Thinner(86)

He looked back at his hand and saw no blood, no scab, no open flesh. The wound there had now healed completely, leaving only a short white scar - it also zigzagged, crossing lifeand heartlines like a lightning bolt.

'This is yours, white man from town,' Lemke said, and he put the pie in Billy's lap. His first, almost ungovernable impulse was to dump it off, to get rid. of it the way he would have gotten rid of a large spider someone had dropped in his lap. The pie was loathsomely warm, and it seemed to pulse inside its cheap aluminum plate like something alive.

Lemke stood up and looked down at him. 'You feel better?' he asked.

Billy realized that aside from the way he felt about the thing he was holding in his lap, he did. The weakness had passed. His heart was beating normally.

'A little,' he said cautiously.

Lemke nodded. 'You take weight now. But in a week, maybe two, you start to fall back. Only this time you fall back and there won't be no stopping it. Unless you find someone to eat that.'

'Yes.'

Lemke's eyes didn't waver. 'You sure?'

'Yes, yes!' Billy cried.

'I feel a little sorry for you,' Lemke said. 'Not much, but a little. Once you might have been pokol - strong. Now your shoulders are broken. Nothing is your fault ... there are reasons ... you have friends.' He smiled mirthlessly. 'Why not eat your own pie, white man from town? You die, but you die strong.'

'Get out of here,' Billy said. 'I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Our business is done, that's all I know.'

'Yes. Our business is done.' His glance shifted briefly to the pie, then back to Billy's face. 'Be careful who eats the meal that was meant for you,' he said, and walked away. Halfway down one of the jogging paths, he turned back. It was the last time Billy ever saw his incredibly ancient, incredibly weary face. 'No poosh, white man from town,' Taduz Lemke said. 'Not never.' He turned and walked away.

Billy sat on the park bench and watched him until he was gone.

When Lemke had disappeared into the evening, Billy got up and started back the way he had come. He had walked twenty paces before he realized he had forgotten something. He went back to the bench, his face dazed and serious, eyes opaque, and got his pie. It was still warm and it still pulsed, but these things sickened him less now. He supposed a man could get used to anything, given sufficient incentive.

He started back toward Union Street.

Halfway up the hill to the place where Ginelli had let him off, he saw the blue Nova parked at the curb. And by then he knew the curse really was gone.

He was still horribly weak, and every now and then his heart skittered in his chest (like a man who has stepped in something greasy, he thought), but it was gone, just the same - and now that it was, he knew exactly what Lemke had meant when he said a curse was a living thing, something like a blind, irrational child that had been inside him, feeding off him. Purpurfargade ansiktet. Gone now.

But he could feel the pie he carried throbbing very slowly in his hands, and when he looked down at it he could see the crust pulsing rhythmically. And the cheap aluminum pie plate held its dim heat. It's sleeping, he thought, and shuddered. He felt like a man carrying a sleeping devil.

The Nova stood at the curb on its jacked back wheels, its nose pointing down. The parking lights were on.

'It's over,' Billy said, opening the passenger door and getting in. 'It's ov . . .'

That was when he saw Ginelli wasn't in the car. At least, not very much of him. Because of the deepening shadows he didn't see that he had come within an inch of sitting on Ginelli's severed hand until a moment later. It was a disembodied fist trailing red gobbets of flesh onto the Nova's faded seat cover from the ragged wrist, a disembodied fist filled with ball bearings.

Chapter Twenty-five

'Where are you?' Heidi's voice was angry, scared, tired. Billy was not particularly surprised to find he felt nothing at all for that voice anymore - not even curiosity.

'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'I'm coming home.'

'He sees the light! Thank God! He finally sees the light! Will you be flying into La Guardia or Kennedy? I'll pick you up.'

'I'll be driving,' Billy said. He paused. 'I want you to call Mike Houston, Heidi, and tell him you've changed your mind about the res gestae.'

'The what? Billy, what ... ?' But he could tell by the sudden change in her tone that she knew exactly what he was talking about - it was the scared tone of a kid who has been caught filching candy, and he suddenly lost all patience with her.

'The involuntary committal order,' he said. 'In the trade it's sometimes known as the Loonybin Writ. I've taken care of the business I had and I'll be happy to check in wherever you two want me to - the Glassman Clinic, the New Jersey Goat Gland Center, the Midwestern College of Acupuncture. But if I get grabbed by the cops when I get to Connecticut and end up in the Norwalk state asylum, you're going to be a very sorry woman, Heidi.'

She was crying. 'We only did what we thought was best for you, Billy. Someday you'll see that.'

Inside his head Lemke spoke up. Nothing is Your fault ... there are reasons ... you have friends. He shook it off, but before he did, goose flesh had crawled up his arms and the sides of his neck to his face.

'Just . . .' He paused, hearing Ginelli in his head this time. Just take it off. Take it off. William Halleck says take it off.