She found Sam in the kitchen. He offered her a can of Coke and a pair of gold sandals with a plastic daisy at the apex of each thong. "They're my mother's," he said. "She won't mind."

She slipped into the sandals but politely refused the Coke. He studied her for a moment, then picked up a handful of hair next to her cheek and closed it in his fist. She felt dizzy with his closeness, as if she were racing toward the edge of a cliff.

"You have beautiful hair," he whispered. He brushed his thumb over her lips. Her breath quickened. The amber flecks in his eyes glowed like the fireflies she had once trapped in a jar as a child. When Susannah wasn't looking, Paige had opened the lid and dumped the insects on the ground, then squashed them with the soles of her sneakers so that their crushed bodies left a yellow phosphorescent streak in the grass. Afterward, Paige had cried so hard that Susannah had thought she would never stop.

The expression in Sam's eyes told Susannah that he wanted to make love to her, and the tissues in her body began to feel loose and fluid, as if she'd had too much wine. There had been so much emotion that day, so many feelings rushing through her. She wanted to live out all her fantasies, but she was frightened. This was the final step in her emancipation, and she wasn't ready.

She pulled abruptly away from him and walked back into the living room. Elvis, soul-eyed and sullen, looked down at her from the wall. Did she love Sam ten? she wondered frantically. She didn't even know what love was anymore. Was this love or was it simply lust? She loved her father, and look what she'd done. She'd been pretending to love Cal, and that had resulted in disaster. And Sam? Had she gone crazy succumbing to the sexual fantasies this amber-eyed renegade aroused in her? Had she thrown away everything familiar for sex?

"Come on out to the garage with me," he said from behind her.

She whirled around and saw him standing in the archway between the kitchen and living room.

"I want you to see what we're doing," he said. "You're going to be part of it now."

He led her toward the back door, talking all the time. "I told you it was starting for us, Suzie, and I meant it. Last week I got an order for forty circuit boards from this guy named Pinky at Z.B. Electronics. Forty! And this is just the beginning."

As Joel Faulconer's daughter, it was difficult for her to work up much excitement for such small numbers, but she tried to respond enthusiastically. "That's wonderful."

She felt the plastic petals on the daisies of her sandals scratch at her toes as she crossed the backyard. Sam pointed toward the garage with his can of Coke. She studied his hand as it curled around the can. It was a working man's hand. His fingernails were clean but uneven, and an untidy white scar marred his thumb.

"Garages are good luck in the Valley. Bill Hewlett and David Packard started Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto, and we're going to start our company in this one. Right now, half the guys in Homebrew have projects going in garages. Do you remember Steve Wozniak from the Homebrew meeting? I pointed him out to you."

"He and his friend are the ones building that single-board computer with some sort of fruit name."

Sam nodded and stopped in front of the side entrance to the garage. "They're working out of Steve Jobs's parents' garage in Los Altos. I heard that Mrs. Jobs is driving Woz crazy by running in and out all the time to use her washer and dryer." Sam grinned and opened the door. "Yank has it even worse."

Susannah didn't understand what he meant until she stepped inside the Gamble garage. It was roughly divided into two sections. The back section held shelves of electronic equipment, a long lighted workbench, and a faded floral sofa. The front of the garage was partitioned off with blond paneling. Susannah walked through a narrow doorway set in the paneling and saw a shampoo bowl, a beauty-shop chair, and several hair dryers. Where the garage door should have been stood a wall of gold-flecked mirrored tiles.

At that moment a phone sitting on a small desk next to an appointment book began to ring. An answering machine clicked on and a woman's voice announced, "This is Angela at Pretty Please Salon. I'm closed for the next two weeks while I try my luck in Vegas. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

There was a pause and then a beep. "Hi, Angela. It's Harry Davis at Longacres Funeral. Old Mrs. Cooney passed away during the night. I wanted you to do her before the first viewing on Monday, but since you're not going to be around, I'll get Barb. I'll call you with the next one."

The answering machine gave its final beep. Susannah turned to Sam and said weakly, "Your mother does the hair on corpses?"

"She does them when they're alive, too, for chrissake," he retorted belligerently. "She works with one of the nursing homes. When the old ladies finally croak, the funeral home calls her. It drives Yank crazy."

"The funeral home?"

"The old ladies. The nursing home buses them over here to get their hair done. Sometimes when he's working, they peek through the door and start asking him questions." He took a swig of his Coke and gestured with his thumb toward the other side of the partition. "Come on. Let me show you what we're doing."

She left the Pretty Please Salon to follow him into the other section of the garage. The guts of a Sylvania television along with the computer circuit board, a keyboard, and a cassette tape recorder sat on a workbench. He flipped on the overhead work light and began to fuss with the equipment. In front of her, the picture tube started to glow. He put a tape in the cassette recorder, and before long a message appeared in block letters on the screen.


WHAT IS YOUR NAME?


"Go on," Sam said. "Talk to it." She walked forward and hesitantly typed, "Susannah." "Now push this key." She did as Sam directed, and another message appeared.

HI, SUSANNAH. I'M HAPPY TO MEET YOU. I DON'T HAVE A NAME OF MY OWN YET. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS?

She was struck by the oddity of having a machine address her by name. "No," she typed.

THAT'S TOO BAD. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MYSELF. I AM BEING RUN OFF A 73 19 MICROPROCESSOR FROM CORTRON. I HAVE 8K BYTES OF MEMORY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

"Yes," she typed.

