"Must be pretty damn overpowering."
"You will see for yourself when we reach the Vanishing Point."
"You know, I think I’m starting to get a handle on this. It’s kind of like how a foul-up at a critical point affects a whole company. The ripple effect."
"You would be surprised how few differences there are, Frank, between existential philosophy and commerce."
"No kiddin'? I’m afraid my readings in philosophy don’t go any further than Andrew Carnegie and Lee Iacocca’s autobiography."
"That may be, but you have an instinctive grasp of how things connect in order to work together. That is philosophical knowledge at its most practical. Reality is not so very different."
"That so? You won’t mind if I throw out the philosophy and just look at this as a question of getting from point A to point B without getting killed?"
"Think of it however it pleases you."
"Hey, I may be crude, but I have shallow depths nobody’s plumbed yet."
"There you go, demeaning yourself again."
"Yeah. But only among friends."
11
When people have been married for a long time they develop the ability to sense their partner’s presence or absence, even in the midst of deep sleep. Few scientists will admit to the existence of this marital telepathy — unless they themselves are married.
Alicia awoke and rolled over, squinting sleepily in the dark. "Frank?" She rose halfway, supporting herself on one arm. "Frank, you in the john?" She kept her voice down even though the children were in the other room behind a closed door.
No reply came from the bathroom, nor the chairs nor anywhere else. Enough light seeped around the edges of the curtain for her to make out the dim silhouettes of bed and cheap motel furniture.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Frank was fond of nocturnal walks when he couldn’t sleep. Certainly he had more on his mind than the future of their vacation.
With a sigh she slipped into her robe and went to the front door. The parking lot was mostly empty, dominated by the silent shape of the motor home. Moonlight enabled her to see clear across the street, to shuttered gift shops and real estate offices. The motel office was dark.
No familiar figure bestrode the concrete walkway in front of the rooms. If he wanted a soda he would’ve gone out to the motor home, she reflected. She retreated long enough to slip into a pair of sneakers, knotted the belt of her robe, and started across the lot.
The door to the motor home stood ajar, a figure seated on the lowest step. "Frank?" A face turned up to her and at the same time she saw that the shape was of a man much bigger than her husband.
"Yatahey, Mrs. Sonderberg. Or perhaps I should say good morning. The sun will rejoin us soon."
"Hello, Burnfingers. Have you seen Frank?"
"He’s not with you?" Burnfingers tried to see past her.
She shook her head. "I thought he came out to talk or get something to drink." She looked back toward the motel, trying to remember where the vending machines were located. Even now he might be back in the room, wondering at the empty bed. Well, if he came looking for her this would be the first place he’d check. No point in worrying about it.
"You can’t sleep, either?"
She could just make out Burnfingers’s grin in the moonlight. "I never sleep. Waste of time."
"Oh, now really. Everybody sleeps."
"Not me. You know, if you spend eight hours out of every twenty-four asleep and you live to be eighty years old, you have wasted one third of your entire life."
"Well, I have to sleep." She wondered why she sounded so defensive. Burnfingers’s claim was patently absurd but, of course, he was crazy. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Nothing he said ought to surprise her.
"Sleepy or not, what are you doing out here alone?"
"Talking to the moon. Watching the sky. Standing guard."
"Guard?" She turned sharply. "Is there something out here?"
"No. But if I wasn’t standing guard, there might be."
"Like what?"
He turned to her. "After all you have seen these past couple of days, I would not think you would have to ask such a question, Mrs. Sonderberg."
"Just Alicia, please. It all has been real, hasn’t it?" One hand clutched at the neck of the bathrobe, pulling it tight around her throat.
"Oh, very real. And instructive."
"Instructive?" She laughed nervously. "Didn’t it scare you? Weren’t you frightened? But, then, maybe it wouldn’t scare you. Not after working as a janitor in Hell."
"Many things frighten me, Alicia."
She walked over to lean against the cool exterior of the motor home. "I bet you’ve seen a lot of strange things."
"More than you can imagine. I have worked with goblins as well as with demons, have danced with witches who were pure energy, have attended the Old Ceremonies. I have seen the sleeping places of the Great Old Ones and read the forbidden books. I’ve traded ice for gold with people who had no water and sat at the feet of all the prophets, trying to learn from them. Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, Zoroaster and Confucius: all of them."
"Have you?" was all she could say.
"They like to get together and argue. Sometimes they get excited, but they never fight. That would be unbecoming to prophets."
Burnfingers’s talk was starting to make her uneasy. Where the hell was Frank? To change the subject she pointed at his right wrist. "That’s such a beautiful bracelet."
"So you’ve said." He raised his arm so it would catch more of the light. A huge turquoise nugget was set deep in a thick band of sand-cast metal. "Skystone and silver." With a finger he traced the recess in which the turquoise reposed. "This is called a shadowbox. The Navajo like to wear their wealth. I have more jewelry, but it can be awkward to travel with. This piece I wear because my father made it. He was very skilled. I keep it with me always."
"Kind of like a talisman?"
"No. To remind me of him. Sadly, he was quite sane. Not like me. That’s what finished him. It is very difficult for an Indian to stay sane and live in your world, where insanity seems to be the normal state of affairs. Since I am mad, I have no difficulty coping."
"You’ve had a hard life, then." She’d moved nearer and was suddenly aware of his size and strength.
"I would say, rather, an interesting one. Many troubles I could have avoided, but to me boredom is the same as death. I would not have had it any other way."
His black hair was inches from her hands and she found herself wondering what it would be like to stroke it, to run her fingers through it.
Abruptly she drew back. What was wrong with her? Here she was out alone in the middle of the night finding herself attracted to a madman. And he was attractive, dammit! The madness, the wildness she sensed in him, was part of it.
"I’ve got to go look for Frank," she found herself muttering. "I guess he’s gone for a walk somewhere."
Burnfingers knew that Mouse had also gone for a nocturnal stroll, but since he was not completely crazy he sensed that mentioning this would have had a deleterious effect on Alicia Sonderberg’s state of mind. So he kept quiet.
"Want me to come with you?"
"No. No, you stay here. I’m sure I’ll run into him any minute now. I’ll just go back to the room and wait." She left him sitting on the lower step.
As she turned the stern of the motor home, she found herself confronting another male figure. "Frank! You startled me. Where have you b — ?"
It wasn’t Frank. It was over six feet tall and thin as a rail, and though it was obviously straining to look like a man it was having a difficult time of it, as though trying something without sufficient practice beforehand. Multiple fingers kept appearing and vanishing on each hand, like the tentacles of sea anemones retracting and extending in the current. The left side of the face kept trying to melt.