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"Maybe it’s struck for the last time in my life," Laura said
Thelma stared hard at her "Wow I know you, Shane, and I know you realize what e yourself at by even just wanting to be this happy I hope you’re right, kid, and I bet you are I bet there’ll be nofor you"
"Thank you, Thelma"
"And I think your Danny is a sweetheart, a jewel But I’ll tell you soht to mean a lot more than my opinion: Ruthie would have loved hiht he was perfect"
They held each other tightly, and for a ain, defiant yet vulnerable, filled with both the cockeyed confidence and the terror of blind fate that had shaped their shared adolescence
Sunday, July 24, when they returned frorocery shopping, then cooked dinner together-tossed salad, sourdough bread, hetti-at the apartiven up her own place andto the plan that they had worked out, they would stay at the apartment for two years, maybe three (They had talked about their future so often and in such detail that they now capitalized those tords in theirto soe and that could be relied upon for an accurate picture of their destiny as husband and wife) So after two years, maybe three, they would be able to afford the down pay into the tidy stock portfolio that Danny was building, and only then would they move
They dined at the small table in the alcove off the kitchen, where they had a view of the king palolden late-afternoon sun, and they discussed the key part of The Plan, which was for Danny to support them while Laura stayed home and wrote her first novel "When you’re wildly rich and fahetti on his fork, "then I’ll leave the brokerage and spendour money"
"What if I’m never rich and famous?"
"You will be"
"What if I can’t even get published?"
"Then I’ll divorce you"
She threw a crust of bread at him "Beast"
"Shrew"
"You want another e has passed I reed
"That’s worth celebrating, don’t you think-that you have a ho "
"So let’s make love"
Danny said, "In the middle of dinner?"
"No, in bed" She pushed back her chair and got up "Co that first year they made love frequently, and in their inti farhim within her, she felt so close to him that at times it almost seemed as if they were one person-one body and one mind, one spirit, one drea of oneness was more than love, or at least different froether, she understood that what she felt was a sense of belonging not experienced in a long time, a sense of family; for this was her husband and she was his wife, and one day from their union would co to The Plan-and within the shelter of the family was a peace not to be found elsewhere
She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, hary, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and e on her work But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best as a conceit of the young and inexperienced The happier she grew, the better she wrote
Six weeks before their first wedding anniversary, Laura finished a novel, Jericho Nights, and sent a copy to a New York literary agent, Spencer Keene, who had responded favorably to a query letter a month earlier Teeks later Keene called to say he would represent the book, expected a quick sale, and thought she had a splendid future as a novelist With a swiftness that startled even the agent, he sold it to the first house to which it was sub, for a modest but perfectly respectable advance of fifteen thousand dollars, and the deal was concluded on Friday, July 14, 1978, two days before Laura and Danny’s anniversary
The place he had seen from farther up the road was a restaurant and tavern in the shadows of enormous Ponderosa pines The trees stood over two hundred feet tall, bedecked with clusters of six-inch cones, with beautifully fissured bark, soht of snow fros; it was so sheltered by trees on three sides that its slate roof was covered with more pine needles than snow The ere either stealy diffused by that translucent fil were two Jeep wagons, two pickup trucks, and a Thunderbird Relieved that no one would be able to see hih the tavern s, Stefan went directly to one of the Jeeps, tried the door, found it unlocked, and got in behind the steering wheel, closing the door after him
He drew the Walther PPK/S 380 fro inside his peacoat He put it on the seat at his side His feet were painfully cold, and he wanted to pause and empty de snow out of his boots But he had arrived late, and his original schedule was shot, so he dared not waste a minute Besides, if his feet hurt, they weren’t frozen; he wasn’t in danger of frostbite yet The keys were not in the ignition He slid the seat back, bent down, groped under the dashboard, located the ignition wires, and had the engine running in a minute
Stefan sat up just as the owner of the Jeep, breath reeking of beer, pulled open the door "Hey, what the hell you doing, pal?" The rest of the snoept parking lot was still deserted They were alone
Laura would be dead in twenty-five minutes The Jeep’s owner reached for hied fro his pistol off the seat as he went, and in fact he threw hi thebackward on the slippery parking lot They fell As they hit the ground, he was on top, and he jauy’s chin
"Jesus,up now Easy, damn you, no sudden uy, quickly reversed his grip on the Walther, used it as a club, struck once, hard enough to knock the e The owner of the Jeep went down again, stayed down, lilanced at the tavern No one else had co on the road, but then again the howling wind an to fall harder, he put the pistol in the deep pocket of his peacoat and dragged the unconscious man to the nearest other vehicle, the Thunderbird It was unlocked, and he heaved the guy into the rear seat, closed the door, and hurried back to the Jeep The engine had died He hot-wired it again
As he put the Jeep in gear and swung it around toward the road, the wind shrieked at thebeside hirew denser, blizzard-thick, and clouds of yesterday’s snohipped up froiant, shadoaddled pines swayed and shuddered under winter’s assault
Laura had little more than twentycontract for Jericho Nights and the otherworldly har their anniversary at a favorite place-Disneyland The sky was blue, cloudless; the air was dry and hot Virtually oblivious of the summer crowds, they rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, had their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse, got dizzy spinning in the Mad Hatter’s teacups, had their portraits drawn by a caricaturist, ate hot dogs and ice cream and chocolate-covered frozen bananas on sticks, and danced that evening to a Dixieland band in New Orleans Square
The park becahtfall, and they rode the Mark Twain paddlewheel steamboat around To at the railing on the top level, near the boith their arms around each other Danny said, "You knoe like this place so much? ’Cause it’s of the world yet untainted by the world And that’s our e"