Leilani squinted with righteous indignation. “So you refused to give it to him.”
“Heavens, no, dear. We emptied the register and all but thanked him for sparing us the trouble of paying income tax on it.”
“And he shot you anyway?”
“He shot my Vernon twice, and apparently then he shot me.”
“Apparently?”
“I remember him shooting Vernon. 1 wish I didn’t, but] do.” Earlier, sadness had cast a gray shadow across Geneva’s face at the counterfeit memory of her anguish-filled love affair with a heroin junkie; but now a flush of happiness pinked her features, and she smiled. “Vernon was a wonderful man, as sweet as honey in the comb.”
Micky reached for her aunt’s hand. “I loved him, too, Aunt Gen.”
To Leilani, Geneva said, “I miss him so much, even after all these years, but I can’t cry over him anymore, because every memory, even that awful day, reminds me of how sweet he was, how loving.”
“My brother, Lukipela — he was like that.” In spite of this tribute to her brother, Leilani was not inspired to match Geneva’s smile. Instead, the girl’s cocky cheerfulness melted into melancholy. Her clear eyes clouded toward a more troubled shade of blue.
For a moment, Micky perceived in their young visitor a quality that chilled her because it was like a view of the darker ravines of her own interior landscape: a glimpse of reckless anger, despair, a brief revelation of a sense of worthlessness that the girl would deny but that from personal experience Micky recognized too well.
No sooner had Leilani’s defenses cracked than they mended. Her eyes glazed with emotion at the mention of her brother, but now they focused. Her gaze rose from her deformed hand to smiling Geneva, and she smiled, too. “Mrs. D, you said apparently the gunman shot you.”
“Well, I know he shot me, of course, but I have no memory of it. I remember him shooting Vernon, and then the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital, disoriented, more than four days later.”
“The bullet didn’t actually penetrate her head,” Micky said.
“Too hard,” Geneva declared proudly.
“Luck,” Micky clarified. “The angle of the shot was severe. The slug literally ricocheted off her skull, fracturing it, and furrowed through her scalp.”
“So, Mrs. D, how did your wires get scrambled?” Leilani asked, tapping her head.
“It was a depressed fracture,” said Geneva. “Bone chips in the brain. A blood clot.”
“They opened Aunt Gen’s head as though it were a can of beans.”
“Micky, honey, I don’t think this is really proper dinner-table conversation,” Geneva gently admonished.
“Oh, I’ve heard much worse at our house,” Leilani assured them. “Old Sinsemilla fancies herself an artist with a camera, and she has this artistic compulsion to take pictures of road kill when we’re traveling. At dinner sometimes she likes to talk about what she saw squashed on the highway that day. And my pseudofather—“
“That would be the murderer,” Micky interrupted without a wink or a smirk, as though she’d never think to question the outrageous family portrait that the girl was painting for them.
“Yeah, Dr. Doom,” Leilani confirmed.
“Never let him adopt you,” Micky said. “Even Leilani Klonk is preferable to Leilani Doom.”
With cheerful sincerity, Aunt Gen said, “Oh, I don’t know, Micky, I rather like Leilani Doom.”
As though it were the most natural thing to do, the girl picked up Micky’s fresh can of Budweiser and, instead of drinking from it, rolled it back and forth across her brow, cooling her forehead.
“Dr. Doom isn’t his real name, of course. It’s what I call him behind his back. Sometimes at dinner, he likes to talk about people he’s killed — the way they looked when they died, their last words, if they cried, whether they peed themselves, all sorts of kinky stuff.”
The girl put down the beer — on the far side of her plate, out of Micky’s reach. Her manner was casual, but her motive was nonetheless clear. She had appointed herself guardian of Micky’s sobriety.
“Maybe,” Leilani continued, “you think that would be interesting conversation, even if sort of gross, but let me tell you, it loses its charm pretty quick.”
“What’s your pseudofather’s real name?” Geneva asked.
Before Leilani could reply, Micky suggested, “Hannibal Lecter.”
“To some people, his name’s scarier than Lecter’s. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. Preston Maddoc.”
“What an impressive name,” Geneva said. “Like a Supreme Court justice or a senator, or someone grand.”
Leilani said, “He comes from a family of Ivy League academic snots. Nobody in that crowd has a regular first name. They’re worse about names than old Sinsemilla. They’re all Hudson, Lombard, Trevor or Kingsley, Wycliffe, Crispin. You’d grow old and die trying to find a Jim or Bob among them. Dr. Doom’s parents were professors — history, literature — so his middle name is Claudius. Preston Claudius Maddoc.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Micky said.
Leilani appeared to be surprised. “Don’t you read newspapers?”
“I stopped reading them when they stopped carrying news,” said Geneva. “They’re all opinion now, front page to last.”
“He’s been all over television,” Leilani said.
Geneva shook her miswired head. “I don’t watch anything on TV except old movies.”
“I just don’t like news,” Micky explained. “It’s mostly bad, and when it isn’t bad, it’s mostly lies.”
“Ah.” Leilani’s eyes widened. “You’re the twelve percenters.”
“The what?”
“Every time the newspaper or TV people take a poll, no matter what the question, twelve percent of the public has no opinion. You could ask them if a group of mad scientists ought to be allowed to create a new species of human beings crossed with crocodiles, and twelve percent would have no opinion.”
“I’d be opposed,” said Geneva, brandishing a carrot stick.
“Me, too,” Micky agreed.
“Some human beings are mean enough without crocodile blood in their veins,” Geneva said.
“What about alligators?” Micky asked her aunt.
“Opposed,” Geneva responded with firm resolve.
“What about human beings crossed with wildly poisonous vipers?” Micky proposed.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Geneva promised.
“Okay, then what about human beings crossed with puppy dogs?”
Geneva brightened. “Now you’re talking.”
To Leilani, Micky said, “So I guess we’re not twelve percenters, after all. We have lots of opinions, and we’re proud of them.”
Grinning, Leilani bit into a crisp dill pickle. “I really like you, Micky B. You, too, Mrs. D.”
“And we like you, sweetheart,” Geneva assured her.
“Only one of you was shot m the head,” Leilani said, “but you’ve both got scrambled wiring for the most part in a nice way.”
“You’re a master of the gracious compliment,” Micky said.
“And so smart,” Aunt Gen said proudly, as if the girl were her daughter. “Micky, did you know she’s got an IQ of one eighty-six?”
“I thought it would be at least one ninety,” Micky replied.
“The day of the test,” Leilani said, “I had chocolate ice cream for breakfast. If I’d had oatmeal, I might’ve scored six or eight points higher. Sinsemilla’s not a boffo mom when it comes to keeping the fridge stocked. So I took the test through a sugar rush and a major post-sugar crash. Not that I’m making excuses or complaining. I’m lucky there was ice cream and not just marijuana brownies. Heck, I’m lucky I’m not dead and buried in some unmarked grave, with worms making passionate worm love inside my empty skull — or taken away in an extraterrestrial starship, like Lukipela, and hauled off to some godforsaken alien planet where there’s nothing worth watching on TV and the only flavor of ice cream is chunky cockroach with crushed-glass sprinkles.”
“So now,” said Micky, “in addition to your perpetually wasted tofu-peaches-bean-sprouts mother and your murderous stepfather, we’re to believe you had a brother who was abducted by aliens.”
“That’s the current story,” Leilani said, “and we’re sticking to it. Strange lights in the sky, pale green
