LIGHT

'What's the matter?' A

'Pack,' he told her.

'At least change your clothes,' she said.

He changed his clothes; and she packed; and they rented a car from Avis; and Kearney drove as fast as he dared on to Henry Hudson Parkway and thence out of the city north. The traffic was aggressive, the expressways dark and dirty, knotted up into intersection after intersection like Kearney's nerves, and after less than an hour A

Hours later he woke in a pulloff on Interstate 93. He had heard a Gothic, animal, keening noise. It was A

A

'Come and look!' she urged him. 'Isn't it nice?'

'It's a motel room,' Kearney acknowledged, eyeing with distrust the ruched faux-gingham curtains.

'It's a Boston motel room.'

They were in Ma

Kearney stayed in the room with the TV on and the sound turned down-a habit he had picked up from Briar: Tate-or listened to a local radio station which specialised in music from the 1980s. He quite liked this, because it made him feel convalescent, half asleep. Then one night they played the old Tom Waits song 'Downtown Train'.

He had never even liked it; but with the first chord, he was flung so completely back into an earlier version of himself that a terrible puzzlement came over him. He couldn't understand how he had aged so savagely, or how he came to be in a motel room with someone he didn't know, someone he had yet to meet, a woman older than himself who, when he touched her thin shoulder, looked sideways at him and smiled. Tears sprang into his eyes. It was only a moment of confusion, but it was carnivorous, and he sensed that by acknowledging it he had allowed it in. Thereafter it would follow him as relentlessly as the Shrander. It would always be waiting to spring out on him. Perhaps in a way it was the Shrander, and it would eat him moment to moment if he didn't do something. So the next morning he got up before A

There, he bought a Sony handicam. He spent some time searching for the kind of soft plastic-covered wire gardeners use; but found a carbon-steel chefs knife quite easily. On an impulse he went to Beacon Hill, where he picked up two bottles of Montrachet. On his way back to the car he stood for a moment on the south side of the Charles River Basin looking across at MIT, then on an impulse tried to phone Brian Tate. No answer. Back at the motel, A

'Cheer up,' he said.

'You could have told me you were going.'

Kearney held up the Sony. 'Look! Let's walk on the beach.'

'I'm not speaking to you.'

But A

'Here's something you don't know,' she said. They sat for a moment on a dune, and she told him about the Ma

November 1970: three thousand pounds of rotting flesh is washed on to the Massachusetts sand. Crowds gather all the next day, motoring up from Providence and down from Boston. Parents stare, startled by the blubbery flippers. Kiddies dart and dash up close enough to frighten themselves. But the thing is too decayed ever to be identified; and though its bone structure resembles that of a plesiosaur, consensus has it that the gale has brought in nothing more exotic than the remains of a basking shark. In the end, everyone goes home, but the arguments continue for thirty years-

'I bet you didn't know that!' said A

'You should go to bed early,' he said.

That evening she drank most of the wine, laughed a lot and took off her clothes, then fell asleep suddenly on the bed. Kearney pulled the covers over her, drew the faux-gingham curtains, and plugged the handicam into the TV. He turned off the lights and for a while ran idly through the stuff he had taken on the beach. He rubbed his eyes. A

He froze that image on the screen, found a pair of scissors and cut two or three lengths of the wire he had bought that morning. These, he placed close to hand on the bedside table. Then he took off his clothes, stripped the chefs knife out of its plastic wrap, pulled back the bedclothes and looked down at her. She lay curled up, with one arm placed loosely round her knees. Her back and shoulders were as thin and unmuscled as a child's, the spine prominent and vulnerable. Her face, in profile, had a sharp, hollo wed-out look, as if sleep was no rest from the central puzzle of being A