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"I don’t sleep well any ood for et up and write"
Thelma pulled up a chair, sat, and propped her feet on Laura’s desk Her taste in sleepas even y silk pajareen, blue, and yellow abstract pattern of squares and circles
"I’ bunny slippers," Laura said "It shows a certain constancy of personality"
"That’s me Rock-solid Can’t buy bunny slippers in my size any more, so I have to buy a pair of furry adult slippers and a pair of kids’ slippers, snip the eyes and ears off the little ones and sew the?"
"A bile-black book"
"Sounds like just the thing for a fun weekend at the beach"
Laura sighed and relaxed in her spring-backed armchair "It’s a novel about death, about the injustice of death It’s a fool’s project because I’ to explain death to my ideal reader because then maybe I can finally understand it o on in spite of that knowledge of our ht and endure It’s a black, bleak, gri book"
"Is there a big hed "Probably no market at all But once an idea for a novel seizes a writerwell, it’s like an inner fire that at first warins to eat you alive, burn you up from within You can’t just walk away fro The only way to put it out is to write the daet stuck on this one, I turn to a nice little children’s book I’ all about Sir To the bunny slippers?"
They talked about this and that, with the easy camaraderie they had shared for twenty years Perhaps it was Laura’s loneliness,Danny’s murder, or maybe it was fear of the unknown, but for whatever reason she began to speak of her special guardian In all the world only Thelht believe the tale In fact Thel her feet fro disbelief, as the story unrolled frouardian vanished on the hway
When Laura had quenched that inner fire, Theluardian years ago? Back in McIlroy?"
"I don’t know It see I should keep to myself because if I shared it I’d break the spell and never see hiain Then after he leftto save Ruthie, I guess I just stopped believing in him I never told Danny about hiuardian was no more real to ain on the highway"
"That night on thein a few days?"
But I haven’t seen hiure that when souardian or, just as likely, another Kokoschka with a subeted on her chair as if a current were crackling through her Finally she got up and paced "What about Kokoschka? The cops find out anything about hi no identification whatsoever The Pontiac he was driving was stolen, just like the red Jeep They ran his fingerprints through every file they’ve got, caate a corpse They don’t knoho he was or where he ca tiuardian? Where did he come from?"
"I don’t know" She had one idea in particular that she focused on, but it sounded mad, and she had no evidence to support the theory She withheld it from Thelma not because it was crazy, however, but because it would sound so egomaniacal "I just don’t know"
"Where’s this belt he left with you?"
"In the safe," Laura said, nodding toward the corner where a floor-set box was hidden under the carpet
Together they pulled the wall-to-wall carpet off its tack strip in that corner, revealing the-face of the safe, which was a cylinder twelve inches in diameter and sixteen inches deep Only one item reposed within, and Laura withdrew it
They moved back to the desk to look at the ht Laura adjusted the flexible neck of the lamp
The belt was four inches wide and was h which oven copper wires that formed intricate and peculiar patterns Because of its width, the belt required two small buckles rather than one; those were also made of copper In addition, sewn on the belt just to the left of the buckles, was a thin box the size of an old-fashioned cigarette case-about four inches by three inches, only three-quarters of an inch thick-and this, too, was made of copper Even on close exaular copper box could be discerned; its only feature was a yellow button toward the lower left corner, less than an inch in diaain what he said would happen if you pushed the yellow button"
"He just told me for God’s sake not to push it, and when I asked why not, he said, ’You won’t want to go where it’ll take you’"
They stood side by side in the glow of the desk la at the belt that Thel, and the house was as silent as any dead, airless crater on the moon
Finally Thelma said, "You ever been tempted to push the button?"