Amanda had cut diagonally from the base of her thumbs to the base of her pinky fingers, severing heartlines, lovelines, and all the other lines along the way. Lisey could understand how she'd done the first one, but the second? That must have been hard cheese indeed (as the saying was). But she had managed, and then she had gone around the kitchen like a woman putting the icing on a madcake-Hey, looka me! Looka me! You not numbah one crazy baby, I numbah one! Manda numbah one crazy baby, you bet! All while Darla had been on the toilet, doing no more than whizzing a little lemonade and blotting the old bush, way to go Amanda, you also numbah one speed-devil baby.

"Darla-these are beyond Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide, hon. She's got to go to the Emergency Room."

"Oh, ratf.u.c.k," Darla said dismally, and began to cry again.

Lisey looked into Amanda's face, which was still barely visible through the screening wings of her hair. "Amanda," she said.

Nothing. No movement.

"Manda."

Nothing. Amanda's head dropped like a doll's. d.a.m.ned Charlie Corriveau! Lisey thought. d.a.m.ned smucking Frenchy Corriveau! But of course if it hadn't been "Shootin' Beans," it would have been someone or something else. Because the Amandas of the world were just made that way. You kept expecting them to fall down and thinking it was a miracle they didn't, and finally the miracle got tired of happening and fell over and took a seizure and died.

"Manda-Bunny."

It was the childhood name that finally got through. Amanda slowly raised her head. And what Lisey saw in her face wasn't the b.l.o.o.d.y, doped-out vacancy she'd expected (yes, Amanda's lips were all red, and that surely wasn't Max Factor on them) but rather the sparkling, childish, tripwire expression of hauteur and mischief, the one that meant Amanda had Taken Something On Herself, and tears would follow for someone.

"Bool," she whispered, and Lisey Landon's interior temperature seemed to fall thirty degrees in an instant.

4.

They got her into the living room, Amanda walking docilely between them, and sat her on the couch. Then Lisey and Darla went back into the kitchen doorway, where they could keep an eye on her and still consult without being overheard.

"What did she say to you, Lisey? You're as white as a d.a.m.n ghost."

Lisey wished Darla had said sheet. She didn't like hearing the word ghost, especially now that the sun had gone down. Stupid but true.

"Nothing," she said. "Well...boo. Like, 'Boo on you, Lisey, I'm covered with blood, how do you like it?' Look, Darl, you're not the only one stressing out."

"If we take her to the ER, what'll they do to her? Keep her on suicide watch, or something?"

"They might," Lisey admitted. Her head was clearer now. That word, that bool, had worked on her oddly like a slap, or a whiff of smelling salts. Of course it had also scared the h.e.l.l out of her, but...if Amanda had something to tell her, Lisey wanted to know what it was. She had a sense that all the things that had been happening to her, maybe even "Zack McCool"'s telephone call, were somehow tied together by...what? Scott's ghost? Ridiculous. By Scott's blood-bool, then? How about that?

Or his long boy? The thing with the endless piebald side?

It doesn't exist, Lisey, it never did outside of his imagination...which was sometimes powerful enough to cast itself over people who were close to him. Powerful enough to make you uneasy about eating fruit after dark, for instance, even though you knew it was just some childhood superst.i.tion he never completely cast away. And the long boy was like that, too. You know it, right?

Did she? Then why, when she tried to consider the idea, did a kind of mist seem to creep over her thoughts, disrupting them? Why did that interior voice tell her to hush?

Darla was looking at her oddly. Lisey gathered herself and brought herself back to the present moment, the present people, the present problem. And for the first time noticed how tired Darl looked: the grooved lines around her mouth and the dark circles under her eyes. She took her sister by the upper arms, not liking how bony they felt, or the loose way Darl's bra-straps slid between her thumbs and the too-deep hollows of Darla's shoulders. Lisey could remember watching enviously as her big sisters went off to Lisbon High, home of the Greyhounds. Now Amanda was on the cusp of sixty and Darl wasn't far behind. They had become old dogs, indeed.

"But listen, hon," she told Darla, "they don't call it suicide watch-that's mean. They just call it observation." Not sure how she knew this, but almost positive, just the same. "They keep them for twenty-four hours, I think. Maybe forty-eight."

"Can they do it without permission?"

"Unless the person's committed a crime and the cops have brought them in, I don't think so."

"Maybe you ought to call your lawyer and make sure. The Montana guy."

"His name's Montano, and he's probably at home by now. That number's unlisted. I've got it in my address book, but my book's back at the house. I think if we take her to Stephens Memorial in No Soapa, we'll be okay."

No Soapa was how the locals referred to NorwaySouth Paris in neighboring Oxford County, towns which also happened to be within a day's drive of such exotic-sounding wide spots in the road as Mexico, Madrid, Gilead, China, and Corinth. Unlike the city hospitals in Portland and Lewiston, Stephens Memorial was a sleepy little place.

"I think they'll bandage her hands and let us take her home without too much trouble." Lisey paused. "If."

"If?"

