One Door Away from Heaven

Instead, she told herself that now more than ever, she needed her anger, because it was her fiery wrath that tempered her and made her tough, that ensured her survival, that motivated. Drink often fueled her anger, and so she drank now in the service of Leilani.

Later, when she poured a third portion of vodka more generous than either of the previous rounds, she braced herself with the same lie once more. This wasn’t really vodka for Micky. This was anger for Leilani, a necessary step toward winning freedom for the girl.

At least she knew the excuse was a lie. She supposed that her inability to fully deceive herself might eventually be her salvation. Or damnation.

The heat. The dark. From time to time the wet rattle of melting ice shifting in the bucket. And without cease, the hum of traffic on the freeway, engines stroking and tires turning: an ever-approaching burr that might be the sound of hope, but also ever receding.

Chapter 25

SOME DAYS SINSEMILLA stank like cabbage stew. Other days she drifted in clouds of attar of roses. Monday, she might smell like oranges; Tuesday, like St.-John’s-wort and celery root; Wednesday, faintly like zinc and powdered copper; Thursday, like fruitcake, which seemed to Leilani to be the most appropriate of all her mother’s fragrances.

Old Sinsemilla was a devoted practitioner of aromatherapy and a believer in purging toxins through reverse osmosis in a properly formulated hot bath. She traveled with such a spectacular omnium-gatherum of bath additives that any citizen of medieval times would have recognized her at once as an alchemist or sorcerer. Extracts, elixirs, spirits, oils, essences, quintessences, florescences, salts, concentrates, and distillations filled a glittery collection of vials and charming ornate bottles fitted in two custom-designed carrying cases, each as large as a Samsonite two-suiter, and both bags now stood bursting with potential in this rank, mildew-riddled bathroom. Leilani knew that many intelligent, well-balanced, responsible, and especially good-smelling people practiced aromatherapy and toxin purging. Yet she shied from using the bath seasonings for the same reason that she didn’t participate in any of her mother’s eccentric interests or activities, even when some of them appeared to be fun. She feared that a single indulgence in the pleasures of Sinsemilla—for example, a luxurious bath infused with coconut oil and distilled essence of cocoa butter—would be the first step on a slippery slope of addiction and insanity. Regardless of who her father might have been, Klonk or not Klonk, she was undeniably her mother’s daughter; therefore, her genes might be her destiny if she wasn’t careful.

Besides, Leilani didn’t want to purge herself of all her toxins. She was comfortable with her toxins. Her toxins, accumulated through more than nine years of living, were an integral part of her, perhaps more important to the definition of who she was than medical science yet realized. What if she purged herself of every particle of toxic substances and then woke up one morning to discover that she wasn’t Leilani anymore, that she was the pope or maybe some pure and saintly girl named Hortense? She didn’t have anything against the pope or saintly girls named Hortense, but more than not, she liked herself, warts and all, including grotesque appendages and strange nodules on the brain—so she would just have to remain saturated with toxins.

Instead of a bath, she took a shower. Her soap of choice—a cake of Ivory—worked well enough to scrub the snake ichor from her hands, to sluice away the sweat of the day, and to remove every trace of the salty tears that offended her more than oozing serpent guts.

Mutants do not cry. In particular, dangerous mutants. She had an image to protect.

Usually, she avoided the shower and soaked in the tub—though with nothing more fragrant than Ivory soap and sometimes with an imaginary sumo wrestler and professional assassin named Kato, with whom she devised elaborate acts of revenge on her mother and on Dr. Doom. This night, in spite of what Sinsemilla had done, Leilani wasn’t in the mood to conjure up Kato.

The shower wasn’t as safe as the tub. Whenever she took off her leg brace, she was hesitant to risk standing on a slippery surface.

As now, however, she sometimes showered without removing the brace. Afterward, she’d have to towel it well and use a hair dryer on the joints, but an occasional drenching wouldn’t hurt it.

The grim device wasn’t a standard orthopedic knee brace; those were mostly designed from formed plastic, leather straps, and elastic belts. Leilani liked to believe that this contraption had a nicely ominous, killer-cyborg quality. Made of steel, hard black rubber, and foam padding, it provided to her some of the style and sexy allure of a robot hunter who had been constructed in a laboratory in the future and sent back in time by an evil machine intelligence to track down and destroy the mother of its most effective human enemy.

After blow-drying her hair and her leg brace, the young killer cyborg wiped the steam off the mirror and studied her torso. No boobs yet. She hadn’t expected any dramatic change, just perhaps vague swellings, like an attractively aligned pair of mosquito bites.

