“Oh, we’ve been doing it. You know parts of their minds that nobody on Earth but you knows. You help get us in. I concentrate it into a kind of real. We’re already there, just not as much there as we need to be.”
Boppit saw my expression and sighed. He said, “I’ll try to describe it. We’ll call it dreaming for now. When Ricky thinks of her, if he’s heading to Neave’s apartment when she’s alone, I feel it. I dream myself into his mind. I suggest that he is very, very thirsty; how had he ever gotten so thirsty? And here’s a bar that he suddenly needs to go into to get a beer. He thinks, Just one. Just a few minutes. He gets to her apartment and she’s gone, because I dreamed her into her car and off to the docks while I was dreaming Ricky into a bar. I put an impulse in her to go now, now, now! You do it too.”
“I don’t feel myself doing it,” I said.
“Lilly, when I go into Ricky’s mind, you’re there with me whether you know where you are or not. Do you ever feel like something’s sliding down your spine, something pulsing and whipping around?”
“Yes.”
“There you go. That’s Ricky. Soon when you travel into a mind, it’ll run in your head like a newsreel. You’ll get better at it.”
It already sort of did run in my head. It didn’t feel real, but when it happened its moving parts could give me a shock of recognition.
“I know,” Boppit said, though I was sure I hadn’t spoken out loud. “It will feel familiar even though it also seems like it hasn’t happened yet, or never happened in the past.”
“If we can dream him away from Neave, why can’t we make Ricky forget about her and go away?”
“We’re just pushing a few things into his path. We’re not changing his nature.”
“Isn’t there something more we can do?”
“We’re going to work on her accessories.”
“Accessories? I thought we decided that a good pair of shoes doesn’t protect you from much in this world.”
“Sometimes they just tip the balance the littlest bit, and Neave needs us to put a thumb on the scale for her.”
“No offense to you, Boppit, but you’re not the first thing that would come to anybody’s mind if they needed heroic intervention. And we both know what came of my thinking I could control Ricky Luhrmann. We’re all wrong for this problem.”
“Yet we are here. And Ricky has not once been behind Neave when she drove to the Rubber Duck.”
“You said she’d be able to see us, Boppit. When’s that going to happen?”
Mr. Boppit laced his arm through mine. “Just stay with me. Concentrate. We’ll get there.”
“Where is ‘there’?”
“We’re close. It’s what I told you: We think of her. She thinks of us.”
“Then what happens?” I asked.
“She’ll see us.”
“Even if that’s true, what good will it do us, or her?”
“We’ll be in her universe, in her time. From there it’ll be easier to turn her attention back to Be Your Best and away from Ricky Luhrmann. We stay alert, on guard, keep watch for him, and we think her into safer places. We push her back into a life where she isn’t sitting in a pile of crumbs looking like every psychopath’s ideal victim. Then we’re going to get her a good haircut.”
I’m no crier, but I started crying then.
“Now, now,” Boppit said gently. “Don’t despair. I’ll take the purse. You take the hair. We’ll go from there.”
It was what we had, and that, in the end, is what you go with.
NEAVE
Lilly and Boppit Break Through
I woke to full sun shining through the Rubber Duck’s cabin windows and across the legs of a young man sitting on the tiny cabin refrigerator. He wore marine whites—formal military except for a Chanel silk scarf at his throat, and a pair of high heels on his feet. He grinned happily and his tongue kind of lolled a bit to one side as he closed his mouth again. The expression was distinct, idiosyncratic, unmistakable.
“Boppit?” I whispered. He nodded, and the gesture summoned up the idea of a wagging tail. I glanced at his feet.
“At last! You see me. What about Lilly?”
“Lilly? Do you know where she is?”
“Of course I do. She’s sitting at the end of your bunk.”
“I don’t see any Lilly.”
“Look harder, honey.”
I looked. There was just a dark blur in the air, maybe, at the other end of the bed. Then it was like a purple foggy mass, then the purple solidified into my favorite blouse—purchased sometime around 1941 and borrowed by Lilly Terhune for a special date. The blouse never returned. But Lilly, my Lilly, seemed to be sitting three feet away from me wearing it now. She smiled at me and lifted one hand in greeting. A lit cigarette balanced between her fingers.
“See me now, Neavie?”
I opened my mouth but I couldn’t make any sounds come out.
Lilly nodded at Boppit and grinned. “You were right! She sees me.”
Boppit smiled. “Of course I was right. The truth is, though, I’m relieved. It took so long.” He turned to me. “Neave, snap out of it!”
“You aren’t there and I don’t see you. I’m fine.”
“You’re fine,” Boppit said, “and you do see us. We’ll just sit here for a while until you calm down.”
I looked down at his feet, the high heels peeping up beneath the cuff.
“Aren’t those our mother’s favorite pumps?”
“They were.” He lifted one leg and tipped the toe of the shoe toward me so I could appreciate the instep. “The woman had terrible taste, but these shoes—the mysterious exception.”
“I was shopping with her when she bought them,” Lilly explained. “I forced them on her.”
“Well, of course.” Bop nodded. “That would explain it.”
“You chewed those pumps to Kingdom Come and she locked you in the garage,” Lilly said.
“She did.” He laughed. “Remember that, Neave?”
I said, “What are you?”
“Exactly what we look like.” Boppit tilted his head toward me, the tongue managing to look like it was hanging over an incisor even though it wasn’t.
“Lilly, are you…?”
“Alive? No, sweetie. I’m something different.”
“But … different, meaning dead? The ponytail … it meant what we thought it meant?”
“It did.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening, Lilly.”
Boppit broke in. “Understanding is overvalued. You have to get dressed, Neave. You have to get to the office.”
“I’m not just confused. I’m.…” I stopped talking because I didn’t know what I was. Surprisingly, though, whatever I might have been, it wasn’t scared. In fact, I felt something in my chest open up that I could honestly call happiness. How strange, I thought.
Lilly was already rooting through the suitcase I’d left by the door. “Where’s your makeup?”
“Home.”
“Okay. Let’s head to your apartment and get you polished up.”
“Lilly, if we can find Ricky we can get him arrested. Do you know where he is?”