One Door Away From Heaven (9 page)

Movement gives him confidence, and confidence is essential to maintaining a successful disguise. Besides, motion is commotion, which has value as camouflage. More of his mother’s wisdom.

Being among people is helpful, too. A crowd distracts the enemy—not much but sometimes enough to matter—and provides a screening effect behind which a fugitive can, with luck, pass undetected.

The truck lot adjoins a separate parking area for cars. Here, the boy is more exposed than he was among the big rigs.

He moves faster and more boldly, striking out directly toward the “full range of services,” which are provided in a complex of structures farther back from the highway than the service islands and fuel pumps.

Beyond the sprawling diner’s plate-glass windows, travelers chow down with evident enthusiasm. The sight of them reminds the boy how much time has passed since he ate a cold cheeseburger in the Explorer.

The dog whines with hunger.

Out of the warm night into the pleasantly cool restaurant, into eddying tides of appetizing aromas that instantly render him ravenous, the boy realizes he is grinning as widely as the dog.

The dog, not the grin, draws the attention of a uniformed woman standing at a lectern labeled
HOSTESS
. She’s petite, pretty, speaks with a comic drawl, but is as formidable as a prison-camp guard when she assumes a blocking stance directly in his path. “Honeylamb, I’ll admit this here’s not a five-star establishment, but we still say no to barefoot bozos and all four-legged kind, regardless of how cute they are.”

The boy is neither barefoot nor a clown, and so after a brief confusion, he realizes she’s talking about the dog. By bursting into the restaurant with the animal at his side, he’s drawn attention to himself when he can least afford to do so.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he apologizes.

Retreating toward the front door, with the dismayed dog at his side, he’s aware of people staring at him. A smiling waitress. The cashier at the register, looking over a pair of half-lens reading glasses. A customer paying his check.

None of these people appears to be suspicious of him, and none seems likely to be one of the relentless trackers on his trail. Fortunately, this blunder will not be the death of him.

Outside once more, he tells the dog to sit. The pooch settles obediently beside the diner door. The boy hunkers in front of the mutt, pets him, scratches behind his ears, and says, “You wait right here. I’ll be back. With food.”

A man looms over them—tall, with a glossy black beard, wearing a green cap with the words
DRIVING MACHINE
in yellow letters above the bill—not the customer who was at the cash register, but another who’s on his way into the restaurant. “That’s sure a fine tailwagger you have there,” the driving machine says, and the dog obligingly swishes his tail, sweeping the pavement on which he sits. “Got a name?”

“Curtis Hammond,” he replies without hesitation, using the name of the boy whose clothes he wears, but at once wonders if this is a wise choice.

Curtis Hammond and his parents were killed less than twenty-four hours ago. If by now the Colorado authorities have realized that the fire at the farmhouse was arson, and if autopsies have revealed that the three victims were savagely assaulted, perhaps tortured, all dead before the fire was set, then the names of the murdered have surely been heard widely on news broadcasts.

With no apparent recognition of the name, the bearded trucker, who may be only what he appears to be, but who may also be Death with facial hair, says, “Curtis Hammond. That’s a powerfully peculiar name for a dog.”

“Oh. Yeah. My dog,” the boy says, feeling stupid and dismally incompetent at this passing-for-nobody-special business. He hasn’t given a thought to naming his four-legged companion, because he’s known that eventually, when he bonds better with the animal, he’ll arrive at not just any name, but at the
exactly right
one. With no time to wait for better bonding, scratching the dog under the chin, he takes inspiration from a movie: “The name’s Old Yeller.”

Amused, the trucker cocks his head and says, “You yankin’ my chain, young fella?”

“No, sir. Why would I?”

“And what’s the logic, callin’ this beauty Old Yeller, when there’s not one yellow hair from nose to tail tip?”

Abashed at his nervous bumbling in the face of this man’s easy and nonthreatening conversation, the boy tries to recover from his foolish gaff. “Well, sir, color doesn’t have anything to do with it. We like the name just because this here is the best old dog in the world, just exactly like Old Yeller in the movie.”

