Cell

'That's a very good question,' Clay said.

'You're fuckin-A right it is. Watch out for the little sweetie pie there.' And without waiting for them to reply, the man who'd won the battle of the beer keg turned and merged with the shadows.

6

' This is it,' Tom said no more than ten minutes later, and the moon emerged from the wrack of cloud and smoke that had obscured it for the last hour or so as if the little man with the spectacles and the mustache had just given the Celestial Lighting Director a cue. Its rays—silver now instead of that awful infected orange—illuminated a house that was either dark blue, green, or perhaps even gray; without the streetlights to help, it was hard to tell for sure. What Clay could tell for sure was that the house was trim and handsome, although maybe not as big as your eye first insisted. The moonlight aided in that deception, but it was mostly caused by the way the steps rose from Tom McCourt's well-kept lawn to the only pillared porch on the street. There was a fieldstone chimney on the left. From above the porch, a dormer looked down on the street.

'Oh, Tom, it's beautiful!” Alice said in a too-rapturous voice. To Clay she sounded exhausted and bordering on hysteria. He himself didn't think it beautiful, but it certainly looked like the home of a man who owned a cell phone and all the other twenty-first-century bells and whistles. So did the rest of the houses on this part of Salem Street, and Clay doubted if many of the residents had had Tom's fantastic good luck. He looked around nervously. All the houses were dark—the power was out now—and they might have been deserted, except he seemed to feel eyes, surveying them.

The eyes of crazies? Phone-crazies? He thought of Power Suit Woman and Pixie Light; of the lunatic in the gray pants and the shredded tie; the man in the business suit who had bitten the ear right off the side of the dog's head. He thought of the naked man jabbing the car aerials back and forth as he ran. No, surveying was not in the phone-crazies' repertoire. They just came at you. But if there were normal people holed up in these houses—some of them, anyway—where were the phone-crazies?

Clay didn't know.

'I don't know if I'd exactly call it beautiful,' Tom said, 'but it's still standing, and that's good enough for me. I'd pretty well made up my mind that we'd get here and find nothing but a smoking hole in the ground.' He reached in his pocket and brought out a slim ring of keys. 'Come on in. Be it ever so humble, and all that.'

They started up the walk and had gone no more than half a dozen steps when Alice cried, 'Wait!'

Clay wheeled around, feeling both alarm and exhaustion. He thought he was beginning to understand combat fatigue a little. Even his adrenaline felt tired. But no one was there—no phone-crazies, no bald man with blood flowing down the side of his face from a shredded ear, not even a little old lady with the talkin apocalypse blues. Just Alice, down on one knee at the place where Tom's walk left the sidewalk.

'What is it, honey?' Tom asked.

She stood up, and Clay saw she was holding a very small sneaker. 'It's a Baby Nike,' she said. 'Do you —'

Tom shook his head. 'I live alone. Except for Rafe, that is. He thinks he's the king, but he's only the cat.'

'Then who left it?' She looked from Tom to Clay with wondering, tired eyes.

Clay shook his head. 'No telling, Alice. Might as well toss it.'

But Clay knew she would not; it was dйjа vu at its disorienting worst. She still held it in her hand, curled against her waist, as she went to stand behind Tom, who was on the steps, picking slowly through his keys in the scant light.

Now we hear the cat, Clay thought. Rafe. And sure enough, there was the cat that had been Tom McCourt's salvation, waowing a greeting from inside.

7

Tom bent down and rafe or rafer—both short for rafael—leaped into his arms, purring loudly and stretching his head up to sniff Tom's carefully trimmed mustache.

'Yeah, missed you, too,' Tom said. 'All is forgiven, believe me.' He carried Rafer across the enclosed porch, stroking the top of his head. Alice followed. Clay came last, closing the door and turning the knob on the lock before catching up to the others.

'Follow along down to the kitchen,' Tom said when they were in the house proper. There was a pleasant smell of furniture polish and, Clay thought, leather, a smell he associated with men living calm lives that did not necessarily include women. 'Second door on the right. Stay close. The hallway's wide, and there's nothing on the floor, but there are tables on both sides and it's as black as your hat. As I think you can see.'

'So to speak,' Clay said.

'Ha-ha.'

'Have you got flashlights?' Clay asked.

'Flashlights and a Coleman lantern that should be even better, but let's get in the kitchen first.'

They followed him down the hallway, Alice walking between the two men. Clay could hear her breathing rapidly, trying not to let the unfamiliar surroundings freak her out, but of course it was hard. Hell, it was hard for him. Disorienting. It would have been better if there had been even a little light, but—

His knee bumped one of the tables Tom had mentioned, and something that sounded all too ready to break rattled like teeth. Clay steeled himself for the smash, and for Alice's scream. That she would scream was almost a given. Then whatever it was, a vase or some knickknack, decided to live a little longer and settled back into place. Still, it seemed like a very long walk before Tom said, 'Here, okay? Hard right.'

The kitchen was nearly as black as the hall, and Clay had just a moment to think of all the things he was missing and Tom must be missing more: a digital readout on the microwave oven, the hum of the fridge, maybe light from a neighboring house coming in through the window over the kitchen sink and making highlights on the faucet.

'Here's the table,' Tom said. 'Alice, I'm going to take your hand. Here's a chair, okay? I'm sorry if I sound like we're playing blindman's bluff.'

'It's all r—,' she began, then gave a little scream that made Clay jump. His hand was on the haft of his knife (now he thought of it as his) before he even realized he'd reached for it.

'What?' Tom asked sharply. 'What?'

'Nothing,' she said. 'Just. . . nothing. The cat. His tail. . . on my leg.'

'Oh. I'm sorry.'

'It's all right. Stupid,' she added with self-contempt that made Clay wince in the dark.

'No,' he said. 'Let up on yourself, Alice. It's been a tough day at the office.'

'Tough day at the office!' Alice repeated, and laughed in a way Clay didn't care for. It reminded him of her voice when she'd called Tom's house beautiful. He thought, That's going to get away from her, and then what do I do? In the movies the hysterical girl gets a slap across the chops and it always brings her around, but in the movies you can see where she is.

He didn't have to slap her, shake her, or hold her, which was what he probably would have tried first. She heard what was in her own voice, maybe, got hold of it, and bulldogged it down: first to a choked gargle, then to a gasp, then to quiet.

'Sit,' Tom said. 'You have to be tired. You too, Clay. I'll get us some light.'

Clay felt for a chair and sat down to a table he could hardly see, although his eyes had to be fully adjusted to the dark by now. There was a whisper of something against his pants leg, there and gone. A low miaow. Rafe.