Following such remarks, Ralph would always offer-and always without rancor-to pull over and let her drive. Such offers Carol had always declined. Her belief was that, on short hops, at least, it was the husband’s job to drive and the wife’s to offer constructive criticism.
He kept waiting for Lois to comment on either his speed or his sloppy driving habits (he didn’t think he would be able to remember his blinkers with any consistency these days even if someone put a gun to his head), but she said nothing-only sat where Carolyn had sat on five thousand rides or more, holding her purse on her lap exactly as Carolyn had always held hers. Wedges of light-store neon, traffic signals, streetlights-ran like rainbows across Lois’s cheeks and brows. Her dark eyes were distant and thoughtful. She had cried after Rosalie died, cried hard, and made Ralph pull down the shade again.
Ralph almost hadn’t done that. His first impulse had been to bolt out into the street before Joe Wyzer could get away. To tell Joe he had to be very careful. To tell him that when he emptied his pants pockets tonight, he was going to be missing a cheap comb, no big deal, people were always losing combs, except this time it was a big deal, and next time it might be Rite Aid pharmacist Joe Wyzer lying at the end of the skid. Listen to me, Joe, and listen closely. You have to be very careful, because there’s all sorts of news from the HyperReality Zone, and in your case all of it comes inside black borders.
There were problems with that, however. The biggest was that Joe Wyzer, sympathetic as he had been on the day he had gotten Ralph an appointment with the acupuncturist, would think Ralph was crazy.
Besides, how did one defend oneself against a creature one couldn’t even see?
So he had pulled the shade… but before he did, he took one last hard look at the man who had told him he used to be Joe Wyze but was now older and Wyzer. The auras were still there, and he could see Wyzer’s balloon-string, a bright orange-yellow, rising intact from the top of his head. So he was still all right.
For now, at least.
Ralph had led Lois into the kitchen and poured her another cup of coffee-black, with lots of sugar.
“He killed her, didn’t he?” she asked as she raised the cup to her lips with both hands. “The little beast killed her.”
“Yes, But I don’t think he did it tonight. I think he really did it this morning.”
“Why? Why.”
“Because he could,” Ralph said grimly. “I think that’s the only reason he needs. just because he could.”
Lois had given him a long, appraising look, and an expression of relief had slowly crept into her eyes. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? I should have known it the minute I saw you this evening. I would have known, if I hadn’t had so many other things rolling around in what passes for my mind.”
“Figured it out? I’m miles from that, but I have had some ideas.
Lois, do you feel up to a trip to Derry Home with me?”
“I suppose so. Do you want to see Bill?”
“I’m not sure exactly who I want to see. It might be Bill, but it might be Bill’s friend, Bob Polhurst. Maybe even jimmy Vandermeer-do you know him?”
“Jimmy V.? Of course I know him! I knew his wife even better.
In fact, she used to play poker with us until she died. It was a heart attack, and so sudden-” She broke off suddenly, looking at Ralph with her dark Spanish eyes. “Jimmy’s in the hospital? Oh God, it’s the cancer, isn’t it? The cancer came back.”
“Yes. He’s in the room right next to Bill’s friend.” Ralph told her about the conversation he’d had with Faye that morning and the note he’d found on the picnic table that afternoon. He pointed out the odd conjunction of rooms and residents-Polhurst, jimmy V Carolyn-and asked Lois if she thought it was just a coincidence.
“No. I’m sure it isn’t.” She had glanced at the clock. “Come on-regular visiting hours over there finish at nine-thirty, I think.
If we’re going to get there before then, we’d better turn it on Now, as he turned onto Hospital Drive (Forgot your damned blinker again, sweetheart, Carolyn commented), he glanced at LoisLois sitting there with her hands clasped on her purse and her aura invisible for the time being-and asked if she was all right.
She nodded. “Yes. Not great, but okay. Don’t worry about me.”
But I do worry, Lois, Ralph thought. A lot. And by the way, did you see Doc #3 take the comb out of Joe Wyzer’s pocket?
That was a stupid question. Of course she’d seen. The bald midaet had wanted her to see. Had wanted both of them to see. The real question was how much significance she had attached to it.
How much do you really know, Lois? How many connections have you made? I have to wonder, because they’re not really that hard to see.
I wonder… but I’m afraid to ask.
There was a low brick building about a quarter of a mile farther down the feeder road-WomanCare. A number of spotlights (new additions, he was quite sure) threw fans of illumination across its lawn, and Ralph could see two men walking back and forth at the end of grotesquely elongated shadows… rent-a-cops, he supposed.
Another new wrinkle; another straw flying in an evil wind.
He turned left (this time remembering the blinker, at least) and eased the Olds carefully up the chute which led into the multi-level hospital parking garage. At the top, an orange barrier-arm blocked the way. PLEASE STOP amp; TAKE TICKET, read the sign next to it. Ralph could recall a time when there used to be actual people in places like this, rendering them a little less eerie. Those were the dais, my friend, we thought they’d never end, he thought as he unrolled his window and took a ticket from the automated dispenser.
“Ralph?”
“Hmmm?” He was concentrating on avoiding the back bumpers of the cars slant-parked on both sides of the ascending aisles. He knew that the aisles were much too wide for the bumpers of those other cars to be an actual impediment to his progress-intellectually he knew it-but what his guts knew was something else. How Carolyn would bitch and moan about the way I’m driving, he thought with a certain distracted fondness.
“Do you know what we’re doing here, or are we just winging it?”
“Just another minute-let me get this damned thing parked.”
He passed several slots big enough for the Olds on the first level, but none with enough buffer-zone to make him feel comfortable.
On the third level he found three spaces side by side (together they were big enough to hold a Sherman tank comfortably) and babied the Olds into the one in the middle. He killed the motor and turned to face Lois. Other engines idled above and below them, their locations impossible to pinpoint because of the echo. Orange lightthat persistent, penetrating tone-glow now common to all such facilities as this, it seemed-lay upon their skins like thin toxic paint.
Lois looked back at him steadily. He could see traces of the tears she had cried for Rosalie in her puffy, swollen lids, but the eyes themselves were calm and sure. He was struck by how much she had changed just since that morning, when he had found her sitting slump-shouldered on a park bench and weeping. Lois, he thought, if your son and daughter-in-law could see you tonight, I think they might run away screaming at the top of their lungs. Not because you look scary, but because the woman they came to bulldoze into moving to Rivervie
Estates is gone.
“Well?” she asked with just a hint of a smile. “Are you going to talk to me or just look at me?”
Ralph, ordinarily a cautious sort of man, recklessly said the first thing to come into his head. “What I’d like to do, I think, is eat you like ice cream.”
Her smile deepened enough to make dimples at the corners of her mouth. “Maybe later we’ll see how much of an appetite for ice cream you really have, Ralph. For now, just tell me why you brought me here.