and raised a thousand miles apart by utterly different adopted families,
will still grow up to live similar lives?"
"Sure, I've heard of that. So?"
"Even raised apart, with totally different backgrounds, they'll choose
similar careers, achieve the same income levels, marry women who
resemble each other, even give their kids the same names. It's uncanny.
And even if they don't know they're twins, even if each of them was told
he was an only child when he was adopted, they'll sense each other out
there, across the miles, even if they don't know who or what they're
sensing.
They have a bond that no one can explain, not even geneticists."
"So how does this apply to you?"
He hesitated, then picked up his fork. He wanted to eat instead of
talk.
Eating was safe. But she wouldn't let him get away with that. His eggs
were congealing. His tranquzirers. He put the fork down again.
"Sometimes," he said, "I see through this guy's eyes when I'm sleeping,
and now sometimes I can even feel him out there when I'm awake, and it's
like the psychic crap in movies, yeah. But I also feel this ...
this bond with him that I really can't explain or describe to you, no
matter how much you prod me about it."
"You're not saying you think he's your twin or something?"
"No, not at all. I think he's a lot younger than me, maybe only twenty
or twenty-one. And no blood relation. But it's that kind of bond, that
mystical twin crap, as if this guy and I share something, have some
fundamental quality in common."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. I wish I did." He paused. He decided to be entirely
truthful. "Or maybe I don't."
Later, after the waitress had cleared away their empty dishes and
brought them strong black coffee, Hatch said, "There's no way I'm going
to go to the cops and offer to help them, if that's what you're
thinking."
"There is a duty here-"
"I don't know anything that could help them anyway."
She blew on her hot coffee. "You know he was driving a Pontiac."
"I don't even think it was his."
"Whose then?"
"Stolen, maybe."
"That was something else you sensed?"
"Yeah. But I don't know what he looks like, his name, where he lives,
anything useful."
"What if something like that comes to you? What if you see something
that could help the cops?"
"Then I'll call it in anonymously."
"They'll take the information more seriously if you give it to them in
person."
He felt violated by the intrusion of this psychotic stranger into his
life.
That violation made him angry, and he feared his anger more than he
feared the stranger, or the supernatural aspect of the situation, or the
prospect of brain damage. He dreaded being driven by some extremity to
discover that his father's hot temper was within him, too, waiting to be
tapped.
"It's a homicide case," he said. "They take every tip seriously in a
murder investigation, even if it's anonymous. I'm not going to let them
make headlines out of me again."
From the restaurant they went across town to Harrison's Antiques, where
Lindsey had an art studio on part of the top floor in addition to the
one at home. When she painted, a regular change of environment
contributed to fresher work.
In the car, with the sun-spangled ocean visible between some of the
buildings to their right, Lindsey pressed the point that she had nagged
him about over breakfast, because she knew that Hatch's only serious
character flaw was a tendency to be too easy-going. Jimmy's death was
the only bad thing in his life that he had never been able to
rationalize, , and put out of mind. And even with that, he had tried to
suppress it rather than face up to his grief, which is why his grief had
a chance to grow.
Given time, and not much of it, he'd begin to downplay the importance of
what had just happened to him.
She said, "You've still got to see Nyebern."
"I suppose so."
"Definitely."
"If there's brain damage, if that's where this psychic stuff comes from,
you said yourself it was benevolent brain damage."
"But maybe it's degenerative, maybe it'll get worse."
"I really don't think so," he said. "I feel fine otherwise."
"You're no doctor."
"All right," he said. He braked for the traffic light at the crossing
to the public beach in the heart of town. "I'll call him. But we have
to see Gujilio later this afternoon."
"You can still squeeze in Nyebern if he has time for you."
Hatch's father had been a tyrant, quick-tempered, shatongued, with a
penchant for subduing his wife and disciplining his son by the
application of regular doses of verbal abuse in the form of nasty
mockery, cutting sarcasm, or just plain threats. Anything at all could
set Hatch's father off, or nothing at all, because secretly he cherished
irritation and actively sought new sources of it. He was a man who
believed he was not destined to be happy-and he insured that his destiny
was fulfilled by making himself and everyone around him miserable.
