•Cobbie was polishing off his spaghetti at a table in a windowed alcove next to the kitchen door. Laurie asked, "How did it go?"
"He's a nice guy. Have you ever been to Mountry?"
She shook her head. "Why?"
"Let's promise never to go there."
Cobbie chanted, "Somewhere, somehow, someone'sgotta be kissed."
Posy sprang from her chair. "Bedtime for the Rat Pack." She wiped the red smears from Cobbie's face. "All right. Upstairs."
"Do I have to?"
She put her hands on her hips. "Would I lie to you?"
"Have to have to?"
She looked at me. "Cobbie wondered if you could make out a list of CDs he would like."
“I'll try to hold it down to the top one hundred."
"Maybe we can get Ned to say good night to you once you're in bed."
Cobbie looked at me with a blast of anticipatory joy. I would have, bet anything that Stewart never tucked him in or read to him at night.
"And I'll read you a book," I said, "but it has to be a short one."
"Goodnight Moon,"he said. I felt an inexplicable chill of resistance.
"Goodnight Moon?"Posy said.
Laurie said, “Isn't that a little babyish for you?"
He shook his head."Goodnight Moon."
"Sure," I said. “It's about the perfect way to go to sleep." The same part of me that had resisted "Something's Gotta Give" was sayingno no no to Cobbie's chosen book. I knew it came from the same place, wherever that was.
"You're a lucky kid," Posy said.
Laurie smiled at me and told Cobbie, "Just once."
He kissed her and flew out of the kitchen, Posy behind him.
Laurie drank the last of the wine in her glass without taking her eyes from my face. “I don't suppose you have three or four children you play with every afternoon and read to every night, one after the other."
"Six," I said. "Plus the twins inBoulder."
My mouth went dry. I had intended to say "San Diego," butBoulder had come out as if a wizard had put a spell on my tongue. For the third time, a powerful and irrational unease spread its wings. Boulder?
Laurie stood up to get the bottle. "You know, Stewart never read to Cobbie at bedtime, not once. What happened to your glass?"
“I left it in the other room," I said. "Hold on, I'll find the dog sled." When I returned, I sat down next to her and putFrom Beyond on the table.
Laurie flipped through random pages. Something made her snicker, and I said, "What?"
She grinned. "'Mr. Waterstone,' creaked the old librarian from the musty darkness of his sinister lair, 'the means by which you acquired that ancient text are of no interest to me.' In books, I don't think people shouldcreak or anything else like that. They should just say things."
"Edward Rinehart may not be the author for you, he surmised."
She closed the book. "Tell me about Donald Messmer."
Icondensed Messmer's tale without mentioning what he had said about Joe Staggers. “It's funny. I thought there'd bemore. I'm almost disappointed there isn't."
“It's amazing, how much you got done in one day. Now you can think about the rest of your life."
Posy Fairbrother swung around the entrance to the kitchen and came as far as the central island. "Your admirer awaits you. He hasn't looked atGoodnight Moon for so long it took me ages to find it, but he promised to go to sleep after one reading. Laurie, what can I do while Ned is being wonderful?"
"Help me with the hollandaise for the artichokes, and if you put a salad together, I'll handle the rest."
"Do you want me to clean up afterwards?"
"One of us will." Laurie pushed her chair back and stood up in a single gesture. The glowing shield of her face revolved toward me. "Ready to be wonderful all over again?"
•56
•Separated by expanses of ocher wall, doors stained to look like rosewood marched toward a floor-to-ceiling window with an arched fanlight. The second door on the right stood partially open.
Sending out waves that would set off a Geiger counter, the book lay on the chair beside Cobbie's bed. Already yawning, he was hugging the teddy bear. A stuffed black cat and a stuffed white rabbit stood guard at the foot of his bed, and a foot-highTyrannosaurus rex reared on the headboard.
Margaret Wise Brown's hymn to bedtime seemed almost poisonous. To distract myself, I asked Cobbie how my namesake was getting along. Ned the bear andTyrannosaurus rex had become excellent friends. Was Cobbie ready for his book? Yes, emphatically. Hoping that I was as ready as he, I opened the book, turned sideways and held it out so he could see the pictures, and began to read.
Instantly, my phobia disappeared, and all sense of danger went away. Cobbie's eyelids reached bottom when I was five pages from the end. I closed the covers and, in the spirit ofGoodnight Moon, whispered good night to all and sundry. The phobia reasserted itself when
I placed the book on the headboard. I turned off the lamp, realizing that I had learned something as mysterious as the original phobia: I was afraid of the jacket, not the hook.
In my inner ear, Frank Sinatra belted out a fragment of "Something's Gotta Give":Fight . . . fight . . . fight it with . . . aaaall of your might. . .
Halfway down the stairs, I met Posy Fairbrother coming up. She was in a rush; she had to do at least four hours of work that night. All the more beautiful for being attuned to the task ahead, Posy's face seemed nearly kittenish as she wished me a wonderful evening.
•57
•Laurie Hatch and I were borne along on a tide of conversation that seemed infinitely expandable into realms more and more intimate by grace of a shared understanding. I had not had an evening like it in at least ten years, and none of those soulful interchanges of my twenties had felt so much like real contact.
The conviction that one's own experience has beenmirrored by the other's, that whatever is said will be understood, soon begins to confirm itself out of sheer momentum, and, of course, I did not dare to be as open as I appeared. Neither did Laurie. Of my "attacks," Mr. X, the weirdness of the Dunstans, and the shadow-double who had saved my life, I said nothing. I never considered being completely honest with Laurie Hatch. She would have been alarmed, taken aback—I did not want to make her think I was crazy.
If conversations like ours did not always contain a degree of falsity, they would not be so profound.
We managed to get through a bottle and a half of wine, and the table was covered with serving dishes. "Why don't we clear this stuff up?" I said.
"Forget it." Laurie tilted back in her chair and ran a hand through her hair. "Posy will take care of that."
"She has hours of work ahead of her. Let's give her a break." I carried bowls to the sink and scraped artichoke leaves into the garbage disposal.
Laurie helped me load the dishwasher and filled its soap trays. “I feel like one of the shoemaker's elves. What were we going to do now, do you remember?"
"Did you want to hear the end of that Rinehart story?"
"The perfect farewell to Mr. Rinehart." She emptied the last of the wine into our glasses and led me back to the sofa.