"That's enough, I said!" Swimming out of the gloom. Swimming out of it like a diver coming up from black water into the green shallows, goggles and all. Of course divers didn't hold paper bags in front of their chests as if to shield their hearts from the blows of cruel widows who knew too much. "I ain't goan warn you again - "
Lisey took no notice. She didn't know if Amanda was still holding the gun and no longer cared. She was delirious. "Did you and Cole talk about Scott's books in group therapy? Sure you did. About the father stuff. And then, after they let you out, there was Woodsmucky, just like a Daddy in a Scott Landon book. One of the good Daddies. After they let you out of the nutbarn. After they let you out of the scream factory. After they let you out of the laughing academy, as the saying i - "
With a shriek, Dooley dropped his paper sack (it clanked) and launched himself at Lisey. She had time to think, Yes. This is why I needed my hands free. Amanda also shrieked, hers overlapping his. Of the three of them only Lisey was calm, because only Lisey knew precisely what she was doing...if not precisely why. She made no effort to run. She opened her arms to Jim Dooley and caught him like a fever. 3
He would have knocked her to the floor and landed on top of her - Lisey had no doubt this was his intention - if not for the desk. She let his weight carry her back, smelling the sweat in his hair and on his skin. She also felt the curve of the goggles digging into her temple and heard a low, rapid clicking sound just below her left ear. That's his teeth, she thought. That's his teeth, trying for my neck. Her butt smacked against the long side of Dumbo's Big Jumbo. Amanda screamed again. There was a loud report and a brief brilliant flash of light.
"Leave her alone, motherfucker!"
Big talk but she fired into the ceiling, Lisey thought, and tightened her locked hands behind Dooley's neck as he bent her backward like a dance-partner at the end of a particularly amorous tango. She could smell gun-smoke, her ears were ringing, and she could feel his cock, heavy and almost fully erect.
"Jim," she whispered, holding him. "I'll give you what you want. Let me give you what you want."
His grip loosened a little. She sensed his confusion. Then, with a feline yowl, Amanda landed on his back and Lisey was forced down again, now almost sprawling on the desk. Her spine gave a warning creak, but she could see the oval smudge of his face - enough to make out how afraid he looked. Was he afraid of me all along? she wondered. Now or never, little Lisey.
She sought his eyes behind the weird circles of glass, found them, locked in on them. Amanda was still yowling like a cat on a hot griddle, and Lisey could see her fists hammering Dooley's shoulders. Both fists. So she had fired that one shot into the ceiling, then dropped the gun. Ah well, maybe it was for the best.
"Jim." God, his weight was killing her. "Jim."
His head dipped, as if drawn by the lock of her eyes and the force of her will. For a moment Lisey didn't think she would be able to reach him, even so. Then, with a final desperate lunge - Pafko at the wall, Scott would have said, quoting God knew who - she did. She breathed the meat and onions he'd eaten for his supper as she settled her mouth on his. She used her tongue to force his lips open, kissed harder, and so passed on her second sip of the pool. She felt the sweetness go. The world she knew wavered and then began to go with it. It happened fast. The walls turned transparent and that other world's mingled scents filled her nose: frangipani, bougainvillea, roses, night-blooming cereus.
"Geromino," she said into his mouth, and as if it had only been waiting for that word, the solid weight of the desk beneath her turned to rain. A moment later it was gone completely. She fell; Jim Dooley fell on top of her; Amanda, still screaming, fell on top of both.
Bool, Lisey thought. Bool, the end.
4
She landed on a thick mat of grass that she knew so well she might have been rolling around in it her whole life. She had time to register the sweetheart trees and then the breath was driven out of her in a large and noisy woof. Black spots danced before her in the sunset-colored air.
She might have passed out if Dooley hadn't rolled away. Amanda he shrugged off his back as if she had been no more than a troublesome kitten. Dooley surged to his feet, staring first down the hill carpeted with purple lupin and then turning the other way, toward the sweetheart trees that formed the outrider of what Paul and Scott Landon had called the Fairy Forest. Lisey was shocked by Dooley's aspect. He looked like some weird flesh-and-hair-covered skull. After a moment she realized it was his narrowness of face combined with evening shadows, and what had happened to his goggles. The lenses hadn't made the trip to Boo'ya Moon. His eyes stared out through the holes where they had been. His mouth hung open. Spit ran between the upper and lower lips in silver strings.
"You always...liked...Scott's books," Lisey said. She sounded like a winded runner, but her breath was returning and the black flecks in front of her eyes were disappearing.
"How do you like his world, Mr. Dooley?"
"Where..." His mouth moved, but he couldn't finish.