Thinner(23)

'Leda? It's Bill. Bill Halleck.'

'Of course it is. Hello, Billy.' Still her hand hovered below her chin, half-fisted, touching the skin of her upper throat in a quizzical, pondering gesture. Although her features were incredibly smooth for her fifty-nine years, the face lifts hadn't been able to do much for her neck; the flesh there was loose, not quite wattled.

She's drunk, maybe. Or ... He thought of Houston, tidily tucking little Bolivian snowdrifts up his nose. Drugs? Leda Rossington? Hard to believe of anyone who can bid a two no-trump with a strictly ho-hum hand ... and then make it good. And on the heels of that: She's scared. Desperate. What's this? And does it tie in somehow with what's happening to me?

That was crazy, of course ... and yet he felt an almost frenzied need to know why Leda Rossington's lips were pressed so tight, why, even in the dim fight and despite the best cosmetics money could buy, the flesh under her eyes looked almost as baggy and discolored as the flesh under his own, why the hand that was now fiddling at the neckline of her Dior dress was quivering slightly. Billy and Leda Rossington considered each other in utter silence for perhaps fifteen seconds ... and then spoke at exactly the same time.

'Leda, is Cary -' 'Cary's not here, Billy. He's'

She stopped. He made a gesture for her to go on.

'He's been called back to Minnesota. His sister is very ill.'

'That's interesting,' Halleck said, 'since Cary doesn't have any sisters.'

She smiled. It was an attempt at the well-bred, pained sort of smile polite people save for those who have been unintentionally rude. It didn't work; it was merely a pulling of the lips, more grimace than smile.

'Sister, did I say? All of this has been very trying for me - for us. His brother, I mean. His -'

'Leda, Cary's an only child,' Halleck said gently. 'We went over our sibs one drunk afternoon in the Hastur Lounge. Must have been ... oh, four years ago. The Hastur burned down not long after. That head. shop, the King in Yellow, is there now. My daughter buys her jeans there.'

He didn't know why he was going on; in some vague way he supposed it might set her at ease if he did. But now, in the light from the hall and the dimmer light from the wrought-iron yard lamp, he saw the bright track of a single tear running from her right eye almost to the corner of her mouth. And the arc below her left eye glimmered. As he watched, his words tangling in each other and coming to a confused stop, she blinked twice, rapidly, and the tear overflowed. A second bright track appeared on her left cheek.

'Go away,' she said. 'Just go away, Billy, all right? Don't ask questions. I don't want to answer them.'

Halleck looked at her, and saw a certain implacability in her eyes, just below the swimming tears. She had no intention of telling him where Cary was. And on an impulse he didn't understand either then or later, with absolutely no forethought or idea of gain, he pulled down the zipper of his jacket and held it open, as if flashing her. He heard her gasp of surprise.

'Look at me, Leda,' he said. 'I've lost seventy pounds. Do you hear me? Seventy pounds!'

'That doesn't have anything to do with me!' she cried in a low, harsh voice. Her complexion had gone a sick clay color; spots of rouge stood out on her face like the spots of color on a clown's cheeks. Her eyes looked raw. Her lips had drawn back from her perfectly capped teeth in a terrorized snarl.

'No, but I need to talk to Cary,' Halleck persisted. He came up the first step of the porch, still holding his jacket open. And I do, he thought. I wasn't sure before, but I am now. 'Please tell me where he is, Leda. Is he here?'

Her reply was a question, and for a moment he couldn't breathe at all. He groped for the porch rail with one numb hand.

'Was it the Gypsies, Billy?'

At last he was able to pull breath into his locked lungs. It came in a soft whoop.

'Where is he, Leda?'

'Answer my question first. Was it the Gypsies?'

Now that it was here - a chance to actually say it out loud -he found he had to struggle to do so. He swallowed -swallowed hard - and nodded. 'Yes. I think so. A curse. Something like a curse.', He paused. 'No, not something like. That's bullshit equivocation. I think I've had a Gypsy curse laid on me.'

He waited for her to shriek derisive laughter - he had heard that reaction so often in his dreams and in his conjectures - but her shoulders only slumped and her head bowed. She was such a picture of dejection and sorrow that in spite of his fresh terror, Halleck felt poignant, almost painful empathy for her - her confusion and her terror. He climbed the second and third porch steps, touched her arm gently ... and was shocked by the bright hate on her face when she raised her head. He stepped back suddenly, blinking ... and then had to grab for the porch railing to keep from tumbling off the steps and landing on his pratt. Her expression was a perfect reflection of the way he had momentarily felt about Heidi the other night. That such an expression should be directed against him he found both inexplicable and frightening.

'It's your fault!' she hissed at him. 'All your fault! Why did you have to hit that stupid Gypsy cunt with your car? It's all your fault!'

He looked at her, incapable of speaking. Cunt? He thought confusedly. Did I hear Leda Rossington say 'cunt'? Who would have believed she even knew such a word? His second thought was: You've got it all wrong, Leda, it was Heidi, not me ... and she's just great. In the pink. Feeling her oats. Hitting on all cylinders. Kicking up dickens. Taking ...