William Bankier: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

With agonizing slowness they crept across deserts and mountains; then suddenly the basin below was filled with an impenetrable brown soup. “Air looks pretty good in L.A. today,” the pilot said imperturbably as they dropped down into it.

She walked briskly up the ramp with heart unaccountably pounding, searching the waiting crowd for Sam’s face. When she didn’t see it she first thought, crazily, that she had somehow forgotten what he looked like, and began to construct a mental image. Tall and thin with dark hair, right?

No. He definitely wasn’t there.

Sagging with disappointment and worry and irrational anger, she made her way to the baggage area and waited. And waited.

“Claire!” someone said breathlessly behind her, and she turned to see a tall, thin, dark-haired stranger whose smile faded as he beheld her blank countenance. “Sorry I’m late,” he said in a familiar-sounding voice. “The Valiant overheated coming up the Grapevine.”

“The Valiant?” she heard herself say. “Why didn’t you bring the Toyota?”

“Because I can’t shift!” he answered plaintively, and she saw that his right arm was in a sling.

“Sam!” So this must be Sam. “What happened?” She reached out tentatively to touch his shoulder. Then her bags arrived, and they fought their way to the parking lot. Despite his protests that the Valiant was easy to maneuver one-handed, she insisted on driving. “It’s sorta pulling to the left,” he said apologetically — a phenomenon she never got to experience, since as soon as they left the airport they were stopped dead by rush-hour traffic.

How high did your blood pressure have to rise before you had a stroke? she wondered, as they sat, silent, gridlocked, two blocks from the airport. “What happened to your arm?”

“It’s a complicated story,” he said, and that was all he said. She could see he was hurt by her coldness. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to be cold, she didn’t even know why she was cold — well, numb was a more exact description — except that everything seemed so alien: the murky air, the extraterrestrial palm trees, the ocean on the left instead of the right... and why couldn’t she simply explain this to Sam?

Instead she asked inanely, “Is that a new shirt?” It was Western-style, with pointy pocket flaps and snaps instead of buttons.

“No. I just never wear it.”

“It’s nice.”

It was nice. And Sam himself was beginning to come into focus. And if she spent one more second sitting on her behind in a vehicle she was going to explode.

Leaning on the horn like a New York cabdriver, she forced her way into the rightmost lane and then, oblivious to Sam’s protests, drove along the shoulder for a few hundred yards, finally turning into the driveway of the airport Hilton.

She came to an abrupt halt in front of the motel office.

“It... it’s a long way to Riverdale,” she said, staring intently at the steering wheel. “And we might be stuck in traffic for hours, or the damn car might overheat again, or we might have an accident, or...”

She broke off. Sam was grinning like a fool. He put his good arm around her neck, and she grasped the lapels of his shirt and pulled them apart. The snaps made a wonderful popping sound.