Lisey's Story

XIII. Lisey and Amanda

(The Sister Thing)

1

Now that she had Amanda, Lisey wasn't exactly sure what to do with her. Right up to Greenlawn, all the steps had seemed clear, but as they drove toward Castle Rock and the

thunderheads massing over New Hampshire, nothing seemed clear. She had just kidnapped her supposedly catatonic sister from one of central Maine's finer nuthouses, for God's sweet sake.

Amanda, however, seemed far from nuts; any fears Lisey harbored of her slipping back into catatonia dissipated in a hurry. Amanda Debusher hadn't been this sharp in years. After listening to everything that had passed between Lisey and Jim "Zack" Dooley, she said: "So. Scott's manuscripts may have been the main thing when he turned up, but now he's after you, because he's your basic loony who gets hard hurting women. Like that weirdo Rader, out in Wichita."

Lisey nodded. He hadn't raped her, but he'd gotten hard, all right. What amazed her was Amanda's succinct re-statement of her situation, even down to the Rader comparison…whose name Lisey wouldn't have remembered. Manda had the advantage of a little distance, of course, yet her clarity of mind was still startling.

Up ahead was a sign reading CASTLE ROCK 15. As they passed it, the sun sailed behind the building clouds. When Amanda next spoke her voice was quieter. "You mean to do it to him before he can do it to you, don't you? Kill him and get rid of the body in that other world." Up ahead of them, thunder rumbled. Lisey waited. Are we doing the sister thing? she thought. Is that what this is?

"Why, Lisey? Other than that I guess you can?"

"He hurt me. He fucked with me." She didn't think she sounded like herself at all, but if truth was the sister thing—she thought it was—then this was it, sure. "And let me tell you, honey: the next time he fucks with me is going to be the last time he fucks with anybody."

Amanda sat looking straight ahead at the unrolling road with her arms folded under her scant bosom. At last she said, almost to herself, "You always were the steel in his spine."

Lisey looked at her, more than surprised. She was shocked. "Say what?"

"Scott. And he knew it." She lifted one of her arms and looked at the red scar there. Then she looked at Lisey. "Kill him," she said with chilling indifference. "I have no problem with that."

2

Lisey swallowed and heard a click in her throat. "Look, Manda, I really don't have any clear idea what I'm doing. You have to know that up front. I'm pretty much flying blind here." "Oh, you know what, I don't believe that," Amanda said, almost playfully. "You left messages saying that you'd see him at eight o'clock in Scott's study—one on your answering machine, and one with that Pittsburgh professor, in case Dooley called there. You mean to kill him and that's fine. Hey, you gave the cops their shot, didn't you?" And before Lisey could reply: "Sure you did. And the guy waltzed right past them. Almost cut your tit off with your own can opener."

Lisey came around a curve and found herself behind another waddling pulp-truck; it was like the day she and Darla had come back from admitting Amanda all over again. Lisey squeezed the brake, once more feeling guilty that she was driving barefoot. Old ideas died hard.

"Scott had plenty of spine," she said.

"Yep. And he used it all getting out of his childhood alive."

"What do you know about that?" Lisey asked.

"Nothing. He never said anything about what life was like when he was a kid. Didn't you think I noticed? Maybe Darla and Canty didn't, but I did, and he knew I did. We knew each other, Lisey—the way the only two people not drinking at a big booze-up know each other. I think that's why he cared about me. And I know something else."

"What?"

"You better pass this truck before I strangle on his exhaust."

"I can't see far enough."

"You can see plenty far enough. Besides, God hates a coward." A brief pause. "That's something else people like Scott and me know all about."

"Manda—"

"Pass him! I'm strangling here!"

"I really don't think I have enough—"

"Lisey's got a boyfriend! Lisey and Zeke, up in a tree, K-I-SS-I—"

"Beanpole, you're being a puke."

Amanda, laughing: "Kissy-kissy, facey-facey, little Lisey!"

"If something's coming the other way—"

"First comes love, then comes marritch, then comes Lisey with a—"

Without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, Lisey mashed the Beemer's accelerator with her bare foot and swung out. She was dead even with the pulp-truck's cab when another pulp-truck appeared over the brow of the next hill, traveling toward them.

"Oh shit, somebody pass me the bong, we're fucked now!" Amanda cried. No rusty giggles now; now she was full-out laughing. Lisey was also laughing. "Floor it, Lisey!"

Lisey did. The BMW scooted with surprising gusto, and she nipped back into her own lane with plenty of time to spare. Darla, she reflected, would have been screaming her head off by this point.

"There," she said to Amanda, "are you happy?"

"Yes," Amanda said, and put her left hand over Lisey's right one, caressing it, making it give up its death-grip on the steering wheel. "Glad to be here, very glad you came for me. Not all of me wanted to come back, but so much of me was just…I don't know…sad to be away. And afraid that pretty soon I wouldn't even care. So thank you, Lisey."

"Thank Scott. He knew you'd need help."

"He knew that you would, too." Now Amanda's tone was very gentle. "And I bet he knew only one of your sisters would be crazy enough to give it."

Lisey took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at Amanda. "Did you and Scott talk about me, Amanda? Did you talk about me over there?"

"We talked. Here or there, I don't remember and I don't think it matters. We talked about how much we loved you."

Lisey could not reply. Her heart was too full. She wanted to cry, but then she wouldn't be able to see the road. And maybe there had been enough tears, anyway. Which was not to say there wouldn't be more.

3

So they rode in silence for awhile. There was no traffic once they passed the Pigwockit Campground. The sky overhead was still blue, but the sun was now buried in the oncoming clouds, rendering the day bright but queerly shadeless. Presently Amanda spoke in an uncharacteristic tone of thoughtful curiosity. "Would you have come for me even if you didn't need a partner in crime?"

Lisey considered this. "I like to think so," she finally said.

