menu she'd plucked from a little collection of them filed between the salt and pepper shakers.
"When I was in the bathroom, I tried to make the auras come back.
This time I couldn't do it."
"Why would you want to, Ralph?"
He shrugged, not wanting to tell her about the feeling of paranoia that had dropped over him as he stood at the basin in the little bathroom, washing his hands and looking into his own strangely young face in the water-spotted mirror. It had suddenly occurred to him that he might not be alone in there. Worse, Lois might not be alone next door in the women's room. Atropos might be creeping up behind her, completely unseen, diamond-cluster earrings glittering from his tiny lobes... scalpel outstretched...
Then, instead of Lois's earrings or McGovern's Panama, his mind's eye had conjured the jumprope Atropos had been using when Ralph had spotted him
(three-six-nine lion the goose drank wine)
in the vacant lot between the bakery and the tanning salon, the jumprope which had once been the prized possession of a little girl who had stumbled during a game of apartment-tag, fallen out of a second-story window, and died of a broken neck (what a dreadful accident, she had her whole life ahead of her, if there's a God why does He let things like that happen, and so on and so on, not to mention blah-blah-blah).
He had told himself to stop it, that things were bad enough without his indulging in gruesome fantasies of Atropos slashing Lois's balloon-string, but it didn't help much... mostly because he knew Atropos might really be here with them in the restaurant, and Atropos could do anything to them he liked. Anything at all.
Lois reached across the table and touched the back of his hand.
"Don't worry. The colors will come back. They always do."
"I suppose." He took a menu of his own, opened it, and cast an eye down the breakfast bill of fare. His initial impression was that he wanted one of everything.
"The first time you saw Ed acting crazy, he was coming out of the Derry Airport," Lois said. "Now we know why. He was taking flying lessons, wasn't he?"
"Of course. While Trig was giving me a lift back to Harris Avenue, he even mentioned that you need a pass to come out that way, through the service gate. He asked me if I knew how Ed had gotten one, and I said I didn't. Now I do. They must give them to all the General Aviation flying students."
"Do you think Helen knew about his hobby?" Lois asked, "She probably didn't, did she?"
"I'm sure she didn't. I'll bet he switched over to Coastal Air right after he ran into the guy from West Side Gardeners, too. That little episode could have convinced him he was losing control, and he might do well to move his lessons a little farther away from home."
"Or maybe it was Atropos who convinced him," Lois said bleakly.
"Atropos or someone from even higher up."
Ralph didn't care for the idea, but it felt right, just the same, Entities, he thought, and shivered. The Crimson King.
"They're dancing him around like a puppet on a string, aren't they?" Lois asked.
"Atropos, you mean?"
"No. Atropos is a nasty little bugger, but otherwise I think he's not much different from Mr. C. and Mr. L.-low-level help, maybe only a step above unskilled labor in the grand scheme of things."
"Janitors."
"Well, yes, maybe," Lois agreed. "Janitors and gofers. Atropos is probably the one who's done most of the actual work on Ed, and I'd bet a cookie it's work he loves, but I'd bet my house that his orders come from higher up. Does that sound more or less on the beam to you?"
"Yes. We'll probably never know exactly how nuts he was before this started, or exactly when Atropos cut his balloon-string, but the thing I'm most curious about at this moment is pretty mundane. I'd like to know how in the hell he went Charlie Pickering's ball and how he paid for his damned flying lessons."
Before Lois could reply, a waitress approached them, digging an order-pad and a ballpoint pen out of the pocket of her apron. "Hell-) you guys"
"I'd like a cheese and mushroom omelet," Ralph said.
"Uh-huh." She switched her cud from one side of her jaw to the other. "Two-egg or three-egg, lion?"
"Four, if that's okay."
She raised her eyebrows slightly and jotted on the pad. "Okay by me if it's okay by you. Anything with that?"