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Show Acting Alone Page 297 Congress. She assumed that he loved old books: the old Poes at the convent, for example, which he so loved to stare at. One nice, interesting, bookish postcard per day would remind him that there were people on this earth who like quiet things, literature and museums, and that not everybody was out to smash his face in. A postcard per day signed, love, Polly, would remind him of this day, and how he'd started off almost psychotic and had ended sane, due to a period of relative quietude, or whatever mysterious thing had taken place during this bus trip to lower him down so gently that he gradually was able to behave like a human being. Polly didn't dare flatter herself, just yet, by assuming that her own soothing voice had helped much; but still she took it upon herself now to keep in touch with Dr. Edwine, to help keep this great orange hot air balloon tethered to terra firma. It was the least she could do for the man who'd helped launch her on her maidern flight. Yes, he was really unclenching now, like a giant fist. He actually sighed, raised his arms, and stretched himself backwards over his seat to yawn, to reach his long fingers for the airvents in the ceiling console above their seats, popping open a few of his shirt buttons - Lord Jesus. Polly saw surgical stitches dotted across his torso, many of them pulled completely free of the yellow, not-completely-healed incision. "You should be in a hospital," said Polly, without thinking. "Doctors are cannibals," he croaked, rebuttoning his shirt and spontaneously clenching back up again. Total finality. And a hint that he might tell her to go to hell, or worse, were she to pursue the matter further. |