with sleet roars out of the northwest, and as warm as the goosedown comforter on that bed. She suspected that most of this feeling stemmed from causes which were purely physical: if you were thirsty enough, it was apparently possible to get stoned on half a glass of water.

But there was a mental side, as well. Ten years ago she had reluctantly given up her job as a substitute teacher, finally giving in to the pressure of Gerald’s persistent (or maybe “relentless” was the word she was actually looking for) logic. He was making almost a hundred thousand dollars a year by then; next to that, her five to seven grand looked pretty paltry. It was, in fact, an actual annoyance at tax time, when the IRS took most of it and then went sniffing over their financial records, wondering where the rest of it was.