“She’s gone now.”
“She certainly had important information to relay to us.” And lo and behold his 50 year old cold was gone (!).
Time to move back to the present as inevitably as red turns yellow turns green turns blue. 1936. Or thereabouts.
—–
Dr. Mouse confessed to his daughter Alice about what happened. “Why didn’t you just pay for an abortion?” she queried in the diner the next day. Mouse had to run off to an appointment the day before or certainly they would have caught up then. Interview with another doctor, a more promising one than Grayson and especially Brown so he couldn’t miss it. Apologized and was on his way, leaving Alice to the pinball machine herself; left alone in the city once more. She peered up at the last score before inserting a quarter: 28064212. Lunar month. Deception. The Sun nowhere to be found. Gloomy day.
The huge Arabic number disappeared as her own scoring began.
Sunnier now. A boy in the far distance stops revolving around 10 to 13 to 10 etc. etc. and becomes 18 for a spell. He asks out the girl down the street he’s had a crush on forever. Now that he can speak to her eye to eye he figures: why not. Forecast doesn’t call for rain until Thursday. And today was Munday; time for maybe even several dates with tall, blonde Sarah. Or was it Nikki?
Back to Mouse and daughter Alice in the diner booth. “Octavia,” he hesitated, “… we had a different relationship than…” Did he want to say “clientele”? He just decided on the “others.” Her other men, her other clients, Alice understood. “She knew the man who owned the swamp, the one the psychic children in town were always altering and changing. This made her special in my eyes. The man’s name was…” He suddenly couldn’t remember, although he’d thought of him a thousand times since Alice’s conception on an old mattress in an alley back of Greene’s Motel (he assumed). “Robert,” he then recollected. He tried the name out on Alice.
“I don’t know that name,” she returned. “Do you mean Bob Levarbe? Leverber?” she tried again herself. “Levargee.”
“Bill,” he suddenly recalled. And a last name. Lavosier! He felt the air around him become heavier and more combustible. BOOMB! he recalled. He got too close.
Sunklands 