By the Light of the Moon

30

Dylan was accustomed to being one of the biggest guys in just about any room, but the two hulks who got out of the driver's side of the Suburban looked as if they had spent the morning in a rodeo ring, tossing cowboys in the air and goring them. They disappeared around the car, heading toward the motel office.

'Let's go,' he said, sliding out of the booth, rising to his feet.

Jilly got up at once, but Shep didn't move. Head bowed, staring at his clean plate, he said, 'Cake please.'

Even if served in a wedge instead of a square, the single curved end of a piece of cake could be flattened easily. Otherwise, a wedge was satisfyingly angular, not curvy, not shapey. Shep loved cake.

'We'll get cake,' Dylan lied. 'But first we're going to the men's room, buddy.'

'Pee?' Shep asked.

'Pee,' Dylan confirmed quietly, determined to avoid making a scene.

'Shep doesn't need to pee.'

Fire laws and a need to receive deliveries guaranteed the existence of a back door; but no doubt they would have to go through the kitchen to reach it, a route that would assure too much commotion even if they were permitted to take it. They dared not leave by the front door, for fear of being spotted by the faux golfers. Only one exit remained.

'You may not get another chance for a while, buddy. Better go now,' Dylan explained.

'No pee.'

Their waitress arrived. 'Will that be everything?'

'Cake,' said Shep.

'Could we have menus to look at the desserts?' Dylan asked.

'Cake.'

'I thought you were leaving,' the waitress said.

'Just going to the men's room,' Jilly assured her. When the waitress frowned, Jilly added, 'The men's and the ladies'.'

'Cake.'

Withdrawing their lunch ticket from a pocket of her apron, the waitress said, 'We have some wonderful cakes.' She extracted a pencil from her elaborately piled and pinned red hair. 'Toasted-coconut, Black Forest, lemon, and lemon-walnut.'

'We don't all want cake,' Dylan said. 'We'll need menus.'

'Cake,' said Shepherd.

As the waitress went to get menus, Dylan said, 'Come on, Shep.'

'Cake. Toasted-coconut-'

'Pee first, Shep.'

'-Black Forest-'

By now the men in the Suburban would be at the registration desk in the motel office.

'-lemon-'

If they were carrying law-enforcement credentials, they would be presenting them to the desk clerk.

'-and lemon-walnut.'

If they had no credentials, they would be using intimidation to get the information they wanted.

'No pee,' Dylan quietly informed Shep, 'no cake.'

Licking his lips in anticipation of the cake, Shep considered this ultimatum.

'Dylan,' Jilly said softly but urgently. 'The window.'

The second black Suburban had crossed the street from the other motel. It parked behind the SUV that already stood in front of the registration office next door to the coffee shop.

Unless given absolutely no other option, Dylan didn't want to seize his brother by the arm and haul him out of the booth. In that event, the kid would probably come, although his cooperation was not a certainty. He wouldn't resist violently, but if he set his mind to it, he could become as immovable as a stubborn octopus.

Carrying menus, the waitress began the return trip from the hostess station.

'No pee, no cake?' Shepherd asked.

'No pee, no cake.'

'Pee, then cake?' Shep asked.

'Pee, then cake,' Dylan agreed.

Shepherd slid out of the booth.

Arriving with the menus just as Shepherd stood up, dropping them on the table, the waitress asked, 'Can I get you coffee?'

Dylan saw the front door open. Sun glared on that moving glass panel, and from this oblique angle, he couldn't see who might be entering until they stepped inside.

'Two coffees,' Jilly said.

An elderly couple crossed the threshold. They were probably in their eighties. Not stooped, spry enough, but surely not assassins.

'Milk,' Shep mumbled.

'Two coffees and one milk,' Dylan told the waitress.

The glass that the milk came in would have a round mouth; but the milk itself wasn't round. It wasn't shapey, but shapeless, and Shepherd never harbored a prejudice against any food solely because of the design of the container in which it might be served.

'Cake,' Shepherd said as, head down, he followed Dylan between the tables, with Jilly at the end of their procession. 'Cake. Pee, then cake. Pee, then cake.'

The restrooms lay off a hall at the back of the coffee shop.

Ahead of Dylan, a burly bearded man in a tank-top shirt sported enough colorful tattoos just on his exposed arms and neck, and on his bald head, to qualify as an attraction in a sideshow. He went into the men's room.

As they gathered in the hallway, still in the line of sight of some of the diners in the restaurant, Dylan said to Jilly, 'Check the women's room.'

She stepped into the lavatory and returned before the door had time to fall shut behind her. 'Nobody's in here.'

Dylan urged his brother to step into the women's restroom with Jilly, and followed close behind him.

The doors stood open on each of two stalls. The outer door between the lav and the hallway could not be locked. Someone might walk in on them at any moment.

The only window appeared to be painted shut, and in any event, it was too small to provide escape.

Dylan said, 'Buddy, I need you to do something for me.'

'Cake.'

'Shep, I need you to fold us out of here and back to our room in the motel.'

'But they'll be going to our room,' Jilly objected.

