Thinner

Chapter Four

They rode back to Fairview mostly in silence, Heidi driving until they were within fifteen miles of New York City and the traffic got heavy. Then she pulled into a service plaza and let Billy take them the rest of the way home. No reason why he should not be driving; the old woman had been killed, true enough, one arm almost torn from her body, her pelvis pulverized, her skull shattered like a Ming vase hurled onto a marble floor, but Billy Halleck had not lost a single point from his Connecticut driver's license. Good old tit-grabbing Cary Rossington had seen to that.

'Did you hear me, Billy?'

He glanced at her for only a second, then returned his eyes to the road. He was driving better these days, and although he didn't use his horn any more than he used to, or shout and wave his arms any more than he used to, he was more aware of other drivers' errors and his own than he ever had been before, and was less forgiving of both.

Killing an old woman did wonders for your concentration. It didn't do shit for your self-respect, and it produced some really hideous dreams, but it certainly did juice up the old concentration levels.

'I was woolgathering. Sorry.'

'I just said thank you for a wonderful time.'

She smiled at him and touched his arm briefly. It had been a wonderful time – for Heidi, at least. Heidi had indubitably Put It Behind Her – the Gypsy woman, the preliminary hearing at which the state's case had been dismissed, the old Gypsy man with the rotted nose. For Heidi it was now just an unpleasantness in the past, like Billy's friendship with that wop hoodlum from New York.

But something else was on her mind; a second quick side glance confirmed it. The smile had faded and she was looking at him and tiny wrinkles around her eyes showed.

'You're welcome,' he said. 'You're always welcome, babe.'

'And when we get home'

'I'll jump your bones again!' he cried with bogus enthusiasm, and manufactured a leer. Actually, he didn't think he could get it up if the Dallas Cowgirls paraded past him in lingerie designed by Frederick's of Hollywood. It had nothing to do with how often they had made it up at Mohonk; it was that damned fortune. THINNER. Surely it had said no such thing – it had been his imagination. But it hadn't seemed like his imagination, dammit; it had seemed as real as a New York Times headline. And that very reality was the terrible part of it, because THINNER wasn't anybody's idea of a fortune. Even YOUR FATE IS TO SOON LOSE WATE didn't really make it. Fortune writers were into things like long journeys and meeting old friends.

Ergo, he had hallucinated it.

Yep, that's right.

Ergo, he was probably losing his marbles.

Oh, come on, now, is that fair?

Fair enough. When your imagination got out of control, it wasn't good news.

'You can jump me if you want to,' Heidi said, 'but what I really want is for you to jump on our bathroom scales'

'Come on, Heidi! I lost some weight, no big deal!'

'I'm very proud of you for losing some weight, Billy, but we've been together almost constantly for the last five days, and I'll be darned if I know how you're losing it.'

He gave her a longer look this time, but she wouldn't look back at him; she only stared through the windshield, her arms folded across her bosom.

'Heidi . . .'

'You're eating as much as you ever did. Maybe more. The mountain air must have really gotten your motor revving.'

'Why gild the lily?' he asked, slowing down to slam forty cents into the basket of the Rye tollbooth. His lips were pressed together into a thin white line, his heart was beating too fast, and he was suddenly furious with her. 'What you mean is, I'm a great big hog. Say it right out if you want, Heidi. What the hell. I can take it.'

'I didn't mean anything like that!' she cried. 'Why do you want to hurt me, Billy? Why do you want to do that after we had such a good time?'

He didn't have to glance over this time to know she was near tears. Her wavering voice told him that. He was sorry, but being sorry didn't kill the anger. And the fear that was just under it.

'I don't want to hurt you,' he said, gripping the Olds's steering wheel so hard his knuckles showed white. 'I never do. But losing weight is a good thing, Heidi, so why do you want to keep hitting on me about it?'

'It is not always a good thing!' she shouted, startling him making the car swerve slightly. 'It is not always a good thing and you know it!'

Now she was crying, crying and rooting through her purse in search of a Kleenex in that half-annoying, half-endearing way she had. He handed her his handkerchief and she used it to wipe her eyes.

'You can say what you want, you can be mean, you can cross-examine me if you want, Billy, you can even spoil the time we just had. But I love you and I'm going to say what I have to say. When people start to lose weight even though they're not on a diet, it can mean they're sick. It's one of the seven warning signs of cancer.' She thrust his handkerchief back at him. His fingers touched hers as he took it. Her hand was very cold.

Well, the word was out. Cancer. Rhymes with dancer and You just shit your pants, sir. God knew the word had bobbed up in his own mind more than once since getting on the penny scale in front of the shoe store. It had bobbed up like some evil clown's dirty balloon and he had turned away from it. He had turned away from it the way you turned away from the bag ladies who sat rocking back and forth in their strange, sooty little nooks outside the Grand Central Station … or the way you turned away from the capering Gypsy children who had come with the rest of the Gypsy band. The Gypsy children sang in voices that somehow managed to be both monotonous and strangely sweet at the same time. The Gypsy children walked on their hands with tambourines outstretched, held somehow by their bare dirty toes. The Gypsy children juggled. The Gypsy children put the local Frisbee jocks to shame by spinning two, sometimes three of the plastic disks at the same time – on fingers, on thumbs, sometimes on noses. They laughed while they did all those things, and they all seemed to have skin diseases or crossed eyes or harelips. When you suddenly found such a weird combination of agility and ugliness thrust in front of you, what else was there to do but turn away? Bag ladies, Gypsy children, and cancer. Even the skittery run of his thoughts frightened him.

