Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER TEN

She put the glass back on the shelf carefully, taking care to make sure she didn’t leave it hanging over the edge. Her tongue now felt like a piece of #5 sandpaper and her throat actually seemed infected with thirst. It reminded her of the way she had felt in the autumn of her tenth year, when a combined case of the flu and bronchitis had kept her out of school for a month and a half. There had been long nights during that siege when she had awakened from confused, jangling nightmares she couldn’t remember

(except you can Jessie; you dreamed about the smoked glass; you dreamedabout how the sun went out; you dreamed about the flat and tearful smellthat was like minerals in well-water; you dreamed about his hands)

and she was drenched with sweat but felt too weak to reach for the pitcher of water on the bed-table. She remembered lying there, wet and sticky and fever-smelling on the outside, parched and full of phantoms on the inside; lying there and thinking that her real disease was not bronchitis but thirst. Now, all these years later, she felt exactly the same way.

Her mind kept trying to return to the horrible moment when she had realized she wasn’t going to be able to bridge the last sliver of distance between the glass and her mouth. She kept seeing the tiny sprays of air-bubbles in the melting ice, kept smelling the faint aroma of minerals trapped in the aquifer far beneath the lake. These images taunted her like an unreachable itch between the shoulderblades.

Nevertheless, she made herself wait. The part of her that was Goody Burlingame said she needed to take some time in spite of the taunting images and her throbbing throat. She needed to wait for her heart to slow down, for her muscles to stop trembling, for her emotions to settle a bit.

Outside, the last color was fading from the air; the world was going a solemn and melancholy gray. On the lake, the loon lifted its piercing cry into the evening gloom.

“Shut your yap, Mr Loon,” Jessie said, and chuckled. It sounded like a rusty hinge.

All right, dear, the Goodwife said. I think it’s time to try. Beforeit gets dark. Better dry your hands again first, though.

She cupped both hands around the bedposts this time, rubbing them up and down until they produced squeaks. She held up her right hand and wiggled it in front of her eyes. They laughed whenI sat down at the piano, she thought. Then, carefully, she reached just beyond the place where the glass stood on the edge of the shelf. She began to patter her fingers along the wood again. The handcuff clinked against the side of the glass once and she froze, waiting for it to overturn. When it didn’t, she resumed her cautious exploration.

She had almost decided that what she was looking for had slid down the shelf-or entirely off it-when she finally touched the corner of the blow-in card. She tweezed it between the first and second fingers of her right hand and brought it carefully up and away from the shelf and the glass. Jessie steadied her grip on the card with her thumb and looked at it curiously.

It was bright purple, with noisemakers dancing tipsily along the upper edge. Confetti and streamers drifted down between the words. Newsweek was celebrating BIG BIG SAVINGS, the card announced, and it wanted her to join the party. Newsweek’s writers would keep her up to date on world events, take her behind the scenes with world leaders, and offer her in-depth coverage of arts, politics, and the sporting life. Although it did not come right out and say so, the card pretty much implied that Newsweek could help Jessie make sense of the entire cosmos. Best of all, those lovable lunatics in Newsweek’s subscription department were offering a deal so amazing it could make your urine steam and your head explode: if she used THIS VERY CARD to subscribe to Newsweek for three years, she would get each issue AT LESS THAN HALF THE NEWSSTAND PRICE! And was money a problem? Absolutely not! She would be billed later.

I wonder if they have Direct Bed Service for handcuffed ladies, Jessie thought. Maybe with George Will or Jane Bryant Quinn or one of thoseother pompous old poops to turn the pages for me-handcuffs make doingthat so dreadfully difficult, you know.

Yet below the sarcasm, she felt a species of odd nervous wonder, and she couldn’t seem to stop studying the purple card with its let’s-have-a-party motif, its blanks for her name and address, and its little squares marked DiCl, MC, Visa, and AMEX. I’ve beencursing these cards all my life-especially when I have to bend over andpick one of the damned things up or see myself as just another litterbug without ever guessing that my sanity, maybe even my life, might dependon one someday.

Her life? Was that really possible? Did she actually have to admit such a horrid idea into her calculations after all? Jessie was reluctantly coming to believe that she did. She might be here for quite awhile before someone discovered her, and yes, she supposed it was just barely possible that the difference between life and death could come down to a single drink of water. The idea was surreal but it no longer seemed patently ridiculous.

Same thing as before, dear-slow and easy wins the race.

Yes… but who would ever have believed the finish-line would turn out to be situated in such weird countryside?

