Tick Tock

at such high speed that Tommy expected the Ford to blow a tire or roll, but they came through all right, and she put the pedal to the metal with less respect for the speed limit than she had shown, earlier, for the seatbelt law.
    Tommy half expected the mini-kin to explode out of the storm again. He didn't feel safe until they crossed Jamboree Road and began to descend toward the Newport harbour.
    Rain slashed through the missing window and snapped against the side of his head. It didn't bother him. He couldn't get any wetter than he already was.
    At the speed they were making, the hooting and gibbering of the wind was so great that neither of them made an effort to engage in conversation.
    As they crossed the bridge over the back-bay channel, a couple of miles from the parking lot where they had left the demon, the blonde finally reduced speed. The noise of the wind abated somewhat.
    She looked at Tommy in a way that no one had ever looked at him before, as though he was green, warty, with a head like a watermelon, and had just stepped out of a flying saucer.
    Well, in fact his own mother had looked at him that way when he first talked about being a detective-story writer.
    He cleared his throat nervously and said, “You're a pretty good driver.”
    Surprisingly she smiled. “You really think so?”
    “Actually, you're terrific.”
    “Thanks. You're not bad yourself.”
    “Me?”
    “That was some stunt with the Corvette.”
    “Very funny.”
    “You went airborne pretty straight and true, but you just lost control of it in flight.”
    “Sorry about your van.”
    “It comes with the territory,” she said cryptically.
    “I'll pay for the repairs.”
    “You're sweet.”
    “We should stop and get something to block this window.”
    “You don't need to go straight to a hospital?”
    “I'm okay,” he assured her. “But the rain's going to ruin your upholstery.”
    “Don't worry about it.”
    “But—”
    “It's blue,” she said.
    “What?”
    “The upholstery.”
    “Yeah, blue. So?”
    “I don't like blue.”
    “But the damage—”
    “I'm used to it.”
    “You are?”
    She said, “There's frequently damage.”
    “There is?”
    “I lead an eventful life.”
    “You do?”
    “I've learned to roll with it.”
    “You're a strange woman,” he said.
    She grinned. “Thank you.”
    He felt disoriented again. “What's your name?”
    “Deliverance,” she said.
    “Yeah?”
    “Deliverance Payne. P-a-y-n-e. It was a hard birth, and my mom has a weird sense of humour.”
    He didn't get it. And then he did. “Ah.”
    “People just call me Del.”
    “Del. That's nice.”
    “What's your name?”
    “Tuong Phan.” He startled himself. “I mean Tommy.”
    “Tuong Tommy?”
    “Tuong nothing. My name's Tommy Phan.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Most of the time.”
    “You're a strange man,” she said, as if that pleased her, as if returning a comptiment.
    “There really is a lot of water coming in this window.”
    “We'll stop soon.”
    “Where'd you learn to drive like that, Del?”
    “My mom.”
    “Some mother you have.”
    “She's a hoot. She races stock cars.”
    “Not my mother,” Tommy said.
    “And power boats. And motorcycles. It has an engine, my mom wants to race it.”
    Del braked at a red traffic light.
    They were silent for a moment.
    Rain poured down as if the sky were a dam and the breast had broken.
    Finally Del said, “So… back there… That was the doll snake rat-quick little monster thing, huh?”
     
     
     

FOUR
     
     
    As they drove, Tommy told Del about the doll on his doorstep, everything up to the moment when it had shorted out the lights in his office. She never gave the slightest indication that she found his story dubious or even, in fact, particularly astonishing. From time to time she said “uh-huh” and “hmmmm” and “okay,” and—two or three times—“yeah, that makes sense,” as if he were telling her about nothing more incredible than what she might have heard on the nightly TV news.
    Then he paused in his tale when Del stopped at a twenty-four-hour-a-day supermarket. She insisted on getting a few things to clean the van and close off the shattered window, and at her request, Tommy went shopping with her. He pushed the cart.
    So few customers prowled the enormous market that it was almost possible for Tommy to believe that he and Del were in one of those 1950's science-fiction movies, in which all but a handful of people had vanished from the face of the earth as the result of a mysterious apocalypse that had left buildings and all other works of humanity