Infernal

15

-8:16

"Is she asleep?" Jack said.

Gia disengaged herself from him and leaned over Vicky, curled under a blanket at the far side of the couch.

"Uh-huh. She's out."

"Okay, I'll carry her up—"

Gia laid a hand on his arm. "Let her stay with us."

Jack nodded in the semidarkness. "I'd like that."

He'd brought along a selection of movies to have something to do other than sit and count the minutes. Classics. Films they could all watch. And, for obvious reasons, no horror.

They'd let Vicky pick the first. No surprise, she chose King Kong because it was the colorized version.

Like most kids her age, she'd had almost no exposure to black-and-whites and didn't like them. Except for King Kong. She'd cried at the end of her first viewing and for days afterward went around the house repeating in a perfect imitation of Robert Armstrong's delivery, "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes… it was beauty killed the beast."

That had inspired Jack to hunt down a copy of Turner's colorized version. He considered himself something of a purist when it came to movies, especially ones he liked, so the idea of tinting and tinkering with a classic offended him. But mildly. The world offered a wide array of far more important issues to get crazy about.

Yet when he watched it with Vicky he'd had to admit that it was kind of nice to see a blue ocean and a green jungle. And Vicky had loved it. What could be more important than that?

"What should we watch next?"

Gia clung to him. "Why don't we just sit here."

"We can do that. But I'd rather not feel like a condemned man waiting for the executioner to knock on the door."

"It's not going to happen," Gia said. "That's the only way I can get through tonight. Just keep telling myself it's not going to happen… it's not going to happen… and maybe if I repeat it enough times, it won't."

Jack searched for something to do, something to say to ease her pain.

"Got as good a chance as anything else."

Crummy, but the best he could come up with. She snaked her arms around him and squeezed.

"Maybe if I hold on real tight it won't be able to take you."

"Now there's a thought."

"How do you stay so calm?"

Calm? He wanted to scream, he wanted to break things.

"Who says I'm calm?"

"Look at you. Our lives are about to be torn apart, you're about to be taken God knows where, maybe to your death. Yet you sit here watching movies. The more disordered and crazy and desperate things get, the calmer you are. Tell me how you do that, because I want some."

I do it for you, he thought.

To help Gia keep it together. He sensed she was just barely holding on, hanging by the slimmest of threads. If he kept thinking about the two ends of the Stain snailing closer and closer together, he might fall apart. And then what would happen to Gia?

"I think that somewhere down in the deepest recess of my psyche I'm convinced I'll come through this. Don't ask me why. It's not logical. And because it's not logical, my conscious mind doesn't buy it. So the films help distract me. They make it easier for me. But if they don't make it easier for you—"

"No-no. They distract me too. What else do you have?"

"Well, I brought Citizen Kane."

"We must have watched that four times in the last year. I'm tired of it."

Jack never tired of it—every time he watched it he found something new—but let it slide. He looked through the short stack of tapes.

"Casablanca?" he said and realized immediately what a bad choice that was.

"Dear God, no. That final good-bye scene… I can't handle that. Too close to home."

"All right then, I've got Gone with the Wind, The Maltese Falcon, and To Kill a Mockingbird."

"All too much like real life. I need some sort of fantasy—far, far from reality."

"How about The Wizard ofOz? That far enough?"

"Perfect. I could use—"

Her voice broke off as her head snapped to the right. Jack sensed it too—movement. He stiffened when he saw it. A small cry broke from Gia.

The Lilitongue had joined them in the sitting room.

If floated to a corner and hovered there. Waiting.