resisting, thereby shattering the illusion that she was his mother and
was giving voluntarily of herself, he struck the side of her neck with
his heavy fist. Then he struck her again. Then he hammered the side of
her face twice. She slumped unconscious against the pillow.
He squirmed under the covers to be close against her, withdrew her hand,
and nipped her palm with his teeth. He put his head on the pillow,
lying face to face with her, holding her hand between them, drinking the
slow trickle from her palm. He closed his eyes after a while and tried
to imagine that she was his mother, and eventually a gratifying peace
stole over him. However, though he was happier at that moment than he
had been in a long time, it was not a deep happiness, mere a veneer of
joy that brightened the surface of his heart but the inner chambers dark
and cold.
the residue on his hands troubled him as deeply as if it been fresh
blood.
“Who the hell am I, what’s happening to me?” he wondered aloud.
He knew that he needed help. But he didn’t know to whom he could turn.
AFTER ONLY a few hours of sleep, Frank Pollard woke in the back seat of
the stolen Chevy. The morning sun, streaming through the windows, was
bright enough to make him wince.
He was stiff, achy, and unrested. His throat was dry, and his eyes
burned as if he had not slept for days.
Groaning, Frank swung his legs off the seat, sat up, and cleared his
throat. He realized that both of his hands were numb; they felt cold
and dead, and he saw that he had curled them into fists. He had
evidently been sleeping that way for some time, because at first he
could not unclench. With considerable effort, he opened his right
fist-and a handful of something black and grainy poured through his
tingling fingers.
He stared, perplexed, at the fine grains that had spilled down the leg
of his jeans and onto his right shoe. He raised his hand to take a
closer look at the residue that had stuck to his palm. It looked and
smelled like sand.
Black sand? Where had he gotten it?
When he opened his left hand, more sand spilled out.
Confused, he looked through the car windows at the residential
neighborhood around him. He saw green lawns, dark topsoil showing
through where the grass was sparse, mulch-filled planting beds, redwood
chips mounded around some shrubs, but nothing like what he had held in
his tightly clenched fists.
He was in Laguna Niguel, so the Pacific Ocean was nearby, rimmed by
broad beaches. But those beaches were white, not black.
As full circulation returned to his cramped fingers, he leaned back in
the seat, raised his hands in front of his face, and stared at the black
grains that speckled his sweat-damp skin. Sand, even black sand, was a
humble and innocent substance.
BOBBY WAs awakened by a Santa Ana wind blowing through the trees
outside. It whistled under the eaves, and forced a chorus of ticks and
creaks from the cedar-shingle roof and the attic rafters.
He blinked sleep-matted eyes and squinted at the numbers on the bedroom
ceiling: 12:07. Because they sometimes worked odd hours and slept
during the day, they had installed exterior Roll-up security shutters,
leaving the room coal-mine dark except for the projection clock’s pale
green numerals, which floated on the ceiling like some portentous spirit
message from Beyond.
Because he had gone to bed near dawn, and instantly to sleep, he knew
the numbers on the ceiling meant that it was shortly past noon, not
midnight. He had slept perhaps six hours. He lay unmoving for a
moment, wondering if Julie was awake.
She said, “I am.”
“You’re spooky,” he said.
“You knew what I was thinking.”
“That’s not spooky,” she said. “That’s married.”
He reached for her, and she came into his arms.
For a while they just held each other, satisfied to be close. But by
mutual and unspoken desire, they began to make love.
The projection clock’s glowing green numerals were too pale to relieve