One Door Away from Heaven

Applying will against matter, on the micro level where will can win, he might disengage the burglar alarm. But he owes the twins some honest answers, and he doesn’t want to leave them entirely mystified.

Besides, after a difficult and tumultuous journey, he has at last found friends. His socializing skills might not be as smooth as he had briefly believed they were, but he has made two fine chums in the dazzling Spelkenfelters, and he is loath to face the world alone again, with just his sister-become. The dog is a cherished companion, but she isn’t all the company that he needs. Though praised by nature poets, solitude is just isolation, and loneliness curls in the heart like a worm in an apple, eating hope and leaving a hollow structure.

Furthermore, the twins remind him of his lost mother. Not in their appearance. For all her virtues, Mom wasn’t born to be a Las Vegas showgirl. The twins’ spirit, their high intelligence, their toughness, and their tenderness are all qualities that his mother possessed in abundance, and in their company, he feels the blessed sense of belonging that arises from being among family.

The weary dog sleeps.

Placing one hand upon her flank, feeling the slow thump of her noble heart, Curtis enters her dreams and grows aware of the playful Presence, from which simple creatures like the dog have not distanced themselves. Worlds away from any place that he has ever called home, the orphaned boy quietly cries, less with grief for his loss than with happiness for his mother; she has crossed the great divide into the light, and now in God’s presence she knows a joy similar to the one that her son had always known in her presence. He can’t sleep, but for a while, he finds a little peace this side of Heaven.

Chapter 52

THE SUN BURNED a bright hole in the western sky, still a few hours above the quenching sea, and the breeze that swept through the trailer park seemed to blow down out of that hole, hot and dry and seasoned with a scent of scorched metal.

Friday afternoon, only five hours after Micky met with Noah Farrel, she loaded a single suitcase in the trunk of her Camaro.

She’d sprung for an oil change, new filters, new fan belts, a lubrication, and four new tires. Counting the money that she had advanced to the detective, more than half her bankroll was gone.

She dared not fail to connect with Leilani in Nun’s Lake, Idaho. Even if she discovered where Maddoc intended to go from there, she probably wouldn’t have enough cash left to chase him down and then get all the way back to California with the girl.

When Micky returned to the house, Aunt Gen was in the kitchen, fitting two Ziploc bags full of ice into a picnic cooler already packed with sandwiches, cookies, apples, and cans of Diet Coke. With these provisions, Micky wouldn’t have to waste time stopping for meals through lunch tomorrow, and she would save money, as well.

“Don’t you try to drive all night,” Aunt Gen cautioned.

“Not to worry.”

“They don’t even have a full day’s head start, so you’ll catch up with them easy enough.”

“I should make Sacramento by midnight. I’ll get a motel there, zonk out for six hours, and try to reach Seattle by tomorrow evening. Then Nun’s Lake, Idaho, late Sunday.”

“Things can happen to women alone on the road,” Geneva worried.

“True. But things can happen to women alone in their own homes.”

Putting the lid on the insulated picnic cooler, Geneva said, “Honey, if the motel clerk looks like Anthony Perkins or if some guy at a service station looks like Anthony Hopkins, or if you meet a man anywhere and he looks like Alec Baldwin, you kick him in the crotch before he has a chance to say two words, and you run.”

“I thought you shot Alec Baldwin in New Orleans.”

“You know, that man’s been pushed off a tall building, drowned, stabbed, mauled by a bear, shot—but he just keeps coming back.”

“I’ll be on the lookout for him,” Micky promised, lifting the picnic cooler off the table. “As for Anthony Hopkins—Hannibal Lecter or not, he looks like a Huggy Bear.”

“Maybe I should go along with you, dear, ride shotgun,” Geneva said, following Micky to the front door.

“Maybe that would be a good idea if we had a shotgun.” Outside, she squinted into the hard sunlight that flared off the white Camaro. “Anyway, you’ve got to stay here to take Noah Farrel’s call.”

“What if he never calls?”

At the car, Micky opened the passenger’s door. “He will.”

“What if he can’t find the proof you need?”

“He will,” Micky said, setting the cooler on the passenger’s seat. “Listen, what’s happened to my aunt Sunshine all of a sudden?”

“Maybe we should call the police.”