Perhaps afraid that the potential for a murderously bad temper was
within him, too, or only because he'd had enough tumult in his life,
Hatch had consciously striven to make himself as mellow as his father
was high-strung, as sweetly tolerant as his father was narrow-minded, as
greathearted as his father was unforgiving, as determined to roll with
all of life's punches as his father was determined to punch back at even
imaginary blows. As a result, he was the nicest man Lindsey had ever
known, the nicest by light-years or by whatever measure niceness was
calculated: bunches, bucketsful, gobs. Sometimes, however, Hatch turned
away from an unpleasantness that had to be dealt with, rather than risk
getting in touch with any negative emotion that was remotely reminiscent
of his old man's paranoia and anger.
The light changed from red to green, but three young women in bikinis
were in the crosswalk, laden with beach gear and heading for the ocean.
Hatch didn't just wait for them. He watched them with a smile of
appreciation for the way they filled out their suits.
"I take it back," Lindsey said.
"What?"
"I was just thinking what a nice guy you are, too nice, but obviously
you're a piece of lecherous scum."
"Nice scum, though."
"I'll call Nyebern as soon as we get to the shop," Lindsey said.
He drove up the hill through the main part of town, past the old Laguna
Hotel. "Okay. But I'm sure as hell not going to tell him I'm suddenly
psychic. He's a good man, but he won't be able to sit on that kind of
news.
The next thing I know, my face'll be all over the cover of the National
Inquirer. Besides, I'm not psychic, not exactly. I don't know what the
hell I am-aside from lecherous scum."
"So what'll you tell him?"
"Just enough about the dreams so he'll realize how troubling they are
and how strange, so he'll order whatever tests I ought to have. Good
enough?"
"I guess it'll have to be."
In the tomb-deep blackness of his hideaway, curled naked upon the
stained and lumpy mattress, fast asleep, Vassago saw sunlight, sand, the
sea, and three bikinied girls beyond the windshield of a red car.
He was dreaming and knew he dreamed, which was a peculiar sensation.
He rolled with it.
He saw, as well, the dark-haired and dark-eyed woman about whom he had
dreamed yesterday, when she had been behind the wheel of that same car.
She had appeared in other dreams, once in a wheelchair, when she had
been laughing and weeping at the same time.
He found her more interesting than the scantily clad beach bunnies
because she was unusually vital. Radiant. Through the unknown man
driving the car, Vassago somehow knew that the woman had once considered
embracing death, had hesitated on the edge of either active or passive
selfdestruction, and had rejected an early grave water, he saw a watery
vault, cold and suffocating, narrowly escape:'...
where after she had been more full of life, energetic, and vivid than
ever before. She had cheated death. Denied the devil. Vassago hated
her for that, because it was in the service of death that he had found
meaning to his own existence.
He tried to reach out and touch her through the body of the man driving
the car. Failed. It was only a dream. Dreams could not be controlled.
If he could have touched her, he would have made her regret that she had
turned away from the comparatively painless death by drowning that could
have been hers.
When she moved in with the Harrisons, Regina almost thought she had died
and gone to Heaven, except she had her own bathroom, and she didn't
believe anyone had his own bathroom up in Heaven because in Heaven no
one needed a bathroom. They were not all permanently constipated in
Heaven or anything like that, and they certainly didn't just do their
business out in public, for God's sake (sorry, God), because no one in
his right mind would want to go to Heaven if it was the kind of place
where you had to watch where you steps. It was just that in Heaven all
the concerns of earthly existence passed away.
You didn't even have a body in Heaven; you were probably just a sphere
of mental energy, sort of like a balloon full of golden glowing gas,
drifting around among the angels, singing the praises of God which was
pretty weird when you thought about it, all those glowing and singing
balloons, but the most you'd ever have to do in the way of waste
elimination was maybe vent a liNe gas now and then, which wouldn't even
smell bad, probably like the sweet incense in church, or perfume.
That first day in the Harrisons' house, late Monday afternoon, the
twenty-ninth of April, she would remember forever, because they were so
ruce. They didn't even mention the real reason why they gave her a
choice between a bedroom on the second floor and a den on the first
floor that could be converted into a bedroom.
"One thing in its favor," Mr. Harrison said about the den, "is the
view.
Better than the view from the upstairs room."
He led Regina to the big windows that looked out on a rose garden ringed
by a border of huge ferns. The view war pretty.
