Dean Koontz - Cold Fire

The snarl of traffic began to loosen, but Jim did not take full advantage of opportunities to change lanes and swing around slower-moving vehicles.

He was more interested in her answers than in making better time.

He said, "And in the dream, when you got to the top of the stairs-or when this woman got to the top of the stairs-you saw a ten-year-old boy standing there, and somehow you knew he was me.”

"Yes.”

"I don't look much like I looked when I was ten, so how'd you recognize me?" "Mostly it was your eyes," Holly said. "They haven't changed much in all these years. They're unmistakable.”

"Lots of people have blue eyes.”

"Are you serious? Honey, your blue eyes are to other blue eyes what Sinatra's voice is to Donald Duck's.”

"You're prejudiced. What did you see in the wall?" She described it again.

"Alive in the stone? This just gets stranger and stranger.”

"I haven't been bored in days," she agreed.

Beyond the junction with Interstate 10, traffic on the San Diego Freeway became even lighter, and finally Jim began to put some of his driving skills to use. He handled the car the way a first-rate jockey handled a thoroughbred horse, finessing from it that extra degree of performance that won races. The Ford was only a stock model with no modification, but it responded to him as if it wanted to be a Porsche.

After a while Holly began to ask questions of her own. "How come you're a millionaire but you live relatively cheap?" "Bought a house, moved out of my apartment. Quit my job.”

"Yeah, but a modest house. And your furniture's falling apart.”

"I needed the privacy of my own house to meditate and rest between.

assignments. But I didn't need fancy furniture.”

Following a few minutes of mutual silence, she said, "Did I catch your eye the way you caught mine, right off the bat, up in Portland?" He smiled but didn't look away from the highway." So are you, Miss Thorne.'" "So you admit it!" Holly said, pleased. "It was a come-on line.”

They made excellent time from the west side of Los Angeles all the way to Ventura, but then Jim began to slack off again. Mile by mile, he drove with less aggression.

Initially Holly thought he was lulled by the view. Past Ventura, Route 101 hugged beautiful stretches of coastline. They passed Pitas Point, then Rincon Point, and the beaches of Carpinteria. The blue sea rose, the blue sky fell, the golden land wedged itself between them, and the only visible turbulence in the serene summer day was the white-capped surf, which slipped to the shore in low combers and broke with a light, foamy spray.

But there was a turbulence in Jim Ironheart, too, and Holly only became aware of his new edginess when she realized that he was not paying any attention to the scenery. He had slowed down not to enjoy the view but, she suspected, to delay their arrival at the farm By the time they left the superhighway, turned inland at Santa Barbara, crossed the city, and headed into the Santa Ynez Mountains, Jim's mood was undeniably darker.

His responses to her conversational sallies grew shorter, more distracted.

State Route 154 led out of the mountains into an appealing land of low hills and fields painted gold by dry summer grass, clusters of California live oaks, and horse ranches with neat white fencing. This was not the farming-intense, agribusiness atmosphere of the San Joaquin and certain other valleys; there were serious vineyards here and there, but the occasional farms appeared to be, as often as not, gentlemen's operations maintained as getaways for rich men in Los Angeles, more concerned with cultivating a picturesque alternate lifestyle than with real crops.

"We'll need to stop in New Svenborg to get a few things before we head out to the farm," Jim said.

"What things?" "I don't know. But when we stop. I'll know what we need.”

Lake Cachuma came and went to the east. They passed the road to Solvang on the west, then skirted Santa Ynez itself Before Los Olivos, they headed east on another state route, and finally into New Svenborg, the closest town to Ironheart Farm.

, In the early nineteen hundreds, groups of Danish-Americans from the Midwest had settled in the Santa Ynez Valley, many of them with the intention of establishing communities that would preserve Danish folk arts and customs and, in general, the ways of Danish life. The most successful of these settlements was Solvang, about which Holly had once written a story; it had become a major tourist attraction because of its quaint Danish architecture, shops, and restaurants.

New Svenborg, with a population of fewer than two thousand, was not as elaborately, thoroughly, authentically, insistently Danish as Solvang.

Depressing desert-style stucco buildings with white-rock roofs, weathered clapboard buildings with unpainted front porches that reminded Holly of parts of rural Texas, Craftsman bungalows, and white Victorian houses with lots of gingerbread and wide front porches stood beside structures that were distinctly Danish with half timbered walls and thatched roofs and leaded-glass windows. Half a dozen windmills dotted the town, their vanes silhouetted against the August sky. All in all, it was one of those singular California mixes that sometimes resulted in delightful and unexpected harmonies; but in New Svenborg, the mix did not work, and the mood was discordancy.

"I spent the end of my childhood and my entire adolescence here," Jim said as he drove slowly down the quiet, shadowy main street.

She figured that his moodiness could be attributed as much to New Svenborg as to his tragic family history.

To an extent, that was unfair. The streets were lined with big trees, the charming streetlamps appeared to have been imported from the Old Country, and most of the sidewalks were gracefully curved and time-worn ribbons of well-worn brick. About twenty percent of the town came straight from the nostalgic Midwest of a Bradbury novel, but the rest of it still belonged in a David Lynch film.

"Let's take a little tour of the old place," he said.

"We should be getting to the farm.”

"It's only a mile north of town, just a few minutes away.”

That was all the more reason to get there, as far as Holly was concerned.

She was tired of being on the road.

But she sensed that for some reason he wanted to show her the town and not merely to delay their arrival at Ironheart Farm. Holly acquiesced.

In fact she listened with interest to what he had to tell her. She had learned that he found it difficult to talk about himself and that he sometimes made personal revelations in an indirect or even casual manner.

He drove past Handahl's Pharmacy on the east end of Main Street, where locals went to get a prescription filled, unless they preferred to drive twenty miles to Solvang. Handahl's was also one of only two restaurants in town, with (according to Jim) "the best soda fountain this side of 1955." It was also the post office and only newsstand. With its multiply peaked roof, verdigris-copper cupola, and beveled-glass windows, it was an appealing enterprise.

Without shutting the engine off, Jim parked across the street from the library on Copenhagen Lane, which was quartered in one of the smaller Victorian houses with considerably less gingerbread than most.

The building was freshly painted, with well-tended shrubbery, and both the United States and California flags fluttered softly on a tall brass pole along the front walkway. It looked like a small and sorry library nonetheless.

"A town this size, it's amazing to find a library at all," Jim said.

"And thank God for it. I rode my bike to the library so often.

if you added up all the miles, I probably pedaled halfway around the world. After my folks died, books were my friends, counselors, psychiatrists. Books kept me sane. Mrs. Glynn, the librarian, was a great lady, she knew just how to talk to a shy, mixed-up kid without talking down to him. She was my guide to the most exotic regions of the world and distant times-all without leaving her aisles of books.”