happy with all the things that made you happy before.” He raised both
hands, as if to stall an argument, and said,
“I’m outta here,” and a moment later he was.
At first, as he told the others what had happened to them, Bobby walked
slowly around the room, marveling at ordinary items, finding wonder in
the mundane, relishing the solace of things. He put his hand on Julie’s
desk, and it seemed to him that nothing in the world was more wondrous
than the Formica-all those molecules of man-made chemicals lined up in
perfect, stable order. The framed prints of Disney characters, the
inexpensive furniture, the half-empty bottle of Scotch, the flourishing
pathos plant on a stand by the windows-all of those things were suddenly
precious to him He had been traveling only thirty-nine minutes. He took
almost as long to tell them a condensed version. He had popped out of
the office at 4:47 and returned at 5:26, but he’d had enough
traveling-via teleportation or otherwise-to last him the rest of his
life.
On the sofa, with Julie and Clint and Lee gathered around Bobby said,
“I want to stay right here in California. I do need to see Paris. Don’t
need London. Not any more. I want to stay where I have my favorite
chair, sleep every night in a bed that’s familiar-”
“Damn right you will,” Julie interjected.
-drive my little yellow Samurai, open a medicine cab where the Anacin
and toothpaste and mouthwash and sty pencil and Bactine and Band-Aids
are exactly where they ought to be.
By 6:15 Frank had not reappeared. During Bobby’s account of his
adventures, no one mentioned Frank’s second disappearance or wondered
aloud when he would return. But all of them kept glancing at the chair
from which he had vanished initially and at the corner of the room from
which he had dematerialized the second time.
“How long do we wait here for him?” Julie finally asked.
“I don’t know,” Bobby said.
“But I have a feeling… a real bad feeling… that maybe Frank’s not
going to regain control of himself this time, that he’s just going to
keep popping from one place to another, faster and faster, until sooner
or later he’s unable to put himself back together again.”
WHEN HE came straight from Japan into the kitchen of his mother’s house,
Candy was seething with anger and when he saw the cats on the table,
where he ate his meals his anger grew into a full-blown rage. Violet
was sitting in a chair at the table; her ever-silent sister was in
another chair beside her, hanging on her. Cats lay under their chairs
all around their feet, and five of the biggest were on the table, eating
bits of ham that Violet fed them.
“What’re you doing?” he demanded.
Without a word Violet did not acknowledge him with a glance. Her gaze
was locked with that of a dark gray mong that was sitting as erect as a
statue of an Egyptian temple priestess patiently nibbling at a few small
bits of meat offered on a pale palm.
“I’m talking to you,” he said sharply, but she did not respond.
He was sick of her silences, weary to death of her infinite strangeness.
If not for the promise that he had made to mother, he would have torn
Violet open right there and fed on her. Too many years had passed since
he had tasted the ambrosia in his sainted mother’s veins, and he had
often thought that the blood in Violet and Verbina was, in a way, the
same blood that had flowed in Roselle. He wondered-and some times
dreamed-of how his sisters’ blood might feel upon his tongue, how it
might taste.
Looming over her, staring down as she continued to commune with the gray
cat, he said,
“This is where I eat, damn you!” Violet still said nothing, and Candy
struck her hand, knocking the remaining bits of ham helter-skelter. He
swept the plate of ham off the table, as well, and took tremendous
satisfaction in the sound of it shattering on the floor.
The five cats on the table were not the least startled by his fury, and