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  SHE GOT BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND, the caption read, and below that: Fellow Castle Rocker Scott Carey helps Deirdre Mc Comb to her feet after she took a spill on the wet road just short of the finish line.

  The second photo was captioned VICTORY HUG, and named the three people in the picture: Deirdre McComb, Melissa Donaldson, and Scott Carey. Deirdre and Missy were embracing. Although Scott hadn’t actually touched them, only raised his arms and curled them around the women in an instinctive gesture to catch them if they fell, he looked like he was joining the hug.

  The body of the story named the restaurant Deirdre McComb ran with “her partner,” and quoted a review that had run in the paper back in August, calling the food “veggie cuisine with Tex-Mex flair that has to be experienced; this is a trip worth making.”

  Bill D. Cat had taken his usual position when Scott was at his desktop, perched on an endtable and watching his pet human with inscrutable green eyes.

  “Tell you what, Bill,” Scott said. “If that doesn’t bring in customers, nothing will.”

  He went into the bathroom and stepped on the scale. Its news didn’t surprise him. He was down to 137. It might have been the day’s exertions, but he didn’t actually believe that. What he believed was that by booting his metabolism into a higher gear (and overdrive at the end), he had sped the process up even more.

  It was starting to look like Zero Day might come weeks earlier than he had anticipated.

  * * *

  Myra Ellis did come to dinner with her husband. She was timid at first—almost skittish—and so was Missy Donaldson, but a glass of Pinot (which Scott served with cheese, crackers, and olives) loosened both ladies up. And then, a miracle—they discovered they were both mycologically inclined, and spent most of the meal talking about edible mushrooms.

  “You know so much about them!” Myra exclaimed. “May I ask if you went to culinary school?”

  “I did. After I met DeeDee, but long before we were married. I went to ICE. That’s—”

  “The Institute of Culinary Education in New York!” Myra exclaimed. A few crumbs tumbled onto her frilly silk blouse. She didn’t notice. “It’s famous! Oh my God, I’m so jealous!”

  Deirdre was looking at them and smiling. Doctor Bob was, too. So that was good.

  Scott had spent the morning at the local Hannaford’s, with Nora’s left-behind copy of The Joy of Cooking propped open in the child seat of his grocery cart. He asked many questions, and research paid off, as it usually did. He served vegetarian lasagna Florentine with garlic toast points. He was gratified—but not surprised—to see Deirdre put away not one or two but three big slices. She was still in post-run mode, and stuffing carbs.

  “For dessert it’s only store-bought pound cake,” he said, “but the chocolate whipped cream I made myself.”

  “I haven’t had that since I was a kid,” Doctor Bob said. “My mom made it for special occasions. We kids called it choco-cream. Bring it on, Scott.”

  “Plus Chianti,” Scott said.

  Deirdre applauded. She was flushed, her eyes sparkling, a woman with every part of her body clearly operating in top form. “Bring that on, too!”

  It was a fine meal, and the first time he’d pulled out all the stops in the kitchen since Nora had decamped. As he watched them eat and listened to them talk, he realized how empty this house had been with just him and Bill to ramble around in it.

  The five of them demolished the pound cake. As Scott began to collect the plates, both Myra and Missy rose. “Let us do that,” Myra said. “You cooked.”

  “Not at all, ma’am,” Scott said. “I’m just going to put everything on the counter and load up the dishwasher later on.”

  He took the dessert plates into the kitchen and stacked them on the counter. He turned and Deirdre was standing there, smiling.

  “If you ever want a job, Missy’s looking for a sous chef.”

  “I don’t think I could keep up with her,” Scott said, “but I’ll keep it in mind. How was business over the weekend? Must have been good if Missy’s looking for help.”

  “Sold out,” she said. “Every table. People from away, but also people from the Rock that I’ve never seen before, at least not in our place. And we’re booked solid for the next nine or ten days. This is like opening all over again, when people come to see what you’ve got. If what you’ve got isn’t tasty, or even just so-so, most don’t try again. But what Missy makes is a lot more than so-so. They will come back.”