A month ago, she had read a magazine article about enlarging your br**sts through the power of positive thinking. Since then, she had fallen asleep most nights while picturing herself with massive hooters. The author of the article was probably full of beans, but Leilani figured she’d sleep better if she dozed off while positively thinking herself into a C-cup instead of brooding about all the many problems in her life, which she could dwell on if she ever wanted to explore the power of negative thinking.

Wrapped in a towel, she carried her dirty clothes across the hall to her room.

All was quiet in the kingdom of Cleopatra. No throb of camera flash. No declaiming in a phony Old English accent.

Leilani dressed in a pair of summer-weight cotton pajamas. Midnight-blue shorts and matching short-sleeved top. On the back of the shirt, a cool yellow-and-red logo said ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO. On the front, the word STARCHILD was emblazoned in two-inch red letters.

She’d seen the pajamas on the recent tour through the saucer sites of New Mexico, and it had seemed to her that acting silly-kid excited about them would help convince Dr. Doom that she continued to believe his cockamamie story about Luki being levitated to the mother ship. The aliens sometimes abduct people right out of bed, Preston. You told us stones like that. Well, gee, then for sure if I’m wearing these jammies, they’ll know I’m ready to go, I’m pumped, I’m psyched. Maybe they’ll beam me up before my birthday, bring me and Luki back together, with a new leg and new hand for the party!

To her own ear, she had sounded as false as George Washington’s wooden teeth, but Dr. Doom had heard only sincerity. He didn’t know squat about kids, didn’t care to learn, and lie expected them to be excitable and shallow and, in general, dorky to the max.

He always bought her what she requested—the pajamas were no exception—probably because these gifts made him feel better about scheming to kill her. Leilani seldom asked for more than paperback books. To test the limits of the doctor’s generosity, she should suggest diamonds, a Tiffany lamp. No matter how ingenuously she phrased the request, asking for a shotgun would probably alarm him.

Now, boldly identified as a starchild, virtually daring the ETs to come and get her, she picked up the first-aid kit from her dresser and returned to her mother’s room.

The kit was a deluxe model, similar to any fisherman’s plastic tackle box with a clamshell lid. Dr. Doom wasn’t a medical doctor, but as a seasoned motor-home enthusiast, he understood the need to be prepared for minor injuries while on the road. And because Leilani understood her mother’s penchant for mishap and calamity, she had added supplies to the basic kit. She kept it always near at hand.

Red blouses still draped the lamps. The scarlet light no longer fostered a brothel atmosphere; in view of recent events in this room, the feeling was now palace-of-the-Martian-king, creepy and surreal.

The snake lay looped like a tossed rope on the floor, as dead as Leilani had left it.

Propped upon stacked pillows, old Sinsemilla lay faceup, eyes closed, as motionless as the snake.

Leilani had needed the shower, the change of clothes, and time to gather the raveled ends of herself before she had been able to return here. She hadn’t been Leilani Klonk when she hurried from this room. She’d been a frightened, angry, and humiliated girl, panicked into flight. She would not ever be that person again. Never. The real Leilani was back—rested, refreshed, ready to take care of business.

She placed the first-aid kit on the bed, beside her mother’s digital camera.

Sinsemilla snored softly. Having crashed from her chemical high, she was planted deeper than sleep, though not as deep as coma. She’d probably lie limp and unresponsive until late morning.

Leilani timed her mother’s pulse. Regular but fast. Metabolism racing to rid the body of drugs.

Although the serpent hadn’t been poisonous, the bite looked wicked. The punctures were small. No blood flowed now, but much of the surrounding soft tissue was blue-black. Probably just bruises.

Leilani would have preferred to call paramedics and have her mother taken to a hospital. Sinsemilla would then, of course, be mad-dog furious for having been subjected to university-trained doctors and Western medicine, which she despised. When she returned home, she would launch a campaign of hectoring recriminations that would last hours, days, until you prayed to go deaf and considered cutting off your ears with an electric carving knife just to change the subject.

Besides, if Sinsemilla flipped out when she woke up and found herself in a hospital, her performance might earn a transfer to the psychiatric ward.

Then Leilani would be alone with Dr. Doom.

He wasn’t a diddler. She’d told Micky the truth about that.

He did kill people, however, and though he wasn’t a hotheaded homicidal maniac, though he was a comparatively genteel murderer, you nevertheless didn’t want to be alone with him any more than you would want to be alone with Charles Manson and a chain saw.

