“Of course I will,” Scott said. “We’re sort of in this together now.”

“That being the case, I wonder if you’d come over, perhaps Sunday. Myra won’t be back and we could watch the Patriots upstairs instead of in my poor excuse for a man-cave. Also, I’d like to take some measurements. Start keeping a record. Would you allow that much?”

“Yes to the football, no to the measurements,” Scott said. “At least for now. Okay?”

“I accept your decision,” Doctor Bob said. “That really was a fine meal. I didn’t miss the meat at all.”

“Neither did I,” Scott said, but this wasn’t precisely true. When he got home, he made himself a salami sandwich with brown mustard. Then he stripped and stepped on the bathroom scale. He had declined the measurements because he was sure Doctor Bob would also want a weigh-in each time he checked Scott’s muscle density, and he had an intuition—or perhaps it was some deep physical self-knowledge—which now proved to be correct. He had been at a little over 201 that morning. Now, after a big dinner followed by a hefty snack, he was at 199.

The process was speeding up.

CHAPTER 3

The Wager

That was a gorgeous late October in Castle Rock, with day after day of cloudless blue skies and warm temperatures. The politically progressive minority spoke of global warming; the more conservative majority called it an especially fine Indian summer that would soon be followed by a typical Maine winter; everyone enjoyed it. Pumpkins came out on stoops, black cats and skeletons danced in the windows of houses, trick-or-treaters were duly warned at an elementary school assembly to stay on the sidewalks when the big night came, and only take wrapped treats. The high schoolers went in costume to the annual Halloween dance in the gym, for which a local garage band, Big Top, renamed themselves Pennywise and the Clowns.

In the two weeks or so since his dinner with Ellis, Scott continued to lose weight at a slowly accelerating pace. He was down to 180, a total drop of sixty pounds, but he continued to feel fine, tip-top, in the pink. On Halloween afternoon he drove to the CVS drugstore in Castle Rock’s new strip mall, and bought more Halloween candy than he would probably need. Residents of the View didn’t get a lot of costumed customers these days (there had been more before the collapse of the Suicide Stairs a few years earlier), but whatever the little beggars didn’t take, he would eat himself. One of the benefits of his peculiar condition, aside from all the extra energy, was how he could eat as much as he wanted without turning into a podge. He supposed all the fats might be playing hell with his cholesterol, but he had an idea they weren’t. He was in the best shape of his life, despite the deceptive roll hanging over his belt, and his frame of mind was better than it had been since the days when his courtship of Nora Kenner had been in full flower.

In addition to all that, his department store clients were delighted with his work, convinced (fallaciously, Scott was afraid) that the multiple websites he had crafted would turn their bricks-and-mortar business around. He had recently received a check for $582,674.50. Before banking it, he photographed it. He was sitting here in a little Maine town, working from his home study, and he was next door to rich.

He had seen Deirdre and Missy only twice, and from a distance. Running in the park, Dee and Dum on long leashes and not looking happy about it.

When Scott got back from his drugstore errand, he started up his walk, then diverted to the elm tree in his front yard. The leaves had turned, but thanks to the warmth of that fall season, most of them were still on the tree, rustling gently. The lowest branch was six feet over his head, and it looked inviting. He dropped the bag with the candy in it, raised his arms, flexed his knees, and jumped. He caught the branch easily, a thing he couldn’t have come close to doing a year ago. No wasting in his muscles; they still thought they were supporting a man who weighed 240. It made him think of old TV footage, showing the astronauts who’d landed on the moon taking ginormous leaps.

He dropped to the lawn, picked up the bag, and went to the porch steps. Instead of walking up them, he flexed again and jumped all the way to the stoop.

It was easy.

He put the candy in a bowl by the front door, and went into his study. He turned on his computer, but didn’t open any of the work-files scattered across the desktop. He opened the calendar function instead, and called up the following year. The date numbers were in black, except for holidays and appointments. Those were in red. Scott had marked only one appointment for next year: May 3rd. The notation, also in red, consisted of a single word: ZERO. When he deleted it, May 3rd turned black again. He selected March 31st, and typed ZERO in the square. That now looked to him like the day when he would run out of weight, unless the rate of loss kept speeding up. Which might happen. In the meantime, however, he intended to enjoy life. Scott felt he owed it to himself. After all, how many people with a terminal condition could say they felt absolutely fine? Sometimes he thought of a saying Nora had brought home from her AA meetings: the past is history, the future’s a mystery.

It seemed to fit his current situation pretty well.

*

He got his first costumed customers around four o’clock, and the last ones just past sunset. There were ghosts and goblins, superheroes and stormtroopers. One child was amusingly got up as a blue and white post office box, with his eyes peeking out through the slot. Scott gave most of the kids two of the mini-sized candybars, but the mailbox got three, because he was the best. The younger children were accompanied by their parents. The latecomers, a bit older, were mostly on their own.