Her voice was so kind and sweet and fine. He held the phone tight to his ear so she could whisper sweetly into it. He felt his feet drift off the floor. His cheeks burned.
"I’m in Marlin Village," he said. "I-"
Buzz.
"Hello?" he said.
Buzz.
He jiggled the hook. Nothing.
Somewhere a wind had blown down a pole. As quickly as she had come, Genevieve Selsor was gone.
He dialled, but the line was dead.
"I know where she is, anyway." He ran out of the house. The sun was rising as he backed a beetle-car from the stranger‘s garage, filled its back seat with food from the house, and set out at eighty miles an hour down the highway, heading for New Texas City.
A thousand miles, he thought. Genevieve Selsor, sit tight, you‘ll hear from me!
He honked his horn on every turn out of town.
At sunset, after an impossible day of driving, he pulled to the roadside kicked off his tight shoes, laid himself out in the seat and slid the grey Homburg over his weary eyes. His breathing became slow and regular. The wind blew and the stars shone gently upon him in the new dusk. The Martian mountains lay all around, millions of years old. Starlight glittered on the spires of a little Martian town, no bigger than a game of chess, in the blue hills.
He lay in the half-place between awake ness and dreams. He whispered. Genevieve, Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve, he sang softly, the years may come, the years may go. But Genevieve, sweet Genevieve... There was a warmth in him. He heard her sweet cool voice sighing. Hello, oh, hello, Walter! This is no record. Where are you, Walter, where are you?
He sighed, putting up a hand to touch her in the moonlight. Long dark hair shaking in the wind; beautiful, it was. And her lips like red peppermints. And her cheeks like fresh-cut wet roses. And her body like a clear vaporous mist, while her soft cool sweet voice crooned to him once more the words to the old sad song, Oh, Genevieve, sweet Genevieve, the years may come, the years may go...