Some of these days You're going to miss me honey Some of these days You're gonna be so lonely You'll miss my huggin'

You'll miss my kissin'...

"You're going to pay the bill," said Grahame. "Then I'll escort you and the young lady out to the car. And we'll go back to my place, for a proper talk. Any funny business, and I shoot you both.Capiche? "

Fat Charlie capiched. He also capiched who had been driving the black Mercedes that afternoon and just how close he had already come to death that day. He was beginning to capiche how utterly cracked Grahame Coats was and how little chance Daisy and he had of getting out of this alive.

The singer finished her song. The other people scattered around the restaurant clapped. Fat Charlie kept his hands palms-down on the table. He stared past Graham Coats at the singer, and, with the eye that Grahame Coats could not see, he winked at her. She was tired of people avoiding her eyes; Fat Charlie's wink was extremely welcome.

Daisy said, "Grahame, obviously I came here because of you, but Charlie's just-" She stopped and made the kind of expression you make when someone pushes a gun barrel deeper into your stomach.

Grahame Coats said, "Listen to me. For the purposes of the innocent bystanders here assembled, we're all good friends. I'm going to put the gun into my pocket, but it will still be pointing at you. We're going to get up. We're going to my car. And I will-"

He stopped. A woman with a red spangly dress and a microphone was heading for their table with an enormous smile on her face. She was making for Fat Charlie. She said into her microphone, "What's your name, darlin'?" She put the microphone into Fat Charlie's face.

"Charlie Nancy," said Fat Charlie. His voice caught and wavered.

"And where you from, Charlie?"

"England. Me and my friends. We're all from England."

"And what do you do, Charlie?"

Everything slowed. It was like diving off a cliff into the ocean. It was the only way out. He took a deep breath and said it. "I'm between jobs," he started. "But I'm really a singer. I sing. Just like you."

"Like me? What kind of things you sing?"

Fat Charlie swallowed. "What have you got?"

She turned to the other people at Fat Charlie's table. "Do you think we could get him to sing for us?" she asked, gesturing with her microphone.

"Er. Don't think so. No. Absatively out of the question," said Grahame Coats. Daisy shrugged, her hands flat on the table.

The woman in the red dress turned to the rest of the room. "What do we think?" she asked them.

There was a rustle of clapping from the diners at the other tables, and more enthusiastic applause from the serving staff. The barman called out, "Sing us something!"

The singer leaned in to Fat Charlie, covered the mike, and said, "Better make it something the boys know."

Fat Charlie said, "Do they know 'Under the Boardwalk'?" and she nodded, announced it, and gave him the microphone.

The band began to play. The singer led Fat Charlie up to the little stage, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

Fat Charlie began to sing, and the audience began to listen.

All he had wanted was to buy himself some time, but he felt comfortable. No one was throwing things. He seemed to have plenty of room in his head to think in. He was aware of everyone in the room: the tourists and the serving staff, and the people over at the bar. He could see everything: he could see the barman measuring out a cocktail, and the old woman in the rear of the room filling a large plastic mug with coffee. He was still terrified, still angry, but he took all the terror and the anger, and he put it into the song, and let it all become a song about lazing and loving. As he sang, he thought.

What would Spider do?thought Fat Charlie.What would my dad do?

He sang. In his song, he told them all exactly what he planned to do under the boardwalk, and it mostly involved making love.

The singer in the red dress was smiling and snapping her fingers and shimmying her body to the music. She leaned into the keyboard player's microphone and began to harmonize.

I'm actually singing in front of an audience,thought Fat Charlie.Bugger me.

He kept his eyes on Grahame Coats.

As he entered the last chorus, he began to clap his hands above his head, and soon the whole room was clapping along with him, diners and waiters and chefs, everyone except Grahame Coats, whose hands were beneath the tablecloth, and Daisy, whose hands were flat on the table. Daisy was looking at him as if he was not simply barking mad, but had picked an extremely odd moment to discover his inner Drifters.