Amanda lifted the Lisey-hand closest to her and planted a kiss on it—truly it was as light as a butterfly's wing—before replacing it on the steering wheel. "I like to think so, too," she said. "It's a funny place, Southwind. When you're there, it seems as real as anything in this world, and better than everything in this world. But when you're here…" She shrugged. Wistfully, Lisey thought. "Then it's only a moonbeam."

Lisey thought of lying in bed with Scott at The Antlers, watching the moon struggle to come out. Listening to his story and then going with him. Going.

Amanda asked, "What did Scott call it?"

"Boo'ya Moon."

Amanda nodded. "I was at least close, wasn't I?"

"You were."

"I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored. They call it NeverLand or the Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few—like Scott—harness their dreams and turn them into horses."

"You were pretty talented yourself. You were the one who thought up Southwind, weren't you? The girls back home played that for years. I wouldn't be surprised if there are girls out on the Sabbatus Road still playing a version of it."

Amanda laughed and shook her head. "People like me were never meant to really cross over. My imagination was just big enough to get me in trouble."

"Manda, that's not true—"

"Yes," Amanda said. "It is. The looneybins are full of people like me. Our dreams harness us, and they whip us with soft whips—oh, lovely whips—and we run and we run, always in the same place…because the ship…Lisey, the sails never open and the ship never weighs its anchor…"

Lisey risked another look. Tears were running down Amanda's cheeks. Maybe tears didn't fall on those stone benches, but yes, here they were the smucking human condish.

"I knew I was going," Amanda said. "All the time we were in Scott's study…all the time I was writing meaningless numbers in that stupid little notebook, I knew…"

"That little notebook turned out to be the key to everything," Lisey said, remembering that HOLLYHOCKS as well as mein gott had been printed there…something like a message in a bottle. Or another bool—Lisey, here's where I am, please come find me.

"Do you mean it?" Amanda asked.

"I do."

"That's so funny. Scott gave me those notebooks, you know—damn near a lifetime supply. For my birthday."

"He did?"

"Yes, the year before he died. He said they might come in handy." She managed a smile. "I guess one of them actually did."

"Yes," Lisey said, wondering if mein gott was written on the backs of all the others, in tiny dark letters just below the trade name. Someday, maybe, she would check. If she and Amanda got out of this alive, that was.

4

When Lisey slowed in downtown Castle Rock, preparing to turn in at the Sheriff's Office, Amanda clutched her arm and asked what in God's name she thought she was doing. She listened to her sister's reply with mounting amazement.

"And what am I supposed to do while you're making your report and filling out forms?" Amanda asked in tones etched with acid. "Sit on the bench outside Animal Registry in these pajamas, with my tits poking out on top and my woofy showing down south? Or should I just sit out here and listen to the radio? How are you going to explain showing up barefoot? Or what if someone from Greenlawn has already called to tell the Sheriff's Department that they ought to keep an eye out for the writer's widow, she was visiting her sister up there at Crackerjack Manor and now they're both gone?"

Lisey was what her less-than-brilliant father would have called hard flummoxed. She had been so fixated on the problems of getting Manda back from Nowhere Land and coping with Jim Dooley that she had completely forgotten their current state of dishabille, not to mention any possible repercussions of the Great Escape. By now they were nestled in a slant-parkingspace in front of the brick Sheriff's Department building, with a visiting State Police cruiser to their left and a Ford sedan with CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT. painted on the side to their right, and Lisey began to feel decidedly claustrophobic. The title of a country song—"What Was I Thinking?"—popped into her mind.

Ridiculous, of course—she wasn't a fugitive, Greenlawn wasn't a prison, and Amanda wasn't exactly a prisoner, but her bare feet…how was she going to explain her smucking bare feet? And—

I haven't been thinking at all, not really, I've just been following the steps. The recipe. And this is like turning a page in the cookbook and finding the next one blank. "Also," Amanda was continuing, "there's Darla and Canty to think about. You did fine this morning, Lisey, I'm not criticizing, but—"

"Yes you are," Lisey said. "And you're right to criticize. If this isn't a mess already, it soon will be. I didn't want to go to your house too soon or stay there too long in case Dooley's keeping an eye on that, too—"

"Does he know about me?"

I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?

"I think…" Lisey began, then stopped. That kind of equivocation wouldn't do. "I know he does, Manda."

"Still, he's not Karnak the Great. He can't be both places at the same time."

"No, but I don't want the cops coming by, either. I don't want them in this at all."

"Drive us up to the View, Lisey. You know, Pretty View."

Pretty View was what locals called the picnic area overlooking Castle Lake and Little Kin Pond. It was the entrance to Castle Rock State Park, and there was plenty of parking, even a couple of Portosans. And at mid-afternoon, with thunderstorms rolling in, it would very likely be deserted. A good place to stop, think, take stock, and kill some time. Maybe Amanda really was a genius.

"Come on, get us off Main Street," Amanda said, plucking at the neckline of her pajama top. "I feel like a stripper in church."

Lisey backed carefully out onto the street—now that she wanted nothing to do with the County Sheriff's Department, she was absurdly sure she was going to get into a fender-bender before she could put it behind her—and turned west. Ten minutes later she was turning in at the sign reading

CASTLE ROCK STATE PARK

PICNIC AND RESTROOM FACILITIES AVAILABLE

MAY–OCTOBER

THIS PARK CLOSES AT SUNDOWN

BARREL-PICKING PROHIBITED FOR YOUR HEALTH

BY LAW

5

Lisey's was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted—not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

"Amanda, do you really think that's—"

"If someone comes I'll nip right back into the car." Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. "Try it—the grass feels positively slinky."

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the balls of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spots where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly—not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.

"Manda!" she said. "I'm glad I'm alive!"

