What if there were houses that no one lived in, though, houses that had never had a single occupant? There were plenty of houses like that just up the street: the other half of the development on Tremaine Street, the ones that had gone unsold. It was the best option that Lila could think of.
Once she had explained it to her son and her husband, Lila was drained. She felt ill and scraped, like a flu was coming on her. Hadn’t a stoner she’d arrested once for breaking and entering warned her about this, about the pain of drugs wearing off? “Anything, any risk to avoid the come-down,” he’d said. “The come-down is ruination. Death to your happy.”
Clint and Jared didn’t say anything immediately. The three of them were standing in the living room.
“Is that—a baby?” Jared finally asked.
She handed the cocoon to him. “Yes. Roger Elway’s daughter.”
Her son pulled the baby close. “This could probably get worse,” he said, “but I don’t know how.”
Lila reached up and traced the hair at Jared’s temple. The difference between the way Terry had held the baby—like it might explode or shatter—and the way Jared held it made her heart pick up speed. Her son hadn’t given up. He was still trying to be human.
Clint shut the sliding glass door, closing off the smell of smoke. “I want to say you’re being paranoid about hiding sleepers—or storing them, to use your word—but you might be onto something. We could bring Molly and the baby and Mrs. Ransom and whoever else we find over to one of the empties.”
“There’s the demo house at the top of the hill,” Jared said. “It’s actually furnished.” And, in response to his mother’s reflexive glance: “Chill. I didn’t go in, just looked through the living room window.”
Clint said, “I hope it’s an unnecessary precaution, but better safe than sorry.”
She nodded. “I think so. Because you’re going to have put me in one of those houses eventually, too. You know that, don’t you?” Lila didn’t say it to shock him or to hurt him. It was just a fact that had to be stated, and she was too tired to gild the lily.
5
The man seated on the toilet in the women’s bathroom stall at the Squeaky Wheel was a wall-eyed character in a rock tee-shirt and dress trousers. He gawked at Michaela. Well, look on the bright side. At least his pants were up.
“Dude,” she said, “this is the ladies’. Another few days and it’ll be all yours for eternity. For now, though, out.” Widespread Panic, his tee-shirt read—of course.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I only need a second.” He gestured at a little clutch in his lap. “I was about to smoke some rocks, but it was too crowded in the men’s room.” He grimaced. “And the men’s room smells like shit. Big shit. That’s unpleasant. Please, if you can be a little patient, I’d appreciate it.” His voice dropped. “I saw some magic earlier tonight. Not Disney magic. Bad magic. I’m pretty steady as a rule, but it kind of freaked me out.”
Michaela took her hand from her purse where she had been holding Ursula’s pistol. “Bad magic, huh? That does sound unsettling. I just drove all the way from DC to find out that my mother’s already asleep. What’s your name?”
“Garth. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” she said. “My mother was a pain in the ass, but there was a lot to like about her. Can I have some of your crack?”
“It’s not crack. It’s meth.” Garth unfastened his clutch and took out a pipe and handed it to her. “But you can certainly have some if you’d like.” Next, he fished out a Ziploc of rocks. “You look just like the girl from the news, you know.”
Michaela smiled. “People are always telling me that.”
6
The catastrophic state of the Squeaky Wheel’s men’s room had likewise driven Frank Geary out to the edge of the parking lot to empty his bladder. In the aftermath of what they had seen—moths born out of fire—it seemed stupid to do anything except go to a bar and drink. With his own eyes he had witnessed something that could not be accounted for. There was another side to the world. There was a deeper stratum that had been wholly invisible until that morning. It hadn’t shown itself as proof of Elaine’s God, though. The moths had grown from the fire, and fire was what was supposed to be waiting at the other end of the spiritual spectrum.
Brush crunched a few yards off. “That bathroom is a fuckin hellhole . . .” The man’s slur trailed off. Frank discerned a narrow shape wearing a cowboy hat.
Frank zipped up and turned to head back to the bar. He didn’t know what else to do. He’d left Nana and Elaine at home, laid out on beach towels in the basement with the door locked.
The man’s voice stopped him.
“Want to hear something crazy? My buddy’s wife, Millie, she works up at the prison, and she says they got a—what, some kind of fee-nom up there. Probably bullshit, that’s my opinion, but . . .” The man’s urine spattered in the brush. “She says this honey, when she sleeps, nothin happens. Wakes up again.”
Frank stopped. “What?”
The man was twisting back and forth in a deliberate fashion, amusing himself by spilling his piss around as widely as possible. “Sleeps and wakes up like normal. Wakes up fine. So my buddy’s wife says.”
A cloud shifted in the sky and moonlight disclosed the distinct profile of that noted dog-beater, Fritz Meshaum. The pubic scrag of hillbilly beard and the deeply sunken area beneath the right cheekbone, where Frank had used the rifle butt to permanently alter the contours of the man’s face, were both clearly visible.
“Who’s that I’m speakin with?” Fritz was squinting ferociously. “That you, Kronsky? How’s that .45 working out for you, Johnny Lee? Fine gun, innit? No, that’s not Kronsky. Christ, I’m not seein double, I’m seein fuckin triple.”
“She wakes up?” asked Frank. “This inmate at the prison wakes up? No cocoon?”
“That’s what I heard, but take it as you will. Say, I know you, mister?”
Frank headed back to the bar without answering. He didn’t have time for Meshaum. It was this woman he was thinking of, this inmate who could sleep and wake up like normal.
7
When Frank rejoined Terry and Don Peters (followed by Garth Flickinger, who came strutting back from the women’s room like a new man), his drinking companions had turned around on the bench of their long table. A man in jeans, a blue chambray workshirt, and a Case gimme cap was on his feet and holding forth, gesturing with a half-full pitcher of beer, and those around him had grown silent, listening respectfully. He looked familiar, a local farmer or maybe a long-haul trucker, his cheeks speckled with beard and his teeth discolored from Red Man, but he had a preacher’s self-assured delivery, his voice rising and falling in cadences that begged for return cries of praise Jesus. Sitting next to him was a man Frank definitely recognized, having helped him select a dog from the shelter when his old one died. Howland, that was his name. Teacher from the community college over in Maylock. Howland was looking up at the sermonizer with an expression of wry amusement.