"If we want to take her home. And if she wants to come. I mean, we don't lie or make up some big story, okay? If they ask-and I'm sure they will-we tell the truth. Yes, she's done it before when she's depressed, but not for a long time." "Five years is not such a long-"

"Everything's relative," Lisey said. "And she can explain that her boyfriend of several years just showed up in town with a brand-new wife and that had her feeling rather p.i.s.sy."

"What if she won't talk?"

"If she won't talk, Darl, I think they'll probably be keeping her for at least twenty-four hours, and with permission from both of us. I mean, do you want her back here if she's still touring the outer planets?"

Darla thought about it, sighed, and shook her head.

"I think a lot of this depends on Amanda," Lisey said. "Step one is getting her cleaned up. I'll get in the shower with her myself, if that's what it takes."

"Yeah," Darla said, running her hand through her cropped hair. "I guess that's the way to go." She suddenly yawned. It was a startlingly wide gawp, one that would have put her tonsils on view if she'd had any left. Lisey took another look at the dark circles under her eyes and realized something she might have gotten much earlier if not for "Zack"'s call.

She took hold of Darla's arms again, lightly but insistently. "Mrs. Jones didn't call you today, did she?"

Darla blinked at her in owly surprise. "No, honey," she said. "Yesterday. Late yesterday afternoon. I came over, bandaged her up as well as I could, and sat up with her most of last night. Didn't I tell you that?"

"No. I was thinking it all happened today."

"Silly Lisey," Darla said, and smiled wanly.

"Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"Didn't want to bother you. You do so much for all of us."

"That's not true," Lisey said. It always hurt her when Darla or Canty (or even Jodotha, over the telephone) said c.r.a.p like that. She knew it was crazy, but crazy or not, there it was. "That's just Scott's money."

"No, Lisey. It's you. Always you." Darla paused a second, then shook her head. "Never mind. Point is, I thought we could get through it, just the two of us. I was wrong."

Lisey kissed her sister on the cheek, gave her a hug, then went to Amanda and sat down next to her on the couch.

5.

"Manda."

Nothing.

"Manda-Bunny?" What the smuck, it had worked before.

And yes, Amanda raised her head. "What. Do you want."

"We have to take you to the hospital, Manda-Bunny."

"I. Don't. Want. To go there."

Lisey was nodding halfway through this short but tortured speech, and starting to unb.u.t.ton Amanda's blood-spattered blouse. "I know, but your poor old hands need more fixing than Darl and I can give them. Now the question is whether or not you want to come back here or spend the night at the hospital over in No Soapa. If you want to come back here, you get me for a roommate." And maybe we'll talk about bools in general and blood-bools in particular. "What do you say, Manda? Do you want to come back here or do you think you need to be in St. Steve's for awhile?"

"Want. To. Come back. Here." When Lisey urged Amanda to her feet so she could get Amanda's cargo pants off, Amanda stood up willingly enough, but she appeared to be studying the room's light-fixture. If this wasn't what her shrink had called "semi-catatonia," it was too close for Lisey's comfort, and she felt sharp relief when Amanda's next words came out sounding more like those of a human being and less like those of a robot: "If we're going...somewhere...why are you undressing me?"

"Because you need a run through the shower," Lisey said, guiding her in the direction of the bathroom. "And you need fresh clothes. These are...dirty." She glanced back and saw Darla gathering up the shed blouse and pants. Amanda, meanwhile, padded toward the bathroom docilely enough, but the sight of her going away squeezed Lisey's heart. It wasn't Amanda's scabbed and scarred body that did it, but rather the seat of her plain white Boxercraft underpants. For years Amanda had worn boy-shorts; they suited her angular body, were even s.e.xy. Tonight the right cheek of the boxers she wore was smeared a muddy maroon.

Oh Manda, Lisey thought. Oh my dear.

Then she was through the bathroom door, an antisocial X-ray dressed in bra, pants, and white tube socks. Lisey turned to Darla. Darla was there. For a moment all the years and clamoring Debusher voices were, too. Then Lisey turned and went into the bathroom after the one she'd once called big sissa Manda-Bunny, who only stood there on the mat with her head bent and her hands dangling, waiting to be undressed the rest of the way.

Lisey was reaching for the hooks of Manda's bra when Amanda suddenly turned and grabbed her by the arm. Her hands were horribly cold. For a moment Lisey was convinced big sissa Manda-Bunny was going to spill the whole thing, blood-bools and all. Instead she looked at Lisey with eyes that were perfectly clear, perfectly there, and said: "My Charles has married another." Then she put her waxy-cool forehead against Lisey's shoulder and began to cry.

6.

The rest of that evening reminded Lisey of what Scott used to call Landon's Rule of Bad Weather: when you slept in, expecting the hurricane to go out to sea, it hooked inland and tore the roof off your house. When you rose early and battened down for the blizzard, you got only snow flurries.

What's the point then? Lisey had asked. They had been lying in bed together-some bed, one of the early beds-snug and spent after love, him with one of his Herbert Tareytons and an ashtray on his chest and a big wind howling outside. What bed, what wind, what storm, or what year she no longer remembered.

