Thinner(68)

An hour later Billy was sitting in front of the television in another motel room - this the living room of a seedy little suite in the Blue Moon Motor Court and Lodge in Northeast Harbor. They were less than fifteen miles from Bar Harbor, but Ginelli seemed satisfied. On the TV screen, Woody Woodpecker was trying to sell insurance to a talking bear.

'Okay,' Ginelli said. 'You rest up the hand, William. I'm gonna be gone all day.'

'You're going back there?'

'What, go back to the hornet's nest while the hornets are still flying? Not me, my friend. No, today I'm gonna play with cars. Tonight'll be time enough for Phase Two. Maybe I'll get time enough to look in on you, but don't count on it.'

Billy didn't see Richard Ginelli again until the following morning at nine, when he showed up driving a dark blue Chevy Nova that had certainly not come from Hertz or Avis. The paint was dull and spotted, there was a hairline crack in the passenger-side window, and a big dent in the trunk. But it was jacked in the back and there was a supercharger cowling on the hood.

This time Billy had given him up for dead a full six hours ago, and he greeted Ginelli shakily, trying not to weep with relief. He seemed to be losing all control of his emotions as he lost weight ... and this morning, as the sun came up, he had felt the first unsteady racings of his heart. He had gasped for breath and pounded at his chest with one closed fist. The beat had finally smoothed out again, but that had been it: the first instance of arrhythmia.

'I thought you were dead,' he told Ginelli as he came in.

'You keep saying that and I keep turning up. I wish you would relax about me, William. I can take care of myself. I am a big boy. If you thought I was going to underestimate this old f**k, that would be one thing. But I'm not. He's smart, and he's dangerous.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing. I'll tell you later.'

'Now!'

No.'.

'Why not?'

'Two reasons,' Ginelli said patiently. 'First, because you might ask me to back off. Second, because I haven't been this tired in about twelve years. I'm gonna go in there to the bedroom and crash out for eight hours. Then I'm gonna get up and eat three pounds of the first food I can snag. Then I'm gonna go back out and shoot the moon.'

Ginelli did indeed look tired - almost haggard. Except for his eyes, Billy thought. His eyes are still whirling and twirling like a couple of fluorescent carnival pinwheels.

'Suppose I did ask you to back off?' Billy asked quietly. 'Would you do it, Richard?'

Richard looked at him for a long, considering moment and then gave Billy the answer he had known he would give ever since he had first seen that mad light in Ginelli's eyes.

'I couldn't now,' Ginelli said calmly. 'You're sick, William. It's through your whole body. You can't be trusted to know where your own best interest lies.'

In other words, you've taken out your own set of committal papers on me. Billy opened his mouth to speak this thought aloud and then closed his mouth again. Because Ginelli didn't mean what he said; he had only said what sounded sane.

'Also because it's personal, right?' Billy asked him.

'Yeah,' Ginelli replied. 'Now it's personal.'

He went into the bedroom, took off his shirt and pants, and lay down. He was asleep on top of the coverlet five minutes later.

Billy drew a glass of water, swallowed an Empirin, and then drank the rest of the water standing in the doorway. His eyes moved from Ginelli to the pants crumpled on the chair. Ginelli had arrived in a pair of impeccable cotton slacks, but somewhere in the last couple of days he had picked up a pair of blue jeans. The keys to the Nova parked out front would undoubtedly be in them. Billy could take them and drive away ... except he knew he wouldn't do that, and the fact that he would be signing his own death warrant by so doing now seemed actually secondary. The important thing now seemed to be how and where all of this would end.

At midday, while Ginelli was still sleeping deeply in the other room, Billy had another episode of arrhythmia. Shortly after, he dozed off himself and had a dream. It was short and totally mundane, but it filled him with a queer mixture of terror and hateful pleasure. In this dream he and Heidi were sitting in the breakfast nook of the Fairview house. Between them was a pie. She cut a large piece and gave it to Billy. It was an apple pie. 'This will fatten you up,' she said. 'I don't want to be fat,' he replied. 'I've decided I like being thin. You eat it.' He gave her the piece of pie, stretching an arm no thicker than a bone across the table. She took it. He sat watching as she ate every bite, and with every bite she took, his feelings of terror and dirty joy grew.

Another spell of light arrhythmia jolted him awake from his dream. He sat there for a moment, gasping, waiting for his heart to slow to its proper rhythm, and eventually it did. He was seized by the feeling that he had had more than a dream - that he had just experienced a prophetic vision of some kind. But such feelings often accompany vivid dreams, and as the dream itself fades, so does the feeling. This happened to Billy Halleck, although he had cause to remember this dream not long after.

Ginelli got up at six in the evening, showered, pulled on the jeans and a dark turtleneck sweater.

'Okay,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow morning, Billy. Then we'll know.'

Billy asked again what Ginelli meant to do, what had happened so far, and once again Ginelli refused to tell him.