  “Winning the race made a difference, huh?”

  “The pictures were what made the difference. And without you, the pictures would have just been a dyke winning a footrace, big deal.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “I don’t think so. Brace yourself, big boy, I’m coming in for a hug.”

  She stepped forward. Scott stepped back, holding his hands out, palms forward. Her face clouded.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to hug you. We both deserve it. But it might not be safe.”

  Missy was standing in the kitchen doorway with wineglasses held between her fingers by the stems. “What is it, Scott? Is something wrong with you?”

  He grinned. “You might say.”

  Doctor Bob joined the women. “Are you going to tell them?”

  “Yes,” Scott said. “In the living room.”

  * * *

  He told them everything. The relief was enormous. Myra only looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t quite taken it in, but Missy was disbelieving.

  “It’s not possible. People’s bodies change when they lose weight, that’s just a fact.”

  Scott hesitated, then went to where she was sitting next to Deirdre on the couch. “Give me your hand. Just for a second.”

  She held it out with no hesitation. Total trust. This much can’t hurt, he told himself, and hoped it was true. He had pulled Deirdre to her feet when she’d fallen, after all, and she was all right.

  He took Missy’s hand and pulled. She flew up from the couch, her hair streaming out behind her and her eyes wide. He caught her to keep her from crashing into him, lifted her, set her down, and stepped back. Her knees flexed when his hands left her and weight came back into her body. Then she stood, staring at him in amazement.

  “You . . . I . . . Jesus!”

  “What was it like?” Doctor Bob asked. He was sitting forward in his chair, eyes bright. “Tell me!”

  “It was . . . well . . . I don’t think I can.”

  “Try,” he urged.

  “It was a little like being on a rollercoaster when it goes over the top of the first steep hill and starts down. My stomach went up . . .” She laughed shakily, still staring at Scott. “Everything went up!”

  “I tried it with Bill,” Scott said, and nodded to where his cat was currently stretched out on the brick hearth. “He freaked out. Laddered scratches up my arm in his hurry to jump down, and Bill never scratches.”

  “Anything you take hold of has no weight?” Deirdre said. “Is that really true?”

  Scott thought about this. He had thought about it often, and sometimes it seemed to him that what was happening to him wasn’t a phenomenon but something like a germ, or a virus.

  “Living things have no weight. To them, at least, but—”

  “They have weight to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “But other things? Inanimate objects?”

  “Once I pick them up . . . or wear them . . . no. No weight.” He shrugged.

  “How can that be?” Myra asked. “How can that possibly be?” She looked at her husband. “Do you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “How did it start?” Deirdre asked. “What caused it?”

  “No idea. I don’t even know when it started, because I wasn’t in the habit of weighing myself until the process was already under way.”

  “In the kitchen you said it wasn’t safe.”


  “I said it might not be. I don’t know for sure, but that sort of sudden weightlessness might screw up your heart . . . your blood-pressure . . . your brain function . . . who knows?”

  “Astronauts are weightless,” Missy objected. “Or almost. I guess those circling the earth must still be subject to at least some gravitational pull. And the ones who walked on the moon, as well.”

  “It isn’t just that, is it?” Deirdre said. “You’re afraid it might be contagious.”

  Scott nodded. “The idea has crossed my mind.”

  There was a moment of silence, while all of them tried to digest the indigestible. Then Missy said, “You have to go to a clinic! You have to be examined! Let the doctors who . . . who know about this sort of thing . . .”

  She trailed off, recognizing the obvious: there were no doctors who knew about this sort of thing.

  “They might be able to find a way to reverse it,” she said eventually. She turned to Ellis. “You’re a doctor. Tell him!”

