"Whuh-"

The keep put his arm around his shoulder, then- "Say cheese!"

snap!

Somebody took a picture of them. The sudden flash left Collier blind.

"Thanks, Mr. Collier," he heard the keep say. A hand on his arm led him back to his bar stool.

"That"ll look great, framed behind the bar. Our first celebrity!"

Collier could barely see. I better get out of here and sober up before tonight. He reached for his wallet.

"Oh, you can"t leave yet, Mr. Collier. Frank and Bubba bought you beers, too."

"No, really, I have to-"

"Aw, come on. It"s not every day we have a TV guy in here."

I guess one more won"t kill me, Collier thought, but was still semishocked by the revelation of what Jiff"s "handyman" work really was.

He spent the next hour trading banter and TV stories with the keep and other patrons. The beers slid down fast, and G.o.d knew how many autographs he signed. "Oh, that"s right," the keep eventually remembered, "you wanted to see Jiff. Mike, go back there and see what he"s up to, all right?"

The beautiful female impersonator rose from the booth, went down the hall, then reappeared a few moments later. "He"s not there, Buster," Mike said in a silky voice. He hoisted his bra beneath a tight blouse.

They seemed to be shielding the conversation from Collier, but even through the alcohol haze, he could hear traces: "He"s supposed to slip me a ten each time." "He probably went out the back." "How do you like that!"

The extra beers were exactly not what Collier needed. He felt narcotized. "Problem?" he asked, when the keep came back.

"No, no biggie, Mr. Collier. But I"m afraid Jiff"s gone; he must"ve left out the back door. If he comes in later, I"ll tell him you were looking for him."

"I"m sure I"ll see him back at the inn..."

A Pabst clock told him it was past two thirty now. Less than five hours and I"m on a date with Dominique...The fact buffed off the weirdness of his current situation. He was determined to leave soon; he needed some time to nap off his buzz. He had one more beer to be polite, but then his head was spinning. He put a twenty down for a tip, took another fifteen minutes saying good-bye to everyone, and at last stumbled out into daylight.

Holy smokes, I"m drunk out of my gourd...

He had to concentrate on each step. Focus, focus! he ordered. If he fell down on the sidewalk, everyone would see. By the time he got to the end of the street, that last beer was overriding his liver. Collier walked as though he had cinder blocks tied to his shoes. Don"t fall, don"t fall, don"t fall, he kept thinking.

When he looked down Number 3 Street, he saw a drove of tourists moving toward him. There"s no way I can fake it, he knew, and with my luck they"ll all want autographs. I"m so stewed right now I doubt that I could sign my name...He made a forty-five-degree pivot on the sidewalk-Here goes!-and walked right into the woods.

I"ll walk through the woods around the hill. No one"ll see me, and that"s a good thing because I"m pretty d.a.m.n sure I"m gonna fall on my face a couple of times.

Among the trees, he found a convenient footpath, then- flump!

-fell flat on his face.

The town buffoon, he thought. Me. Washed-up TV hasbeen alcoholic wreck and L.A. burnout useless waste of s.p.a.ce! Gets s.h.i.t-faced in the middle of the afternoon...Collier hoped there was no afterlife. He didn"t want to think that his dear dead parents might be seeing him now, lamenting tearily, "Where did we go wrong?"

He dragged himself up, then lurched from tree to tree for about a hundred yards. He could only sense where the inn was. Over there someplace, he thought, and gazed drunkenly left. He squinted through double vision, saw that he still had about four hours before his date...

I can"t make it, I need to sit down for a little while. His b.u.t.t thunked to the ground, and he thought he heard the seat rip open. He heard something else, too, a steady disconnected noise...

Running water?

He shot his face forward and thought he saw a creek burbling through the woods. I ought to go put my face in that, he considered, but now that he was down, he wasn"t getting up. There was no bed to spin here, only the woods.

He nodded in and out. The steady sound of the creek reminded him of those sleep-machine things that supposedly offered calming sounds but only wound up alerting the sleeper. He nodded off again, quite heavily. He felt as though he were being buried in sand.

Pieces of dreams pecked at him: the clang of railroad workers, and men singing like a chain gang. He dreamed of Penelope Gast fanning herself in a posh parlor as female maids tended to her, and then he dreamed of the smell of urine.

A splendid horizon, into which a steam locomotive chugged briskly, smoke pouring, and a whistle screeching as it disappeared into the distance...

"I wanna do it, too," the voice of a young girl whined.

"Don"t be stupid!" insisted another older-sounding girl.

The brook burbled on, but beneath it crept a fainter sound: scritch-scritch-scritch "Then let me do it to you..."

"You"re too little, stupid! You"d cut me!"

"No I wouldn"t!"

Something like alarm pried open Collier"s eyes. The voices weren"t from a dream. He craned his neck and stared forward, at two young girls doing something near the creek. One dirty blonde who looked about thirteen or fourteen, and the other about ten, with a ruffled helmet-cut like a 1920s flapper, the color of dark chocolate. They were both barefoot, wearing white smocklike dresses.

s.h.i.t! Two little kids, and they don"t know I"m here, Collier realized. It would likely scare them if he announced himself. The young one stepped into the water and continued looking down at the other, who sat with her back to Collier and seemed to be leaning over.

scritch-scritch-scritch What the h.e.l.l is she doing? Then Collier almost screamed when a feisty mud-colored dog trounced in his lap and began licking his face. "Jesus!"

Both girls looked over, and the younger one said, "Look. A man"s there," in a sharp Southern accent.

The blonde"s accent seemed more lazy. "Hey, mister. That"s just our dog. Don"t worry, he don"t bite."

"He"s a good dog!"

Collier had to palm the dog back. He wasn"t sure, but in the animal"s enthusiasm, he thought it might be humping his leg.

