“This is Buffy.” He nodded toward the front of the
boat. “The two kids up front are Steve and Mary-Ann.
Steve works in my office. Don’t you, Steve?” Steve didn’t
reply. He and Mary-Ann were giggling in tandem now.
The driver turned back to Jon-Tom. “Who are you?”
“One hell of a good question,” Jon-Tom replied thickly.
He glanced down at his outrageous costume. Is this what
happens when you get the DTs? he wondered. Somehow
he’d always imagined having the DTs would involve
stronger hallucinations than a quartet of happily stoned
vacationers loaded down with pot and pretzels.
“My name… my name…” For one terrible instant
there was a soft, puffy blank in his mind where his name
belonged. The kind of disorientation one encounters in a
cheap house of mirrors at the state fair, where you have to
feel your way through to the exit by putting your hands out
in front of you and pushing through the nothingness of
your own reflections.
Meriweather, he told himself. Jonathan Thomas Meri-
weather. I am a graduate law student from UCLA. The
University of California at Los Angeles. He repeated this
information slowly to the driver of the boat.
“Nice to meet you,” said MacReady.
“But you, you, you, where are you? Where are you
from?” Jon-Tom was aware he was half crying, but he
couldn’t stop himself. His desperation overwhelmed any
suggestion of self-control.
The song, the song, that seemingly innocuous song so
full of unforeseen consequences. First the boat, then the
storm and his drunkenness, and now … where in the song