By the light of the moon

the kid's head
up.
    The moment their eyes met, Shep closed his.
    'You okay?' Dylan asked.
    'Read and ride.'
    'I love you, Shep.'
    'Read and ride.'
    A pinch of color had returned to the kid's wintry cheeks. The
lines of anxiety in his face slowly smoothed away as crow tracks
might be erased from a mantle of snow by a persistent breeze.
    Although Shep's outer tranquility became complete, his inner
weather remained troubled. Shuttered, his eyes twitched behind his
pale lids, jumping from sight to sight in a world that only he
could see.
    'Read and ride,' Shep repeated, as if those three words were a
calming mantra.
    Dylan regarded the bank of toilet stalls. The door of the fourth
stood open, as he had left it after he'd checked on the nature of
the partitions. The doors of the two middle stalls were ajar, and
that of the first remained tightly closed.
    'Read and ride,' said Shep.
    'Read and ride,' Dylan assured him. 'I'll get your book.'
    Leaving his brother beside the towel dispenser, Dylan retrieved Great Expectations from the shelf above the sinks.
    Shep stood where he'd been left, head still raised even though
Dylan's supporting hand had been removed. Eyes closed, but
busy.
    Carrying the book, Dylan went to the first stall. He tried the
door. It wouldn't open.
    'Here, there,' Shep whispered. Standing with his eyes closed,
arms slack at his sides, and hands open with both palms facing
front, Shepherd had an otherworldly quality, as though he were a
medium in a trance, bisected by the membrane between this world and
the next. If he had risen off the floor, his levitation would have
conformed to his appearance so completely that you would not have
been much surprised to see him floating in the air. Although Shep's
voice remained recognizably his own, he almost seemed to speak for
a séance-summoned entity from Beyond: 'Here,
there.'
    Dylan knew that no one could be in the first stall. Nevertheless
he dropped to one knee and peered under the door to confirm what he
understood to be a certainty.
    'Here, there.'
    He got up and tried the door again. Not just stuck. Locked. From
the inside, of course.
    A faulty latch, perhaps. Loose, the drop bar might have fallen
into the latch channel when no one had been in the stall.
    Maybe Shepherd had approached this first compartment, as
Dylan had seen him do, but had found it inaccessible, and had at
once moved to the fourth without Dylan noticing.
    'Here, there.'
    The chill found bone first, not skin, and radiated through Dylan
from the core of every limb. Fear iced his marrow, although not
fear alone; this was also a chill of not entirely unpleasant
expectation and of awe inspired by some mysterious looming event
that he sensed much in the manner that a storm petrel, winging
under curdled black clouds, senses the glorious tempest before
being alerted by either lightning or thunder.
    Strangely, he glanced at the mirror above the sink, prepared to
see a room other than the lavatory in which he stood. His
expectation of wonders outstripped the capacity of the moment to
deliver them, however, and the reflection proved to be the mundane
facts of toilet stalls and urinals. He and Shep were the only
figures occupying the reversed image, though he didn't know who or
what else he might have expected.
    With one last puzzled glance at the locked stall door, Dylan
returned to his brother and put one hand on his shoulder.
    At Dylan's touch, Shepherd opened his eyes, lowered his head,
let his shoulders slump forward, and in general reassumed the
humble posture in which he shuffled through life.
    'Read and ride,' Shep said, and Dylan said, 'Let's roll.'

20
    Jilly waited pensively near the cashier's station, by
the front door, gazing out at the night, as radiant as a princess,
perhaps the heir of a handsome Roman emperor who had ventured in
conquest south of Sidra's shores.
    Dylan nearly stopped midrestaurant to study her and to lock in
his memory every detail of the way she looked at this moment in the
dialed-down, bevel-sheared light from the cut-glass ceiling
fixtures, for he wanted to paint her eventually just as she stood
now.
    Always preferring to remain in motion in any public place, lest
a hesitation should encourage a stranger to speak to him, Shepherd
allowed no slightest pause, and Dylan was drawn after his brother
by their invisible chain.
    Bringing hand to hat brim, a departing customer graciously
tipped his Stetson to Jilly as she stepped aside to give him easier
access to the