"So am I," Amanda said seriously, and held out her hands. The wind blew back her graying hair and made it fly like a child's. Lisey closed her fingers carefully around her sister's, trying to be mindful of Amanda's cuts but aware of a rising wildness in herself all the same. Thunder cracked overhead, the warm wind blew harder, and ninety miles to the west, thunderheads streamed through the ancient mountain passes. Amanda began to dance and Lisey danced with her, their bare feet in the grass, their linked hands in the sky.

"Yes!" Thunder cracked and Lisey had to yell it.

"Yes, what?" Manda hollered back. She was laughing again.

"Yes, I mean to kill him!"

"That's what I said! I'll help you!" Amanda shouted, and then the rain began and they ran back to the car, both of them laughing and holding their hands over their heads.

6

They were under cover before the first of that afternoon's half a dozen real downpours came, and so were spared a serious soaking, which they most certainly would have gotten had they dallied; thirty seconds after the first drops fell, they could no longer see the nearest picnic table, less than twenty yards away. The rain was cold, the inside of the car warm, and the windshield fogged up at once. Lisey started the engine and turned on the defroster. Amanda snared Lisey's cell phone. "Time to call Miss Buggy Bumpers," she said, using a childhood name for Darla Lisey hadn't heard in years.

Lisey glanced at her watch and saw it was now after three. Not much chance of Canty and Darla (once known as Miss Buggy Bumpers, and how she'd hated it) still being at lunch. "They're probably on the road between Portland and Auburn by now," she said.

"Yes, they probably are," Amanda said, speaking to Lisey as though she were a child. "That's why I'm going to call Miss Buggy's cell."

It's Scott's fault if I'm technologically challenged, Lisey thought of saying. Ever since he died, I keep falling farther behind the cutting edge. Why, I haven't even gotten around to buying a DVD player yet, and everybody has those.

What she did say was, "If you call Darla Miss Buggy Bumpers, she'll probably hang up even if she realizes it's you."

"I'd never do that." Amanda stared out at the pelting rain. It had turned the BMW's windshield into a glass river. "Do you know why me n Canty used to call her that, and why it was so mean of us?"

"No."

"When she was only three or four, Darla had a little red rubber dolly. She was the original Miss Buggy Bumpers. Darl loved that old thing. One cold night she left Miss Buggy on a radiator and she melted. Sweet baldheaded Christ, what a stink."

Lisey tried her best to hold back more laughter and failed. Because her throat was locked and her mouth was shut, it came out through her nose and she blew a large quantity of clear snot onto her fingers.

"Euwww, charming, high tea is served, madam," Amanda said.

"There are Kleenex in the glove compartment," Lisey said, blushing to the roots of her hair. "Would you give me some?" Then she thought of Miss Buggy Bumpers melting on the radiator, and this crossed with what had been Dandy's juiciest curse—sweet baldheaded Christ—and she started laughing again, although she recognized the sadness hidden like a sweet-sour pearl within her hilarity, something that had to do with the neatly-put-together do-it-my-

way-darling adult Darla and the ghost child still hidden just beneath, that jam-smeared and often furious kid who had always seemed to need something.

"Oh, just wipe it on the steering wheel," Amanda said, now laughing again herself. She was holding the hand with the phone in it against her stomach. "I think I'm going to pee myself."

"If you pee in those pajamas, Amanda, they'll melt. Give me that damn box of Kleenex."

Amanda, still laughing, opened the glove compartment and handed over the Kleenex.

"Do you think you'll be able to get her?" Lisey asked. "In all this rain?"

"If she's got her phone turned on, I'll get her. And unless she's in a movie or something, she's always got it turned on. I talk to her almost every day—sometimes twice, if Matt's off on one of his teaching orgies. 'Cause, see, sometimes Metzie calls her and Darla tells me what she says. These days Darl's the only one in the family Metzie will talk to."

Lisey was fascinated by this. She'd had no idea Amanda and Darla talked about Amanda's troubled daughter—certainly Darla had never said anything about it. She wished she could pursue the matter further, but supposed this wasn't the time to do so. "What will you tell her, if you get her?"

"Just listen. I think I've got it figured out, but I'm afraid if I tell you in advance, it'll lose some of its…I don't know. Freshness. Believability. All I want is to get the two of them far enough away so they won't come wandering in and—"

"—get caught in Max Silver's potato grader?" Lisey asked. Over the years they'd all worked for Mr. Silver: a quarter for every barrel of potatoes you picked, and you ended up scrubbing dirt out from under your nails until February.

Amanda gave her a sharp look, then smiled. "Something like that. Darla and Canty can be annoying, but I love em, so sue me. I sure wouldn't want em getting hurt just because they turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Me either," Lisey said softly.

A burst of hail rattled down on the roof and windshield; then it was just hard rain again.

Amanda patted her hand. "I know that, Little."

Little. Not little Lisey, just Little. How long since Amanda had called her that? And she'd been the only one who ever did.

7

Amanda entered the number with some difficulty because of her hands, going wrong once and having to start over. The second time she managed it, pushed the green SEND button, and put the small Motorola phone to her ear.

The rain had let up a little. Lisey realized she could see the first picnic table again. How many seconds since Amanda had sent the call on its way? She looked from the picnic table to her sister, eyebrows raised. Amanda started to shake her head, then straightened in her bucket seat and raised her right forefinger, as if summoning a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

"Darla?…Can you hear me?…Do you know who this is?…Yes! Yes, really!"

Amanda stuck out her tongue and bugged her eyes, miming Darla's reaction with silent and rather cruel efficiency: a game-show contestant who has just won the bonus round.

"Yes, she's right beside m…Darla, slow down! First I couldn't talk and now I can't get a word in edgeways! I'll let you talk to Lisey in just a…"

Amanda listened longer this time, nodding, at the same time clipping the thumb and fingers of her right hand together in a quack-quack-quack gesture.

