Thinner

'You don't know why I'm losing weight.'

'Nope.' Houston seemed pleased by the fact. 'But my guess is that you may actually be thinking yourself thin. It can be done, you know. We see it fairly often. Someone comes in who really wants to lose weight. Usually they've had some kind of scare -heart palpitations, a fainting spell while playing te

'Okay,' Halleck said. He was willing to be convinced. He had taken the day off from work, and suddenly what he wanted to do more than anything else was go home and tell Heidi he was okay and take her upstairs and make love to her while the afternoon sunlight shafted in through the windows of their bedroom, 'I'll buy that.'

Houston got up to see him out: Halleck noticed with quiet amusement that there was a dusting of white powder under Houston's nose.

'If you continue to lose weight, we'll run an entire metabolic series on you,' Houston said. 'I may have given you the idea that tests like that aren't very good, but sometimes they can show us a lot. Anyway, I doubt if we'll have to go to that. My guess is your weight loss will start to taper off – five pounds this week, three next week, one the week after that. Then you're going to get on the scales and see that you've put on a pound of two.'

'You've eased my mind a lot,' Halleck said, and gripped Houston's hand hard.

Houston smiled complacently, although he had really done no more than present Halleck with negatives – no, he didn't know what was wrong with Halleck, but no, it wasn't cancer. Whew. 'That's what we're here for, Billyboy.'

Billy-boy went home to his wife.

'He said you're okay?'

Halleck nodded.

She put her arms around him and hugged him hard. He could feel the tempting swell of her breasts against his chest.

'Want to go upstairs?'

She looked at him, her eyes dancing. 'My, you are okay, aren't you?'

'You bet.'

They went upstairs and had magnificent sex. For one of the last times.

Afterward, Halleck fell asleep. And dreamed.

The Gypsy had turned into a huge bird. A vulture with a rotting beak. It was cruising over Fairview and casting down a gritty, cindery dust like chimney soot that seemed to come fro beneath its dusky pinions … its wingpits?

Chapter Seven. Bird Dream

'Thi

Thi

He walked faster and faster up Main Street, apparently invisible – the logic of dreams, after all, is only whatever the dream demands – and horrified by the results of the Gypsy's curse. Fairview had become a town filled with concentration-camp survivors. Big-headed babies with wasted bodies screamed from expensive prams. Two women in expensive designer dresses staggered and lurched out of Cherry on Top, Fairview's version of the old ice-cream shoppe. Their faces were all cheekbones and bulging brows stretching parchment-shiny skin; the necklines of their dresses slipped from jutting skin-wrapped collarbones and deep shoulder hollows in a hideous parody of seduction.

Here came Michael Houston, staggering along on scarecrow-thin legs, his Savile Row suit flapping around his unbelievably gaunt frame, holding out a vial of cocaine in one skeletal hand. 'Toot-sweet?' he screamed at Halleck – it was the voice of a rat caught in a trap and squealing out the last of its miserable life. 'Toot-sweet? It helps speed up your metabolism, Billy-boy! Toot-sweet? Toot -'

With deepening horror Halleck realised the hand holding the vial was not a hand at all but only clattering bones. The man was a walking, talking skeleton.

He turned to run, but in the way of nightmares, he could seem to pick up no speed. Although he was on the Main Street sidewalk, he felt as if he was ru

'Toot-sweet, toot-sweet, toot-sweet!' Houston's squalling, ratlike voice screamed. The voice was drawing closer and closer; Halleck knew that if he turned his head, the apparition would be close to him, so very close – sparkling eyes bulging from sockets of naked bone, the uncovered jawbone jerking and snapping.

He saw Yard Stevens shamble out of Heads Up, his beige barber's smock flapping over a chest and a belly that were now nonexistent. Yard was screeching in a horrid, crowlike voice, and when he turned toward Halleck, he saw it was not Yard at all, but Ronald Reagan. 'Where's the rest of me?' he screamed. 'Where's the rest of me? WHERE'S THE REST OF ME?'

'Thi

Chapter Eight. Billy's Pants

Billy jerked awake, breathing hard, his hand clapped across his mouth. Heidi slept peacefully beside him, deeply buried in a quilt. A mid-spring wind was ru

Halleck took one quick, fearful look around the bedroom, assuring himself that Michael Houston – or a scarecrow version of him – was not in attendance. It was just his bedroom, every corner of it known. The nightmare began to drain away … but there was still enough of it left so that he scooted over next to Heidi. He did not touch her – she woke easily – but he got into the zone of her warmth and stole part of her quilt.

Just a dream.

Thi

Sleep came again. Eventually.

The morning following the nightmare, the bathroom scales showed him at 215, and Halleck felt hopeful. Only two pounds. Houston had been right, coke or not. The process was slowing down. He went downstairs whistling and ate three fried eggs and half a dozen link sausages.

On his ride to the train station, the nightmare recurred to him in vague fashion, more as a feeling of deja vu than actual memory. He looked out the window as he passed Heads Up (which was flanked by Frank's Fine Meats and Toys Are Joys) and for just a moment he expected to see a half-score of lurching, shambling skeletons, as if comfortable, plushy Fairview had somehow been changed into Biafra. But the people on the streets looked okay; better than okay. Yard Stevens, as physically substantial as ever, waved. Halleck waved back and thought: Your metabolism is warning you to quit smoking, Yard. The thought made him smile a little, and by the time his train pulled into Grand Central, the last vestiges of the dream were forgotten.