Hearts in Atlantis(24)

'Yeah, way off. I was scared. I thought you were having an epilepsy fit or somediing. Your eyes - '

'It's not epilepsy,' Ted said. 'And it's not dangerous. But if it happens again, it would be best if you didn't touch me.'

'Why?'

Ted lit a fresh cigarette. 'Just because. Will you promise?'

'Okay. What's the Beam?'

Ted gazed at him sharply. 'I spoke of the Beam?'

'You said "All things serve the Beam." I think that was it.'

'Perhaps sometime I'll tell you, but not today. Today you're going to the beach, aren't you?'

Bobby jumped, startled. He looked at Ted's clock and saw it was almost nine o'clock. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Maybe I ought to start getting ready. I could finish reading you the paper when I get back.'

'Yes, good. A fine idea. I have some letters to write.'

No you don't, you just want to get rid of me before I ask any other questions you don't want to answer.

But if that was what Ted was doing it was all right. As Liz Garfield so often said, Bobby had his own fish to fry. Still, as he reached the door to Ted's room, the thought of the red scrap of cloth hanging from the TV aerial and the crescent moon and the star next to the hopscotch grid made him turn reluctantly back.

'Ted, there's something - '

'The low men, yes, I know.' Ted smiled. 'For now don't trouble yourself about them, Bobby. For now all is well. They aren't moving this way or even looking this way.'

'They draw west,' Bobby said.

Ted looked at him through a scurf of rising cigarette smoke, his blue eyes steady. 'Yes,' he said, 'and with luck they'll stay west. Seattle would be fine with me. Have a good time at the seaside, Bobby.'

'But I saw - '

'Perhaps you saw only shadows. In any case, this isn't the time to talk. Just remember what I said - if I should go blank like that again, just sit and wait for it to pass. If I should reach for you, stand back. If I should get up, tell me to sit down. In that state I will do as you say. It's like being hypnotized.'

'Why do you - '

'No more questions, Bobby. Please.'

'You're okay? Really okay?'

'In the pink. Now go. Enjoy your day.'

Bobby hurried downstairs, again struck by how sharp everything seemed to be: the brilliance of the light slanting through the window on the second-floor landing, a ladybug crawling around the lip of an empty milk-bottle outside the door of the Proskys' apartment, a sweet high humming in his ears that was like the voice of the day - the first Saturday of summer vacation.

Back in the apartment, Bobby grabbed his toy cars and trucks from various stashes under his bed and at the back of his closet. A couple of these - a Matchbox Ford and a blue metal dumptruck Mr Biderman had sent home with his mom a few days after Bobby's birthday - were pretty cool, but he had nothing to rival Sully's gasoline tanker or yellow Tonka bulldozer. The 'dozer was especially good to play with in the sand. Bobby was looking forward to at least an hour's serious roadbuilding while the waves broke nearby and his skin pinkened in the bright coastal sunshine. It occurred to him that he hadn't gathered up his trucks like this since sometime last winter, when he and S-J had spent a happy post-blizzard Saturday afternoon making a road-system in the fresh snow down Commonwealth Park. He was old now, eleven, almost too old for stuff like this. There was something sad about that idea, but he didn't have to be sad right now, not if he didn't want to. His toy-truck days might be fast approaching their end, but that end wouldn't be today. Nope, not today.

His mother packed him a lunch for the trip, but she wouldn't give him any money when he asked - not even a nickel for one of the private changing-stalls which lined the ocean side of the midway. And almost before Bobby realized it was happening, they were having what he most dreaded: an argument about money.

'Fifty cents'd be enough,' Bobby said. He heard the baby-whine in his voice, hated it, couldn't stop it. 'Just half a rock. Come on, Mom, what do you say? Be a sport.'

She lit a Kool, striking the match so hard it made a snapping sound, and looked at him through the smoke with her eyes narrowed. 'You're earning your own money now, Bob. Most people pay three cents for the paper and you get paid for reading it. A dollar a week! My God! When I was a girl - '

'Mom, that money's for my bike! You know that.'

She had turned to the mirror, frowning and fussing at the shoulders of her blouse - Mr Biderman had asked her to come in for a few hours even though it was Saturday. Now she turned back, cigarette still clamped between her lips, and bent her frown on him.

'You're still asking me to buy you that bike, aren't you? Still. I told you I couldn't afford it but you're still asking.'

'No, I'm not! I'm not either!' Bobby's eyes were wide with anger and hurt. 'Just a lousy half a rock for the - '

'Half a buck here, two bits there - it all adds up, you know. What you want is for me to buy you that bike by handing you the money for everything else. Then you don't have to give up any of the other things you want.'

'That's not fair!'

He knew what she would say before she said it, even had time to think that he had walked right into that one. 'Life's not fair, Bobby-O.' Turning back to the mirror for one final pluck at the ghost of a slip-strap hovering beneath the right shoulder of her blouse.