Lightning

"It isn't slave wages either." He pushed his sundae aside, leaned forward, slid her sundae aside, too, and took her hands across the table. "The money will come eventually because you're brilliant, but money isn't what I care about. What I care about is that you've got something special to share. No. That's not exactly what I mean. You don't just have something special, you are something special. In some way I understand but can't explain, I know that what you are, when shared, will bring as much hope and joy to people in far places as it brings to me here at your side."

Blinking away sudden tears, she said, "I love you."

Jericho Nights was published ten months later, in May of 1979. Danny insisted she use her maiden name because he knew that through all the bad years in McIlroy Home and Caswell Hall, she had endured in part because she wanted to grow up and make something of herself as a testament to her father and perhaps, as well, to the mother she had never known. The book sold few copies, was not chosen by any book clubs, and was licensed by Viking to a paperback publisher for a small advance.

"Doesn't matter," Danny told her. "It'll come in time. It'll all come in time. Because of what you are."

By then she was deep into her second novel, Shadrach. Working ten hours a day, six days a week, she finished it that July.

On a Friday she sent one copy to Spencer Keene in New York and gave the original script to Danny. He was the first to read it. He left work early and began reading at one o'clock Friday afternoon in his living-room armchair, then shifted to the bedroom, slept only four hours, and by ten o'clock Saturday morning he was back in the armchair and two-thirds of the way through the script. He would not talk about it, not a word. "Not until I'm done. It wouldn't be fair to you to start analyzing and reacting until I've finished, until I've grasped your entire pattern, and it wouldn't be fair to me, either, because in discussing it you're sure to give away some plot turn or other.''

She kept peeking at him to see if he was frowning, smiling, or responding to the story in any way, and even when he was reacting she worried that it was the wrong reaction to whatever scene he might be reading. By ten-thirty Saturday, she couldn't bear to stay around the apartment any longer, so she drove to South Coast Plaza, browsed in bookstores, ate an early lunch though she was not hungry, drove to the Westminster Mall, window-shopped, ate a cone of frozen yogurt, drove to the Orange Mall, looked in a few shops, bought a square of fudge and ate half of it. "Shane," she told herself, "go home, or you'll be a double for Orson Welles by dinnertime."

As she parked in the carport at the apartment complex, she saw that Danny's car was gone. When she let herself into the apartment, she called his name but got no answer.

The script of Shadrach was piled on the dinette table.

She looked for a note. There was none.

"Oh, God," she said.

The book was bad. It stank. It reeked. It was mule puke. Poor Danny had gone out somewhere to have a beer and find the courage to tell her that she should study plumbing while she was still young enough to get launched on a new career.

She was going to throw up. She hurried to the bathroom, but the nausea passed. She washed her face with cold water.

The book was mule puke.

Okay, she would just have to live with that. She'd thought Shadrach was pretty good, better than Jericho Nights by a mile, but evidently she had been wrong. So she would write another book.

She went to the kitchen and opened a Coors. She had taken only two swallows when Danny came home with a gift-wrapped box about the right size to hold a basketball. He put it on the dinette table beside the manuscript, looked at her solemnly. "It's for you."

Ignoring the box, she said, "Tell me."

"Open your gift first."

' 'Oh, God, is it that bad? Is it so bad you have to soften the blow with a gift? Tell me. I can take it. Wait! Let me sit down." She pulled out a chair from the table and dropped into it. "Hit me with your best, big guy. I'm a survivor."

"You've got too strong a sense of drama, Laura."

"What're you saying? The book's melodramatic?"

"Not the book. You. Right now, anyway. Will you for God's sake stop being the shattered young artiste and open your gift?"

"All right, all right, if I've got to open the gift before you'll talk, then I'll open the bloody gift."

She put the box in her lap — it was heavy — and tore at the ribbon while Danny pulled up a chair and sat in front of her, watching.

The box was from an expensive shop, but she was not prepared for the contents: a large, gorgeous Lalique bowl; it was clear except for two handles that were partly clear green and partly frosted crystal; each handle was formed by two leaping toads, four toads altogether.

She looked up, wide-eyed. "Danny, I've never seen anything like this. It's the most beautiful piece ever."

"Like it, then?"

"Good God, how much was it?"

"Three thousand."

"Danny, we can't afford this!"