Thinner

He toweled himself off. He put on his robe and found himself standing by the closed door and looking fixedly at Heidi's new blue robe. He reached out one hand and caught a fold of nylon between his fingers. He rubbed its slickness. The robe looked new, but it also looked familiar.

She's just gone out and bought a robe that looks like one she owned sometime in the past, he thought. Human creativity only goes so far, chumly – in the end, we all start to repeat ourselves. In the end, we're all obsessives.

Houston spoke up in his mind: It's the people who aren't scared who die young.

Heidi: For Christ's sake, Billy, don't look at me that way! I can't bear it!

Leda: He looks like an alligator now. like something that crawled out of a swamp and put on human clothes.

Hopley: You hang around thinking maybe this once, maybe just this once, there's going to be a little justice … an instant of justice to make up for a lifetime of crap.

Billy fingered the blue nylon and a terrible idea began to slide up into his mind. He remembered his dream. Linda at his study door. The bleeding hole in her face. This robe … it didn't look familiar because Heidi had once owned one that looked like it. It looked familiar because Linda owned one that looked like it right now.

He turned around and opened a drawer to the right of the sink. Here was a brush with LINDA written along the red plastic handle.

Black hairs clung to the bristles.

Like a man in a dream he walked down the hall to her room.

Drift trade is always willing to arrange these things, my friend … that's one of the things drift trade is for.

An asshole, William, is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

Billy Halleck pushed open the door at the end of the hallway and saw his daughter, Linda, asleep in her bed, one arm across her face. Her old teddy bear, Amos, was in the crook of her other arm.

No. Oh, no. No, no.

He hung on to the sides of the door, swaying dreamily back and forth. Whatever else he was, he was no asshole, because he saw everything: her gray suede bomber jacket hung over the back of her chair, the one Samsonite suitcase, open, spilling out a collection of jeans and shorts and blouses and underthings. He saw the Greyhound tag on the handle. And he saw more. He saw the roses beside the clock in his and Heidi's bedroom. The roses hadn't been there when he went to bed last night. No … Linda had brought the roses. As a peace offering. She had come home early to make up with her mother before Billy came home.

The old Gypsy with the rotting nose: No blame, you say. You tell yourself and tell yourself and tell yourself. But there is no poosh, white man from town. Everybody pays, even for things they didn't do. No poosh.

He turned then and ran for the stairs. Terror had made him double-jointed and he shambled like a sailor at sea.

No, not Linda! his mind screamed. Not Linda! God, please, not Linda!

Everybody pays, white man from – town – even for things they didn't do. Because that's what it's really all about.

What remained of the pie stood on the counter, neatly covered with Saran Wrap. Fully a quarter of it was gone. He looked at the kitchen table and saw Linda's purse there – a line of rockstar buttons had been pi

He went to the sink.

Two plates.

Two forks.

They sat here and ate pie and made up, he thought. When? Right after I went to sleep? Must have been.

He heard the old Gypsy laughing and his knees buckled. He had to clutch at the counter to keep from actually falling over.

When he had some strength, he turned and crossed the kitchen, hearing the board in the middle squeak under his feet as he crossed over it.

The pie was pulsing again – up and down, up and down. Its obscene, persistent warmth had fogged the Saran Wrap. He could hear a faint squelching sound.

He opened the overhead cupboard and got himself a dessert plate, opened the drawer beneath, and got out a knife and fork.

'Why not?' he whispered, and pulled the wrapping off the pie. Now it was still again. Now it was just a strawberry pie that looked extremely tempting in spite of the earliness of the hour.

And as Heidi herself had said, he still needed all the calories he could get.

'Eat hearty,' Billy Halleck whispered in the su