She did move slowly and carefully, however, and was relieved to discover that manipulating the blow-in card one-handed was not as difficult-as she had feared it might be. This was partly because it was about six inches by four-almost the size of two playing cards laid side by side-but mostly because she wasn’t trying to do anything very tricky with it.

She held the card lengthwise between her first and second fingers, then used her thumb to bend the last half-inch of the long side all the way down. The fold wasn’t even, but she thought it would serve. Besides, nobody was going to come along and judge her work; Brownie Crafts Hour on Thursday nights at the First Methodist Church of Falmouth was long behind her now.

She pinched the purple card firmly between her first two fingers again and folded over another half-inch. It took her almost three minutes and seven fold-overs to get to the end of the card. When she finally did, she had something that looked like a bomber joint clumsily rolled in jaunty purple paper.

Or, if you stretched your imagination a little, a straw.

Jessie stuck it in her mouth, trying to hold the crooked folds together with her teeth. When she had it as firmly as she thought she was going to get it, she began feeling around for the glass again.

Stay careful, Jessie, Don’t spoil it all with impatience now!

Thanks for the advice. Also for the idea. It was great-I really mean that, Now, however, Id like you to shut up long enough for me to takemy shot. Okay?

When her fingertips touched the smooth surface of the glass, she slid them around it with the gentleness and caution of a young lover slipping her hand into her boyfriend’s fly for the first time.

Gripping the glass in its new position was a relatively simple matter. She brought it around and lifted it as far as the chain would allow. The last slivers of ice had melted, she saw; tempus had gone fugiting merrily along despite her feeling that it had stopped dead in its tracks around the time the dog had put in its first appearance. But she wouldn’t think about the dog. In fact, she was going to work hard at believing that no dog had ever been here.

You’re good at unhappening things, aren’t you, tootsie-wootsie?

Hey, Ruth-I’m trying to keep a grip on myself as well as on thedamned glass, in case you didn’t notice. If playing a few mind-gameshelps me do that, I don’t see what the big deal is. just shut up for awhile,okay? Give it a rest and let me get on with my business.

Ruth apparently had no intention of giving it a rest, however. Shut up.” she marvelled. Boy, how that takes me back-it’s better thana Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up,Jessie-remember that night in the dorm after we came back from yourfirst and last consciousness-raising session at Neuworth?

I don’t want to remember, Ruth.

I’m sure you don’t, so I’ll remember for both of us, how’s that for adeal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her breasts thathad upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell youwhat you’d said in the kitchen-about how you and your father hadbeen alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in1963, and how he’d done something to you-you told me to shut up.When I wouldn’t, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldn’t, yougrabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else-probablyin Susie Timmel’slittle fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we usedto call Susie’s Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, you’d found some girlswho bad an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, asfast as that… but then, you always moved fast when you’d made upyour mind, Jess, I’ll give you that. And like I said, you always gavegood shut up.

Shu-

There! What’d I tell you?

Leave me alone!

I’m pretty familiar with that one, too. You know what hurt me themost, Jessie? It wasn’t the trust thing-I knew even then that it wasnothing personal, that you felt you couldn’t trust anyone with the storyof what happened that day, including yourself. What hurt was knowinghow close you came to spilling it all, there in the kitchen of the NeuworthParsonage. We were sitting with our backs against the door and our armsaround each other and you started to talk. You said, “I could never tell,would have killed my Mom, and even if it didn’t, she would have lefthim and I loved him. We all loved him, we all needed him, they wouldhave blamed me, and he didn’t do anything, not really.” I asked you who didn’t do anything and it came out of you so fast it was like you’dspent the last nine years waiting for someone to pop the question. “Myfather,” you said. “We were at Dark Score Lake on the day the sun wentout.” You would have told me the rest-I know you would-hut thatwas when that dumb bitch came in and asked, “Is she all right?” As ifyou looked all right, you know what I mean? Jesus, sometimes I can’tbelieve how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that youhave to get a license, or at least a learner’s permit, before you’re allowedto talk. Until you pass your Talker’s Test, you should have to be a mute.It would solve a lot of problems. But that’s not the way things are, andas soon as Hart Hall’s answer to Florence Nightingale came in, you closedup like a clam. There was nothing I could do to make you open up again'.although God knows I tried.

You should have just left me alone! Jessie returned. The glass of water was starting to shake in her hand, and the makeshift purple straw was trembling between her lips. You should have stoppedmeddling! It didn’t concern you!

