“Did you?” I asked “That was quite a dream, wasn’t it, Ki?” There was a long silence at the other end. I could imagine Mattie wondering what had happened to her telephone chatterbox. At last Ki said in a hesitating voice: “You there too.” Tiu. “We saw the snake-dance ladies… the pole with the bell on top… we went in the spookyhouse… you fell down in the barrel! It wasn’t a dream… was it?” I could have convinced her that it was, but all at once that seemed like a bad idea, one that was dangerous in its own way. I said: “You had on a pretty hat and a pretty dress.”

“I3ah!” Ki sounded enormously relieved. “And you had on—”

“Kyra, stop. Listen to me.” She stopped at once. “It’s better if you don’t talk about that dream too much, I think. To your mom or to anyone except me.”

“Except you.”

“Yes. And the same with the refrigerator people. Okay?”

“Okay. Mike, there was a lady in Mattie’s clothes.”

“I know,” I said. It was all right for her to talk, I was sure of it, but I asked anyway: “Where’s Mattie now?”

“Waterin the flowers. We got lots of flowers, a billion at least. I have to clean up the table. It’s a chore.

I don’t mind, though. I like chores. We had French toast. We always do on Sundays. It’s yummy, ’specially with strawberry syrup.”

“I know,” I said, drawing an arrow to the piece of bread wearing the beret. “French toast is great. Ki, did you tell your mom about the lady in her dress?”

“No. I thought it might scare her.” She dropped her voice. “Here she comes I”

“That’s all right… but we’ve got a secret, right?”

“Yes.”

“Now can I talk to Mattie again?”

“Okay.” Her voice moved off a little.

“Mommy-bommy, Mike wants to talk to you.” Then she came back. “Will you bizzit us today? We could go on another picnic.”

“I can’t today, Ki. I have to work.”

“Mattie never works on Sunday.”

“Well, when I’m writing a book, I write every day. I have to, or else I’ll forget the story. Maybe we’ll have a picnic on Tuesday, though. A barbecue picnic at your house.”

“Is it long ’til Tuesday?”

“Not too long. Day after tomorrow.” “Is it long to write a book?”

“Medium-long.” I could hear Mattie telling Ki to give her the phone. “I will, just one more second. Mike?”

“I’m here, Ki.”

“I love you.” I was both touched and terrified. For a moment I was sure my throat was going to lock up the way my chest used to when I tried to write. Then it cleared and I said, “Love you, too, Ki.”

“Here’s Mattie.”

Again there was the rustly sound of the telephone changing hands, then Mattie said: “Did that refresh your recollection of your date with my daughter, sir?”

“Well,” I said, “it certainly refreshed hers.” There was a link between Mattie and me, but it didn’t extend to this—I was sure of it. She was laughing. I loved the way she sounded this morning and I didn’t want to bring her down… but I didn’t want her mistaking the white line in the middle of the road for the crossmock, either. “Mattie, you still need to be careful, okay? Just because Lindy Briggs offered you your old job back doesn’t mean everyone in town is suddenly your friend.”

“I understand that,” she said. I thought again about asking if she’d consider taking Ki up to Derry for awhile—they could live in my house, stay for the duration of the summer if that was what it took for things to return to normal down here. Except she wouldn’t do it. When it came to accepting my offer of high-priced New York legal talent, she’d had no choice. About this she did. Or thought she did, and how could I change her mind? I had no logic, no connected facts; all I had was a vague dark shape, like something lying beneath nine inches of snowblind ice.

“I want you to be careful of two men in particular,” I said. “One is Bill Dean. The other is Kenny Auster. He’s the one—”

“—with the big dog who wears the neckerchief. He—”

“That’s Booberry!” Ki called from the middle distance. “Booberry licked my facie!”

“Go out and play, hon,” Mattie said. “I’m clearun the table.”

“You can finish later. Go on outside now.” There was a pause as she watched Ki go out the door, taking Strickland with her. Although the kid had left the trailer, Mattie still spoke in the lowered tone of someone who doesn’t want to be overheard. “Are you trying to scare me?”

