Gardener's smile with her lips still pulled back to the gums; the result of this experiment was mildly grotesque. She put a forefinger on a molar and pressed.
'Oes it iggle en I ooo at?'
'What?'
'Does it wiggle when I do that?'
'No. Not that I can see, anyway. Why?'
'It's just this dream I keep having. It - ' She looked down at herself. 'Get out of here, Gard, I'm in dishabilly.'
Don't worry, Bobbi. I wasn't going to jump your bones. Mostly because that'd be too close to what I'd really be doing.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Door was open. I thought you'd gone out.'
He closed the door, latching it firmly.
Through it she said clearly: 'I know what you're wondering.'
He said nothing - only stood there. But he had a feeling she knew - knew - he was still there. As if she could see through the door.
'You're wondering if I'm losing my mind.'
'No,' he said then. 'No, Bobbi. But - '
'I'm as sane as you are,' Anderson said through the door. 'I'm so stiff I can hardly walk and I've got an Ace bandage wrapped around my right knee for some reason I can't quite remember and I'm hungry as a bear and I know I've lost too much weight ... but I am sane, Gard. I think you may have
times before the day's over when you wonder if you are. The answer is, we both are.'
'Bobbi, what's happening here?' Gardener asked. It came out in a helpless sort of cry.
'I want to unwrap the goddam Ace bandage and see what's under it,' Anderson said through the door. 'Feel like I jobbed my knee pretty good. Out in the woods, probably. Then I want to take a hot shower and put on some clean clothes. While I do that, you could make us some breakfast. And I'll tell you everything.'
'Will you?'
'Yes.'
'Okay, Bobbi.'
'I'm glad to have you here, Gard,' she said. 'I had a bad feeling once or twice. Like maybe you weren't doing so good.'
Gardener felt his vision double, treble, then float away in prisms. He wiped an arm across his face. 'No pain, no strain,' he said. 'I'll make some breakfast.'
'Thanks, Gard.'
He walked away then, but he had to walk slow, because no matter how many times he wiped his eyes, his vision kept trying to break up on him.
3
He stopped just inside the kitchen and went back to the closed bathroom door as a new thought occurred to him. Water was running in there now.
'Where's Peter, Bobbi?'
'What?' she called over the drumming shower.
'I said, where's Peter?' he called, raising his voice.
'Dead,' Bobbi called back over the drumming water. 'I cried, Gard. But he was ... you know . . .'
'Old,' Gardener muttered, then remembered and raised his voice again. 'It was old age, then?'
'Yes,' Anderson called back over the drumming water.
Gardener stood there for just a moment before going back to the kitchen, wondering why he believed Bobbi was lying about Peter and how he had died.
4
Gard scrambled eight eggs and fried bacon on Bobbi's grill. He noticed that a microwave oven had been installed over the conventional one since he'd last been here, and there was now track lighting over the main work areas and the kitchen table, where Bobbi was in the habit of eating most of her meals - usually with a book in her free hand.
He made coffee, strong and black, and was just bringing everything to the table when Bobbi came in, wearing a fresh pair of cords and a T-shirt with a picture of a blackfly on it and the legend MAINE STATE BIRD. Her wet hair was wrapped in a towel.
Anderson surveyed the table. 'No toast?' she asked.
'Make your own frigging toast,' Gardener said amiably. 'I didn't hitchhike two hundred miles to buttle your breakfast.'
Anderson stared. 'You did what? Yesterday? In the rain?'
'Yeah.'
'What in God's name happened? Muriel said you were doing a reading tour and your last one was June 30th.'
'You called Muriel?' He was absurdly touched. 'When?'
Anderson flapped a hand as if that didn't matter - probably it didn't. 'What happened?' she asked again.
Gardener thought about telling her - wanted to tell her, he realized, dismayed. Was that what Bobbi was for, then? Was Bobbi Anderson really no more than the wall he wailed to? He hesitated, wanting to tell her ... and didn't. There would be time for that later.
Maybe.
'Later,' he said. 'I want to know what happened here.'
'Breakfast first,' Anderson said, 'and that's an order.'