The Servants of Twilight

"Maybe she once had a little boy of her own, a little boy she loved very much, but maybe he wasn't a good little boy like you. Maybe he grew up to be very bad and did a lot of terrible things that broke his mother's heart. Something like that could. unbalance her a little."

"So now maybe she hates all little boys, whether she knows them or not,"

he said.

"Yes, perhaps."

"Because they remind her of her own little boy? is that it'?"

"That's right."

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded." Yeah. I can sorta see how that could be."

She smiled at him and mussed his hair." Hey, I'll tell you what-let's stop at Baskin-Robbins and get an ice cream cone. I think their flavor of the month is peanut butter and chocolate.

That's one of your favorites, isn't it?"

He was obviously surprised. She didn't approve of too much fat in his diet, and she planned his meals carefully. Ice cream wasn't a frequent indulgence. He seized the moment and said, "Could I have one scoop of that and one scoop of lemon custard? "

"Two scoops?"

"It's Sunday," he said.

"Last time I looked, Sunday wasn't so all-fired special.

There's one of them every week. Or has that changed while I wasn't paying attention?"

"Well. but. see, I've just had He screwed up his face, thinking hard. He worked his mouth as if chewing on a piece of taffy, then said, "I've just had a. a traumamatatic experience."

"Traumatic experience?"

"Yeah. That's it."

She blinked at him." Where'd you get a big word like that?

Oh. Of course. Never mind. Val."

According to Valerie Gardner, who was given to theatrics, just getting up in the morning was a traumatic experience. Val had about half a dozen traumatic experiences every day-and thrived on them.

"So it's Sunday, and I had this traumatic experience," Joey said, "and I think maybe what I better do is, I better have two scoops of ice cream to make up for it. You know?"

"I know I'd better not hear about another traumatic experience for at least ten years."

"What about the ice cream?"

She looked at his torn shirt." Two scoops," she agreed.

"Wow! This is some terrific day, isn't it? A real Looney Tune and a double-dip ice cream!"

Christine never ceased to be amazed by the resiliency of children, especially the resiliency of this child. Already, in his mind, he had transmuted the encounter with the old woman, had changed it from a moment of terror to an adventure that was not quite-but almost-as good as a visit to an ice cream parlor.

"You're some kid," she said.

"You're some mom."

He turned on the radio and hummed along happily with the music, all the way to Baskin-Robbins.

Christine kept checking the rearview mirror. No one was following them.

She was sure of that. But she kept checking anyway.

2

After a light dinner at the kitchen table with Joey, Christine went to her desk in the den to catch up on paperwork. She and Val Gardner owned a gourmet shop called Wine & Dine in Newport Beach, where they sold fine wines, specialty foods from all over the world, high quality cooking utensils, and slightly exotic appliances like pasta-makers and expresso machines. The store was in its sixth year of operation and was solidly established; in fact, it was returning considerably more profit than either Christine or Val had ever dared hope when they'd first opened their doors for business.

Now, they were planning to open a second outlet this summer, then a third store in West Los Angeles sometime next year. Their success was exciting and gratifying, but the business demanded an ever-increasing amount of their time.

This wasn't the first weekend evening that she had spent catching up on paperwork.

She wasn't complaining. Before Wine & Dine, she had worked as a waitress, six days a week, holding down two jobs at the same time: a four-hour lunch shift in a diner and a six-hour dinner shift at a moderately expensive French restaurant, Chez Lavelle. Because she was a polite and attentive waitress who hustled her butt off, the tips had been good at the diner and excellent at Chez Lavelle, but after a few years the work numbed and aged her: the sixty-hour weeks; the busboys who often came to work so high on drugs that she had to cover for them and do two jobs instead of one; the lecherous guys who ate lunch at the diner and who could be gross and obnoxious and frighteningly persistent, but who had to be turned down with coquettish good humor for the sake of business. She spent so many hours on her feet that, on her day off, she did nothing but sit with her aching legs raised on an ottoman while she read the Sunday papers with special attention to the financial section, dreaming of one day owning her own business.

But because of the tips and because she lived frugally-even doing without a car for two years-she had eventually managed to put enough aside to pay for a one-week cruise to Mexico aboard a luxury liner, the Aztec Princess, and had accumulated a nest egg large enough to provide half the cash with which she and Val had launched their gourmet shop.