inHong Kongcalled "The Dragon Sows His Pearls."
The Dragon.
He felt stunned, cloven. And all the long night beside her he listened, fearful, for himself coming down the stairs in the kimono.
She stirred once in the night, searching sleepily until she found the bedside glass. Grandmother's teeth rattled in it.
Dolarhyde brought her water. She held him in the dark. When she slept again, he took her hand off his great tattoo and put it on his face.
* * *
He slept hard at dawn.
Reba McClane woke at nine and heard his steady breathing. She stretched lazily in the big bed. He didn't stir. She reviewed the layout of the house, the order of rugs and floor, the direction of the ticking clock. When she had it straight, she rose quietly and found the bathroom.
After her long shower, he was still asleep. Her torn underclothes were on the floor. She found them with her feet and stuffed them in her purse. She pulled her cotton dress on over her head, picked up her cane and walked outside.
He had told her the yard was large and level, bounded by hedges grown wild, but she was cautious at first.
The morning breeze was cool, the sun warm. She stood in the yard and let the wind toss the seed heads of the elderberry through her hands. The wind found the creases of her body, fresh from the shower. She raised her arms to it and the wind blew cool beneath her breasts and arms and between her legs. Bees went by. She was not afraid of them and they left her alone.
Dolarhyde woke, puzzled for an instant because he was not in his room upstairs. His yellow eyes grew wide as he remembered. An owlish turn of his head to the other pillow. Empty.
Was she wandering around the house? What might she find? Or had something happened in the night? Something to clean up. He would be suspected. He might have to run.
He looked in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Down in the basement where his other wheelchair stood. The upper floor. He didn't want to go upstairs. He had to look. His tattoo flexed as he climbed the stairs. The Dragon glowed at him from the picture in his bedroom. He could not stay in the room with the Dragon.
From an upstairs window he spotted her in the yard.
"FRANCIS." He knew the voice came from his room. He knew it was the voice of the Dragon. This new twoness with the Dragon disoriented him. He first felt it when he put his hand on Reba's heart.
The Dragon had never spoken to him before. It was frightening.
"FRANCIS, COME HERE."
He tried to shut out the voice calling him, calling him as he hurried down the stairs.
What could she have found? Grandmother's teeth had rattled in the glass, but he put them away when he brought her water. She couldn't see anything.
Freddy's tape. It was in a cassette recorder in the parlor. He checked it. The cassette was rewound to the beginning. He couldn't remember if he hadrewound it after he played it on the telephone to the Tattler.
She must not come back in the house. He didn't know what might happen in the house. She might get a surprise. The Dragon might come down. He knew how easily she would tear.
The women saw her getting in his van. Warfield would remember them together, Hurriedly he dressed.
Reba McClane felt the cool bar of a tree trunk's shadow, and then the sun again as she wandered across the yard. She could always tell where she was by the heat of the sun and the hum of the window air conditioner. Navigation, her life's discipline, was easy here. She turned around and around, trailing her hands on the shrubs and overgrown flowers.
A cloud blocked the sun and she stopped, not knowing in which direction she faced. She listened for the air conditioner. It was off. She felt a moment of uneasiness, then clapped her hands and heard the reassuring echo from the house. Reba flipped up her watch crystal and felt the time. She'd have to wake D. soon. She needed to go home.
The screen door slammed.
"Good morning," she said.
His keys tinkled as he came across the grass.
He approached her cautiously, as though the wind of his coming might blow her down, and saw that she was not afraid of him.
She didn't seem embarrassed or ashamed of what they had done in the night. She didn't seem angry. She didn't run