  “I have,” Doctor Bob said. “Many times. Scott refuses. At first I thought that was wrong of him—wrongheaded—but I’ve changed my mind. I doubt very much if this is something that can be scientifically investigated. It may stop on its own . . . even reverse itself . . . but I don’t think the best doctors in the world could understand it, let alone affect it in any way, positive or negative.”

  “And I have no desire to spend the remainder of my weight-loss program in a hospital room or a government facility, being examined,” Scott said.

  “Or as a public curiosity, I suppose,” Deirdre said. “I get that. Perfectly.”

  Scott nodded. “So you’ll understand when I ask you to promise that what’s been said in this room has to stay in this room.”

  “But what will happen to you?” Missy burst out. “What will happen to you when you have no weight left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How will you live? You can’t just . . . just . . .” She looked around wildly, as if hoping for someone to finish her thought. No one did. “You can’t just float along the ceiling!”

  Scott, who had already thought of a life like that, only shrugged again.

  Myra Ellis leaned forward, her hands so tightly clasped the knuckles were white. “Are you very frightened? I suppose you must be.”

  “That’s the thing,” Scott said. “I’m not. I was at the very beginning, but now . . . I don’t know . . . it seems sort of okay.”

  There were tears in Deirdre’s eyes, but she smiled. “I think I get that, too,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe you do.”

  * * *

  He thought that if any of them found it impossible to keep his secret, it would be Myra Ellis, with her church groups and committees. But she did keep it. All of them did. They became a kind of cabal, getting together once a week at Holy Frijole, where Deirdre always kept a table reserved for them, with a little placard on it that said Dr. Ellis Party. The place was always full, or nearly, and Deirdre said that after the new year, if things didn’t slow down, they would have to open earlier and institute a second sitting. Missy had indeed hired a sous chef to help her in the kitchen, and on Scott’s advice, she hired someone local—Milly Jacobs’s oldest daughter.

  “She’s a little slow,” Missy said, “but she’s willing to learn, and by the time the summer people come back, she’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  Then she blushed and looked down at her hands, realizing Scott might not be around when the summer people came back.

  On December 10th, Deirdre McComb lit the big Christmas tree in the Castle Rock town square. Almost a thousand people turned out for the evening ceremony, which included the high school chorus singing seasonal songs. Mayor Coughlin, dressed as Santa Claus, arrived by helicopter.

  There was applause when Deirdre mounted the podium, and a roar of approval when she proclaimed the thirty-foot spruce as “the best Christmas tree in the best town in New England.”

  The lights came on, the neon angel at the top twirled and curtseyed, and the crowd sang along with the high schoolers: Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches. Scott was amused to see Trevor Yount singing and applauding along with everyone else.

  On that day, Scott Carey weighed 114 pounds.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Incredible Lightness of Being

  There were limits to what Scott had come to think of as “the weightless effect.” His clothes did not float up from his body. Chairs did not levitate when he sat in them, although if he carried one into the bathroom and stood on the scale with it, its weight didn’t register. If there were rules to what was going on, he didn’t understand them, or care to. His outlook remained optimistic, and he slept through the night. Those were the things he cared about.

  He called Mike Badalamente on New Year’s Day, passed on the appropriate good wishes, and then said he was thinking about making a trip to California in a few weeks, to see his only surviving aunt. If he made the trip, would Mike take his cat?

  “Well, I don’t know,” Mike said. “Maybe. Does he do his business in a litter box?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I believe every bookstore should have a resident cat, which you are currently lacking.”

  “How long are you planning to be gone?”

  “Don’t know. It sort of depends on how Aunt Harriet is doing.” There was no Aunt Harriet, of course, and he would have to have Doctor Bob or Myra take the cat to Mike’s. Deirdre and Missy both smelled of dog, and Scott could no longer even stroke his old friend; Bill ran away if he came too near.

  “What does he eat?”

  “Friskies,” Scott said. “And a good supply will come with the animal. If I decide to go, that is.”

