Lisey's Story(18)

When she looks at him again, his eyes are different. The fierceness is gone. He's fading, but maybe that's all right, because he looks sane again. "Lisey...?"

Still whispering. Looking directly into his eyes. "Leave that smucking thing alone and it will go away." For a moment she almost adds, You can take care of the rest of this mess later, but the idea is senseless - for awhile, the only thing Scott can do for himself is not die. What she says is, "Don't you ever make that noise again."

He licks at his lips. She sees the blood on his tongue and it turns her stomach, but she doesn't pull away from him. She supposes she's in this now until the ambulance hauls him away or he quits breathing right here on this hot pavement a hundred yards or so from his latest triumph; if she can stick through that last, she guesses she can stick through anything.

"I'm so hot," he says. "If only I had a piece of ice to suck..."

"Soon," Lisey says, not knowing if she's promising rashly and not caring. "I'm getting it for you." At least she can hear the ambulance howling its way toward them. That's something.

And then, a kind of miracle. The girl with the bows on her shoulders and the new scrapes on her palms fights her way to the front of the crowd. She's gasping like someone who has just run a race and sweat is running down her cheeks and neck, but she's holding two big waxed paper cups in her hands. "I spilled half the f**king Coke getting back here," she says, throwing a brief, baleful glance over her shoulder at the crowd, "but I got the ice okay. Ice is ni - " Then her eyes roll up almost to the whites and she reels backward, all looseygoosey in her sneakers. The campus cop - oh bless him with many blessings, huh-yooge batch of orifice and all - grabs her, steadies her, and takes one of the cups. He hands it to Lisey, then urges the other Lisa to drink from the remaining cup. Lisey Landon pays no attention. Later, replaying all this, she'll be a little in awe of her own single-mindedness. Now she only thinks Just keep her from falling on top of me again if she faints, Officer Friendly, and turns back to Scott.

He's shivering worse than ever and his eyes are dulling out, losing their grasp on her. And still, he tries. "Lisey...so hot...ice..."

"I have it, Scott. Now will you for once just shut your everlasting mouth?"

"One went north, one went south," he croaks, and then he does what she asks. Maybe he's all talked out, which would be a Scott Landon first.

Lisey drives her hand deep into the cup, sending Coke all the way to the top and splooshing over the edge. The cold is shocking and utterly wonderful. She clutches a good handful of ice-chips, thinking how ironic this is: whenever she and Scott stop at a turnpike rest area and she uses a machine that dispenses cups of soda instead of cans or bottles, she always hammers on the NO ICE button, feeling righteous - others may allow the evil soft drink companies to shortchange them by dispensing half a cup of soda and half a cup of ice, but not Dave Debusher's baby girl Lisa. What was old Dandy's saying? I didn't fall off a hayrick yesterday! And now here she is, wishing for even more ice and less Coke...not that she thinks it will make much difference. But on that one she's in for a surprise.

"Scott, here. Ice."

His eyes are half-closed now, but he opens his mouth and when she first rubs his lips with her handful of ice and then pops one of the melting shards onto his bloody tongue, his shivering suddenly stops. God, it's magic. Emboldened, she rubs her freezing, leaking hand along his right cheek, his left cheek, and then across his forehead, where drops of Cokecolored water drip into his eyebrows and then run down the sides of his nose.

"Oh Lisey, that's heaven," he says, and although still screamy, his voice sounds more with-it to her...more there. The ambulance has pulled up on the left side of the crowd with a dying growl of its siren and a few seconds later she can hear an impatient male voice shouting, "Paramedics! Let us through! Paramedics, c'mon, people, let us through so we can do our jobs, whaddaya say?"

Dashmiel, the southern-fried ass**le, chooses this moment to speak in Lisey's ear. The solicitude in his voice, given the speed with which he jackrabbitted, makes her want to grind her teeth. "How is he, darlin?"

Without looking around, she replies: "Trying to live."

7

"Trying to live," she murmured, running her palm over the glossy page in the U-Tenn Nashville Review. Over the picture of Scott with his foot poised on that dopey silver shovel. She closed the book with a snap and tossed it onto the dusty back of the booksnake. Her appetite for pictures - for memories - was more than sated for one day. There was a nasty throb starting up behind her right eye. She wanted to take something for it, not that sissy Tylenol but what her late husband had called head-bonkers. A couple of his Excedrin would be just the ticket, if they weren't too far off the shelf-date. Then a little lie-down in their bedroom until the incipient headache passed. She might even sleep awhile.

I'm still thinking of it as our bedroom, she mused, going to the stairs that lead down to the barn, which was now not really a barn at all but just a series of storage cubbies...though still redolent of hay and rope and tractor-oil, the old sweet-stubborn farm smells. Still as ours, even after two years.

And so what? What of that?

She shrugged. "Nothing, I suppose."

She was a little shocked at the mumbly, half-drunk sound of the words. She supposed all that vivid remembering had worn her out. All that relived stress. There was one thing to be grateful for: no other picture of Scott in the belly of the booksnake could call up such violent memories, he'd only been shot once and none of those colleges would have sent him photos of his fa -