Tom went stockstill. The animation died out of his face. His mouth dropped slackly open and he became the picture of idiocy.
Stu stirred uncomfortably and said, "Nick, don't you think we ought to - "
Nick shushed him with a finger at his lips, and at the same instant Tom came alive again.
"Stew!" he said, capering and laughing. "You're Stew!" He looked at Nick for confirmation, and Nick gave him a V-for-victory.
"M-O-O-N, that spells Stew, Tom Cullen knows that, everybody knows that!"
Nick pointed to the door of Tom's house.
"Want to come in? Laws, yes! All of us are going to come in. Tom's been decorating his house."
Ralph and Stu exchanged an amused glance as they followed Nick and Tom up the porch steps. Tom was always "decorating." He did not "furnish," because the house had of course been furnished when he moved in. Going inside was like entering a madly jumbled Mother Goose world.
A huge gilded birdcage with a green stuffed parrot carefully wired to the perch hung just inside the front door and Nick had to duck under it. The thing was, he thought, Tom's decorations were not just random rickrack. That would have made this house into something no more striking than a rummage sale barn. But there was something more here, something that seemed just beyond what the ordinary mind could grasp as a pattern. In a large square block over the mantel in the living room were a number of credit card signs, all of them centered and carefully mounted. YOUR VISA CARD WELCOME HERE. JUST SAY MASTERCARD. WE HONOR AMERICAN EXPRESS. DINER'S CLUB. Now the question occurred: How did Tom know that all those signs were part of a fixed set? He couldn't read, but somehow he had grasped the pattern.
Sitting on the coffee table was a large Styrofoam fireplug. On the windowsill, where it could catch the sunlight and reflect cool fans of blue light onto the wall, was a police car bubble.
Tom toured them through the entire house. The downstairs game room was filled with stuffed birds and animals that Tom had found in a taxidermy shop; he had strung the birds on nearly invisible piano wire and they seemed to cruise, owls and hawks and even a bald eagle with moth-eaten feathers and one yellow glass eye missing. A woodchuck stood on its hind legs in one corner, a gopher in another, a skunk in another, a weasel in the fourth. In the center of the room was a coyote, somehow seeming to be the focus for all the smaller animals.
The banister leading up the stairs had been wrapped in red and white strips of Con-Tact paper so that it resembled a barber pole. The upper hallway was hung with fighter planes on more piano wire - Fokkers, Spads, Stukas, Spitfires, Zeros, Messerschmitts. The floor of the bathroom had been painted a bright electric blue and on it was Tom's extensive collection of toy boats, sailing an enamel sea around four white porcelain islands and one white porcelain continent: the legs of the tub, the base of the toilet.
At last Tom took them back downstairs and they sat below the credit card montage and facing a 3-D picture of John and Robert Kennedy against a background of gold-edged clouds. The legend beneath proclaimed BROTHERS TOGETHER IN HEAVEN.
"You like Tom's decorations? What do you think? Nice?"
"Very nice," Stu said. "Tell me. Those birds downstairs... do they ever get on your nerves?"
"Laws, no!" Tom said, astounded. "They're full of sawdust!"
Nick handed a note to Ralph.
"Tom, Nick wants to know if you'd mind being hypnotized again. Like the time Stan did it. It's important this time, not just a game. Nick says he'll explain why afterward."
"Go ahead," Tom said. "Youuu... are getting... verrrry sleepy... right?"
"Yes, that's it," Ralph said.
"Do you want me to look at the watch again? I don't mind. You know, when you swing it back and forth? Verrrry... sleeeepy... " Tom looked at them doubtfully. "Except I don't feel very sleepy. Laws, no. I went to bed early last night. Tom Cullen always goes to bed early because there's no TV to watch."
Stu said softly: "Tom, would you like to see an elephant?"
Tom's eyes closed immediately. His head dropped forward loosely. His respiration deepened to long, slow strokes. Stu watched this with great surprise. Nick had given him the key phrase, but Stu hadn't known whether or not to believe it would work. And he had never expected that it could happen so fast.
"Just like putting a chicken's head under its wing," Ralph marveled.
Nick handed Stu his prepared "script" for this encounter. Stu looked at Nick for a long moment. Nick looked back, then nodded gravely that Stu should go ahead.
"Tom, can you hear me?" Stu asked.