"Leave the man alone!" one of them squalled.

The mutt broke off, running excited circles in the clearing. But Collier knew at once: That"s the dog I...think...I saw in my room.

"What are you doin" there, mister?" the dark-haired one squawked. She had smudges of dirt on her dress, and there was something about the way she stood and the way she looked at him that seemed hyperactive.

"I, uh, oh, I was just taking a nap."

"Too much whiskey, huh, mister?" supposed the older one. She kept her back to him, and was leaning over as if looking into the creek.

"An alkie!" the younger girl half shrieked. "A rummy, like Mother says! Says there"s lots of "em."

Collier"s head thunked. "No, no, I"m staying at the inn." Then he lied. "It"s nothing like that. I was just taking a nap in the woods, because it"s nice out."

"Rummy! Rummy!" The little girl danced in the water, while the mongrel joined her.

Precocious little s.h.i.t, Collier thought.

"Shut up, Cricket. Don"t be disrespectful..."

scritch-scritch-scritch Collier felt he had to prove something now. Very carefully he stood up, and noticed that he"d slept off some of the drunk. Some but not all. Careful. He walked over. "What are you girls doing over here? I hear this noise."

The dirty blonde looked up, smiled with a doughy face that seemed to droop. Her eyes looked dull in spite of the big, proud smile. "I"m shavin" my legs, "cos I"m a young lady now, and I gotta do ladylike things."

"That"s what our mother says," the younger one seemed to regret. "I can"t wait till I"m a young lady, too, so I can shave my legs."

Collier almost winced at the sight. A cup of shaving lather sat beside the blonde, and indeed, she was shaving her legs in the creek, with an old-fashioned straight razor.

scritch-scritch-scritch Then she splashed the lather off with creek water.

"Oh, wow, you should be careful," Collier warned. "You ought to do that at home. If you cut yourself, you could get all kind of germs from that water."

Both girls traded bewildered glances. Now the blonde splashed off some more, shot her gleaming legs up. She wriggled her feet in the air, and seemed pleased with the effect. "There," she drawled. "All smooth now, just like a real lady." The doughy face beamed back up. "My name"s Mary, and this here"s my sister, Cricket. I"m fourteen, she"s eleven."

"Hi," Collier said, and tasted a waft of old beer.

The younger girl jumped out of the water and poked him with a finger. "What"s your name, mister?"

"Justin."

A toothy grin turned Cricket"s face into a lined mask. "You ain"t one"a them fellas who messes with little girls, are ya? Ya don"t look like it."

Out of here! Collier thought. Kids these days-they see all this molestation stuff on Oprah. "No, no, but you girls have a good day, I have to go."

"Aw, Cricket! What"cha say that for? Now you got him scared. Don"t go, mister. She"s just teasin"."

"No, I"ve got to-" He winced again. "Please, Mary, be careful with that razor-"

Now she was doing her underarms, rather obliviously. Scritch-scritch-scritch. She shaved the lather out of one armpit, then flipped it off the blade into the water. Collier noticed a thread-thin line of red.

"See, you"ve cut yourself-"

"Aw, it"s just a nick, but I can"t do it right with this hand." She held up her index finger.

First glance made Collier think she was wearing a fat dark ring but then he realized it was a bruise.

"I got one, too, but not as bad." Cricket showed her own finger. "I stole a piece of sugarloaf from the store and got caught." A manic giggle. "But that ain"t as bad as what Mary got caught doin"-"

"Shut up!"

The gritted-teeth mask again. "She got five minutes "cos she got caught kissin" a boy at school!"

Mary laid a hard hand across the back of her sister"s thigh. The sound cracked through the woods.

"Ow!"

"Serves ya right. Mister, don"t listen to her."

Collier"s mind churned over too much at once. Who were these girls? Were they staying at the inn? Collier doubted it. Probably a trailer park nearby. Then: Those bruises, he pondered. He couldn"t forget Mrs. Butler"s painful demonstration of the "Naughty Girl Clips" in the display case...

scritch-scritch-scritch "Oh, please, you really shouldn"t do that..."

Now the blonde was shaving the other armpit.

"Do mine next, do mine next!" Cricket insisted.

"There ain"t nothin" to shave!" Mary almost wailed. "You ain"t got no hair yet!" Another gleeful smile shot back to Collier. "She"s jealous, mister, "cos I got hair and she don"t. I got the blood, too."

Collier"s throat thickened. "The...blood?"

"The Curse of Eve, like our mother told us "bout. Eve did somethin" bad in the Garden of Eden, so now all girls get the curse. But the curse gives us hair. Ain"t that right, mister?"

Collier stood speechless. He cleared his throat and asked, "Are you, uh, are you girls from town?"

"Oh, yeah. We was born here."

"Where are your parents?"

Cricket wriggled her toes in creek mud. "Our father"s away workin" and our mother"s at home. Where you from, mister?"

"California-"

Both girls traded another glance that seemed in awe.

"-but I"m just visiting here. I"m staying at Mrs. Butler"s inn."

Mary splashed off her other armpit. It occurred to Collier just then that, for sisters, the girls couldn"t have looked more different.

"We don"t know no Mrs. Butler."

Must be from a nearby town, and wandered over here. But...had it really been that dog he"d seen last night? No. It was just a dream. Just a hallucination...

Yet it wasn"t too far-fetched to think that the dog may have gotten inside. Mrs. Butler had even suggested the possibility.

"Oh, yeah," Mary informed. "There"s a man at the cooper"s named Butler, but he ain"t got no wife."

Cricket piped in, "One time he was all drunk and he offered us half a dollar to show him our-"

"Cricket! Be quiet!"

Collier"s contemplations stretched like taffy.