"Uh-huh, I'll tell her, Darl." Without bothering to cover the mouthpiece of the phone—probably because she wanted Darla to hear the message being passed on—Amanda said, "She and Canty are together, Lisey, but still at the Jetport. Canty's plane was held up by thunderstorms out of Boston. Isn't that a shame?"

Amanda gave Lisey a thumbs-up as she said this last, then returned her attention to the phone.

"I'm glad I caught you guys before you started rolling, because I'm not at Greenlawn anymore. Lisey and I are at Acadia Mental Health in Derry…that's right, Derry."

She listened, nodding.

"Yes, I guess it is sort of a miracle. All I know is I heard Lisey calling and I woke up. The last thing I remember before that is you guys taking me to Stephens Memorial in No Soapa. Then I just…I heard Lisey calling me and it was like when you hear someone calling you out of a deep sleep…and the docs at Greenlawn sent me up here for all these tests on my brain that probably cost a fortune…"

Listening.

"Yes, hon, I do want to say hi to Canty, and I'm sure Lisey does, too, but they want us now and the phone won't work in the room where they do their tests. You'll drive up, won't you? I'm sure you can be in Derry by seven o'clock, eight o'clock tops…"

At that moment the skies opened again. This cloudburst was even fiercer than the first had been, and suddenly the car was filled with its hollow drumming sound. For the first time Amanda seemed completely at a loss. She looked at Lisey, eyes wide and full of panic. One finger pointed at the roof of the car, where the sound was coming from. Her lips formed the words She wants to know what that sound is.

Lisey didn't hesitate. She snatched the telephone away from Amanda and put it to her own ear. The connection was bellclear in spite of the storm (maybe even because of it, for all Lisey knew). She heard not just Darla but Canty as well, talking to each other in agitated, confused, jubilant voices; in the background she could even hear a loudspeaker announcing flight delays due to bad weather.

"Darla, it's Lisey. Amanda's back! All the way back! Isn't it wonderful?"

"Lisey, I can't believe it!"

"Seeing's believing," Lisey said. "Get your ass up to Acadia in Derry and see for yourself."

"Lisey, what's that noise? It sounds like you're in a shower!"

"Hydrotherapy, right across the hall!" Lisey said, lying giddily and thinking We'll never be able to explain this later—not in a million years. "They've got the door open and it's awfully noisy."

For a moment there was no sound but the steadily downpouring rain. Then Darla said, "If she's really all right, maybe Canty and I could go to the Snow Squall anyway. It's a long drive up to Derry and we're both famished."

For a moment Lisey was furious with her, then could almost have punched herself in the eye for feeling that way. The longer they took, the better—wasn't that right? Yet still, the put-upon petulance she heard in Darla's voice made Lisey feel a little sick to her stomach. And that was also the sister thing, she supposed.

"Sure, why not?" she said, and made a thumb-and-forefinger circle at Amanda, who smiled back and nodded. "We're not going anywhere, Darl."

Except maybe to Boo'ya Moon, to get rid of a dead lunatic. If we're lucky, that is. If things break our way.

"Can you put Manda on again?" Darla still sounded peeved, as if she'd never seen that dreadful catatonic heaviness and now suspected Amanda had been faking all along. "Canty wants to talk to her."

"You bet," Lisey said, and mouthed Cantata to Amanda as she handed the phone back.

Amanda assured Canty repeatedly that yes, she was all right, and yes, it was a miracle; no, she didn't mind a bit if Canty and Darla went through with their original plan for lunch at the Snow Squall, and no, she most definitely didn't need them to divert to Castle View and pick up anything at her house. She had everything she needed, Lisey had taken care of that.

Toward the end of the conversation the rain stopped all at once, without the slightest slackening, as if God had turned off a faucet in the sky, and Lisey was struck by a queer idea: this was how it rained in Boo'ya Moon, in quick, furious, offand-on showers.

I've left it behind, but not very far, she thought, and realized that sweet, clean taste was still in her mouth.

As Amanda told Cantata that she loved her and then broke the connection, an improbable shaft of humid June sunlight broke through the clouds and another rainbow formed in the sky, this one closer, shining above Castle Lake. Like a promise, Lisey thought. The kind you want to believe but don't quite trust.

8

Amanda's murmuring voice called her away from her

contemplation of the rainbow. Manda was asking Directory Assistance for the Greenlawn number, then writing it with the tip of her finger in the fog forming on the bottom of the Beemer's windshield.

"That'll stay there even after the windshield's completely defogged, you know," Lisey told her when Amanda had rung off. "It'll take Windex to get rid of it. I had a pen in the center console—why didn't you ask?"

"Because I'm catatonic," Amanda said, and held the phone out to her.

Lisey only looked at it. "Who am I supposed to call?"

"As if you didn't know."

"Amanda—"

"It has to be you, Lisey. I have no idea who to talk to, or how you even got me in there." She was silent for a moment, twiddling her fingers on the legs of her pajamas. The clouds had closed up again, the day was once more dark, and the rainbow might have been a dream. "Sure I do," she said at last. "Only it wasn't you, it was Scott. He fixed it somehow. Saved me a seat."

Lisey only nodded. She didn't trust herself to say anything.

"When? After the last time I tuned up on myself? After the last time I saw him in Southwind? What he called Boonya Moon?" Lisey didn't bother to correct her. "He schmoozed a doc named Hugh Alberness. Alberness agreed you were headed for trouble after looking at your records, and when you freaked this time, he examined you and admitted you. You have no memory of that? Any of it?"

"No."

Lisey took the cell phone and looked at the number on the partially fogged windshield. "I don't have a clue what to tell him, Manda."

"What would Scott have told him, Little?"