“No,” I said, drawing repeated circles around the word DANGER. “But I want you to be careful. Bill and Kenny may have been on Devore’s team, like Footman and Osgood. Don’t ask me why I think that might be, because I have no satisfactory answer.

It’s only a feeling, but since I got back on the TR, my feelings are different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you wearing a tee-shirt with a duck on it?”

“How do you know that? Did Ki tell you?”

“Did she take the little stuffed dog from her Happy Meal out with her just now?” A long pause. At last she said “My God” in a voice so Low I could hardly hear it. Then again: “How—”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know if you’re still in a… a bad situation, either, or why you might be, but I feel that you are. That you both are.” I could have said more, but I was afraid she’d think I’d gone entirely off the rails. “He’s dead!” she burst out.

“That old man is dead! Why can’t he leave us alone?”

“Maybe he has.

Maybe I’m wrong about all this. But there’s no harm in being careful, is there?”

“No,” she said. “Usually that’s true.”

“Usually?”

“Why don’t you come and see me, Mike? Maybe we could go to the Fair together.”

D-k3 %.31IDK31NE “Maybe this fall we will. All three of us.”

“I’d like that.”

“In the meantime, I’m thinking about the key."

“Thinking is half your problem, Mike,” she said, and laughed again. Ruefully, I thought. And I saw what she meant. What she didn’t seem to understand was that feeling was the other half. It’s a sling, and in the end I think it rocks most of us to death.

I worked for a while,’ then carried the IBM back into the house and left the manuscript on top. I was done with it, at least for the time being.

No more looking for the way back through the wardrobe; no more Andy Drake and John Shackleford until this was over. And, as I dressed in long pants and a button-up shirt for the first time in what felt like weeks, it occurred to me that perhaps something—some force—had been trying to sedate me with the story I was telling. With the ability to work again. It made sense; work had always been my drug of choice, even better than booze or the Mellaril I still kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Or maybe work was only the delivery system, the hypo with all the dreamy dreams inside it. Maybe the real drug was the zone. Being in the zone. Feeling it, you sometimes hear the basketball players say. I was in the zone and I was really feeling it. I grabbed the keys to the Chevrolet off the counter and looked at the fridge as I did. The magnets were circled again. In the middle was a message I’d seen before, one that was now instantly understandable, thanks to the extra Magnabet letters: help her “I’m doing my best,” I said, and went out.

Three miles north on Route 68—by then you’re on the part of it which used to be known as Castle Rock Road-there’s a greenhouse with a shop in front of it. Slips ’n Greens, it’s called, and Jo used to spend a fair amount of time there, buying gardening supplies or just noodling with the two women who ran the place. One of them was Helen Auster, Kenny’s wife.

I pulled in there at around ten o’clock that Sunday morning (it was open, of course; during tourist season almost every Maine shopkeeper turns heathen) and parked next to a Beamer with New York plates. I paused long enough to hear the weather forecast on the radio—contin-ued hot and humid for another forty-eight hours at least—and then got out. A woman wearing a bathing suit, a skort, and a giant yellow sunhat emerged from the shop with a bag of peat moss cradled in her arms. She gave me a little smile. I returned it with eighteen per cent interest. She was from New York, and that meant she wasn’t a Martian. The shop was even hotter and’ damper than the white morning outside. Lila Proulx, the co-owner, was on the phone. There was a little fan beside the cash register and she was standing directly in front of it, flapping the front of her sleeveless blouse. She saw me and twiddled her fingers in a wave. I twiddled mine back, feeling like someone else. Work or no work, I was still zoning. Still feeling it. I walked around the shop, picking up a few things almost at random, watching Lila out of the corner of my eye and waiting for her to get off the phone so I could talk to her… and all the time my own private hyperdrive was humming softly away. At last she hung up and I came to the counter. “Michael Noonan, what a sight for sore eyes you are!” she said, and began ringing up my purchases. “I was awfully sorry to hear about Johanna. Got to get that right up front. Jo was a pet.”