“Look,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about this all day. More than all day. For days. It seems to me we have two problems, not one.”
“What two problems?”
“Sex and Donegal Steele.”
“For God’s sake,” Chessey said, “don’t put it that way.”
“I’m not putting it any way, Chess, I’m just stating fact. We’ve got to do something about the physical thing between us that will work, and we’ve got to get Steele off your case. Right?”
“Dr. Steele isn’t on my case at the moment. He isn’t on anybody’s. He hasn’t been around.”
“He’ll be around again soon enough if we let him. The trick is to cut him off at the pass.”
“How?”
“The same way we solve the physical thing between us.”
“Jack, for God’s sake, what do you want to do? Relieve me of my virginity at high noon on Minuteman Field? What do you think will get through to him?”
“Chess, please, please, will you trust me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you will.”
He had managed to slide down farther against the trunk of the tree, to somehow seem to be sitting on his haunches—although how that was possible, stuck in the branches the way they were, Chessey didn’t know. He took her face between his hands and lifted her chin until he was looking into her eyes, so much like the way he had the first time he had kissed her that Chessey found herself unable to breathe again, for reasons that had nothing to do with her fear of heights.
“What we’ve got to do right now,” he said, “is we’ve got to get into your room and get you out of that pumpkin thing.”
“Men aren’t allowed in the rooms at Lexington House after ten o’clock on weekdays.”
“So who’s to notice? Evie? When we tell her what we’re going to do, she’ll pin a medal on us.”
“Only if it’s bloody murder,” Chessey said.
“It’s better than that. Please?”
Chessey looked away. “What about you? You’re still in your bat suit.”
“We’ll take care of me later. I’m all right for now just the way I am.”
Chessey thought he was all right with her just the way he was—he was always all right, no matter what he did—but it was too stupid a thing to admit in public and besides, he was pushing her out on the branch again, toward the window. She went without thinking about it, the space between her body and the ground eliminated from her imagination. She could feel his hands on her shoulders and his laughter in her ear. She wondered if he realized they’d never tried going in this way before.
The window was still open. She barreled for it, head first, anything to get her hands onto the sill. At the same time she thought: This time he’s going to want to do something really crazy.
3
OUT AT COUNTY RECEIVING it was midnight and Miss Maryanne Veer was lying in a bed on the intensive care ward, neither conscious nor unconscious, neither dreaming nor not dreaming, thinking about lemons. She had been thinking about lemons at least since she first remembered waking up. She had even thought about them while Margaret was here to visit. Margaret had been Margaret the whole time—weepy and hysterical when a doctor or nurse was in the room, fiery and hard when the two of them were alone. Maryanne and Margaret shared their secret lives only with each other.
Now the ward was dark and quiet. The only other patient was three doors down, suffering the aftereffects of having a heart attack in the middle of a fire. Miss Maryanne Veer closed her eyes and let her mind drift, over the lemons and onto the hand.
This is how it happened, over and over again, no matter what she tried to do to stop it: The lemons were piled in a pyramid on somebody else’s table in somebody else’s house, each and every one of them perfectly round, each and every one of them marked in ink like those Sunkist oranges but with a line that said: “full of sugar.” Miss Maryanne Veer was standing next to them and wishing they were hers. The hand came out of nowhere and handed one to her, taking it off the top. When Miss Maryanne Veer got it into her own hand, she saw there was a straw sticking out of one end.
Lemons, hand, straw: that was it. There was nothing sensible. It wasn’t even a hand she recognized, although she kept thinking she should.
Lemons, hand, straw: there was something there that was sensible, maybe even important, but she couldn’t pin it down. She ought to tell somebody about it, but she couldn’t do that either. She’d already heard them say it was doubtful if she would ever again be able to talk.