At first he thought the object ahead might be a mirage. But it didn't shimmer, and it grew in appearance as his car approached.

A two-story mansion of shiny white stone, with rows of windows on each level, reflected the early afternoon sun. The front porch, shaded by an overhang, boasted a row of gleaming white marble pillars. In front of the house a rectangular patch of green lawn was sharply delineated from the barren desert around it.

He'd driven the road before and didn't remember seeing anything like this. But that was a few years ago, and anything could have happened in the meantime. He ignored the mansion and drove straight ahead.

Or tried to. Without warning his engine suddenly coughed and died, and the old Corolla coasted slowly to a stop almost directly in front of the mansion's driveway. He at least managed to steer it off to the side of the road so it wouldn't get hit by any other car passing this way. Not that there was much likelihood of that.

The gas gauge showed the tank was half full. He tried the ignition a couple of times, but only got a dismal whirring noise. "Damn!" he screamed at the unheeding machine, pounding the steering wheel with both fists. "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! Why me? Why now? I knew I shouldn't have trusted this piece of junk for a trip like this."

He looked at the stack of insurance forms on the passenger's seat under the bag of his clothes he'd managed to salvage after the fire, then got out and slammed the door angrily behind him. He raised the hood to stare at the engine. It was an exercise in futility--he had no idea what to look for, let alone how to fix it.

He looked impatiently at his watch. Twelve thirty-five. The temperature was easily a hundred already and would only get worse as the afternoon wore on. There wasn't a breath of wind. He'd have to do something if he wanted to make it to his brother's ranch before nightfall.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. That was no help, either--the display showed no signal here. After all, who would put a cell phone tower out here for the jackrabbits and coyotes? He threw the cell phone as far as he could into the desert. "Good riddance!" he shouted after it. "What good are you? What good is anything?" He kicked the car in frustration and shook with a barely suppressed sob. "What good is anything?"

What he wanted to do was get back in the car again. In the back seat. And curl up in a fetal ball, whimpering. Maybe even sucking his thumb. The whole universe could just pass him by. That would probably be better than what it had been doing lately.

He looked up and saw the house again. Well, at least he could ask to use their phone to call Triple-A. Of course, with his luck there wouldn't be anyone home.

He looked down at himself. Despite his sweating, his clothes were dry in this desert heat. He ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times in lieu of a comb. Then he started stomping up the asphalt driveway, glad it wasn't a dark, stormy night, because then he might be heading into the lair of Dracula or Frank-N-Furter or someone ominous like that.

He was so wrapped up in his black cloud of thoughts that he'd gotten more than halfway up the driveway before he saw the snowman out on the lawn near the porch. It had to be one of those plastic Christmas ornaments, he mused. Someone had a weird sense of humor, leaving it out in July. Either that or they were really lazy about putting it away.

As he approached it, though, it looked more and more real. It was a standard three-snowball snowman with the base three feet in diameter, the middle two feet and the head one foot. Its eyes were black plums, its nose a sweet gherkin pickle and its mouth a dotted line of cherries curving in a smile. It wore a cheerful yellow and red scarf around where its neck would be. On its head, instead of the traditional top hat, it had an Oakland A's baseball cap. Its arms were disproportionately skinny, just a couple of bare twigs sticking out of its shoulders.

He came up beside it and touched it experimentally. It was cold. It was made of snow. And it was standing out on this lawn in hundred-degree heat under the blazing desert sun in July.

He backed away from it slowly, not completely willing to take his eyes off it. The snowman just stood there and showed no intention of melting.

Finally, with a fast shake of his head, he tried to put it out of his mind. He had too many other problems of greater concern. He climbed the four steps onto the porch, walked up to the large door and pressed the bell.

A few seconds later the door opened and he found himself looking at the most beautiful young woman he'd ever met. She was short--he stood five-eight, and she barely came up to his nose--but that was about her only feature he might have called substandard. Her perfectly proportioned body, neither too busty nor too boyish, engaged him. Her dark brown hair, in a pixie cut, surrounded a perfect face with wide, sparkling brown eyes, a perky nose, and a small but expressive mouth.

She wore a black one-piece satin pants-dress: Pants with gently flaring legs; the top a harness like two black kerchiefs rising up the front and tied behind her neck. She had ordinary low-heeled black pumps, and her back was bare. She wasn't model-skinny, but there was certainly no fat there. Around her neck she wore a thin gold chain and a large medallion several inches across, with at least a dozen small lights that blinked on and off. She didn't look much more than twenty years old.

"Yes?" she asked.

He was so busy admiring the view that he almost forgot why he was there. "Uh, sorry to bother you, but my car broke down on the road over there. I was wondering--"

"Well, don't just stand out there in the heat," she said, beckoning. "Come on in to the air conditioning and get comfortable. Welcome to the Green House."

"Thank you," he said, stepping inside. She closed the door behind him, and he luxuriated in the feeling. He hadn't felt cool for hours.

They were in a vestibule with a black and white marble tile floor and an enormous cut crystal chandelier suspended from the high ceiling. A long hallway led to the back of the mansion with several doors at intervals along its length. A broad staircase with dark green carpeting led up to the next story.

"I hate to intrude like this--" he began, but she interrupted him again.

"Pish tosh. It's no intrusion. You can't help where your car breaks down, can you?"

"No," he said with a deep sigh. "I was just hoping you'd let me use your phone a moment."

"I would if I had one."

"You live all the way out here in the middle of nowhere without a phone?"

"If I had a phone, people would just call me all the time," she said. "Too many people keep trying to talk to me. I prefer being a little unreachable."

"But what if you run into trouble?" he pressed her. "What if you needed to get in touch with someone?"

"I have no trouble getting in touch with anyone I want," she said. "And there's no trouble my staff and I can't handle."

"Oh, you have a staff. I guess that's a little better."

"Yup. In fact, I was going to suggest you let my chauffeur take a look at your car. He'll probably know how to fix it."

"I don't want to put you to any trouble--"

"It's no trouble for me. Fritz will do the work. That's what he's here for." She grabbed her medallion and spoke into it. "Fritz, there's a car out front that seems to have stopped working. Can you have a look at it and get it going again?"

"Ja, meine fraulein," came a voice out of the medallion. The accent was so Hollywood German that he could almost hear the clicking of heels.

"Thank you so much," he said.

She turned back to face him. "I'm Polly, by the way."

"Oh, uh, hi. I'm Rod."

She tilted her head to the left. "You don't look like a 'Rod,'" she said critically.

"What does a 'Rod' look like?"

"Oh, long, cylindrical and stiff." She gave him a wicked grin. "Of course, I can understand if that's a nickname."

He found himself blushing furiously. "It's, uh, for Herodotus," he said quietly. At the same time, he wondered why he said it. He almost never told anyone that--certainly not a complete stranger.

"Oh, the Greek historian," Polly squealed. "How neat."

"You've heard of him?"

"Of course. I loved the ancient Greeks."

"Yeah, so did my father. He was a professor of classical civilizations."

"He must have really loved you to give you such an honored name."

Herodotus snorted with scorn. "Herodotus Shapiro is a horrible name to give a Jewish boy."

"I kinda like it. Mind if I call you 'Hero'?"

"I really prefer Rod."

"You can be my Hero," she said, completely ignoring his complaint. "It's better than 'Her,' ain't it?"

"Whatever," he said resignedly. He had much bigger problems in his life right now than what some silly rich girl called him. And right now, one of those problems was taking his eyes off the gorgeous body of that silly rich girl and avoiding drooling on the floor.