“I’m fine,” Ralph said, and forced his false smile even wider. He felt like a kid pulling a wad of Silly Putty, seeing how far he could stretch it before it thinned enough to tear. “And if you’re still cookin, I’m still eatin.”
Three-six-nine, bon, the goose drank wine.
Lois took a close look at him and then relaxed. “Good. That would be fun. I haven’t cooked for anyone but Simone and Minathey’re my girlfriends, you know-in a long time.” Then she laughed. “Except that isn’t what I mean, That isn’t why it would t)e, you know, fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I haven’t cooked for a man in a long time. I hope I haven’t forgotten how.”
“Well, there was the day Bill and I came in to watch the DeNx,s with you-we had macaroni and cheese. It was good, too.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “Reheated. Not the same.”
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line. The line broke.
Smiling wider than ever. Waiting for the rips to start. “I’M sure you haven’t forgotten how, Lois.”
“Mr. Chasse had a very hearty appetite, All sorts of hearty appetites, in fact. But then he started having his liver trouble, and…”
She sighed, then reached for Ralph’s arm and took it with a mixture of timidity and resolution he found completely endearing, “Now is the mind. I’m tired of snivelling and moaning about the past. I’ll leave that to Bill. Let’s go.”
He stood up, linked his arm through hers, and walked her down the hill and toward the lower entrance to the park. Lois beamed blindingly at the young mothers in the playground as she and Ralph passed them.
Ralph was glad for the distraction. He could tell himself to withhold judgement, he could remind himself over and over again that he didn’t know enough about what was happening to him and Lois to even kid himself that he could think logically about it, but he kept jumping at that conclusion anyway. The conclusion felt right to his heart, and he had already come a long way toward believing that, in the world of ose to identical.
I don’t know about the other two, but #3 is one crazy medic… and he takes souvenirs. Takes them the way some of the crazies In Vietnam took ears.
That Lois’s daughter-in-law had given in to an evil impulse, scooping the diamond earrings from the china dish and putting them in the pocket of her jeans, he had no doubt. But Janet Chasse no longer had them; even now she was no doubt reproaching herself bitterly for having lost them and wondering why she had ever taken them in the first place.
Ralph knew the shrimp with the scalpel had McGovern’s hat even if Lois had failed to recognize it, and they had both seen him take Rosalie’s bandanna. What Ralph had realized as he started to get up from the bench was that those splinters of light he had seen reflected from the bald creature’s earlobes almost certainly meant that Doc #3 had Lois’s earrings, as well.
The late Mr. Chasse’s rocking chair stood on faded linoleum by the door to the back porch. Lois led Ralph to it and admonished him to “stay out from underfoot. Ralph thought this was an assignment he could handle. Strong light, mid-afternoon light, fell across his lap as he sat and rocked. Ralph wasn’t sure how it had gotten so late so fast, but somehow it had. Maybe I fell asleep, he thought. Maybe I’m asleep right now, and dreaming all this. He watched as Lois took down a wok (definitely hobbit-sized) from an overhead cupboard.
Five minutes later, savory smells began to fill the kitchen.
“I told you I’d cook for you someday,” Lois said, adding vegetables from the fridge crisper and spices from one of the overhead cabinets. “That was the same day I gave you and Bill the leftover macaroni and cheese. Do you remember?”
“I believe I do,” Ralph said, smiling.
“There’s a jug of fresh cider in the milk-box on the front porchcider always keeps best outside. Would you get it? You can pour out, too. My good glasses are in the cupboard over the sink, the one I can’t reach without dragging over a chair. You’re tall enough to do without the chair, I judge. What are you, Ralph, about six-two?”
“Six-three. At least I was; I guess maybe I’ve lost an inch or two in the last ten years. Your spine settles, or something. And you don’t have to go putting on the dog just for me. Honest.”
She looked at him levelly, hands on hips, the spoon with which she had been stirring the contents of the wok jutting from one of them.
Her severity was offset by a trace of a smile. “I said my good glasses, Ralph Roberts, not my best glasses.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning, then added: “From the way that smells, I guess you still remember how to cook for a man.”
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” Lois replied, but Ralph thought she looked pleased as she turned back to the wok.
The food was good, and they didn’t talk about what had happened in the park as they applied themselves to it. Ralph’s appetite had become uncertain, out more often than in, since his insomnia had really begun to bite, but today he ate heartily and chased Lois’s spicy stir-fry with three glasses of apple cider (hoping uneasily as he finished the last one that the rest of the day’s activities wouldn’t take him too far from a toilet). When they had finished, Lois got up, went to the sink, and began to draw hot water for dishes. As she did, she resumed their earlier conversation as if it were a half-finished piece of knitting which had been temporarily laid aside for some other, more pressing, chore.
“What did you do to me?” she asked him. “What did you do to make the colors come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was as if I was on the edge of that world, and when you put your hands over my eyes, you pushed me into it.”
He nodded, remembering how she’d looked in the first few seconds after he’d removed his hands-as if she’d just taken off a pair of goggles which had been dipped in powdered sugar. “It was pure instinct. And you’re right, it is like a world. I keep thinking of it just that way, as the world of auras.”
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I mean, it’s scary, and when it first started to happen to me-back in late July or early August, this was-I was sure I was going crazy, but even then I liked it, too. I couldn’t help liking it.”
Ralph gazed at her, startled. Had he once upon a time thought of Lois as transparent? Gossipy? Unable to keep a secret?
No, I’m afraid it is a little more than that, old buddy.)’On thought she was shallow. You saw her pretty much through Bill’s eyes, as a matter of fact: as “Our Lois.” No less… but not much more.
“What?” she asked, a little uneasily. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’ve been seeing these auras since summer? That long?”
“Yes-brighter and brighter. Also more often. That’s why I finally went to see the tattletale. Did I really shoot that thing with my finger, Ralph? The more time goes by, the less I can believe that part of it.”
“You did. I did something like it myself shortly before I ran into you.”
He told her about his earlier confrontation with Doc #3, and about how he had banished the dwarf… temporarily, at least, He raised his hand to his shoulder and brought it swiftly down. “That’s all I did-like a kid pretending to be Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.
But it sent this incredible bolt of blue light at him, and he scurried in a hurry. Which was probably for the best, because I couldn’t have done it again. I don’t know how I did that, either.
Could you have shot your finger again?”
Lois giggled, turned toward him, and cocked her finger in his general direction. “Want to find out? Kapow! Kablam!”
“Don’t point dat ding at me, lady,” Ralph told her. He smiled as he said it, but wasn’t entirely sure he was joking.
Lois lowered her finger and squirted joy into the sink. As she began to stir the water around with one hand, puffing up the suds, she asked what Ralph thought of as the Big Questions: “Where did this power come from, Ralph? And what’s it for?”