'Good work.'
Willie held up her fingers in a V. The time was 7: 35.
At 8: 01, while Chris was in the study talking to her agent on the phone, Sharon walked through the door with several packages, and then flopped in a chair and waited.
'Where've you been?' asked Chris when she'd finished.
'Oh, didn't he tell you?'
'Oh, didn't who tell me?'
'Burke. Isn't he here? Where is he?'
'He was here?'
'You mean he wasn't when you got home?'
'Listen, start all over,' said Chris.
'Oh, that nut,' Sharon chided with a headshake. 'I couldn't get the druggist to deliver, so when Burke came around, I thought, fine, he can stay here with -Regan while I go get the Thorazine.' She shrugged. 'I should have known.'
'Yeah, you should've. And so what did you buy?'
'Well, since I thought I had the time, I went and bought a rubber drawsheet for her bed.' She displayed it.
'Did you eat?'
'No, I thought I'd fix a sandwich. Would you like one?'
'Good idea. Let's go and eat.'
'What happened with the tests?' Sharon asked as they walked slowly to the kitchen.
'Not a thing. All negative. I'm going to have to get her a shrink,' Chris answered dully.
After sandwiches and coffee, Sharon showed Chris how to give an injection.
'The two main things,' she explained, 'are to make sure that there aren't any air bubbles, and then you make sure that you haven't hit a vein. See, you aspirate a little, like this'---she was demonstrating---'and see if there's blood in the syringe.'
For a time, Chris practiced the procedure on a grapefruit, and seemed to grow proficient. Then at 9: 28, the front doorbell rang. Willie answered. It was Karl. As he passed through the kitchen, en route to his room, he nodded a good evening and remarked he'd forgotten to take his key.
'I can't believe it,' Chris said to Sharon. 'That's the first time he's ever admitted a mistake.'
They passed the evening watching television in the study.
At 11: 46, Chris answered the phone. The young director of the second unit, He sounded grave.
'Have you heard the news yet, Chris?'
'No, what?'
'Well, it's bad.'
'What is it?' she asked.
'Burke's dead.'
He'd been drank. He had stumbled. He had fallen down the steep flight of steps beside the house, fallen far to the bottom, where a passing pedestrian on M Street watched as he tumbled into night without end. A broken neck. This bloody, crumpled scene, his last.
As the telephone fell from Chris's fingers, she was silently weeping, standing unsteadily. Sharon ran and caught her, supported her, hung up the phone and led her to the sofa.
'Burke's dead,' Chris sobbed.
'Oh, my God!' gasped Sharon. 'What happened?'
But Chris could not speak yet. She wept.
Then, later, they talked. For hours. They talked. Chris drank. Reminisced about Dennings. Now laughed. Now cried. 'Ah, my God,' she kept sighing. 'Poor Burke... poor Burke...'
Her dream of death kept coming back to her.
At a little past five in the morning, Chris was standing moodily behind the bar, her elbows propped, head lowered, eyes sad. She was waiting for Sharon to return from the kitchen with a tray of ice.
She heard her coming.
'I still can't believe it,' Sharon was sighing as she entered the study.
Chris looked up and froze.
Gliding spiderlike, rapidly, close behind Sharon, her body arched backward in a bow with her head almost touching her feet, was Regan, her tongue flicking quickly in and out of her mouth while she hissed sibilantly like a serpent.
'Sharon?' Chris said numbly, still staring at Regan.
