Tamara cranked the stereo another notch, and Fred Schneider talk-chanted his way through an amphetamine-fueled tune about a girl from Planet Claire. She took the narrow fork into their neighborhood, a cluster of small houses at the foot of the slopes. The closer she got to the driveway, the tighter her stomach clenched, her body anticipating another showdown. What would it be tonight, cold indifference or hot rage?

Think happy thoughts.

At least Robert had a job here and the family was relatively secure. She was lucky to have a position at Westridge. Even if she had given up her assistantship at the University of North Carolina, where she'd been a rising star in the psychology department.

Don't think about it. Robert wanted to stay, wanted you to develop your career. At least, that’s what he said. Maybe that’s where the gap had started, the trickle that eroded into a canyon.

She’d watched his face grow longer and older as he came home jobless every day, tired from delivering air check tapes to Piedmont radio stations, worn out from filling up program directors’ voicemail boxes, pissed off at the media whiz kids who wouldn't recognize talent even if it came from Walter Cronkite's golden pipes.

She’d decided that, for his self-esteem and their mutual happiness, they'd be better off moving here, where Robert had been offered a shift. It meant a cut in pay for Tamara and not much of a boost in overall household income. But her sacrifice had been repaid with sullen resentment, and her disturbed sleep and headaches didn’t help matters.

Because she had been stupid enough to share her suspicions, that the strange set of sensations she’d nicknamed the Gloomies were back.

The invisible voice came again, louder, more drawn out this time: Shhhhuuu.

As if the Gloomies were trying out a new tongue, breaking it in, forming a forgotten language or else a word not yet learned.