Sometimes friends can’t help their concern, Jessie, the voice inside said, and it was so full of kindness that Jessie was silenced. I lookedit up, you know, I figured out what you must have been talking aboutand I looked it up. I didn’t remember anything at all about an eclipseback in the early sixties, hut of course I was in Florida at the time, anda lot more interested in snorkeling and the Delray lifeguard-I had themost incredible crush on him-than I was in astronomical phenomena. Iguess I wanted to make sure the whole thing wasn’t some kind of crazyfantasy or something-maybe brought on by that girl with the horrible burns on her bazooms. It was no fantasy. There was a total solar eclipse in Maine, and your summer house on Dark Score Lake would have been right in the path of totality. July of 1963. Just a girl and her Dad,watching the eclipse. You wouldn’t tell me what good old Dad did toyou, hut I knew two things, Jessie: that he was your father, which wasbad, and that you were ten-going-on-eleven, on the childhood rim ofpuberty…and that was worse.

Ruth, please stop. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to startraking up all that old-

But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessie’s roommate had always been determined to have her say every single word of it-and the Ruth who was now Jessie’s headmate apparently hadn’t changed a bit.

The next thing I knew, you were living off-campus with three littleSorority Susies-princesses in A -line jumpers and Ship “n” Shore blouses,each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of theweek sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go intotraining for the Olympic Dusting and Floor- Waxing Team right aroundthen. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, westill saw each other once in awhile-split the occasional pizza and pitcherof Molson’s down at Pat’s-hut our friendship was really over, wasn’tit? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to youin July of 1963, you chose the eclipse.

The glass of water was trembling harder.

“Why now, Ruth?” she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, that’swhat I want to know-given that in this incarnation you’re really apart of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least affordbeing upset and distracted?

The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing: because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she was-handcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserable-just fine. Who didn’t want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasn’t.

The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie…except in your mind. In there, it’s still going on, isn’t it?

She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruth’s voice without self-consciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it.

Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after I’ve taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just-

“-shut the fuck up,” she finished in a low whisper.

Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know there’s something or someoneinside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimesuses my voice-it’s a great ventriloquist, no doubt about that-but it’snot me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kepttrying to stay in touch as long as I did…because I loved you. And,I suppose, because us high-riding bitches have to stick together.

Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw.

Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard.

Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolled-up card jutting out of her mouth like FDR’s cigarette holder.

Please God, I’m begging you…let this work.

Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadn’t been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolled-up subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose.

She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mother’s teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seats and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husband’s water-glass, was the apogee of her life.

Don’t drink it all, Jess-save some for later.

She didn’t know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didn’t matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteen-year-old boy half-mad with six months of heavy petting that it didn’t matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didn’t have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the mind’s advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as well-giving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief.

Jessie went on sucking through the rolled-up card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway.

What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Gerald’s glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolled-up blow-in card was dark with moisture.

I could get what’s left, though. I could, IfI could turn my hand alittle farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to gethold of the miserable glass inthe first place, I think I can stick my necka little farther forward and get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can.

She did know it, and later on she would test the idea, but for now the white-collar guys on the top floor-the ones with all the good views-had once again wrested control away from the day-laborers and shop stewards who ran the machinery; the mutiny was over. Her thirst was a long way from being entirely slaked, but her throat had quit throbbing and she felt a lot better… mentally as well as physically. Sharper in her thoughts and marginally brighter in her outlook.

She found she was glad she’d left that last little bit in the glass. Two sips of water through the leaky straw probably wouldn’t spell the difference between remaining handcuffed to the bed and finding a way to wriggle out of this mess on her own-let alone between life and death-but getting those last couple of sips might occupy her mind when and if it tried to turn to its own morbid devices again. After all, night was coming, her husband was lying dead nearby, and it looked like she was camping out.

Not a pretty picture, especially when you added the hungry stray who was camping out with her, but Jessie found she was growing sleepy again just the same. She tried to think of reasons to fight her growing drowsiness and couldn’t come up with any good ones. Even the thought of waking up with her arms numb to the elbows didn’t seem like a particularly big deal. She would simply move them around until the blood was flowing briskly again. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she had no doubt about her ability to do it.

Also, you might have an idea while you’re asleep, dear, Goodwife Burlingame said. That always happens in books.

“Maybe you will,” Jessie said. “After all, you’ve had the best one so far.”

She let herself lie down, using her shoulder-blades to scrunch the pillow as far up against the head of the bed as she could. Her shoulders ached, her arms (especially the left one) throbbed, and her stomach muscles were still fluttering with the strain of holding her upper body far enough forward to drink through the straw… but she felt strangely content, just the same. At peace with herself.

