Lisey's Story(42)

"Blood-bools, sure. For when we didn't dare or to let out the bad-gunky. Paul made good bools. Fun bools. Like treasure hunts. Follow the clues. 'Bool! The End!' and get a prize. Like candy or an RC." The ash falls off his cigarette again. Scott's eyes are on the bloody tea in the basin. "But Daddy gives a kiss." He looks at her and she suddenly understands he knows everything she has been too timid to ask and is answering as well as he can. As well as he dares. "That's Daddy's prize. A kiss when the hurting stops."

19

She has no bandage in her medicine cabinet that will satisfy her, so Lisey ends up tearing long strips from a sheet. The sheet is old, but she mourns its passing just the same

- on a waitress's salary (supplemented by niggardly tips from the Lost Boys and only slightly better ones from the faculty members who lunch at Pat's) she can ill afford to raid her linen closet. But when she thinks of the crisscrossing cuts on his hand - and the deeper, longer gill on his forearm - she doesn't hesitate.

Scott's asleep almost before his head hits the pillow on his side of her ridiculously narrow bed; Lisey thinks she will be awake for some time, mulling over the things he's told her. Instead she falls asleep almost at once.

She wakes twice during the night, the first time because she needs to pee. The bed is empty. She sleepwalks to the bathroom, hiking the oversized University of Maine teeshirt she sleeps in to her hips as she goes, saying "Scott, hurry up, okay, I really have to g

- " But when she enters the bathroom, the night-light she always leaves burning shows her an empty room. Scott isn't there. Nor is the toilet-seat up, the way he always leaves it after he takes a whiz.

All at once Lisey no longer has to urinate. All at once she's terrified that pain has awakened him, he's remembered all the things he's told her, and has been crushed by -

what do they call them in Chuckie's Insider? - recovered memories. Are they recovered, or things he's just been keeping to himself? She doesn't know for sure, but she does know that childish way he spoke for awhile was very spooky...and suppose he's gone back down to Parks Greenhouse to finish the job? His throat this time instead of his hand?

She turns toward the dim maw of the kitchen - the apartment consists of only that and the bedroom - and catches sight of him curled up in bed. He's sleeping in his usual semifetal position, knees almost to his chest, forehead touching the wall (when they leave this place in the fall, there will be a faint but discernible mark there - Scott's mark). She has told him several times that he'd have more room if he slept on the outside, but he won't. Now he shifts a little, the springs squeak, and in the glow of the streetlight coming in the window, Lisey can see a dark wing of hair fall across his cheek.

He wasn't in bed.

But there he is, on the inside. If she doubts, she could put her hand under the sheaf of hair she's looking at, lift it, feel its weight.

So maybe I just dreamed he was gone?

That makes sense - sort of - but as she goes back into the bathroom and sits down on the toilet, she thinks again: He wasn't there. When I got up, the smucking bed was empty. She puts the ring up after she's finished, because if he gets up in the night, he'll be too asleep to do it. Then she goes back to bed. She's in a doze by the time she gets there. He's beside her now, and that's what matters. Surely that's what matters. 20

The second time she doesn't wake up on her own.

"Lisey."

It's Scott, shaking her.

"Lisey, little Lisey."

She fights it, she put in a hard day - hell, a hard week - but he's persistent.

"Lisey, wake up!"

She expects morning light to lance her eyes, but it's still dark.

"Scott. Hizzit?"

She wants to ask if he's bleeding again, or if the bandage she put on has slipped, but these ideas seem too big and complicated for her fogged-out mind. Hizzit will have to do. His face is looming over hers, completely awake. He looks excited, but not dismayed or in pain. He says, "We can't go on living like this."

That wakes her up most of the way, because it scares her. What is he saying? That he wants to break up?

"Scott?" She fumbles on the floor, comes up with her Timex, squints at it. "It's quarter past four in the morning!" Sounding put-out, sounding exasperated, and she is those things, but she is also frightened.

"Lisey, we should get a real house. Buy it." He shakes his head. "Nah, that's backwards. I think we ought to get married."

Relief floods her and she slumps back. The watch falls from her relaxing fingers and clatters to the floor. That's all right; Timexes take a licking and keep on ticking. Relief is followed by amazement; she has just been proposed to, like a lady in a romance novel. And relief is followed by a little red caboose of terror. The guy doing the proposing (at quarter past four in the morning, mind you) is the same guy who stood her up last night, tore the shit out of his hand when she yelled at him about it (and a few other things, yeah, okay, true), then came up the lawn holding the wounded hand out to her like some kind of smucking Christmas present. This is the man with the dead brother she only found out about tonight, and the dead mother that he supposedly killed because he - how did the hotshot writer put it? - growed too big.

"Lisey?"

"Shut up, Scott, I'm thinking." Oh but it's hard to think when the moon is down and the hour is none, no matter what your trusty Timex may say.