Still, it was maybe better to have the word out.

'I've felt fine,' he repeated, for maybe the sixth time since the night Heidi had asked him if he felt quite well. And, dammit, it was true! 'Also, I've been exercising.'

That was also true … of the last five days, anyway. They had made it up the Labyrinth Trail together, and although he'd had to exhale all the way and suck in his gut to get through a couple of the tightest places, he'd never come even close to getting stuck. In fact, it had been Heidi, puffing and out of breath, who'd needed to ask for a rest twice. Billy had diplomatically not mentioned her cigarette jones.

'I'm sure you've felt fine,' she said, 'and that's great. But a checkup would be great, too. You haven't had one in over eighteen months, and I bet Dr Houston misses you -'

'I think he's a little dope freak,' Halleck muttered.

'A little what?'

'Nothing.'

'But I'm telling you, Billy, you can't lose almost twenty pounds in two weeks just by exercising.'

'I am not sick!'

'Then just humor me.'

They rode the rest of the way to Fairview in silence. Halleck wanted to pull her to him and tell her sure, okay, he would do what she wanted. Except a thought had come to him. An utterly absurd thought. Absurd but nevertheless chilling.

Maybe there's a new style in old Gypsy curses, friends and neighbors – how about that possibility? They used to change you into a werewolf or send a demon to pull Off your head in the middle of the night, something like that, but everything changes, doesn't it? What if that old man touched me and gave me cancer? She's right, it's one of the tattletales – losing twenty pounds just like that is like when the miners' canary drops dead in his cage. Lung cancer.

leukemia … melanoma …

It was crazy, but the craziness didn't keep the thought away: What if he touched me and gave me cancer?

Linda greeted them with extravagant kisses and, to their mutual amazement, produced a very creditable lasagna from the oven and served it on paper plates bearing the face of that lasagna-lover extraordinaire, Garfield the cat. She asked them how their second honeymoon had been ('A phrase that belongs right up there with second childhood,' Halleck observed dryly to Heidi that evening, after the dishes had been done and Linda had gone flying off with two of her girlfriends to continue a Dungeons and Dragons game that had been going on for nearly a year), and before they could do more than begin to tell her about the trip, she had cried, 'Oh, that reminds me!' and spent the rest of the meal regaling them with Tales of Wonder and Horror from Fairview Junior High – a continuing story which held more fascination for her than it did for either Halleck or his wife, although both tried to listen with attention. They had been gone for almost a week, after all.

As she rushed out, she kissed Halleck's cheek loudly and cried, "Bye, skinny!'

Halleck watched her mount her bike and pedal down the front walk, ponytail flying, and then turned to Heidi. He was dumbfounded.

'Now,' she said, 'will you please listen to me?'

'You told her. You called ahead and told her to say that. Female conspiracy.'

'No.'

He scanned her face and then nodded tiredly. 'No, I guess not.'

Heidi nagged him upstairs, where he finally ended up in the bathroom, naked except for the towel around his waist. He was struck by a strong sense of deja vu – the temporal dislocation was so complete that he felt a mild physical nausea. It was an almost exact replay of the day he had stood on this same scale with a towel from this same powder-blue set wrapped around his waist. All that was lacking was the good smell of frying bacon coming up from downstairs. Everything else was exactly the same.

No. No, it wasn't. One other thing was remarkably different.

That other day he had craned over in order to read the bad news on the dial. He had to do that because his bay window was in the way.

The bay window was there, but it was smaller. There could be no question about it, because now he could look straight down and still read the numbers.

The digital readout said 229.

'That settles it,' Heidi said flatly. 'I'm making you an appointment with Dr Houston.'

'This scale weighs light,' Halleck said weakly. 'It always has. That's why I like it.'

She looked at him coldly. 'Enough bullshit is enough bullshit, my friend. You've spent the last five years bitching about how it weighs heavy, and we both know it.' In the harsh white bathroom light he could see how honestly anxious she was. The skin was drawn shinily tight across her cheekbones.

'Stay right there,' she said at last, and left the bathroom.

'Heidi?'

'Don't move!' she called back as she went downstairs.

She returned a minute later with an unopened bag of sugar. 'Net wt., 10 lbs.,' the bag announced. She plonked it on the scale. The scale considered for a moment and then printed a big red digital readout: 012.

'That's what I thought,' Heidi said grimly. 'I weigh myself, too, Billy. It doesn't weigh light, and it never has.

It weighs heavy, just like you always said. It wasn't just bitching, and we both knew it. Someone who's overweight likes an inaccurate scale. It makes the actual facts easier to dismiss. If'

'Heidi -'

'If this scale says you weigh two-twenty-nine, that means you're really down to two-twenty-seven. Now, let me

'Heidi -'

'Let me make you an appointment.'

He paused, looking down at his bare feet, and then shook his head.

'Billy!'

'I'll make it myself,' he said.

'When?'

'Wednesday. I'll make it Wednesday. Houston goes out to the country club every Wednesday afternoon and plays nine holes.' Sometimes he plays with the inimitable titgrabbing, wife-kissing Cary Rossington. 'I'll speak to him in person.'

'Why don't you call him tonight? Right now?'

'Heidi,' he said, 'no more.' And something in his face must have convinced her not to push it any further, because she didn't mention it again that night.