By the light of the moon

abandoned.
    'Pee,' Shep said, growing anxious in his stall. 'Dylan, pee.
Dylan, Dylan. Pee! '
    'Pee,' Dylan replied.
    Shep's spoken pee served a purpose similar to that of a
signal broadcast by submarine sonar apparatus, and Dylan's response
was equivalent to the return ping that signified the
echolocation of another vessel, in this case a known and friendly
presence in the scary depths of the men's room.
    'Pee,' said Shep.
    'Pee,' Dylan replied. . .
    In the mirrored wall above the urinals, Dylan observed the
retiree's reaction to this verbal sonar.
    'Pee, Dylan.'
    'Pee, Shepherd.'
    Puzzled and uneasy, Mr. Muttonchops looked back and forth from
the closed stall to Dylan, to the stall, as if something not only
strange but also perverse might be unfolding here.
    'Pee.'
    'Pee.'
    When Mr. Muttonchops realized that Dylan was watching him, when
their eyes met in the mirror above the urinals, the retiree quickly
looked away. He turned off the water at the sink, without rinsing
the orange-scented lather off his hands.
    'Pee, Dylan.'
    'Pee, Shepherd.'
    Dripping frothy suds from his fingers, shedding iridescent
bubbles that floated in his wake and settled slowly to the floor,
the retiree went to a wall dispenser and cranked out a few paper
towels.
    At last came the sound of Shepherd's healthy stream.
    'Good pee,' said Shep.
    'Good pee.'
    Reluctant to pause long enough to dry his soapy hands, the man
fled the lavatory with the wad of paper towels.
    Dylan went to a different sink from the one that the retiree had
used – and then had an idea that led him to the towel
dispenser.
    'Pee, pee, pee,' Shep said happily, with great relief.
    'Pee, pee, pee,' Dylan echoed, returning with a towel to the
retiree's sink.
    Shielding his right hand with the paper towel, he touched the
faucet that the retiree had so recently shut off. Nothing. No fizz.
No crackle.
    He touched the fixture barehanded. Lots of fizz and crackle.
    Again with the paper towel. Nothing.
    Skin contact was required. Maybe not just hands. Maybe an elbow
would work. Maybe feet. All sorts of ludicrous comic possibilities
occurred to him.
    'Pee.'
    'Pee.'
    Dylan rubbed the faucet vigorously with the towel, scrubbing
away the soap and water that the retiree had left on the
handle.
    Then he touched it with his bare hand once more. The senior
citizen's psychic spoor remained as strong as it had been
previously.
    'Pee.'
    'Pee.'
    Evidently, this latent energy couldn't simply be wiped away as
fingerprints could be, but it dissipated gradually on its own, like
an evaporating solvent.
    At another sink, Dylan washed his hands. He was drying them near
the towel dispenser when Shepherd came out of the fourth stall and
went to the sink that his brother had just used.
    'Pee,' Shepherd said.
    'You can see me now.'
    'Pee,' Shep insisted as he turned on the water.
    'I'm right here.'
    'Pee.'
    Refusing to be drawn into the sonar game when they were within
sight of each other, Dylan tossed his crumpled towels in the waste
can, and waited.
    A riot of bizarre thoughts tumbled through his head, like an
immense load of colorful laundry in a laundromat-size clothes
dryer. One of those thoughts was that Shep had gone into the first
stall but had come out of the fourth.
    'Pee.'
    Dylan went to the fourth stall. The door stood ajar, and he
shouldered it open.
    Partitions separated the stalls, with twelve or fourteen inches
of air space at the bottom. Shepherd could have dropped flat on the
floor and wriggled from stall one to number four, under intervening
partitions. Possible but highly unlikely.
    'Pee,' Shep repeated, but with less enthusiasm, reluctantly
coming to the conclusion that his brother would not participate any
longer.
    As fastidious about personal cleanliness as he was about the
geometrical presentation of his meals, Shep had a post-toilet
routine from which he never deviated: vigorously scrub the hands
once, rinse them thoroughly, then scrub and rinse again. Indeed, as
Dylan watched, Shep began the second scrub.
    The kid had a special concern about the sanitary conditions in
public lavatories. He regarded even the most well-maintained
restroom with paranoid suspicion, certain that all known diseases
and some not yet discovered were busily festering on every surface.
Having read the American Medical Association Encyclopedia of
Medicine , Shep could recite a list of virtually all known
diseases and infections if you were foolish enough to ask him to do
so, and if he happened to be