"Now, that's not fair, Fran. It bothered me, too. There we had those two advance meetings... hashed everything over to a fare-thee-well... at least we thought so... and along comes Harold. He takes a whack-whack here and a whack-whack there and says, 'Ain't that what you really meant?' And we say, 'Yeah, thanks, Harold. It was.'" Stu shook his head. "Putting everybody up for blanket election, how come we never thought of that, Fran? That was sharp. And we never even discussed it."
"Well, none of us knew for sure what kind of mood they'd be in. I thought - especially after Mother Abagail walked off - that they'd be glum, maybe even mean. With that Impening talking to them like some kind of deathcrow - "
"I wonder if he should be shut up somehow," Stu said thoughtfully.
"But it wasn't like that. They were so... exuberant just to be together. Did you feel that?"
"Yeah, I did."
"It was like a tent revival, almost. I don't think it was anything Harold had planned. He just seized the moment."
"I just don't know how to feel about him," Stu said. "That night after we hunted for Mother Abagail, I felt real bad for him. When Ralph and Glen turned up, he looked downright horrible, like he was going to faint, or something. But when we were talking out on the lawn just now and everybody was congratulating him, he seemed puffed up like a toad. Like he was smiling on the outside and on the inside he was saying, 'There, you see what your committee's worth, you stupid bunch of fools.' He's like one of those puzzles you could never figure out when you were a kid. The Chinese finger-pullers or those three steel rings that would come apart if you pulled them just the right way."
Fran stuck out her feet and looked at them. "Speaking of Harold, do you see anything funny about my feet, Stuart?"
Stu looked at them judiciously. "Nope. Just that you're wearing those funny-looking Earth Shoes from up the street. And they're almighty big, o course."
She slapped at him. "Earth Shoes are very good for your feet. All the best magazines say so. And I happen to be a size seven, for your information. That's practically petite."
"So what have your feet got to do with anything? It's late, honey." He began to push his bike again and she fell in beside him.
"Nothing, I guess. It's just that Harold kept looking at my feet. After the meeting when we were sitting out on the grass and talking things over." She shook her head, frowning a little. "Now why would Harold Lauder be interested in my feet?" she asked.
When Larry and Lucy got home, they were by themselves, walking hand in hand. Sometime before, Leo had gone into the house where he stayed with "Nadine-mom."
Now, as they walked toward the door, Lucy said: "It was quite a meeting. I never thought - " Her words caught in her throat as a dark form unfolded itself from the shadows of their porch. Larry felt hot fear leap up in his throat. It's him, he thought wildly. He's come to get me... I'm going to see his face.
But then he wondered how he could have thought that, because it was Nadine Cross, that was all. She was wearing a dress of some soft bluish-gray material, and her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders and down her back, dark hair shot with skeins of purest white.
She sort of makes Lucy look like a used car on a scalper's lot, he thought before he could help himself, and then hated himself for thinking it. That was the old Larry talking... old Larry? You might as well say old Adam.
"Nadine," Lucy was saying shakily, with one hand pressed to her chest. "You gave me the fright of my life. I thought... well, I don't know what I thought."
She took no notice of Lucy. "Can I talk to you?" she asked Larry.
"What? Now?" He looked sideways at Lucy, or thought he did... later he was never able to remember what Lucy had looked like in that moment. It was as if she had been eclipsed, but by a dark star rather than by a bright one.
"Now. It has to be now."
"In the morning would - "
"It has to be now, Larry. Or never."
He looked at Lucy again and this time he did see her, saw the resignation on her face as she looked from Larry to Nadine and back again. He saw the hurt.
"I'll be right in, Lucy."
"No you won't," she said dully. Tears had begun to sparkle in her eyes. "Oh no, I doubt it."
"Ten minutes."
"Ten minutes, ten years," Lucy said. "She's come to get you. Did you bring your dog collar and your muzzle, Nadine?"
For Nadine, Lucy Swann did not exist. Her eyes were fixed only on Larry, those dark, wide eyes. For Larry, they would always be the strangest, most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, the eyes that come back to you, calm and deep, when you're hurt or in bad trouble or maybe just about out of your mind with grief.
"I'll be in, Lucy," he said automatically.
"She - "
"Go on."
"Yes, I guess I will. She's come. I'm dismissed."
She ran up the steps, stumbling on the top one, regaining her balance, pulling the door open, closing it behind her with a slam, cutting off the sound of her sobs even as they started.
Nadine and Larry looked at each other for a long time as if entranced. This is how it happens, he thought. When you catch someone's eyes across a room and never forget them, or see someone at the far end of a crowded subway platform that could have been your double, or hear a laugh on the street that could have been the laugh of the first girl you ever made love to -