remembered all the things he's told her, and has been crushed by—what do they call them in Chuckie's Insider?— recovered memories.
Are they recovered, or things he's just been keeping to himself? She doesn't know for sure, but she does know that childish way he spoke for awhile was very spooky…and suppose he's gone back down to Parks Greenhouse to finish the job? His throat this time instead of his hand?
She turns toward the dim maw of the kitchen—the apartment consists of only that and the bedroom—and catches sight of him curled up in bed. He's sleeping in his usual semi-fetal position, knees almost to his chest, forehead touching the wall (when they leave this place in the fall, there will be a faint but discernible mark there—Scott's mark). She has told him several times that he'd have more room if he slept on the outside, but he won't. Now he shifts a little, the springs squeak, and in the glow of the streetlight coming in the window, Lisey can see a dark wing of hair fall across his cheek.
He wasn't in bed.
But there he is, on the inside. If she doubts, she could put her hand under the sheaf of hair she's looking at, lift it, feel its weight.
So maybe I just dreamed he was gone?
That makes sense—sort of—but as she goes back into the bathroom and sits down on the toilet, she thinks again: He wasn't there. When I got up, the smucking bed was empty.
She puts the ring up after she's finished, because if he gets up in the night, he'll be too asleep to do it. Then she goes back to bed. She's in a doze by the time she gets there. He's beside her now, and that's what matters. Surely that's what matters.
20
The second time she doesn't wake up on her own.
'Lisey.'
It's Scott, shaking her.
'Lisey, little Lisey.'
She fights it, she put in a hard day—hell, a hard week—but he's persistent.
'Lisey, wake up!'
She expects morning light to lance her eyes, but it's still dark.
'Scott. Hizzit?'
She wants to ask if he's bleeding again, or if the bandage she put on has slipped, but these ideas seem too big and complicated for her fogged-out mind. Hizzit will have to do.
His face is looming over hers, completely awake. He looks excited, but not dismayed or in pain. He says, 'We can't go on living like this.'
That wakes her up most of the way, because it scares her. What is he saying? That he wants to break up?
'Scott?' She fumbles on the floor, comes up with her Timex, squints at it. 'It's quarter past four in the morning!' Sounding put-out, sounding exasperated, and she is those things, but she is also frightened.
'Lisey, we should get a real house. Buy it.' He shakes his head. 'Nah, that's backwards. I think we ought to get married.'
Relief floods her and she slumps back. The watch falls from her relaxing fingers and clatters to the floor. That's all right; Timexes take a licking and keep on ticking. Relief is followed by amazement; she has just been proposed to, like a lady in a romance novel. And relief is followed by a little red caboose of terror. The guy doing the proposing (at quarter past four in the morning, mind you) is the same guy who stood her up last night, tore the shit out of his hand when she yelled at him about it (and a few other things, yeah, okay, true), then came up the lawn holding the wounded hand out to her like some kind of smucking Christmas present. This is the man with the dead brother she only found out about tonight, and the dead mother that he supposedly killed because he—how did the hotshot writer put it?—growed too big.
'Lisey?'
'Shut up, Scott, I'm thinking.' Oh but it's hard to think when the moon is down and the hour is none, no matter what your trusty Timex may say.
'I love you,' he says mildly.
'I know. I love you, too. That's not the point.'
'It might be,' he says. 'That you love me, I mean. That might be exactly the point. No one's loved me since Paul.' A long pause. 'And Daddy, I guess.'
She gets up on her elbow. 'Scott, lots of people love you. When you read from your last book—and the one you're writing now—' She wrinkles her nose. The new one is called Empty Devils, and what she's read of it and heard him read from it she doesn't like. 'When you read, nearly five hundred people showed up! They had to move you from the Maine Lounge into Hauck Auditorium! When you were done, they gave you a standing O!'
'That's not love,' he says, 'that's curiosity. And just between me and thee, it's freakshow stuff. When you publish your first novel at twenty-one, you find out all about freakshow stuff, even if the damn thing only sells to libraries and there's no paperback. But you don't care about the child-prodigy stuff, Lisey —'
'Yes I do—' Wholly awake now, or almost.
'Yes, but…cigarette me, babyluv.' His cigarettes are on the floor, in the turtle ashtray she keeps for him. She hands him the ashtray, puts a cigarette in his mouth, and lights it for him. He resumes. 'But you also care about whether or not I brush my teeth—'
'Well yeah—'
'And if the shampoo I'm using is getting rid of my dandruff or just causing more of it—'
That reminds her of something. 'I bought a bottle of that Tegrin stuff I told you about. It's in the shower. I want you to try it.'
He bursts out laughing. 'See? See? A perfect example. You take the holistic approach.'
'I don't know that word,' she says, frowning.
He stubs out the cigarette a quarter smoked. 'It means that when you look at me you see me top to bottom and side to side and to you everything weighs the same.'
She thinks about it, then nods. 'I suppose, sure.'
'You don't know what that's like. I put in a childhood when I was only…when I was one thing. The last six years, I've been another. It's a better thing, but still, to most people around here and back at Pitt, Scott Landon is nothing but a…a holy jukebox. Put in a couple of bucks and out comes a smucking story.' He doesn't sound angry, but she senses he could become angry. In time. If he doesn't have a place to go and be safe, be right-sized. And yes, she could be that person. She could make that place. He would help her do it. To some extent they have done it already.
'You're different, Lisey. I knew it the first time I met you, on Blues Night in the Maine Lounge—do you remember?'
Jesus Mary and JoJo the Carpenter, does she remember. She had gone up to the University that night to look at the Hartgen art exhibition outside Hauck, heard the music coming from the lounge, and went in on what was little more than a whim. He came in a few minutes later, looked around at the mostly full house, and asked if the other end of the couch she was sitting on was taken. She had almost skipped the music. She could have made the eight- thirty bus back to Cleaves if she'd skipped it. That was how close she had come to being in bed alone tonight. The thought makes her feel the way looking down from a high window makes her feel.
She says none of this, only nods.
'To me you're like…' Scott pauses, then smiles. His smile is divine, crooked teeth and all. 'You're like the pool
