supposed to go.) Einstein was able to dispense letters from the tubes by
stepping on the pedals, then could use his nose to form the tiles into words on
the pantry floor. They had chosen to put the device in there, out of sight, so
they would not be required to explain it to neighbors who might drop in
unexpectedly.
As Einstein busily pumped pedals and clicked tiles against one another, Travis
carried his beer and the dog’s water dish out to the front porch, where they
would sit and wait for Nora. By the time he came back, Einstein had finished
forming a message.
COULD I HAVE SOME HAMBURGER? OR THREE WEENIES?
Travis said, “I’m going to have lunch with Nora when she gets home. Don’t YOU
want to wait and eat with us?”
The retriever licked his chops and thought for a moment. Then he studied the
letters he had already used, pushed some of them aside, and reused the rest
along with a K and a T and an apostrophe that he had to release from the Lucite
tubes.
OK. BUT I’M STARVED.
“You’ll survive,” Travis told him. He gathered up the lettered tiles and sorted
them into the open tops of the proper tubes.
He retrieved the pistol-grip shotgun that he’d stood by the back door and
carried it out to the front porch, where he put it beside his rocking chair. He
heard Einstein turn off the pantry light and follow him.
They sat in anxious silence, Travis in his chair, Einstein on the redwood floor.
Songbirds trilled in the mild October air.
Travis sipped at his beer, and Einstein lapped occasionally at his water, and
they stared down the dirt driveway, into the trees, toward the highway that they
could not see.
In the glove compartment of the Toyota, Nora had a .38 pistol loaded with
hollow-point cartridges. During the weeks since they had left Marin County, she
had learned to drive and, with Travis’s help, had become proficient with the
.38—also with a fully automatic Uzi pistol and a shotgun. She only had the .38
today, but she’d be safe going and coming from Carmel. Besides, even if The
Outsider had crept into the area without Einstein’s knowledge, it did not want
Nora; it wanted the dog. So she was perfectly safe.
But where was she?
Travis wished he had gone with her. But after thirty years of dependency and
fear, solo trips into Carmel were one of the means by which she asserted— and
tested—her new strength, independence, and self-confidence. She would not have
welcomed his company.
By one-thirty, when Nora was half an hour late, Travis began to get a sick,
twisting feeling in his gut.
Einstein began to pace.
Five minutes later, the retriever was the first to hear the car turning into the
foot of the driveway at the main road. He dashed down the porch steps, which
were at the side of the house, and stood at the edge of the dirt lane.
Travis did not want Nora to see that he had been overly worried because somehow
that would seem to indicate a lack of trust in her ability to take care of
herself, an ability that she did, indeed, possess and that she prized. He
remained in his rocking chair, his bottle of Corona in one hand.
When the blue Toyota appeared, he sighed with relief. As she went by the house,
she tooted the horn. Travis waved as if he had not been sitting there under a
leaden blanket of fear.
Einstein went to the garage to greet her, and a minute later they both
reappeared. She was wearing blue jeans and a yellow- and white-checkered shirt,
but Travis thought she looked good enough to waltz onto a dance floor among
begowned and bejeweled princesses.
She came to him, leaned down, kissed him. Her lips were warm.
She said, “Miss me terribly?”
“With you gone, there was no sun, no trilling from the birds, no joy.” He tried
to say it flippantly, but it came out with an underlying note of seriousness.
Einstein rubbed against her and whined to get her attention, then peered up at