  “Okay, you got a deal.”

  “Thanks, Mike. You’re a pal.”

  “I am, but not just because of that. You did this town a small but valuable mitzvah when you helped the McComb woman get up so she could finish the race. What was happening with her and her wife was ugly. It’s better now.”

  “A little better.”

  “Actually quite a lot.”

  “Well, thanks. And Happy New Year again.”

  “Back atcha, buddy. What’s the feline’s name?”

  “Bill. Bill D. Cat, actually.”

  “Like in Bloom County. Cool.”

  “Pick him up and give him a stroke once in awhile. If I decide to go, that is. He likes that.”

  Scott hung up, thought about what giving things away meant—especially things that were also valued friends—and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Doctor Bob called a few days later, and asked Scott if his weight-loss was remaining constant at one and a half to two pounds a day. Scott said it was, knowing the lie couldn’t come back to haunt him; he looked the same as ever, right down to the bulge of belly hanging over his belt.

  “So . . . you still think you’ll be down to nothing in early March?”

  “Yes.”

  Scott now thought Zero Day might come before January was out, but he didn’t know for sure, couldn’t even make an educated guess, because he had stopped weighing himself. Not so long ago he had avoided the bathroom scale because it showed too many pounds; now he stayed away for the opposite reason. The irony was not lost on him.

  For the time being Bob and Myra Ellis were not to know how things had speeded up, nor were Missy and Deirdre. He would have to tell them eventually, because when the end came, he would need help from one of them. And he knew which one.

  “What do you weigh now?” Doctor Bob asked.

  “106,” Scott said.

  “Holy shit!”

  He guessed Ellis would say a lot more than holy shit if he knew what Scott knew: it was more like seventy. He could cross his big living room in four loping strides, or jump, catch one of the overhead beams, and swing from it like Tarzan. He hadn’t reached what his weight would be on the moon, but he w
as closing in on it.

  Doctor Bob was silent for a moment, then said, “Have you considered that the cause of what’s happening to you might be alive?”

  “Sure,” Scott said. “Maybe an exotic bacteria that got into a cut, or some extremely rare virus that I inhaled.”

  “Has it crossed your mind that it might be sentient?”

  It was Scott’s turn to be silent. At last he said, “Yes.”

  “You’re dealing with this extremely well, I must say.”

  “So far, so good,” Scott said, but three days later he discovered just how much he might have to deal with before the end came. You thought you knew, you thought you could get ready . . . and then you tried to get the mail.

  * * *

  Western Maine had been experiencing a January thaw since New Year’s Day, with temperatures in the fifties. Two days after Doctor Bob’s call, it climbed all the way into the sixties, and the kids went back to school wearing their light jackets. That night, however, temperatures dropped and a sleety, granular snow began falling.

  Scott barely noticed. He spent the evening on his computer, ordering stuff. He could have gotten all the items locally—the wheelchair and chest harness from the ostomy department of the CVS where he’d bought his Halloween candy, the ramp and clamps from Purdy’s Hardware—but local people had a tendency to talk. And ask questions. He didn’t want that.

  The snow ended around midnight, and the following day dawned clear and cold. The new snow, frozen to a crust on top, was almost too brilliant to look at. It was as if his lawn and driveway had been sprayed with transparent plastic. Scott put on his parka and went out to get the mail. He had gotten in the habit of skipping the steps and just leaping down to the driveway. His legs, wildly overmuscled for his weight, seemed to crave that explosion of energy.

  He did it now, and when his feet hit the icy crust, they shot out from under him. He landed on his ass, started to laugh, then stopped when he began to slide. He went down the slope of the lawn on his back, like a weight along the sawdusty surface of an arcade bowling game, gaining speed as he approached the street. He grabbed at a bush, but it was coated with ice and his hand slid off. He rolled over on his stomach and spread his legs, thinking that might slow him down. It didn’t. He only slued sideways.