Content? How can you feel content? Your husband is dead, after all,and you played a part in that, Jessie. And suppose you are found? Suppose you are rescued? Have you thought about how this situation is going tolook to whoever finds you? How do you suppose it’s going to took toConstable Teagarden, as far as that goes? How long do you think it willtake him to decide to call the State Police? Thirty seconds? Maybe forty? They think a little slower out here in the country, though, don’t they t might take him all of two minutes.

She couldn’t argue with any of that. It was true.

Then how can you feel content, Jessie? How can you possibly feel content with things like that hanging over you?

She didn’t know, but she did. Her sense of tranquility was as deep as a featherbed on the night a March gale filled with sleet roars out of the northwest, and as warm as the goosedown comforter on that bed. She suspected that most of this feeling stemmed from causes which were purely physical: if you were thirsty enough, it was apparently possible to get stoned on half a glass of water.

But there was a mental side, as well. Ten years ago she had reluctantly given up her job as a substitute teacher, finally giving in to the pressure of Gerald’s persistent (or maybe “relentless” was the word she was actually looking for) logic. He was making almost a hundred thousand dollars a year by then; next to that, her five to seven grand looked pretty paltry. It was, in fact, an actual annoyance at tax time, when the IRS took most of it and then went sniffing over their financial records, wondering where the rest of it was.

When she complained about their suspicious behavior, Gerald had looked at her with a mixture of love and exasperation. It wasn’t quite his “Why are you girls always so silly?” expression that one didn’t start to show up regularly for another five or six years-but it was close. They see what I’m making, he told her, theysee two large German cars in the garage, they look at the pictures of theplace on the lake, and then they look at your tax forms and see you’reworking for what they think of as chump change. They can’t believe it-it looks phony to them, a cover for something else-and so they go snoopingaround, looking for whatever that something else might he. They don’tknow you like I do, that’s all.

She had been unable to explain to Gerald what the substitute contract meant to her… or maybe it was that he had been unwilling to listen. Either way, it came to the same: teaching, even on a part-time basis, filled her up in some important way, and Gerald didn’t get that. Nor had he been able to get the fact that subbing formed a bridge to the life she had lived before she’d met Gerald at that Republican mixer, when she’d been a full-time English teacher at Waterville High, a woman on her own who was working for a living, who was well-liked and respected by her colleagues, and who was beholden to no one. She had been unable to explain (or he had been unwilling to listen) how quitting teaching-even on that final part-time, piecework basis-made her feel mournful and lost and somehow useless.

That rudderless feeling-probably caused as much by her in-ability to catch pregnant as by her decision to return her contract unsigned-had departed from the surface of her mind after a year or so, but it had never entirely left the deeper ranges of her heart. She had sometimes felt like a cliche to herself-young teacher-lady weds successful lawyer whose name goes up on the door at the tender (professionally speaking, that is) age of thirty. This young (well, relatively young) woman eventually steps into the foyer of that puzzle palace known as middle age, looks around, and finds she is suddenly all alone-no job, no kids, and a husband who is almost completely focused (one wouldn’t want to say fixated; that might be accurate, but it would also be unkind) on climbing that fabled ladder of success.

This woman, suddenly faced with forty just beyond the next bend in the road, is exactly the sort of woman most likely to get in trouble with drugs, booze, or another man. A younger man, usually. None of that happened to this young (well… previously young) woman, but Jessie still found herself with a scary amount of time on her hands-time to garden, time to go malling, time to take classes (the painting, the sculpture, the poetry… and she could have had an affair with the man who taught the poetry if she’d wanted to, and she had almost wanted to). There had also been time to do a little work on herself, which was how she had happened to meet Nora. Yet not one of those things had left her feeling the way she felt now, as though her weariness and aches were badges of valor and her sleepiness a justly won reward… the handcuffed ladies” version of Miller Time, you might say.

Hey, Jess-the way you got that water really was pretty great.

It was another UFO, but this time Jessie didn’t mind. Just as long as Ruth didn’t show up for awhile. Ruth was interesting, but she was also exhausting.

A lot of people never would have even gotten the glass, her UFO fan continued, and using the blow-in card for a straw… that was amaster-stroke. So go ahead and feel good. It’s allowed. A little nap isallowed, too.

But the dog, Goody said doubtfully.

That dog isn’t going to bother you one damned bit…and you knowwhy.

Yes. The reason the dog wasn’t going to bother her was lying nearby on the bedroom floor. Gerald was now nothing but a shadow among shadows, for which Jessie was grateful. Outside, the wind gusted again. The sound of it hissing through the pines was comforting, lulling. Jessie closed her eyes.

