'Scott, how do you know?'
He shrugs. His shoulders also seem to weigh a thousand pounds— that, at least, is how it looks to her—but he manages. 'Telepathy, I suppose.'
'Will he get better now?'
There's a long pause. Just when she thinks he won't answer, he does. 'He might,' he says. 'He's…it's deep…in here.' Scott touches his own head—indicating, Lisey thinks, some sort of brain injury. 'Sometimes things just…go too far.'
'Then do they come and sit here? Wrap themselves in sheets?'
Nothing from Scott. What she's afraid of now is losing what little of him she's found. She doesn't need anyone to tell her how easily it could happen; she can feel it. Every nerve in her body knows this news.
'Scott, I think you want to come back. I think it's why you hung on so hard all last December. And I think it's why you brought the african. It's hard to miss, even in the gloom.'
He looks down, as if seeing it for the first time, then actually smiles a little. 'You're always…saving me, Lisey,' he says.
'I don't know what you're—'
'Nashville. I was going down.' With every word he seems to gain animation. For the first time she allows herself to really hope. 'I was lost in the dark and you found me. I was hot—so hot—and you gave me ice. Do you remember?'
She remembers that other Lisa
(I spilled half the fucking Coke getting back here)
and how Scott's shivering suddenly stopped when she popped a sliver of ice onto his bloody tongue. She remembers Cokecolored water dripping out of his eyebrows. She remembers it all. 'Of course I do. Now let's get out of here.'
He shakes his head, slowly but firmly. 'It's too hard. You go on, Lisey.'
'I'm supposed to go without you?' She blinks her eyes fiercely, only realizing when she feels the sting that she has begun to cry.
'It won't be hard—do it like that time in New Hampshire.' He speaks patiently, but still very slowly, as if every word were a great weight, and he is purposely misunderstanding her. She's almost sure of it. 'Just close your eyes…concentrate on the place you came from…see it…and that's the place you'll go back to.'
'Without you?' she repeats fiercely, and below them, slowly, like a man moving underwater, a guy in a red flannel shirt turns to look at them.
Scott says, 'Shhhh, Lisey—here you must be still.'
'What if I don't want to be? This isn't the smucking library, Scott!'
Deep in the Fairy Forest the laughers howl as if this is the funniest thing they've ever heard, a knee- slapper worthy of the Auburn Novelty Shop. From the pool there's a single sharp splash. Lisey glances that way and sees the stout gentleman has gone to…well, to somewhere else. She decides she doesn't give a good goddam if it's underwater or Dimension X; her business now is with her husband. He's right, she's always saving him, just call her the U.S. Cavalry. And it's okay, she knew that practical shit was never exactly going to be Scott's main deal when she married him, but she has a right to expect a little help, doesn't she?
His gaze has drifted back to the water. She has an idea that when night comes and the moon begins to burn there like a drowned lamp, she'll lose him for good. This frightens and infuriates her. She stands up and snatches Good Ma's african. It came from her side of the family, after all, and if this is to be their divorce, she will have it back—all of it—even if it hurts him. Especially if it hurts him.
Scott looks at her with an expression of sleepy surprise that makes her angrier still.
'Okay,' she says, speaking with brittle lightness. It's a tone foreign to her and seemingly to this place, as well. Several people look around, clearly disturbed and—perhaps—irritated. Well, smuck them and the various horses (or hearses, or ambulances) they rode in on. 'You want to stay here and eat lotuses, or whatever the saying is? Fine. I'll just go on back down the path—'
And for the first time she sees a strong emotion on Scott's face. It's fear. 'Lisey, no!' he says. 'Just boom back from here! You can't use the path! It's too late, almost night!'
'Shhhh!' someone says.
Fine. She'll shhhh. Bundling the yellow african higher in her arms, Lisey starts back down the risers. Two benches down from the bottom she chances a glance back. Part of her is sure that he'll follow her; this is Scott, after all. No matter how strange this place may be, he's still her husband, still her lover. The idea of divorce has crossed her mind, but surely it is absurd, a thing for other people but not for Scott and Lisey. He will not allow her to leave alone. But when she looks over her shoulder he's just sitting there in his white tee-shirt and green long underwear bottoms, with his knees together and his hands clasped tightly as if he is cold even here, where the air is so tropical. He's not coming, and for the first time Lisey lets herself acknowledge that it may be because he can't. If that is so, her choices are down to a pair: stay here with him or go home without him.
No, there's a third. I can gamble. I can shoot the works, as the saying is. Bet the farm. So come on, Scott. If the path is really dangerous, get off your dead ass and keep me from taking it.
She wants to look back as she crosses the beach, but doing that would show weakness. The laughers are closer now, which means that whatever else might be lurking near the path back to Sweetheart Hill will be closer, too. It will be full dark by now under the trees, and she guesses she'll have that sense of something stalking her before she gets far; that sense of something closing in. It's very close, honey, Scott told her that day in Nashville as he lay on the broiling pavement, bleeding from the lung and near death. And when she tried to tell him she didn't know what he was talking about, he had told her not to insult his intelligence.
Or her own.
Never mind. I'll deal with whatever's in the woods when—if—I have to. All I know right now is that Dandy Debusher's girl Lisey has finally got it strapped all the way on. That mysterious 'it' Scott said you could never define because it changed from one jackpot to the next. This is the total deal, SOWISA, babyluv, and do you know what? It feels pretty good. She begins making her way up the slanting path that leads to the steps and behind her
12
'He called me,' Lisey murmured.
One of the women who had been standing at the edge of the pool now stood up to her knees in that still water, looking dreamily off to the horizon. Her companion turned to Lisey, her brows drawn together in a disapproving frown. At first Lisey didn't understand, then she did. People didn't like you to talk here, that hadn't changed. She had an idea that in Boo'ya Moon, few things did.
She nodded as if the frowning woman had requested
clarification. 'My husband called my name, tried to stop me. God knows what it cost him to do that, but he did.'
The woman on the beach—her hair was blond but dark at the roots, as if it needed touching up—said, 'Be…quiet, please. I need…to think.'
Lisey nodded—fine by her, although she doubted the blond woman was doing as much thinking as she might believe—and waded into the water. She thought it would be cool, but in fact it was almost hot. The heat coursed up her legs and made her sex tingle in a way it hadn't in a long time. She waded out farther but got no deeper than her waist. She took another half a dozen steps, looked around, and saw she was at least ten yards beyond the farthest of the other waders, and remembered that good food turned bad after dark in Boo'ya Moon. Might the water also turn bad? Even if it didn't, might not dangerous things come out here as well as in the woods? Pool-sharks, so to speak? And if that was the case, might she not find herself too far out to get back before one of them decided dinner was served?
