The house was there, Rosalie was there, and Atropos was there, too, wearing a hat cocked back on his head and looking like a wiseacre news reporter in a 1950s B-picture-something directed by Ida Lupino, perhaps. Only this time it wasn’t a Panama with a bite gone from the brim; this time it was a Boston Red Sox cap and it was too small even for Atropos because the adjustable band in the back had been pulled all the way over to the last hole. It had to be, in order to fit the head of the little girl who owned it.
All we need now is Pete the paperboy and the show would be perfect, Ralph thought. The final scene of Insomnia, or, Short-Time Life on Harris Avenue, a Tragi-Comedy in Three Acts. Everyone takes a how and then exits stage right.
This dog was afraid of Atropos, just as Rosalie #1 had been, and the main reason the little bald doc hadn’t seen Ralph and Lois was that he was trying to keep her from running off before he was ready.
And here came Nat, headed down the sidewalk toward her favorite dog in the whole world, Ralph and Lois’s Rosie. Her jumprope (three-six-nine lion the goose drank wine) was slung over her arm.
She looked impossibly beautiful and impossibly fragile in her sailor shirt and bine shorts. Her pigtails bounced. fast, Ralph thought. Everything Is happening it’s happening too much too fast.
[Not at all, Ralph! You did splendidly five ’wears ago,-’you’ll do splendidly now.] it sounded like Clotho, but there was no time to look.
A green car was coming slowly down Harris Avenue from the direction of the airport, moving with the sort of agonized care which usually meant a driver who was very old or very young. Agonized care or not, it was unquestionably the car; a dirty membrane hung I over it like a shroud.
Life is a wheel, Ralph thought, and it occurred to him that this was not the first time the idea had occurred to him. Sooner or later everything you thought you’d left behind comes around again ’ n-Forgood or ill, it comes around again -n. ortive lunge for freedom, and as Atropos Rosie made another ah yanked her back, losing his hat, Nat knelt before her and patted her “Are you lost, girl? Did you get out by yourself? That’s okay, ’ I’ll take you home.” She gave Rosie a hug, her small arms passing through Atropos’s arms, her small, beautiful face only inches from his ugly, grinning one. Then she got up. “Come on, Rosie! Come on, sugarpie.”
Rosalie started down the sidewalk at Nat’s heel, looking back once at the grinning little man and whining uneasily. On the other side of Harris Avenue, Helen came out of the Red Apple, and the last condition of the vision Atropos had shown Ralph was fulfilled. Helen had a loaf of bread in one hand. Her Red Sox hat was on her head.
Ralph swept Lois into his arms and kissed her fiercely. “I love you with all my heart,” he said. “Remember that, Lois.”
“I know you do,” she said calmly. “And I love you. That’s why I can’t let you do it.”
She seized him around the neck, her arms like bands of iron, and he felt her breasts push against him hard as she drew in all the breath her lungs would hold.
“Go away, you rotten bastard.” she screamed. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.” Go away.” Go away and leave us alone.” Natalie stopped dead in her tracks and looked at Lois with wide-eyed surprise. Rosalie stopped beside her, ears pricking.
“Don’t go into the street, Nat.” Lois screamed at her.
“Don’tThen her hands, which had been laced together at the back of Ralph’s neck, were holding nothing; her arms, which had been locked about his shoulders in a deathgrip, were empty.
He was gone like smoke.
Atropos looked toward the cry of alarm and saw Ralph and Lois standing on the other side of Harris Avenue. More important, he saw Ralph seeing him. His eyes widened; his lips parted in a hateful snarl. One hand flew to his bald pate-it was crisscrossed with old scars, the remnants of wounds made with his own scalpel-in an instinctive gesture of defense that was five years too late.
[Fuck you, Shorts This little bitch is mine.] Ralph saw Nat, looking at Lois with uncertainty and surprise. He heard Lois shrieking at her, telling her not to go into the street.
