"Scott said booled. Didn't he?"
That coppery taste was in her mouth again, the taste of pennies and panic. Yes, Scott had said booled. Sure. Scott had said that Dr. Alberness should ask Lisey (if he ever met her) how Scott booled the nurse that time in Nashville, Scott knowing perfectly well that she would get the message.
Had he been sending her messages? Had he, even then?
"Leave it alone, " she whispered at her reflection, and left the ladies' room. It would have been nice to leave that voice trapped inside, but now it always seemed to be there. For a long time it had been quiet, either sleeping or agreeing with Lisey's conscious mind that there were some things one simply did not speak about, not even among the various versions of one's self. What the nurse had said on the day after Scott had been shot, for instance. Or
( hush do hush)
what had happened in
( Hush! )
the winter of 1996.
( YOU HUSH NOW! )
And for a blue-eyed wonder that voice did...but she sensed it watching and listening, and she was afraid.
6
Lisey exited the ladies' room just in time to see Darla hanging up the pay telephone.
"I was calling that motel across from Greenlawn," she said. "It looked clean, so I booked a room for tonight. I really don't want to drive all the way back to Castle View, and this way I can see Manda first thing tomorrow morning. All I'll have to do is be like the chicken and cross the road." She looked at her younger sister with an apprehensive expression Lisey found rather surreal, given all the years she'd spent listening to Darla lay down the law, usually in a strident, take-no-prisoners tone of voice. "Do you think that's silly?"
"I think it's a great idea." Lisey gave Darla's hand a squeeze, and Darla's relieved smile broke her heart a little. She thought: This is also what money does. It makes you the smart one. It makes you the boss. "Come on, Darl - I'll drive back, how's that?"
"Works for me," Darla said, and followed her younger sister out into the latening day. 7
The drive back to Castle View was as slow as Lisey had feared it might be; they got behind an overloaded, waddling pulp truck, and on the hills and curves there was no place to pass. The best Lisey could do was hang back so they didn't have to eat too much of the guy's half-cooked exhaust. It gave her time to reflect on the day. At least there was that.
Speaking with Dr. Alberness had been like getting to a baseball game in the bottom of the fourth inning, but that was nothing new; playing catch-up had always been part of life with Scott. She remembered the day a furniture van from Portland had shown up with a two-thousand-dollar sectional sofa. Scott had been in his study, writing with the music cranked to its usual deafening levels - she could faintly hear Steve Earle singing "Guitar Town" in the house even with the soundproofing - and interrupting him was apt to do another two thousand dollars' worth of damage to her ears, in Lisey's opinion. The furniture guys said "the mister" told them she'd let them know where to put the new piece of furniture. Lisey had briskly directed them to carry the current sofa - the perfectly good current sofa - out to the barn, and place the new sectional where it had been. The color was at least a fair match for the room, and that was a relief. She knew she and Scott had never discussed a new sofa, sectional or otherwise, just as she knew Scott would declare - oh yes, most vehemently - that they had. She was sure he'd discussed it with her in his head; he just sometimes forgot to vocalize those discussions. Forgetting was a skill he had honed.
His luncheon with Hugh Alberness might have been only another case in point. He might have meant to tell Lisey all about it, and if you'd asked him six months or a year later, he might well have told you he had told her all about it: Lunch with Alberness?
Sure, filled her in that very night. When what he'd really done that very night was go out to his study, put on the new Dylan CD, and work on a new short story. Or maybe this time it had been different - not Scott just forgetting (as he'd once forgotten they'd had a date, as he'd forgotten to tell her about his extremely smucked-up childhood), but Scott hiding clues for her to find after a death he had already foreseen; laying out what he himself would have called "stations of the bool."
In either case, Lisey had caught up with him before, and she got most of the blanks filled in on the phone, saying Uh-huh and Oh, really! And You know, I forgot about that!