Little. There it was again. Another shower, furious but of no more than twenty seconds' duration, beat on the roof of the car, and while it drummed, Lisey found herself thinking of all the speaking engagements she'd gone to with Scott—what he called gigs. With the notable exception of Nashville in 1988, it seemed to her that she always had a good time, and why not? He told them what they wanted to hear; her job was only to smile and clap in the right places. Oh, and sometimes she had to mouth Thank you when acknowledged. Sometimes they gave him things—souvenirs, mementos—and he gave them to her and she had to hold them. Sometimes people took pictures and sometimes there were people like Tony Eddington—Toneh—whose job was to write it up and sometimes they mentioned her and sometimes they didn't and sometimes they spelled her name right and sometimes they didn't and once she had been identified as Scott Landon's Gal Pal and that was okay, it was all okay because she didn't make a fuss, she was good at quiet, but she was not like the little girl in the Saki story, invention at short notice was most assuredly not her specialty, and—

"Listen, Amanda, if channeling Scott is what you had in mind, it's not working, I'm really clueless here. Why don't you just call Dr. Alberness and tell him you're all right…" As she was saying this, Lisey tried to pass the cell phone back.

Amanda raised her mutilated hands to her chest in refusal. "It wouldn't work no matter what I said. I'm crazy. You, on the other hand, are not only sane, you're the famous writer's widow. So make the call, Lisey. Get Dr. Alberness out of our road. And do it now."

9

Lisey dialed, and what followed was, to begin with, almost too similar to the call she'd made on her long, long Thursday—the day she had started following the stations of the bool. It was once more Cassandra on the other end, and Lisey once more recognized the soporific music when she was put on hold, but this time Cassandra sounded both excited and relieved to hear from her. She said she was going to connect Lisey with Dr. Alberness at his home.

"Don't go away, now," she instructed Lisey before disappearing into what might have been the old Donna Summer disco tune "Love to Love You, Baby," before undergoing a musical lobotomy. Don't go away had an ominous ring, but the fact that Hugh Alberness was at home…surely that was hopeful, wasn't it?

He could have called the cops from home as easily as from his office, you know. Or the on-call doc at Greenlawn could have done it. And what are you going to tell him when he comes on? Just what the hell are you going to tell him?

What would Scott have told him?

Scott would have told him that reality is Ralph.

And yes, that was undoubtedly true.

Lisey smiled a little at the thought, and at the memory of Scott pacing around a hotel room in…Lincoln? Lincoln, Nebraska? More likely Omaha, because this had been a hotel room, a nice one, maybe even part of a suite. He'd been reading the newspaper when a fax from his editor had come sliding under the door. The editor, Carson Foray, wanted further changes in the third draft of Scott's new novel. Lisey couldn't remember which novel, just that it had been one of the later ones, which he sometimes referred to as "Landon's Throbbing Love Stories." In any case, Carson—who had been with Scott for what old Dandy would have called a dead coon's age— felt that a chance meeting between two characters after twenty years or so was poorly managed. "Plot creaks a bit here, old boy," he'd written.

"Creak on this, old boy," Scott had grumbled, grabbing his crotch with one hand (and had that sweetly troublesome lock of hair tumbled across his brow when he did it? of course it did). And then, before she could say anything of an

ameliorative nature, he had snatched up the newspaper, rattled it to the back page, and shown her an item in a feature called This Odd World. It was headlined DOG FINDS HIS WAY HOME—AFTER 3 YEARS. It told the story of a Border Collie named Ralph, who had been lost while on vacation with his family in Port Charlotte, Florida. Three years later Ralph had shown up at the family manse in Eugene, Oregon. He was thin, collarless, and a little footsore, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Just came walking up the driveway, sat down on the stoop, and barked to be let in.

"What do you think Monsieur Carson Foray would make of that if it turned up in a book of mine?" Scott had demanded, brushing the hair off his forehead (it flopped right back, of course). "Do you think he'd shoot me a fax telling me it creaked a bit, old boy?"

Lisey, both amused by his pique and almost absurdly touched by the thought of Ralph coming back after all those years (and God knew what adventures), agreed that Carson probably would.

Scott had snatched back the paper, peered balefully for a moment at the photo of Ralph looking sporty in a new collar and a paisley bandanna, then tossed it aside. "I'll tell you something, Lisey," he'd said, "novelists labor under tremendous handicaps. Reality is Ralph, showing up after three years, and no one knows why. But a novelist can't tell that story! Because it creaks a bit, old boy!"

Having delivered himself of this diatribe, Scott had then, to the best of her recollection, gone back and rewritten the pages in question.

The holdmusic cut off. "Mrs. Landon, still there?" Cassandra asked.

"Still here," Lisey said, feeling considerably calmer. Scott had been right. Reality was a drunk buying a lottery ticket, cashing out to the tune of seventy million dollars, and splitting it with his favorite barmaid. A little girl emerging alive from the well in Texas where she'd been trapped for six days. A college boy falling from a fifth-floor balcony in Cancún and only breaking his wrist. Reality was Ralph.

"I'm transferring you now," Cassandra said.

There was a double click, then Hugh Alberness—a very concerned Hugh Alberness, she judged, but not a panic-stricken one—was saying, "Mrs. Landon? Where are you?"

"On the road to my sister's house. We'll be there in twenty minutes."

"Amanda's with you?"

"Yes." Lisey had determined to answer his questions, but no more. Part of her was quite curious as to what those questions would be.

"Mrs. Landon—"

"Lisey."

"Lisey, there are a great many concerned people at Greenlawn this afternoon, especially Dr. Stein, the on-call physician, Nurse Burrell, who is in charge of the Ackley Wing, and Josh Phelan, who's head of our small but ordinarily quite able campus security team."

Lisey decided this was both a question—What did you do?—and an accusation—You scared the hell out of some folks today!—and thought she'd better respond to it. Briefly. It would be only too easy to dig herself a hole and then fall into it.

"Yes, well. I'm sorry about that. Very. But Amanda wanted to leave, she was very insistent about that, and she was also very insistent about not calling anyone from Greenlawn until we were well away from there. Under the circumstances, I thought it was best to go with the flow. It was a judgment call."

