he was seeing Baldy #3 again, standing between the Burry-Burry and the apartment house next door. Baldy #3 trying to get Rosalie to cross Harris Avenue so he could cut her balloon-string.
He'd failed then, but he'd gotten the job done (I was gonna play with her before the morning was out.
Maybe the fact that Bill McGovern isn't the hat-biting type wasn't the only reason Lot's didn't notice whose hat Baldy #3 was wearing, Ralph old buddy. Maybe she didn't notice because she didn't want to notice. Maybe there are a couple of pieces here that fit together, and if you're right about that, the implications are wide-ranging. You see that, don't you.)
"Ralph? What's wrong?"
He saw the dwarf snatching a bite from the brim of the Panama and then clapping it back on his head. Heard him saying he guessed he would have to play with Ralph instead.
But not just me. Me and my friends, he said. Me and my asshole friends.
Now, thinking back on it, he saw something else, as well. He saw the sun striking splinters of fire from the lobes of Doc #3's ears as he-or it-chomped into the brim of McGovern's hat. The memory was too clear to deny, and so were those implications.
Those wide-ranging implications.
Take it easy-you don't know a thing for sure, and the funny-farm is just over the horizon, my friend. I think you need to remember that, maybe use it as an anchor. I don't care if Lois is also seeing all this stuff or not. The other men in the white coats, not the pint-sized baldies but the muscular guys with the butterfly nets and the Thorazine shots, can show up at any time. Any old time at all.
But still.
Still.
"Ralph! Jesus Christ, talk to me!" Lois was shaking him now and shaking hard, like a wife trying to rouse a husband who is going to be late for work.
He looked around at her and tried to manufacture a smile. It felt false from the inside but must have looked all right to Lois, because she relaxed. A little, anyway. "Sorry," he said. "For a few seconds there it all just sort of... you know, ganged up on me."
"Don't you scare me like that! The way you grabbed your chest, my God!"
"I'm fine," Ralph said, and forced his false smile even wider. He felt like a kid pulling a wad of Silly Putty, seeing how far he could stretch it before it thinned enough to tear. "And if you're still cookin, I'm still eatin."
Three-six-nine, bon, the goose drank wine.
Lois took a close look at him and then relaxed. "Good. That would be fun. I haven't cooked for anyone but Simone and Minathey're my girlfriends, you know-in a long time." Then she laughed. "Except that isn't what I mean, That isn't why it would t)e, you know, fun."
"What do you mean?"
"That I haven't cooked for a man in a long time. I hope I haven't forgotten how."
"Well, there was the day Bill and I came in to watch the DeNx,s with you-we had macaroni and cheese. It was good, too."
She made a dismissive gesture. "Reheated. Not the same."
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line. The line broke.
Smiling wider than ever. Waiting for the rips to start. "I'M sure you haven't forgotten how, Lois."
"Mr. Chasse had a very hearty appetite, All sorts of hearty appetites, in fact. But then he started having his liver trouble, and..."
She sighed, then reached for Ralph's arm and took it with a mixture of timidity and resolution he found completely endearing, "Now is the mind. I'm tired of snivelling and moaning about the past. I'll leave that to Bill. Let's go."
He stood up, linked his arm through hers, and walked her down the hill and toward the lower entrance to the park. Lois beamed blindingly at the young mothers in the playground as she and Ralph passed them.
Ralph was glad for the distraction. He could tell himself to withhold judgement, he could remind himself over and over again that he didn't know enough about what was happening to him and Lois to even kid himself that he could think logically about it, but he kept jumping at that conclusion anyway. The conclusion felt right to his heart, and he had already come a long way toward believing that, in the world of ose to identical.
I don't know about the other two, but #3 is one crazy medic... and he takes souvenirs. Takes them the way some of the crazies