literally could not-take their eyes off me. I made a lot of glib talk about some new makeup I’d gotten out at the mall, but they didn’t swallow it. A man would, but a woman knows what makeup can do. And what it can’t.”
They walked back to the kitchen, and although the auras were gone again for the time being, Ralph discovered he could see one anyway: a blush rising out of the collar of Lois’s white silk blouse.
“Finally I told them the only thing they would believe.”
“What was that?” Ralph asked.
“I said I’d met a man.” She hesitated, and then, as the rising blood reached her cheeks and stained them pink, she plunged. “And had fallen in love with him.”
He touched her arm and turned her toward him. He looked at the small, clean crease in the bend of her elbow and thought how much he would like to touch it with his mouth. Or the tip of his tongue, perhaps. Then he raised his eyes to look at her. “And was it true?”
She looked back with eyes that were all hope and candor. “I think so,” she said in a small, clear voice, “but everything’s so strange now.
All I know for sure is that I want it to be true. I want a friend. I’ve been frightened and unhappy and lonely for quite awhile now. The loneliness is the worst part of getting old, I think-not the aches and pains, not the cranky bowels or the way you lose your breath after climbing a flight of stairs you could have just about flown up when you were twenty-but being lonely.”
“Yes,” Ralph said. “That is the worst.”
“No one talks to you anymore-oh, they talk at you, sometimes, but that’s not the same-and mostly it’s like people don’t even see you.
Have you ever felt that way?”
Ralph thought of the Derry of the Old Crocks, a city mostly ignored by the hurry-to-work, hurry-to-play world which surrounded it, and nodded.
“Ralph, would you hug me?”
“My pleasure,” he said, and pulled her gently into the circle of his arms.
Some time later, rumpled and dazed but happy, Ralph and Lois sat together on the living-room couch, a piece of furniture so stringently hobbit-sized it was really not much more than a love-seat. Neither of them minded. Ralph’s arm was around Lois’s shoulders. She had let her hair down and he twined a lock of it in his fingers, musing upon how easy it was to forget the feel of a woman’s hair, so marvelously different from the feel of a man’s. She had told him about her card-game and Ralph had listened closely, amazed but not, he discovered, much surprised.
There were a dozen or so of them who played every week or so at the
Ludlow Grange for small stakes. It was possible to go home a five-buck loser or a ten-buck winner, but the most likely result was finishing a dollar ahead or a handful of change behind. Although there were a couple of good players and a couple of shlumps (Lois counted herself among the former), it was mostly just a fun way to spend an afternoon-the Lady Old Crock version of chess tournaments and marathon gin-rummy games.
“Only this afternoon I just couldn’t lose. I should have come home completely broke, what with all of them asking what kind of vitamins I was taking and where I’d gotten my last facial and all the rest of it. Who can concentrate on a silly game like Deuces and jacks, Man with the Axe, Natural Sevens Take All when you have to keep telling new lies and trying not to trip over the ones you’ve already told?”
“Must have been hard, Ralph said, trying not to grin.
“It was. Very hard! But instead of losing, I just kept raking it in.
And do you know why, Ralph?”
He did, but shook his head so she would tell him. He liked listening to her.
“It was their auras. I didn’t always know the exact cards they were holding, but a lot of times I did. Even when I didn’t, I could get a pretty clear idea of how good their hands were. The auras weren’t always there, you know how they come and go, but even when they were gone I played better than I ever have in my life. During the last hour, I began to lose on purpose just so they wouldn’t all hate me.
And do you know something? Even losing on purpose was hard.”
She looked down at her hands, which had begun to twine together nervously in her lap. “And on the way back, I did something I’m ashamed of.”
Ralph began to glimpse her aura again, a dim gray ghost in which unformed blobs of dark blue swirled. “Before you tell me,” he said, “listen to this and see if it sounds familiar.”
He related how Mrs. Perrine had approached while he was sitting on the porch, eating and waiting for Lois to get back. As he told her what he had done to the old lady, he dropped his eyes and felt his ears heating up again.
“Yes,” she said when he was finished. “It’s the same thing I did… but I didn’t mean to, Ralph… at least, I don’t think I meant 1111 to. I was sitting in the back seat with M-na, and she was starting to go on and on again about how different I looked, how young I looked, and I thought-I’m embarrassed to say it right out loud, but I guess I better-I thought, shut you up, you snoopy, envious old thing.”
