Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection by Charles De Lint, John Jude Palencar Page A

couple of weeks. They were good weeks. Sam and I spent the evenings and weekends together. We went out a few times, twice with Jilly, once with a couple of Sam’s friends. Jilly and Sam got along just as well as I’d thought they would—and why shouldn’t they? They were both special people. I should know.
    The morning it did rain it was Sam’s day off from Gypsy’s. The previous night was the first I’d stayed over all night. The first we made love. Waking up in the morning with her warm beside me was everything I thought it would be. She was sleepy-eyed and smiling, more than willing to nestle deep under the comforter while I saw about getting some coffee together.
    When the rain started, we took our mugs into the living room and watched the street in front of the Hamill estate. A woman came by walking one of those fat white bull terriers that look like they’re more pig than dog. The terrier didn’t seem to mind the rain but the woman at the other end of the leash was less than pleased. She alternated between frowning at the clouds and tugging him along. About five minutes after the pair had rounded the corner, our ghost showed up, just winking into existence out of nowhere. Or out of a slip in time. One of Jilly’s timeskips.
    We watched him go through his routine. When he reached the streetlight and vanished again, Sam leaned her head against my shoulder. We were cozied up together in one of the big comfy chairs, feet on the windowsill.
    “We should do something for him,” she said.
    “Remember what Jilly said,” I reminded her.

    Sam nodded. “But I don’t think that he’s out to hurt anybody. It’s not like he’s calling out to us or anything. He’s just there, going through the same moves, time after time. The next time it rains ...”
    “What’re we going to do?”
    Sam shrugged. “Talk to him, maybe?”
    I didn’t see how that could cause any harm. Truth to tell, I was feeling sorry for the poor bugger myself.
    “Why not?” I said.
    About then Sam’s hands got busy and I quickly lost interest in the ghost. I started to get up, but Sam held me down in the chair. “Where are you going?” she asked.
    “Well, I thought the bed would be more .
    “We’ve never done it in a chair before.”
    “There’s a lot of places we haven’t done it yet,” I said.
    Those deep blue eyes of hers, about five inches from my own, just about swallowed me.
    “We’ve got all the time in the world,” she said.
    It’s funny how you remember things like that later.
    The next time it rained, Jilly was with us. The three of us were walking home from Your Second Home, a sleazy bar on the other side of Foxville where the band of a friend of Sam’s was playing. None of us looked quite right for the bar when we walked in. Sam was still the perennial California beach girl, all blonde and curves in a pair of tight jeans and a white T-shirt, with a faded jean-jacket overtop. Jilly and I looked like the scruffs we were.
    The bar was a place for serious drinking during the day, serving mostly unemployed blue-collar workers spending their welfare checks on a few hours of forgetfulness. By the time the band started around nine, though, the clientele underwent a drastic transforma-tion. Scattered here and there through the crowd was the odd individual who still dressed for volume—all the colors turned up loud—but mostly we were outnumbered thirty-to-one by spike-haired punks in their black leathers and blue jeans.
    It was like being on the inside of a bruise.
    The band was called the Wang Boys and ended up being pretty good—especially on their original numbers—if a bit loud. My ears were ringing when we finally left the place sometime after midnight. We were having a good time on the walk home. Jilly was in rare form, half-dancing on the street around us, singing the band’s clos-ing number, making up the words, turning the piece into a punk gospel number.
    She kept bouncing around in front of us, skipping