Marrity's field of vision shifted from her to the lawn, so she said, "Are you visiting somebody? "
Again she saw herself in his vision. "Yes, my daughter's having her throat stitched up. Uh — tracheotomy." He paused, and then his left hand was holding out his wallet, tilted toward her. "Daphne," he said. "She's twelve."
Apparently he was showing Charlotte a photograph of his daughter. She took off her sunglasses and lowered her eyes until she seemed to be staring at the wallet. "Very pretty girl," Charlotte said.
"Yes." Marrity glanced at the picture himself before putting the wallet away.
She looks like I used to, Charlotte thought, and then thrust the thought away.
After a pause in which he might have smiled, Marrity went on, "You too? I mean, not a daughter with a tracheotomy—"
"A neighbor of mine. They won't let me see her yet, but — 'We also serve who only stand and wait.'"
"'When I consider how my light is spent,'" Marrity said, quoting the beginning of the poem, " 'ere half my days in this dark world and wide—"
This one she hadn't been prompted with on the drive over here; it was Milton's sonnet "On His Blindness," and years ago she had got someone to read it onto a tape and had memorized it. "'And that one Talent which is death to hide, lodged with me useless,'" she said, keeping the usual bitterness out of her voice. "You don't meet a lot of Milton fans in San Bernardino."
"My excuse is that I teach literature at Redlands."
"Ah. I was a career English major. I quote poetry the way Christians quote the Bible." Time for one of the Housman bits she'd been primed with: "'And starry darkness paces the land from sea to sea, and blots the foolish faces of my poor friends and me.'" That was adequately placed, she thought, and Rascasse said it was underlined in Marrity's copy.
"Housman!" she heard him exclaim. "My favorite! My name's Frank Marrity. And you are…?"
"Libra Nosamalo Morrison." She held out her right hand. "My parents were Catholic, with an odd sense of humor."
"Libera nos a malo, deliver us from evil." She watched him reach out and take her hand. "Well, it's unforgettable."
She smiled, admiring her white teeth.
"I've got to say I'll be ready for a drink," she said, "not too long after the sun goes down." She leaned back against the planter and closed her eyelids to check the eyeshadow through Marrity's gaze. It looked fine, and she raised her eyelids and swiveled the plastic eyes until Marrity saw the carbon pupils seeming to look straight at him. "A scotch on the rocks — Laphroaig, ideally."
He let go of her hand, and his voice was cautious when he said, "Yes, that's good scotch. I'd love to join you, but I can't."
Charlotte wished someone would walk by so that she could see Marrity's face — were his eyebrows up in surprise? lowered in a suspicious frown? — for she was suddenly sure that she had pushed it too far. You were doing fine without the Laphroaig, she told herself furiously; just because Rascasse's crew found several bottles of it in Marrity's cupboard didn't mean you had to go and mention it right away. What must Rascasse be thinking, listening to the transmission of this conversation?
She found that she was reflexively thinking of the song "Bye Bye Blackbird" —no one here can love or understand me—and she recalled that it had been her old eavesdropper-warning signal in the missile — silo days of her childhood. But of course Marrity doesn't even know that the song was a code, she thought; and why should I want to warn Marrity, anyway?
She put her sunglasses back on.
"Another time?" she asked, watching her face to be sure she kept the expression cheerful. "I'd trust my phone number to anybody who knows Milton and Housman."
"Yes, thanks. I just can't really think about anything but my daughter right now."
"Of course." By touch she found a card in her purse, and held it out to him. She read it through his eyes: Libra Nosamalo Morrison, Veterinary Medicine, (909) JKL-HYDE.
"A Stevenson fan too," she heard him say.
The hastily printed card seemed idiotically clumsy now. "Well," she stammered, "like Heckyll and Jeckyll — those crows, in the cartoons — and hide—"
"And I bet you specialize in cats." The card disappeared from his view, and she hoped he had put it in his pocket and not just dropped it. "I'd better go back and see if she's out of surgery yet," he said. "It's been nice meeting you, uh, Libra!"
"You too, Frank! Give me a call!"
His view was of the opening doors now, and the reception desk and gift-shop counter in the lobby; she turned away, so that when he looked back at her he wouldn't hesitate to stare; but he looked only straight ahead, at the corridor leading to the elevators.
When he had rounded the corner and pushed one of the elevator buttons, she raised her right hand, wide open, and heard a car accelerating toward the curb where she stood.
"I'm a viewer, not a spy," she muttered into the microphone at her throat.
The driver of the car that had now stopped in front of her craned his neck to peer into the rearview mirror, and she saw it was Rascasse himself.
She groped till she felt the door, then found the handle and opened it.
"You knew his birth date too," said Rascasse. "Why did you not tell him you had the same birthday? You could have shouted it after him, as he was leaving." His French accent was more pronounced when he was angry, and higher in pitch. Charlotte could imagine it was a woman speaking.
"So what do we do now," she asked dully as she pulled the door closed.
"If this… debacle just now was enough to let him know somebody's trying to approach him covertly, probably we will have to kill him, and then get somebody less clumsy to approach Moira and Bennett Bradley, and the daughter."
She looks like I used to, thought Charlotte again.
She settled back in the seat and fastened the shoulder strap. It was good meeting you, Frank, she thought as Rascasse steered the car out of the hospital driveway and clicked the turn-signal lever for a right turn onto Waterman. You seem like a good man, a widower doing his best with a young daughter — you even saved her life today! — and you're the first guy I've met who's known what the Milton line was from. But I'm afraid I've killed you by mentioning your favorite scotch.
And I won't try to stop it. I'm not a good person, you see. I used to be, and soon — if Rascasse succeeds in this and keeps his promises — I'll get another chance to be one, starting over again.
I'll get a better life then; or she will, anyway — the girl I used to be, my "little daughter," who looks so much like your Daphne. I have done nothing but in care of thee. And she won't know about any of this terrible stuff I do to get it for her. And she won't be blind. She won't be blind.
Oren Lepidopt stood on the carpet in Frank Marrity's now dark living room, looking around at the shapes that were the table and the television and the rows of shelved books whose titles he couldn't read now. He had studied them when there had still been light, though — lots of Stevenson and the Brontes and Trollope in this room, while poetry and drama and encyclopedias lined the shelves that hung above head height up the hall, and history and philosophy and modern novels filled the shelves in the uphill living room. Poetry, history, and philosophy were in chronological order, novels alphabetical.
The girl's room had been painted today — the bed had been moved to the center of the linoleum floor, and a little desk and a couple of bookcases had been shoved up against it, with a rolled-up rug and a couple of wicker baskets stacked right on the bed, everything covered by a brown paper drop cloth. When he had peered under it, Lepidopt had seen The Wind in the Willows and Watership Down among the books in one of the bookcases; the baskets contained recent rock tapes and albums, with a lot of Queen. A black shellac jewelry box with blue-velvet-covered dividers and slits for rings held two gold bracelets, some earrings, and a wedding ring — presumably her mother's.