«Don't touch the baby. Just leave the baby alone, Chili! Don't touch my baby!»
The name stopped him and he looked at me, confused. In desperation, I threw my hand out at him again. It had worked once with Weber.
The arc came again, only this time slowly and lazily. It drifted in many colors across the room. Williams put up his hand, caught the light and put it in his mouth. He ate it.
He took two more steps toward the crib, looking at it now. I beat him there and stood with my back to it.
The crowbar still glowed. A light from inside Alvin's stomach glowed. My light. My magic. All gone.
«Hello, Mrs. James. Remember me? Yours very sincerely, Alvin Williams.» He brought the flickering crowbar up over his head. He wanted me dead, so I threw myself on to the floor as far away from the baby as I could get. Maybe he would stop when I was dead.
A noise like a bomb shook the room and for an instant I thought I had already been hit, because at the same time a white light enveloped us all.
Williams spun around, his arms still high and cocked and ready.
The light was everywhere, but the sound was gone. Only white, full light and silence.
I heard something hit the ground with a hard _clang_. Alvin grunted once, then jerked sideways and fell near me. I saw what was left of his dead, split face. Something had hit in the middle of that face and everything had collapsed inward.
«Mom?»
Pepsi stepped out of the white light and came to me. On my knees, I reached up for him but he shook his head. I wasn't allowed to touch him.
«You won, Pepsi!»
He nodded and smiled. «Is that Mae, Mom? It is, isn't it?» His voice was his own, only hollower and much, much further away.
He went over to his sister and looked at her through the bars of her crib. I was on all fours when I watched my children meet for the first time.
Mae saw him and reached out her hand. She opened her mouth, closed it, smiled; she knew who he was, I'm sure of that.
«Hello, Mae.»
I closed my eyes. «I love both of you. Mae sees you, Pepsi. I know she sees you. I love you both and you're both here now.»
He reached out a small finger and almost touched his sister's hand with it. «Promise to always sing her the Mouse song, Mom.»
«I will.»
He pointed toward the window. New York City was gone and Mr. Tracy's face filled the window instead. He smiled like old times.
«Always sing that one to her, Mom. And the one about the Spider Club too. That's a good one.»
The light grew in the room. It climbed from a swimming-pool blue, to orange, to yellow, higher yellow, white. It was too bright then and I had to close my eyes. When I opened them again, both Pepsi and Mr. Tracy were gone.
When the police arrived, I had Mae in my arms and the crowbar across my wet lap. All of the blood had soaked through my cotton nightgown and on to my thighs. It didn't feel bad.
Alvin Williams had escaped two hours before. Doctor Lavery had completely forgotten about me in the initial confusion. When he did remember, he called the police right away. But they took a while to arrive.
Williams had hailed a cab, strangled the driver, stolen the man's money and the tire iron from the trunk of the car.
Tire iron. That's what the policeman called the thing. A tire iron. Alvin still had the key to the front door of our building in his pocket. They said it had been his prized possession at the Institute, so they'd allowed him to keep it.
I wouldn't let the police take Mae or the tire iron away from me. They took Eliot. Then they took Alvin. But I wouldn't let them take Mae or the tire iron.
When they asked how I had gotten it away from Alvin, I shrugged and said _I_ hadn't – Pepsi had.
They left me alone.
Danny buried Eliot, then moved us out of that apartment within nine days after it happened. We live on Riverside Drive now, and there is a little bit of a view of the Hudson River. Danny laughed and said he had to pay off three people to get that view, but he wanted me to have it.
In bed last night he held me again and said he wanted to talk to me for the rest of our lives. He wanted to wake up talking to me and go to bed talking. He said we would help each other grow old.
Do you know what I've been thinking about? Thinking about a lot? Whether Eliot is with Pepsi now. Even if he first had to go to Ophir Zik, I know Pepsi would get Eliot out of there in a flash. That would be great. They would have so much fun together.
There's no way to express how much i miss them.
It's hard convincing yourself that where you are at the moment is your home, and it's not always where your heart is. Sometimes I win and sometimes not.
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Bones of The Moon Page 21
