Lisey's Story(130)
"We'll get you some clothes," Lisey said, and then, in a kind of belated panic, she slapped at the right front pocket of her carpenter's pants and let out a sigh of relief. Her wallet was still there. Relief was short-lived, however. Her SmartKey, which she'd put in her left front pocket - she knew she had, she always did - was gone. It hadn't traveled. It was either lying on the patio outside Amanda's room with her sneakers and socks or -
"Lisey!" Amanda cried, clutching her arm.
"What? What!" Lisey wheeled around, but so far as she could tell, they were still alone in the parking lot.
"I'm really awake again!" Amanda cried in a hoarse voice. There were tears standing in her eyes.
"I know it," Lisey said. She couldn't help smiling, even with the missing key to worry about. "It's pretty smucking wonderful."
"I'll get my clothes," Amanda said, and started toward the building. Lisey barely grabbed her arm. For a woman who had been catatonic only minutes ago, big sissa Manda-Bunny was now just as lively as a trout at sundown.
"Never mind your clothes," Lisey said. "You go back in there now and I guarantee you you'll be spending the night. Is that what you want?"
"No!"
"Good, because I need you with me. Unfortunately, we may be reduced to taking the city bus."
Amanda nearly screamed: "You want me to get on a bus looking like a f**king pole-dancer?"
"Amanda, I no longer have my car key. It's either on your patio or one of those benches...do you remember the benches?"
Amanda nodded reluctantly, then said: "Didn't you used to keep a spare key in a magnetic thingamabobby under the back bumper of your Lexus? Which, by the way, was a sane color for a northern climate?"
Lisey barely heard the gibe. Scott had given her the "magnetic thingamabobby" as a birthday present five or six years ago, and when she traded for the Beemer, she had transferred the Beemer's spare key to the little metal box almost without thinking about it. It should still be under the back bumper.
Unless it had fallen off. She dropped to one knee, felt around, and just when she was starting to despair, her fingers happened on it, riding as high and snug as ever.
"Amanda, I love you. You're a genius."
"Not at all," Amanda said with as much dignity as a barefoot woman in flimsy green pajamas could manage. "Just your older sister. Now could we get in the car? Because this pavement is very warm, even in the shade."
"You bet," Lisey said, unlocking the car with the spare key.
"We have to get out of here, only jeez, I hate to - " She paused, gave a brief laugh, shook her head.
"What?" Amanda asked in that special tone that really demands What now?
"Nothing. Well...I was just remembering something Daddy told me after I got my license. I drove a bunch of kids back from White's Beach one day, and...you remember White's, don't you?"
They were in the car now, and Lisey was backing out of the shady space. So far this part of the world was still quiet, and that was the way she wanted to leave it.
Amanda snorted and buckled her seatbelt, doing it carefully because of her wounded hands. "White's! Huh! Nothing but an old gravel pit that happened to have a coldspring in the bottom!" Her look of scorn melted into an expression of longing. "Nothing at all like the sand at Southwind."
"Is that what you called it?" Lisey asked, curious in spite of herself. She stopped at the mouth of the parking lot and waited for a break in traffic so she could make a left onto Minot Avenue and start the journey back to Castle Rock.
Traffic was heavy and she had to fight the impulse to make a right instead, just so she could get them away from here. "Of course," Amanda said, sounding rather put-out with Lisey.
"Southwind is where the Hollyhocks always came to pick up supplies. It's also where the pirate-girls got to see their boyfriends. Don't you remember?"
"Sort of," Lisey said, wondering if she would hear an alarm go off behind her when they discovered Amanda was gone. Probably not. Mustn't scare the patients. She saw a small break in traffic and scooted the BMW into it, earning herself a honk from some impatient driver who actually had to slow down five miles an hour to let her in.
Amanda flipped this motorist - almost certainly a man, probably wearing a baseball cap and needing a shave - a double bird, raising her fists to shoulder height and pumping the middle fingers briskly without looking around.
"Great technique," Lisey said. "Someday it'll get you raped and murdered."
Amanda rolled a sly eye in her sister's direction. "Big talk for someone in the soup." Then, with hardly a pause for breath: "What did Dandy tell you when you came back from White's that day? I bet it was foolish, whatever it was."
"He saw me get out of that old Pontiac with no sneakers or sandals on and said it was against the law to drive barefoot in the state of Maine." Lisey glanced briefly, guiltily, down at her toes on the accelerator as she finished saying this. Amanda made a small, rusty sound. Lisey thought she might be crying, or trying to. Then she realized Amanda was giggling. Lisey began to smile herself, partly because just ahead she saw the Route 202 bypass that would take her around the worst of the city traffic.
"What a fool he was!" Amanda said, getting the words out around further bursts of giggles. "What a sweet old fool! Dandy Dave Debusher! Sugar for brains! Do you know what he once told me?"