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Oh, gone.

Reba rests her head on his thigh and turns her gleaming cheek to him. She runs her hand inside his shirt and rests it warm on his chest.

“I hope I didn’t shock you,” she said.

It was the sound of her living voice that shocked him, and he felt to see if her heart was going and it was. She held his hand there gently.

“My goodness, you’re not through yet, are you?”

A living woman. How bizarre. Filled with power, the Dragon’s or his own, he lifted her from the couch easily. She weighed nothing, so much easier to carry because she wasn’t limp. Not upstairs. Not upstairs. Hurrying now. Somewhere. Quick. Grandmother’s bed, the satin comforter sliding under them.

“Oh, wait, I’ll get them off. Oh, now it’s torn. I don’t care. Come on. My God, man. That’s so sweeeet. Don’t please hold me down, let me come up to you and take it.”

With Reba, his only living woman, held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt for the first time that it was all right: It was his life he was releasing, himself past all mortality that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet, ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest.

Beside her in the dark, he put his hand on her and pressed her together gently to seal the way back. As she slept, Dolarhyde, damned murderer of eleven, listened time and again to her heart.

Images. Baroque pearls flying through the friendly dark. A Very pistol he had fired at the moon. A great firework he saw in Hong Kong called “The Dragon Sows His Pearls.”

The Dragon.

He felt stunned, cloven. And all the long night beside her he listened, fearful, for himself coming down the stairs in the kimono.

She stirred once in the night, searching sleepily until she found the bedside glass. Grandmother’s teeth rattled in it.

Dolarhyde brought her water. She held him in the dark. When she slept again, he took her hand off his great tattoo and put it on his face.

He slept hard at dawn.

Reba McClane woke at nine and heard his steady breathing. She stretched lazily in the big bed. He didn’t stir. She reviewed the layout of the house, the order of rugs and floor, the direction of the ticking clock. When she had it straight, she rose quietly and found the bathroom.

After her long shower, he was still asleep. Her torn underclothes were on the floor. She found them with her feet and stuffed them in her purse. She pulled her cotton dress on over her head, picked up her cane and walked outside.

He had told her the yard was large and level, bounded by hedges grown wild, but she was cautious at first.

The morning breeze was cool, the sun warm. She stood in the yard and let the wind toss the seed heads of the elderberry through her hands. The wind found the creases of her body, fresh from the shower. She raised her arms to it and the wind blew cool beneath her breasts and arms and between her legs. Bees went by. She was not afraid of them and they left her alone.

Dolarhyde woke, puzzled for an instant because he was not in his room upstairs. His yellow eyes grew wide as he remembered. An owlish turn of his head to the other pillow. Empty.

Was she wandering around the house? What might she find? Or had something happened in the night? Something to clean up. He would be suspected. He might have to run.

He looked in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Down in the basement where his other wheelchair stood. The upper floor. He didn’t want to go upstairs. He had to look. His tattoo flexed as he climbed the stairs. The Dragon glowed at him from the picture in his bedroom. He could not stay in the room with the Dragon.

From an upstairs window he spotted her in the yard.

“FRANCIS.” He knew the voice came from his room. He knew it was the voice of the Dragon. This new twoness with the Dragon disoriented him. He first felt it when he put his hand on Reba’s heart.

The Dragon had never spoken to him before. It was frightening.

“FRANCIS, COME HERE.”

He tried to shut out the voice calling him, calling him as he hurried down the stairs.

What could she have found? Grandmother’s teeth had rattled in the glass, but he put them away when he brought her water. She couldn’t see anything.

Freddy’s tape. It was in a cassette recorder in the parlor. He checked it. The cassette was rewound to the beginning. He couldn’t remember if he had rewound it after he played it on the telephone to the Tattler.

She must not come back in the house. He didn’t know what might happen in the house. She might get a surprise. The Dragon might come down. He knew how easily she would tear.