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I woke just before dawn broke. The shower was too hot and I stood butt naked at the open window shivering in the chill draft, rubbing my stomach and chest muscles. On an impulse I touched my toes until I could press my knuckles to the floor. Then it occurred to me that if Moira was lying in bed with her eyes open she could see right up my hairy ass. So I pulled on one of my two pairs of jeans, the cleanest one, put on a red-and-black flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a sock cap, and grabbing my boots and socks went down stairs.

Top was an early riser. Sure enough I saw him through a kitchen window sitting in one of the fan-back wicker chairs on the back porch, in his black felt overcoat, drinking coffee.

The hunchbacked Stella was whipping up some waffle batter and smiled at me. We once played Chinese Checkers, so I was her favorite. I sat at the kitchen table putting my boots on, telling her some biker anecdotes that made her laugh. At the pit of my gut was Moira's strange behavior, which by contrast was floating my sense of humor. It was like an inflatable raft that gives a man lost at sea a sense of security, even though he suspects that the air is leaking out of it.

Stella gave me a toasted biscuit with marmalade, and a cup for the coffee urn. I went out to the porch, filled the cup, Top saying "There ye be," and sat next to him. I wanted to know more about this Neal fellow.

I knew about Top's animosity toward Shovel, and why they were at odds, but all I knew about Neal was that he and Top had taken architectural classes together ages ago, where they met, and that they had kept in touch over the years due mainly to Neal living in Pittsburg, not far from Top's sister, Esther.  But there was something else that bound them, something about "the evil eye," and this is what I inquired after, there on the misty porch with the sky like pale blue smoke to the east.

Top, usually so quick to respond, sat silent for a minute while he went through the antics of lighting his pipe. I couldn't just wait and do nothing, so I rolled a fat smoke. Then he began talking. He started at the end of the story and worked his way backwards.

In Neal he found a kindred spirit too familiar for him to like. Top was amoral. He never considered good and evil, just the legal equivalents of right and wrong. Neal was the same way. They say rules are meant to be broken. For Top, laws were accepted or rejected based on what he felt was the best course of action. He always wanted to set things right, in accordance with his view of how the world should turn, and if the best course, that which was the simplest and quickest way to solve a problem, should happen to be illegal, he dismissed the illegality as inapplicable or superfluous. He was several years older than Neal, had a keener intellect, and was thus the dominant influence on his erstwhile friend. They were more or less equal in psychic talent, something they were slow to recognize in each other. They had each tried to read the other's mind and to manipulate the other's attitudes and actions.

Then one day when they were both bidding for a contract, they suddenly realized that they shared this mysterious power and had been canceling out each other's attempts to control the other. At first the telegnosis was about urging the other to "do right," to make sound decisions, to be a better friend. But over the years it became a tool of the ego, an expression of pride, and gradually their friendship morphed into a dark desire to conquer the other.

Top was not ashamed of this. He called his and Neal's ability "the evil eye," but put no moral weight on it. Evil just sounded better than "the wrong eye." Besides, this power wasn't wrong unless it was stupidly or unproductively used. Violating a person's innermost privacy was nothing to Top, nothing to Neal. There was one reason why Top wanted to avenge Alicia. He wanted to prove once and for all that he was more powerful than Neal, that he understood the mind, and the obscurities of life, better than Neal, better than anybody.

I don't think he felt sorry for Alicia, but he did feel that she had been mistreated, or wronged, by her parents and, of course, by her lover, Neal. I asked how much Neal knew about his, Top's, belief in his guilt. "I told him everything," Top said. "He sensed it anyway. He doesn't care. The Law can't touch him. He is not coming to silence me out of fear that I would bring evidence against him. He simply wants to put an end to my vaunted superiority."

The inflatable raft at the pit of my gut was about ready to explode, so I told him all I knew, or understood, about Moira's deviant urge, her phobia, her outrageous desire to drown Neal if his heart should stop beating; and told him also that behind this was her greater need: to drown Josie's mother instead. Top was fascinated by this. He kept repeating "Indeed?" and clacking his teeth on the pipe stem. Compared to Moira's desires, Neal was insignificant. After all, destroying Neal would not bring Alicia back. But destroying Roberta would most effusively "set things right," as far as Top was concerned.  He was mulling this over when Stella came out and said that breakfast was ready, and that "the pretty thing" was up.

Top smiled at that. He gave me a wink.