By the Light of the Moon

'A-S-P-E-R-G-E-R, emphasis on per. Sometimes Shep seems totally high- functioning and sometimes not so high as you would hope. Mostly, I don't think easy labels apply. He's just Shep, unique.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'He's said that fourteen times,' Dylan noted. 'How many teeth in the human mouth?'

'I think… thirty-two, counting four wisdom teeth.'

Dylan sighed. 'Thank God his wisdom teeth were pulled.'

'You said he needs stability. Is it good for him to be bouncing around the country like a Gypsy?'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'We don't bounce,' Dylan replied with an edge that suggested he had taken offense at her question, though she intended none. 'We have a schedule, a routine, goals to be attained. Focus. We have focus. We drive in style. This isn't a horse-drawn wagon with hex signs painted on the sides.'

'I just meant he might be better off in an institution.'

'That'll never happen.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

Jilly said, 'Not all those places are snake pits.'

'The only thing he's got is me. Drop him in an institution, and he won't have anything.'

'It might be good for him.'

'No. It would kill him.'

'For one thing, maybe they could keep him from hurting himself.'

'He won't hurt himself.'

'He just did,' she noted.

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'That was a first and a fluke,' Dylan said with what sounded more like hope than like conviction. 'It won't happen again.'

'You never imagined it would happen the first time.'

Although they were already exceeding the legal limit and though traffic conditions were not conducive to even greater speed, Dylan accelerated steadily.

Jilly sensed that he was trying to outrun more than just the men in the black Suburbans. 'No matter how fast you drive, Shep's still in the backseat.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

Dylan said, 'The lunatic doctor gives you an injection, and an hour later, or whatever, you experience an altered state of-'

'I said I want a time-out from that.'

'And I don't want to talk about this,' he declared emphatically, 'about institutions, sanitariums, care homes, places where people might as well be canned meat, where they're put on a shelf and dusted from time to time.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'All right,' Jilly relented. 'Sorry. I understand. It's really none of my business anyway.'

'That's right,' Dylan concurred. 'Shep isn't our business. He's my business.'

'All right.'

'Okay.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'Twenty,' Jilly counted.

Dylan said, 'But your altered state of consciousness is our business, not just yours, but yours and mine, because it's related to the injection-'

'We don't know that for sure.'

Certain expressions took exaggerated form on his broad rubbery face, as if he were in fact a cartoon bear who had stepped out of an animated realm into the real world, had shaved his furry mug, and had set himself the tricky task of passing for human. In this instance, his disbelief pulled his features into a configuration worthy of Sylvester the cat on those occasions when the scheming feline had been tricked by Tweety bird into walking off the edge of a cliff. 'Oh, but we do know that for sure.'

'We do not,' she insisted.

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

Jilly continued: 'And I don't like the term altered state any more than I like hallucination. It makes me sound like a doper.'

'I can't believe we're arguing over vocabulary.'

'I'm not arguing. I'm just saying what I don't like.'

'If we're going to talk about it, we have to call it something.'

'Then let's not talk about it,' she suggested.

'We have to talk about it. What the hell are we supposed to do – drive at random the rest of our lives, here and there and everywhere, keeping on the move, and not talking about it?'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'Speaking of driving,' Jilly said, 'you're going way too fast.'

'I am not.'

'You're doing over ninety.'

'It only looks that way from your angle.'

'Oh, yeah? What's it look like from your angle?'

'Eighty-eight,' he admitted, and eased up on the accelerator. 'Let's call it a… mirage. That doesn't imply mental instability, drug use, or religious hysteria.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'I was thinking maybe phantasm,' Jilly said.

'I can live with phantasm.'

'But I think I like mirage better.'

'Great! Fantastic! And we're in the desert, so it fits.'

'But it wasn't actually a mirage.'

'I know that,' he hastened to assure her. 'It was its own thing, special, unique, impossible to properly name. But if you were hit by this mirage because of the stuff in the damn needle-' He interrupted himself, sensing her rising objection: 'Oh, get real! Common sense tells us the two things must be related.'

'Common sense is overrated.'

'Not in the O'Conner family.'

'I'm not a member of the O'Conner family.'

'Which relieves us of the need to change our name.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

She didn't want to argue with him, for she knew that they were in this together, but she couldn't restrain herself: 'So there's not room in the O'Conner family for people like me, huh?'

'There's that 'people like me' business again!'

'Well, it seems to be an issue with you.'

'It's not an issue with me. It's an issue with you. You're way too sensitive or something, like a boil just waiting to burst.'

'Lovely. Now I'm a bursting boil. You've sure got a talent for getting under people's skin.'

'Me? I'm the easiest guy in the world to get along with. I've never gotten under anyone's skin in my life – until you.'

'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'

'You're doing over ninety again,' she warned him.

'Eighty-nine,' he disagreed, and this time he didn't ease up on the accelerator. 'If you were hit by that