FIVE

They tried for a couple of hours without any luck. Susan went to her bunk long before anyone else; sleeping out of frustration was what Owen called it. It was not long before everyone but Don and Owen had turned in. The long ride coupled with the idea of a long day sent them to bed without closing the solid canvas wall that separated the work area from the sleeping area.

They sat on opposite sides of the picnic table, facing each other, drinking beer.

"How long have you known her?" Don asked.

Owen looked past him to the sleeping form. She was facing away from them and barely a bump under the blanket and a braid on the pillow.

"Most of my life."

"Are you two . . . together?"

"Nah. She's never had time for that kind of thing."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know how to put this without making her sound like the Chaste Absent Minded Professor." Owen took a drink of his beer then leaned forward. "She's distracted too much with other people and the other side to have a boyfriend."

"Never?" Don wanted to it to be clear with what he thought he was hearing.

"Not that I know, and I'd know."

"What about you?"

"She's my oldest friend, if she was willing, I'd be there. But like I said she doesn't have time and I couldn't deal with the kind of multitasking it would take to be with her."

"I think it would be wreck me to feel that way about someone and still be her friend."

"I can't not see her."

Owen finished off his beer and went to get another. As he sat down, he put a cold beer in front of Don who nodded his thanks. They drank in silence and listened to the sounds of night -- crickets and frogs, the occasional cry of a whippoorwill.

Owen broke the silence. "What about you?"

"No one right now."

"That's not what I meant."

Don looked at Owen's good natured face and there he saw a protector.

"If she doesn't have time for you, she's not going to have time for me."

"And that's not an answer."

There was a dry spell happening for Don. After the first week he had been actively trying to find any woman who would react to him. He thought that Judy might be a taker but she had seemed to have lost interest. Face facts, Susan intrigued him -- to get her attention would be like winning the lottery.

"Yeah, okay. I'm attracted to her. She's also the only woman to look me in the eye in three months. I'm not going to elope with her and I'm not going to fuck her and leave."

"What's with the questions, then?"

"I guess I'm not ruling anything out but I didn't want to step into a relationship."

"Thanks."

"What can I say, I don't like getting beaten up."

Owen laughed. "I don't blame you. Nothing worse than getting beaten for a woman that doesn't care."

Don raised his bottle in a salute to Owen, who clinked the bottle necks together. Then they drank to each other.

Owen had one more beer and then went to bed.

Don could not imagine being able to sleep. On the other hand, he thought as he looked around the work area and heard the sounds of sleeping people, there was a lot to be said for not being alone.

He was getting up to throw away his bottle when he heard someone getting out of their bunk. Susan came out of the shadows, she was wearing a long T-shirt and shorts; what she called her pajamas.

"I thought I heard someone moving around," she said, as she sat down at the table.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I'm an insomniac. If I get a couple of hours a night, I'm lucky." She saw the beer bottle in Don's hand. "I'll join you if you don't mind."

Don brought two bottles to the table. After a slight hesitation, he came around to her side and sat down next to her.

"Can I ask something?" Don asked, he had been wondering something for most of the day.

Susan nodded.

"What happened with you and Ethan? Did you know him before he died? Is that why he is here with you now?"

There were always people who had to know why, so she told him the story.

She had known that she was their last hope, all other avenues of so called "normal" hope were exhausted. Otherwise, they never would have called her. These people did not believe in this kind of mumbo-jumbo but when you are at the end of your rope and someone you love is at stake -- well, you would be surprised how quickly the phone book could be opened to snake charmers.

It was a private room but there were still too many eyes for her liking. The youngest of the Hall family, Ethan, was in the bed on a respirator. The rest of the clan, mother, father, older brothers and sister, stood around the bed watching her with red, teary eyes.

There had been a car crash -- that much she had gotten from the papers -- it had not been Ethan's fault; as the driver of the other car had been talking on a cell phone and trying to light a cigarette, he had wandered over the center line and hit young Ethan head on.

The smoking, cell phone user's air bag had deployed. Ethan's had not.

It was a shock to the family to see twenty-three-year-old Ethan with a tube down his throat that forced each breath noisily into his lungs.

The Halls were not ready to take him off the machine, but every day it became less likely that Ethan would survive without it. He would have to wake today -- according to his living will -- or they would have to take him off the loud machine. This was why The Halls were at the end of their rope.

Suzette crossed to the bed. She laid a hand on his arm, he was warm, so she knew that he was present.

Now comes the hard part, she thought.

"There is too much emotion in here. I need you all to leave so I can talk to Ethan."

They did not like that and said so over and over again. In the end it was Ethan's mother who convinced the rest to leave her and Susan in the room. There were grumbles on their lips and threats in their eyes that Susan heard and saw as they left. Then it was just the three of them; Ethan with his mechanically forced air and occasional buzzes when his heart rate changed; Mrs. Hall with her sniffs and occasional sobs; and Susan, with her quiet discomfort.

Susan had her hand placed on his arm, not to get a clearer reading, but to make sure she had his attention.

"Ethan, I'm Susan and I want to talk to you."

Mrs. Hall had started to cry again, she was trying to be quiet which made it sound as if she was strangling on her grief. What set her off was the buzz of the machine that went off at the sound of his name. There had been no other movement in his physical body but Susan could feel his attention on her.

"You know that you've been accident." Ethan was shocked and worried, he had known that something was off, but he could not figure out what. He thought that he was dreaming. This information comes to Susan like a vague memory. Or a jigsaw puzzle -- pieces fitting together to make a picture.

