"Then you could ski with me, Jack. Daddy's skiing days are over."
"He can't ski anymore?"
"The first thing you'll think when you see him is that there's nothing wrong with him--that he's just a little eccentric, or something," his sister said. She took off her glasses and put her face so close to Jack's that their noses touched. "Without my glasses, I have to be this close to you to see you clearly," Heather said. She pulled slowly back from him, but only about six or eight inches. "I lose you about here," she said, putting her glasses back on. "Well, when you meet him, he'll make you believe that you could take him to Los Angeles--where you would have a great time together. You'll think I'm cruel or stupid for sending him away, but he needs to be taken care of and they know how to do it. Don't think you can take care of him. If I can't take care of him--and I can't--you can't take care of him, either. You may not think so at first, but he's where he belongs."
"Okay," Jack said. He took her glasses off and put his face close to hers, their noses touching. "Keep looking at me," he told her. "I believe you."
"I've seen close-ups of you half my life," she said, smiling.
"I can't look at you enough, Heather."
She ran her hand through her hair, wiping her lips with the back of her other hand. Jack recognized the gesture. It was the way he'd removed his wig and wiped the mauve lip gloss off his lips with the back of his ski glove in My Last Hitchhiker. In a near-perfect imitation of Jack's voice, Heather said: "You probably thought I was a girl, right?"
"That's pretty good," he told her, looking into her brown eyes.
"This isn't a very safe place to stop," Heather said, just the way he'd said it in My Last Hitchhiker. "I'm sorry for the trouble, but I catch more rides as a girl," she went on. "I try not to buy my own dinner," Heather said, with a shrug; she had Jack's shrug down pat, too.
"How about Melody in The Tour Guide?" he asked her.
Heather cleared her throat. "It's a good job to lose," she said perfectly.
"How about Johnny-as-a-hooker in Normal and Nice?" (No girl can get that right, Jack was thinking.)
"There's something you should know," his sister said, in that hooker's husky voice. "Lester Billings has checked out. I'm afraid he's really left his room a mess."
"Put your glasses back on," Jack told her, getting up from the bed. He went to her closet and opened the door. Jack picked out a salmon-pink camisole and held it up by the hanger, against his chest.
"Boy, I'll bet this looks great on you," Heather said, just the way Jack-as-a-thief had said it to Jessica Lee.
He hung up the camisole in her closet, and they went into the kitchen and washed and dried their teacups and put them away in the cupboard. To someone like Jack, the five-roommates idea was unthinkable.
"It must be like living on a ship," he said to Heather.
"I'm moving out soon," she told him, laughing.
They walked back the way they had come, through the Meadows. Jack carried the small photo album in one hand, although Heather had volunteered to carry it in her backpack.
Just before they got to George Square, they saw an old man with snow-white hair playing a guitar and whistling. He was always there, every day, Heather told Jack--even in the winter. The old man was often there at eight o'clock in the morning and would stay the whole day.
"Is he crazy?" Jack asked her.
"Crazy is a relative word," his sister said.
She talked about playing squash, which she seemed to take very seriously. (The music department had a squash team, and she was one of the better players on it.) She also spoke of "a plague of urban seagulls."
"Urban seagulls?" Jack said.
"They're all over Edinburgh--they attacked one man so badly, he had to go to hospital!" Heather told him.
They came along South Bridge to where it intersected with the Royal Mile. Jack was not aware that he had looked the wrong way, but as they started to cross the street, Heather took his hand and spoke sharply to him: "Look right, Jack. I don't want to lose you."
"I don't want to lose you," he told her.
"I mean crossing the street," she said.
Jack doubted that he could have found Old St. Paul's without a map and some detailed directions. The church was built into a steep hill between the Royal Mile and Jeffrey Street, where the main entrance was. There was a side entrance off Carruber's Close, a narrow alley--and an even narrower alley called North Gray's Close, where there was no entrance to the church.
Jack began to tell Heather the story his mom had told him. One night, shortly before midnight, William was playing the organ in Old St. Paul's--a so-called organ marathon, a twenty-four-hour concert, with a different organist playing every hour or half hour--and their dad's playing had roused a drunk sleeping in one of the narrow alleys alongside the church. The foul-mouthed down-and-out had complained about the sound of the organ.