Insomnia (94 page)

Ralph looked at Lois and saw she was smiling . . . but he thought he saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes, as well.

He offered his hand to Lachesis first, because Mr L seemed marginally less jumpy than his colleague.

[
‘Put ’er there, Mr L.’
]

Lachesis looked at Ralph’s hand for so long that Ralph began to think he wasn’t going to be able to actually do it, although he clearly wanted to. Then, timidly, he put out his own small hand and allowed Ralph’s larger one to close over it. There was a tingling vibration in Ralph’s flesh as their auras first mingled, then merged . . . and in that merging he saw a series of swift, beautiful silver patterns. They reminded him of the Japanese characters on Ed’s scarf.

He pumped Lachesis’s hand twice, slowly and formally, then released it. Lachesis’s look of apprehension had been replaced by a large goony smile. He turned to his partner.

[
His force is almost completely unguarded during this ceremony! I felt it! It’s quite wonderful!
]

Clotho inched his own hand out to meet Ralph’s, and in the instant before they touched, Mr C closed his eyes like a man expecting a painful injection. Lachesis, meanwhile, was shaking hands with Lois and grinning like a vaudeville hoofer taking an encore.

Clotho appeared to steel himself, then seized Ralph’s hand. He flagged it once, firmly. Ralph grinned.

[
‘Take her easy, Mr C.’
]

Clotho withdrew his hand. He seemed to be searching for the proper response.

[
Thank you, Ralph. I will take her any way I can get her. Correct?
]

Ralph burst out laughing. Clotho, now turning to shake hands with Lois, gave him a puzzled smile, and Ralph clapped him on the back.

[
‘You got it right, Mr C – absolutely right.’
]

He slipped his arm around Lois and gave the little bald doctors a final curious look.

[
‘I’ll be seeing you fellows again, won’t I?’
]

Clotho: [
Yes, Ralph.
]

Ralph: [
‘Well, that’s fine. About seventy years from now would be good for me; why don’t you boys just put it down on your calendar?’
]

They responded with the smiles of politicians, which didn’t surprise him much. Ralph gave them a little bow, then put his arms around Lois’s shoulders and watched as Mr C and Mr L walked slowly down the hill. Lachesis opened the door of the slightly warped Portosan marked
MEN
; Clotho stood in the open doorway of
WOMEN
. Lachesis smiled and waved. Clotho lifted the long-bladed scissors in a queer sort of salute.

Ralph and Lois waved back.

The bald doctors stepped inside and closed the doors.

Lois wiped her streaming eyes and turned to Ralph.

[
‘Is that it? It is, isn’t it?’
]

Ralph nodded.

[
‘What do we do now?’
]

He held out his arm.

[
‘May I see you home, madam?’
]

Smiling, she clasped his forearm just below the elbow.

[
‘Thank you, sir. You may.’
]

They left Strawford Park that way, returning to the Short-Time level as they came out on Harris Avenue, slipping back down to their normal place in the scheme of things with no fuss or bother – without, in fact, even being aware they were doing it until it was done.

Derry groaned with panic and sweated with excitement. Sirens wailed, people shouted from second-storey windows to friends on the sidewalks below, and on every street-corner people had clustered to watch the fire on the other side of the valley.

Ralph and Lois paid no attention to the tumult and hooraw. They walked slowly up Up-Mile Hill, increasingly aware of their exhaustion; it seemed to come piling into them like softly thrown bags of sand. The pool of white light marking the Red Apple Store’s parking lot seemed an impossible distance away, although Ralph knew it was only three blocks, and short ones, at that.

To make matters worse, the temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees since that morning, the wind was blowing hard, and neither of them was dressed for the weather. Ralph suspected this might be the leading edge of autumn’s first big gale, and that in Derry, Indian summer was over.

Faye Chapin, Don Veazie, and Stan Eberly came hurrying down the hill toward them, obviously bound for Strawford Park. The field-glasses Old Dor sometimes used to watch planes taxi, land, and take off were bouncing around Faye’s neck. With Don, who was balding and heavy set, in the middle, their resemblance to a more famous trio was inescapable.
The Three Stooges of the Apocalypse,
Ralph thought, and grinned.

