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Yet by soht twinkles in unlikely corners of the shadowy roolass beads of the shade on the lalass knob on a distant closet door…

"Piggy?"

"Okay"

"The potato salad"

"Okay"

"I’h"

"And a sandwich"

"Why do you do this to rate"

"I’rate is?"

"No"

"You don’t know y shakes her head

"Eat the potato salad"

"Okay"

"When?"

"Later," says Piggy

"No Now"

"Okay"

"Don’t just say okay Do it"

The child neither speaks nor reaches for the potato salad

Diamonds dark at throat and wrist in spite of the desk lairl rises from her chair, snatches up the potato salad, and throws it

The container strikes a wall and bursts open, splattering the plaster and showering the floor with spit-spiced potato salad

Bright tears sting Piggy’s eyes, and her wet cheeks shine

"Clean it up"

"Okay"

Froirl seizes the pieces of the ruined doll and throws the of cookies and throws that

"Clean it up"

"Okay"

"Every sive irl turns and, dia, strides from the roo solutions and eimen that seldom fails to leave her in a better mood

Perched on the arm of the upholstered chair, Harroatches the child As simple as she is, and plain and slow, she has about her a ues him and that seems in soy sits for a ent as rubbing alcohol, they swiftly evaporate from her cheeks In remarkably short order, her eyes are dry as well

She opens the second lunchbox bag of potato chips and eats one Then another Then a third Slowly she eers on a paper napkin, she pushes aside the tray and picks up the doll on which she orking when her mother and Harrow first entered the roo with it other than study its face

The odd thought occurs to hiy, may be the only person he has ever knoho is only and exactly who she appears to be, which may be why she seems mysterious

And here, unexpectedly, is the Look that Harrow has lately seen subtly transform the child’s features, the quality that is not beauty but thatword for the Look still eludes hilow that lacks the strength to press through the cracks in the shutters Only the desk lahts persist in the crystal beads of the lalass doorknob far froold-leaf detail of a picture frale to reflect the desk la that he and the child are not alone in the rooy will not clean up theas Harrow remains to watch her She stoops to such tasks only when she is alone

He rises fro her for a ain

Rarely does he say anything to the child More rarely still does she speak to him

Suddenly the expression on her face so infuriates him that if he were a man without absolute control of his emotions, he would knock it off her with one hard punch

Without looking at Harrow, she says, "Good-bye," and he finds hi the door

"You’ll burn like pig fat," he mutters as he turns the deadbolt lock, and he feels his face flush because this juvenile threat, while worthy of Moongirl, is beneath him

Chapter 36

The man known as Eliot Rosewater to Vernon Lesley was known as Billy Pilgriine aircraft to the abandoned military facility in the Mojave

The pilot, who had worked with Billy on many occasions, called himself Gunther Schloss, and was Gunny to his friends Billy thought Gunther Schloss sounded like a true name, a born name, but he would not have bet a penny on it

Gunny looked like a Gunther Schloss ought to look: tall, thick-necked, muscular, hite-blond hair and blue eyes and a face made for the cover of White Supremacist Monthly

In fact he was married to a lovely black wo Chinese woman in San Francisco He wasn’t a fascist but an anarchist, and during one bizarre week in Havana, he had sanja with Fidel Castro You could hire Gunny Schloss to kill just about anyone, if it was someone you for some reason didn’t want to kill yourself, but he cried every tinolias, which he did once a year