Amanda gave her a vigorous double thumbs-up, but she couldn't afford to be distracted. Dr. Alberness might have been a huhyooge fan of her husband's books, but Lisey had no doubt he was also excellent at getting things out of people that they didn't want or mean to tell.

Alberness, however, sounded excited. "Mrs. Landon…Lisey…is your sister responding? Is she aware and responding?"

"Hearing is believing," Lisey said, and handed the phone to Amanda. Amanda looked alarmed, but took the cell phone. Lisey mouthed the words Be careful.

10

"Hello, Dr. Alberness?" Amanda spoke slowly and carefully but clearly. "Yes, this is she." She listened. "Amanda Debusher, correct." She listened. "My middle name is Georgette." Listened. "July of 1946. Which makes me not quite sixty." Listened. "I have one child, a daughter named Intermezzo. Metzie for short." Listened. "George W. Bush, sad to say—I believe the man has a God-complex at least as dangerous as that of his stated enemies." Listened. Shook her head minutely. "I…I really can't go into all that now, Dr. Alberness. Here's Lisey." She handed the phone back, her eyes begging for a good review…or at least a passing grade. Lisey nodded vigorously. Amanda collapsed back against her seat like a woman who has just run a race.

"—still there?" the phone was squawking when Lisey put it back to her ear.

"It's Lisey, Dr. Alberness."

"Lisey, what happened?"

"I'll have to give you the short form, Dr.—"

"Hugh. Please. Hugh."

Lisey had been sitting bolt-upright behind the wheel. Now she allowed herself to relax a little against the comforting leather of the driver's seat. He had asked her to call him Hugh. They were pals again. She would still have to be careful, but it was probably going to be all right.

"I was visiting her—we were on her patio—and she just came around."

Showed up limping and without her collar, but otherwise fine, Lisey thought, and had to clamp down on a crazy bray of laughter. On the far side of the lake, lightning flashed brilliantly. Her head felt like that.

"I've never heard of such a thing," Hugh Alberness said. This wasn't a question, so Lisey stayed silent. "And how did you…uh…make your exit?"

"I beg pardon?"

"How did you get past the Ackley Wing reception desk? Who buzzed you out?"

Reality is Ralph, Lisey reminded herself. Taking care to sound only a little puzzled, she said: "No one asked us to sign out, or anything—they all looked very busy. We just walked out."

"What about the door?"

"It was open," Lisey said.

"I'll be—" Alberness said, and then made himself stop.

Lisey waited for more. She was quite sure there would be more.

"The nurses found a key-ring, a key-case, and a pair of slippers. Also a pair of sneakers with the socks inside them."

For a moment Lisey was stuck on her key-ring. She hadn't realized the rest of her keys were also gone, and it would probably be better not to let Alberness know that. "I keep a spare car key under the bumper of my car in a magnetic box. As for the ones on my ring…" Lisey tried for a halfway genuine laugh. She had no idea if she succeeded, but at least Amanda did not pale noticeably. "I'd be sorry to lose those! You'll have the staff hold them for me, won't you?"

"Of course, but we need to see Miss Debusher. There are certain procedures, if you want us to release her into your custody." Dr. Alberness's voice suggested he thought this was a terrible idea, but there was no question here. It was hard, but Lisey waited. On the far side of Castle Lake, the sky had once more gone dead black. Another squall was rushing their way. Lisey wanted very much to be done with this conversation before it hit, but still she waited. She had an idea that she and Alberness had reached the critical point.

"Lisey," he said at last, "why did you and your sister leave your footwear?"

"I don't really know. Amanda was insistent that we go at once, that we go barefoot, and that I not take my keys—"

"With the keys, she may have been worried about the metal detector," Alberness said. "Although, given her condition, I'm surprised she even…never mind, go on."

Lisey looked away from the oncoming squall, which had now blotted out the hills on the far side of Castle Lake. "Do you remember why you wanted us to leave barefooted, Amanda?" she asked, and tilted the phone toward her.

"No," Amanda said loudly, then added: "Only that I wanted to feel the grass. The slinky grass."

"Did you get that?" Lisey asked Alberness.

"Something about feeling the grass?"

"Yes, but I'm sure that it was more. She was very insistent."

"And you just did as she asked?"

"She's my older sister, Hugh—my oldest sister, actually. Also, I have to admit I was too excited at having her back on planet Earth to think very straight."

"But I—we—really need to see her, and make sure this is an actual recovery."

"If I bring her back in for examination tomorrow, would that be all right?"

Amanda was shaking her head hard enough to make her hair fly, her eyes big with alarm. Lisey began nodding her own head just as emphatically.

"That will do very well," Alberness said. Lisey could hear the relief in his voice, real relief that made her feel bad about lying to him. Some things, however, had to be done once you had it strapped on nice and tight. "I could come in to Greenlawn around two tomorrow afternoon and speak to both of you myself. Would that suit?"

"That would be fine." Assuming we're still alive tomorrow at two.

"All right, then. Lisey, I wonder if—" Just then, directly above them, a glare-bright bolt of lightning raced beneath the clouds and struck something on the far side of the highway. Lisey heard the crack; she smelled both electricity and burning. She had never been so close to a lightning strike in her whole life. Amanda screamed, the sound almost completely lost in a monstrous roll of follow-thunder.

"What was that?" Alberness shouted. Lisey thought the connection was as good as ever, but the doctor her husband had so assiduously cultivated on Amanda's behalf five years before suddenly seemed very far away and unimportant.

"Thunder and lightning," she said calmly. "We're having quite a storm here, Hugh."

"You'd better pull over to the side of the road."

"I've already done that, but I want to get off this phone before it gives me a shock, or something. I'll see you tomorrow—"

"The Ackley Wing—"

"Yes. At two. With Amanda. Thanks for—" Lightning flared overhead and she cringed, but this time it was more diffuse, and the thunder which followed, while loud, didn't threaten to burst her eardrums. "—for being so understanding," she finished, and pushed the END button without saying goodbye. The rain came at once, as if it had been waiting for her to finish her call. It beat the car in a white fury. Never mind the picnic bench; Lisey could no longer see to the end of her car's hood.

