The Talisman

knows, the real Queen, and that’s why you are letting go this easily . ‘That’s right. I can believe, too. That’s what makes it right.’
    ‘Well . . . since you say you’ll go no matter what I say . . .’
    ‘I will, too.’
    ‘. . . then I guess it doesn’t matter what I say.’ She looked at him bravely. ‘It does matter, though. I know. I want you to get back here as quick as you can, sonny boy. you’re not going right away, are you?’
    ‘I have to.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Yes. I am going right away. As soon as I leave you.’
    ‘I could almost believe in this rigamarole. you’re Phil Sawyer’s son, all right. You haven’t found a girl somewhere in this place, have you . . .?’ She looked at him very sharply. ‘No. No girl. Okay. Save my life. Off with you.’ She shook her head, and he thought he saw an extra brightness in her eyes. ‘If you’re going to leave, get out of here, Jacky. Call me tomorrow.’
    ‘If I can.’ He stood up.
    ‘If you can. Of course. Forgive me.’ She looked down at nothing, and he saw that her eyes were unfocussed. Red dots burned in the middle of her cheeks.
    Jack leaned over and kissed her, but she just waved him away. The waitress stared at the two of them as if they were performing a play. Despite what his mother had just said, Jack thought that he had brought the level of her disbelief down to something like fifty per cent; which meant that she no longer knew what to believe.
    She focussed on him for a moment, and he saw that hectic brightness blazing in her eyes again. Anger: tears? ‘Take care,’ she said, and signalled the waitress.
    ‘I love you,’ Jack said.
    ‘Never get off on a line like that.’ Now she was almost smiling. ‘Get travelling, Jack. Get going before I realize how crazy this is.’
    ‘I’m gone,’ he said, and turned away and marched out of the restaurant. His head felt tight, as if the bones of his skull had just grown too large for their covering of flesh. The empty yellow sunlight attacked his eyes. Jack heard the door of the Arcadia Tea and Jam Shoppe banging shut an instant after the little bell had sounded. He blinked; ran across Boardwalk Avenue without looking for cars. When he reached the pavement on the other side, he realized that he would have to go back to their suite for some clothes. His mother had still not emerged from the tea shop by the time Jack was pulling open the hotel’s great front door.
    The desk clerk stepped backward and sullenly stared. Jack felt some sort of emotion steaming off the man, but for a second could not remember why the clerk should react so strongly to the sight of him. The conversation with his mother – actually much shorter than he had imagined it would be – seemed to have lasted for days. On the other side of the vast gulf of time he’d spent in the Tea and Jam Shoppe, he had called the clerk a creep. Should he apologize? He no longer actually remembered what had caused him to flare up at the clerk . . .
    His mother had agreed to his going – she had given him permission to take his journey, and as he walked through the crossfire of the deskman’s glare he finally understood why. He had not mentioned the Talisman, not explicitly, but even if he had – if he had spoken of the most lunatic aspect of his mission – she would have accepted that too. And if he’d said that he was going to bring back a foot-long butterfly and roast it in the oven, she’d have agreed to eat roast butterfly. It would have been an ironic, but a real, agreement. In part this showed the depth of her fear, that she would grasp at such straws.
    But she would grasp because at some level she knew that these were bricks, not straws. His mother had given him permission to go because somewhere inside her she too knew about the Territories.
    Did she ever wake up in the night with that name, Laura DeLoessian , sounding in her mind?
    Up in 407 and 408, he tossed clothes into his knapsack almost randomly: if his fingers found it in a drawer and it was not too large, in it went. Shirts, socks, a sweater, Jockey shorts. Jack tightly rolled up a pair of tan jeans and forced them in, too; then he realized that the pack had become uncomfortably heavy, and pulled out most of the shirts and socks. The sweater too came out. At the last minute he remembered his toothbrush. Then he slid the straps over his shoulders and felt the pull of the weight on his back – not too heavy. He could walk all day, carrying only