The audience clapped, and Fat Charlie smiled and he sang, and as he sang he knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that everything was going to be all right. They were going to be just fine, him and Spider and Daisy and Rosie, too, wherever she was, they'd be okay. He knew what he was going to do: it was foolish and unlikely and the act of an idiot, but it would work. And as the last notes of the song faded away, he said, "There's a young lady at the table I was sitting at. Her name's Daisy Day. She's from England too. Daisy, can you wave at everyone?"

Daisy gave him a sick look, but she raised a hand from the table, and she waved.

"There's something I wanted to say to Daisy. She doesn't know I'm going to say this."If this doesn't work, whispered a voice at the back of his head,she's dead. You know that? "But let's hope she says yes. Daisy? Will you marry me?"

The room was quiet. Fat Charlie stared at Daisy, willing her to understand, to play along.

Daisy nodded.

The diners applauded.This was a floor show. The singer, the maitre d', and several of the waitresses descended on the table, hauled Daisy to her feet, and pulled her over to the middle of the floor. They pulled her over to Fat Charlie, and, as the band played "I Just Called to Say I Love You," he put his arm around her.

"You got a ring for her?" asked the singer.

He put his hand into his pocket. "Here," he said to Daisy. "This is for you." He put his arms around her and kissed her. If anyone is going to get shot, he thought, it will be now. Then the kiss was over, and people were shaking his hand and hugging him-one man, in town, he said, for the music festival, insisted on giving Fat Charlie his card-and now Daisy was holding the lime he had given her with a very strange expression on her face; and when he looked back to the table they had been sitting at, Grahame Coats was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WHICH PROVES TO BE UNLUCKY FOR SOME

THE BIRDSWERE EXCITED, NOW. THEY WERE CAWING AND CRYING and chattering in the treetops. It's coming, thought Spider, and he cursed. He was spent and done. There was nothing left in him. Nothing but fatigue, nothing but exhaustion.

He thought about lying on the ground and being devoured. Overall, he decided, it was a lousy way to go. He wasn't even certain that he'd be able to regrow a liver, while he was pretty sure that whatever was stalking him had no plans to stop at just the liver anyway.

He began to wrench at the stake. He counted to three, and then, as best as he could and as much as he could, jerked both of his arms toward him so they'd tense the rope and pull the stake, then he counted to three and did it again.

It had about as much effect as if he was to try to pull a mountain across a road. One two three...tug. Andagain . Andagain.

He wondered if the beast would come soon.

One two three...tug. One two three...tug.

Somewhere, someone was singing, he could hear it. And the song made Spider smile. He found himself wishing that he still had a tongue: he'd stick it out at the tiger when it finally made its appearance. The thought gave him strength.

On two three...tug.

And the stake gave and shifted in his hands.

One more pull and the stake came out of the ground, slick as a sword sliding out of a stone.

He pulled the ropes toward him, and held the stake in his hands. It was about three feet long. One end had been sharpened to go into the ground. He pushed it out of the loops of rope with numb hands. Ropes dangled uselessly from his wrists. He hefted the stake in his right hand. It would do. And he knew then that he was being watched: that it had been watching him for some time now, like a cat watching a mousehole.

It came to him in silence, or nearly, insinuating its way toward him like a shadow moving across the day. The only movement that caught the eye was its tail, which swished impatiently. Otherwise, it might have been a statue, or a mound of sand that looked, due to a trick of the light, like a monstrous beast, for its coat was a sandy color, its unblinking eyes the green of the midwinter sea. Its face was the wide, cruel face of a panther. In the islands they called any big cat Tiger, and this was every big cat there had ever been-bigger, meaner, more dangerous.

Spider's ankles were still hobbled, and he could barely walk. Pins and needles pricked his hands and his feet. He hopped from one foot to another and tried to look as if he was doing it on purpose, some kind of dance of intimidation, and not because standing hurt him.

