Transgressions

smelled like burning hair.

I thought about Tonya Gregson in Rahway— Tonya and the child who might or might not have Roland Abelson's eyes—and thought I'd have to work up to that one. I decided to start with Bruce Mason's widow.

I took the train to Dobbs Ferry and called a taxi from the station. The cabbie took me to a Cape Cod house on a residential street. I gave him some money, told him to wait— wouldn't be long—and rang the doorbell. had a box under one arm. It looked like the kind that contains a bakery cake.

I only had to ring once because I'd called ahead and Janice Mason was expecting me. had my story carefully prepared and told with some confidence, knowing that the taxi sitting in the driveway, its meter running, would forestall any detailed cross-examination.

On September seventh, I said—the Friday before—I had tried to blow a note from the conch Bruce kept on his desk, as I had heard Bruce himself do at the Jones Beach picnic. (Janice, Mrs. Lord of the Flies, nodding; she had been there, of course.) Well, I said, to make a long story short, I had persuaded Bruce to let me have the conch shell over the weekend so I could practice. Then, on Tuesday morning, I'd awakened with a raging sinus infection and a horrible headache to go with it. (This was a story I had already told several people.) I'd been drinking a cup of lea when I heard the boom and saw the rising smoke. I hadn't thought of the conch shell again until just this week. I'd been (leaning out my little utility closet and by damn, there it was. And I just thought. . . well, it's not much of a keepsake, but I just thought maybe you'd like to. . . you know. ..

Her eyes filled up with tears just as mine had when Paula brought back Roland Abelson's 'retirement fund,' only these weren't accompanied by the look of fright that I'm sure was on my own face as Paula stood there with her stiff hair sticking out on either side of her head. Janice told me she would be glad to have any keepsake of Bruce.

'I can't get over the way we said good-bye,' she said, holding the box in her arms. 'He always left very early because he took the train. He kissed me on the cheek and I opened one eye and asked him if he'd bring back a pint of half-and-half. He said he would. That's the last thing he ever said to me. When he asked me to marry him, I felt like Helen of Troy—stupid but absolutely true—and I wish I'd said something better than 'Bring home a pint of half-and-half.' But we'd been married a long time, and it seemed like business as usual that day, and ... we don't know, do we?'

'No.'

'Yes. Any parting could be forever, and we don't know. Thank you, Mr. Staley. For coming out and bringing me this. That was very kind.' She smiled a little then. 'Do you remember how he stood on the beach with his shirt off and blew it?'

'Yes,' I said, and looked at the way she held the box. Later she would sit down and take the shell out and hold it on her lap and cry. I knew that the conch, at least, would never come back to my apartment. It was home.

I returned to the station and caught the train back to New York. The cars were almost empty at that time of day, early afternoon, and I sat by a rain- and dirt-streaked window, looking out at the river and the approaching skyline. On cloudy and rainy days, you almost seem to be creating that skyline out of your own imagination, a piece at a time.

Tomorrow I'd go to Rahway, with the penny in the Lucite cube. Perhaps the child would take it in his or her chubby hand and look at it curiously. In any case, it would be out of my life. I thought the only difficult thing to get rid of would be Jimmy Eagleton's Farting Cushion—I could hardly tell Mrs. Eagleton I'd brought it home for the weekend in order to practice using it, could I? But necessity is the mother of inven-tion, and I was confident that I would eventually think of some halfway plausible story.

It occurred to me that other things might show up, in time. And I'd be lying if I told you I found that possibility entirely unpleasant. When it comes to returning things which people believe have been lost forever, things that have weight, there are compensations. Even if they're only little things, like a pair of joke sunglasses or a steel penny in a Lucite cube . . . yeah. I'd have to say there are compensations.

JOHN FARRIS

John Farris began writing fiction in high school. At 22, while he was studying at the University of Missouri, his

first major novel, Harrison High, was published; it became a bestseller. He has worked in many

genres—suspense, horror, mystery—while transcending

each through the power of his writing. The New York Times noted his talent for 'masterfully devious plotting'

while reviewing The Captors. All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By was cited in an essay published in Horror: 100 Best Books, which concluded, 'The field's most powerful individual voice ... when John Farris is on

high-burn, no one can match the skill with which he puts

words together.' In the 1990s, he turned exclusively to thrillers, publishing Dragonfly, Soon She Will Be Gone, Solar Eclipse, and Sacrifice, of which Richard Matheson wrote, 'John Farris has once again elevated the terror genre into the realm of literature.' Commenting on

Dragonfly, Ed Gorman said, 'Dragonfly has style, heart, cunning,

terror,

irony,

suspense,

and

genuine

surprise—and an absolutely fearless look into the souls of