The night was still warm. Twice within an hour we heard the distant snarl of approaching automobiles. Headlights danced vaguely up and down the main highway, casting weird shadows. The sound of the approaching car grew to a whine, then rapidly faded as the glare of the brilliant headlights gave place to the glowing red of a receding taillight. There were only those two cars within more than an hour. For the rest, we had the desert to ourselves.
Louie’s music had the majesty of organ music. It was, of course, due in part to the environment, the desert, and the steady stars, in a sky which looked as though it had been freshly washed and polished by some cosmic housekeeper. Louie played by ear, but he was an artist, and he made that harmonica accomplish things one would have thought impossible.
Then, after a while, Louie quit playing, just let the music fade into silence, and we sat there, looking up at the stars, out at the dim outlines of the automobile, of the sagebrush against the sand of the desert, feeling the eternal silence.
Helen said softly in a half whisper, “It’s close to heaven out here.”
I could feel the warmth of her body through her clothes and mine, could feel the weight of her head settling down against my shoulder. Once or twice her muscles gave involuntary little twitches, as the nerve tension relaxed, and her body surrendered itself to drowsiness.
After a while, a breeze so faint as to be all but imperceptible stole over the desert, but that breeze was cold. The warmth simply vanished. The breeze grew stronger. You could feel the air moving now. Helen snuggled closer. She doubled her legs, and pushed her knees hard against my leg. For a moment, warmth returned, then the breeze came again, and Helen straightened with a shiver.
“Gettin’ cold,” Louie said.
“Bedtime,” Helen announced. “Mine’s the end bed. Donald, you sleep in the center.”
She moved over to her blankets, slipped out of her outer clothes. It was too dark for details, but the starlight showed the general contours of her figure as her outer garments slipped down her smooth limbs. I watched her without curiosity and without self-consciousness. It was as though one were seeing a beautiful piece of statuary by starlight.
She slid under the covers, twisted and turned for a moment, slipping out of her underclothes, then sat up in bed to pull pajamas on and button them around her neck.