“What about this check you just gave me? Isn’t it drawn on your own account?”
“Yes, but I don’t write very many, and I certainly haven’t kept track of the stubs from four years ago.”
“Do you use an engagement book?”
“I throw away my engagement book at the end of each year,” Daisy said. “I used to keep a diary a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“I don’t recall exactly. I just sort of lost interest in it — nothing seemed to happen to me that deserved writing down, no excitement or anything.”
No excitement, Pinata thought. So now she’s scrounging around for some, looking for a lost day like a bored child during summer vacation looking for something to do, a game to play. Well, Daisy baby, I haven’t got time for games. I won’t play. “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Harker, but as I told you, this is out of my line. You’d be wasting your money.”
“I’ve wasted money before.” She stared at him obstinately. “Anyway, you’re not in the least concerned about my wasting my money, only about your wasting your time. You don’t understand — I haven’t made you realize how terribly important this is to me.”
“Why is it important?”
She wanted to tell him about the dream, but she was afraid of his reaction. He might be amused like Jim, or impatient and a little contemptuous like Adam, or annoyed like her mother. “I can’t explain that right now.”
“Why not?”
“You’re already very skeptical and suspicious of me. If I told you the rest of it, well, you might consider me quite crazy.”
Bored, Pinata thought. Not crazy. Or maybe just a little. “I think you’d better tell me the rest of it anyway, Mrs. Harker, so at least we’ll understand each other. I’ve been asked to do some pretty funny things, but finding a lost day — that’s a tall order.”
“I didn’t lose the day. It’s not lost. It’s still around someplace, here or there, wherever used days and old years go. They don’t simply vanish into nothing. They’re still available — hiding, yes, but not lost.”
“I see,” Pinata said, thinking that Daisy baby wasn’t a little crazy after all; she was a whole lot crazy. He couldn’t help being interested, however; he wasn’t sure whether his interest was in Daisy’s problem or Daisy herself, or whether the two could ever be separated. “If you don’t remember this day, Mrs. Harker, why do you believe it was so important to you?”
It was almost the identical question Adam had asked. She hadn’t been able to give a satisfactory answer then, and she couldn’t now. “I know it was. Sometimes people know things in different ways. You know I’m sitting here because you can see and hear me. But there are other ways of knowing things than merely through the five senses. Some of them haven’t been explained yet... I do wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if you expected me to announce that my name was Josephine Bonaparte or something. I’m quite sane, Mr. Pinata. And rational, if the two can possibly go together in this confused world.”
“I thought they were the same thing.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a kind of prim politeness. “Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it’s a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.”
Pinata looked surprised and somewhat annoyed, as if a pet parrot, which he had taught to speak a few simple phrases, had suddenly started explaining the techniques of nuclear fission.
“That was a neat trick,” he said at last.
“What was?”
“The way you changed the subject. When the box got a little hot for you, out you jumped. What are you trying to avoid telling me, Mrs. Harker?”
He’s honest, Daisy thought. He doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t know or to exaggerate what he does know. He isn’t even very good at hiding his feelings. I think I can trust him.
“I had a dream,” Daisy said, and before he could tell her he didn’t deal in dreams, she was telling about the stroll on the beach with Prince and the tombstone with her name on it.
Pinata listened, without audible comment, to the end. Then he said, “Have you told anyone else about this dream, Mrs. Harker?”
“My mother, my husband Jim, and a friend of Jim’s who’s a lawyer, Adam Burnett.”
“What was their reaction?”
She looked across the desk at him with a dry little smile. “My mother and Jim want me to take vitamins and forget the whole thing.”
“And the lawyer, Mr. Burnett?”
“He understood more than the others how important it was to me to find out what happened. But he gave me a warning.”
“Which was?”
“Whatever happened on that day to cause my — my death must have been very unpleasant, and I shouldn’t try to dredge it up. I have nothing to gain and everything to lose.”
“But you want to go ahead with it anyway?”
“It’s no longer a question of wanting to. I have to. You see, we’re about to adopt a baby.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It won’t be just my life and Jim’s anymore. We’ll be sharing it with a child. I must be sure that this child will be coming into the right home, a place of security and happiness.”
“And at the moment you think yours isn’t the right home?”
“I’m checking to be certain. Let’s say you bought a house, Mr. Pinata, and you’ve been living in it for some time quite comfortably. Then something happens, say an important guest is arriving. You decide to check the place over, and you find certain serious structural defects. Would you consult a good contractor to see what he could do about the defects? Or would you just sit there with your eyes closed and pretend everything was fine?”
“That’s a pretty desperate analogy,” Pinata said. “All it amounts to is that you’re determined to have your own way no matter what comes of it.”
“I’m not a child demanding a stick of candy.”
No, Pinata thought, you’re a grown woman demanding a stick of dynamite. You don’t like your life or your house. You’re afraid to share it with a child. So blow the whole thing sky high and watch the pretty pieces come falling down on your head.
The phone rang again. This time it was Pinata’s cleaning woman relaying the news that the roof was leaking in the kitchen and one of the bedrooms and reminding him that she’d warned him last year he was going to have to get a new roof put on.
“Do the best you can. I’ll be home at five,” Pinata said, and hung up, feeling depressed. New roofs cost money, and Johnny was having his teeth straightened. I can’t afford a new roof. But Daisy can. If she’s determined to blow up her own roof, at least I can catch some of the lumber to build mine.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll help you, Mrs. Harker. If I can, and against my better judgment.”
She looked pleased, in a subdued way, as if she didn’t want him to see how eager she actually was to begin this new game. “When do we start?”
“I’m tied up for a couple of days.” It was a necessary lie: two days would give him a chance to do some checking up on Daisy, and Daisy a chance to change her mind. “Say Thursday afternoon.”
“I was hoping right away...”
“No. Sorry. I have a case.”
“Of jitters?”
“All right, of jitters.”
“And you need time to investigate me, find out how many steps I am in front of the butterfly net? Well, I can’t blame you, of course. If some woman came to me and told me the kind of story I’ve told you, I’d be suspicious, too. The only thing is, there’s no need for secrecy. I’m perfectly willing to answer any questions you’d like to ask me: age, weight, education, background, religious preference...”