Because it was envy, Ralph. I could see it in her aura. Big, jagged spikes the exact color of a cat’s eyes. No wonder they call jealousy the green-eyed monster! Anyway, I pointed out the window and said ’Oooh, Mina, isn’t that the dearest little house?” And when she turned to look, I… I did what you did, Ralph. Only I didn’t curl up my hand. I just kind of puckered my lips… like this She demonstrated, looking so kissable that Ralph felt moved (almost compelled, in fact) to take advantage of the expression-and I breathed in a big cloud of her stuff.”
“What happened?” Ralph asked, fascinated and afraid.
Lois laughed ruefully. “To me or her?”
“Both of you.”
“Mina jumped and slapped the back of her neck. ’There’s a bug on me!” she said. ’It bit me! Get it off, Lo! Please get it off!” Of course there was no bug on her-I was the bug-but I brushed at her neck just the same, then opened the window and told her it was gone, it flew away. She was lucky I didn’t knock her brains out instead of just brushing her neck-that’s how full of pep I was. I felt like I could have opened the car door and run all the way home.”
Ralph nodded.
“It was wonderful… too wonderful. It’s like the stories about drugs you see on TV, how they take you to heaven at first and then lock you in hell. What if we start doing this and can’t stop?”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “And what if it hurts people? I keep thinking about vampires.”
“Do you know what I keep thinking about?” Lois’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “Those things you said Ed Deepneau talked about.
Those Centurions. What if they’re us, Ralph? What if they’re us?”
He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. Hearing his worst fear coming from her mouth made it less heavy on his own heart, and that made him think of what Lois had said about loneliness being the worst part of getting old.
“I know,” he said. “And what I did to Mrs. Perrine was totally spur-of-the-moment-I don’t remember thinking about it at all, just doing it. Was it that way with you?”
“Yes. Just like that.” She laid her head against his shoulder.
“We can’t do it anymore,” he said. “Because it really might be addictive. Anything that feels that good just about has to be addictive, don’t you think? We’ve got to try and build up some safeguards against doing it unconsciously, too. Because I think I have been.
That could be why-” A scream of brakes and sliding, wailing tires cut him off. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as outside on the street that sound went on and on, grief seeming to search for a point of impact.
There was a muffled thud from the street as the scream of the brakes and tires silenced. it was followed by a brief cry uttered by n either a woman or a child, Ralph could not tell which.
Someone else shouted, “What happened?” and then, “Oh, cripe There was a rattle of running footsteps on pavement.
“Stay on the couch,” Ralph said, and hurried to the living-room window. When he ran up the shade Lois was standing right beside him, and Ralph felt a flash of approval. It was what Carolyn would have done under similar circumstances.
They looked out on a nighttime world that pulsed with strange color and fabulous motion. Ralph knew it was Bill they were going to see, knew it-Bill hit by a car and lying dead in the street, his Panama with the crescent bitten out of the brim lying near one outstretched hand. He slipped an arm around Lois and she gripped his hand.
But it wasn’t McGovern in the fan of headlights thrown by the Ford which was slued around in the middle of Harris Avenue; it was Rosalie.
Her early-morning shopping expeditions were at an end.
She lay on her side in a spreading pool of blood, her back bunched and twisted in several places. As the driver of the car which had struck her knelt beside the old stray, the pitiless glare of the nearest streetlamp illuminated his face. It was Joe Wyzer, the Rite Aid druggist, his orange-yellow aura now swirling with confused eddies of red and blue. He stroked the old dog’s side, and each time his hand slipped into the vile black aura which clung to Rosalie, it disappeared.
Dreamy of terror washed through Ralph, dropping his temperature and shrivelling his testicles until they felt like hard little peachpits. Suddenly it was July of 1992 again, Carolyn dying, the deathwatch ticking, and something weird had happened to Ed Deepneau.
Ed had freaked out, and Ralph had found himself trying to keep fielen’s normally good-natured husband from springing at the man in the West Side Gardeners cap and attempting to rip his throat out.
Then-the cherry on the Charlotte russe, Carol would have said-Dorrance Marstellar had arrived. Old Dor.
And what had he said?
I wouldn’t touch him anymore… I can’t see -your hands.
I can’t see your hands.
“Oh my God,” Ralph whispered.
He was brought back to the here and now by the feeling of Lois swaying against him, as if she were on the edge of a faint.
“Lois!” he said sharply, gripping her arm. “Lois, are you okay?”
“I think so… but Ralph… do you see.
“Yes, it’s Rosalie. I guess she-”
“I don’t mean her,-I mean him!” She pointed to the right.
Doc #3 was leaning against the trunk of Joe Wyzer’s Ford, McGovern’s Panama tipped jauntily back on his bald skull. He looked toward Ralph and Lois,
