Castaways in Time by Adams Robert

siimed the others suffered the same, for all the five people who now shared his house had seemed in one degree or another of shock when first they had arrived at his doors—the Colliers at the front, the other three at the back, first Krystal Kent, then Dave Atkins and the grubby little teenager who went by the name of Susan Sunshine.

Eschewing chairs, the two were lying side by side on the wall-to-wall carpet before Bass’s stereo. One of his very few tapes of acid rock was in place and both Dave and Susan had fitted padded earphones on their heads. They, at least, were not slopping up their host’s booze; Dave had rolled a double-thick joint—of the diameter of an ordinary cigarette and almost as long—and, smilingly, they were passing it back and forth. Despite the efforts of the air conditioner, the room already contained an acrid reek of burning rope.

According to the story given by Collier when first he and his wife had arrived, yesterday noon—both of them soaking wet and he slimed all over with reddish-brown mud, his hands and shirtfront smudged as well with greasy black grime—they had been driving from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., had gone off at the incorrect beltway exit, become lost and spent seeming hours driving the backroads and byways of rural Maryland. Finally, a blowout of their right rear tire had forced a stop on a muddy shoulder under the driving rain of the approaching storm.

While Arbor Collier sat and fumed in the car, nipping at one of the several pints of gin she had hidden in various locations for the long trip, Collier had jacked up the aging Ford and gotten the wheel off with much effort and was kneeling in the slippery mud, putting the spare in place, when he felt the shoulder under him seem to become fluid . . . and Arbor had chosen that moment to open the passenger-side door and make to step out Collier had tried to shout a warning, then he was falling. …

Seconds later, or eons, Collier had found himself lying— still muddy, still gripping his lug wrench—near the base of a stone wall. Arbor was sitting, dazed, a few feet away, in her sensible traveling suit and with her huge purse still slung from her shoulder. The grass directly under Collier was wet, but that surrounding him was dry as a bone under the bright, hot sun.

“William!” Arbor had shrieked. “Where are we? How . . . how did we get here and . . . Where’s our . . . car? All my clothes are in the car, William, my medicine and my vitamins, everything. You’ve got to find the car!”

She had continued the same selfish, shrewish litany all the way to Bass’s trilevel—maybe a hundred feet. But when she discovered that Bass stocked a fair amount of the “medicine” she required, in varying proof and flavors, she had set about dosing herself, even taking a bottle of gin up to bed with her.

This morning, she had mechanically eaten the breakfast Bass and Krystal had together cooked, then had sought out the liquor cabinet. She had nagged her husband for a short while about Bass’s lack of any more gin, but had soon settled on one of the couches with a water glass and a bottle of 100-proof vodka.

With his eyes on Krystal Kent’s slender loveliness, Bass had allowed his mind to slip back to pleasurable thoughts of last night with her—two frightened people, taking solace and comfort in each other.

“. . . ster Foster, I’m speaking to you!” The nasal, strident, supercilious voice was Arbor Collier’s.

Bass turned his head to face her. “Uh, sorry, I was . . . was thinking, Mrs. Collier. What is it?”

Arbor smiled a nasty, knowing smirk. “Yes, I know the way you dirty men all think when you’re looking at women the way you were looking at Miss Kent,” she sniggered.

Bass felt his face going hot. Forcing calm, he inquired coldly, “If that was all you had on your pickled brain, Mrs. Collier, it could have been left unsaid. I don’t like you any better than you apparently like me. If we continue to ignore each other, maybe we can make it through the day without coming to blows.”