Anyway, when the doctors learned Sinsemilla was the wife of that Preston Claudius Maddoc, the chances of their transferring her to a head-case ward would diminish to zero. They might send her home in a stretch limousine, perhaps with a complimentary he**in lollipop.

In most cases, these circumstances—drug-soaked psycho mother, dead snake, traumatized young mutant girl—would mobilize government social workers to consider placing Leilani temporarily in foster care. Already separated from Luki forever, she would be willing to risk a foster home, but this wouldn’t be handled like an ordinary case, and she wouldn’t be given that opportunity.

Preston Claudius Maddoc wasn’t an ordinary mortal. If anyone attempted to take his stepdaughter from him, powerful forces would spring to his defense. Like most district attorneys and police coast to coast, local authorities would probably decline to do battle with him.

Short of being caught on video in the act of blowing someone’s bruins out, Preston Maddoc was untouchable.

Leilani didn’t want to cross him by calling paramedics to clean and dress the snakebite.

If he began to think she was a troublemaker, he might decide to prepare a nice dirt bed for her, like the one he’d made for Lukipela, and put her to sleep in it immediately, instead of waiting any longer for the extraterrestrials to show up. Then for Sinsemilla’s delight, the doom doctor would concoct a heartwarming story about a twinkly cute spaceship, smartly tailored alien diplomats from the Parliament of Planets, and Leilani waving goodbye with an American flag in one hand and a Fourth of July sparkler in the other as she ascended in a pale green levitation beam.

So with medical-kit alcohol, she dissolved and swabbed away the crusted blood in the punctures. She applied hydrogen peroxide, too, which churned up a bloody foam. Then she worked sulfacetamide powder into the wounds with a small syringelike applicator.

A few times, Sinsemilla whimpered or groaned, although she never woke or attempted to pull away from Leilani.

If the fangs had reached the bone, infection would most likely develop regardless of these simple efforts to flush the wounds with antiseptics. Then, Sinsemilla might feel differently about seeing a university-trained doctor.

Meanwhile, Leilani did the best that she could with the skills she had and with the materials at her disposal. After using dabs of Neosporin to seal the sulfacetamide in the punctures, she bandaged the wound to keep it clean.

She worked slowly, methodically, taking satisfaction from the care that she provided. In spite of the Martian light and the dead snake, there was a peaceful quality to the moment that she savored for its rarity.

Even disheveled, in the dirty rumpled full-length slip with its squashed and filthy flounce, Sinsemilla was beautiful. She might indeed have been a princess once, in a previous incarnation, during another life when she’d not been so confused and sad.

This was nice. Quiet. Placing a nonstick cotton pad over the punctures. Opening a roll of two-inch-wide gauze bandage. Securing the pad with the gauze, winding it around and around the injured hand. Finishing it with two strips of waterproof tape. Nice. This tender, quiet caregiving was almost a normal mother-daughter moment. It didn’t matter that their roles were reversed, that the daughter was providing the mothering. Only the normality mattered. The peace. Here, now, Leilani was overcome with a pleasant if melancholy sense of what might have been—but never would be.

Chapter 26

ATTHETOPOFTHE SLOPE, dog and boy—one panting, one gasping—halt and turn to look back toward the highway, which lies a third of a mile to the south.

If Curtis had just finished a plate of dirt for dinner, his tongue could not have felt grainier than it did now, and the plaque of dust gritting between his teeth could not have been more vile. He is unable to work up enough saliva to spit out a foul alkaline taste. Having been raised for a time on the edge of a desert more forbidding than this one, he knows that sprinting flat-out through such terrain in twenty-percent humidity, even long after sundown, is extremely debilitating. They have hardly begun to run, and already he feels parched.

On the bosom of the dark plain below, a half-mile necklace of stopped traffic, continually growing longer, twinkles diamond-bright and ruby-red. From this elevation, he can see the interdiction point to the southwest. The westbound lanes are blocked by police vehicles that form a gate, and traffic is being funneled down from three lanes to one.

North of the highway, near the roadblock, the large, armored, and perhaps armed helicopter stands in open land. The rotors aren’t turning, but evidently the engines are running, since the interior is softly illuminated. From the open double-bay doors in the chopper’s fuselage, sufficient light escapes to reveal men gathered alongside the craft. At this distance, it’s impossible to discern whether these are additional SWAT-team units or uniformed troops.