He smiled. "Yeah, I'm at the stage where I hang around there even when I'm not on duty. The older cops tell me I'll get over that fast."

I nodded. "Thanks for telling me about Myles."

"It's a h.e.l.l of thing to have to tell somebody."

"I'd rather know than not know."

"He's got some kind of hold on her, that's for sure." Then: "You see that new SF movie that opened last weekend?"

"I wanted to. But Cindy said it looked too scary. She hates scary stuff."

Except for a well that has an alien in it, I thought unkindly.

"I've got Sunday afternoon off. It you're free, give me a call."

I put out my hand and we shook. I needed a friend very badly at the moment.

"You'll get over it," he said. "I got dumped once."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. This little car hop out at the A&W on old 49?"

"Jeeze, I'd forgotten all about that place." Back in my high school days, that had been the sort of unofficial hangout of the dweebs and nerds. We were far enough out of town that n.o.body could ha.s.sle us. Plus they let us use the cigarette machine even though we were underage.

"Took me a year to get over her, but I did."

"How come she dumped you?"

He tapped his nose. "She got in this f.u.c.king car wreck."

"And that's why she dumped you?"

"Nah. She got in this car wreck and had to have all this plastic surgery on her face."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And the surgery turned her into a real beauty. G.o.d, she was beautiful. You should've seen her." He shrugged. "Well, anybody who looks like she did sure doesn't want to hang around somebody like me. So she dumped me. Started going out with this really handsome rich kid." He smiled. It was not without bitterness. "But she got paid back."

"How?"

"The handsome rich kid?"

"Uh-huh."

"He turned out to be a peeper."

"A peeper?"

"Yeah, you know, a guy who's always peeping into ladies' johns and places like that."

I laughed. "Man, I guess she got paid back."

He smiled and cuffed me on the arm. "Just hang in there. Maybe Myles'll turn out to be a transvest.i.te or something."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

That night I followed her. That's not a nice thing to admit about yourself, that you're the kind of guy who'd sneak around after your girlfriend, like the kind of guy who would call people on the phone anonymously and ha.s.sle them.

But I did.

Dark came right after dinner, and when she left the house for the evening I was parked down the block.

She went to the pharmacy first, and then to the library, and then to the mall.

Then she went to the Arby's over on Foster Avenue, and that's where she found Myles.

He was there waiting for her.

I sat in the lot and watched them in the window.

When she saw him, she gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and then sat down in his booth, across from him.

I felt sick.

I had quick, frantic dreams of going in there and hauling her out here. I'd make a strong case for myself, how I was good and true and sensitive and didn't that count for something in this world? And if she needed reminding, I'd remind her of all the terrible things Myles had done to her.

I started feeling self-conscious, the way people checked me out as they went inside.

They seemed to sense that I was a pretty sleazy character, following some poor girl around, unable to take my banishment like a mature adult.

None of it made sense to me. For three or four nights there, we'd spent a lot of great hours together, her constantly telling me how happy she was to be with me instead of him... and then I felt her pulling back.

But why?

Sometimes I looked in the window where she sat and I hated her for what she'd done to me. I couldn't ever remember pain like this.

Tonight, for example, I'd gone into my room and slid out my Penthouse from underneath my mattress where my Mom couldn't find it. Sometimes, just to cut tension (and to have as good a time as you can have alone), I m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed. But not tonight. I looked at all the naked girls who usually aroused me, and felt nothing. Nothing. Then I'd gone into the bas.e.m.e.nt where I have four small bookcases packed with science fiction paperbacks and magazines from high school. Sometimes, when I'm down, I can go down there and look at them and touch them and feel the kind of solace I used to, that even if I was a dweeb and isolated and scared, I could always hide between the covers of those books and magazines, that there was escape and mercy after all, if only you knew where to find it.

They stayed in Arby's an hour.

Some of the time, they looked to be having a very serious discussion. Other times, they laughed.

When they came out into the warm mid-November night, her arm was around his middle and he was giving her a squeeze.

They left her car there. She got in his.

If he found out that I was following them, he'd beat me up even worse than he had before.

But I didn't care. I followed them.

She sat close to him in the front seat. A lot of people honked at them, and they honked back. King and queen. Royalty.

The night didn't help. It was one of those smoky autumn nights that make you melancholy and restless without you knowing quite why.

They stopped at a jock shop where he tried on a couple of letter jackets. Again, I saw them through the windows. My own little TV show.

Maybe it would be better if he saw me and caught me, I thought. Then we could at least get this over with.

When they came out of the jock shop, they stopped off at a convenience store where Myles bought a six-pack. He was underage but he was also Myles and they weren't going to refuse him, not in this town.

Myles had parked on the dark side of the store. When he came out, he set the beer in the back seat and then they started making out.

Right there.

We'd kind of done that, too, our last night together, wanted to kiss so badly that we couldn't control ourselves, and made out just about every place we went.

I felt sick again, wild with rage and embarra.s.sment and self-pity.

I was so fascinated and repelled by what I saw that I didn't even hear him sneak up on me.

"You want to borrow my binoculars?" he said.

"Hey. How you doing?"

"Guess I should ask how you're doing?"

"Oh, pretty good."

"Right. That's why you're sitting here watching them make out."

He really was a cop, Garrett. He'd easily figured out what I was doing here.

"You must like punishment."

"Yeah, I must."

"Why don't you go have a beer?"

I could tell that this wasn't a suggestion, it was a subtle but definite order.

This was Garrett the cop talking, saying that it wasn't a real good situation when one citizen sat there spying on another.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

He looked at me and smiled. "You'll get over it."

"Yeah, I suppose I will."

"You'll meet somebody else."

Once again, I had the sense that Garrett had become a real adult while I had remained a child. He wouldn't sit here watching her like this. He was too proud, too sensible, too much of an adult.

"I hope it's soon, Garrett."

He nodded, and then walked back to his car.

I did what he wanted me to. I fired up the beast, which was running again after smashing into Cindy's tree, and then I drove away from therea"

a"all the way around the block.

Garrett was gone.

Myles and Cindy were just pulling out.

I followed them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

At first I wasn't sure where they were going.

We drove out of town on an old highway that paralleled the Interstate. Everything got dark. I stayed a half mile behind. Farmhouses shone in tonight's red harvest moon. I had the window down and I could hear cows and horses and barn owls.

When he turned west, I knew where he was going to take us.

I had to smile when I tried to imagine him at the well. This hard, unimaginative football hero trying to play along with her fantasy.

Maybe that would drive her back to me, the way I'd been sympathetic and pretended that I'd heard something.

Suggestible is what I'd been.

I'd gotten caught up in her mood and then, while we were making love, my mind had started imagining the voice. At least the voice had been speaking gibberish.