The Talisman

driver, already stepping on the accelerator. White Suit jumped back into the passenger seat, and the car spun its wheels and squealed diagonally across Rodeo Drive, barely missing a long white Clenet driven by a suntanned man in tennis whites. The Clenet’s horn blared.
    Jack picked himself up off the sidewalk. He felt dizzy. A bald man in a tan safari suit appeared beside him and said, ‘Who were they? Did you get their names?’
    Jack shook his head.
    ‘How do you feel? We ought to call the police.’
    ‘I want to sit down,’ Jack said, and the man backed away a step.
    ‘You want me to call the police?’ he asked, and Jack shook his head.
    ‘I can’t believe this,’ the man said. ‘Do you live around here? I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?’
    ‘I’m Jack Sawyer. My house is just down there.’
    ‘The white house,’ the man said, nodding. ‘you’re Lily Cavanaugh’s kid. I’ll walk you home, if you like.’
    ‘Where’s the other man?’ Jack asked him. ‘The black man – the one who was shouting.’
    He took an uneasy step away from the man in the safari suit. Apart from the two of them, the street was empty.
    Lester Speedy Parker had been the man running toward him. Speedy had saved his life back then, Jack realized, and ran all the harder toward the hotel.
    3
    ‘You get any breakfast?’ his mother asked him, spilling a cloud of smoke out of her mouth. She wore a scarf over her hair like a turban, and with her hair hidden that way, her face looked bony and vulnerable to Jack. A half-inch of cigarette smouldered between her second and third fingers, and when she saw him glance at it, she snubbed it out in the ashtray on her dressing table.
    ‘Ah, no, not really,’ he said, hovering in the door of her bedroom.
    ‘Give me a clear yes or no,’ she said, turning back to the mirror. ‘The ambiguity is killing me.’ Her mirror-wrist and mirror-hand, applying the makeup to Lily’s face, looked stick-thin.
    ‘No,’ he said.
    ‘Well, hang on for a second and when your mother has made herself beautiful she’ll take you downstairs and buy you whatever your heart desires.’
    ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It just seemed so depressing, being there all alone.’
    ‘I swear, what you have to be depressed about . . .’ She leaned forward and inspected her face in the mirror. ‘I don’t suppose you’d mind waiting in the living room, Jacky? I’d rather do this alone. Tribal secrets.’
    Jack wordlessly turned away and wandered back into the living room.
    When the telephone rang, he jumped about a foot.
    ‘Should I get that?’ he called out.
    ‘Thank you,’ her cool voice came back.
    Jack picked up the receiver and said hello.
    ‘Hey kid, I finally got you,’ said Uncle Morgan Sloat. ‘What in the world is going on in your momma’s head? Jesus, we could have a real situation here if somebody doesn’t start paying attention to details. Is she there? Tell her she has to talk to me – I don’t care what she says, she has to talk to me. Trust me, kiddo.’
    Jack let the phone dangle in his hand. He wanted to hang up, to get in the car with his mother and drive to another hotel in another state. He did not hang up. He called out, ‘Mom, Uncle Morgan’s on the phone. He says you have to talk to him.’
    She was silent for a moment, and he wished he could have seen her face. Finally she said, ‘I’ll take it in here, Jacky.’
    Jack already knew what he was going to have to do. His mother gently shut her bedroom door; he heard her walking back to the dressing table. She picked up the telephone in her bedroom. ‘Okay, Jacky,’ she called through the door. ‘Okay,’ he called back. Then he put the telephone back to his ear and covered the mouthpiece with his hand so that no one would hear him breathing.
    ‘Great stunt, Lily,’ Uncle Morgan said. ‘Terrific. If you were still in pictures, we could probably get a little mileage out of this. Kind of a “Why Has This Actress Disappeared?” thing. But don’t you think it’s time you started acting like a rational person again?’
    ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
    ‘You think you’re hard to find? Give me a break, Lily, I want you to get your ass back to New York. It’s time you stopped running away.’
    ‘Is that what I’m doing, Morgan?’
    ‘You don’t exactly have all the time in the world, Lily, and I don’t have enough time to waste to chase you all over New England. Hey, hold on. Your kid never hung up his