Smoke

She burst into tears.

36

'Hold still,' Peg said.

'I am holding still,' Freddie said, though of course he wasn't.

Peg knew he was twitching because the brush tickled him, particularly under the nose, but there was no help for that. He just had to stand it for a minute, the baby. 'I don't want to stick this brush in your nose,' she pointed out.

'That makes two of us,' he said.

The problem was cabin fever. It does exist, and not just in snowbound log huts in the frozen north. You can have cabin fever in a nice house in upstate New York in the summer, too, even with a swimming pool and a VCR and all the rest of it, if you can't go anywhere.

They both felt the same way about this. That is, Peg felt this way, and Freddie assured her he did, too.

So it was time to do something about it. And the something was a meal in a restaurant, a nice candlelit dinner that did not come out of their own kitchen. A restaurant meal was all either of them asked for. That was all, in fact, that either of them talked about or thought about these days. They had all this money, they had all this leisure, they were living in the middle of a resort and vacation area speckled with charming restaurants, and all they did was eat at home, and not even together. In separate rooms, gloomily, not even shouting stuff to one another anymore.

How to do it. How to have a nice dinner out. They could always go for drives, with Freddie inside one of his heads, but he couldn't very well eat a meal with a latex head on, and if he took it off in the restaurant there'd really be hell to pay.

He even volunteered at one point to just come along and escort her and sit there and watch her eat, only pretending to join in the meal himself, but she wouldn't let him do it. It would drive them both crazy, and she knew it.

So here was the idea. It had come to her this morning when she woke up, three days after Call Me Tom had come by with his warning that the forces of evil were still out and about. 'Hmmmmm,' she said, sitting up.

'Nothing's happened yet,' the voice of Freddie said, from over by the dresser. 'So maybe Call Me Tom did keep his mouth shut.'

'Of course he did,' Peg said, looking at a different corner of the room. 'I told you he would. And I got an idea.'

'What kind of an idea?'

'A way, maybe, maybe a way we can go out and have dinner somewhere.'

'Peg?' Hope and skepticism battled in his voice. 'Are you serious?'

'I think we could try it.'

'Try what, Peg?'

'Makeup,' she said.

'What?' Now disappointment and scorn battled there in that voice. 'Come on, Peg.'

This time she looked directly toward where she thought he probably stood. 'Women wear makeup all the time,' she explained.

'Not all over their face,' Freddie objected.

'That's what you know. There are women you see on the street, in stores, you aren't seeing one speck of their actual facial skin, not their real face, not even a teeny little bit. Maybe some of the forehead, but that's it.'

'Are you putting me on, Peg?'

'We are talking about women,' Peg went on, 'who wake up in the morning all wrinkled, and when they leave the house there's no wrinkles on their faces at all. That's the kind of makeup I mean.'

'And you could do my whole face?'

'Sure. And your neck, and your ears. That's not normally done, but I don't see why not. And we'll buy you a wig.'

'What about my hands? Can I eat with makeup all over my hands?'

'Oh,' Peg said, and suddenly crashed. 'No, you can't.' She hadn't thought about his goddam hands. A great weight that had just begun to lift from her shoulders now dropped down on her again, heavier than ever. 'Forget it,' she said. Slumped in seated position on the bed, she sighed and said, 'Nobody's gonna think those Playtex gloves are real hands, not up close in a restaurant.'

There was a little silence, in which she gazed at nothing at all, and then he said, 'Burns.'

She frowned in his general direction. 'What?'

'What I'll do,' he said, 'I'll explain to the waiter, whoever, when I go in. I got burned, I got scalded or something, I got ointment on, I gotta wear these gloves.'

The smile that spread across Peg's features was like day-break. 'Could you do that, Freddie? Say that?'

'Why not? Could you do the thing with the makeup?'

'Why not?' she said, and bounded out of bed with fresh enthusiasm and hope.

Makeup was easy. In a drugstore — not in Dudley — while Freddie waited in the van, Peg went through the displays of Cover Girl and Max Factor. Freddie would have to wear sunglasses in the restaurant, of course — another result of that horrible accident that so messed up his hands — but the eyebrows would show (or not show), so she bought black and brown eyebrow pencils, on the assumption that if she painted his invisible eyebrows, the color would show on top of the invisible hairs, and look realistic enough for a dim-lit restaurant after dark.

Let's see, what else? Skin-tone lipstick. Blush. But not too much stuff; she wasn't up for a night on the town with Bozo the Clown. So she paid for her purchases — they were paying for everything these days, they were gonna need some more cash soon — and went back out to the van. It was parked under a tree down the block, windows open, Freddie invisible in back. 'Now the wig,' she said, sliding behind the wheel, as though that would be just as easy.

No. Men's wigs were not easy. They were expensive, and there weren't very many places that sold them, and they had to be fitted. That last was the killer.

They were driving around, Freddie consulting various telephone Yellow Pages in the back of the van, and it wasn't looking good. 'There are places,' he said, 'they say here for chemotherapy patients and like that, but they all say 'fitting.''

'Women's wigs are easier, I guess,' Peg said, driving aimlessly around Columbia County, 'because they've got more hair and they can do different styles and things.'

'I dunno, Peg,' Freddie said. He was sounding gloomy again. 'I don't think I can go as Kojak,' he said, 'with makeup all over my whole head.'

'I don't think so, either,' she agreed, and thought a while as she drove, and then she said, 'I think I got an idea. Another idea. Can you find a shopping mall in those Yellow Pages?'

'What's the idea?'

'I'll tell you later,' she said, because she was afraid he'd say no if he knew what it was.

He said, 'You're afraid I'll say no.'

'No, come on, Freddie, it's just to be a surprise, that's all. Find me a mall.'

From where they were at that moment, the nearest mall was over in Massachusetts, in the Berkshires, miles and miles away. They went there, and of course there were no trees or shade of any kind in the parking lot, baking in the July sun, so Peg said, 'I'll be as quick as I can,' and left both windows open, so he wouldn't roast in there.

She was as quick as she could be, and came back with a purchase in a plain brown paper bag. When she got into the van Freddie said, 'Some guy tried to steal the radio.'

'Freddie! He did?' The radio, she saw, was still there. 'What'd you do?'

'I guess he figured,' Freddie said, 'the windows being open, might as well. So he got in, and he lay down on the seat there, facedown, so he could reach under the dash.'

She had the windows rolled up now, and the engines and air-conditioning on, but she didn't drive yet. 'Yeah?'

'So first I picked his pocket,' Freddie said, 'and then I pulled his hair.'