But be care I what you dream! Goody called after her in sudden alarm, but her voice was distant and not terribly compelling. Still, it tried again: Be careful what you dream, Jessie! I’m serious!

Yes, of course she was. The Goodwife was always serious, which meant she was also often tiresome.

Whatever I dream, Jessie thought, it won’t be that I’m thirsty, Ihaven’t bad many clear victories over the last ten years-mostly one murkyguerrilla engagement after another-but getting that drink of water wasa clear win. Wasn’t it?

Yes, the UFO voice agreed. It was a vaguely masculine voice, and she found herself wondering in a sleepy way if perhaps it was the voice of her brother, Will… Will as he’d been as a child, back in the sixties. You bet it was. It was great.

Five minutes later Jessie was sleeping deeply, arms up and splayed in a limp V-shape, wrists held loosely to the bedposts by the handcuffs, head lolling against her right shoulder (the less painful one), long, slow snores drifting from her mouth. And at some point-long after dark had fallen and a white rind of moon had risen in the east-the dog appeared in the doorway again.

Like Jessie, it was calmer now that its most immediate need had been met and the clamor in its stomach had been stilled to some extent. It gazed at her for a long time with its good ear cocked and its muzzle up, trying to decide if she was really asleep or only pretending. It decided (mostly on the basis of smell-the sweat which was now drying, the total absence of the crackling ozone stink of adrenaline) that she was asleep. There would be no kicks or shouts this time-not if it was careful not to wake her up.

The dog padded softly to the heap of meat in the middle of the floor. Although its hunger was now less, the meat actually smelled better. This was because its first meal had gone a long way toward breaking down the ancient, inbred taboo against this sort of meat, although the dog did not know this and wouldn’t have cared if it did.

It lowered its head, first sniffing the now-attractive aroma of dead lawyer with all the delicacy of a gourmet, then closing its teeth gently on Gerald’s lower lip. It pulled, applying pressure slowly, stretching the flesh further and further. Gerald began to look as if he were deep in some monstrous pout. The lip finally tore off, revealing his bottom teeth in a big dead grin. The dog swallowed this small delicacy in a single gulp, then licked its chops. Its tail began to wag again, this time moving in slow, contented sweeps. Two tiny spots of light danced on the ceiling high above; moonlight reflected from the fillings in two of Gerald’s lower molars. These fillings had been done only the week before, and they were still as fresh and shiny as newly minted quarters.

The dog licked its chops a second time, looking lovingly at Gerald as it did so. Then it stretched its neck forward, almost exactly as Jessie had stretched hers in order to finally plop her straw into the glass. The dog sniffed Gerald’s face, but it did not just sniff; it allowed its nose to go on a kind of olfactory vacation there, first sampling the faint floor-polishy aroma of brown wax buried deep in the dead master’s left ear, then the intermingled odors of sweat and Prell at the hairline, then the sharp, entrancingly bitter smell of clotted blood on the crown of Gerald’s head. It lingered especially long at Gerald’s nose, conducting a delicate investigation into those now tideless channels with its scratched, dirty, but oh-so-sensitive muzzle. Again there was that sense of gourmandizing, a feeling that the dog was choosing among many treasures. At last it sank its sharp teeth deeply into Gerald’s left cheek, clamped them together, and began to pull.

On the bed, Jessie’s eyes had begun to move rapidly back and forth behind her lids and now she moaned-a high, wavering sound, full of terror and recognition.

The dog looked up at once, its body dropping into an instinctive cringe of guilt and fear. It didn’t last long; already it had begun to see this pile of meat as its private larder, for which it would fight-and perhaps die-if challenged. Besides, it was only the bitchmaster making that sound, and the dog was now quite sure that the bitchmaster was powerless.

It dipped its head down, seized Gerald Burlingame’s cheek once more, and yanked backward, shaking its head briskly from side to side as it did so. A long strip of the dead man’s cheek came free with a sound like strapping tape being pulled briskly off the dispenser roll. Gerald now wore the ferocious, predatory smile of a man who has just filled a straight-flush in a high-stakes poker game.

Jessie moaned again. The sound was followed by a string of guttural, unintelligible sleeptalk. The dog glanced up at her once more. It was sure she couldn’t get off the bed and bother it, but those sounds made it uneasy, just the same. The old taboo had faded, but it hadn’t disappeared. Besides, its hunger was sated; what it was doing now wasn’t eating but snacking. It turned and trotted out of the room again. Most of Gerald’s left cheek dangled from its mouth like the scalp of an infant.