The Mask

script or something.”
    They sat at the small table by the kitchen window. Carol was wearing one of Grace’s robes and a pair of Grace’s slippers while her own clothes finished drying out.
    “Only one close call,” she told Grace. “The lightning. That was a gut-wrencher, all right. But I wasn’t really in any danger this morning. That poor girl was the one who nearly got killed.”
    Grace shook her head. “No. It was a close call for you, too. Didn’t you tell me you slid toward the oncoming traffic when you braked to avoid the girl? And didn’t you say the Cadillac missed you by an inch or less? Well, what if it hadn’t missed? If that Caddy had rammed your little VW, you certainly wouldn’t have walked away without a scratch.”
    Frowning, Carol said, “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
    “You’ve been so busy worrying about the girl that you haven’t had a chance to think about yourself.”
    Carol ate a bite of spice cake and washed it down with coffee. “You’re not the only one having nightmares.” She summarized her own dream: the severed heads, the houses that dissolved behind her as she passed through them, the flickering, silvery object.
    Grace clasped her hands around her coffee cup and hunched over the table. There was worry in her blue eyes. “That’s one nasty dream. What do you make of it?”
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s prophetic.”
    “Why couldn’t it be? Mine appear to have been.”
    “Yes, but—it doesn’t follow that both of us are turning into soothsayers. Besides, my dream didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was just too wild to be taken seriously. I mean, severed heads that suddenly come to life—that sort of thing isn’t really going to happen.”
    “It could be prophetic without being literally prophetic. I mean, it might be a symbolic warning.”
    “Of what?”
    “I don’t see any easy interpretation of it. But I really think you ought to be extra careful for a while. God, I know I’m starting to sound like a phony gypsy fortune-teller, like Maria Ouspenskya in all those old monster movies from the thirties, but I still don’t think you should dismiss it as just an ordinary dream. Especially not after what’s already happened.”
     
----
     
    Later, after lunch, as Grace squirted some liquid soap into the sinkful of dirty dishes, she said, “How’s the situation with the adoption agency? Does it look like they’ll give you and Paul a child soon?”
    Carol hesitated.
    Grace glanced at her. “Something wrong?”
    Taking the dish towel from the rack and unfolding it, Carol said, “No. Not really. O’Brian says we’ll be approved. It’s a sure thing, he says.”
    “But you’re still worried about it.”
    “A little,” Carol admitted.
    “Why?”
    “I’m not sure. It’s just that… I’ve had this feeling…”
    “What feeling?”
    “That it won’t work out.”
    “Why shouldn’t it?”
    “I can’t shake the idea that somebody’s trying to stop us from adopting.”
    “Who?”
    Carol shrugged.
    “O’Brian?” Grace asked.
    “No, no. He’s on our side.”
    “Someone on the recommendations committee?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t actually have any evidence of ill will toward Paul and me. I can’t point my finger at anyone.”
    Grace washed some silverware, put it in the drainage rack, and said, “You’ve wanted to adopt for so long that you can’t believe it’s finally happening, so you’re looking for boogeymen where there aren’t any.”
    “Maybe.”
    “You’re just spooked because of the lightning yesterday and the accident this morning.”
    “Maybe.”
    “That’s understandable. It spooks me, too. But the adoption will go through as smooth as can be.”
    “I hope so,” Carol said. But she thought about the lost set of application forms, and she wondered.
     
----
     
    By the time Paul got back from the adoption agency, the rain had stopped, though the wind was still cold and damp.
    He got the ladder out of the garage and climbed onto the least slanted portion of the many-angled roof. The wet shingles squeaked under his feet as be moved cautiously across the slope toward the television antenna, which was anchored near a brick chimney.
    His legs were rubbery. He suffered from a mild case of acrophobia, a fear that had never become incapacitating because he occasionally forced himself to challenge and overcome it, as he was doing now.
    When he reached the chimney, he put a hand against it for support and looked out across the roofs of the neighboring homes. The storm-dark September sky had settled lower, lower, until it