They were joined a moment later by the warble-whoop of the Chevy’s car alarm. The whole world was cacophony. Something hot and pillowy seized my wrist. My hand shot forward like a piston and slammed down on the steno pad. I watched as it pawed clumsily to a blank page, then seized the pencil which lay nearby. I gripped it like a dagger and then something wrote with it, not guiding my hand but raping it. The hand moved slowly at first, almost blindly, then picked up speed until it was flying, almost tearing through the sheet:

I!

I had almost reached the bottom of the page when the cold descended again, that outer cold that was like sleet in January, chilling my skin and crackling the snot in my nose and sending two shuddery puffs of white air from my mouth. My hand clenched and the pencil snapped in two.

Behind me, Bunter’s bell rang out one final furious convulsion before falling silent. Also from behind me came a peculiar double pop, like the sound of champagne corks being drawn. Then it was over. Whatever it had been or however many they had been, it was finished. I was alone again.

I turned off the CD player just as Mick and Keith moved on to a white-boy version of Howling Wolf, then ran upstairs and pushed the reset buttons on the smoke-detectors. I leaned out the window of the big guest bedroom while I was up there, aimed the fob of my keyring down at the Chevrolet, and pushed the button on it. The alarm quit. With the worst of the noise gone I could hear the TV cackling away in the kitchen. I went down, killed it, then froze with my hand still on the OFF button, looking at Jo’s annoying waggy-cat clock. Its tail had finally stopped switching, and its big plastic eyes lay on the floor.

They had popped right out of its head.

I went down to the Village Cafe for supper, snagging the last Sunday legram from the rack (COMPUTER MOGUL DEVORE DIES IN WESTERN MAINE TOWN WHERE HE GREW UP, the headline read) before sitting down at the counter.

The accompanying photo was a studio shot of Devore that looked about thirty years old. He was smiling. Most people do that quite naturally.

On Devore’s face it looked like a learned skill. I ordered the beans that were left over from Buddy Jellison’s Satur-day-night beanhole supper. My father wasn’t much for aphorisms—in my family dispensing nuggets of wisdom was Mom’s job—but as Daddy warmed up the Saturday-night yelloweyes in the oven on Sunday afternoon, he would invariably say that beans and beef stew were better the second day. I guess it stuck. The only other piece of fatherly wisdom I can remember receiving was that you should always wash your hands after you took a shit in a bus station.

While I was reading the story on Devore, Audrey came over and told me that Royce Merrill had passed without recovering consciousness. The funeral would be Tuesday afternoon at Grace Baptist, she said. Most of the town would be there, many folks just to see Ila Meserve awarded the Boston Post cane. Did I think I’d get over? No, I said, probably not. I thought it prudent not to add that I’d likely be attending a victory party at Mattie Devore’s while Royce’s funeral was going on down the road.

The usual late-Sunday-afternoon flow of customers came and went while I ate, people ordering burgers, people ordering beans, people ordering chicken salad sandwiches, people buying sixpacks. Some were from the TR, some from away. I didn’t notice many of them, and no one spoke to me. I have no idea who left the napkin on my newspaper, but when I put down the A section and turned to find the sports, there it was. I picked it up, meaning only to put it aside, and saw what was written on the back in big dark letters: GET OFF THE TR.

I never found out who left it there. I guess it could have been any of them.

I!

Te murk came back and transformed that Sunday night’s dusk into a thing of decadent beauty. The sun turned red as it slid down toward the hills and the haze picked up the glow, turning the western sky into a nosebleed. I sat out on the deck and watched it, trying to do a crossword puzzle and not getting very far. When the phone rang, I dropped gh Stuff on top of my manuscript as I went to answer it. I was tired of looking at the title of my book every time I passed.

“Hello?”

“What’s going on up there?” John Storrow demanded. He didn’t even bother to say hi. He didn’t sound angry, though; he sounded totally pumped.

“I’m missing the whole goddam soap opera!”

“I invited myself to lunch on Tuesday,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s good, the more the merrier.” He sounded as if he absolutely meant it. “What a summer, huh? What a summer! Anything happen just lately? Earthquakes? Volcanoes? Mass suicides?”

“No mass suicides, but the old guy died,” I said.

“Shit, the whole world knows Max Devore kicked it,” he said. “Surprise me, Mike! Stun me! Make me holler boy-howdy!”

“No, the other old guy. Royce Merrill.”

“I don’t know who you—oh, wait. The one with the gold cane who looked like an exhibit from Jurassic Park?”

“That’s him.”

“Bummer. Otherwise. .?”

“Otherwise everything’s under control,” I said, then thought of the popped-out eyes of the cat-clock and almost laughed. What stopped me was a kind of surety that Mr. Good Humor Man was just an act—John had really called to ask what, if anything, was going on between me and Mattie. And what was I going to say? Nothing yet? One kiss, one instant blue-steel ham-on, the fundamental things apply as time goes by?

But John had other things on his mind. “Listen, Michael, I called because I’ve got something to tell you. I think you’ll be both amused and amazed.”

“A state we all crave,” I said. “Lay it on me.”

“Rogette Whitmore called, and… you didn’t happen to give her my parents’ number, did you? I’m back in New York now, but she called me in Philly.”

“I didn’t have your parents’ number. You didn’t leave it on either of your machines.”

“Oh, right.” No apology; he seemed too excited to think of such mundanities. I began to feel excited myself, and I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. “I gave it to Mattie. Do you think the Whit-more woman called Mattie to get it? Would Mattie give it to her?”

“I’m not sure that if Mattie came upon Rogette flaming in a thoroughfare, she’d piss on her to put her out.”

“Vulgar, Michael, trs vulgarino.” But he was laughing. “Maybe Whit-more got it the same way Devore got yours.”

“Probably so,” I said. “I don’t know what’ll happen in the months ahead, but right now I’m sure she’s still got access to Max Devore’s personal control panel. And if anyone knows how to push the buttons on it, it’s probably her. Did she call from Palm Springs?”

“Uh-huh. She said she’d just finished a preliminary meeting with Devore’s attorneys concerning the old man’s will. According to her, Grampa left Mattie Devote eighty million dollars.”

I was struck silent. I wasn’t amused yet, but I was certainly amazed.

“Gets ya, don’t it?” John said gleefully.

“You mean he left it to Kyra,” I said at last. “Left it in trust to Kyra.”

“No, that’s just what he did not do. I asked Whitmore three times, but by the third I was starting to understand. There was method in his madness. Not much, but a little. You see, there’s a condition. If he left the money to the minor child instead of to the mother, the condition would have no weight. It’s funny when you consider that Mattie isn’t long past minor status herself.”

“Funny,” I agreed, and thought of her dress sliding between my hands and her smooth bare waist. I also thought of Bill Dean saying that men who went with girls that age always looked the same, had their tongues run out even if their mouths were shut.

“What string did he put on the money?”

“That Mattie remain on the TR for one year following Devore’s death—until July 17, 1999. She can leave on day-trips, but she has to be tucked up in her TR-90 bed every night by nine o’clock, or else the legacy is forfeit. Did you ever hear such a bullshit thing in your life?