Amanda clutched her shoulder, and Lisey thought of another country song, the one opining that if you worked your fingers to the bone, all you got was bony fingers. "I'm not going back there, Lisey, I'm not!"

"Ow, Manda, that hurts!"

Amanda let go but didn't pull back. Her eyes blazed. "I'm not going back there."

"You are. Just long enough to talk to Dr. Alberness."

"No—"

"Shut up and listen to me."

Amanda blinked and sat back, recoiling from the fury in Lisey's voice.

"Darla and I had to stick you in there, we had no choice. You were nothing but a breathing lump of meat with drool running out one end and piss running out the other. And my husband, who knew it was going to happen, did not just take care of you in one world but in two. You owe me, big sissa Manda-Bunny. Which is why you're going to help me tonight and yourself tomorrow, and I don't want to hear any more about it except 'Yes, Lisey.' Have you got it?"

"Yes, Lisey," Amanda muttered. Then, looking down at her cut hands and starting to cry again: "But what if they make me go back to that room? What if they lock me in and make me take sponge-baths and drink bug-juice?"

"They won't. They can't. Your committal was purely voluntary— Darla and I did the volunteering, since you were hors-debatty."

Amanda snickered dolefully. "Scott used to say that. And sometimes, when he thought someone was stuck-up, he'd say they were hors-de-snotty."

"Yes," Lisey said, not without a pang. "I remember. Anyway, you're okay now. That's the point." She took one of Amanda's hands, reminding herself to be gentle. "You're going to go in there tomorrow and charm the socks off that doc."

"I'll try," Amanda said. "But not because I owe you."

"No?"

"Because I love you," Amanda said with simple dignity. Then, in a very small voice: "You'll come with, won't you?" "You bet I will."

"Maybe…maybe your boyfriend will get us and I won't have to worry about Greenlawn at all."

"Told you not to call him my boyfriend."

Amanda smiled wanly. "I think I can manage to remember that, if you can drop the Manda-Bunny shit."

Lisey burst out laughing.

"Why don't you get going, Lisey? The rain's letting up. And please turn on the heater. It's getting cold in here."

Lisey flicked it on, backed the BMW out of its parking space, and turned toward the road. "We'll go to your house," she said. "Dooley's probably not watching it if it's raining as hard there as it has been here—at least I hope not. And even if he is, what's he going to see? We go to your house, then we go to my house. Two middle-aged women. Is he going to worry about two middle-aged women?"

"Unlikely," Amanda said. "But I'm glad we sent Canty and Miss Buggy Bumpers off on a long trip, aren't you?"

Lisey was, even though she knew that, like Lucy Ricardo, she was going to have some 'splainin to do down the line. She pulled out onto the highway, which was now deserted. She hoped she wouldn't encounter a tree lying across the road and knew it was very possible that she would. Thunder growled overhead, sounding ill-tempered.

"I can get some clothes that actually fit me," Amanda was saying. "Also, I have two pounds of nice ground chuck in my freezer. It'll thaw nicely in the microwave, and I'm very hungry."

"My microwave," Lisey said, not taking her eyes off the road. The rain had stopped entirely for the time being, but there were more dark clouds up ahead. Black as a stage villain's hat, Scott would have said, and she was struck by the old sick wanting of him, that empty place that could now never be filled. That needing-place.

"Did you hear me, little Lisey?" Amanda asked, and Lisey realized that her sister had been talking. Saying something about something. Twenty-four hours ago she had been afraid Manda would never speak again, and here she was, already ignoring her. But wasn't that the way the world turned?

"No," Lisey admitted. "Guess not. Sorry."

"That's you, always was. Off in your own…" Amanda's voice trailed away, and she made a business of looking out the window.

"Always off in my own little world?" Lisey asked, smiling.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." They came around a curve and Lisey swerved to avoid a large fir branch lying in the road. She considered stopping and tossing it onto the shoulder, and decided to leave it for the next person to come along. The next person to come along would probably not have a psychopath to deal with. "If it's Boo'ya Moon you're thinking of, it's not really my world, anyway. It seems to me that everyone who goes there has his or her own version. What were you saying?"

"Just that I have something else you might want. Unless you're already strapped, that is."

Lisey was startled. She took her eyes off the road for a moment to look at her sister. "What? What did you say?"

"Just a figure of speech," Amanda said. "I mean I have a gun."

11

There was a long white envelope propped on the sill of Amanda's screen door, well under the porch overhang and thus safe from the rain. Lisey's first alarmed thought on seeing it was Dooley's been here already. But the envelope Lisey had found after discovering the dead cat in her mailbox had been blank on both sides. This one had Amanda's name printed on the front. She handed it over. Amanda looked at the printing, turned the card over to read the embossing on the back— Hallmark—and then spoke a single disdainful word: "Charles."

For a moment the name meant nothing to Lisey. Then she remembered that once upon a time, before this current craziness had begun, Amanda had had a boyfriend.

Shootin' Beans, she thought, and made a strangled noise in her throat.

"Lisey?" Amanda asked. Her eyebrows went up.

"Just thinking about Canty and Miss Buggy, charging up to Derry," Lisey said. "I know it's not funny, but—"

"Oh, it has its humorous elements," Amanda said. "Probably this does, too." She opened the envelope and removed the card. Scanned it. "Oh. My. God. Look. What just fell out of. The dog's ass."

"Can I see?"

Amanda passed it over. On the front was a gap-toothed little boy, Hallmark's idea of tough but endearing (too-big sweater, patched jeans), holding out a single droopy flower. Gee, I'm Sorry! read the message below the scamp's battered sneakers. Lisey flipped it open and read this:

I know I hurt your feelin's, and I guess you're feelin' bad,

This is just a note to say you ain't the only one who's sad!

