to restrain it, and Rosie waited to see no more. She seized Bill by the arm and yanked him through the window-sized painting.
3
There was no sensation of tripping, but she fell rather than walked out of the painting, just the same. So did Bill. They landed on the closet floor side by side in a long, trapezoidal patch of moonlight. Bill rapped his head against the side of the door, hard enough to hurt, by the sound, but he seemed unaware of it.
“That was no dream,” he said. “Jesus, we were in the picture! The one you bought on the day I met you!”
“No,” she said calmly. “Not at all.”
Around them, the moonlight began tu simultaneously brighten and contract. At the same time it lost its linear shape and quickly became circular. It was as if a door were slowly irising closed behind them. Rosie felt an urge to turn and see what was happening, but she resisted it. And when Bill started to turn his head, she placed her palms gently against his cheeks and turned his face back to hers.
“Don’t,” she said. “What good would it do? Whatever happened is over now.”
“But—”
The light had contracted to a blindingly bright spotlight around them now, and Rosie had the crazy idea that if Bill took her in his arms and danced her across the room, that bright beam of light would follow them.
“Never mind,” she said. “Never mind any of it. Just let it go.”
“But where’s Norman, Rosie?”
“Gone,” she said, and then, as an almost comic afterthought : “My sweater and the jacket you loaned me, too. The sweater wasn’t much, but I’m sorry about the jacket.”
“Hey,” he said, with a kind of numb insouciance, “don’t sweat the small stuff.”
The pinspot shrank to a cold and furiously blazing matchhead of light, then to a needlepoint, and then it was gone, leaving just a white dot of afterimage floating in front of her eyes. She looked back into the closet. The picture was exactly where she had put it following her first trip to the world inside it, only it had changed again. Now it showed only the hilltop and the temple below by the last rays of the waning moon. The stillness of this scene—and the absence of any human figure—made it look more classical than ever to Rosie.
“Christ,” Bill said. He was rubbing his swollen throat. “What happened, Rosie? I just can’t figure out what happened.”
Not too much time could have passed; down the hall, the tenant Norman had shot was still screaming his head off.
“I ought to go see if I can help that guy,” Bill said, struggling to his feet. “Will you call an ambulance? And the cops?”
“Yes. I imagine they’re both on the way already, but I’ll make the calls.”
He went to the door, then looked back doubtfully, still massaging his throat. “What’ll you tell the police, Rosie?”
She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Dunno ... but I’ll think of something. These days invention on short notice is my strong suit. Go on, now. Do your thing.”
“I love you, Rosie. That’s the only thing I’m sure of anymore.”
He went before she could reply. She followed a step or two after him, then stopped. From down the hall she could now see a hesitant, bobbing light that had to be a candle. Someone said: “Holy cow! Is he shot?” Bill’s murmured reply was lost in another howl from the injured man. Injured, yes, but probably not too badly. Not if he could produce a noise level that high.
Unkind, she told herself, picking up the handset of her new telephone and punching 911. Perhaps it was, but it might also be simple realism. Rosie didn’t think it mattered either way. She’d started to see the world in a new perspective, she supposed, and her thought about the yelling man down the hall was just one sign of that new perspective at work. “It doesn’t matter as long as I remember the tree,” she said, without even being aware that she had spoken.
The phone on the other end of her call was picked up after a single ring. “Hello, 911, this call is being recorded.”
“Yes, I’m sure. My name is Rosie McClendon, and my residence is 897 Trenton Street, second floor. My upstairs neighbor needs an ambulance.”
“Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of his—”
She could, she most certainly could, but something else struck her then, something she hadn’t understood before but did now, something that needed doing right this