Free Yarrow by Charles DeLint Page B

Ron.
    "That's good," Ron replied, equally serious. "I don't like snakes."
    Ron had been bumming some spare change down in the Market late that afternoon, when a woman had pressed a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, saying, "You get yourself something to eat, you poor man."
    "Yes, ma'am," he'd replied, grinning so hard he was likely to split his face. "I surely will, ma'am. Thank you very much. God bless you, ma'am. God bless you."
    With the three dollars Farley had acquired, they'd bought themselves four bottles of wine and had enough left over for two breakfast specials in the morning and a healthy start on tomorrow's alcoholic intake.
    "I especially don't like snake-headed men," Farley said as the bottle came back to him.
    "The worst," Ron agreed. "They're the fucking worst."
    Rick spent the evening at Stella's, bored out of his mind as they watched some made-for-TV movie that even the actors didn't seem to care about. About its only saving grace was the way that woman— what was her name? She was on Dallas or one of those shows— looked in a bikini. It made you want to get her out under some palm trees somewhere and hump the brains out of her.
    He sighed as they sat through the news. The National. The Prime Minister was leading Joe Clark in the Gallup Polls. Big deal. The Local. Some church burned down. Who cared? Did people even go to church anymore?
    Tonight was his big effort at "getting along"— especially important because he wasn't going to be around until late tomorrow night, and he sure didn't want Stella tagging along. Not with Bill's secretary coming. But until he had Bill's money in his hands… Yeah. Well, all that was going to save tonight was when they finally turned off the boob tube and hit the sack.
    Stella might have her faults, but she sure had all the right moves when it came down to the skin game. He might get a little on the side— hell, he might get a lot, who was counting?— but what made those affairs so sweet was knowing he could always have Stella as a sort of icing on the cake. Who said you couldn't have your cake and eat it too?
    By eleven Cat and Peter were sitting on a couch on Peter's balcony. It had cooled down somewhat over the evening and Cat was snuggled in an old sweater of Peter's, feeling drained of words again, but in a pleasant way. She didn't think she'd talked this much, especially about herself, to anyone before. They'd been enjoying a companionable silence over the past fifteen minutes, broken only by the traffic on Bank Street, a few houses away.
    "The dreams are the key," Peter said suddenly.
    Cat started at the sound of his voice. She'd been just drifting along, not really thinking of anything.
    "You believe me?" she asked.
    That in itself was hard to believe. She'd found herself telling him everything, from how she felt about cats and people when she was a teenager, to her night visits in the Otherworld; how she felt she was living a lie, that her ghosts should share as much of a byline as she did.
    "What's to believe or disbelieve?" he asked. "I just think you're luckier than most, that's all. I wish I could remember a quarter of my dreams, much less have them be one connecting narrative. You're certainly not the first artist to be inspired by dreams and visions either. Just think of William Blake. What we have to figure out is how to get you to remember them again."
    "But they don't just come to me in my dreams," Cat said.
    Peter shook his head. "Uh-uh. I can't buy that. You said yourself that it was only a feeling. You thought you felt presences. You never actually saw them. I can see where that would happen. I mean, your dreams were like having a whole other life. It stands to reason that you'd feel those people— your 'ghosts'— around you in the day. They were so much a part of you, how could they go away? Are you with me so far?"
    Cat was willing to go along with that for now, no matter what she privately believed. "Okay."
    "Well, from the little I know about