“Not exactly like,” the driving machine disagrees. “Old Yeller was a male. This lovely black-and-white lady here must get a mite confused from time to time, bein’ called a male name and a color she isn’t.”

The boy hasn’t previously given much thought to the gender of the dog.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He remembers his mother’s counsel that in order to pass for someone you’re not, you must have confidence, confidence above all else, because self-consciousness and self-doubt fade the disguise. He must not allow himself to be rattled by the trucker’s latest observation.

“Oh, we don’t think of it as just a male name or a female name,” the boy explains, still nervous but pleased by his growing fluency, which improves when he keeps his attention on the pooch instead of looking up at the trucker. “Any dog could be a Yeller.”

“Evidently so. I think I’ll buy me a girl cat and call her Mr. Rover.”

No meanness is evident in this tall, somewhat portly man, no suspicion or calculation in his twinkling blue eyes. He looks like Santa Claus with a dye job.

Nevertheless, standing erect, the boy wishes the trucker would go away, but he can’t think of a thing to say to make him leave.

“Where’s your folks, son?” the man asks.

“I’m with my dad. He’s inside getting takeout, so we can eat on the road. They won’t let our dog in, you know.”

Frowning, surveying the activity at the service islands and the contrasting quiet of the acres of parked vehicles, the trucker says, “You shouldn’t stray from right here, son. There’s all kinds of people in the world, and some you don’t want to meet at night in a lonely corner of a parkin’ lot.”

“Sure, I know about their kind.”

The dog sits up straighter and pricks her ears, as if to say that she, too, is well informed about such fiends.

Smiling, reaching down to stroke the lovely lady’s head, the trucker says, “I guess you’ll be all right with Old Yeller here to take a chunk of meat out of anyone who might try to do you wrong.”

“She’s real protective,” the boy assures him.

“Just don’t you stray from here,” the driving machine warns. He tugs on the bill of his green cap, the way a polite cowboy in the movies will sometimes tug on the brim of his Stetson, an abbreviated tipping of the hat, meant as a sign of respect to ladies and other upstanding citizens, and at last he goes inside.

The boy watches through the glass door and the windows as the hostess greets the trucker and escorts him to a table. Fortunately, he is seated with his back toward the entrance. With his cap still on, he appears to be at once enthralled by the offerings on the tall, two-fold menu.

To the faithful canine, the boy says, “Stay here, girl. I’ll be back soon.”

She chuffs softly, as though she understands.

Out in the vast parking area, where cones of dirty yellow light alternate with funnels of shadow, there’s no sign of the two silent men who wouldn’t stoop to pick up five dollars.

Sooner or later, they’ll come back here, run a search through the diner, around the motel, and wherever else their suspicion draws them, even if they’ve searched those places before. And if not those same two men, then two others. Or four. Or ten. Or legions.

Better move.

Chapter 11

GENEROUS SLICES of homemade apple pie. Simple white plates bought at Sears. Yellow plastic place mats from Wal-Mart. The homey glow of three unscented candles that had been acquired with twenty-one others in an economy pack at a discount hardware store.

This humble scene at Geneva’s kitchen table was a fresh breeze of reality, clearing away the lingering mists of unreason that the chaotic encounter with Sinsemilla had left in Micky’s head. Indeed, the contrast between Geneva polishing each already-clean dessert fork on a dishtowel before placing it on the table and Sinsemilla waltzing with the moon was less like a mere refreshing breeze than like sudden immersion in an arctic sea.

How peculiar the world had grown if now life with Aunt Gen had become the sterling standard of normalcy.

“Coffee?” Geneva inquired.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Hot or iced?”

“Hot. But spike it,” Micky said.

“Spike it with what, dear?”

“Brandy and milk,” Micky said, and at once Leilani, who was not drinking coffee, suggested, “Milk,” speaking in her capacity as self-appointed temperance enforcer on assignment to Michelina Bellsong.

