Small World (44 page)

He jumped up and trotted into the camouflage of the trees, ahead of her and parallel to her path. By staying higher than she was, he hoped to keep her in sight. She moved at a very steady, ground-eating pace; he was soon soaked with sweat, and his feet threatened blisters with every step. When she showed no sign of slacking, he grew a little desperate and decided to intersect as rapidly as possible.

Their paths crossed about an hour from the house, on a hillside that overlooked the island nicely. Roger, thrashing through aggressively thorny bushes and undergrowth, had no time to appreciate the view. But when he reached Lucy she was entranced enough with it to be really startled by his sudden eruption from the bush.

Frozen for the moment by the fright, she simply stared at him, her eyes huge, and held her breath.

Roger, sore of foot, uneasy in his stomach, headachy from the sun on his bare head, sweat trickling through his young beard, was distressed to frighten her. He stepped forward, reaching out instinctively to comfort her, and was horrified when she jumped away from him.

‘Hey,’ he protested.

She must have had a sudden vision of how she looked, cringing from him, a strapping girl who stood a head taller than he, and outweighed him, newly slimmed by Dolly’s regimen by twenty pounds. The bridge of her nose wrinkled as if she had to sneeze, and then she laughed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you startled me.’

Roger grinned. ‘You must have really been taken with the view. I sounded like a troop of elephants coming through the woods.’

‘It
is
beautiful,’ she admitted, and turned to look at it again.

Roger, who had not peeked back on the path once because he was too busy following Lucy, stared down over the island that lay below them. He could see the curve of the fishhook, and the buildings that were Sartoris’s house and studio, only now they were simple sculptural shapes against the green of the earth. The blue sea pounded sand and rock seemingly only inches away. Roger began to feel really queasy again, and it wasn’t just lunch anymore. It bothered him to see just how small the island was and how great the sea around it. He wanted, he thought, to see the curve of the earth from a big jet, one more time, and the high towers of Manhattan. And then he remembered Manhattan too was an island, at the edge of this very same great ocean. It was something he wanted to think about but Lucy backed from the view a little just then, sat down on a rocky outcropping, and smiled at him.

‘Why did you steal my X-acto bladg?’ she asked conversationally.

‘Huh?’

‘My X-acto blade. You kited one from my workshop. Why?’

She was sweet and patient, just as if she were asking Zach why he had blacked little Billy Cassidy’s eye.

Roger stuck his hands in his pockets. Staring down at his sneakers, a guilty blush heating his cheeks, he knew what he had to tell her. It was only necessary to find the right words.

‘Oh,’ he said,
‘that
X-acto blade.’

Lucy nodded encouragingly.

Roger stepped painfully forward, plumped down on the stone next to her, and began to untie his sneakers.

‘This is a really long story,’ he said, trying to be as casual as he could, so as not to frighten her off too soon, ‘and I’m afraid you’re not going to believe me.’

Lucy, wincing with him as he drew off his sneakers and exposed his blisters to the air, pulled back a little, blinked, and said, ‘Try me.’

Roger took a deep breath, spread his toes in the air, and plunged.

‘It’s funny. That’s why I followed you.’

The bridge of Lucy’s nose wrinkled again. Roger liked that. It was cute. He hoped she would do it again.

‘You followed me?’ Her eyes were wide again, too, in mild astonishment.

He nodded. ‘I have to warn you.’

She moved fractionally away from him, across the rock. ‘What?’ Her voice shook as lightly as one of the aspen leaves above them, breathing the sea wind.

Roger patted one of the camera cases on his chest.

‘See, this is a camera. An ordinary instant photo camera, useful for taking pictures of kids’ birthday parties, and the Washington Monument.’

Lucy nodded in agreement.

‘But this,’ he patted the other, very lightly, ‘is not.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘See, this is my invention. I call it the minimizer.’

She stared at it. It looked like a camera case, just like the other one.

‘It minimizes things."

‘Oh,’ she said again. Her brow furrowed delicately. ‘I’m almost sure that’s the name of a girdle.’

