Carefully he rolled off the bed, watching her to make sure her eyelids hadn’t fluttered open, then checked the thermostat on the wall. It was set at a comfortable temperature, and he didn’t want to freeze her. The discomfort was all his. He snagged his wallet and the ice bucket and quietly left the room.
The bright sunlight in the hallway surprised him. It was midday.
He didn’t mean to read the minds of other hotel guests as he passed their rooms. Their minds reached out to his. Here was a rodeo queen trying to rest up before the parade, but worrying about her excitable horse out in the town stables. Here was an overweight man struggling into a gorilla costume that had fit perfectly last year. Here was a happy family of three road-tripping through the mountains. They’d had a big brunch, then returned to the hotel for the small child’s nap. When he woke, they would find a good spot to watch the parade.
The child’s dreams were happy, of the child himself and angels and kittens leaping from cloud to cloud, chasing a birthday cupcake that zipped along just out of their reach, but then—the child caught it! And it magically divided into just enough cupcakes for everyone. The child had learned the story of five loaves and two fishes in church. The child and the kittens and angels giggled and ate. The cupcakes were delicious, vanilla with white icing. Elijah’s mouth watered, and the pure sugar rushed through his blood. The child considered dividing the cupcake again so that everyone could have two cupcakes instead of one. He thought he could get away with it since his mom was not in this dream. Elijah agreed it was worth a try. Finally Elijah trudged on down the hall to retrieve his ice. On his way back, he paused next to this door again to share a few more seconds of a child’s fantasy.
At his own door he slipped his wallet from his back pocket, then put both arms around the ice bucket while he fumbled to draw out the room key card—and nearly dropped the bucket as a wave of emotion and desire washed over him.
Holly was dreaming of him.
Holly was dreaming of making love with him, and—
Crunch. Elijah realized he was squeezing the ice bucket with both arms. He blinked, backing away from the door.
But no, he needed to go forward, toward the door, inside the room. To Holly.
He paused again with his key card in the slot. He couldn’t really read minds. He only thought he could read minds because he was crazy. He shouldn’t burst into the room and give Holly the rudest possible awakening by touching her when she didn’t want to be touched, just because he’d thought he sensed her dream about him while he stood outside the door. That was how crazy people got accused of sexual battery and ended up in the state pen rather than the mental institution.
But if he woke her gently, and she seemed receptive, fair was fair.
He opened the door, illuminating the dark room with a wedge of light from the hallway.
A hotel notepad, a pen, a bottle of lotion, a glass of water—every object that had sat on the bedside table—circled slowly in the air above her head.
Elijah backed into the hall and slammed the door. In the craziest depths of his crazy evening that caused him to be medicated when he was fourteen, he’d never suffered a hallucination like this: objects tumbling in midair, glinting realistically in the light as if his insanity were the most carefully crafted Pixar cartoon.
He took a deep breath and collected himself, returning to the normalcy of the bright hotel hallway. He would get his Mentafixol that afternoon. The visions would go away. In the meantime, he had to quit freaking out before somebody got wise and carted him off. He steeled himself and opened the door.
Holly sat up in bed, the pad and pen and bottle of lotion and empty glass in her lap, blinking water out of her eyes.
She laughed nervously. “Was I snoring? Did you throw water on me?”
He backed against the door to close it, then gave her the sort of excuse he kept giving himself to explain away his own power. “No, you must have knocked your glass off the bedside table.” His voice sounded hollow, as if he didn’t quite believe it. In the bathroom he made them each a glass of ice water and grabbed a hand towel off the rack. He stopped at the edge of the bed and handed the towel to her. “Here.”
She wrinkled her brow at the towel and took it slowly, as if he’d offered her something apropos of nothing, like a combination wrench or a pneumatic nailer. Finally she wiped her face with it. He waited until she was dry(er), then handed her the fresh glass.
She sipped the cold water. He could feel it in his throat. He was cooler already. He eased onto the bed again and drank from his own glass, the whole thing, down to the ice. He could see himself through her eyes. She watched his throat move as he swallowed.
He slid the glass of ice across his brow. “When you first got mental adolescent dysfunction,” he said, “before you started taking Mentafixol, what were your symptoms? Did you think you had magical power?”
She nodded. Her curls bounced. “That’s one of the most common symptoms. In my case, I thought I could move stuff with my mind.”
Elijah shook the dregs of his glass into his mouth, swallowed. “Do you feel like you have this power now?”
“No. I haven’t been off Mentafixol long enough. Probably in the next few hours, though. I feel it coming on. I have this urge to nudge things, even though right now I’m still sane enough to know I can’t.”
Elijah wasn’t so sure she couldn’t. He remembered the gun in his jeans, and the way his foot had seemed to hit an invisible wall preventing him from connecting with the door of the candy store that morning.
She took a few swallows of her own ice water. “How about you? Do you feel like you can levitate things?”
“No, I feel like I can read minds.”
Her heart sped up as her suspicions bloomed. “Do you feel like that now?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read my mind?”
He laughed shortly. “Yes.”
“What am I thinking?” In her imagination she slid her arms around him and pressed her lips to his.
He said sharply, “Don’t think that unless you’re going to put your money where your . . .”
She gaped at him.
“. . . mouth is,” he finished weakly.
She was horrified that he could see into her mind. And not exactly turned off.
But of course this was all his imagination. He could feel himself blushing. “Holly, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. I haven’t gotten enough sleep.”
“Well.” Trying to gloss over it, she glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “The parade won’t start for another three hours. Lie back down, if you can dodge the wet spots.”