She overbalanced the motor-scooter going around the concession stand. She might have held it if she'd been on a paved surface, but the Vespa's rear wheel skidded out from under her in the loose gravel and she fell with a thump, biting her lip bloody and cutting her cheek. She got up, her eyes wide and skittish, and drove on. She was trembling all over.
Now she was in the alley the cars drove through to get into the drive-in and the ticket stand, looking like a small toll-booth, was just ahead of her. She was going to get out. She was going to get away. Her mouth softened in gratitude.
Behind her, hundreds of speakers blared into life all at once, and now the voice was singing, a horrid, tuneless singing: "I'LL BE SEEING YOU... IN ALL THE OLD FAMILIAR PLACES... THAT THIS HEART OF MINE EMBRACES... ALL DAY THROOOOO... "
Nadine screamed in her newly cracked voice.
Huge, monstrous laughter came then, a dark and sterile cackling which seemed to fill the earth.
"DO WELL, NADINE," the voice boomed. "DO WELL, MY FANCY, MY DEAR ONE."
Then she gained the road and fled back toward Boulder at the Vespa's top speed, leaving the disembodied voice and staring speakers behind... but carrying them with her in her heart, for then, for always.
She was waiting for Harold around the corner from the bus station. When he saw her, his face froze and drained of color. "Nadine - " he whispered. The lunch bucket dropped from his hand and clacked on the pavement.
"Harold," she said. "They know. We've got to - "
"Your hair, Nadine, oh my God, your hair - " His face seemed to be all eyes.
"Listen to me! "
He seemed to gain some of himself back. "A-all right. What?"
"They went up to your house and found your book. They took it away."
Emotions at war on Harold's face: anger, horror, shame. Little by little they drained away and then, like some terrible corpse coming up from deep water, a frozen grin resurfaced on Harold's face. "Who? Who did that?"
"I don't know all of it, and it doesn't matter anyway. Fran Goldsmith was one of them, I'm sure of that. Maybe Bateman or Underwood. I don't know. But they'll come for you, Harold."
"How do you know?" He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, remembering that she had put the ledger back under the hearthstone. He shook her like a ragdoll, but Nadine faced him without fear. She had been face-to-face with more terrible things than Harold Lauder on this long, long day. "You bitch, how do you know? "
"He told me."
Harold's hands dropped away.
"Flagg?" A whisper. "He told you? He spoke to you? And it did that?" Harold's grin was ghastly, the grin of the Reaper on horseback.
"What are you talking about?"
They were standing next to an appliance store. Taking her by the shoulders again, Harold turned her to face the glass. Nadine looked at her reflection for a long time.
Her hair had gone white. Entirely white. There was not a single black strand left.
Oh how I love to love Nadine.
"Come on," she said. "We have to leave town."
"Now?"
"After dark. We'll hide until then, and pick up what camping gear we need on the way out."
"West?"
"Not yet. Not until tomorrow night."
"Maybe I don't want to anymore," Harold whispered. He was still looking at her hair.
She put his hand on it. "Too late, Harold," she said.
BOOK II ON THE BOARDER Chapter 58
Fran and Larry sat at the kitchen table of Stu and Fran's place, sipping coffee. Downstairs, Leo was stretching out on his guitar, one that Larry had helped him pick out at Earthly Sounds. It was a nice $600 Gibson with a hand-rubbed cherry finish. As an afterthought he had gotten the boy a battery-powered phonograph and about a dozen folk/blues albums. Now Lucy was with him, and a startlingly good imitation of Dave van Ronk's "Backwater Blues" drifted up to them.
Well it rained five days
and the sky turned black as night...
There's trouble takin place,
on the bayou tonight.
Through the arch that gave on the living room, Fran and Larry could see Stu, sitting in his favorite easy chair, Harold's ledger open on his lap. He had been sitting that way since four in the afternoon. It was now nine, and full dark. He had refused supper. As Frannie watched him, he turned another page.
Down below, Leo finished "Backwater Blues" and there was a pause.
"He plays well, doesn't he?" Fran said.
"Better than I do or ever will," Larry said. He sipped his coffee.
From below there suddenly came a familiar chop, a swift running down the frets to a not-quite-standard blues progression that made Larry's coffee cup pause. And then Leo's voice, low and insinuating, adding the vocal to the slow, driving beat:
Hey baby I come down here tonight
And I didn't come to get in no fight,
I just want you to say if you can,
Tell me once and I'll understand,
Baby, can you dig your man?
He's a righteous man,
Baby, can you dig your man?
Larry spilled his coffee.
"Whoops," Fran said, and got up to get a dishcloth.
"I'll do it," he said. "Jiggled when I should have joggled, I guess."
"No, sit still." She got the dishcloth and wiped up the stain quickly. "I remember that one. It was big just before the flu. He must have picked up the single downtown."
"I guess so."
"What was that guy's name? The guy that did it?"