Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Part 61

"You look fine," Adam said, as Brent fingered his chin and watched the reflection in the full-length mirror on the door of Alan's study. "You look great."

"I look conspicuous. Visible. Used to be that eyes just slid off of me. Now they'll come to rest on me, if only for a few seconds."

Andy nodded. "Sure, that's right. You know, being invisible isn't the same as being normal. Normal people are visible."

"Yeah," Brad said, nodding miserably. He pawed again at the smooth hollows of his cheeks.

"You can stay in here," Alan said, gesturing at his study. The desk and his laptop and his little beginning of a story sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by a litter of access points in various stages of repair and printed literature full of optimistic, nontechnical explanations of ParasiteNet. "I'll move all that stuff out."

"Yeah," Billy said. "You should. Just put it in the bas.e.m.e.nt in boxes. I've been watching you screw around with that wireless stuff and you know, it's not real normal, either. It's pretty desperately weird. Danny's right -- that Kurt guy, following you around, like he's in love with you. That's not normal." He flushed, and his hands were in fists. "Christ, Adam, you're living in this G.o.dd.a.m.ned museum and nailing those stupid science-fair projects to the sides of buildings. You've got this comet tail of druggy kids following you around, buying dope with the money they make off of the work they do for you. You're not just visible, you're *strobing*, and you're so weird even *I* get the crawlies around you."

His bare feet slapped the s.h.i.+ning cool wood as he paced the room, lame foot making a different sound from the good one.

Andy looked out the window at the green maple-keys rattling in the wind. "They're buying drugs?"

Benny snorted. "You're bankrolling weekly heroin parties at two warehouses on Oxford, and three raves a month down on Liberty Street."

He looked up at the ceiling. "Mimi's awake now," he said. "Better introduce me."

Mimi kept her own schedule, mostly nocturnal, padding quietly around his house while he slept, coming silently to bed after he rose, while he was in the bathroom. She hadn't spoken a word to him in more than a week, and he had said nothing to her. But for the snores and the warmth of the bed when he lay down and the morning dishes in the sink, she might not have been living with him at all. But for his constant awareness of her presence in his house and but for the s.h.i.+rts with cut-away backs in the laundry hamper, he might be living all on his own.

But for the knife that he found under the mattress, compa.s.s set into the handle, serrated edge glinting, he might have forgotten those wings, which drooped near to the floor now.

Footsteps crossing between the master bedroom and the bathroom. Pausing at the top of the stairs. A soft cough.

"Alan?"

"It's okay, Mimi," he said.

She came down in a pair of his boxer shorts, with the topsheet complicatedly draped over her chest in a way that left her wings free. Their tips touched the ground.

"This is my brother Bentley," Adam said. "I told you about him."

"You can see the future," she said reproachfully.

"You have wings," he said.

She held out her hand and he shook it.

"I want breakfast," she said.

"Sounds good to me," Brent said.

Alan nodded. "I'll cook."

He made pancakes and cut up pears and peaches and apples and bananas for fruit salad.

"This reminds me of the pancake house in town," Bart said. "Remember?"

Adam nodded. It had been Ed-Fred-George's favorite Sunday dinner place.

"Do you live here now?" Mimi said.

Alan said, "Yes." She slipped her hand into his and squeezed his thumb. It felt good and unexpected.

"Are you going to tell her?" Billy said.

She withdrew her hand. "What is it." Her voice was cold.

Billy said, "There's no good comes of keeping secrets. Krishna and Davey are planning to attack Kurt. Krishna says he owns you. He'll probably come for you."

"Did you see that?" Adam said. "Him coming for her?"

"Not that kind of seeing. I just understand enough about people to know what that means."

Trey met her at six, and he was paunchier than she'd remembered, his high school brawn run to a little fat. He shoved a gift into her hand, a brown paper bag with a quart of cheap vodka in it. She thanked him simperingly and tucked it in her knapsack. "It's a nice night. Let's get takeout and eat it in High Park."

She saw the wheels turn in his head, meal plus booze plus secluded park equals p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, and she let the tip of her tongue touch her lips. This would be even easier than she'd thought.

"How can you tell the difference?" Arthur said. "Between seeing and understanding?"

"You'll never mistake them. Seeing it is like remembering spying on someone, only you haven't spied on him yet. Like you were standing behind him and he just didn't notice. You hear it, you smell it, you see it. Like you were standing *in* him sometimes, like it happened to you.

"Understanding, that's totally different. That's like a little voice in your head explaining it to you, telling you what it all means."

"Oh," Andy said.

"You thought you'd seen, right?"

"Yeah. Thought that I was running out of time and going to die, or kill Davey again, or something. It was a feeling, though, not like being there, not like having anything explained."

"Is that going to happen?" Mimi asked Brad.

Brad looked down at the table. "'Answer unclear, ask again later.'

That's what this Magic 8-Ball I bought in a store once used to say."

"Does that mean you don't know?"

"I think it means I don't want to know."

"Don't worry," Bert said. "Kurt's safe tonight."

Alan stopped lacing up his shoes and slumped back on the bench in his foyer. Mimi had done the dishes, Bill had dried, and he'd fretted about Kurt. But it wasn't until he couldn't take it anymore and was ready to go and find him, bring him home if necessary, that Billy had come to talk to him.

"Do you know that for sure?"