‘What?’ Roger was stunned.

‘Minimizer? You did say minimizer?’

He nodded anxiously.

‘Ummm. I’ve seen it. It’s a girdle.’

‘Oh.’ Roger was seriously deflated.

Lucy felt sorry for him, with his sweaty, softly fuzzed beagle face, and his ragged feet.

‘But that’s not?’ she asked, trying to get him back on the subject. Whatever it was. She settled back, prepared to be patient. It was pleasant, sitting at the top of this hill after a little exertion, feeling and smelling a sea breeze, and if the company was strange, well, she would have a story to tell Nick that evening, among the sweetly tangled sheets.

‘No,’ he said, shaking off the disappointment he felt over the debasement of his private name. It was more important to tell Lucy what he had to tell her.

‘For most of my life, I’ve worked for the government. On this project, I was fired better than a year ago now. Project shut down, saving money, you know? But I happened to be right on top of the very thing the project was looking for. So I took what I’d found out and applied it, and invented this device. The minimizer.’

His prideful touch faltered on the carrying case. The glamor of its name was destroyed. He would have to find another one.

‘So?’ Lucy said hopefully.

‘Well, you see,’ he looked at her shyly, ‘this is the hard part to believe.' He took another gulp of air. ‘It makes things small.’ Lucy nodded politely, and without comprehension. ‘Oh.’ ‘Really,’ he insisted. ‘Remember Leyna Shaw? And Lady Maggie Weiler and her nurse? Haven’t you ever thought it was strange that Dolly and I were around when they disappeared?’ Lucy was frozen on the rock, staring beyond Roger, at the distance-shrunken island below them.

‘And the Central Park Carousel? And the stuff from the Borough Museum? I did those.’ He listed the works. And amended the statement. ‘I mean, we did.’

Lucy stared at him now, unseeing.

‘The people died. Leyna killed herself. She didn’t like being small, I guess. She did all the damage to the Doll’s White House. And I didn’t want Dolly to hurt the old lady, so I killed her and the nurse. Set the device too high.’

Roger babbled on. It was like listening to Zach confess to torturing the cat or raping his sister.

‘Stop,’ she said weakly, holding up her hand.

He did, staring at her with bird-bright eyes, waiting for her to catch up to him.

‘You’re crazy,’ she said flatly.

He sighed, and studied the carrying cases on his chest. There was a painful silence.

‘How can you make people small?’ she blurted angrily. ‘How?’

Dolly had asked him that, not in anger, but in curiosity, and he had told her she could not understand. Somehow, he would have to try to make this already hostile woman understand.
Understand.

He closed his eyes. ‘With mirrors,’ he said, ‘into other dimensions, and back again. I can’t explain it any better than that.’ He pounded his fist into his thigh in frustration. There was so much more, all the modifications that kept a living thing alive, that reduced it to exactly the size he wanted it to be.

She looked away from him, passing her hands over her eyes as if they were tired, or she had a headache.

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ Roger sulked.

‘It’s crazy,’ she muttered.

‘You’d better believe me,’ he said softly.

Her head snapped up. ‘What?’

‘Just keep your kids away from Dolly. She wants someone living in her dollhouse. And
she is
crazy.’

Abruptly, the woman was on her feet, crashing through the brush, headed back to the house. At least, Roger thought with some satisfaction, he had managed to hit her panic button. Maybe she believed enough to save her kids.

He slid across the rocky seat and picked up his sneakers. Slowly, painfully, he started after her again. He had a lot to think about on the way down. Whether she would tell Weiler, or any of the others. He grimaced to think what Dolly might do or say if she knew he spilled the whole mess to Lucy Douglas, just like that. He had to find a new name for his device. Zapper? Too commercial. Reductor? That had possibilities. The first thing he would do at the house was to flop and take a nap. Perhaps sleep would throw up a new name, some answer.