The machine responded with more technical information and then, to her surprise, flashed the question, ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE, SUSANNAH?

"Female," she typed.

are you pretty? it asked.

Sam reached around her and typed, "Yes."


ARE YOU STACKED?


She smiled for the first time that day. "This machine has a naughty mind." "Don't blame me. I didn't program it." She entered the word no on the keyboard.

THAT'S TOO BAD. WOULD YOU GO TO BED WITH ME ANYWAY?

She chuckled and entered the word no.

DARN. I NEVER HAVE ANY LUCK WITH WOMEN. I THINK MY MICROPROCESSOR IS TOO SMALL.

She laughed. "What would the machine have done if I'd said yes?"

Sam's hand slid up along her spine. "It would have told you to stand in front of the screen and take off your clothes."

She shivered. His fingers rose above the mandarin collar of her wedding dress and touched the skin at the back of her neck. She didn't move as he held his hand there. He rubbed the skin lightly with his thumb while he pointed out other features on the small computer. She was barely listening.

She wanted to lean back into his chest and press so tightly against him that her body dissolved into his. She envisioned her spine slipping through his skin, her ribs locking with his. And once he had absorbed every part of her flesh and sinew and bone, she would be able to feed from the very source of his spirit. His energy would become her own. She would feast on his brashness and arrogance, on his daring and certainty, on all of those qualities that were missing in her but that he possessed in abundance. By absorbing Sam's spirit, she would make herself complete. And reborn, she lis would finally be able to march boldly into the world, fully armed against all of the boogeymen, protected against evil, so that nothing bad could ever happen to her again.

He took her hand and led her from the garage. They walked back across the small yard to the house. The scent of someone's backyard barbecue was heavy in the evening air, and a group of kids were playing flashlight tag in the next yard.

When they got inside, Sam gestured toward the kitchen table. "Have a seat. I'll take care of dinner tonight. You can do it tomorrow."

Her stomach was no more ready to handle food now than it had been earlier. "We just ate a couple of hours ago."

"Yeah, I know, but I'm hungry again." He went over to the refrigerator and looked inside. "I'm funny about food. I'll go for a couple of days without eating much of anything, and then I'll eat everything in sight." He pulled another Coke from the refrigerator, shut the door and leaned back against it, apparently not having found anything else that suited him.

He took a swig. The expression in his eyes was so piercing that she had to look away. "You seem to drink a lot of Coke," she said nervously.

"I'm addicted. I got hooked on Coke when I stopped smoking pot." He wandered over to a sliding pantry door, opened it with his foot, and after contemplating the shelves for a few moments, pulled out half a loaf of white bread, a jar of Jif peanut butter, and a plastic squeeze bottle of honey. He grabbed some utensils and sat down next to her.

"Gourmet fare," she said lightly, trying to relieve the awful tension that had taken hold of her.

He didn't smile. "I've got other things on my mind besides food."

"Such as what?" Oh, God. What a stupid question. What an incredibly stupid question. He had sex on his mind. Sex with her.

He squeezed a drop of honey through the bright yellow nozzle onto his index finger. His eyes never left hers as he sucked it off. "Can't you guess?"

A wave of desire curled through her, starting in the center of her chest and moving down through her body into her legs. She tried to tell herself to get up and move away, but she felt as if she were paralyzed. What if sex was all that he wanted from her? She knew that he was a daredevil. What if he was only interested in the challenge that she presented? She realized that she could not let anything else happen between them until they had talked. They needed to understand each other better before they did something that could never be taken back.

He tilted his head, and the ends of his hair formed a dark pool on top of his left shoulder. She snatched up the jar of peanut butter as if she were suddenly ravenous and began clumsily unscrewing the top while she framed the words that needed to be spoken.

He gave her a slow smile and took the jar from her. "I said I'd do the cooking."

She watched as he spread peanut butter on a piece of bread, set it down on the table, and picked up the honey bottle. He gazed at her for a moment. She realized she was holding her breath. His arm seemed to move in slow motion as he reached for the silk-covered buttons on the front of her wedding dress. She needed to tell him to stop, but she couldn't speak.

He paused only when he reached a point well below her breasts. The dress was fully lined, so she wore no slip. He brushed the bodice aside to reveal her bra. It was filmy, part of a bra and panty set she had bought to light a fire in the stodgy soul of Cal Theroux.

He hooked his finger over the front clasp and tugged on it but made no real effort to open it. "Scared?"

She was terrified. Staring at the honey bottle he still held in his hand, she felt her mouth go dry with fear. If only she could reach through his skin and draw out his brashness. "Of-of course not," she stammered. "Don't be ridiculous."

He moved his thumb roughly over the top curve of her breast. "Maybe you should be scared. Because, baby, you can't imagine what I'm thinking about doing to you."

Rockets went off inside her. The edges of her fear evaporated in the strength of her desire. Do it! she wanted to scream. Do it! Please! She gripped her hands tightly in her lap to keep herself under control. Despite the fact that she had run away from her wedding on the back of a motorcycle, despite the fact that she wore sandals with a plastic daisy stuck between her toes and had gone to the toilet in front of a portrait of Elvis Presley, she was still Susannah Faulconer. And a well-bred young woman didn't scream Do it, not even to a man who set her on fire.

He let go of her bra clasp and squeezed a honey spiral over the surface of the peanut butter he had spread for her. Then he lifted the bread to her mouth. She looked at it. Her jaw wouldn't move.