‘Ralph!’ Faye exclaimed. He was breathing fast, almost panting. The wind blew his hair into his eyes and he raked it back impatiently. ‘Goddam Civic Center blew up! Someone bombed it from a light plane! We heard there’s a thousand people dead!’

‘I heard about the same,’ Ralph agreed gravely. ‘In fact, Lois and I have just been down at the park, having a look. You can see straight across the valley from there, you know.’

‘Christ,
I
know that, I’ve lived here all my damn life, haven’t I? Where do you think we’re going? Come on back with us!’

‘Lois and I were just headed up to her house to see what they’ve got about it on TV. Maybe we’ll join you later.’

‘Okay, we – jeepers-creepers, Ralph, what’d you do to your head?’

For a moment Ralph drew a blank – what
had
he done to his head? – and then, in an instant of nightmarish recall, he saw Ed’s snarling mouth and mad eyes.
Oh no, don’t,
Ed had screamed at him.
You’ll spoil everything
.

‘We were running to get a better look and Ralph ran into a tree,’ Lois said. ‘He’s lucky not to be in the hospital.’

Don laughed at that, but in the half-distracted manner of a fellow who has bigger fish to fry. Faye wasn’t paying attention to them at all. Stan Eberly was, however, and Stan didn’t laugh. He was looking at them with close, puzzled curiosity.

‘Lois,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Did you know you’ve got a sneaker tied to your wrist?’

She looked down at it. Ralph looked down at it. Then Lois looked up and gave Stan a dazzling, eye-frying smile. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It’s an interesting look, isn’t it? Sort of a . . . a life-sized charm bracelet!’

‘Yeah,’ Stan said. ‘Sure.’ But he wasn’t looking at the sneaker anymore; now he was looking at Lois’s face. Ralph wondered how in hell they were going to explain how they looked tomorrow, when there were no shadows between the streetlights to hide them.

‘Come on!’ Faye cried impatiently. ‘Let’s get going!’

They hurried off (Stan gave them one last doubtful glance over his shoulder as they went). Ralph listened after them, almost expecting Don Veazie to give out a
nyucknyuck
or two.

‘Boy, that sounded so
dumb,
’ Lois said, ‘but I had to say something, didn’t I?’

‘You did fine.’

‘Well, when I open my mouth,
something
always seems to fall out,’ she said. ‘It’s one of my two great talents, the other being the ability to clean out an entire Whitman’s Sampler during a two-hour TV movie.’ She untied Helen’s sneaker and looked at it. ‘She’s safe, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Ralph agreed, and reached for the sneaker. As he did, he realized he already had something in his left hand. The fingers had been clamped down so long that they were creaky and reluctant to open. When they finally did, he saw the marks of his nails pressed into the flesh of his palm. The first thing he was aware of was that, while his own wedding ring was still in its accustomed place, Ed’s was gone. It had seemed a perfect fit, but apparently it had slipped off his finger at some point during the last half an hour, just the same.

Maybe not,
a voice whispered, and Ralph was amused to realize that it wasn’t Carolyn’s this time. This time the voice in his head belonged to Bill McGovern.
Maybe it just disappeared. You know, poof
.

But he didn’t think so. He had an idea that Ed’s wedding band might have been invested with powers that hadn’t necessarily died with Ed. The Ring Bilbo Baggins had found and reluctantly given up to his grandson, Frodo, had had a way of going where it wanted to . . . and when. Perhaps Ed’s ring wasn’t all that different.

Before he could consider this idea further, Lois traded Helen’s sneaker for the thing in his hand: a small stiff crumple of paper. She smoothed it out and looked at it. Her curiosity slowly changed to solemnity.

‘I remember this picture,’ she said. ‘The big one was on the mantel in their living room, in a fancy gold frame. It had pride of place.’

Ralph nodded. ‘This must have been the one he carried in his wallet. It was taped to the instrument panel of the plane. Until I took it, he was beating me, and not even breathing hard while he did it. Grabbing his picture was all I could think of to do. When I did, his focus switched from the Civic Center to them. The last thing I heard him say was “Give them back, they’re mine.”’

‘And was he talking to you when he said it?’

