“The alpha and the omega,” she said. “I didn’t invent it.” She handed me the comic and walked to her suitcase. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Oh, okay,” I said nonchalantly. “I’ll take one after you.”
She glanced back at me with an expression I couldn’t parse, then picked up a small nylon bag and carried it into the tiny room that held the shower and toilet. She closed the door behind her. After several long minutes, the water sputtered on.
I lay down on my bed and focused on the comic book page, trying to stare past the image of O’Connell, naked, face turned up to the shower head, water streaming down her neck . . . dr. awkward: Do Good’s deeds live on? No, Evil’s deeds do, O God. r a d a r m a n : Egad, an adage! Draw, O coward!
Which doesn’t make much sense, because the doctor doesn’t have a gun. RM’s own RADAR gun knocks both Dr. Awkward and the evil Hannah back into one of the big funhouse mirrors the doctor keeps in
his lair, shattering it. The doctor lies on the floor, stunned, shards of glass around him.
r a d a r m a n : Now I won!
d r . aw k wa r d : Drat such custard!
Then the big revelation: Dr. Awkward pulls down his mask, and it’s Bob’s own face! (As much as I could make it look like the same face. I wasn’t good at faces, or consistency. My specialty was biceps and thigh muscles.)
r a d a r m a n : Is it . . . ? ’Tis I!
The truth finally revealed: Dr. Awkward is Bob’s evil clone. Or, is Bob Dr. Awkward’s good clone? Tune in next month, reader!
O’Connell stepped out of the bathroom, walked toward me. The white motel towel barely reached the tops of her thighs. She looked tiny, birdlike. Fuzzed scalp, nearly translucent ears. Her expression was grave.
I sat up. “What is it?” I said softly.
“I need to know something.” She stood in front of me without moving. Her pale shoulders, still glazed by wet, had pinked under the hot shower. I glanced at the white on white swell of her breasts against the frayed cotton towel, looked away.
I could smell her. Soap, and the danker scent that slipped from between her thighs. From that shadow beneath the hem of the towel.
“I need to know if the boy is watching.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.” On the video he’d come awake as if he’d been jolted from a nightmare. He’d yelled for his mother like a five-year-old. “I don’t think time passes there.”
I lifted a hand, touched the back of her knee, still damp. She closed her eyes. I moved my hand up, fingertips drawing a line of moisture. She gripped my forearm, stopping me. Opened her eyes again. “Please. Does he know what happens to you? Will he remember?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how it all works.”
She stepped back. My fingers slipped from her skin. She turned and walked to her bed. She pulled a handful of clothes from the case and stepped back into the bathroom. I lifted my hand, touched dewy fingers to my lips. I could smell nothing, taste nothing, but the subtle scent of her was still in my mind.
“Shit,” I said quietly.
After ten or fifteen minutes she came back out, dressed in a long T-shirt and nylon running shorts. She brushed her teeth at the sink without looking in the mirror. She straightened the clothes in her suitcase, shut the lid, and set it carefully on the dresser. Then she pulled back the heavy polyester bedcover and slipped under the sheets. She lay faceup, eyes closed.
I picked up my shaving kit and a pair of gym shorts. I turned out the light by my bed, then the overhead light, leaving only the fluorescent above the sink and the light from the bath. As I passed the foot of her bed, she said, “Don’t worry about the lights.”
I stopped. “Are we going to talk about this?”
“I’ve taken a vow of celibacy, Del.” Her voice was flat. Her eyes stayed closed. “I’m your pastor. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
She didn’t answer.
After my shower, I turned out all the lights, and in the dark stuffed my dirty clothes into a corner of the duffel, next to the bike chains. I left the slingshot in the back pocket of my jeans. I hadn’t shown that to her, maybe afraid she’d throw it away like my father’s pistol. I lay in the dark between the scratchy sheets, listening for O’Connell’s breathing. All I could hear was the thrum of trucks on the overpass. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my legs.
A moment before, I’d been dreaming of water, and cold. Paralyzed, I sank through the icy dark. The Black Well filled my vision,
above me and below me at the same time, a bottomless corkscrewing pit, a tunnel into space. I could sense something or someone waiting for me in the tunnel—no, thousands of presences. A vast congregation. The next moment the water vanished. My eyes were closed, or else open but blind in the dark. My lips were covered by a hot weight, my legs still trapped. I knew then that the water had been a memory, a dream, but I couldn’t tell if I’d woken up.
Heat against my cock. I was hard, aching. I thrust into that heat, and my eyes opened a second time. Fully awake now. Electrically awake.
O’Connell sat astride my hips, her lips on mine, her hands pinning my shoulders. She was naked, the muscles of her neck limned in a sliver of lamplight.
I tried to sit up. Her mouth released me, but she didn’t look at my face. She put a hand on my sternum and pushed me onto my back with surprising force. I opened my mouth to speak, and she pressed a hand against my jaw, forcing the side of my head into the mattress, forcing me to look away from her. Her strength was fierce. She began to grind against me. My shorts were still on, but the bedclothes had been pushed down, trapping my ankles.
“O’Connell.” I could hardly speak with her weight on my jaw. She rocked against me and made a sound between a grunt and a sigh.
“O’Connell—”
She didn’t answer. She moved again and the grunt became something like a laugh. I screamed through gritted teeth, twisted my arm out of her grip. Pushed her away from me, sending her tumbling off the bed. She yelped as she hit the floor. I scrambled off the bed and turned to face her, my back pressed against the cold door.
“What the fuck!” O’Connell yelled.
“Who are you?” I said.
She stared up at me—looking me in the face for the first time since I’d woken up. In the dim light I couldn’t make out her eyes.
A long moment, then she said, “Del, it’s me.” She scooted back until she was sitting up against the other bed, one knee drawn up.
“O’Connell. Siobhan.” Her voice sounded the same.
“How do I know?” I said.
“You already know.”
I felt for the light switch, flicked it on. She squinted against the light.
I’d known with the Shug. And I’d known that the Piper at the Hyatt was an imposter. I realized I could always
