“Ayuh?” The postmistress was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed to meet the public with hair of a perfect beauty-shop blue-white.

“I’d like to leave a letter for some friends of mine,” Callahan said. “They’re from New York, and they’d likely be General Delivery customers.” He had argued with Eddie that Calvin Tower, on the run from a bunch of dangerous hoods who would almost certainly still want his head on a stick, wouldn’t do anything so dumb as sign up for mail. Eddie had reminded him of how Tower had been about his fucking precious first editions, and Callahan had finally agreed to at least try this.

“Summer folk?”

“Do ya,” Callahan agreed, but that wasn’t quite right. “I mean ayuh. Their names are Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau. I guess that isn’t information you’re supposed to give someone just in off the street, but—”

“Oh, we don’t bother much about such things out in these parts,” she said. Parts came out pahts . “Just let me check the list…we have so many between Memorial Day and Labor Day…”

She picked up a clipboard with three or four tattered sheets of paper on it from her side of the counter. Lots of handwritten names. She flicked over the first sheet to the second, then from the second to the third.

“Deepneau!” she said. “Ayuh, there’s that one. Now…just let me see if I can find t’other ’un…”

“Never mind,” Callahan said. All at once he felt uneasy, as though something had gone wrong back on the other side. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the door, and the cave, and Eddie sitting there cross-legged with a book in his lap.

“Got somebody chasin ya?” the postlady asked, smiling.

Callahan laughed. It sounded forced and stupid to his own ears, but the postlady seemed to sense nothing wrong. “If I were to write Aaron a note and put it in a stamped envelope, would you see that he gets it when he comes in? Or when Mr. Tower comes in?”

“Oh, no need to buy a stamp,” said she, comfortably. “Glad to do it.”

Yes, it was like the Calla. Suddenly he liked this woman very much. Liked her big-big.