"And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Nothing?"
"Easy, easy," Alan said, rising and moving toward her. She was working herself up into one of her rages. He went to put his arms around her but she pushed him away.
"No! I don't want to be known as the wife of the local witch doctor! I want this junk straightened out and fast! You just tell me why—!"
Her voice was reaching a screechy pitch that frazzled Alan's nerves.
"Ginny…"
"You just tell me why you can't call Tony and have him sue this rag for defamation of character or libel or whatever it's called and print a retraction!"
"Ginny…" Alan felt his own patience wearing thin.
"You just tell me!"
"Because it's true, goddamnit!"
Alan regretted the explosion immediately. He hadn't wanted to say that.
Ginny stepped back as if she had been slapped in the face. Her voice was tiny when she spoke.
"What?"
"It's true," Alan said. "I tried to tell you last month but I knew you wouldn't believe me."
Ginny reached a shaking hand behind her, found a chair, and sat down.
"Alan, you've got to be kidding!"
Alan sat on the sofa across from her. "At times, Ginny, I almost wish I were. But it's true. Those people aren't lying and they aren't crazy. They've really been cured. And I did it."
He saw her mouth form a question that found no voice. He asked it for her:
"How? I don't know." He didn't mention the incident with the derelict. This was all hard enough to believe without adding that and what Tony had recently told him about the man. "All I know is that at certain times of the day I can cure people of whatever ails them."
Ginny said nothing. Neither did Alan. Ginny watched her hands; Alan watched her.
Finally she spoke, falteringly.
"If it's true—and I really can't believe I'm sitting here talking about this—but if it's true, then you've got to stop."
Alan sat in stunned silence. He couldn't stop. Not permanently. He could cut back or hold off for a while, but he couldn't stop.
"It's healing, Ginny," he said, trying to catch her eyes. She wouldn't look at him. "I don't know how long I'll have this power. But while I have it, I've got to use it. It's what I'm about. How can I stop?"
Ginny finally looked up. There were tears in her eyes. "It will destroy everything we've worked for. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Ginny, you've got to understand—"
She shot to her feet and turned away. "I see it doesn't."
Alan gently turned her around and pulled her to him. She clung to him as if she were about to fall. They stood there in silence, arms wrapped around each other.
"What's happened to us?" he finally asked.
"I don't know," Ginny said. "But I don't like the way things are going."
"Neither do I."
As they held the embrace, Alan thought, This is the way it used to be. This used to be the simple answer to everything. I'd hold Ginny and she'd hold me, and it would be enough. Everything would be all right.
"Let's not talk about this anymore tonight," she said finally, and pulled away. "Let me sleep on it."
"We should talk this out, Ginny. It's important."
"I know it's important. But I can't handle it right now. It's too much. You're talking like someone who belongs in a mental hospital, and I'm tired and I want to go to bed."
As Alan watched her go up the stairs, he remembered that tomorrow was the twenty-seventh. His receptionist had reminded him that his office hours started late in the morning because of that. He always started late on May 27. Now was hardly the best time to ask, but maybe this year Ginny would come.
"Ginny? Would you come with me?"
She turned at the top of the stairs and looked at him questioningly.
"It's the twenty-seventh."
Her face suddenly went blank, devoid of any feeling. She shook her head silently and turned away.
He wandered around the first floor aimlessly for a while. He felt lost and very much alone. If only he could talk to someone about this! The pressure was building to explosive proportions inside him. If he didn't let it out soon, he'd really be crazy.
He went to the kitchen, made a cup of instant coffee, and brought it back to the living room. He stopped and stared in surprise when he saw another cup of coffee already there.
When had he made that?
Shaking his head, he dumped both in the kitchen sink. He returned to the living room and lay back in the recliner, thinking about the power.
How could something that seemed like such a miraculous boon become such a curse?
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
___17.___
Sylvia
"There he is now," Sylvia said as she spotted Alan's Eagle. She leaned forward and pointed past Ba's shoulder.
Ba nodded from the driver's seat. "I see him, Missus."
"We'll follow him to his office and catch him before he goes in."
Jeffy had been dropped off at the Stanton School and Sylvia was on her way to Alan's office, determined to speak to him before he saw his first patient.
She leaned back in the rear seat, wondering how she would broach the subject to Alan. Last night she almost had been able to accept what Ba had said about this healing touch, this Dat-tay-vao, as he called it. Now, with the sun flickering and slanting through the oaks along the road on a beautiful spring morning, it seemed preposterous. But she had decided to follow through with her decision to speak to Alan about it, and pass on Ba's warning. She owed him at least that much.
They were approaching the office now. But Alan didn't turn into the parking lot. She saw his car slow momentarily as it passed, then pick up speed again. There were two cars and a van in the parking lot, and one man sitting on the front steps.
"Do I follow him, Missus?" Ba said as he slowed the car.
Sylvia hesitated. He wasn't headed toward the hospital— that was in the other direction. "Yes. Let's see where he's going. Maybe we'll still get a chance to speak to him."
They didn't have far to go. He turned into Tall Oaks Cemetery. Ba stopped the car at the gate and waited.
Sylvia sat tense and quiet while invisible fingers of ice encircled her stomach and squeezed.
"Go on," she said at last.
Ba turned the Graham through the gate and followed the winding asphalt strip through the trees. They found Alan's car pulled to the side about a third of the way along the drive. Sylvia spotted him a few hundred feet off to the left, kneeling in the grass on a gentle rise.
She watched him a moment, puzzled. She didn't know much about his past, but she knew he was not from around here and had no family in the area. On impulse she got out of the car and walked toward him.
She knew Tall Oaks well. Too well. It was one of those modern cemeteries that didn't allow standing markers. All headstones had to be flat little slabs laid in the ground in neat rows to facilitate groundskeeping. Gone was the old-fashioned creepy cemetery with its mausoleums and cracked, tilted headstones. In its place was this open, grassy field ringed by trees.
As she came up behind Alan she saw that the ground around him was littered with colorful cardboard and clear plastic packaging, all torn to pieces. When she saw what he was doing, she stopped in shock.
He was lining up little Star Wars action figures along the edges of a headstone plaque. The three human leads were there, plus a variety of bizarre aliens, of which Jabba the Hutt was the only one she knew by name.