By the light of the moon

disagreed, and this time he didn't ease up on
the accelerator. 'If you were hit by that mirage because of the
stuff in the injection, then I'll probably be hit with one,
too.'
    'Which is another reason you shouldn't be doing over
ninety.'
    'Eighty-nine,' he corrected, and reluctantly allowed the speed
of the SUV to fall.
    'The crazy son-of-a-bitch salesman jacked the stuff into your
arm first,' Jilly said. 'So if it always causes mirages, you should
have had one before I did.'
    'For maybe the hundredth time – he wasn't a salesman. He
was some lunatic doctor, some psycho scientist or something. And
come to think of it, he said the stuff in the needle does lots of
different things to different people.'
    'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'
    'Different things? Like what?'
    'He didn't say. Just different. He also said something like...
the effect is always interesting, often astonishing, and sometimes positive.'
    She shuddered with the memory of whirling birds and flickering
votive candles. 'That mirage wasn't a positive effect. So what else
did Dr. Frankenstein say?'
    'Frankenstein?'
    'We can't keep calling him a lunatic doctor, psycho scientist,
crazy son-of-a-bitch salesman. We need a name for him until we can
find out his real name.'
    'But Frankenstein...'
    'What about it?'
    Dylan grimaced. He took one hand off the steering wheel to make
a gesture of equivocation. 'It feels so...'
    'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'
    'Feels so what?'
    'Melodramatic,' he decided.
    'Everyone's a critic,' she said impatiently. 'And why's this
word melodramatic being flung at me all the time?'
    'I never flung it before,' he objected, 'and I wasn't referring
to you personally.'
    'Not you. I didn't say it was you. But it might as well have
been you. You're a man.'
    'I don't follow that at all.'
    'Of course you don't. You're a man. With all your common sense,
you can't follow anything that isn't as perfectly linear as a line
of dominoes.'
    'Do you have issues with men?' he asked, and the
self-satisfied, back-at-you look on his face made her want to smack
him.
    'Quite as it should be, m'lord.'
    Simultaneously and with equal relief, Jilly and Dylan said, 'Twenty-eight!'
    In the backseat, all teeth tested and found secure, Shep put on
his shoes, tied them, and then settled into silence.
    The speedometer needle dropped, and gradually so did Jilly's
tension, although she figured she wouldn't again achieve a state of
serenity for another decade.
    Cruising at seventy miles an hour, though he probably would have
claimed that he was only doing sixty-eight, Dylan said, 'I'm
sorry.'
    The apology surprised Jilly. 'Sorry for what?'
    'For my tone. My attitude. Things I said. I mean, normally you
couldn't drag me into an argument.'
    'I didn't drag you into anything.'
    'No, no,' he quickly amended. 'That's not what I meant. You
didn't drag. You didn't. I'm just saying normally I don't get
angry. I hold it in. I manage it. I convert it into creative
energy. That's part of my philosophy as an artist.'
    She couldn't repress her cynicism as skillfully as he claimed to
manage his anger; she heard it in her voice, felt it twist her
features and harden them as effectively as if thick plaster had
been applied to her face to cast a life mask titled Scorn .
'Artists don't get angry, huh?'
    'We just don't have much negative energy left after all the
raping and killing.'
    She had to like him for that comeback. 'Sorry. My excrement
detector always goes off when people start talking about their
philosophy.'
    'You're right, actually. It's nothing so grand as a philosophy.
I should have said it's my modus operandi. I'm not one of those
angry young artists who turns out paintings full of rage, angst,
and bitter nihilism.'
    'What do you paint?'
    'The world as it is.'
    'Yeah? And how's the world look to you these days?'
    'Exquisite. Beautiful. Deeply, strangely layered. Mysterious.'
Word by word, as though this were an oft-repeated prayer from which
he drew the comfort that only profound faith can provide, his voice
softened both in tone and volume, and into his face came a radiant
quality, after which Jilly was no longer able to see the cartoon
bear that heretofore he had resembled. 'Full of meaning that eludes
complete understanding. Full of a truth that, if both felt and also
logically deduced, calms the roughest sea with hope. More beauty
than I have the talent or the time to capture on canvas.'
    His simple eloquence stood so at odds with the man whom he had
seemed to be