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for me to say something, sitting there smiling at me, her hands caressing the arms of the chair.
    “You’re slipping,” I said. “I’m going to eat something and go to bed.”
    “Joe!”
    I turned in the doorway. She was standing. It looked like she had started to follow me.
    “Well, what?” I said.
    “Nothing, Joe. I guess—nothing.”
    I went on into the kitchen.
    I fixed a sandwich and a cup of coffee. When I’d got away with about half of it the lights blinked, went dim, and came on full again.
    It didn’t register on me for a second. Then it was as if something was holding me back when I tried to move.
    It seemed like I was about to see something; I mean I could almost see what it was. And it scared me so badly my stomach rolled and my scalp crawled. I came alive and stumbled to the door. I half fell down the back steps and ran for the garage. I raced up the outside stairs and threw myself against the door.
    The room was lined with sheet metal. Floors, ceiling, walls. The projectors and sound tables I’d got from Bower were stashed in a corner. In the center of the room was the metal film table, with a reel at each end and a quarter-horse motor at one.
    There was a metal stool in front of the table, and Elizabeth was seated on it, bent over. Her face wasn’t six inches from the film that was traveling in front of her.
    Two full reels were lying on the table next to the motor. They were partly unwound, and their ends dangled down into the open film can. There were seven more reels in it. It was a full-length feature, seven in the can, two on the table, and one in the rewind. A can with a two-reel travelogue and one with a one-reel cartoon were under the table. Close to Elizabeth’s feet. They were standing open, too.
    The film was wet. As it passed through the reel it sent a fine spray over the motor. The spray formed a trickle that ran down the pear-shaped back of the motor.
    The cord sparked.
    The trickle of water seemed to catch fire.
    There was a flash as if someone had tossed a barrel of yellow paint into the room.
    I struck out with my hand, and something seemed to grab it and push my arm back into my shoulder. A streak of lightning shot across the table. There were a couple of pinwheels of fire at each end. Then, a loud pop and darkness; and the sound of the broken film whipping against the table.
    And Elizabeth crying.
    I found the cord and jerked it loose. I fumbled along the wall until I found the circuit breaker, and the lights came on again.
    I turned them off and opened the door. I picked up Elizabeth and carried her back to the house and into the kitchen. I put my foot up on a chair, and pulled her over my knee, and whaled the tar out of her.
    She stopped crying and laughing, and really began to cry.
    Some way she got turned around and put her arms around my neck.

8
    Y ou wouldn’t think we’d have been hungry, but we were. We ate some sandwiches and coffee; and afterward she made me go upstairs to the bathroom with her to get my hand fixed up.
    It wasn’t a bad burn; it just looked bad. But she insisted on doping it all up, so I let her.
    “What’d you want to do a crazy thing like that for?” I asked. I’d asked her about umpteen times already.
    “You know why,” she said.
    “No, I don’t, either.”
    “Well, you do,” she said. Like a little girl. And she did look like one then. Her skin was always so clear you could almost see through it, and now it was rosy and flushed.
    She acted like she was afraid to look at me; bashful, you know. She’d duck her head and look the other way. Her hair was like silk as she bent over my hand. Black silk, with a finger-wide streak of white through the center.
    “You’re awfully pretty,” I said, all of a sudden.
    “I’ll bet I’m black and blue.”
    “Let’s see if you are.”
    “Now, Joe—don’t—”
    But she didn’t pull away.
    I put a kiss on my hand and patted her.
    “Feel better now?”
    “Uh-huh. And now you’re going to