Then it was Lachesis he heard, speaking from someplace close by.
[Come up, Ralph.” As far as you can! Quickly.”
He felt the clench in the center of his head, felt that brief swoop of vertigo in his stomach, and suddenly the whole world brightened and filled with color. He half-saw and half-felt Lois’s arms and locked hands collapse inward, through the place where his body had been a moment before, and then he was drawing away from her no, being carried away from her. He felt the pull of something great if there was such a current and understood, in a vague way, that as a Higher Purpose, he had joined it and would soon be swept down river with it.
Natalie and Rosalie were now standing directly in front of the house which ralph had once shared with Bill McGovern before selling out and moving into Lois’s house. Nat glanced doubtfully at Lois, then waved tentatively. “She’s okay, Lois-see, she’s right here.” She patted Rosalie’s head. “I’ll cross her safe, don’t worry.”
Then, as she started into the street, she called to her mother.
“I can’t find my baseball cap! I think somebody stoled it!”
Rosalie was still on the sidewalk. Nat turned to her impatiently.
“Come on, girl!”
The green car was moving in the child’s direction, but very slowly.
It did not at first look like much of a danger to her. Ralph recognized the driver at once, and he did not doubt his senses or suspect he was having a hallucination. In that instant it seemed very right that the approaching sedan should be piloted by his old paperboy.
“Natalie!” Lois screamed. “Natalie, no!”
Atropos darted forward and slapped Rosalie #2 on the rump [Get outta here, mutt! G’wan.” Before I change my mind!] Atropos spared Ralph one final grimacing leer as Rosie yelped and darted into the street… and into the path of the Ford driven by sixteen-year-old Pete Sullivan.
Natalie didn’t see the car; she was looking at Lois, whose face was all red and scary. It had finally occurred to Nat that Lois wasn’t screaming about Rose at all, but something else entirely.
Pete registered the sprinting beagle; it was the little girl he didn’t see. He swerved to avoid Rosalie, a maneuver that ended with the Ford aimed directly at Natalie. Ralph could see two frightened faces behind the windshield as the car veered, and he thought Mrs. SulJI’var was screaming.
Atropos was leaping up and down, doing an obscenely joyful hornpipe.
[Yahh, Short-Time! Silly white-hair. Toldja I’dfix you.]
In slow motion Helen dropped the loaf of bread she was holding.
“Natalie, LOOK OUUUUUUTTT!” she shrieked.
Ralph ran. Again there was that clear sensation of moving by thought alone. And as he closed in on Nat, now diving forward with his hands stretched out, aware of the car looming just beyond her, kicking bright arrows of sun t ’ enough its dark deathbag and into his eyes, he clenched his mind again,, \bringing himself back down to the Short-Time world for the last time.
He fell into a landscape that rang with splintered screams: Helen’s mingled with Lois’s mingled with the ones being made by the tires of the Ford. Weaving its way through them like an outlaw vine was the sound of Atropos’s jeers. Ralph got a brief glimpse of Nat’s wide blue eyes, and then he shoved her in the chest and stomach as hard as he could, sending her flying backward with her hands and feet thrust out in front of her. She landed sitting up in the gutter, bruising her tailbone on the curb but breaking nothing. From some distant place, Ralph heard Atropos squawk in fury and disbelief.
Then two tons of Ford, still travelling at twenty miles an hour, struck Ralph and the soundtrack dropped dead. He was heaved upward and backward in a low, slow arc-it felt slow, anyway, from inside-and went with the Ford’s hood ornament imprinted on his cheek like a tattoo and one broken leg trailing behind him. There was time to see his shadow sliding along the pavement beneath him in a shape like an X; there was time to see a spray of red droplets in the air just above him and to think that Lois must have splattered more paint on him than he had thought at first. And there was time to see Natalie sitting at the side of the street, weeping but all right… and to sense Atropos on the sidewalk behind her, shaking his fists and dancing with rage.