dollar bills in it, and bright loose change visible at the bottom.
That was as good a measure of time as he had, so he picked up the cup and counted the money.
Four dollars and sixty cents, in bills and change. And something else. He felt and traced the familiar contours with his fingers.
An empty shell casing. As sure as he was sitting here.
He glanced down and saw the brass color in his hand.
Then he looked more closely. The object wasn’t brass at all. It was copper. A copper penny. His fingers, his mind, had played a trick on him again. It was happening more often.
The object even felt different now. It felt exactly like a coin. Why hadn’t it felt like a coin before?
Bobby threw the penny away in despair, hearing it nick off the sidewalk. A woman striding past glanced down at him in alarm and picked up her pace, unconsciously clutching her purse closer to her side.
Bobby looked past her, across the street, and there was the raggedy man who walked with too much purpose. The homeless man who didn’t belong even in that anguished and desperate society. The man was moving too fast, with his gaze fixed straight ahead-not glancing around, not wary.
This time Bobby wouldn’t let himself be taken in. He couldn’t deny the evidence that he hadn’t been thinking straight lately. He’d been losing yesterdays, imagining todays. This wouldn’t be like the shell casing that turned out to be a bullet. No, a penny. A coin that felt like something shaped completely unlike a coin.
As he watched, the raggedy man went down the steps of a subway stop and disappeared.
He was there; then he was gone.
That was when Bobby was sure the man wasn’t real, because the subway stop was closed.
37
“C’mon, Dante! The girls are waiting!”
Orvey was eager to leave. The ranch was holding what had become its annual mixer, an outdoor dance in the cool December Arizona evening. The girls from across the arroyo would be there, along with a five-piece band trucked in from Tucson. Strong had determined that all his charges on the ranch would learn to dance at least well enough to negotiate a crowded floor. This dance floor wouldn’t be crowded, but there’d be few standing and watching instead of struggling to keep time with the amateur band’s persistent tempo.
Dante didn’t bother answering Orvey. He finished brushing his teeth, then rinsed out his mouth with Listerene to ensure good breath. Wiping his lips with a towel, he smiled at himself in the mirror. A tanned, handsome youth smiled back at him. In fact, dressed as he was in a blazer and tie, his black wig perfectly adjusted to blend with his sideburns, Dante was incredibly handsome. Possibly knowing the pain caused in his young life by circumstances, then by hideous scarring, the surgeons had gone too far, made him somehow too attractive. His were the kind of features that graced movie posters and romantic fantasies of foolish girls.
Verna wasn’t foolish and didn’t think Dante was too attractive. She’d made it clear she’d be waiting for him tonight and expected the first-and the last-dance. This was the closest thing to a date the protective and puritanical Strong would allow.
The other boys were jealous but didn’t act on it. Dante, with his accomplishments and new handsomeness, had reached a place in their estimation where he was untouchable. And if anyone did cause pain or even inconvenience for Dante, they would have to deal with Adam Strong.
Strong made no secret of his favoritism when it came to Dante. He even from time to time slipped and referred to him as his son. He figured Dante, unlike Strong himself, had earned the hard way everything he had.
Dante’s long and often agonizing series of cosmetic surgeries to restore his burned features had been at the Strong Foundation’s expense. The result was the handsome reflection in the mirror. The effect could be ruined only if he removed his wig. Because of his burns, hair grew only over half his skull. Unless he kept his head cleanly shaved, the odd pattern of hair growth was obvious and, along with the unusual smooth texture of his flesh, gave the definite impression that he hadn’t been born with his good looks. Rather than shave his head almost daily, Dante often wore a wig.
Despite the nearly perfect image in the mirror, he sometimes looked more closely and could see beneath the surface of his new flesh and form. If he failed to look away, the old Dante emerged through the thin surface flesh and grinned hideously at him, and sometimes wept.
That was happening less often lately, but still it was happening.
Not tonight, though.
“C’mon, Dante!”
Orvey again.
Dante switched off the bathroom light and hurried through the barracks and outside to join the other boys.
There were half a dozen of them, lounging around in sloppily knotted ties, and blazers that didn’t quite fit, all waiting for Dante. They seemed oblivious of the moths circling and darting around them in the pool of light cast by the barracks’ outside fixture. Hanley, a skinny six-footer from South Carolina, was smoking a cigarette, keeping it cupped in his hand so the ember wouldn’t be visible, fooling no one.
“You busy jerkin’ off or somethin’?” Orvey asked jokingly. The others laughed. “We’re already late.”
“What’s it matter?” Hanley asked. “Who else they gonna dance with?”
“You guys don’t wanna go, I’ll dance with all of ’em,” someone said.
Dante didn’t bother joining the banter.
With his friends, his admirers, he strolled through the cooling evening toward the distant music, voices, and softly hued light from colored paper lanterns, toward Verna and a dream almost real.
In the years that followed, nothing could stop Dante. Perhaps it was the successful surgery-that certainly had to help. But he grew in confidence and ability every year. He graduated from Nailsville High School with honors, then left the ranch to attend Arizona State University. Weekends he drove home from college in the old Ford pickup Strong had given him and stayed at the ranch.
Maintaining a 4. 0 grade point average was no problem, and Dante dated as often as he chose. But it was still Verna he thought of and saw most often. She planned on remaining at the ranch until she began college next year, when she thought she’d be psychologically strong enough to go out on her own, attending the same school as Dante. He’d already made up his mind that if she weren’t accepted, he’d go to school elsewhere, so they could be together.
It was a rainy weeknight, and Dante was stretched out on his bunk in his dorm room, reading
As soon as he heard the tone of Strong’s voice, Dante sat up and the book hit the floor. He suspected something was wrong, but he would never have guessed what. He was afraid to guess.
“Verna has left the ranch, Dante.”
Dante lay back, stunned. “Left? Why?”
“She went to live with relatives.”
“She doesn’t have any living relatives.”
“Apparently she does.”
“Where?” Dante’s questions were automatic; he was still trying to digest this.
“She’d rather keep it a secret.”
