Every wailed note and histrionic piano chord was delivered with pristine clarity.
He moved gingerly, slowly, pensively, locked his gun and hung it back up on the wall.
He tentatively opened the front door. He was tempted to hold his breath, as if he was plunging into noxious gas. He stepped outside.
Holyshit.
However it was accomplished—God knows they made teeny speakers these days that could produce just about the same amount of noise—the soundfeltloud enough to crumble the walls of Jericho, or to be mistaken for the kind of fracking that could cause earthquakes three states away.
He was held motionless in a veritable net of sound. It was like the trees, the hills, the very ground and air were singing.
Singing the worst, theworstsong in the whole world.
The execution of this fiendish plot had been diabolically skillful.
He stood, still naked, in that storm of sound, buffeted by a full dozen more emotions, which was about double the number that had even twinged him in the last few years.
But he was shocked by the impression he decided to nourish.
It was:she remembered.
Avalon remembered Ihatethat song.
He’d mentioned it to her maybe once in his entire life, and there was a very good reason why he’d never mentioned it again.
But she’d remembered.
He imagined a shrink would have afieldday with the fact that, in the middle of his righteous and quite justified outrage, a perverse little pilot light of joy glowed.
Because if she’d remembered a stupid little thing like that, he had a hunch she remembered everything. Because that’s what you did when someone meant something to you. You hoarded every little detail you could.
How long had it been since he’d felt truly known? Something in him that he hadn’t known was tense shifted a little. Like he’d been given just a skosh more leg room on a flight.
He stood there until the song ended, as if to make sure an attacking army really was in retreat.
He sucked in a long, long breath, as if the air was finally clean again.
Well. Points to Avalon. It was ahelluvaway to wake up.
He turned and went back into the house, hefted a bag of kibble and poured some into The Cat’s bowl.
The Cat, unoffended by being jounced out of bed unceremoniously by Mac’s sudden leap out of it and who had in fact hopped back in and stolen his warm spot, jumped down, did a sort of nonchalant downward dog stretch and headed for his bowl. The Cat always rebounded swiftly from the many vicissitudes of humans, and never seemed to hold any grudges. In this way he and Mac were probably a little different.
Mac stepped outside again and stretched his arms luxuriously upward into the chilly morning. He’d been contemplating planting about a quarter acre with winter crops, and he needed to clean up the rest of the hydrangeas he’d trimmed behind the Devil’s Leap house and get as much work out of the way as possible during this warm spell, including trimming branches near the roof and cutting back the oleander.
He started the coffee, pulled on some clothes, and dozily communed with six deer moseying down the road, who all turned big limpid brown eyes on him, eyes which reminded him of the very person who was torturing him with Melissa Manchester.
The Cat came to sit next to him and wash his face. Mac always talked to The Cat. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautif—”
DUN dun DUN dun DUN dun...
He froze, blank with a sort of dark amazement as the sound hammered his nerves like they were piano strings.
The motherfucking song was startingall over again.
Well.
Now he knew how it would go down.
