quick-to-anger side of which she was not proud.
she couldn’t always control it, because it was part of her genetic
makeup or, as Bobby suspected, a predilection to violent response that
had begun to form in her on the day, in her childhood, when a
drug-crazed sociopath had brutally killed her mother. Either way, she
knew Bobby was sometimes dismayed by that dark side of her, much as he
loved everything else she made a bargain with both Bobby and God:
Listen, Bobby wherever you are-and you listen, too, God-if this just…
well, if I can just have my Bobby back with me, I won’t be that way any
more, I won’t want to kick in Jackie’s head or anyone else’s head,
either, I’ll turn over a new leaf I will, just let Bobby come back to me
safe and sound
THEY WERE on a beach again, but this one had white that was slightly
phosphorescent in the early darkness.
Sand disappeared into a medium-thick fog in both directions. No rain
was falling, and the air was not as warm as it had been at Punaluu.
Bobby shivered in the chill, moist air.
“Where are we?”
“I’m not sure,” Frank said,
“but I think we’re probably on the Monterey Peninsula somewhere.” A car
passed on a highway a hundred yards behind them.
“That’s probably Seventeen-Mile Drive. You know it? The road from
Carmel through Pebble Beach-”
“I know it.”
“I love the peninsula, Big Sur to the south,” Frank said.
“It’s another one of the places I was happy… for a while.” Their
voices were strangely muffled by the mist. Bobby liked the solid ground
beneath his feet, and the thought that he was not only on his own planet
but in his own country and in his own state; but he would have preferred
a place with more concrete details, where fog did not obscure the
landscape. The white blindness of fog was another form of chaos, and he
had had more than enough disorder to last him for the rest of his life.
Frank said,
“Oh, and by the way, back there in Hawaii a minute ago, you were worried
about giving Candy the slip, but you don’t need to be concerned. We
lost him several stops ago in Kyoto, or maybe on the slopes of Mount
Fuji.”
“For God’s sake, if we don’t have to worry about leading him back to the
office, let’s go home.”
“Bobby, I don’t have-”
“Any control. Yeah, I know, I heard, it’s no big secret. But I’ll tell
you something-you’ve got control on some level, way down deep in the
subconscious, more control than you think you have.”
“No. I
“Yes. Because you came back to that crater for me,” Bobby said. “You
told me you hate the place, that it’s more frightening than anywhere
you’ve ever been, but you came back and got me. You didn’t leave me
there with the bed railing.”
“Pure chance that I came back.”
“I don’t think so.” Darkness.
Fireflies.
Velocity.
THEY MADE the soft, pretty bing-bong signal come out of the wall,
because that was how they told all the people in Home it was just ten
minutes before supper was going to be eaten.
Derek was already out the door by the time Thomas got up from his chair.
Derek liked food. Everyone liked food of course. But Derek liked food
enough for three people.
Thomas got to the doorway, and Derek was already down the hall, walking
fast in that funny way he did, almost to the Dining Room. Thomas looked
back at the window.
Night was at the window.
He didn’t like seeing night at the window, which was why he usually kept
the drapes closed after the light went out in the world. But after he
got himself ready for supper, he tried to find the Bad Thing out there,
and it helped a little to see the night when he was trying to send a
mind-string to it.
The Bad Thing was still so far away it couldn’t be felt.
he wanted to try once more before going to eat food and be Sociable. He
reached out through the window, up into the dark, spinning the