Ralph stuck the sneaker into his back pocket and shook his head. ‘Nope. Don’t think so.’

‘Helen was at the Civic Center tonight, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ Ralph thought of how she had looked out at High Ridge – her pale face and smoke-reddened, watering eyes.
If they stop us now, they win,
she’d said.
Don’t you see that?

And now he
did
see.

He took the picture from Lois’s hand, crumpled it up again, and walked over to the litter-basket which stood on the corner of Harris Avenue and Kossuth Lane. ‘We’ll get another picture of them sometime, one we can keep on our own mantel. Something not quite so formal. This one, though . . . I don’t want it.’

He tossed the little ball of paper at the litter-basket, an easy shot, two feet at the most, but the wind picked that moment to gust and the crumpled photo of Helen and Natalie which had been taped above the altimeter of Ed’s plane flew away on its cold breath. The two of them watched it whirl up into the sky, almost hypnotized. It was Lois who looked away first. She glanced at Ralph with a trace of a smile curving her lips.

‘Did I hear a backhand proposal of marriage from you, or am I just tired?’ she asked.

He opened his mouth to reply and another gust of wind struck them, this one so hard it made them both wince their eyes shut. When he opened his, Lois had already started up the hill again.

‘Anything’s possible, Lois,’ he said. ‘I know that now.’

Five minutes later, Lois’s key rattled in the lock of her front door. She led Ralph inside and shut it firmly behind them, closing out the windy, contentious night. He followed her into the living room and would have stopped there, but Lois never hesitated. Still holding his hand, not quite pulling him along (but perhaps meaning to do so if he began to lag), she showed him into her bedroom.

He looked at her. Lois looked calmly back . . . and suddenly he felt the blink happen again. He watched her aura bloom around her like a gray rose. It was still diminished, but it was already coming back, reknitting itself, healing itself.

[
‘Lois, are you sure this is what you want?’
]

[
‘Of course it is! Did you think I was going to give you a pat on the head and send you home after all we’ve been through?’
]

Suddenly she smiled – a wickedly mischievous smile.

[
‘Besides, Ralph – do you really feel like getting up to dickens tonight? Tell me the truth. Better still, don’t flatter me.’
]

He considered it, then laughed and drew her into his arms. Her mouth was sweet and slightly moist, like the skin of a ripe peach. That kiss seemed to tingle through his entire body, but the sensation was most concentrated in his mouth, where it felt almost like an electric shock. When their lips parted, he felt more excited than ever . . . but he also felt queerly drained.

[
‘What if I say I do, Lois? What if I say I do want to get up to dickens?’
]

She stood back and looked at him critically, as if trying to decide whether he meant what he said or if it was just the usual male bluff and brag. At the same time her hands went to the buttons of her dress. As she began to slip them free, Ralph noticed a wonderful thing: she looked younger again. Not forty by any stretch of the imagination, but surely no more than fifty . . . and a
young
fifty. It had been the kiss, of course, and the really amusing thing was he didn’t think she had the slightest idea that she had added a helping of Ralph to her earlier helping of wino. And what was wrong with that?

She finished her inspection, leaned forward, and kissed his cheek.

[
‘I think that there’ll be plenty of time for getting up to dickens later, Ralph – tonight’s for sleeping.’
]

He supposed she was right. Five minutes ago he had been more than willing – he had always loved the act of physical love, and it had been a long time. For now, however, the spark was gone. Ralph didn’t regret that in the least. He knew, after all,
where
it had gone.

[
‘Okay, Lois – tonight’s for sleeping.’
]

She went into the bathroom and the shower went on. A few minutes later, Ralph heard her brushing her teeth. It was nice to know she still had them. During the ten minutes she was gone he managed to do a certain amount of undressing, although his throbbing ribs made it slow work. He finally succeeded in wriggling McGovern’s sweater off and pushing out of his shoes. His shirt came next, and he was fumbling ineffectually with the buckle of his belt when Lois came out with her hair tied back and her face shining. Ralph was stunned by her beauty, and suddenly felt much too big and stupid (not to mention old) for his own good. She was wearing a long rose-colored silk nightgown and he could smell the lotion she had used on her hands. It was a good smell.