Micky closed the car door. “Which police would we call? Here in Santa Ana? Maddoc’s not in their jurisdiction anymore. Call the cops in whatever town he might be passing through in California or Oregon, or Nevada, depending on the route he’s taken? Hitler could be passing through, and as long as he kept moving, they wouldn’t care. Call the FBI? Me an ex-con, and them busy chasing drug lords?”

“Maybe by the time you get to Idaho, this Mr. Farrel will have your proof, and you can go to the police up there.”

“Maybe. But it’s a different world from the one you see in those old black-and-white movies, Aunt Gen. Cops cared more in those days. People cared more. Something happened. Everything changed. The whole world feels . . . broken. More and more, we’re on our own.”

“And you think I’ve lost my sunshine,” said Geneva.

Micky smiled. “Well, I’ve never been exactly jolly. But you know, even with this damn hard thing to get done, I feel better than I’ve felt in … maybe better than I’ve ever felt.”

A shadow seemed to pass through Gen’s green eyes, between the lens and an inner light, darkening her stare. “I’m scared.”

“Me too. But I’d be more scared if I wasn’t doing this.”

Geneva nodded. “I packed a little jar of sweet pickles.”

“I like sweet pickles.”

“And a little jar of green olives.”

“You’re the best.”

“I didn’t have any pepperoncini.”

“Oh. Well, then, I guess the trip is off.”

They hugged each other. For a while, Micky thought Gen wasn’t going to release her, and then she herself couldn’t let go.

Gen’s words came as hushed as a prayer: “Bring her back.”

“I will,” Micky whispered, half convinced that making the pledge in a louder voice would seem like bragging and would tempt fate.

After Micky got in the car and started the engine, Gen kept one hand on the sill of the open window. “I packed three bags of M&M’s.”

“After this trip, I’ll be on a strict lettuce diet.”

“And, dear, there’s a special treat in a small green jar. Be sure you try it with your dinner tonight.”

“I love you, Aunt Gen.”

Blotting her eyes with a Kleenex, Geneva let go of the door and stepped back from the Camaro.

Then, as Micky pulled away, Geneva hurried after her, waving the tear-dampened tissue.

Micky braked to a full stop, and Gen leaned down to the window again. “Little mouse, do you remember a riddle that I used to puzzle you with when you were just a girl?”

Micky shook her head. “Riddle?”

“What will you find behind the door—“

“—that is one door away from heaven,” Micky completed.

“You do remember. And can you remember how you gave me answer after answer, so many answers, and none of them the right one?”

Micky nodded to avoid speaking.

The shadowed green of Geneva’s eyes shimmered beneath brimming emotion. “I should have known from your answers that something was so wrong in your life.”

Micky managed to say, “I’m okay, Gen. None of that is dragging me down anymore.”

“What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven? Do you remember the right answer?”

“Yes.”

“And do you believe it’s true?”

“You told me the right answer when I couldn’t get it, so it must be true, Aunt Gen. You told me the right answer . . . and you never lie.”

In the afternoon sun, Geneva’s shadow lay longer than she was, thinner than she was, blacker than the blacktop on which it reclined, and the gentle breeze stirred her gold-and-silver hair into a lazily shifting nimbus, with the result that a supernatural quality settled upon her. “Honey, remember the lesson of that riddle. This is a great good thing you’re doing, a crazy-reckless good thing, but if maybe it doesn’t work out, there’s always that door and what’s beyond it.”

“It’s going to work out, Aunt Gen.”

“You come home.”

“Where else am I gonna get free rent and such good cookin’?”

“You come home,” Geneva insisted with an edge of desperation.

“I will.”

Geneva radiant in the sunshine, as though she were as much a source of light as the sun itself. Geneva reaching through the open window to touch Micky’s cheek. Reluctantly withdrawing her hand. No cheerful movie memory softened the anguish of the moment. Then Geneva in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye. Geneva dwindling, shining in the sun, waving, waving. A corner turned, Geneva gone. Micky alone and Nun’s Lake over sixteen hundred miles away.

Chapter 53

PACKED FULL of wizard babies, the hive queen rode into Nevada beside the scorpion who had serviced her, their already inscrutable eyes concealed by sunglasses, a pair of celebrity insects abroad in the royal coach.

They continued to conspire with each other, speaking in lowered voices. Their conversation was punctuated by twitters of laughter and by the queen’s squeals of manic delight.

