noticed a Ziploc bag on the floor. I picked it up, realized it was the set of white plastic buildings from the game of Life. Well, what used to be Life before Lew and I chopped it up for our own game. I scanned the shelves for the Life and Death boards and noticed the piece of wood jutting from an open plastic tub.
The Hellion’s slingshot. My slingshot.
I dropped the bag of playing pieces and picked up the knotty, untrimmed handle of the weapon. Before I could change my mind I tucked it into the back pocket of my jeans, grabbed the comic box, and headed upstairs.
“Del!”
“Shit!” I bobbled the box, caught it.
Bertram stood at the top of the stairs like a low-rent Caesar: the top of his bald head gleaming, a fringe of wet hair stuck out all over like a laurel crown. He wore my mother’s green bathrobe, open at the chest to reveal tufts of gray hair.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What am I . . . ? What are you doing in my mother’s robe?” A disturbing thought crossed my mind. “You didn’t . . . ?”
“Didn’t what?”
He had no idea what I was talking about. “Never mind.” He stepped aside to let me pass. “What are you doing in my mother’s house?”
“She invited me. And wait till she gets home—she’s been so worried about you. I’ve been worried about you! If there’s anything I can do to help you—”
“No. The last thing I need is more of your help.”
“I understand,” he said. His face cinched into a deep frown, and he nodded. “You have every right to be upset. What I did was inexcusable.”
I didn’t have the time to work through Bertram’s guilt with him.
“Listen, does my mother know what happened at the lake? What really happened?”
He suddenly looked apologetic. “Possibly . . .”
“Does she know why the Human League came after me?”
“Have you ever tried to hide anything from that woman?” Bertram said. “It’s like she can smell when you’re not telling her something. Lew didn’t even ride with her—he stayed in the car with Amra—but me, I was trapped! The whole trip back she was pumping me for information, and half the time I didn’t even realize I’d said something I shouldn’t until she gave me that look.” He winced. “Del, you and I’ve both been through intense psychotherapy. We know from shrinks. But your mother, she’s good.”
The All-Seeing Eye of Agamoto, I thought.
“And now you’re living here?” I said.
“Just for a couple days. She said I could take some time to figure out my next step.”
Uh-huh. I wondered which step that would be: back to the hospital, or on to a brand-new cult. Outside the front window the street was clear. “One thing, Bertram—you can’t tell her I was here.”
“Are you crazy? I just told you I can’t keep anything from her!
What is that you’re taking?”
“Nothing, just some of my stuff. Childhood memorabilia.”
“Okay, but what if she—”
“She can’t read your mind,” I said, exasperated. “She’s not a slan.”
He looked like he’d been slapped.
I sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Bertram said sincerely. “I almost got you killed, and for that I’ll be eternally in your debt.”
“I’ve got to get going.” I headed for the kitchen, and Bertram followed.
“I’m serious!” he said. “Anything you want me to do, I’ll do it. Anything.”
How about please don’t screw my mother, I thought. I went to the back door, turned back. “Listen, here’s what you do. Lew and I used this all the time. If she gets suspicious, you admit your guilt, but for something else.”
“Like what?”
building, and opened a door on the first floor. Double beds. The carpet crunched from old spills, and the air was thick with a sickeningly sweet scent—some perfumed cleanser. I expected at any moment to detect the horrible smell it was trying to mask.
“Oh my God,” I said.
O’Connell looked annoyed. “Sleep in the truck, then.”
“No, no, this is great. No fish on the door, but you can’t have everything.”
I dropped my duffel and the comic box onto the bed by the window, thinking I could channel a little fresh air across my face as I slept. I tried to open the window, but it was sealed. Then again, maybe keeping the window closed on the first floor of a shady motel wasn’t such a bad idea. Only one other car in the parking lot right now, but more people would arrive later.
“Checking to see if we were followed?” O’Connell said. “You spent the whole trip looking out the back window, when you weren’t buried in these comics.”
I turned around, and she had the box open. She picked up an issue of RADAR Man, flipped it open to a random page.
“Bertram thought the demons were performing for each other,” I said. “That they were watching each other. But maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe they help each other.”
O’Connell shook her head. “They’re too self-involved, wrapped up in their own stories. They don’t cooperate.”
“What if there was a threat to all of them? Like Dr. Ram—”
“Dr. Ram was killed because he was a threat to some fanatic’s worldview,” she said without looking up. “And this—” She shook the comic. “This makes no sense. ‘Yo, bozo boy’?”
I walked around the side of the bed, looked over her shoulder. It was the climactic fight scene, and my sixth-grade drawing skills had been taxed to their limits. I’d been trying out some of those Jack Kirby forced perspectives, and RADAR Man’s fists looked as big as cars.
“It’s simple,” I said. “RADAR Man, aka Robert Trebor, aka Bob, has tracked Doctor Awkward to his lair in Bob’s hometown.”
“Doctor Awkward?”
“They’re palindromes,” I said. “Doctor Awkward is D-R-A-W—”
“Oh, I got it.”
“Anyway, the doctor’s kidnapped his girlfriend, Hannah, and made a clone of her, except that the polarity of her brain’s been reversed. The clone is evil and left-handed.”
“Of course.”
“So the evil Hannah says, ‘Yo, bozo boy! I’m alive; evil am I!’ And RADAR Man says, ‘Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live!’ ”
“Lovely dialogue,” she said.
“Hey, you try to write in all palindromes. Lew had this book, Big Book of Word Games or something, with pages of these things. We wanted to write the whole story that way, one big continuous palindrome. That would’ve been the ultimate, an entire book you could read forward or backward.”
“The ending is present in the beginning,” she said. “As always.”
“Is that like a theological insight or something?”
