Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 1)

“Hey!” a man shouted from a gray Honda that had stopped in the middle of the street. I stepped back down off the curb and walked toward the car.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked. I placed him at twenty-six or twenty-seven. His hair was very black, and his razor-thin face was baby ass–smooth and white. The interior of his car reeked of Windex. I didn’t like his eyes.

“Are you Andrew Thomas?” he asked.

Here we go.

Since the publication of my first novel, I’d kept a running count—excluding conferences, literary festivals, and other publicized appearances, this was the thirty-third time I’d been recognized.

I nodded. “No way! I’m reading your book right now. Um, The Incinerator—no, ah, I know what it’s called.…”

“The Scorcher.”

“That’s it. I love it. In fact, I’ve got it with me. Do you think that, um, that…”

“Would you like for me to sign it?”

“Would you?”

“Be happy to.” He reached onto the floorboard in the back, grabbed my newest hardcover, and handed it to me. I guess I just look like I have a pen on me. Sometimes it was disappointing meeting the fans. “You got a pen?” I asked.

“Shit, I don’t—oh, wait.” He opened the glove compartment and retrieved a short, dull pencil. He’d played miniature golf recently. As I took the pencil, I glanced at the jacket of The Scorcher—an evil smiling face, consumed in flames. I hadn’t been particularly pleased with this jacket design, but no one cares what the author thinks.

“You want me just to sign it?” I asked.

“Could you do it to …sign it to my girlfriend?”

“Sure.” Are you gonna tell me her name, or do I have to ask? …I have to ask. “What’s her name?”

“Jenna.”

“J-E-N-N-A?”

“Yep.” I set my book on the roof of his car and scribbled her name and one of the three dedications I always use: “To Jenna—may your hands tremble and your heart pound. Andrew Z. Thomas.” I closed the book and returned it. “She’s gonna love this,” he said, shifting the car back into drive. “Thank you so much.” I shook his cold, thin hand and stepped back over the curb.

As he drove away, I walked through my mother’s uncut grass toward the front door. A gusty wind passed through the trees and tickled my spine. The morning sky was overcast, filled with bumpy mattresslike clouds, which in the coming months might be filled with snow. In the center of her lawn, against the ashen late-October sky, a silver maple exploded in burnt orange.

As I continued through the grass, the appearance of her house grew dismal. Beginning to pull away from the roof, the gutters overflowed with leaves, and the siding had peeled and buckled. Even the yard had turned into a jungle, and I didn’t doubt Mom had fired the lawn service I’d hired for her. She’d been infuriatingly stubborn in her refusal to accept any degree of financial assistance. I’d tried to buy her a new house after The Killer and His Weapon was sold to Hollywood, but she refused. She wouldn’t let me pay her bills, buy her a car, or even send her on a cruise. Whether it was her pride or just ignorance concerning how much money I made, I wasn’t sure, but it irritated me to no end. She insisted on scraping by with Social Security, her teacher’s pension, and the tiny chunk of Dad’s life insurance, now almost gone.

I stepped up onto the front porch and rang the doorbell. Bob Barker’s voice from The Price Is Right escaped through a cracked window. I heard my mother dragging a stool across the floor so she could reach the peephole.

“It’s me, Mom,” I said through the door.

“Andrew, is that you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Three dead bolts turned, and it opened.

“Darling!” Her face brightened—a cloud unveiling the sun. “Come in,” she said, smiling. “Give your mom a hug.” I stepped inside and we embraced. At sixty-five, she seemed to grow smaller every time I visited. Her hair was turning white, but she wore it long, as she always had, pulled back in a ponytail. Though too big for her now, a green dress dotted with white flowers hung upon her feeble frame like outdated wallpaper.

“You look good,” she said, inspecting my waist. “I see you lost that spare tire.” Smiling, she pinched my stomach. She had a paralyzing fear I’d suddenly gain six hundred pounds and become trapped in my house. It was hell being around her if I was the slightest bit overweight. “I told you it wouldn’t take much to lose those love handles. They’re really not attractive, you know. That’s what happens when you spend all your time inside, writing.”

“The yard doesn’t look good, Mom,” I said, walking into the living room and sitting down on the sofa. She walked to the television and turned the volume all the way down. “Is that lawn service not coming anymore?”

“I fired them,” she said, blocking the screen, hands on her hips. “They charged too much.”

“You weren’t paying for it.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said. “And I’m not gonna argue with you about it. I wrote a check to you for the money you gave me. Remind me to give it to you before you leave.”

“I won’t take it.”

“Then the money will go to waste.”

“But the yard looks terrible. It needs to be—”

“That grass is gonna turn brown and die anyway. No need to make a fuss about it now.”

I sighed and leaned back against the dusty, sunken sofa as my mother disappeared into the kitchen. The house smelled of must, aged wood, and tarnished silverware. Above the brick fireplace hung a family portrait that had been taken the summer after Orson and I graduated from high school. The picture was sixteen years old, and it showed. The background had reddened, and our faces looked more pink than flesh-colored.

I remembered the day distinctly. Orson and I had fought about who would wear Dad’s brown suit. We’d both become fixated on it, so Mom had flipped a dime, and I won. Furious, Orson had refused to have his picture taken, so Mom and I went alone to the photographer’s studio. I wore my father’s brown suit, and she wore a purple dress, black now in the discolored photograph. It was eerie to look at my mother and myself standing there alone, with the plain red background behind us, half a family. Sixteen years later, nothing has changed.