“Brandy and milk and milk,” Aunt Gen noted, taking the order for Micky’s complex spike as she poured the coffee.

“Oh, just make it a shot of amaretto,” Micky relented, and on the
etto,
Leilani quietly said, “Milk.”

Ordinarily, nothing made Micky bristle with anger or triggered her stubbornness more quickly than being told she couldn’t have what she wanted, unless it was being told that her choices in life hadn’t been the best, unless it was being told that she would screw up the rest of her life if she wasn’t careful, unless it was being told that she had an alcohol problem or an attitude problem, or a problem with motivation, or with men. In the recent past, Leilani’s well-meaning murmured insistence on milk would have jammed down the detonation plunger, not on all these issues, but on enough of them to have assured an explosion of respectable magnitude.

During the past year, however, Micky had spent a great many hours in late-night self-analysis, if only because her circumstances had given her so much time for contemplation that she couldn’t avoid shining a light into a few of the rooms in her heart. Until then, she had long resisted such explorations, perhaps out of fear that she’d find a haunted house within herself, occupied by everything from mere ghosts to hobgoblins, with monsters of a singular nature crouched behind doors from the attic to the subcellar. She’d found a few monsters, all right, but she’d been more disturbed by the discovery that in the mansion of her soul, a greater number of rooms than not were unfurnished spaces, dusty and unheated. Since childhood, her defenses against a cruel life had been anger and stubbornness. She’d seen herself as the lone defender of the castle, ceaselessly prowling the ramparts, at war with the world. But a constant state of battle readiness had held off friends as well as enemies, and in fact it had prevented her from experiencing the fullness of life, which might have filled those vacant rooms with good memories to balance the bad that cluttered other chambers.

As a matter of emotional survival, she had recently been making an effort to keep her anger sheathed and to let her stubbornness rest in its scabbard. Now she said, “Just milk, Aunt Gen.”

This evening wasn’t about Micky Bellsong, anyway, not about what she wanted or whether she was self-destructive, or whether she would be able to pull her life out of the fire into which she herself had cast it. This evening had become all about Leilani Klonk, if it had not actually been about the girl from the start, and Micky had never in her memory been less focused on her own interests or needs—or resentments.

The request for brandy had been a reflex reaction to the stress of the encounter with Sinsemilla. Over the years, alcohol had become a reliable part of her arsenal, as useful for keeping life at bay as were anger and pigheadedness. Too useful.

Returning to her chair, Geneva said, “So, Micky, will we all be getting together for a neighborly barbecue anytime soon?”

“The woman is either nuts or higher than a Navajo shaman with a one-pound-a-day peyote habit.”

Poking her pie with a fork, Leilani said, “It’s both, actually. Though not peyote. Like I told you—tonight it’s crack cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, much enhanced by old Sinsemilla’s patented brand of lunatic charm.”

Micky had no appetite. She left the pie untouched. “She really was in an institution once, wasn’t she?”

“I told you yesterday. They shot like six hundred thousand volts of electricity through her head—”

“You said fifty or a hundred thousand.”

“Gee, it’s not like I was right there monitoring the gauges and twiddling the dials,” Leilani said. “You’ve got to allow me a
little
literary license.”

“Where was she institutionalized?”

“We lived in San Francisco then.”

“When?”

“Over two years ago. I was seven going on eight.”

“Who did you live with while she was hospitalized?”

“Dr. Doom. They’ve been together four and a half years now. See, there’s even kismet for crackpots. Anyway, the headshrinkers shot like
nine
hundred thousand volts through old Sinsemilla’s noggin, unless you want to nit-pick my figures, and it didn’t help her any way whatsoever, though the feedback of lunacy from her brain probably blew out power-company transformers all over the Bay Area. Great pie, Mrs. D!”

“Thank you, dear. It’s a Martha Stewart recipe. Not that she gave it to me personally. I took it down from her TV show.”

Micky said, “Leilani, for God’s sake, is your mother always like that—the way I just saw her?”

“No, no. Sometimes she’s simply impossible.”

