Lightning

and ice cream and chocolate-covered frozen bananas on sticks, and danced that evening to a Dixieland band in New Orleans Square.
    The park became even more magical after nightfall, and they rode the Mark Twain paddlewheel steamboat around Tom Sawyer's Island for the third time, standing at the railing on the top level, near the bow, with their arms around each other. Danny said, "You know why we like this place so much? 'Cause it's of the world yet untainted
by
the world. And that's our marriage."
    Later, over strawberry sundaes at the Carnation Pavilion, at a table beneath trees strung with white Christmas lights, Laura said, "Fifteen thousand bucks for a year's work… not exactly a fortune."
    "It isn't slave wages either." He pushed his sundae aside, leaned forward, slid her sundae aside, too, and took her hands across the table. "The money will come eventually because you're brilliant, but money isn't what I care about. What I care about is that you've got something special to share. No. That's not exactly what I mean. You don't just
have
something special, you
are
something special. In some way I understand but can't explain, I know that what you
are
, when shared, will bring as much hope and joy to people in far places as it brings to me here at your side."
    Blinking away sudden tears, she said, "I love you."
    Jericho Nights
was published ten months later, in May of 1979. Danny insisted she use her maiden name because he knew that through all the bad years in Mcllroy Home and Caswell Hall, she had endured in part because she wanted to grow up and make something of herself as a testament to her father and perhaps, as well, to the mother she had never known. The book sold few copies, was not chosen by any book clubs, and was licensed by Viking to a paperback publisher for a small advance.
    "Doesn't matter," Danny told her. "It'll come in time. It'll all come in time. Because of what you
are
."
    By then she was deep into her second novel,
Shadrach
. Working ten hours a day, six days a week, she finished it that July.
    On a Friday she sent one copy to Spencer Keene in New York and gave the original script to Danny. He was the first to read it. He left work early and began reading at one o'clock Friday afternoon in his living-room armchair, then shifted to the bedroom, slept only four hours, and by ten o'clock Saturday morning he was back in the armchair and two-thirds of the way through the script. He would not talk about it, not a word. "Not until I'm done. It wouldn't be fair to you to start analyzing and reacting until I've finished, until I've grasped your entire pattern, and it wouldn't be fair to me, either, because in discussing it you're sure to give away some plot turn or other."
    She kept peeking at him to see if he was frowning, smiling, or responding to the story in any way, and even when he was reacting she worried that it was the
wrong
reaction to whatever scene he might be reading. By ten-thirty Saturday, she couldn't bear to stay around the apartment any longer, so she drove to South Coast Plaza, browsed in bookstores, ate an early lunch though she was not hungry, drove to the Westminster Mall, window-shopped, ate a cone of frozen yogurt, drove to the Orange Mall, looked in a few shops, bought a square of fudge and ate half of it. "Shane," she told herself, "go home, or you'll be a double for Orson Welles by dinnertime."
    As she parked in the carport at the apartment complex, she saw that Danny's car was gone. When she let herself into the apartment, she called his name but got no answer.
    The script of
Shadrach
was piled on the dinette table.
    She looked for a note. There was none.
    "Oh, God," she said.
    The book was bad. It stank. It reeked. It was mule puke. Poor Danny had gone out somewhere to have a beer and find the courage to tell her that she should study plumbing while she was still young enough to get launched on a new career.
    She was going to throw up. She hurried to the bathroom, but the nausea passed. She washed her face with cold water.
    The book was mule puke.
    Okay, she would just have to live with that. She'd thought
Shadrach
was pretty good, better than
Jericho Nights
by a mile, but evidently she had been wrong. So she would write another book.
    She went to the kitchen and opened a Coors. She had taken only two swallows when Danny came home with a gift-wrapped box about the right size to hold a basketball. He put it on the dinette table beside the manuscript, looked at her