Anybody seen em?… No?… Think they run off together?.
Eloped, maybe?… Naw, not at their age, but they might be shacked up… I dunno if Ralphie’s got any live rounds left in the old ammo dump, but she’s always looked like a hot ticket to me…
Yeah, walks like she knows what to do with it, don’t she?
The image of his oversized rustbucket waiting patiently behind one of the ivy-covered units of the Derry Cabins while the springs boinged and sproinged salaciously inside came to Ralph, and he grinned. He couldn’t help it. A moment later the alarming idea that he might be broadcasting his thoughts on his aura came to him, and he slammed the door on the picture at once. Yet wasn’t Lois looking at him with a certain amused speculation?
Ralph turned his attention hastily back to Clotho.
[Atropos serves the Random. Not all deaths of the sort Short-Timers call “senseless” and “unnecessary” and “tragic” are his work, but most are. When a dozen old men and women die in a fire at a retirement hotel, the chances are good that Atropos has been there, taking souvenirs and cutting cords. When an infant dies in his crib for no apparent reason, the cause, more often than not, is Atropos and his rusty scalpel. When a dog-yes, even a dog, for the destinies of almost all living things in the Short-Time world fall among either the Random or the Purpose-I’s run over in the road because the driver of the car that hit him picked the wrong moment to glance at him watch-” Lois: [“Is that what happened to Rosalie?”] Clotho: [Atropos is what happened to Rosalie. Ralph’s friend Joe Wyzer was only what we call “fulfilling circumstance.”] is young man Lachesis: And Atropos is also what happened to lollrer, Cl, late Mr. McGovern.] Lois looked the way Ralph felt: dismayed but not really surprised. it was now late afternoon, perhaps as many as eighteen Short-Time hours had passed since they had last seen Bill, and Ralph had known the man’s time was extremely short even last night, Lois, who had inadvertently put her hand inside him, probably knew it even better.
Ralph: [“When did it happen? How long after we saw him?”] Lachesis: [Not long. While he was leaving the hospital. I’m sorry for your loss, and for giving you the news in such clumsy fashion.
We speak to Short-Timers so infrequently that we forget how, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Ralph and Lois.] Lois told him it was all right, that she quite understood, but tears were trickling down her cheeks, and Ralph felt them burning in his own eyes. The idea that Bill could be gone-that the little shithead in the dirty smock had gotten him-was hard to grasp. Was he to believe McGovern would never hoist that satiric, bristly eyebrow of his again? Never bitch about how cruddy it was to get old again-?
Impossible, He turned suddenly to Clotho.
[“Show us.”] Clotho, surprised, almost dithering: [I… I don’t think-] Ralph: [“Seeing is believing to us Short-Time schmoes. Didn’t you guys ever hear that one?”] Lois spoke up unexpectedly.
[“Yes-show us. But only enough so we can know it and accept it.
Try not to make us feel any worse than we already do.”] Clotho and Lachesis looked at each other, then seemed to shrug without actually moving their narrow shoulders. Lachesis flicked the first two fingers of his right hand upward, creating a blue-green peacock’s fan of light.
In it Ralph saw a small, eerily perfect representation of the I.C.U. corridor. A nurse pushing a pharmacy cart came into this arc and crossed it. At the far side of the viewing area, she actually seemed to curve for a moment before passing out of view.
Lois, delighted in spite of the circumstances: [“It’s like watching a movie in a soapbubble!” Now McGovern and Mr. Plum stepped out of Bob Polhurst’s room. McGovern had put on. an old Derry High letter sweater and his friend was zipping up a jacket; they were clearly giving up the deathwatch for another night. McGovern was walking slowly, lagging behind Mr. Plum. Ralph could see that his downstairs neighbor and sometime friend didn’t look good at all.
He felt Lois’s hand slip onto his upper arm and grip hard. He put his hand over hers.
Halfway to the elevator, McGovern stopped, braced himself against the wall with one hand, and lowered his head. He looked like a totally blown runner at the end of a marathon. For a moment Mr. Plum went on walking. Ralph could see his mouth moving and thought, He doesn’t know he’s talking to thin air-not yet, at least.
Suddenly Ralph didn’t want to see any more.
Inside the blue-green arc, McGovern put one hand to his chest.
The other went to his throat and began to rub, as if he were checking for wattles. Ralph couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought his downstairs neighbor’s eyes looked frightened. He remembered the grimace of hate on Doc #3’s face when he realized a Short-Timer had presumed to step into his business with one of the local strays. What had he said?
[I’ll fuck you over, Shorts. I’ll fuck you over big-time. And I’ll fuck your friends over. Do you get me?] A terrible idea, almost a certainty, dawned in Ralph’s mind as he watched Bill McGovern crumple slowly to the floor.
Lois: [“Make it go away-please make it go away!” She buried her face against Ralph’s shoulder. Clotho and Lachesis exchanged uneasy looks, and Ralph realized he had already begun to revise his mental picture of them as omniscient and all-poNN,erfLil.
They might be supernatural creatures, but Dr. Joyce Brothers then, were not. He had an idea they weren’t much shakes at predicting the future, either; fellows with really efficient crystal balls probably wouldn’t have a look like that in their entire repertoire. they’re feeling their way along, just like the rest of us, Ralph thought, and he felt a certain reluctant sympathy for Mr. C. and Mr. L.
The blue-green arc of light floating in front of Lachesis-and the images trapped inside it-suddenly disappeared, Clotho, sounding defensive: [Please remember that it was your choice to see, Ralph and Lois. We did not show you that milli gli.] Ralph barely heard this.
His terrible idea was still developing, like a photograph one does not wish to see but cannot turn away from.
He was thinking of Bill’s hat… Rosalie’s faded blue bandanna. and Lois’s missing diamond earrings.
[I’ll fuck your friends over, Shorts-do you get me? I hope so.
I most certainly do.] He looked from Clotho to Lachesis, his sympathy for them disappearing. What replaced it was a dull pulse of anger.
Lachesis had said there was no such thing as accidental death, and that included McGovern’s. Ralph had no doubt that Atropos had taken McGovern when he had for one simple reason: he’d wanted to hurt Ralph, to punish Ralph for messing into… what had Dorrance called it.Long-time business.
Old Dor had suggested he not do that-a good policy, no doubt, but he, Ralph, had really had no choice… because these two bald half-pints had messed in with him. They had, in a very real sense, gotten Bill McGovern killed.
Clotho and Lachesis saw his anger and took a step backward although they seemed to do it without actually moving their feet), their faces becoming more uneasy than ever.
[“You two are the reason Bill McGovern’s dead. That’s the truth of it, isn’t it?”] Clotho: [Please… if you’ll just let us finish explaiming-I Lois was staring at Ralph, worried and scared.
[“Ralph? What’s wrong? Why are you angry?”] [“Don’t you get it?
This little setup of theirs cost Bill McGovern his life. We’re here because Atropos has either done something these guys don’t like or is getting ready to-“] Lachesis: [You’re jumping to conclusions, Ralph-” [“-but there’s one very basic problem: he knows we see him!