Chapter 33

On our way into town I voiced something I'd begun to recognize about halfway through our three-way discussion.

"You've really come to like him, haven't you, Camilla?" I asked.

She smiled at me. "Yes, I have. At first he was a little scary, then just a little different, and now he's just ... well, him. And he's nice, really very sweet. He did that for you about your voice just to do something for you, he was very helpful and sympathetic when I talked to him about, well, a little about you—"

"Is that the part I missed?"

"Yes, kind of. I wanted to know how you felt, it'd been a long time for me and I was a little uncertain. I didn't actually come out and ask him, but he sensed it when he was in my mind and he told me you were the same way. I think he thought it was funny, both of us wanting the same thing but being so timid about making the first move. That's what gave me the courage to barge in on you like that, and even so my heart was in my mouth. So anyhow, all that's why."

"Damned good reasons, if you ask me."

She looked over at me anxiously. "I think so, too, but are they really my reasons? Or am I just coming up with rationalizations to explain something that he's put in my mind?"

I was shaking my head even before she'd finished. "Two-way street, remember?" I said. "He's in your head, when he is, but you're in his at the same time. It doesn't go real deep, you have to be thinking about something right on top for him to get it and the same for him, but it pretty much forecloses any idea of manipulation. If he was doing it he'd have to be thinking actively about it and you'd pick it up. He's pretty good at fooling the eyes and the ears, but not your thoughts."

"Are you sure?"

"I can't get much surer," I told her confidently. "He had to kind of trick me into doing that surgery, remember? He was desperate, for God's sake he was bloody dying, if he could have forced me don't you think he would? You weren't there when I came down the next morning and found him." Even the recollection made me shudder. "All I could think was I'd been sleepwalking and killed this poor little cat in a horrible way, and for a minute I thought I was some kind of subconscious monster. If he was controlling me none of that would have been there."

Her face cleared. "OK, then. I like him, and it's me liking him. And he helped us get together, and I like that, too. And I like liking it all." And she burst out in a song from an old Broadway musical: "'I like everybody / That I've ever met.' Well, of course I don't really, but I'm feeling pretty happy about the world right now." And she squeezed my hand hard.

Walking into stores with Camilla on my arm was quite an experience. I suppose the same thing had happened Monday when we were grocery shopping, but I'd been so overwhelmed by having her with me then that I'd paid little attention to anybody else. People, though, stared—not just men, but women too. She absolutely radiated beauty and sex appeal, and even little kids seemed to respond. Shop clerks were often tongue-tied when we asked for help; the first guy in the pet store stammered the whole time as he was showing us cat carriers, and had his eyes so glued to her that he had trouble describing what he was showing.

The thing was, she didn't really seem to notice. I guessed she simply considered it part of a normal shopping experience. Well, since she looked like that every day, perhaps for her it was. She was just natural and easy-going, bestowing smiles and thank-yous freely, as though she were some dowdy housewife cheerfully going about her chores.

I decided not to say anything about it to her. She was so natural and unselfconscious, and why upset that applecart? Hell, in time this might turn into an everyday shopping experience for me, too, so long as I was with her.

The next and last scheduled stop was the parts store. I hadn't followed my usual practice of laying out a schematic first, so I had to think the whole thing through pretty much on the fly. I'd set it up for triple-A batteries, I thought, and went to the battery display to get some fresh ones. Then I noticed some N batteries and quickly reconsidered; I'd need only one, and there'd be that much less weight for Asmedogh. I re-thought my design and picked up the rest of what I'd need.