The point is SOWISA, he had replied-that she remembered, although at first thought she'd either misheard or misunderstood.

Soweeza? What's soweeza?

He'd snuffed his cigarette and put the ashtray on the table next to the bed. He had taken her face in his hands, covering her ears and shutting out the whole world for a minute with the palms of his hands. He kissed her lips. Then he took his hands away so she could hear him. Scott Landon always wanted to be heard.

SOWISA, babyluv-Strap On Whenever It Seems Appropriate.

She had turned this over in her mind-she wasn't fast like he was, but she usually got there-and realized that SOWISA was what he called an agronim. Strap On Whenever It Seems Appropriate. She liked it. It was quite silly, which made her like it even more. She began to laugh. Scott laughed with her, and pretty soon he was as inside her as they were inside the house while the big wind boomed and shook outside.

With Scott she had always laughed a lot.

7.

His saying about how the blizzard missed you when you really battened down for the storm recurred to her several times before their little excursion to the ER was over and they had once more returned to Amanda's weather-tight Cape Cod between Castle View and the Harlow Deep Cut. For one thing, Amanda helped matters by brightening up considerably. Morbid or not, Lisey kept thinking about how sometimes a dimming lightbulb will flash bright for an hour or two before burning out forever. This change for the better began in the shower. Lisey undressed and got in with her sister, who initially just stood there with her shoulders slumped and her arms dangling apishly. Then, in spite of using the hand-held attachment and being as careful as she could, Lisey managed to spray warm water directly onto Manda's slashed left palm.

"Ow! Ow!" Manda cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing her hand away. "That hurts, Lisey! Watch where you're pointin that thing, w.i.l.l.ya, okay?"

Lisey rejoined in exactly the same tone-Amanda would have expected no less, even with both of them bucka.s.s naked-but rejoiced at the sound of her sister's anger. It was awake. "Well pardon me all the way to Kittery, but I wasn't the one who took a piece of the d.a.m.n Pottery Barn to my hand."

"Well, I couldn't get at him, could I?" Amanda asked, and then unleashed a flood of stunning invective aimed at Charlie Corriveau and his new wife-a mixture of adult obscenity and childish p.o.o.pie-talk that filled Lisey with amazement, amus.e.m.e.nt, and admiration.

When she paused for breath, Lisey said: "s.h.i.tmouth motherf.u.c.ker, huh? Wow."

Amanda, sullen: "f.u.c.k you too, Lisey."

"If you want to come back home, I wouldn't use a lot of those words on the doc who treats your hands."

"You think I'm stupid, don't you?"

"No. I don't. It's just...saying you were mad at him will be enough."

"My hands are bleeding again."

"A lot?"

"Just a little bit. I think you better put some Vaseline on em."

"Really? Won't it hurt?"

"Love hurts," Amanda said solemnly...and then gave a little snort of laughter that lightened Lisey's heart.

By the time she and Darla bundled her into Lisey's BMW and got on the road to Norway, Manda was asking about Lisey's progress in the study, almost as if this were the end of a normal day. Lisey didn't mention "Zack McCool"'s call, but she told them about "Ike Comes Home" and quoted the single line of copy: "Ike came home with a boom, and everything was fine. BOOL! THE END!" She wanted to use that word, that bool, in Mandy's presence. Wanted to see how she'd respond.

Darla responded first. "You married a very strange man, Lisa," she said.

"Tell me something I don't know, darlin." Lisey glanced in the rearview mirror to see Amanda sitting alone in the back seat. In solitary splendor, Good Ma would have said. "What do you think, Manda?"

Amanda shrugged, and at first Lisey thought that was going to be her only response. Then came the flood.

"It was just him, that's all. I hooked a ride with him up the city once-he needed to go to the office-supply store and I needed new shoes, you know, good walking shoes I could wear in the woods for hiking, stuff like that. And we happened to drive by Auburn Novelty. He'd never seen it before and nothing would do but he had to park and go right in. He was like a ten-year-old! I needed Eddie Bauer s.h.i.tkickers so I could walk in the woods without getting poison ivy all over me and all he wanted to do was buy out that whole freakin store. Itchypowder, joy buzzers, pepper gum, plastic puke, X-ray gla.s.ses, you name it, he had it piled up on the counter next to these lollipops, when you sucked em down there was a naked woman inside. He must have bought a hundred dollars' worth of that crazy made-in-Taiwan s.h.i.te, Lisey. Do you remember?"

She did. Most of all she remembered how he had looked coming home that day, his arms full of bags with laughing cartoon faces and the words LAFF RIOT printed all over them. How full of color his cheeks had been. And s.h.i.te was what he'd called it, not s.h.i.t but s.h.i.te, that was one word he picked up from her, could you believe it. Well, turnabout was fair play, so Good Ma had liked to claim, although s.h.i.te had been their Dad's word, as it had been Dandy Dave who would sometimes tell folks a thing was no good, so I slang it forth. How Scott had loved it, said it had a weight coming off the tongue that I threw it away or even I flung it away could never hope to match.

Scott with his catches from the word-pool, the story-pool, the myth-pool.

Scott smucking Landon.

Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this.