"No, you were in a car accident."

Oh, yes, I remember now.

His memory of the crash comes to her -- bright lights, the sound of a horn, his hands trying to jerk the wheel to get out of the other car's path, failing, the jolt of the impact, the bright light of pain, so much brighter than the headlights shining through the shattered windshield.

As the images faded Susan said, "Your family is here and they are worried about you."

The feeling of anger surprised her. They are worried that I might do something that they can't control.

"I am sure that they care about you."

"What's going on?" Mrs. Hall asked, suspiciously.

They care about what my friends look like, what girls I dated, what school I go to. It's all about connections and contacts. Not what makes me happy. It's about what makes them happy.

"This choice is yours, Ethan." Susan tells him.

"What?!" his mother yelps. "That's not what you're supposed to say!"

"You can stay or you can go," Susan told him as his mother pulled her hand off of his arm.

"You're here to make him stay! You're here to make him wake up!" she screamed. The door slammed open and the room is again full of Halls.

Over Mrs. Hall's cries of "she's killing my baby!" Susan said to Ethan, "This is your choice, Ethan; decide and act."

It had no more left her lips when the heart monitor began to buzz. Not the brief, intermittent buzz of a momentary problem, this buzz was not stopping.

There were shouted threats, and Ethan's sister shoved Susan against the wall, a medical team rushed in and everyone was told to wait in the hall and through it all Susan smiled; the feeling of freedom was making her giddy.

During the trial Susan was said to have been giggling while Ethan died.

The truth of the matter was that she was happy for him. He apologized over and over for his family's actions and Susan kept telling him that it was not his fault.

After the law suit was dropped and all contacts with his family were severed, she assumed that Ethan would go to the other side. But he liked her company and was pleased that she let him be his own person so he decided to stay. On her part, Susan appreciated his enthusiasm and The Black Cat took to him right away, she could see no reason for him to go elsewhere if he was going to stay on this plane.

I wish I had known you when I was alive. Ethan told her. They were sitting on the porch swing watching fireflies and Susan was drinking a beer.

"I'm not so good with the living," she responded.

Why is that? Ethan wanted to know.

"It's all about greed with the living," she said, "they want to touch you or take something that's not theirs or worse trying to trick you into thinking they are different."

You think all the living are like that?

"That's been my experience."

That's too bad.

Susan thought about it for a moment. "Yes, I suppose it is."

Susan started to feel sorry for herself, it did not happen often but when it did it was the darkest of moods. It might have led to a few days of her being curled up in her bed if Ethan had no offered. Maybe men are the problem. Have you considered women?

Susan admitted that she had but like having a sweet tooth or a favorite color, her tastes did not lean that way. This, however, did not stop Ethan from teasing her when they went out for groceries.

How about her? he would ask, pointing out some sweet young thing.

Susan would shake her head and try not to laugh.

Come on, be a sport.

"Oh, you'd like that," Susan muttered and caused the S.S.Y.T. to look at her. Susan was reading the cereal box with a strange smile as if the vitamin A levels were the funniest of ingredients. Ethan's sex drive had ended with his life, he did it to make her laugh. It was not long before they asked her to stop coming into the store. They offered to give her free delivery if she never darkened their doorway again.

That was how she became a recluse. Owen would still come by sometimes but mostly it was just her, Ethan, and The Black Cat. And the computer. Thanks to Owen she had the best free computer in the state. He built it from scratch.

Susan relayed all this to Don as they drank their beers.

Don watched her face, the way both distress and a certain amount of love was conveyed in her expression as she talked about Ethan. He had to say something.

"You can't be responsible for someone dying when all you did was tell them that it was okay to make up their own mind."

Suzette stood up and picked up the bottles. "You want some more?" she asked.

An idea floated to the front of Don's brain and he decided that he was drunk enough to try. He reached up and took hold of her arm, she watched him as he navigated her around that she was standing between his knees. He placed his hands on her hips and then slid them up to the small of her back. He pushed up her shirt, baring the top of her stomach, all the while looking at her body and her face.

"I take my offer back, I think you might have had enough," she said, giving him a puzzled look.

He pressed his face to her belly and kissed her skin, long and slow, then nibbled at her flesh. Susan looked down at him with an expression of vague confusion.

"You really feel nothing?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sorry."

Deflated he sat back against the table and let his hands fall away from her. "I don't get this at all."

"It's not like I don't like about you, I just don't . . . " her voice trailed away. "Want you."

Don did not know what to do with this information, this is his area of expertise. He could always seduce a woman if given the opportunity -- when he was a teenager he was the first of his group to lose his cherry -- when he was in college he had a necktie on the doorknob to his room to ward away his roommate so often that the roommate eventually found other sleeping arrangements -- as an adult he never left a bar alone unless he wanted to -- and now this. Did this mean an end of an era?

Even as he watched her cross to the refrigerator he had to wonder if it would take sleeping with her to get rid of this feeling of unease.

It was a lie. Susan had felt something beyond surprise and apprehension -- but she could not bring herself to examine it. There was a good possibility that it was desire. This was something that she could spend time dwelling on or she could let it go. There was little point in focusing on what she was feeling when nothing could come of it. In a day or two she and Don would go their separate ways to live their separate lives. It was the acme of foolishness to believe otherwise.

She had a vision of him sitting in the dark on her back porch. This faded into a paling fantasy, which was what it was from the start.