The bright green light is neither hot nor cold. It is nothing. Except ...
His throat.
His throat is no longer sore.
And he hears this, clearly and unmistakably: '- per cent off! This is the sort of price reduction that may never be repeated! EVERYONE gets credit! Recliners! Waterbeds! Living room s - '
The plate in his skull, talking again. Gone almost before it was fairly begun.
Like his sore throat.
And that green light was gone, too.
Gardener opens his eyes ... cautiously.
Bobbi is lying on the couch, eyes shut, deeply asleep ... just as she was. What's all this about rays shooting out of eyes? Good God!
He sits in the rocking chair again. Swallows. No pain. The fever has gone down a lot, too.
Coffee and aspirin, he thinks. You were going to get up for coffee and aspirin, remember?
Sure, he thinks, settling more comfortably into the rocking chair and closing his eyes. But no one gets coffee and aspirin in a dream. I'll do it just as soon as I wake up.
Gard, you are awake.
But that, of course, could not be. In the waking world, people don't shoot green beams from their eyes, beams that cure fevers and sore throats. Dreams si, reality no.
He crosses his arms over his chest and drifts away. He knows no more - either sleeping or waking -for the rest of that night.
5
When Gardener woke up, bright light was streaming into his face through the western window. His back hurt like a bastard, and when he stood up his neck gave a wretched, arthritic creak that made him wince. It was quarter of nine. He looked at Bobbi and felt a moment of suffocating fear - in that moment he was sure Bobbi was dead. Then he saw that she was just so deeply, movelessly asleep that she gave a good impression of being dead. It was a mistake anyone might have made. Bobbi's chest rose in slow, steady pulls with long but even pauses in between. Gardener timed her and saw she was breathing no more than six times a minute.
But she looked better this morning - not great, but a lot better than the haggard scarecrow who had reeled out to greet him last night.
Doubt if I looked much better, he thought, and went into Bobbi's bathroom to shave.
The face looking back from the mirror wasn't as bad as he had feared, but he noted with some dismay that his nose had bled again in the night - not a lot, but enough to have covered his philtrum and most of his upper lip. He got a facecloth out of the cupboard to the right of the sink and turned on the hot water to wet it down.
He put the facecloth under the water flowing from the hot tap with all the absentmindedness of long habit - with Bobbi's water heater, you just about had time for a cup of coffee and a smoke before you got a lukewarm stream - and that was on a good d
'Youch!'
He pulled his hand back from water so hot it was steaming. Okay, that was what he got for assuming Bobbi was just going to go clipclopping down the road of life without ever getting her damned water heater fixed.
Gardener put his scalded palm to his mouth and looked at the water coming out of the tap. It had already fogged the lower edge of the shaving mirror on the back of the medicine cabinet. He reached out, found the tap's handle almost too hot to touch, and used the facecloth to turn it off. Then he put in the rubber plug, drew a little more hot water - cautiously! - and added a generous dollop of cold. The pad of flesh below his left thumb had reddened a little.
He opened the medicine cabinet and moved things around until he came to the prescription bottle of Valium with his own name on the label. If that stuff improves with age, it ought to be great, he thought. Still almost full. Well, what did he expect? Whatever Bobbi had been using, it sure as hell had been the opposite of Valium.
Gardener didn't want it, either. He wanted what was behind it, if it was still
Ali! Success!
He pulled out a double-edge razor and a package of blades. He looked a little sadly at the layer of dust on the razor - it had been a long time since he'd shaved in the morning here at Bobbi's - and then rinsed it