the health consequences of consuming alcohol. At the moment he was
appreciating life too much to worry unduly about losing it again-which
was why he was determined not to let the dreams and the death of the
blonde push him off the deep end.
Food had a natural tranquilizing effect. Each bite of egg yolk soothed
his nerves.
“Okay,” Lindsey said, going at her breakfast somewhat less heartily than
Hatch did, “let’s suppose there was brain damage of some sort, after
all. But minor. So minor it never showed up on any of the tests. Not
bad enough to cause paralysis or speech problems or anything like that.
In fact, by an incredible stroke of luck, a one in a billion chance,
this brain damage had a freak effect that was actually beneficial. It
could’ve made a few new connections in the cerebral tissues, and left
you psychic.”
“Bull.”
“Why?”
“I’m not psychic.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“Even if I was psychic, I wouldn’t say it was beneficial.”
Because the breakfast rush had subsided, the restaurant was not too
busy.
The nearest tables to theirs were vacant. They could discuss the
morning’s events without fear of being overheard, but Hatch kept
glancing around self-conciously anyway.
Immediately following his reanimation, the media had swarmed to Orange
County General Hospital, and in the days after Hatch’s release,
reporters had virtually camped on his doorstep at home. After all, he
had been dead longer than any man alive, which made him eligible for
considerably more than the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had
said would eventually be every person’s fate in celebrity America.
He’d done nothing to earn his fame. He didn’t want it He hadn’t fought
his way out of death; Lindsey, Nyebern, and the resuscitation team had
dragged him back He was a private person, content with just the quiet of
the better antique dealers who knew his shop and traded with him
sometimes. In fact, the only respect he had was Lindsey’s, he was
famous only in her eyes and only for being a good husband, that would be
enough for him. By steadfastly refusing to talk to the press, he had
finally convinced them to leave him alone and chase after whatever newly
born two-headed goat-or its equivalent-was available to fill newspaper
space or a minute of the airwaves between deodorant commercials.
Now, if he revealed that he had come back from the dead with some
strange power to connect with the mind of a psycho killer, swarms of
newspeople would d on him again. He could not tolerate even the
prospect of it. He would find it easier to endure a plague of killer
bees or a hive of Hare Krishna solicitors with collection cups and eyes
glazed by spiritual transcendence.
“If it’s not some psychic ability,” Lindsey persisted, “then what it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It could pass, never happen again. It could be a fluke.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Well. . . I want to believe it.”
“We have to deal with this.”
“Why?”
“We have to try to understand it.”
“Why?”
“Don’t why’ me like a five-year-old child.”
“Why?”
“Be serious, Hatch. A woman’s dead. She may not be the first. She may
not be the last.”
He put his fork on his half-empty plate, and swallowed some orange juice
to wash down the homefries. “Okay, all right, it’s like a psychic
vision, yeah, just the way they show it in the movies. But it’s more
than that. Creepier.”
He closed his eyes, trying to think of an analogy. When he had it, he
opened his eyes and looked around the restaurant again to be sure no new
diners had entered and sat near them.
He looked regretfully at his plate. His eggs were getting cold. He
sighed.
“You know,” he said, “how they say identical twins, separated at birth
and raised a thousand miles apart by utterly different adopted families,
will still grow up to live similar lives?”
“Sure, I’ve heard of that. So?”
“Even raised apart, with totally different backgrounds, they’ll choose
similar careers, achieve the same income levels, marry women who
resemble each other, even give their kids the same names. It’s uncanny.