or watch TV until Paige and the girls got home.
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, so he browsed for
books and records, buying a novel by Ed McBain and a CD by Alan Jackson,
hoping that such mundane activities would help him forget his troubles.
He strolled past the cookie shop twice, coveting the big ones with
chocolate chips and pecans but finding the will power to resist their
allure.
The world is a better place, he thought, if you’re ignorant of good
nutrition.
When he left the mall, sprinkles of cold rain were painting camouflage
patterns on the concrete sidewalk. Lightning flashed as he ran for the
Ford, caissons of thunder rolled across the embattled sky, and the
sprinkles became heavy volleys just as he pulled the door shut and
settled behind the steering wheel.
Driving home, Marty took considerable pleasure in the glimmer of
rain-silvered streets, the burbling splash of the tires churning through
deep puddles–and the sight of swaying palm fronds, which seemed to be
combing the gray tresses of the stormy sky and which reminded him of
certain Somerset Maugham stories and an old Bogart film. Because rain
was an infrequent visitor to drought-stricken California, the benefit
and novelty outweighed the inconvenience.
He parked in the garage and entered the house by the connecting door to
the kitchen, enjoying the damp heaviness of the air and the scent of
ozone that always accompanied the start of a storm.
In the shadowy kitchen, the luminous green display of the electronic
clock on the stove read 4,10. Paige and the girls might be home in
twenty minutes.
He switched on lamps and sconces as he moved from room to room. The
house never felt homier than when it was warm and well lighted while
rain drummed on the roof and the gray pall of a storm veiled the world
beyond every window. He decided to start the gas-log fire in the
family-room fireplace and to lay out all of the fixings for hot
chocolate so it could be made immediately after Paige and the girls
arrived.
First, he went upstairs to check the fax and answering machines in his
office. By now Paul Guthridge’s secretary should have called with a
schedule of test appointments at the hospital.
He also had a wild hunch his literary agent had left a message about a
sale of rights in one foreign territory or another, or maybe news of an
offer for a film option, a reason to celebrate.
Curiously, the storm had improved his mood instead of darkening it,
probably because inclement weather tended to focus the mind on the
pleasures of home, though it was always his nature to find reasons to be
upbeat even when common sense suggested pessimism was a more realistic
reaction. He was never able to stew in gloom for long, and since
Saturday he’d had enough negative thoughts to last a couple of years.
Entering his office, he reached for the wall switch to flick on the
overhead light but left it untouched, surprised that the stained-glass
lamp and a work lamp were aglow. He always extinguished lights when
leaving the house. Before he’d gone to the doctor’s office, however,
he’d been inexplicably oppressed by the bizarre feeling of being in the
path of an unknown Juggernaut, and evidently he’d not had sufficient
presence of mind to switch off the lamps.
Remembering the panic attack at its worst, in the garage, when he’d been
nearly incapacitated by terror, Marty felt some of the air bleeding out
of his balloon of optimism.
The fax and answering machines were on the back corner of the U-shaped
work area. The red message light was blinking on the latter, and a
couple of flimsy sheets of thermal paper were in the tray of the former.
Before he reached either machine, Marty saw the shattered video display,
glass teeth bristling from the frame. A black maw gaped in the center.
A piece of glass crunched under his shoe as he pushed his office chair
aside and stared down at the computer in disbelief.
Jagged pieces of the screen littered the keyboard.
A twist of nausea knotted his stomach. Had he done this, too, in a