He was on a motorcycle, racing over a road through brilliant flashes of light and dark. He lifted his eyes from the road and saw trees and stone walls and houses. The trees were so intensely green they burned against Tristan's eyes. The blue sky was neon. Red felt like heat.
They were racing up a road, climbing higher and higher. Tristan tried to slow them down, to steer one way, then another, to exert some control, but he was powerless.
Suddenly they screeched to a halt. Tristan looked up and saw the Baines house.
Gregory's home — it was and it wasn't. He stared at the house as they walked toward it. It was like looking at a room reflected in a Christmas ornament; he saw objects he knew well stretched by a strange perspective, at once familiar and weird.
Was he in a dream, or was this a memory whose edges had been burned and curled by drugs?
They knocked, then walked through the front door. There was no ceiling, no roof. In fact, there wasn't a furnished room, but a huge playground, whose fence was the shell of the house. Gregory was there, looking down at them from the top of a very tall sliding board, a silver chute that did not stop at ground level but tunneled into it-There was a woman also. Caroline, Tristan realized suddenly.
When she saw them she waved and smiled in a warm and friendly way. Gregory stayed on top of his sliding board, looking down at them coldly, but Caroline beckoned them over to a merry-go-round, and they could not resist.
She was on one side, they were on the other. They ran and pushed, ran and pushed, then hopped on.
They whirled around and around, but instead of slowing down, as Tristan expected, they went faster and faster. And faster and faster still — they hung by their fingertips as they spun. Tristan thought his head would fly off. Then their fingers slipped and they went hurtling into space.
When Tristan looked up, the world still spun for a moment, then stopped. The playground had disappeared, but the shell of the house remained, enclosing a cemetery.
He saw his own grave. He saw Caroline's. Then he saw a third grave, gaping open, a pile of freshly dug earth next to it.
Was it Eric who started shaking then, or was it himself? Tristan didn't know, and he couldn't stop it — he shook violently and fell to the ground. The ground rumbled and tilted. Gravestones rolled around him, rolled like teeth shaken out of a skull. He was on his side, shaking, curled in a ball, waiting for the earth to crack, to split like a mouth and swallow him.
Then it stopped. Everything was still. He saw in front of him a glossy picture of a motorcycle. Eric had awakened.
It was a dream, thought Tristan. He was still inside, but Eric didn't seem to notice. Maybe he was too exhausted, or maybe his fried brain was too used to strange feelings and thoughts to respond to Tristan.
Did the bizarre events of the dream mean anything? Was there some truth hidden in them, or were they the wanderings of a druggie's mind?
Caroline was a mysterious figure. He remembered how they had no will to resist her invitation to a ride on the merry-go-round. Her face was so welcoming.
He saw it again, the welcoming face. It was older now. He imagined her standing at the door of her own house. Then he walked through that door with her. This time he was in Eric's memory!
Caroline looked around the room, and they did, too. The blinds were opened in the big picture window; he could see dark clouds gathering in the western sky. In a vase was a long-stemmed rose, still tightly curled in a bud. Caroline was sitting across from him, smiling at him. Now she was frowning, The memory jumped, like a badly spliced movie, frames dropping out of it. Smiling, frowning, smiling again. Tristan could barely hear the words being spoken; they were drowned out by waves of emotion.
Caroline threw back her head and laughed. She laughed almost hysterically, and Tristan felt an overwhelming sense of fear and frustration. She laughed and laughed, and Tristan thought he'd explode with the force of Eric's frustration.
He grabbed Caroline's arms and shook her, shook her so hard her head rolled backward and forward like a rag doll's. Suddenly he heard the words being screamed out at her: "Listen to me. I mean it! It's not a joke. Nobody's laughing but you. It's not a joke!"
Then Tristan felt a pressure squeezing his head, compressing his mind so intensely he thought he would dissolve. Caroline and the room dissolved, like a scene from a movie disintegrating in front of his eyes; the screen went black. Eric had pressed down on the memory. His own bedroom suddenly came back into focus.
Tristan got up and moved with Eric across the room. He watched his fingers open a knapsack and pull out an envelope. Eric shook brightly colored pills into his quivering hand, lifted them to his mouth, and swallowed.
Now, Tristan thought, was the time to take seriously Lacey's warnings about a drug-poisoned mind. He cut out of there fast.
"Capes and teeth are selling big," Betty said, glancing through the sales receipts for Tis the Season. "Is there a convention for vampires at the Hilton this week?"
"Don't know," Ivy murmured, counting out a customer's change for the third time.
"I think you need a break, dear," Lillian observed.
Ivy glanced at the clock. "I just had dinner an hour ago."
"I know," said Lillian, "but since you'll be closing up for Bet and me, and since you just sold that sweet young man who bought the Dracula cape a pair of wax lips…"
"Wax lips? Are you sure?"
"The Ruby Reds," Lillian said. "Don't worry, I caught him at the door and got him to trade them for a nice set of fangs. But I do think you should take a little break."
Ivy stared down at the cash register, embarrassed. She had been making mistakes for three days now, though the sisters had graciously pretended not to notice. She wondered if the cash box had come out right Sunday and Monday. She was amazed that they would trust her to close up that night.
"The last time I saw you like this," Betty said, "you were falling in love."
Lillian shot her sister a look.
"I'm not this time," Ivy said firmly. "But maybe I could use a break."
"Off you go," Lillian said. "Take as long as you need."
She gave Ivy a gentle push.
Ivy walked the top floor of the mall from one end to the other, trying once more to sort things out. Since Saturday she and Gregory had been doing a sort of shy dance around each other: hands brushing, eyes meeting, greeting each other softly, then backing away. Sunday night her mother had set the table for a family dinner and lit two candles. Gregory looked at Ivy from across the table as he'd often done before, but this time Ivy saw the flame dancing in his eyes. Monday Gregory had slipped away without speaking to anyone. Ivy didn't know where he had gone and didn't dare ask. Maybe to Suzanne's. Maybe Saturday night had been just a moment of closeness — a single moment, a single kiss, after all the hard times they had shared.
Ivy felt guilty.
But was it so wrong, caring for someone who cared for her? Was it wrong, wanting to touch someone who touched her gently? Was it wrong, changing her mind about Gregory?
Ivy had never felt so mixed up. Only one thing was clear: she was going to have to get her act together and concentrate on what she doing, she told herself — just as she ran into a baby stroller.
"Oops. Sorry."
The woman pushing the stroller smiled, and Ivy returned the smile, then backed into a cart selling earrings and chains. Everything jingled.
"Sorry. Sorry."
She narrowly avoided a trash can, then headed straight for the Coffee Mill.
Ivy took her cup of cappuccino to the far end of the mall. The two big stores that had been there were closed, and several lights had burned out. She sat on an empty bench in the artificial twilight, sipping her drink. Voices from shoppers at the other end of the mall lapped toward her in soft waves that never quite reached her.