tells me you're a talented artist.'
Tommy looked embarrassed by the prompt and busied himself with stirring his chocolate. 'I guess.'
'Very talented,' Julieta affirmed proudly, as if she were personally responsible for his abilities. 'So much so that he won a complete private scholarship, just for visual artists, to come here. Tomorrow, you'll have to show Cree your work, Tommy.'
Tommy looked into his cup and blew across the top.
'How did you start?' Cree asked. 'Are there artists in your family?'
'Yeah. My dad was a potter and sculptor. In summer, he'd sell stuff to the tourists in Window Rock. He kind of got me going.' Tommy didn't look up as he answered. Under the edge of the table, his right knee started to bob, and the taut, unconscious motion, so at odds with the false calm of his face and the controlled movements of his hands, frightened Lynn. Was that a sign of it? Kids bobbed their knees, but with Tommy you couldn't be sure. Was it an ordinary nervous knee, or the… the seizure, starting to kindle again?
'Okay,' Joseph said at last. 'Julieta, your turn to start.'
They were playing rummy. Everyone took up the cards Joseph had dealt and looked them over. Cree's eyes moved to Tommy, who was scrupulously intent on his fan of cards, to Julieta to Joseph.
Julieta drew a card, slipped it into her hand, discarded.
'I was watching you with the horses,' Cree went on. 'Another talent, looks like. You must have spent a lot of time with them when you were growing up.'
'Yeah. My dad liked them. He taught me to ride when I was a baby.' The subject seemed to embarrass Tommy, and silence followed hard on his words.
'Well, my dad was no artist. He was a plumber,' Cree said, as if she hadn't noticed the conversational stall. She took her card and considered it.
'He was from Brooklyn. I loved him to pieces, but I sure wasn't going to follow in his footsteps and set toilet bowls for a living. You're lucky you got the artistic influence. But Pop did have one thing in common with your father-he liked horses, too.' She chuckled as if at some fond memory, discarded, and went on, 'Probably in a different way, though. He liked to bet on the races. You have to understand, my father was the kind of Brooklyn guy you see in the movies who talks like this: 'So dis guy sez to me, he sez, 'I got a sure t'ing for ya, put yaself a sawbuck on a win for Sugar Baby inna eight'.'' Even I could hardly understand him half the time!'
Tommy flicked his gaze at her, a glimmer of appreciation there.
'You're up, Lynn,' Joseph said, startling her.
She had a bad hand, of course, all low numbers and nothing to match. Like life, she thought savagely. She picked up and discarded.
'He died,' Tommy said. 'Killed himself.' This time he raised his eyes to look challengingly at Cree. The words froze Julieta and Joseph.
'Who did?' the psychologist asked blandly.
'He drunk himself and my mother to death. Got into a car crash because he was so loaded he couldn't see cows on the road.'
The psychologist didn't blink. 'I'm sorry, Tommy,' she said, with sincere but not excessive sympathy. 'You must miss him terribly. I know I miss my pop every day.'
Tommy looked to his cards again and shrugged his shoulders, doesn't matter or not really. He seemed puzzled and maybe put out by her response-clearly he'd been fishing for something more dramatic. He picked up a card, laid out three twos, discarded a six of spades. Meanwhile, Julieta was making heartbroken moon eyes and trying to hide the expression from Tommy. Joseph gave her a supportive, steadying gaze. It made Lynn sick. The craving for nicotine was beginning to gnaw at her in a way that couldn't be ignored, and she tried to remember which one she was on-number four? Or five? Whichever, she needed a cigarette.
'Alcoholism is one of our leading health problems,' Joseph told Cree.
'It's the root cause of most crimes and accidents here. Native Americans carry a genetic predisposition for it, a difference in the way carbohydrates are metabolized. That's one reason liquor's illegal on the rez.'
Cree nodded as she took her turn, keeping whatever it was she picked up, discarding but not laying out any cards. They went around again in silence, as if nobody was sure what to say.
The psychologist broke the quiet. 'This is such a gorgeous room. I love the fireplace!'
'This was the main store of the trading post, and then it was my living room,' Julieta said, deliberating theatrically over her hand. 'I told you this was my house before we converted it, didn't I?'
'Yes. You must miss having it all to yourself.'
Julieta shook her head. 'Nope. Never once. Haven't had time to miss it since we got the school going. Anyway, I get so many rewards from my job, especially when I work with the kids and their parents. And I gave myself one indulgence, teaching one of the drawing classes. Beyond that, I don't feel any need for the luxury. Really, I wouldn't know what to do with this much space all to myself now.'
How touching, Lynn thought. How very admirable of you.
It would be bad enough to have to listen to this crap, but it broke her heart to watch Joseph falling for it. He was a brilliant man in every other respect, but when it came to Julieta he seemed to have no brains at all. He took her posing at face value. Like just now, that decisive little shake of her head: the way her lustrous big black hair swung so alluringly, half covered one eye, got swept casually aside-she learned that one in beauty queen school for sure. Over the last three years, Lynn had seen her too many times around other men to believe it was unconscious. Board members, prospective donors, maintenance contractors, whoever-they all went knock-kneed around her. And she didn't hesitate to exploit the effect to get what she wanted.
The tragic part was that in Joseph's case the feelings so obviously went much deeper. Of course they did: He was too sincere and decent for his affection to be anything but genuine, even if it was deluded. The deceptions those two pulled were obviously not his choice! The thing that really made Lynn sick was that Julieta was too self- preoccupied or stupid or whatever to treat him with the respect he deserved, and to-'Lynn?'
She startled at Joseph's voice and looked up from the fan of cards she'd been staring sightlessly at. She realized it was the second time he'd said her name.
'Your turn,' he said, smiling. He chuckled and explained to the psychologist, 'We're all a little tired, I think.'
'Sorry!' Lynn forced a laugh as she picked up another useless card, the seven of hearts, and threw it down again.
Tommy's turn. He picked up her seven from the discard pile.
'How about you, Tommy? How do you feel?' Cree asked. 'Tired?'
'Not so much. Pretty boring to sit around.'
'Think you'll be up for spending time with me tomorrow?'
He made a frown. 'They already talked to me. The headshrinkers at the hospital.'
'You must be sick of it, huh?'
He smiled weakly, unsure how to answer, courtesy at odds with candor.
'It's okay. You won't insult me if you say yes-'
He shrugged, looking at his cards. 'They didn't know anything.' Cree nodded.
Sitting at Tommy's side, Lynn noticed that his leg had stopped bobbing. But down on the floor, his feet writhed in his socks. She tried not to make her reaction obvious as she darted her eyes down. It almost didn't look like human feet-the bumps that came and went as the bones flexed, the arching and tensing and twisting! And still the rest of him, everything above the tabletop, kept an artificial calm.
Lynn felt sick at the sight. It reminded her of just how bizarre this whole situation was. Between crises, it was so tempting to doubt the strangeness of what she'd seen. But she'd never forget that time she'd seen his arm moving, on its own, when he was dead asleep-the queer awareness it moved with. And she could still feel the marks of his teeth on her forearm, three double arcs of scab now set in purple-green bruises, that she'd kept hidden since last week. Julieta had been out of the room when he'd attacked her, and during a lull she'd managed to bandage her wounds and change into a long-sleeved blouse. The queen had been so distraught during that whole episode, on the verge of panic, that Lynn had hidden the biting in an effort to keep her boss from going to pieces utterly. The sight of the feet and their almost inhuman contortions brought back the horror of the other nights, and she wondered again just what Julieta hoped to gain from having this oddly blue-collar psychologist here.
'You believe in ghosts, Tommy?' Cree asked suddenly.
