Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy by Barbara Paul Page A

There’s no way I can get away from this desk for at least a week. Somebody else is going to have to take care of it. You’re the logical one to follow through.”
    Megan’s heart gave a leap; this was more than she’d hoped for. She forced herself to calm down and realized Unruh’s name hadn’t even been mentioned. “I’d love to go,” she said truthfully.
    â€œBut there’s another hitch. The Lipan shipments start the day after tomorrow, and Lipan’s potential is far more important to this company than the Boston contract. What if some of the shipping arrangements break down and you’re not here to take care of it?”
    Here it was: the sink-or-swim test of Megan’s faith in her own work. She took a deep breath and said, “I can’t see that there’ll be any problem. I have at least three contingency plans for every shipment scheduled, and as many as six for the larger ones. I’ve been over each one a dozen times. They’re solid.”
    â€œThey’re all in the computer?”
    â€œYes. If something does go wrong—an airport gets fogged in or the like—the computer will automatically kick through the alternate plan that will cause the least loss of time. I’d meant to keep a close eye on it, of course—but that was mostly for my own satisfaction. The computer can handle it.”
    Mr. Ziegler studied her through slitted eyes for a moment—and then nodded once, abruptly. “You leave tomorrow,” he said.
    Gus Bilinski wrote in Persian: We took the rug off the carpet and under it we put our money . He pushed his book aside. He was worried about Megan.
    Gus was seated at a big table in the University of Pittsburgh’s determinedly modern Hillman Library, directly under one of the numerous signs listing the phone number of the Rape Crisis Center. The library wasn’t crowded; not many girls about. Gus gathered up his books and left. The place depressed him.
    Megan seemed healthy enough, and she certainly was in good spirits when she left for Boston. But her second try at hypnosis with that marvelously-named Snooks person hadn’t been any more productive than the first. And Megan had had to cancel the third session—because of her last-minute business trip. So they still didn’t know what had caused the blackout, or whether it might happen again or not.
    He couldn’t shake the feeling that there ought to be something he could do. He stood on a corner of Forbes Avenue waiting for a Highland Park bus. If he woke up one morning and found he’d lost thirty-eight hours of his life, he’d probably come down with the screaming meemies. Megan had simply called a cab and gone home.
    It wasn’t his problem, as Megan had once told him. But it was a puzzle. And Gus had a hard time leaving puzzles alone.
    The bus growled up to the corner and stopped with a great hissing of brakes. It was crowded: standing room only during the evening rush hour. Gus grabbed an overhead bar and planted his feet against the ordeal to come. The bus lurched ahead and took the next corner with all the speed the driver could coax out of the engine, slinging the standing passengers around like so many slabs of meat. The man standing next to Gus ended up in a lady’s lap, to their mutual distress.
    Megan had been lucky that nothing had happened to her during her night in Schenley Park. There had been murders in that park, and even a couple of plane crashes on the golf course itself. The first person who saw her was that groundskeeper—or was he? Gus wondered about that, as a fat man lost his grip and came hurtling into Gus’s back. That park was patrolled at night. But if someone had spotted Megan lying there on the golf course, surely he wouldn’t have just left her there.
    It suddenly became very important to Gus to know whether Schenley Park had its own guards or whether the patrolling was done by the