Chapter 9

Anderson Spins a Tale

Bobbi was getting off the couch slowly, wincing, like an old woman.

“Bobbi-” Gardener began.

“Christ, I ache all over,” Anderson said. “And I've got to change my-never mind. How long did I sleep?”

Gardener glanced at his watch. “Fourteen hours, I guess. A little more. Bobbi, your new book-”

“Yeah. Hold that thought until I get back.” She walked slowly across the floor toward the bathroom, unbuttoning the shirt she had slept in. As she hobbled toward the bathroom, Gardener got a good look-a much better one than he wanted, actually-of just how much weight Bobbi had lost. This went beyond scrawniness to the point of emaciation.

She stopped, as if aware Gardener was looking at her, and without looking around she said: “I can explain everything, you know.”

“Can you?” Gardener asked.

Anderson was in the bathroom a long time-much longer than it should have taken her to use the toilet and change her pad-Gardener was pretty sure that was what she'd gone to do. Her face just had that I-got-the-curse look. He listened for the shower but it wasn't running, and he began to feel uneasy. Bobbi had seemed perfectly lucid when she woke up, but did that necessarily mean she was? Gardener began to have uncomfortable visions of Bobbi wriggling out the bathroom window and then running off into the woods in nothing but blue jeans, cackling wildly.

He put his right hand to the left side of his forehead, where the scar was. His head had started to throb a little. He let another minute or two slip by, and then he got up and walked toward the bathroom, making an effort to step quietly that was not quite unconscious. Visions of Bobbi escaping through the bathroom window to avoid explanations had been replaced by one of Bobbi serenely cutting her throat with one of Gard's own razor-blades to avoid explanations permanently.

He decided he would just listen. If he heard normal-sounding movements he would go on out to the kitchen and put on coffee, maybe scramble a few eggs. If he didn't hear anything

His worries were needless. The bathroom door hadn't latched when she closed it, and other improvements aside, the unlatched doors in the place apparently still had their old way of swinging open. She'd probably have to shim up the whole north side of the house to do that. Maybe that was next week's project, he thought.

The door had swung open enough for him to see Bobbi standing at the mirror where Gardener had stood himself not long ago. She had her toothbrush in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other… but she hadn't uncapped the tube yet. She was looking into the mirror with an intensity that was almost hypnotic. Her lips were pulled back, her teeth bared.

She caught movement in the mirror and turned around, making no particular effort to cover her wasted breasts.

“Gard, do my teeth look all right to you?”

Gardener looked at them. They looked to him about as they always had, although he couldn't remember ever having seen quite this much of them-he was reminded of that terrible photo of Karen Carpenter again.

“Sure.” He kept trying not to look at her stacked ribs, the painful jut of her pelvic bones above the waist of her jeans, which were drooping in spite of a belt cinched so tight it looked like a hobo's length of clothesline. “I guess so.” He smiled cautiously. “Look, ma, no cavities.”

Anderson tried to return 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.

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.

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.