Mrs. Harrison said, "And you'd have all these bookshelves, which you
might want to fill up gradually with your own collection, since you're a
book lover."
Actually, without ever hinting at it, their concern was that she might
find the stairs troublesome. But she didn't mind stairs so much. In
fact she liked stairs, she loved stairs, she ate stairs for breakfast.
In the orphanage, they had put her on the first floor, until she was
eight years old and realized she'd been given ground-level
accommodations because of her clunky leg brace and deformed right hand,
whereupon she immediately demanded to be moved to the third floor. The
nuns would not hear of it, so she threw a tantrum, but the nuns knew how
to deal with that, so she tried withering scorn, but the nuns could not
be withered, so she went on a hunger strike, and finally the nuns
surrendered to her demand on a trial basis. She'd lived on the third
floor for more than two years, and she had never used the elevator.
having seen it, neither of them tried to talk her out of it, or wondered
aloud if she were "up" to it, or even blinked. She loved them for that.
The house was gorgeouream walls, white woodwork, modern furniture mixed
with antiques, Chinese bowls and vases, everything just so.
When they took her on a tour, Regina actually felt as dangerously clumsy
as she had claimed to be in the meeting in Mr. Gujilio's office. She
moved with exaggerated care, afraid that she would knock over one
precious item and kick off a chain reaction that would spread across the
entire room, then through a doorway into the next room and from there
throughout the house, one beautiful treasure tipping into the next like
dominoes in a world championship toppling contest, two-hundred-year-old
porcelains exploding, antique furniture reduced to match sticks, until
they were left standing in mounds of worthless rubble, coated with the
dust of what had been a fortune in interior design.
She was so absolutely certain it was going to happen that she wracked
her mind urgently, room by room, for something winning to say when
catastrophe struck, after the last exquisite crystal candy dish had
crashed off the last disintegrating table that had once been the
property of the First King of France. "Oops," did not seem appropriate,
and neither did "Jesus Christ!" because they thought they had adopted a
good Catholic girl not a foulmouthed heathen (sorry, God), and neither
did "somebody pushed me," because that was a lie, and lying bought you a
ticket to Hell, though she suspected she was going to wind up in Hell
anyway, considering how she couldn't stop thinking the Lord's name in
vain and using vulgarities.
No balloon full of glowing golden gas for her.
Throughout the house, the walls were adorned with art, and Regin: noted
that the most wonderful pieces all had the same signature at the bottom
right corner: Lindsey Sparling. Even as much of a screwup as she was,
she was smart enough to figure that the name Lindsey was no coincidence
and that Sparling must be Mrs. Harrison's maiden name. They were the
strangest and most beautiful paintings Regina had ever seen, some of
them so bright and full of good feeling that you had to smile, some of
them dark and brooding. She wanted to spend a long time in front of
each of them, sort of soaking them up, but she was afraid Mr. and Mrs.
Harrison would think she was a brown-nosing phony, pretending interest
as a way of apologizing for the wisecracks she had made in Mr. Gujilio's
office about paintings on velvet.
Somehow she got through the entire house without destroying anything,
and th
e last room was hers. It was bigger than any room at the
orphanage, and she didn't have to share it with anyone. The windows
were covered with white plantation shutters. Furnishings included a
corner desk and chair, a bookcase, an armchair with footstool,
nightstands with matching lamp and an amazing bed.
"It's from about 1850," Mrs. Harrison said, as Regina let her hand
glide slowly over the beautiful bed.
"English," Mr. Harrison said. "Mahogany with hand-painted decoration
under several coats of laLAuer."
On the footboard, side rails, and headboard, the dark-red and dark
yellow roses and emerald-green leaves seemed alive, not bright against
the deeply colored wood but so lustrous and dewy-looking that she was
sure she would be able to smell them if she put her nose to their
petals.
Mrs. Harrison said, "It might seem a little old for a young girl, a
little stuffy "Yes, of course," Mr. Harrison said, "we can send it over
to the store, sell it, let you choose something you'd like, something
modern. This was just furnished as a guest room."
"No," Regina said hastily. "I like it, I really do. Could I keep it, I
mean even though it's so expensive?"
"It's not that expensive," Mr. Harrison said, "and of course you can
keep anything you want."