'They won't be there yet. We left the computer running, with the Proctor interview. We don't want them to see that. I don't know where we'll be going from here, but wherever it is, they'll have a better chance of staying on our heels if they realize how much we know and can try to anticipate our moves.'

'Toasted-coconut cake.'

'Besides,' Dylan added, 'there's an envelope of cash in my shaving kit, almost five hundred bucks, and right now all we have is what's in my wallet.' He put one hand under Shep's chin, raised his head. 'Shep, you've got to do this for me.'

Shep closed his eyes. 'Don't pee in public.'

'I'm not asking you to pee, Shep. Just fold us back to our room. Now. Right now, Shep.'

'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold.'

'This is different, Shep.'

'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold.'

'That rule doesn't apply, buddy. We're not in public now.'

Shepherd wasn't buying that line of argument. After all, this was called a public restroom, and he knew it. 'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold.'

'Listen, buddy, you've seen a lot of movies, you know what bad guys are.'

'Pee in public.'

'Worse bad guys than that. Bad guys with guns. Killers like in the movies. We've got some bad guys looking for us, Shep.'

'Hannibal Lecter.'

'I don't know. Maybe they're that bad. I don't know. But if you don't help me here, if you don't fold us when I ask you to, then for sure things are going to get gooey-bloody.'

The kid's eyes were active behind his lids, an indication of the degree of his agitation. 'Gooey-bloody is bad.'

'Gooey-bloody is very bad. And it's going to get very gooey and very bloody if we don't fold back to our room right now.'

'Shep is scared.'

'Don't be scared.'

'Shep is scared.'

Dylan admonished himself not to lose his temper as he had lost it on the hilltop in California. He must never speak to Shep that way again, never, no matter how desperate the situation became. But he was left with no tactic but to plead. 'Buddy, for God's sake, please.'

'Sh-shep is s-s-scared.'

When Dylan checked his Timex, the sweep-motion second hand seemed to be spinning around the watch face.

Moving to Shepherd's side, Jilly said, 'Sweetie, last night when I was in my bed and you were in your bed, and Dylan was asleep and snoring, do you remember the little conversation we had?'

Dylan had no idea what she was talking about. She hadn't told him about a conversation with Shep. And he was certain that he didn't snore.

'Sweetie, I woke up and heard you whispering, remember? You said you were scared. And what did I say?'

Shepherd's hyperactive eyes stopped moving behind his closed lids, but he didn't respond to her.

'Do you remember, honey?' When she put an arm around Shepherd's shoulders, he didn't cringe from contact or even flinch. 'Sweetie, remember, you said, "Shep is scared," and I said, "Shep is brave."'

Dylan heard noises in the hallway, glanced at the door. No one came in, but the coffee shop had a big lunch crowd; this privacy wouldn't last much longer.

Jilly said, 'And you are brave, Shep. You're one of the bravest people I've ever known. The world is a scary place. And I know it's scarier for you than it is for us. So much noise, so much brightness and color, so many people, strangers, always talking at you, and then germs everywhere, nothing neat like it ought to be, nothing simple like you want it so much to be, everything shapey, and so much that's disgusting. You can put a puzzle together and make it right, and you can read Great Expectations like twenty times, a hundred times, and every time it'll be exactly like you expect it to be, exactly right. But you can't make life come together like a puzzle, and you can't make it be the same every day – and yet you get up every morning, and you try. That's very brave, sweetie. If I were you, if I were the way you are, I don't think I could be as brave as you, Shepherd. I know I couldn't. Every day, trying so hard – that is as brave as anything any hero ever did in any movie.'

Listening to Jilly, Dylan eventually stopped glancing worriedly at the door, stopped consulting his wristwatch, and discovered that this woman's face and melodious voice were more compelling even than the thought of professional killers closing in from all sides.

'Honey, you have to be as brave as I know you can be. You have to not worry about bad guys, not worry about gooey-bloody, just do what needs to be done, like you get up every morning and shower and do what needs to be done to make the world as neat and as simple as you can make it. Sweetie, you have to be brave and fold us back to our room.'

'Shep is brave?'

'Yes. Shep is brave.'

'No Goldfish, no pee, no fold,' said Shep, but his eyes remained still behind his closed lids, which suggested that even the issue of the impropriety of public folding did not trouble him as much as it had a minute ago.

Jilly said, 'Actually, folding in public isn't quite like peeing in public, sweetie. It's more like spitting in public. It's still not something that polite people do. But while you never pee in public, no matter what, sometimes you just have to spit in public, like when a bug flies in your mouth, and that's okay. These bad guys are like a bug that flies in your mouth, and folding away from them is no worse than spitting out a bug, Shep. Do it now, sweetie. Do it quickly.'

Shepherd reached up and pinched a scrap of nothing between his thumb and forefinger.

Beside him, Jilly put the palm of her left hand against the back of Shepherd's right.

Shep opened his eyes, turned his head to meet Jilly's gaze. 'You feel how it is?'

'Do it, sweetie. Hurry. Now.'

Dylan stepped in closer, afraid of being left behind. He saw the air crimp where Shepherd's fingers met, and he watched in wonder as wrinkles formed outward from the crimp.

Shep plucked the fabric of reality. The women's restroom folded away, and a new place folded toward them.