Good question, isn't it?"
"It's a stupid question, El Dopo," Trisha said pettishly. "If you could hit like Mo, you'd ask for a lot of money, too."
"Want to talk about Marvelous Pedro Martinez? Darren Lewis? The surprising Sox bullpen? A nice surprise from the Red Sox, can you believe it? Give me a call, tell me what you think. Back after this."
A happy voice began singing a familiar jingle: "Who do you call when your windshield's busted?"
"1-800-54-GIANT," Trisha said, and then dialed away from 'EEI. Maybe she could find another game. Even the hated Yankees would do. But before she found any baseball, she was transfixed by the sound of her own name.
" - is fading for nine-year-old Patricia McFarland, miss-ing since Saturday morning."
The news announcer's voice was faint, wavery, sliced and diced by static. Trisha leaned forward, her fingers going to her ears and pressing the little black buds deeper in.
"Connecticut law enforcement authorities, acting on a tip phoned in to state police in Maine, today arrested Fran-cis Raymond Mazzerole of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and questioned him for six hours in connection with the McFar-land girl's disappearance. Mazzerole, a construction worker currently employed on a Hartford bridge project, has twice been convicted of child molestation, and is being held pend-ing extradition to Maine on current charges of sexual assault and child molestation there. It now seems that he has no knowledge of Patricia McFarland's whereabouts, however.
A source close to the investigation says that Mazzerole claims to have been in Hartford over the past weekend, and that numerous witnesses corroborate..."
The sound faded out. Trisha pushed the power button and pulled the earbuds out of her ears. Were they still look-ing for her? They probably were, but she had an idea that they'd spent most of today hanging around that guy Mazze-role instead.
"What a bunch of El Dopos," she said disconsolately, and returned her Walkman to her pack. She lay back on the pine boughs, spread her poncho over her, then shuffled her shoulders and butt around until she was close to comfort-able.
A breeze puffed past, and she was glad she was in one of the hammocky dips between the rock outcrops. It was chilly tonight, and would probably be downright cold before the sun came up.
Overhead in the black were a zillion stars, just as forecast.
Exactly one zillion. They would pale a bit when the moon rose, but for now they were bright enough to paint her dirty cheeks with frost. As always, Trisha wondered if any of those brilliant specks were warming other live beings. Were there jungles out there populated by fabulous alien animals?
Pyramids? Kings and giants? Possibly even some version of baseball?
"Who do you call when your windshield's busted?" Trisha sang softly. "1-800-54 - "
She broke off, drawing swift breath in over her lower lip, as if hurt. White fire scratched the sky as one of the stars fell. The streak ran halfway across the black and then winked out. Not a star, of course, not a real star but a meteor.
There was another, and then another. Trisha sat up, the split rags of her poncho falling into her lap, her eyes wide.
Here was a fourth and fifth, these going in a different direc-tion.
Not just a meteor but a meteor shower.
As if something had only been waiting for her to under-stand this, the sky lit up in a silent storm of bright contrails.
Trisha stared, neck tilted, eyes wide, arms crossed over her breastless chest, hands clutching her shoulders with nervous nail-bitten fingers. She had never seen anything like it, never dreamed there could be anything like it.
"Oh, Tom," she whispered in a trembling voice. "Oh Tom, look at this. Do you see?"
Most were momentary white flashes, thin and straight and gone so quickly that they would have seemed like hal-lucinations if there hadn't been so many of them. A few, however - five, perhaps eight - lit up the sky like silent fireworks, brilliant stripes that seemed to burn orange at the edges. That orange might just have been eye-dazzle, but Trisha didn't think so.
At last the shower began to wane. Trisha lay back again and scooted the various sore parts of her body around some more until she was comfortable again... as comfortable as she was apt to get, anyway. As she did, she watched the ever more occasional flashes as bits of rock further off the path than she could ever get dropped into earth's well of gravity, first turning red as the atmosphere thickened and then burning to death in brief glares of light. Trisha was still watching when she fell asleep.