She has never heard the word before, but she doesn't mistake it for anything else, for boo or book or anything else. It's bool, another Scott-word, and not just any bool but a blood-bool. The kitchen light leaps down the lawn to meet him and he's holding out his left hand to her like a gift, she's sure he means it as a gift, just as she's pretty sure there's still a hand under there someplace, oh pray to Jesus Mary and JoJo the everloving Carpenter there's still a hand under there someplace or he's going to be finishing the book he's working on plus any that might come later typing one-handed. Because where his left hand was there's now just a red and dripping mass. Blood goes slipping between spread starfish things that she supposes are his fingers, and even as she flies to meet him, her feet stuttering down the back porch steps, she's counting those spread red shapes, one two three four and oh thank God, that fifth one's the thumb. Everything's still there, but his jeans are splattered red and still he holds his bloody lacerated hand out to her, the one he plunged through a pane of thick greenhouse glass, shouldering his way through the hedge at the foot of the lawn in order to get to it. Now he's holding out his gift to her, his act of atonement for being late, his blood-bool.
"It's for you," he says as she yanks off her blouse and drapes it around the red and dripping mass, feeling it soak through the cloth at once, feeling the crazy heat of it and knowing - of course! - why that small voice was in such terror of the things she was saying to him, what it knew all along: not only is this man in love with her, he's half in love with death and more than ready to agree with every mean and hurtful thing anyone says about him.
Anyone?
No, not quite. He's not quite that vulnerable. Just anyone he loves. And Lisey suddenly realizes she's not the only one who has said almost nothing about her past.
"It's for you. To say I'm sorry I forgot and it won't happen again. It's a bool. We - "
"Scott, hush. It's all right. I'm not - "
"We call it a blood-bool. It's special. Daddy told me and Paul - "
"I'm not mad at you. I was never mad at you."
He stops at the foot of the splintery back steps, gawking at her. The expression makes him look about ten years old. Her blouse is wrapped clumsily around his hand like a knight's dress gauntlet; once yellow, it's now all bloom and blood. She stands there on the lawn in her Maiden-form bra, feeling the grass tickling her bare ankles. The dusky yellow light which rains on them from the kitchen puts a deep curved shadow between her br**sts. "Will you take it?"
He's looking at her with such childish pleading. All the man in him is gone for now. She sees pain in his long and longing glance and knows it's not from his lacerated hand, but she doesn't know what to say. This is beyond her. She's done well to get some sort of compress on the horrible mess he's made south of his wrist, but now she's frozen. Is there a right thing to say? More important, is there a wrong one? One that will set him off again?
He helps her. "If you take a bool - especially a blood-bool - then sorry's okay. Daddy said so. Daddy tole Paul n me over n over." Not told but tole. He has regressed to the diction of his childhood. Oh jeez. Jeez Louise.
Lisey says, "I guess I take it, then, because I never wanted to go see any Swedishmeatball movie with subtitles in the first place. My feet hurt. I just wanted to go to bed with you. And now look, we have to go to the smucking Emergency Room, instead."
He shakes his head, slowly but firmly.
"Scott - "
"If you weren't mad, why did you shout and call me all the bad-gunky?"
All the bad-gunky. Surely another postcard from his childhood. She notes it, puts it away for later examination.
"Because I couldn't shout at my sister anymore," she says. This hits her funny and she begins to laugh. She laughs hard, and the sound so shocks her that she begins to cry. Then she feels light-headed. She sits down on the porch steps, thinking she may faint. Scott sits beside her. He's twenty-four, his hair falls almost to his shoulders, his face is scruffy with two days' growth, and he's as slim as a rule. On his left hand he wears her blouse, one sleeve now unwrapped and hanging down. He kisses the throbbing hollow of her temple, then looks at her with perfect fond understanding. When he speaks, he sounds almost like himself again.
"I understand," he says. "Families suck."
"Yeah they do," she whispers.
He puts his arm around her - the left one, which she is already thinking of as the bloodbool arm, his gift to her, his crazy smucked-up Friday-night gift.
"They don't have to matter," he says. His voice is weirdly serene. It's as if he hasn't just turned his left hand into so much raw and bleeding meat. "Listen, Lisey: people can forget anything."
She looked at him doubtfully. "Can they?"
"Yes. This is our time now. You and me. That's what matters."
You and me. But does she want that? Now that she sees how narrowly he's balanced?
Now that she has a picture of what life with him may be like? Then she thinks of how his lips felt in the hollow of her temple, touching that special secret place, and she thinks, Maybe I do. Doesn't every hurricane have an eye?
"Is it?" she asks.
For several seconds he says nothing. Only holds her. From Cleaves's paltry downtown come the sounds of engines and yells and wild, whooping laughter. It's Friday night and the Lost Boys are at play. But that is not here. Here is all the smell of her long, sloping backyard sleeping toward summer, the sound of Pluto barking under the pole-light next door, and the feel of his arm around her. Even the warm damp press of his wounded hand is comforting, marking the bare skin of her midriff like a brand.
"Baby," he says at last.
Pauses.
Then: "Babyluv."