“And then I met Mr. Schmidt. I thought maybe it was a mirage. An old white-haired man about a quarter mile up the highway. He was standing by the road with heat waves rippling around him. As I got closer, I saw that he carried a cane and wore pitch-black glasses, and he was dressed as if headed for church—white suit, white shirt, black tie, black shoes.

“Without looking at me, and while some distance away, he called out: ‘My name is George Schmidt.’

“I said, ‘Yes. Good afternoon, sir.’

“He said: ‘Is it afternoon?’

“‘After three.’

“‘Then I must have been standing here two hours or more. Would you mind telling me where I am?’

“‘In the Mojave Desert. About eighteen miles west of Needles.’

“‘Imagine that,’ he said. ‘Leaving a seventy-year-old blind man stranded alone in the desert. Ten dollars in my pocket, and not another rag to my name. Women are like flies: they settle on sugar or shit. I’m not saying I’m sugar. But she’s sure settled for shit now. My name is George Schmidt.’

“I said, ‘Yes sir, you told me. I’m George Whitelaw.’ And he wanted to know where I was going, what I was up to, and when I said I was hitchhiking, heading for New York, he asked if I would take his hand and help him along a bit, maybe until we could catch a ride. I forgot to mention, he had a German accent and he was extremely stout, almost fat; he looked as if he’d been lying in a hammock all his life. But when I held his hand, I felt the roughness, the immense strength of it. You wouldn’t have wanted a pair of hands like that around your throat. He said, ‘Yes, I have strong hands. I’ve worked as a masseur for fifty years, the last twelve in Palm Springs. You got any water?’ I gave him my canteen, which was still half full. And he said: ‘She left me there without even a drop of water. The whole thing took me by surprise. Though I can’t say it should have, knowing Ivory good as I did. That’s my wife. Ivory Hunter she was. A stripper; she played the Chicago World’s Fair, 1932, and she would have been a star if it hadn’t been for that Sally Rand. Ivory invented this fan dance thing and that Rand woman stole it off her. So Ivory said. Probably just more of her bullshit. Uh oh, watch out for the rattler, he’s over there someplace, I can hear him really singing. There’s two things I’m scared of. Snakes and women. They have a lot in common. One thing they have in common is: the last thing that dies is their tail.’