“I know you did,” she cried, exasperated. “Now be quiet and let me think.” Silence. She had to return to normalcy, wait until this period of … irrationality passed. The open eyes of Lawrence’s body gave her the shivers but she couldn’t bring herself to close them, so she put a book in his lap and started to clean out the refrigerator. They’d been on the road just long enough to collect unused leftovers. But she got confused and started to throw away good food. Once, unaccountably, she forgot how to open the crisper door underneath, and had to stop to remember.

“Lydia, why the hell are you cleaning out the refrigerator at a time like this?” Lawrence asked.

“Now stop it,” she shouted, thoroughly distracted.

“You aren’t crazy. I’m here,” he announced forcibly. “You don’t believe in spirits generally, but you believe in me, and I’m here; it’s got something to do with that, why you can hear me.”

“But Lawrence, the dead don’t talk, so I must be mad.”

“What would you rather believe?” he asked; and suddenly she didn’t care if she was crazy or not, or what was happening. For all she knew, maybe she was just having a nightmare. “All right,” she said, aloud. “What’s next on the agenda?” The sweetness of madness, she thought, the freedom. She’d just go along. What else could she do? Lawrence was there; somehow he was going to help her figure out what to do with his body. She just couldn’t cart it around forever. It would be a terrible nuisance.

He wanted her to just leave it somewhere, where it was peaceful and quiet and could just rot away by itself. She started the trailer up again, after putting Mr. George back on the bookcase. She felt, anyway, that Lawrence was beside her on the seat.

“The readers never got a chance to know you at all,” she said suddenly.

“What readers? What are you talking about?” Lawrence said.

“I don’t know. It just slipped into my mind,” she said. “But what are we going to do now?”

“Just leave my body somewhere. There’s no law against it that I know. Maybe local health laws. But after all, what could they do to you?”

“Well, it’s more or less what we planned in case one of us died. At least you didn’t change your ideas,” she said. “If you’re here, and I can’t see you,” she added, nervously.

“Well, I must be dead, I mean, really dead, and too stupid to know it,” he answered. “If I was really dead, though, how could I be talking? You know—‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’—”

“Don’t joke about something like that,” she snapped. “Honestly.”

“I’m just staying around to help,” he said.