“What’s your homework?”
“Just stuff. Nothing particularly interesting.” He looked around, thinking maybe, by the time he looked back, I’d be gone. But I was still there. “How’s Angie?” he asked.
“She’s good, Trevor.”
“I think she might have something wrong with her cell phone,” he said. “Sometimes, I try to call her, it doesn’t go through.”
“You know how cells are. What were you calling her about? I could pass on a message.”
“College stuff. I was thinking I might try Mackenzie, I think they have a computer science program there, and that would be right up my alley, you know? And if my classes were around the same time as Angie’s, we could share rides. I could drive one week, she could drive the next, that kind of thing. But I’ll talk to her about it myself. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I do worry.”
“What?”
“I worry. I’m kind of a worrier, Trevor. Ask anyone who knows me. I’m a bit over the top at times. Especially where members of my family are concerned. Like Angie. I worry about her. All fathers worry about their daughters.”
“Yeah, I guess they would.” Trevor slipped his shades back on. “There’s a lot of freaky people out there.”
“That’s right,” I said. “So I try to keep as close an eye on her as I can, you know? To make sure she’s okay. Because if something ever happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Trevor nodded in agreement. “I can understand that. Totally.”
“I hope you do,” I said.
We didn’t speak for a moment. Trevor broke the silence. “So, you’ve written some SF.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done a few sci-fi novels.”
“I like sci-fi. But as much as I like the scientific aspect of it, I find there’s something mystical about it, too. There are forces other than those of nature at play. I don’t think science rules everything in the universe.”
“Maybe not,” I said.
“And I believe, sometimes for reasons that we can’t possibly understand, that certain things are meant to happen.”
“Okay.”
“And that there are people out there that we’re destined to meet up with. That everyone has, from the moment they’re born, a certain other person that they’re supposed to hook up with for them to fulfill their destiny.”
“I don’t know much about that,” I said. “It’s not the sort of thing I’ve written about. But it’s one point of view.”
Trevor smiled knowingly, nodded slowly. “It certainly is.”
I tilted my head in the direction of the black Chevy. “That’s your car, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t see a lot of those around,” I said. “They haven’t made that model for quite a few years, have they?”
“I don’t suppose so.”
“And yet, with so few of them around, I saw one at the mall last night, at Midtown? Same color as yours, parked right by the doors.”
Trevor swallowed. “Huh.”
“And then, I was heading out of town, toward Oakwood? And I saw another one, just like it, same color, everything.”
This time, Trevor didn’t even have a “huh” to offer.
“Isn’t that a coincidence,” I said. “That I’d see two cars exactly the same, in different places, in the same evening.”
I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses. Couldn’t tell whether he was looking away.
“Trevor, take your glasses off for a sec.” He sat rigidly, made no move to do what I’d asked. “Trevor, just for a second.”
Slowly, making a ritual of it, he removed the glasses. I eyed him intently.
“I would never want anyone, ever, to hurt my daughter, or scare her, or cause her any trouble.”
“Of course not,” he said, not looking away.
“I just wanted to make myself clear about that.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“So we understand each other,” I said.
“We do,” Trevor said. I nodded my farewell to him, and moved on.
“And don’t buy my son booze anymore,” I added.
“Whatever you say.”
I turned and walked away.
I had two surprises shortly after that.
The first: As I walked by Trevor’s Chevy on the way back to my car, there, asleep in the backseat, was Morpheus.
The second: After I got back in the Virtue, I turned onto Crandall. Looking up the street, I noticed the back end of a big black Annihilator SUV. Trolling past my house, slowly, then picking up speed as it headed north.
23
“CAN WE WATCH TV WHILE WE EAT?” Paul asked, standing next to me in the kitchen.
I was putting linguine on three plates, and had put the salad in a glass bowl with a couple of tongs.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You know how your mother feels about having the TV on during dinner.”
“Yeah, but Mom’s not here. And The Simpsons is on.”
This did raise an interesting question. Did we have to play by Sarah’s rules if Sarah wasn’t home? Especially when The Simpsons was on?