Ticktock (32 page)

At Tommy's right hand, Roland Ironwright, the magician, said, “Relax. Getting married is a snap. I did it myself eighteen hours ago in this very room.”

Accompanied by a nine-piece band, Frank sang, “I've Got the World on a String,” as only Frank had ever been able to sing it, while Mrs. Payne gave Del a final once-over in the vestibule at the back of the chapel.

Then the band struck up “Here Comes the Bride.”

Scootie entered from the vestibule, carrying a nosegay in his mouth, which he brought to Tommy.

Behind Scootie was Mai, Tommy's sister, radiant as he had never seen her. She carried a white basket full of rose petals, which she sprinkled on the carpet as she advanced.

Del appeared, and everyone seated in the chapel rose to beam at her as she approached the altar.

Somehow Frank managed to ad-lib additional lyrics to “Here Comes the Bride,” adding lines like “she looks so groovy, like she stepped out of a movie,” without diminishing the beauty and solemnity of the piece. Indeed, if anything, his version enriched the old standard, and he sounded fifty years younger than he was, not like a crooner in the twilight of his life but like a young swinger in the days of the Dorsey Brothers and Duke Ellington.

When Tommy handed the nosegay to Del and took her arm to lead her to the altar, his heart swelled with love.

The minister was mercifully swift in the performance of his sacred duties, and precisely when it was needed, Roland Ironwright cut open a fresh orange and produced the wedding band from the heart of the fruit.

After the minister pronounced them man and wife at 11:34 in the morning, less than eighteen hours after they had first met, Tommy and Deliverance indulged in another kiss of earthshaking power, only the second they had ever shared, and the onlookers applauded joyously.

From his place in front of the band, Frank called out to Del's mother, “Hey, Sheila, you wonderful broad, come up here and do this number with me!”

Del's mother joined him, and they shared a microphone to belt out an up-tempo rendition of “I've Got You Under My Skin,” which served as a recessional.

In the receiving line outside, Del reminded everyone about the reception at the grand ballroom of the Mirage at seven o'clock that evening. It promised to be the party of the year.

When the two of them were alone again with Scootie in the back of the limousine, returning to the hotel, Del said to Tommy, “Are you tired yet?”

“I don't understand it, but I feel as if I just woke up from the longest sleep on record. I've got so much energy it's absurd.”

“Lovely,” she said, snuggling against him.

He put his arm around her, suddenly excited by the warmth of her and by the exquisite perfection with which her supple body molded to his.

“We're not going back to the hotel,” she told him.

“What? Why not?”

“I told Mummingford to take us to the airport. We're flying back to Orange County right away.”

“But I thought…I mean…aren't we going to…Oh, Del, I want to be alone with you.”

“I'm not going to ask you to consummate until you know all of my secrets,” she said.

“But I
want
to consummate,” he said. “I want to consummate this morning, as soon as possible, right here in the limo!”

“Have you been eating too much tofu?” she asked coquettishly.

“If we go back to Orange County, we'll miss our own party this evening.”

“It's less than an hour's flight each way. We have maybe two hours of business when we get there. We'll make it back with time to spare.” She put a hand in his lap. “With time to consummate.”

         

In her house on Balboa Peninsula, Del led Tommy upstairs to the studio where she created her paintings.

Canvases were hung on all sides, and others stood in stacks against one wall, at least a hundred altogether. Most of them were exceedingly strange landscapes of places that could never exist in this world, scenes of such stunning beauty that the sight of them brought tears to Tommy's eyes.

“I painted these by remote viewing,” she said, “but someday I hope to travel there.”

“Where?”

“I'll tell you later.”

Eight paintings were different from all the others. They were portraits of Tommy, rendered with a photographic realism equal to that with which the landscapes had been painted.

Blinking in astonishment, he said, “When did you do these?”

“Over the past two years. That's how long I've been having dreams about you. I knew you were the one, my destiny, and then last night you just walked into the restaurant and ordered two cheeseburgers.”

         

The living room in the Phan house in Huntington Beach was remarkably similar to the living room of the Dai house, although the furnishings were somewhat more expensive. A painting of Jesus, revealing His Sacred Heart, hung on one wall, and in a corner was a Buddhist shrine.

Mother Phan sat in her favorite armchair, slack-jawed and pale, having taken the news of the wedding as though she had been hit in the face with a skillet.

Scootie licked one of her hands consolingly, but she didn't seem to be aware of the dog.

Del sat on the sofa with Tommy, holding his hand. “First, Mrs. Phan, I want you to understand that the Paynes and the Phans could be the most wonderful combination of families imaginable, a tremendous union of talents and forces, and my mother and I are prepared to embrace all of you as our own. I want to be given a chance to love you and Mr. Phan and Tommy's brothers and his sister, and I want all of you to learn to love me.”

“You steal my son,” said Mother Phan.