“This isn’t funny, Leilani.”

“You’re wrong. It’s hilarious.”

“The woman is a menace.”

“To be fair,” Leilani said, forking pie into her mouth as she talked, “my dear mater isn’t always drugged out of her mind the way you just saw her. She saves that for special evenings—birthdays, anniversaries, when the moon is in the seventh house, when Jupiter is aligned with Mars, that kind of thing. Most of the time, she’s satisfied with tokin’ on a joint, keeping a nice light buzz, maybe floating on a Quaalude. She even goes clean and straight some days, though that’s when the depression sets in.”

Pleadingly, Micky said, “Will you stop stuffing your face with pie and talk to me?”

“I can talk around the pie, even if it isn’t polite. I haven’t belched all evening, so I ought to have some etiquette points to my credit. I’m not going to miss out on one bite of this. Old Sinsemilla couldn’t bake up anything this good if her life depended on it—not that she’s ever likely to face a pie-or-die threat.”

“What sort of baking does your mother do?” Geneva asked.

“She made an earthworm pie once,” Leilani said. “That was when she was deep in a passionate natural-foods phase that stretched the definition of
natural
to include things like chocolate-covered ants, pickled slugs, and crushed-insect protein. The earthworm pie sort of put an end to all that. I’m absolutely sure it wasn’t a Martha Stewart recipe.”

Micky finished her coffee in long swallows, as though she had forgotten it wasn’t spiked, and though she most definitely didn’t need a caffeine jolt. Her hands were shaking. The cup rattled against the saucer when she put it down.

“Leilani, you can’t go on living with her.”

“With who?”

“Old Sinsemilla. Who else? She’s psychotic. As they say when they commit people to the psychiatric ward against their will—she’s a danger to herself and others.”

“To herself, for sure,” Leilani agreed. “Not really to others.”

“She was a danger to
me
in the yard, all that screaming about hag of a witch bitch and spellcasting and not being the boss of her.”

Geneva had risen from her chair to fetch the pot from the Mr. Coffee machine. She poured a refill for Micky. “Maybe it’ll settle your nerves, dear.”

With no pie left on her plate, Leilani put down her fork. “Old Sinsemilla
scared
you, that’s all. She can be as scary as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and Big Bird all rolled into one, but she’s not dangerous. At least as long as my
pseudo
father keeps her supplied with drugs. She might be a terror if she ever went into withdrawal.”

Freshening her own coffee, Geneva said, “I don’t find Big Bird scary, dear, just unnerving.”

“Oh, Mrs. D, I disagree. People dressing up in big weird animal suits where you can’t see their faces—that’s scarier than sleeping with a nuclear bomb under your bed. You have to figure people like that have real
issues
to resolve.”

“Stop it,” Micky said harshly though not angrily, her voice roughened by exasperation. “Just, please, stop it.”

Leilani pretended puzzlement. “Stop what?”

“You know very well what I mean. Stop all this avoidance. Talk to me,
deal
with this situation.”

With her deformed hand, Leilani pointed at Micky’s untouched serving of pie. “Are you going to eat that?”

Micky pulled the plate closer to herself. “I’ll trade pie for a serious discussion.”

“We’ve been
having
a serious discussion.”

“There’s half a pie left,” Geneva offered cheerily.

“I’d love a piece, thanks,” Leilani said.

“The half that’s left is off-limits,” Micky declared. “The only pie in play is my piece.”

“Nonsense, Micky,” Geneva said. “Tomorrow I can bake another apple pie all for you.”

As Geneva rose from the table, Micky said, “Aunt Gen, sit down. This isn’t about pie.”

“It is from
my
perspective,” said Leilani.

“Listen, kid, you can’t come around here, doing your dangerous-young-mutant act, worming your way—”

Grimacing, Leilani said, “Worming?”

“
Worming
your way into…” Micky fell silent, surprised by what she had been about to say.

“Into your spleen?” Leilani suggested.

For longer than she could remember, Micky hadn’t allowed herself to be emotionally affected by anyone to any significant degree.

