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mysteriously, the sleepers slept.
    Sandy could be thankful only that Bart and Bernie had miscalculated the amount of whatever they'd put into the cake so that it hadn't been lethal. And he knew he'd never forgive himself for putting the rest of the cake down the disposal. Without it as evidence, no one would believe what he knew to be true.
     
    The days unfolded into a new routine of meals, patient care, and walks—for exercise and tension relief, rather than for pleasure—through the grounds of Eclipse. Sunnie was a perfect nurse, caring and tender, and she lived up to her name in disposition. The odd little household accommodated the altered style of their lives, but Sandy, and Bentley, too, missed more than they could say the old life of shared work and play and enlightenment.
    Knowing Sunnie was an unexpected adventure for Sandy. She represented the outside world for him, a world which, though he knew it existed, had seemed so distant and imaginary as to be irrelevant. Suddenly it was here, in his own home.
    "You know, Sandy," Sunnie said one day as they walked through the gardens scattering crumbs for the chickens, "I can see why you never wanted to leave here."
    "I never thought about it," he said honestly. "Leaving here simply never occurred to me."
    "Well, if it ever does, I'd suggest ignoring it. You have no idea how restorative it is for me to be here. The bustle of the city, the hassles of living there ... why, it's a jungle. I've worked hard from the time I was a little girl, and this is the first vacation I've ever had. Oh, I realize it's not a
real
vacation. I mean, I know I'm working, but it's so nice and easy here. My mother wasn't very well and I never knew my father, so I had to take care of a lot of things. My mother was an actress, but she had to leave the only good role she ever got when she found I was on the way. My father was a street juggler who went to Florida in the winters. Because of the weather, you know. He left just before I was born, and he didn't come back when he'd said he would. In fact, he never came back. For years my mother spent her days walking around the streets looking for him, hoping he'd returned without telling her, the way a charming but irresponsible rogue, which he was, would do. That's probably what broke down her health, so much walking around in all kinds of weather. Then when her health got too poor for her to walk, she sat at home looking out the window of our apartment, still watching for him." Sunnie lowered her voice. "She used to drink a little more than was really good for her.
    "Even when I was small I earned a little money running errands for some of the other people in the apartment house. I'd go to the market for them or walk their dogs or buy a newspaper for them. We were always short of money. Then when I was old enough, I got real jobs after school, waitressing and working in the dime store and things like that. But my mother was getting sicker and sicker, and I spent a lot of time taking care of her. That's when I decided to be a nurse. I really liked taking care of her. But she died anyway. I mean, I don't think the way I took care of her had anything to do with it," she said hastily. "I think she would have died no matter who was taking care of her. But the oddest thing was, right after she died, I got a telegram from a lawyer in Florida telling me my father had just died and left me and my mother some money. He'd stayed in Florida all that time, and had a little nightclub. I was really mad at him. But then I found out from the lawyer how my father had always felt guilty about leaving me and my mother but he just wasn't cut out to be a family man. Then I wasn't quite so mad. I mean, it was an awful thing to do to us, but it bothered him for the rest of his life, so he wasn't as hard-hearted as I thought. Nobody's simple, I guess. So anyway, I took the money he left me. It was just enough to support me so I didn't have to work at anything except school, and