At this hour of the morning, Ralph had his pick of the ten-minute spaces across from the building. He parked, got out, then came around to open Lois’s door, as he had been trained.
“How do you want to handle this?” she asked as he took her hand and helped er out.
“We’ll probably have to be a little cute, but let’s not get carried away. Right?”
“Right.” She ran a nervous, patting hand down the front of her coat as they crossed, then flashed a megawatt smile at the security guard. “Good morning, officer.”
“Morning.” He glanced at his watch. “I don’t think there’s anyone in there just yet but the receptionist and the cleaning woman.”
“The receptionist is who we want to see,” Lois said cheerfully.
It was news to Ralph. “Barbae Richards. Her aunt Simone has a message for her to pass along. Very important. just say it’s Lois Chasse.”
The security guard thought this over, then nodded toward the door.
“That won’t be necessary. You go on right ahead, ma’am.”
Lois said, smiling more brilliantly than ever, “We won’t be two shakes, will we, Norton?”
“Shake and a half, more like it,” Ralph agreed. As they approached the building and left the security man behind, he leaned toward her and murmured: “Norton? Good God, Lois, Norton?”
“It was the first name that came into my head,” she replied. “I guess I was thinking of The Honeymooners-Ralph and Norton, remember?”
“Yes,” he said. “One of these days, Alice… pow! Right to da moon!
Two of the three doors were locked, but the one on the far left opened and they went in. Ralph squeezed Lois’s hand and felt her answering squeeze. He sensed a strong focusing of his concentration at the same moment, a narrowing and brightening of will and awareness.
All around him the eye of the world seemed to first blink and then open wide. All around them both.
The reception area was almost ostentatiously plain. The posters on the walls were mostly the sort foreign tourist agencies send out for the price of postage. The only exception was to the right of the receptionist’s desk: a large black-and-white photo of a young woman in a maternity smock. She was sitting on a barstool with a martini glass in one hand. WHEN YOU’re PREGNANT, YOU NEVER DRINK ALONE, the copy beneath the photo read. There was no indication that in a room or rooms behind this pleasant, unremarkable business space, abortions were done on demand.
Well, Ralph thought, what did you expect? An advertisement? A poster of aborted fetuses in a galvanized garbage pail between the one showing the Isle of Capriand the one of the Italian Alps? Get real, Ralph.
To their left, a heavyset woman in her late forties or early fifties was washing the top of a glass coffee-table; there was a little cart filled with various cleaning implements parked beside her. She was buried in a dark blue aura speckled with unhealthy-looking black dots which swarmed like queer insects over the places where her heart and lungs were, and she was looking at the newcomers with undisguised suspicion.
Straight ahead, another woman was watching them carefully, although without the janitor’s suspicion. Ralph recognized her from the TV news report on the day of the doll-throwing incident. Simone Castonguay’s niece was dark-haired, about thirty-five, and close to gorgeous even at this hour of the morning. She sat behind a severe gray metal desk that perfectly complemented her looks and within a forest-green aura which looked much healthier than the cleaning woman’s. A cut-glass vase filled with fall flowers stood on one corner of her desk.
She smiled tentatively at them, showing no immediate recognition of Lois, then wiggled the tip of one finger at the clock on the wall.
“We don’t open until eight,” she said, “and I don’t think we could help you today in any case. The doctors are all off-I mean, Dr. Hamilton is technically covering, but I’m not even sure I could get to her. There’s a lot going on-this is a big day for us,”
“I know,” Lois said, and gave Ralph’s hand another squeeze before letting it go. He heard her voice in his mind for a moment, very faint-like a bad overseas telephone conversation-but audible: [“Stay where you are, Ralph. She’s got-“] Lois sent him a picture which was even fainter than the thought, and gone almost as soon as Ralph glimpsed it. This sort of communication was a lot easier on the upper levels, but what he got was enough. The hand with which Barbara Richards had pointed at the clock was now resting easily on top of the desk, but the other was underneath it, where a small white button was mounted on one side of the kneehole. If either of them showed the slightest sign of odd behavior, she would push the button, summoning first their friend with the clipboard who was posted outside, and then most of the private security cops in Derry.
And I’m the one she’s watchting most carefully, because I’m the man, Ralph thought.
As Lois approached the reception desk, Ralph had an unsettling thought: given the current atmosphere in Derry, that sort of sexdiscrimination-unconscious but very real-could get this pretty black-haired woman hurt… maybe even killed. He remembered Leydecker telling him that one of Ed’s small cadre of co-crazies was a woman. Pasty complexion, he’d said, lots Of acne, glasses so thick they make her eyes look like poached eggs. Sandra something, her name was. And if Sandra Something had approached His. Richards’s desk as Lois was approaching it now, first opening her purse and then reaching into it, would the woman dressed in the forest-green aura have pushed the hidden alarm button?
“You probably don’t remember me, Barbara,” Lois was saying, “because I haven’t seen you much since you were in college, when you were going with the Sparkmeyer boy-”
“Oh my God, Lennie Sparkmeyer, I haven’t thought of him in years,” Barbara Richards said, and gave an embarrassed little laugh.
“But I remember you. Lois Delancey. Aunt Simone’s poker-buddy.
Do you guys still play?”
“It’s Chasse, not Delancey, and we still do.” Lois sounded delighted that Barbara had remembered her, and Ralph hoped she wouldn’t lose track of what they were supposed to be doing here.
He needn’t have worried. “Anyway, Simone sent me with a message for Gretchen Tillbury.” She brought a piece of paper out of her purse.
“I wonder if you could give it to her?”
“I doubt very much if I’ll even talk to Gretchen on the phone today,” Richards said. “She’s as busy as the rest of us. Busier.”
“I’ll bet.” Lois tinkled an amazingly genuine little laugh. “I guess there’s no real hurry about this, though. Gretchen has got a niece who’s been granted a full scholarship at the University of New Hampshire. Have you ever noticed how much harder people try to get in touch when it’s bad news they have to pass on? Strange, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Pichards said, reaching for the folded slip of paper. “Anyway, I’ll be happy to put this in Gretchen’s-” Lois seized her wrist, and a flash of gray light-so bright Ralph had to squint his eyes against it to keep from being dazzled-leaped up the woman’s arm, shoulder, and neck. It spun around her head in a brief halo, then disappeared.
No, it didn’t, Ralph thought. It didn’t disappear, it sank in.
“What was that?” the cleaning woman asked suspiciously. “What was that bang?”
“A car backfired,” Ralph said. “That’s all.”
“Huh,” she said. “Goshdarn men think they know everything. Did you hear that, Barbie?”
“Yes,” Richards said. She sounded entirely normal to Ralph, and he knew that the cleaning woman would not be able to see the pearl gray mist which had now filled her eyes. “I think he’s right, but would you check with Peter outside? We can’t be too careful.”