“So don’t set foot in their house. Move Angela into yours, you have enough room. Evan likes her, doesn’t he?”
Shay gave a rueful smile. “I’m not sure how he’d feel about it, I don’t discuss my sex life with my son, we’d both be too embarrassed. Besides, the only time I mentioned living together Angela made it plain she wanted marriage, so I haven’t pushed her. I’m not ready for that.”
“You’re too soft for your own good, buddy. I don’t know how you can stand the vet business, you must see a dozen things a day that make you want to cry.”
“Not a dozen. Since the last recession if I treat a dozen patients in one day I’m ecstatic. But if I see some I can help—and I help a lot of ’em—then it’s worthwhile. How about you out there in Bennett’s Bunker in the forest; you helping a lot of people?”
“To be honest, Shay, I’m not quite sure what we’re doing anymore. When Robert Bennett hired me his company was involved in producing packaging for the pharmaceutical industry. My job was to help develop containers for sensitive or volatile materials; real cutting-edge stuff. The lab was equipped for a wide range of testing and it was a pleasure to work there.
“Then Bennett started adding ‘peripheral products,’ as he calls them, and they’re taking over. They’re not, well—and this is between us—not strictly on the up-and-up. The other employees don’t seem to mind, but I’m not sure I want to be involved anymore. The money’s too good to turn down if we want to start a family, though, and we’re trying. Gloria plans to take a leave of absence from the hospital when she gets pregnant.”
“Family man, hunh?”
Gerry smiled. “We plan for two boys and a girl. Or two girls and a boy, either way, as long as they’re healthy. I was an only child and so was Gloria. We want our own tribe.”
Shay gave a whistle. “That’s going to be some leave of absence.” He was about to start running again when he noticed a photographer and his assistant setting up a photo shoot in the park. They were accompanied by a reed-thin young woman in a semitransparent crimson toga with a matching pair of designer sunglasses. When she realized Shay was looking at her she assumed an aloof professional smile—that faded abruptly as she began to paw at her face.
The designer sunglasses were oozing down her perfect cheekbones.
When they returned from their run the two men found a gleaming red convertible parked in front of the vet clinic. “Hey, look at that, Gerry! Jack Reece must be back in town. D’you know him?”
“Not personally, but I’ve heard the name. He’s a… well, what is it he does?”
“No one knows exactly, but he’s a hell of a guy. Come on in and I’ll introduce you.”
It was obvious that Paige Prentiss knew Jack. She was watching him the way a greyhound watches a rabbit.
A plastic pet carrier stood on the counter. The unseen occupant was complaining bitterly.
“Who do we have here?” Shay asked Jack.
“Plato, Aunt Bea’s oldest cat. He’s having trouble going up the stairs and she wants you to give him glucosamine.”
“How old is he?”
“At least twenty. If she can’t get a cat to live into his twenties she thinks she’s a failure.”
“So I guess you don’t want him put to sleep.”
Jack shook his head. “It would be more than my life is worth.”
“My wife’s that way about plants,” said Gerry. “She even hates to kill weeds.”
“She’s a gardener?”
“She’s a psychologist at Staunton Memorial.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”
Shay said, “You two wait for me, I’ll take Plato to the back and examine him before I decide on his treatment. Come on, Paige, I’ll need you to hold him.”
While they waited, Gerry told Jack about the model and the dissolving sunglasses. “Poor girl’s probably going to need help from my wife.”
“Think she has psychological damage in addition to being burned?”
“She wasn’t burned, which makes it stranger. The glasses weren’t any warmer than skin temperature, I touched them myself.”
“But plastic won’t dissolve at skin temperature.”
“You won’t convince me of that, Jack. I saw it with my own eyes; so did Shay. Some of the stuff even dripped onto the ground.”
“Then I think you’ll be interested in what my aunt saw at the bank. Listen to this…”
Shay soon returned, carrying the cat carrier with its now-silent contents. “Plato’s unhappy about having a shot in his spine and one in his neck, but he’s not hurting. We’ll repeat the process in six weeks and it should last him the rest of his life.”
“No glucosamine?”
“That’s outdated, Jack: nobody uses it now.” He noticed their expressions. “What were you two talking about, anyway?”
They told him.
“Aren’t you both describing the same thing?”
“Sounds like it.”
“We’re having a hell of a hot season,” Shay said. “Could the climate be responsible somehow?”
Jack shook his head. “You can’t blame the climate for things dissolving inside an air-conditioned bank. I think there’s something larger at work here.”
“Based on what evidence?”
“Gut instinct, Gerry.”
“That’s a damned poor substitute for science. Tell you what, Jack; we’re having a barbecue at my house on Saturday, and by then we’ll probably know what’s going on. Shay’s coming, so why don’t you join us? Bring a friend if you want to.”
“I’ve only been back in town for a couple of days, there isn’t anybody special.”
“You never know, you might meet someone at the party. But I warn you; the most gorgeous girl there will be my wife, Gloria, and she’s strictly off-limits.”
By the weekend the inhabitants of Sycamore River knew their town was not unique. Similar incidents had been reported elsewhere around the country; plastic items were inexplicably dissolving. Small things; unimportant bits and pieces. News commentators began referring to the bizarre incidents as “the Change.”
People made jokes about it.
On Saturday afternoon a good-humored crowd gathered on the deck at the Delmonicos’ house to enjoy the barbecue. The Change was the main topic of conversation.
“It’s weird, but is it dangerous?” a woman wondered.
“Only if you’re plastic,” said a male guest, glancing at her breasts.
She snapped, “Everything you see is real!”
Most of the guests laughed, but one said, “I have a bad feeling about this, we don’t know what’s going to go next. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Don’t sweat it,” advised Frank Auerbach, publisher and editor of The Sycamore Seed. “Crazy things happen all the time, but you never hear about most of them. Usually it’s technology gone bad and they’re trying to cover it up. This is just another of the petty annoyances of the twenty-first century.”
Auerbach was an archetypal American, a blend of many generations of immigrants from the four corners of the earth. Average height, average build, medium brown hair, no distinctive features. His wife, Anne, who loved him and was annoyed by him in almost equal measure, once told him, “You wouldn’t stand out in a crowd of two.”
Now she asked, “Would you rather be living a hundred years ago, Frank? With no modern medicine, no wallscreens? No air-conditioning?”