Late in the afternoon, Dolly woke him with a resounding slap on his bare buttocks. He opened one eye and grunted. There was the sound of her zipper unzipping, the fall of cloth to the floor, the rustle of her kicking it out of the way, promising sounds that stirred him from sleep.

‘Your feet look like the rats have been at them,’ she observed.

‘Huh?’ Roger rolled over. ‘Oh. Yuh. Went walking in use wrong socks.’

‘Poor thing.’ She didn’t sound very sympathetic.

He roused himself. ‘What did you do?’

Dolly was down to her bra and panties. Two pieces of a bathing suit dangled from her hands. She tossed them on the bed at his feet and reached behind her to unhook the bra.

‘Followed Nick Weiler around. Made a nuisance of myself.’ She giggled. ‘He wanted to count his inheritance.’

Roger watched her breasts falling out of her bra cups like money out of a slot machine. A few weeks ago he would have been drooling. Now the best he could manage was a vague tumescence, about what the
Playboy
centerfold might evoke.

She picked up the top of the bathing suit. ‘Let’s go swimming. Before they throw us out of their little paradise.’

Roger lay back and closed his eyes. He felt logy. His mother always claimed afternoon naps were the worst thing for a person. Not really resting and you always felt like you were in slow motion when you came to. His feet itched.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I guess I won’t.’

Dolly stopped rummaging for her sun-screening lotion and stared at him. ‘Don’t be a party-poop.’

‘Ah, my feet are all blistered. That’s salt out there in that water. It’ll hurt like fire.’

‘Don’t be such a big baby. Salt water’s just the thing to soak your feet in.’

She finished stuffing necessities into a beach bag, jammed on a wide-brimmed white linen hat, and picked up her beach jacket. ‘Are you coming?’ she demanded.

Roger, beached on the white-sheeted bed, opened his eyes long enough to look at her. ‘No,’ he said calmly, ‘count me out.’

Her gray eyes grew icy. She slammed the door on the way out. Roger smiled to himself. It was time she recognized whose finger controlled the button on the minimizer.

The long summer afternoon passed. The children played in the sand and in the water, watched over by a quiet, withdrawn Lucy. Dolly joined them, glossy with sun-screen. After trying to engage Lucy in conversation and being rebuffed, she settled down to watch avidly her grandchildren’s caperings. At last the wind began to rise, promising the evening chill, and the sunbathers and castle-builders and sea-swimmers retired to the house, with hot,

soapy showers and food in mind.

Nick Weiler emerged from his father?s studio alone. The old man had shuffled off to his bedroom at midafternoon, wakened by Dolly’s poking and prying, as Nick tried to work. She had seemed satisfied once she had disturbed Sartoris, and went away, so that at least Nick could do what he need to do before the afternoon ended.

Head-tired, and aching in his back and shoulders, he walked to the beach. The day was fading, the beach abandoned. Or given back to itself. The tide had not come far enough up to destroy the children’s sand castles, but they were melting, losing their identity. The footprints remained, the prints' of Lucy’s sandals, still readable to the informed eye. He found a place where she had sat for some time; her bottom had made a small abstract print of its own, rather like the wings of a snow angel. No, he thought, a snow moth, was there such a thing? His head was too befogged to sort it out. All he knew was that he was jolted by this evidence of her presence.

He sat down and rested his head on his knees. Once he had been anxious to bed her, convinced that once he had slept with her, she would be as all the other women in his life, and the terrible need would die.

‘More fool you,’ he muttered to himself.

He could look at her and see the imperfections of her face and body. He knew her personal shortcomings, her temper, her perfectionism. And she knew him; that was the real test. He still loved her, knowing that she knew all his weaknesses. Loved her, was crazy about her.

They would leave the island and go back to Washington. The days would be as they had been seemingly forever; he would work at the Dalton, the summer would end, another year would close. If Lucy married him, none of that would change. There would still be politics as usual, the petty squabbling among the staff, the continuing search for funds, for acquisitions, for publicity, concern over security. He would get older. With a little luck and perseverance, he might become a very powerful person. His father, someday, would still die.