But then he wondered how he could have thought that, because it was Nadine Cross, that was all. She was wearing a dress of some soft bluish-gray material, and her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders and down her back, dark hair shot with skeins of purest white.

She sort of makes Lucy look like a used car on a scalper’s lot, he thought before he could help himself, and then hated himself for thinking it. That was the old Larry talking… old Larry? You might as well say old Adam.

“Nadine,” Lucy was saying shakily, with one hand pressed to her chest. “You gave me the fright of my life. I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought.”

She took no notice of Lucy. “Can I talk to you?” she asked Larry.

“What? Now?” He looked sideways at Lucy, or thought he did… later he was never able to remember what Lucy had looked like in that moment. It was as if she had been eclipsed, but by a dark star rather than by a bright one.

“Now. It has to be now.”

“In the morning would—”

“It has to be now, Larry. Or never.”

He looked at Lucy again and this time he did see her, saw the resignation on her face as she looked from Larry to Nadine and back again. He saw the hurt.

“I’ll be right in, Lucy.”

“No you won’t,” she said dully. Tears had begun to sparkle in her eyes. “Oh no, I doubt it.”

“Ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes, ten years,” Lucy said. “She’s come to get you. Did you bring your dog collar and your muzzle, Nadine?”

For Nadine, Lucy Swann did not exist. Her eyes were fixed only on Larry, those dark, wide eyes. For Larry, they would always be the strangest, most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, the eyes that come back to you, calm and deep, when you’re hurt or in bad trouble or maybe just about out of your mind with grief.

“I’ll be in, Lucy,” he said automatically.

“She—”

“Go on.”

“Yes, I guess I will. She’s come. I’m dismissed.”

She ran up the steps, stumbling on the top one, regaining her balance, pulling the door open, closing it behind her with a slam, cutting off the sound of her sobs even as they started.

Nadine and Larry looked at each other for a long time as if entranced. This is how it happens, he thought. When you catch someone’s eyes across a room and never forget them, or see someone at the far end of a crowded subway platform that could have been your double, or hear a laugh on the street that could have been the laugh of the first girl you ever made love to—

But something in his mouth tasted so bitter.

“Let’s walk down to the corner and back,” Nadine said in a low voice. “Would you do that much?”

“I better go in to her. You picked one hell of a bad time to come here.”

“Please? Just down to the corner and back? If you want, I’ll get down on my knees and beg. If that’s what you want. Here. See?”

And to his horror she did get down on her knees, pulling her skirt up a little so she could do it, showing him her bare legs, making him curiously certain that everything else was bare as well. Why should he think that? He didn’t know. Her eyes were on him, making his head spin, and there was a sickening feeling of power involved here someplace, involved with having her on her knees before him, her mouth on a level with—

“Get up!” he said roughly. He took her hands and yanked her to her feet, trying not to see the way the skirt rode up even more before falling back into place; her thighs were the color of cream, that shade of white that is not pale and dead but vigorous and healthy and enticing.

“Come on,” he said, almost totally unnerved.

They walked west, in the direction of the mountains, which were a negative presence far ahead, triangular patches of darkness blotting out the stars that had come out after the rain. Walking toward those mountains at night always made him feel queerly uneasy but somehow adventurous, and now, with Nadine by his side, her hand resting lightly in the crook of his elbow, those feelings seemed heightened. He had always had vivid dreams, and three or four nights ago about those mountains; he had dreamed there were trolls in them, hideous creatures with bright green eyes, the oversized heads of hydrocephalic cretins, and short-fingered, powerful hands. Strangler’s hands. Idiot trolls, guarding the passes through the mountains. Waiting until his time came around—the time of the dark man.

A soft breeze meandered down the street, blowing papers before it. They passed King Sooper’s, a few shopping carts standing in the big parking lot like dead sentinels, making him think of the Lincoln Tunnel. There had been trolls in the Lincoln Tunnel. They had been dead, but that didn’t mean all the trolls in their new world were dead.

“It’s hard,” Nadine said, her voice still low. “She made it hard because she’s right. I want you now. And I’m afraid I’m too late. I want to stay here.”

“Nadine—”

“No! ” she said fiercely. “Let me finish. I want to stay here, can’t you understand that? And if we’re with each other, I’ll be able to. You’re my last chance,” she said, her voice breaking. “Joe’s gone now.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Larry said, feeling slow and stupid and bewildered. “We dropped him off at your place on the way home. Isn’t he there?”

“No. There’s a boy named Leo Rockway asleep in his bed.”

“What are you—”

“Listen,” she said. “Listen to me, can’t you listen? As long as I had Joe, I was all right. I could… be as strong as I had to be. But he doesn’t need me anymore. And I need to be needed.”

“He does need you!”

“Of course he does,” Nadine said, and Larry felt afraid again. She wasn’t talking about Leo anymore; he didn’t know who she was talking about. “He needs me. That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I came to you.” She stepped in front of him and looked up, her chin tilted. He could smell her secret clean scent, and he wanted her. But part of him turned back toward Lucy. That was the part of him he needed if he was going to make it here in Boulder. If he let it go and went with Nadine, they might as well slink out of Boulder tonight. It would be finished with him. The old Larry triumphant.

“I have to go home,” he said. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to work it out on your own, Nadine.” Work it out on your own —weren’t they the words he had been using to people in one form or another all his life? Why did they have to rise up this way when he knew he was right and still catch him, and twist in him, and make him doubt himself?

“Make love to me,” she said, and put her arms around his neck. She pressed her body against his and he knew by its looseness, its warmth and springiness, that he had been right, she was wearing the dress and that was all. Buck naked underneath, he thought, and thinking it excited him blackly.

“That’s all right, I can feel you,” she said, and began to wriggle against him—sideways, up and down, creating a delicious friction. “Make love to me and that will be the end of it. I’ll be safe. Safe. I’ll be safe.”

He reached up, and later he never knew how he was able to do that when he could have been inside her warmth in only three quick movements and one thrust, the way she wanted it, but somehow he reached up and unlocked her hands and pushed her away with such force that she stumbled and almost fell. A low moan came from her.

“Larry, if you knew—”

“Well, I don’t. Why don’t you try telling me instead of… of raping me?”

“Rape!” she repeated, laughing shrilly. “Oh, that’s funny! Oh, what you said! Me! Rape you! Oh, Larry!”

“Whatever you want from me, you could have had. You could have had it last week, or the week before. The week before that I asked you to take it. I wanted you to have it.”

“That was too soon,” she whispered.

“And now it’s too late,” he said, hating the brutal sound of his voice but unable to control it. He was still shaking all over from wanting her, how was he supposed to sound? “What are you gonna do; huh?”