Hearts in Atlantis(34)

'I don't believe the Kilgallens or the Proskys would enjoy you yelling up to Mr Brautigan at three o'clock in the morning that you'd had a nightmare,' Liz said tartly. The Kilgallens and the Proskys had the two small second-floor apartments; Liz and Bobby were friendly with neither of them.

'I won't have any nightmares,' Bobby said, deeply humiliated to be treated like a little kid. 'I mean jeepers.'

'Keep it to yourself,' his mom said. They were sitting at Ted's kitchen table, the two adults smoking, Bobby with a rootbeer in front of him.

'It's just not the right idea,' Ted told him. 'You're a good kid, Bobby, responsible and level-headed, but eleven's too young to be on your own, I think.'

Bobby found it easier to be called too young by his friend than by his mother. Also he had to admit that it might be spooky to wake up in one of those little hours after midnight and go to the bathroom knowing he was the only person in the apartment. He could do it, he had no doubt he could do it, but yeah, it would be spooky.

'What about the couch?' he asked. 'It pulls out and makes a bed, doesn't it?' They had never used it that way, but Bobby was sure she'd told him once that it did. He was right, and it solved the problem. She probably hadn't wanted Bobby in her bed (let alone 'Brattigan'), and she really hadn't wanted Bobby up here in this hot third-floor room - that he was sure of. He figured she'd been looking so hard for a solution that she'd looked right past the obvious one.

So it was decided that Ted would spend Tuesday and Wednesday nights of the following week on the pull-out couch in the Garfields' living room. Bobby was excited by the prospect: he would have two days on his own - three, counting Thursday - and there would be someone with him at night, when things could get spooky. Not a babysitter, either, but a grownup friend. It wasn't the same as Sully-John going to Camp Winnie for a week, but in a way it was. Camp Broad Street, Bobby thought, and almost laughed out loud.

'We'll have fun,' Ted said. I'll make my famous beans-and-franks casserole.' He reached over and ruffled Bobby's crewcut.

'If you're going to have beans and franks, it might be wise to bring that down,' his mom said, and pointed the fingers holding her cigarette at Ted's fan.

Ted and Bobby laughed. Liz Garfield smiled her cynical half-smile, finished her cigarette, and put it out in Ted's ashtray. When she did, Bobby again noticed the puffiness of her eyelids.

As Bobby and his mother went back down the stairs, Bobby remembered the poster he had seen in the park - the missing Corgi who would bring you a BALL if you said HURRY UP PHIL. He should tell Ted about the poster. He should tell Ted about everything. But if he did that and Ted left 149, who would stay with him next week? What would happen to Camp Broad Street, two fellows eating Ted's famous beans-and-franks casserole for supper (maybe in front of the TV, which his mom rarely allowed) and then staying up as late as they wanted?

Bobby made a promise to himself: he would tell Ted everything next Friday, after his mother was back from her conference or seminar or whatever it was. He would make a complete report and Ted could do whatever he needed to do. He might even stick around.

With this decision Bobby's mind cleared amazingly, and when he saw an upside-down FOR SALE card on the Total Grocery bulletin board two days later - it was for a washer-dryer set - he was able to put it out of his thoughts almost immediately.

That was nevertheless an uneasy week for Bobby Garfield, very uneasy indeed. He saw two more lost-pet posters, one downtown and one out on Asher Avenue, half a mile beyond the Asher Empire (the block he lived on was no longer enough; he found himself going farther and farther afield in his daily scouting trips). And Ted began to have those weird blank periods with greater frequency. They lasted longer when they came, too. Sometimes he spoke when he was in that distant state of mind, and not always in English. When he did speak in English, what he said did not always make sense. Most of the time Bobby thought Ted was one of the sanest, smartest, neatest guys he had ever met. When he went away, though, it was scary. At least his mom didn't know. Bobby didn't think she'd be too cool on the idea of leaving him with a guy who sometimes flipped out and started talking nonsense in English or gibberish in some other language.

After one of these lapses, when Ted did nothing for almost a minute and a half but stare blankly off into space, making no response to Bobby's increasingly agitated questions, it occurred to Bobby that perhaps Ted wasn't in his own head at all but in some other world - that he had left Earth as surely as those people in Ring Around the Sun who discovered they could follow the spirals on a child's top to just about anywhere.

Ted had been holding a Chesterfield between his fingers when he went blank; the ash grew long and eventually dropped off onto the table. When the coal grew unnervingly close to Ted's bunchy knuckles, Bobby pulled it gently free and was putting it out in the overflowing ashtray when Ted finally came back.

'Smoking?' he asked with a frown. 'Hell, Bobby, you're too young to smoke.'

'I was just putting it out for you. I thought . . . ' Bobby shrugged, suddenly shy.

Ted looked at the first two fingers of his right hand, where there was a permanent yellow nicotine stain. He laughed - a short bark with absolutely no humor in it. 'Thought I was going to burn myself, did you?'

Bobby nodded. 'What do you think about when you go off like that? Where do you go?'