'After all, you said you smelled wine, didn't you?'
'Yes, that's true.'
'And if it only lasted a few seconds before you scared him off, and it was dark, and you were scuffling, how can you be positive he wasn't just trying to rob you?'
'You're right, I can't.'
'And do you really believe all this, or are you just humoring me?'
'I'm just humoring you,” Gideon said. “Somebody was trying to kill me.'
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Chapter 12
* * * *
When Gideon awakened the next morning he stretched before thinking, then followed it with an immediate and heartfelt groan.
'Feeling a little achy?” Julie murmured beside him.
'If you call an inability to move without excruciating pain a little achy, then I suppose you could say I'm a little achy. God, I feel like the Tin Man after a year in the rain.'
Julie kissed him sleepily somewhere near the left eyebrow and rolled out of bed, yawning. “I'll get you some aspirin.'
'Thanks. About forty should do it.'
While she rummaged in the toiletry kit that had been placed on the bathroom windowsill but not yet unpacked, Gideon lay on his back, careful not to move. Although he rarely fell back asleep once awake, this time he drowsed, slipping into a troubling dream, perhaps the continuation of a dream he'd been having when he woke up.
He was a child again, lying on an operating table, alone in an immense, cold room. He was frightened, his heart in his mouth. Something awful was going to happen to him. There was an ominous grinding noise, and the table, which had wheels, began to slide over the linoleum floor, slowly at first, gradually building up to a blurred speed, then coming to halt in another huge room. There, silent, elongated figures in white surgical gowns and masks glided as if on skates. The smell of ether was strong in Gideon's nostrils.
Terrified, he held himself perfectly still. He stopped breathing. He shut his eyes.
But they saw him all the same. One of the tall, slender figures approached, holding a scalpel in a rubber-gloved hand. The figure mumbled something. As he spoke the mask fell away and Gideon could see that there was no human mouth beneath it; no human flesh at all, but the curved, bony jaws of a fish.
The figure towered over him. The scalpel had changed to a flint knife. He lay the point against Gideon's collarbone and pressed. Screaming, Gideon kicked out at him.
'Ow!” the monster cried.
His eyes flipped open. Julie was sitting on the side of the bed, her hand gently touching his shoulder, fingertips on his collarbone. “Are you okay? I think you were dreaming. Here's your aspirin.'
He took the two tablets, swallowed some water, and fell back onto the bed, trying to hold onto the dream's fragmenting images.
'Julie,” he said slowly, “it was an American.'
'You were having a dream, Gideon,” she said soothingly.
'No, last night. The guy that jumped me. He was an American.'
'Last night? But how could you tell? I thought he didn't say anything.'
'He grunted. He said ‘ow.’ I just remembered. Damn, how could I be so stupid?'
There was a brief pause while she frowned down at him. “And Mexicans don't say ‘ow'?'
'No, they don't.'
'What do they say?'
'I'm not sure, but even if they said it, it wouldn't come out the same. The initial vowel—the ah sound—would be farther back in the palate, and the glide to the second one wouldn't be as marked. It would sound more like two separate vowels, not our kind of diphthong.'
'It would?'
'Sure.” He demonstrated.
'Come again? They wouldn't say ‘ow,’ they'd say ‘ow'?” She was far from convinced.
'They'd say ‘ah-oo,'” he repeated patiently, “if they said it at all. But they don't.'
'I don't know about this, Gideon,” she said doubtfully. “It sounds pretty subtle to me. He was grunting from a punch in the stomach, after all, not reciting a speech, and I doubt if you were listening too carefully to his diphthongs at the time. Besides, are you sure your Spanish is that good?'