Considering what old Sinsemilla had already revealed, Leilani couldn’t logically deduce even the general shape of the additional secrets that these two might still share. As a would-be writer, she didn’t worry about her failure of imagination, for no one this side of Hell could be expected to conceive of the horrors that squirmed in the deeper recesses of either her mother’s mind or Dr. Doom’s.

West of Las Vegas, they stopped for lunch in the coffee shop at a hotel-casino surrounded by miles of barren sand and rock. The establishment had been erected in this wasteland not because the natural setting was ideal for a resort, but because a significant percentage of the multitudes who traveled to Vegas would stop here first, impatient to skin Lady Luck, and would themselves be fleeced.

This gaudy dream palace provided cheap drinks to boozehounds, induced compulsive gamblers to bankrupt themselves at games of chance in which the rules gave the main chance to the house, satisfied self-destructive impulses ranging between a lust to consume mountains of rich desserts from an all-you-can-eat buffet to the

sweaty desire to be punished by sadistic prostitutes with whips. Yet even here, the hotel coffee shop offered a cholesterol-free egg-white omelet with fat-free tofu cheese and blanched broccoli.

Trapping Leilani between herself and Preston in a semicircular red leatherette booth, old Sinsemilla ordered two of those flavorless constructions, one for herself and one for her daughter, with dry toast and two fresh-fruit plates. The doom doctor ate a cheeseburger and fries—grinning, licking his lips, being insufferable.

Their waitress was a teenage girl with oily blond hair worn in a shaggy chop that apparently resulted from the risky application of a lawn mower. The name tag on her uniform announced HELLO, MY NAME IS DARVEY. Darvey’s gray eyes were as blank as tarnished spoons. Bored and not inclined to conceal it, she yawned frequently while serving her customers, spoke in a disinterested mumble, moved in a foot-sliding slouch, and got their orders mixed up. When any mistake was called to her attention, she sighed as wearily as a waiting soul in Limbo who had been playing solitaire with an imaginary deck of cards since before three wise men carried gifts to Bethlehem by camel.

Calculating that someone as terminally bored as Darvey might welcome a colorful encounter to relieve the tedium of her day, might actually listen, and might enjoy involvement in a real-life drama, Leilani spoke up when, at the end of lunch, the waitress arrived with the check: “They’re going to take me up to Idaho, smash my skull with a hammer, and bury me in the woods.”

Darvey blinked as slowly as a lizard sunning on a rock.

To Leilani, Preston Maddoc said, “Now, sweetie, be honest with the young lady. Your mother and I aren’t hammer maniacs. We’re ax maniacs. We aren’t going to club you to death. It’s our plan to chop you to pieces and feed you to the bears.”

“I’m entirely serious,” Leilani told Darvey. “He killed my older brother and buried him in Montana.”

“Fed him to bears,” Preston assured the waitress. “As we always do with difficult children.”

Sinsemilla affectionately ruffled her daughter’s hair. “Oh, Lani baby, you are such a morbid child sometimes.”

The slowly, slowly blinking Darvey seemed to wait with coiled tongue for an unwary fly to buzz by.

To this blond gecko, dear Mater said, “Her brother was actually abducted by aliens and is undergoing rehabilitation at their secret base on the dark side of the moon.”

“My mother really believes the alien crap,” Leilani told Darvey, ” ’cause she’s a totally wrecked junkie who’s had like a billion volts shot through her brain in electroshock therapy.”

Her mother rolled her eyes and made an electrical sound, “Zzzt, zzzt,” and laughed, and made it again, “Zzzt, zzzt!”

Playing the stern but loving father, Preston Maddoc said, “Lani, enough already. This isn’t funny.”

Sinsemilla frowned disapprovingly at the pseudofather. “Oh, now, honey, it’s all right. She’s exercising her imagination. That’s good. It’s healthy. I don’t believe in repressing children’s creativity.”

To the waitress, Leilani said, “If you call the cops and swear you saw these two hit me, that’ll start an investigation, and when it’s all over, you’ll be a hero. You’ll be praised on America’s Most Wanted and maybe even hugged on Oprah.”

Putting the lunch check on the table, Darvey said, “This is one of like a million reasons why I’m never having kids.”

“Oh, no, don’t say that,” Sinsemilla objected with deep feeling. “Darvey, don’t deny yourself motherhood. It’s such a natural high, and making a baby bonds you to the living earth like nothing else.”