Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"Just a bunch of hooey — "

"I live in a hooey-free zone."

" — but a bunch of hooey that maybe has a second and more serious purpose," Micky suggested.

Returning the potato salad to the refrigerator, Leilani said, "What — you think I'm talking in riddles?"

Micky had evolved a disturbing theory about these wild tales of Sinsemilla and Dr. Doom. If she stated her suspicions directly, however, she would risk driving Leilani to further evasion. For reasons that she hadn't yet found time to analyze, she wanted to provide the girl with whatever help was needed if indeed help was being sought.

Instead of making eye contact, avoiding any approach that might seem like an inquisition, Micky continued rinsing dishes as she said, "Not riddles exactly. Sometimes there are things we can't easily talk about, so we talk around them."

Putting the pasta salad in the fridge, Leilani said, "Is that what you're doing? Talking around what you really want to talk about? And I'm — what? — supposed to guess the true subject?"

"No, no." Micky hesitated. "Well, yes, that is what I'm doing. But I meant maybe you're talking around something when you tell these tall tales about Dr. Doom murdering boys in wheelchairs."

From the corner of her eye, Micky was aware that the girl had stopped working and had turned to face her. "Help me here, Michelina Bellsong. This little chat of ours is making me dizzy. What is it you think I'm talking around?"

"I don't have any idea what you're talking around," Micky lied. "That's for you to tell me. when you're ready."

"How long have you been living with Mrs. D?"

"What's that matter? A week."

"One week, and already you're a master of hugely befuddling conversation. Oh, I'd love to hear what a chinfest between the two of you is like when I'm not here to provide some rationality."

"You provide rationality?" Micky rinsed the last of the dishes. "Just when was the last time you actually ate tofu and canned peaches on a bed of bean sprouts?"

"I never eat it," Leilani said. "The last time old Sinsemilla served it was Monday. So come on, tell me, what do you think I'm talking around? You brought it up, so you must suspect something."

Micky was flummoxed that her amateur psychology was proving to be no more successful than would have been a little amateur nuclear-reactor engineering or a session of brain surgery with kitchen utensils.

Drying her hands on a dishtowel, she turned to the girl. "I don't have any suspicions. I'm just saying, if you want to talk about anything instead of just around it, I'm here."

"Oh, Lord." Although the sparkle in Leilani's eyes might have been read as something other than merriment, the mirth in her voice was unmistakable: "You think I'm making up stories about Dr. Doom killing people because I'm too fearful or too ashamed to bring myself to talk about what he really does, and what you think maybe he really does is have his sweaty, greasy, drooling, lustful way with me."

Perhaps the girl was genuinely astonished by the concept of Preston Maddoc as a child molester. Or perhaps this was nothing more than a pretense of amusement, to cover her discomfort at how close Micky had come to the truth.

The only thing trickier than an amateur using a psychologist's techniques was an amateur trying to interpret a patient's responses. If this had been nuclear-reactor engineering, Micky would already have been reduced to a cloud of radioactive dust.

Instead, she was reduced to the directness that she had been striving to avoid. "Does he?" she asked Leilani.

Picking up Micky's second can of Budweiser from the table, the girl said, "There's at least a million reasons why that's an absurd idea."

"Give me one."

"Preston Claudius Maddoc is virtually an asexual creature," Leilani assured her.

"There's no such thing."

"What about the ameba?"

Micky understood this special girl well enough to know that the mysteries of her heart were many, that the answers to them could be learned only by earning her complete trust, and that her trust could be gained only by respecting her, by accepting her highly ornamental eccentricities, which included playing her baroque conversational games. In that spirit, Micky said, "I'm not sure amebas are asexual."

"Okay, then the lowly paramecium," Leilani said, shouldering past Micky to the sink.

"I don't even know what a paramecium is."

"Good grief, didn't you go to school?"

"I went, but I didn't listen much. Besides, you aren't studying amebas and parameciums in fourth grade."

"I'm not in fourth grade," Leilani said, pouring the warm beer into the sink. "We're twenty-first-century Gypsies, searching for the stairway to the stars, never staying in one place long enough to put down a single rootlet. I'm homeschooled, currently learning at a twelfth-grade level." The beer, foaming in the drain basket, produced a malty perfume that at once masked the faint smell of the hot wax from the candles on the table. "Dr. Doom is my teacher, on paper, but the fact is I'm self-taught. The word for it is autodidact. I'm an autodidact and a good one, because I'll kick my own ass if I don't learn, which is a sight to see with this leg brace." As though to prove how tough she was, Leilani crumpled the empty beer can in her good hand. "Anyway, Dr. Doom might have been an okay professor when he worked at the university, but I can't rely on him to educate me now, because it's impossible to concentrate on your lessons when your teacher has his hand up your skirt."

This time, Micky resisted being charmed. "That's not funny, Leilani."

Staring at the partially crushed can in her small fist, avoiding eye contact, the girl said, "Well, I'll admit it's not as amusing as a good dumb-blonde joke, which I enjoy even though I'm a blonde myself, and it isn't a fraction as hilarious as a highly convincing puddle of plastic vomit, and there's no chance whatsoever I'd be making light of the subject if I were actually being molested." She opened the cabinet door under the sink and tossed the can into the trash receptacle. "But the fact is that Dr. Doom would never touch me even if he were that kind of pervert, because he pities me the way you would pity a truck-smashed dog all mangled but still alive on the highway, and he finds my deformities so disgusting that if he dared to kiss me on the cheek, he'd probably puke up his guts."

In spite of the girl's jocular tone, her words were wasps, and the truth in them appeared to sting her, sharp as venom.

Sympathy cinched Micky's heart, but for a moment she was unable to think of something to say that wouldn't be the wrong thing.

Even more loquacious than usual, talking faster, as though the briefest interruption in the flow of words might dam the stream forever, leaving her parched and mute and defenseless, Leilani filled the narrow silence left by Micky's hesitation: "As long back as I can remember, old Preston has touched me only twice, and I don't mean dirty-old-man-going-to-jail touching. Just ordinary touching. Both times, so much blood drained out of the poor dear's face, he looked like one of the walking dead — though I've got to admit he smelled better than your average corpse."

"Stop," Micky said, dismayed to hear the word come out with a harsh edge. Then more softly: "Just stop."

Leilani looked up at last, her lovely face unreadable, as free of all emotional tension as the countenance of the most serene bronze Buddha.

Perhaps the girl mistakenly believed that every secret of her soul was written on her features, or perhaps she saw more in Micky's face than she cared to see. She switched on the light above the sink, returning them to the silken gloom and the suety glow of the candle flames.

"Are you never serious?" Micky asked. "Are you always making with the wisecracks, the patter?"