Leaning across the table as though earnestly determined to help Micky find the elusive word, Leilani said, “Into your gall bladder?”

Caring was dangerous. Caring made you vulnerable. Stay up on the high ramparts, safe behind the battlements.

Geneva said, “Kidneys?”

“Worming your way into our hearts,” Micky continued, because saying
our
instead of
my
seemed to share the risk and to leave her less exposed, “and then expect us not to care when we see the danger you’re in.”

Still armored in drollery, with a full bandolier of cheerful banter, Leilani said, “I never thought of myself as heart-worm, but I guess it’s a perfectly respectable parasite. Anyway, I assure you with all seriousness—if that’s what it takes to get the pie—that my mother isn’t a danger to me. I’ve lived with her ever since she popped me out of the oven, and I’ve still got all my limbs, or at least the same odd arrangement I was born with. She’s pathetic, old Sinsemilla, not fearsome. Anyway, she
is
my mother, and when you’re a nine-year-old girl, even an unusually smart one with a gift for gab, you can’t just pack your bags, walk out, find a good apartment, get a high-paying job in software design, and be tooling around in your new Corvette by Thursday. I’m sort of stuck with her, if you see what I mean, and I know how to cope with that.”

“Child Protective Services—”

“Well-meaning but useless,” Leilani interrupted. She seemed to be speaking from experience. “Anyway, the
last
thing I want is for old Sinsemilla to be put back in the nuthouse for a refresher course in ear-to-ear electrocution, because that’ll leave me alone with my pseudofather.”

Micky shook her head. “They wouldn’t leave you in the care of your mother’s boyfriend.”

“When I call him my pseudofather, I’m indulging in wishful thinking. He’s my legal stepfather. He married old Sinsemilla four years ago, when I was five going on six. I wasn’t reading anywhere near at a college level then, but I understood the implications, anyway. It was an amazing wedding, let me tell you, though there wasn’t a carved-ice swan. Do you like carved-ice swans, Mrs. D?”

Geneva said, “I’ve never seen one, dear.”

“Neither have I. But the idea appeals to me. And so right after he married Sinsemilla, he said that even though he hadn’t actually adopted me and Lukipela, we should start using his last name, but I still use the Klonk I was born with. You’ve got to be mad to be Maddoc—that’s what Luki and I used to say.”

Here came that unsettling shift in the girl’s eyes, like a sudden muddy tide washing through clean water, an uncharacteristic despair that even candlelight was sufficiently bright to reveal.

In spite of the news about the marriage, Micky clung to the hope that her newfound desire to act as—so to speak—her sister’s keeper could be fulfilled at least to some small extent. “Whether he’s your legal stepfather or not, the proper authorities will—”

“The proper authorities didn’t nail the guy who killed Mrs. D’s husband,” Leilani said. “She had to track Alec Baldwin to New Orleans and blow him away herself.”

“With great satisfaction,” Geneva noted, raising her coffee cup as if in a toast to the liberating power of vengeance.

For once, no sparkle of humor enlivened Leilani’s blue eyes, no thinnest paring of a wry smile curled either corner of her mouth, and no sportive note informed her voice as she met Micky’s stare with a piercing directness, and said almost in a whisper, “When you were such a pretty little girl and bad people took things from you that you never-ever wanted to give, the proper authorities weren’t there for you even once, were they, Michelina?”

Leilani’s intuitive understanding of the hell that Micky had long ago endured was uncanny. The empathy in those blue eyes rocked her and left her with the certain sense that the most closely guarded truths about herself had been exposed, ugly secrets around which she had constructed impregnable vaults of shame. And though she had never expected to speak to another human being about those years of ordeal and humiliation, although until this moment she would have angrily denied ever being
anyone’s
victim, she didn’t feel wounded by this exposure, as she would have expected, didn’t feel mortified or in the least diminished, but felt instead as if a painfully constricting knot had at last come loose inside her, and realized that sympathy, as this girl had shown it to her, did not have to contain any element of condescension.