“No,” Del said, “I stole a Honda and later a Ferrari, and then we borrowed the Peterbilt that the demon stole, but I didn't steal your son. He gave his heart to me of his own free will. Now, before you say anything more that might be rash, that you might later come to regret having said, let me tell you about my mother and me.”

“You bad news.”

Ignoring the insult, Del said, “Twenty-nine years ago, when my mom and dad were driving from Vegas to a poker tournament in Reno, taking a scenic route, they were abducted by aliens from a lonely stretch of highway near Mud Lake in Nevada.”

Gazing at Del, his head ringing like a gong with remembered lines of conversation that had seemed like sheer lunacy when she had spoken them, Tommy said, “South of Tonopah.”

“That's right, darling,” said Del. To Tommy's mother, she said, “They were taken up to the mothership and examined. They were allowed to remember all of this, you see, because the aliens who abducted them were
good
extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, most of the abductions are perpetrated by evil ETs whose plans for this planet are nefarious in the extreme, which is why they block abductees' memories of what happened.”

Mother Phan scowled at Tommy. “You rude to Mrs. Dai, won't even stay for tea, run off and marry
crazy
woman.” She discovered Scootie licking her hand, and she shooed him away. “You want lose tongue, you filthy dog?”

“Anyway, in the mothership, hovering above Mud Lake,” Del continued, “the aliens took an egg from my mother, sperm from Daddy, added some genetic wizardry of their own, and implanted Mother with an embryo—which was me. I am a starchild, Mrs. Phan, and my mission here is to ferret out damage done by certain other extraterrestrials—which often includes teaching people like Mrs. Dai to perform evil mojo—and set things right. Because of this, I lead an eventful life, and often a lonely one. But at last…not lonely any more, because I have Tommy.”

“World full of lovely Vietnamese girls,” Tommy's mother told him, “and you run away with crackpot maniac blonde.”

“When I reached puberty,” Del said, “I began to acquire various extraordinary powers, and I suppose I might continue to acquire even more as the years go by.”

Tommy said, “So that's what you meant when you said you'd have been able to save your father if he hadn't gotten cancer before you reached puberty.”

Squeezing his hand, Del said, “It's all right. Fate is fate. Death
is
just a phase, just a transition between this and a higher existence.”

“The David Letterman show.”

Grinning, Del said, “I love you, tofu man.”

Mother Phan sat as stone-faced as an Easter Island monument.

“And Emmy, the little girl…the daughter of the guard at the gatehouse,” Tommy said. “You
have
cured her.”

“And gave you a massage on the carousel that means you'll never need to sleep again.”

He raised one hand to the back of his neck, and as his heart began to race with exhilaration, he remembered the tingle of her fingers as they had probed his weary muscles.

She winked. “Who wants to sleep when we could use all that time to consummate?”

“Don't want you here,” said Mother Phan.

Turning to her mother-in-law again, Del said, “When the aliens returned Mom and Daddy to that highway south of Tonopah, they sent along one of their own as a guardian, in the form of a dog.”

Tommy would have thought that nothing on earth could have torn his attention away from Del at that moment, but he turned his head to Scootie so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash.

The dog grinned at him.

“Scootie,” Del explained, “has greater powers than I do—”

“The flock of birds that distracted the demon,” Tommy said.

“—and with your indulgence, Mrs. Phan, I will ask him to give a little demonstration to confirm what I've told you.”

“Insane crazy American maniac blond lunatic,” Mother Phan insisted.

The Labrador sprang onto the coffee table, ears pricked, tail wagging, and gazed so intently at Mother Phan that she pressed back into her armchair in alarm.

Above the dog's head, a sphere of soft orange light formed in the air. It hung there a moment, but when Scootie twitched one ear, the light spun away from him and whirled around the room. When it passed an open door, the door flew shut. When it passed a closed door, the door flew open. All the windows rose as if flung up by invisible hands, and balmy November air blew into the living room. A clock stopped ticking, unlighted lamps glowed, and the television switched on by itself.

The sphere of light returned to Scootie, hovered over his head for a moment, and then faded away.

Now Tommy knew how Del had started the yacht without keys and how she had hot-wired the Ferrari in two seconds flat.

The black Labrador got off the coffee table and padded to his mistress, putting his head on her lap.

To Tommy's mother, Del said, “We'd like you and Mr. Phan and Tommy's brothers and their wives, all his nieces and nephews, to come to our party tonight in Las Vegas and celebrate our marriage. We can't fit you all in the LearJet, but Mother has leased a 737, which is standing by at the airport right now, and if you hurry, you can all be there with us tonight. It's time for me to quit my job as a waitress and get on with my real work. Tommy and I are going to lead eventful lives, Mrs. Phan, and we'd like all of you to be a part of that.”

Tommy couldn't read the wrenching series of emotions that passed across his mother's face.

Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured appreciatively to him: “Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.”

After a while, Mother Phan got up from her chair. She went to the television and turned it off.