I thought I'd send a card an' apologize to you,

'Cuz to think of you down in the dumps has made me feel so blue!

So get out an' smell the roses! Be happy for a while!

Get that spring back in your step! Put on that cheery smile!

Today I guess I made you feel a tiny bit o' sorrow,

But I hope we'll still be friends when the sun comes out tomorrow!

It was signed Yours in friendship (4-Ever! Remember the Good Times!!) Charles "Charlie" Corriveau.

Lisey tried mightily to keep a solemn face, but couldn't. She burst out laughing. And Amanda joined her. They stood on the porch together, laughing. When it began to wind down a little, Amanda stood up straight and declaimed to her rain-soaked front yard, with the card held out before her like a choirbook.

"My darling Charles, I cannot let another moment pass, without asking you to come over here and kiss my fuckin ass."

Lisey fell against the side of the house hard enough to rattle the nearest window, screaming with laughter, her hands against her chest. Amanda gave her a haughty smile and marched down the porch stairs. She squelched two or three steps into the yard, upended the little lawn-pixie that stood guard over the rose bushes, and fished out the spare latchkey she kept stashed beneath. But while she was bent over, she took the opportunity to rub Charlie Corriveau's card briskly over her green-clad fanny.

No longer caring if Jim Dooley might be watching from the woods, no longer thinking of Jim Dooley at all, Lisey collapsed to a sitting position on the porch, now wheezing with laughter because she had almost no breath left. She might have laughed so hard once or twice with Scott, but maybe not. Maybe not even then.

12

There was a single message on Amanda's answering machine, and it was from Darla, not Dooley. "Lisey!" she said exuberantly. "I don't know what you did, but wow! We're on our way to Derry! Lisey, I love you! You're a champ!"

She heard Scott saying Lisey, you're a champ at this! and her laughter began to dry up.

Amanda's gun turned out to be a Pathfinder .22 revolver, and when Amanda passed it over, it felt absolutely correct in Lisey's hand, as if it had been manufactured with her in mind. Amanda had been keeping it in a shoebox on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. With only minimal fiddling, Lisey was able to swing out the cylinder.

"Jesus-please-us, Manda, this thing is loaded!"

As if Someone Up There was displeased with Lisey's profanity, the skies opened and more rain poured down. A moment later, the windows and gutters were rattling and pinging with hail. "What's a woman on her own supposed to do if a raper comes in?" Amanda asked. "Point an unloaded gun at him and shout bang? Lisey, hook this for me, would you?" Amanda had put on a pair of jeans. Now she presented her bony back and the hooks of her bra. "Every time I try, my hands just about kill me. You should have taken me down for a little dip in that pool of yours."

"I was having enough trouble getting you away from it without baptizing you in it, please and thank you," Lisey said, doing the hooks. "Wear the red shirt with the yellow flowers, would you? I love that one on you."

"It shows my gut."

"Amanda, you don't have a gut."

"I do s—Why in the name of Jesus, Mary, and JoJo the Carpenter are you taking the bullets out?"

"So I don't shoot my own kneecap off." Lisey put the bullets in the pocket of her jeans. "I'll re-load it later." Although whether she could point it at Jim Dooley and actually pull the trigger…she just didn't know. Maybe. If she summoned up the memory of her can opener.

But you do mean to get rid of him. Don't you?

She certainly did. He had hurt her. That was strike one. He was dangerous. That was strike two. She could trust no one else to do it, strike three and you're out. Still, she continued to look at the Pathfinder with fascination. Scott had researched gunshot wounds for one of his novels—Relics, she was quite sure—and she'd made the mistake of looking into a folder filled with very ugly photographs. Until then she hadn't realized how lucky Scott himself had been that day in Nashville. If Cole's bullet had hit a rib and splintered—

"Why not take it in the shoebox?" Amanda asked, pulling on a rude tee-shirt (KISS ME WHERE IT STINKS—MEET ME IN MOTTON) instead of the button-up one Lisey liked. "There are some extra shells in it, too. You can tape it shut while I'm getting the meat out of the freezer."

"Where did you get it, Manda?"

"Charles gave it to me," Amanda said. She turned away, seized a brush from her not-so-vain vanity, peered into the mirror, and went at her hair furiously. "Last year."

Lisey put the gun, so much like the one Gerd Allen Cole had used on her husband, back in the shoebox and watched Amanda in the mirror.

"I slept with him two and sometimes three times a week for four years," Amanda said. "Which is intimate. Wouldn't you agree that's intimate?"

"Yes."

"I also washed his undershorts for four years, and scraped the scaly stuff off his scalp once a week so it wouldn't fall on the shoulders of his dark suits and embarrass him, and I think those things are a hell of a lot more intimate than fucking. What do you think?"

"I think you've got a point."

"Yeah," Amanda said. "Four years of that and I get a Hallmark card as severance pay. That woman he found up there in the Sin-Jin is welcome to him."

Lisey felt like cheering. No, she didn't think Manda needed a dip in the pool.

"Let's get the meat out of the freezer and go to your house," Amanda said. "I'm starving."

13

The sun came out as they approached Patel's Market, putting a rainbow like a fairy-gate over the road ahead. "You know what I'd like for supper?" Amanda asked.

"No, what?"

"A big, nasty mess of Hamburger Helper. I don't suppose you've got anything like that at your house, do you?"

"I did," Lisey said, smiling guiltily, "but I ate it."

"Pull in to Patel's," Amanda said. "I'll spring for a box."

Lisey pulled in. Amanda had insisted on bringing her housemoney from the blue pitcher where she kept it stashed in the kitchen, and she now extracted a crumpled five-spot. "What kind do you want, Little?"

"Anything but Cheeseburger Pie," Lisey said.