Part 22 (1/2)

”Look at my poor hands, dear. Look at my nails!”

”Seriously, how come...”

”Travis, darling, a long time ago-maybe not so awfully long ago really, but it does seem way way back-I told Meyer that you had picked up all the pieces of me and put me together, and that if you were ever in need of the same he was to find me through my gallery, and let me know and if I did not happen to have any compound fractures, I would come to you on a dead run. I got here a week ago yesterday.”

”So that's why Meyer has looked so bland and smug and mysterious. Why didn't you come to the hospital?”

”Hate them, darling. Sorry. Wasn't this better?”

”This is as good as anything can get. My G.o.d, you look lovely. You are something way out else, Heidi.”

”Do you need putting together?”

”Haven't you noticed me?”

”Oh h.e.l.l, I don't mean looking like sudden death. That's a body thing. I mean putting together.”

I looked at her and knew that I did. ”Something was going wrong and it went further wrong. I don't know. I lost it, somehow, without knowing what I lost. Some kind of... sense of light and motion and purpose. I went ragged around the edges and bleak in the middle. The world seems to be coa.r.s.ening, and me with it. Everything that happens takes away, and less flows back. And I respond less, and in the wrong way. I still amuse myself but there's some contempt in it now. I don't know... I don't know...”

”Darling, there's that water from the eye syndrome again.”

”Sorry.”

”There's nothing so really wrong with you, you know. It's second adolescence.”

”Is that it?”