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pickup truck came around the downhill curve. It was a new red Dodge Ram, and it looked beautiful to Paul, the perfect embodiment of civilization, of order itself.
    Still sitting, Paul waved feeling a flood of relief. They'd be able to get the old man to the hospital.
    The woodcutter saw the truck and began scrambling toward it on his hands and knees. When it stopped and the driver leaned over to open the passenger-side door, the old man knelt, clutching the door, looking back fearfully at Paul. "Help me!" he said to the driver. "Please, help me!"
    The driver looked wide-eyed at Paul. Then he leaned and hauled the woodcutter into the cab. Door flapping, the truck roared backward, made a three-point turn, took off in the direction of town.
    Paul sat down with his back against his car, feet in the road, and pitched pebbles into the dust.
    Then after a while the sirens, the explanations. Reflected in the State Police cruiser's window, he caught sight of the bloodied, twitching thing that he was, and he couldn't blame the woodcutter. He labored to contain the verbal tics around the cops, but the pressure built inside him and he was too tired to fight it. Not knowing what else to do with him, they nailed him for drunk and disorderly. When he'd finally talked himself out of the lockup in Hardwick and had gotten his nose worked on at the hospital, he went home to Janet and more explanations that dragged on until morning.
    So much for finding the whiz kid within. He had gone back to haloperidol.
    Paul pulled back from the memory. The saxophone was a golden icicle, the sun was gone and the blue hour was upon the sky. He had never been able to convey to Lia how that episode had stayed with him. Ten years later, the story seemed a hell of a lot funnier than it had been at the time. He got stiffly off the boulder and started toward the house, fingers working the sax keys. "Who Do You Think You Are?" he decided, 1974, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods.
    Who indeed? In the short term, the experiment had sent him scurrying back to the security and predictability of Haloperidol Paul. He'd learned a basic truth: It was dangerous to let go too much. The memory of those two days stayed with him like a vivid nightmare. He wished he could really convey to Lia that, unlike her, he was already perpetually at risk—from within.
    But the joy of letting go had stayed with him too, just as convincing as the risk of it. Along with the exhausting tics and compulsions had come a creativity, a spontaneity that he liked. So after a few years he had begun to trim back the haloperidol dosage, give himself more room to be Tourette's Paul, or Playful Paul, whichever. Ultimately, this was one of the big factors in his separation from Janet: Her rules didn't include the asocial and unpredictable behavior that came with the condition.
    He'd also learned that his symptoms were suspended whenever he did something that satisfied his body's—his mind's?—craving for an interesting kinetic melody. One result was that he bought himself an alto saxophone, which had been a great source of pleasure and respite in the years since.
    Another positive end result was the permanent scar on his nose, which he found to be an improvement, lending a little dash to a face that he otherwise found too sincere and wholesome. Lia claimed it was one of the things that made him irresistibly attractive to her. Definitely worth it.
    Paul cleared his mind with one last echoing blast on the sax. The depressed mood of earlier had passed. The air was fresh, the evening sky beautiful. This was the good life. You can't say you haven't been lucky in other respects, Line had said.
    Plus there was the phone call from Kay. With any luck, he'd be making money soon. Highwood—maybe the proposition was the beginning of the turnaround. Maybe he'd paid enough dues and it was time to collect.

4
     
    T HE CAR DOOR CHUNKED and a moment later Lia burst into the kitchen, carrying an armload of books and a bag of