The old woman looked delighted. “It’s very nice to meet you!” she said. “It’s very nice to meet you!”
“You can call me Gregor, if you like,” Gregor said. “I’m not sure what you want me to call you.”
“Oh, you call me Lily, just like everybody,” the old woman said. “Lily. Lily flower. That’s what my mother used to say. She used to say that I looked just like a lily flower. That was before the helicopters came, you know, back in the days when there was grass. I used to like the grass. I liked the smell of it.”
“I like the smell of it, too,” Gregor said. “There isn’t much of it, in the city. Except in the parks.”
The old woman leaned very close to Gregor’s ear. Her breath was sour with age and, he thought, lack of dental work, but her teeth had been brushed. He could smell the mint of the toothpaste.
“I don’t go into the parks anymore,” Lily said. “I used to. I used to go there for the grass. There are children in the parks. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I knew that.”
“Some of them are real children, but some of them are not,” Lily said. “People like to disguise themselves as children sometimes. You have to be careful. It’s like that old story. The sheep in wolf’s clothing. My mother used to tell me stories. Before the helicopters came.”
Gregor nodded. “My mother used to tell me stories, too. That was right down the street. I grew up on this street. I lived in an apartment a couple of blocks from here, but that building is gone now. Did you grow up here?”
“Here?”
“In this house. I don’t remember seeing you around, but this is a couple of blocks away. I might not have noticed you.”
“I notice you,” Lily said. “You’re right there. I can see you.”
“I am right here. I was wondering if you grew up in this house, that’s all.”
Lily backed away a little. She looked around. She looked back at Gregor.
“The helicopters came,” she said. “They came and they ran all around the yard, and then there was water. It was like being on an ocean, but it wasn’t. There are whales in the oceans. There’s the Loch Ness monster. I read about that in the newspaper. I don’t think that was this house. Do you?”
“No,” Gregor said. “I don’t.”
“Am I someplace I’m not supposed to be? I’m always someplace I’m not supposed to be these days. I don’t know how it happens. I thought I was all right in this house, though. There was a lady, but she fell down. She gave me soap for my hair. And then the helicopters came. But not here. It wasn’t here. And there was water.”
“I think it would be a good thing if you let these people take you to a hospital,” Gregor said. “I don’t think you’re feeling very well.”
“She wasn’t feeling very well,” Lily said. “She fell down. My mother didn’t fall down. She fell into a hole. It was a big black hole. I read about those in the newspaper, too. Do you read the newspapers? I don’t know if I can believe them. They disguise themselves as children sometimes. It’s very wrong of them.”
“I’m sure it is,” Gregor said.
He stepped away and motioned to the policewoman who had been closest when he first came up. She moved forward and took Lily by the hand, not by the arm.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll just take you to the hospital and see what the doctors have to say.”
“I don’t like the hospital,” Lily said. “They yell at you there.”
For a split second, Gregor thought he would have to step in again, but Lily was going without a struggle, walking along hand in hand with the policewoman as if they were two best friends from second grade.
THREE
1
It had been raining when Olivia Dahl first woke up in the morning. It had rained all through her sweep of the morning news shows, local and national and cable. It was raining now, as she took her clipboard down the long back hall to where Sheila Dunham’s voice was emanating, that grating Connecticut caw that always sounded halfway between trailer park and drunk.
“Of course I’m going to do Good Morning America,” Sheila was saying. “Do you think I give a flying fuck whether that little bitch from the Today show still has friends? It wasn’t my fault she drove her husband off the edge of a cliff and he got cancer just to get away from her. And that’s what happened, don’t believe anything else. Stupid bitch.”
It was halfway possible that Sheila was drunk. It wasn’t likely. In spite of all the rumors, Sheila didn’t usually drink first thing in the day. People just needed an excuse for her behavior.