"I will."
Lisey went back to her sandwich with a smile on her face and didn't think about Amanda, or the good ship Hollyhocks, or Boo'ya Moon, for the rest of the day. That night, however, she awoke to the sound of distant thunder and a sense that something vast was - not hunting her, exactly (it wouldn't bother), but musing on her. The idea that she should be in such a thing's unknowable mind made her feel like crying and like screaming. At the same time. It also made her want to sit up watching movies on TCM, smoking cigarettes and drinking high-tension coffee. Or beer. Beer might be better. Beer might call back sleep. Instead of getting up, she turned off the bedside lamp and lay still. I'll never go back to sleep, she thought. I'll just lie here like this until it gets light in the east. Then I can get up and make the coffee I want now.
But three minutes after having this thought she was dozing. Ten minutes later she was sleeping deeply. Later still, when the moon rose and she dreamed of floating over a certain exotic beach of fine white sand on the PILLSBURY magic carpet, her bed was for a few moments empty and the room filled with the smells of frangipani and jasmine and night-blooming cereus, scents that were somehow longing and terrible at the same time. But then she was back and in the morning Lisey barely remembered her dream, her dream of flying, her dream of flying across the beach at the edge of the pool in Boo'ya Moon.
8
As it happened, Lisey's vision of dismantling the booksnake varied in only two respects from what she had foreseen, and these were minor variations indeed. First, one half of Mr. Partridge's two-person team turned out to be a girl - a strapping twentysomething with a caramel-colored ponytail threaded through the back of a Red Sox cap. Second, Lisey hadn't guessed how quickly the job would be done. In spite of the study's fearsome heat (not even three fans turning at top speed could do much about it), all the books were packed away in a dark blue UMO van in less than an hour. When Lisey asked the two librarians from Special Collections (who called themselves - only half-jokingly, Lisey thought - the Minions of Partridge) if they'd like iced tea, they agreed enthusiastically, and put away two large glasses each. The girl was Cory. She was the one who told Lisey how much she had liked Scott's books, especially Relics, which she claimed to have read three times. The boy was Mike, and he was the one who said they were very sorry for her loss. Lisey thanked them both for their kindness, and meant it.
"It must make you sad, seeing it so empty," Cory said, and tipped her glass toward the barn. The ice cubes clinked in it. Lisey was careful not to look directly at the glass, lest she see something besides ice in there.
"It is a little sad, but it's freeing, too," she said. "I put off the job of cleaning it out for too long. My sisters helped me. I'm glad we did it. More tea, Cory?"
"No thanks, but could I use your bathroom before we start back?"
"Of course. Through the living room, first door on the right."
Cory excused herself. Absently - almost absently - Lisey moved the girl's glass behind the brown plastic iced-tea pitcher. "Another glass, Mike?"
"No thanks," he said. "You'll be taking up the carpet, too, I guess."
She laughed self-consciously. "Yes. Pretty bad, isn't it? From Scott's one experiment in wood-staining. It was a disaster." Thinking: Sorry, honey.
"Looks a little like dried blood," Mike said, and finished his iced tea. The sun, hazy and hot, ran across the surface of his glass, and for a moment an eye seemed to peer out of it at Lisey. When he set it down, she had to restrain an urge to snatch it and hide it behind the plastic pitcher with the other one.
"Everybody says that," she agreed.
"World's worst shaving cut," Mike said, and laughed. They both laughed. Lisey thought hers sounded almost as natural as his. She didn't look at his glass. She didn't think about the long boy that was now her long boy. She thought about nothing but the long boy.