"Just another hour," the boy said. "The solution will be used up then, and you can go."
"What time is it?"
The boy told them. Paulo struggled to get up--he had an appointment, and there was no way he was going to miss it.
"I have to meet with Gene," he said to Chris.
&nb
sp; "Sit down," the boy said. "Not until the solution is used up."
The comment was unnecessary. Paulo no longer had either the strength or desire to walk even to the door.
I've missed the meeting, he thought. But at this point, nothing mattered. The less he thought about, the better.
"FIFTEEN MINUTES," GENE SAID. "THAT'S ALL IT TAKES, and without even realizing what's happening, you die."
They were back at the old trailer. It was the afternoon of the next day, and the entire scene was bathed in pink. Nothing like the desert of the previous day--golden, peaceful, nausea, vomiting.
They hadn't been able to eat or sleep for twenty-four hours--they threw up everything they tried to eat. But now that strange sensation was passing.
"It's good that your horizon had been expanded. And that you were thinking about angels. An angel appeared."
Paulo thought it would be better to have said "Your soul had grown." Besides, the guy who had appeared wasn't an angel--he had an old truck, and he spoke English.
"Let's get going," said Gene, asking Paulo to start the car. He took the passenger seat, with no show of ceremony. And Chris, grumbling in Portuguese, climbed into the back.
Gene began to give instructions--take that road there, go for a few miles, drive fast so that the car gets cool inside, turn off the air-conditioning so the motor doesn't overheat. Several times they drove off the narrow dirt road into the desert. But Gene knew what he was doing. He wasn't going to make the same mistakes they had.
"What happened yesterday?" Chris asked for the hundredth time. She knew that Gene wanted her to ask. He might already have seen his guardian angel, but he acted like any other young man his age.
"Sunstroke," he finally explained. "Haven't either of you ever seen a film about the desert?"
Of course they had. Thirsty men, dragging themselves across the sand in search of a drop of water.
"We didn't feel thirsty at all. The two canteens were filled with water."
"That's not what I'm talking about," the American interrupted. "I mean your clothing."
The clothing! The Arabs with their long robes, and several hoods--one on top of the other. Of course, how stupid we were! Paulo had already heard about that, and he'd already walked across three other deserts...and he had never felt the desire to take his clothes off. But here, that morning, after the frustration of the lake that they seemed never to reach.... How could I have had such a stupid idea? he thought.
"When you took off your clothes, the water in your bodies began to evaporate immediately. You can't even perspire, because the climate is so dry. In fifteen minutes, you were both already dehydrated. No thirst or anything--just a slight feeling of disorientation."
"And the exhaustion?"
"That exhaustion is death arriving."
I sure didn't know it was death arriving, Chris said to herself. If someday she had to choose an easy way to leave the world behind, she would come back and take off her clothing in the middle of the desert.
"Most people who die in the desert die with water in their canteen. The dehydration is so rapid that we feel as if we've drunk an entire bottle of whiskey, or taken an overdose of some tranquilizer." He suggested that, starting now, they drink water periodically--even if they weren't thirsty--because their bodies needed the water.
"But an angel did appear," Gene said.
Before Paulo could say what he was thinking, Gene ordered him to stop at the foot of a cliff.
"Let's get out here and go the rest of the way on foot."
They began to walk along a narrow path that led to the top of the cliff. Before they had gone far, Gene realized he had forgotten the flashlight from the car. He went back, picked it up, and sat on the hood of the car for some time, staring out at the desert.