She went to the Buddhist shrine in the corner, struck a match, and lit three sticks of incense.

For perhaps two or three minutes, the survivor of Saigon and the South China Sea stood staring at the shrine, inhaling the thin and fragrant smoke.

Del patted Tommy's hand.

At last his mother turned away from the shrine, came to the sofa, and stood over him, scowling. “Tuong, you won't be doctor when want you be doctor, won't be baker when want you be baker, write stories about silly whiskey-drunk detective, won't keep old ways, don't even remember how speak language from Land of Seagull and Fox, buy Corvette and like cheeseburgers better than
com tay cam,
forget your roots, want to be something never can be…all bad, all bad. But you make best marriage any boy ever make in history of world, so I guess that got to count for something.”

         

By four-thirty that afternoon, Tommy, Del, and Scootie were back in their suite at the Mirage.

Scootie settled in his bedroom to crunch dog biscuits and watch an old Bogart and Bacall movie on television.

Tommy and Del consummated.

Afterward, she didn't bite his head off and devour him alive.

That evening at the reception, Mr. Sinatra called Mother Phan “a great old broad,” Mai danced with her father, Ton got tipsy for the first time in his life, Sheila Ingrid Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith answered to three other names, and Del whispered to Tommy as they did a fox trot, “This is reality, tofu man, because reality is what we carry in our hearts, and my heart is full of beauty just for you.”

A NOTE TO THE READER

Ticktock
is a new novel, not a revision of a book originally released under a pen name, as have been some recent paperbacks in my publication schedule. Inevitably, many of you will write to me to inquire why this story appeared initially in paperback without first being published in hardcover. To forestall those letters, I will give you a peek into my—admittedly disordered—mind.

Two and a half years ago, when I finished
Dark Rivers of the Heart,
one of the most intense and arguably most complex books I had ever done, I was exhausted; more to the point, I was shaken by the darkness of the story. I decided that I needed to tackle a project that was considerably lighter in tone.

Over the years, I've become known for mixing different genres of fiction with reckless abandon—suspense and terror and mystery and love story and a little science fiction—changing the mix with every novel. In a number of books—
Watchers, Lightning, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Mr. Murder,
to name a few—I've even blended large measures of humor into the mix, though, according to the common wisdom of modern publishing, this is a sure sales squelcher. These became some of my most successful novels, however, and readers responded to them enthusiastically. Consequently, after
Dark Rivers of the Heart,
I decided to tackle a new and strange mix of genres: the supernatural thriller and the screwball comedy.

Good screwball comedy—exemplified by splendid old movies like
Bringing Up Baby
and
The Philadelphia Story
—is different from all other comedy in that its form is nearly as strict as that of the sonnet. Some basic requirements include the following elements: the male lead must be smart, witty, sensible, but befuddled by the other eccentric characters with whom he becomes involved; the appealing female lead appears to be an airhead but turns out, by the end, to be the wisest of all the characters; she should also be an heiress; she should have an astonishingly eccentric but lovable family; all of the screwball characters should be largely unaware of the way in which they leave the male lead in a state of perpetual confusion; the dialogue should be of a rarefied type that has characters talking at cross purposes and that allows the most outrageous things to be said with convincingly deadpan seriousness; the story should be propelled by surprising character twists and revelations that delight us and that are logical
within the given structure of the story;
and if possible, there ought to be a dog.

When I began
Ticktock
in early 1994, I had fun with it—but then I hit a wall. Something was wrong. I couldn't identify the trouble, so I put the book aside. Instead, I wrote
Intensity,
which turned out to be the scariest and fastest-paced novel I had ever written. Even
Dark Rivers of the Heart
had made room for some humor, if less than usual, but
Intensity
was perhaps (if reviewers can be believed) as unrelenting as a thriller can be, and I finished it with a deep
need
to write something lighter.

When I returned to
Ticktock,
I realized at once what the problem was. The lead character didn't work. He needed to be a Vietnamese-American. You know why if you've read the book before reading this afterword. Suddenly the story flew. As is the tradition with pure screwball comedy, the humorous elements are quiet at first; comic chaos builds slowly through the first third of this supernatural thriller, but then escalates page by page.

The revelations in
Ticktock
left me wide-eyed with wonder as they unfolded, and I came to love the characters—Tommy, Del, their mothers, Scootie the dog—so much that I was dismayed when I reached the final page and couldn't follow their adventures any further, couldn't hear what they would say next. After the darkness and intensity of
Intensity,
writing
Ticktock
buoyed me.

Nevertheless, I didn't feel the book was long enough to justify a hardcover price. Every book sets its own length, and it can't be stretched or condensed to meet either the author's preferred word count or market requirements. From time to time, therefore, if a book comes in shorter, I think the reader should not be asked to pay hardcover prices. So here are the adventures of Tommy Phan, Del Payne, Scootie, and their families, with the hope that you have as much fun with them as I did.

—D
EAN
K
OONTZ
May 1996