He wanted to crouch and untie his ankles, but he did not dare take his eyes off the beast.

The stake was heavy and thick but was too short to be a spear, too clumsy and large to be anything else. Spider held it by the narrower end, where it had been sharpened, and he looked away, out to sea, intentionally not looking at the place the animal was, relying on his peripheral vision for information.

What had she said?You will bleat. You will whimper. Your fear will excite him .

Spider began to whimper. Then he bleated, like an injured goat, lost and plump and alone.

A flash of sandy-colored motion, barely enough time to register teeth and claws as they blurred toward him. Spider swung the stake like a baseball bat as hard as he could, feeling it connect with a satisfying thunk across the beast's nose.

Tiger stopped, stared at him as if unable to believe its eyes, then made a noise in the back of its throat, a querulous growl, and it walked, stiff-legged, back in the direction it had come, toward the scrub, as if it had a prior appointment that it wished it could get out of. It glared back at Spider resentfully over its shoulder, a beast in pain, and gave him the look of an animal who would be returning.

Spider watched it go.

Then he sat down, and untangled and untied his ankles.

He walked, a little unsteadily, along the cliff edge, following it gently downhill. Soon a stream crossed his path, running off the cliff edge in a sparkling waterfall. Spider went down on his knees, cupped his hands together, and began to drink the cool water.

Then he began to collect rocks. Good, fist-sized rocks. He stacked them together, like snowballs.

"YOU'VE HARDLYEATEN ANYTHING," SAID ROSIE.

"Youeat. Keep your strength up," said her mother. "I had a little of that cheese. It was enough."

It was cold in the meat cellar, and it was dark. Not the kind of dark your eyes get used to, either. There was no light. Rosie had walked the perimeter of the cellar, her fingers trailing against the whitewash and rock and crumbling brick, looking for something that would help, finding nothing.

"You used to eat," said Rosie. "Back when Dad was alive."

"Your father," said her mother, "used to eat, too. And see where it got him? A heart attack, aged forty-one. What kind of world is that?"

"But he loved his food."

"He loved everything," said her mother bitterly. "He loved food, he loved people, he loved his daughter. He loved cooking. He loved me. What did it get him? Just an early grave. You mustn't go loving things like that. I've told you."

"Yes," said Rosie. "I suppose you have."

She walked toward the sound of her mother's voice, hand in front of her face to stop it banging into one of the metal chains that hung in the middle of the room. She found her mother's bony shoulder, put an arm around her.

"I'm not scared," said Rosie, in the darkness.

"You're crazy, then," said her mother.

Rosie let go of her mother, moved back into the middle of the room. There was a sudden creaking noise. Dust and powdered plaster fell from the ceiling.

"Rosie? What are you doing?" asked Rosie's mother.

"Swinging on the chain."

"You be careful. If that chain gives way, you'll be on the floor with a broken head before you can say Jack Robinson." There was no answer from her daughter. Mrs. Noah said, "I told you. You're crazy."

"No," said Rosie. "I'm not. I'm just not scared anymore."

Above them, in the house, the front door slammed.

"Bluebeard's home," said Rosie's mother.

"I know. I heard," said Rosie. "I'm still not scared."

PEOPLE KEPT CLAPPINGFAT CHARLIE ON THE BACK, ANDbuying him drinks with umbrellas in them; in addition to which, he had now collected five business cards from people in the music world on the island for the festival.

All around the room, people were smiling at him. He had an arm around Daisy: he could feel her trembling. She put her lips to his ear. "You're a complete loony, you know that?"

"It worked, didn't it?"

She looked at him. "You're full of surprises."

"Come on," he said. "We're not done yet."

He made for the maitre d'. "Excuse me.... There was a lady. While I was singing. She came in, refilled her coffee mug from the pot back there, by the bar. Where did she go?"

The maitre d' blinked and shrugged. She said, "I don't know...."