The Talisman

back into the corridor, closing the door after him. When he had gone a few paces down the hall, he twirled around in mid-step, went back, and opened the door with his own key. He pushed the door an inch in, and then trotted back towards the elevators. It was always possible that she had gone out without her key – to the shop in the lobby, to the newsstand for a magazine or a paper.
    Sure. He had not seen her pick up a newspaper since the beginning of summer. All the news she cared about came over an internal radio.
    Out for a walk, then.
    Yeah, out exercising and breathing deeply. Or jogging, maybe: maybe Lily Cavanaugh had suddenly gone in for the hundred-yard dash. She’d set up hurdles down on the beach and was in training for the next Olympics . . .
    When the elevator deposited him in the lobby he glanced into the shop, where an elderly blond woman behind a counter peered at him over the tops of her glasses. Stuffed animals, a tiny pile of thin newspapers, a display rack of flavored Chap Stick. Leaning out of pockets in a wallstand were People and Us and New Hampshire Magazine .
    ‘Sorry,’ Jack said, and turned away.
    He found himself staring at the bronze plaque beside a huge, dispirited fern . . . has begun to sicken and must soon die .
    The woman in the shop cleared her throat. Jack thought that he must have been staring at those words of Daniel Webster’s for entire minutes. ‘Yes?’ the woman said behind him.
    ‘Sorry,’ Jack repeated, and pulled himself into the center of the lobby. The hateful clerk lifted an eyebrow, then turned sideways to stare at a deserted staircase. Jack made himself approach the man.
    ‘Mister,’ he said when he stood before the desk. The clerk was pretending to try to remember the capital of North Carolina or the principal export of Peru. ‘Mister.’ The man scowled to himself: he was nearly there, he could not be disturbed.
    All of this was an act, Jack knew, and he said, ‘I wonder if you can help me.’
    The man decided to look at him after all. ‘Depends on what the help is, sonny.’
    Jack consciously decided to ignore the hidden sneer. ‘Did you see my mother go out a little while ago?’
    ‘What’s a little while?’ Now the sneer was almost visible.
    ‘Did you see her go out? That’s all I’m asking.’
    ‘Afraid she saw you and your sweetheart holding hands out there?’
    ‘God, you’re such a creep,’ Jack startled himself by saying. ‘No, I’m not afraid of that. I’m just wondering if she went out, and if you weren’t such a creep, you’d tell me.’ His face had grown hot, and he realized that his hands were bunched into fists.
    ‘Well okay, she went out,’ the clerk said, drifting away toward the bank of pigeonholes behind him. ‘But you’d better watch your tongue, boy. You better apologize to me, fancy little Master Sawyer. I got eyes, too. I know things.’
    ‘You run your mouth and I run my business,’ Jack said, dredging the phrase up from one of his father’s old records – perhaps it did not quite fit the situation, but it felt right in his mouth, and the clerk blinked satisfactorily.
    ‘Maybe she’s in the gardens, I don’t know,’ the man said gloomily but Jack was already on his way toward the door.
    The Darling of the Drive-ins and Queen of the Bs was nowhere in the wide gardens before the hotel, Jack saw immediately – and he had known that she would not be in the gardens, for he would have seen her on his way into the hotel. Besides, Lily Cavanaugh did not dawdle through gardens: that suited her as little as did setting up hurdles on the beach.
    A few cars rolled down Boardwalk Avenue. A gull screeched far overhead, and Jack’s heart tightened.
    The boy pushed his fingers through his hair and looked up and down the bright street. Maybe she had been curious about Speedy – maybe she’d wanted to check out this unusual new pal of her son’s and had wandered down to the amusement park. But Jack could not see her in Arcadia Funworld any more than he could see her lingering picturesquely in the gardens. He turned in the less familiar direction, toward the town line.
    Separated from the Alhambra’s grounds by a high thick hedge, the Arcadia Tea and Jam Shoppe stood first in a row of brightly colored shops. It and New England Drugs were the only shops in the terrace to remain open after Labor Day. Jack hesitated a moment on the cracked sidewalk. A tea shop, much less shoppe, was an unlikely situation for the