Set This House In Order Part 51

She's still here in town."

"Only for as long as it takes me to crawl back to the f.u.c.king car," Maledicta says. "But. . ." -- her gla.s.s is full again; she tosses it back -- "A-a-a-ah!. . . you're not going to f.u.c.king bother her anymore.

And you're definitely not going to tell her what I f.u.c.king told you about her stepfather."

"No, of course not, I wouldn't. . . at least not unless she. . . but I would like to talk to her one more time before you go. Not to bother her, just. . . hey, are you all right?"

"f.u.c.king fine," Maledicta says, but she's not. The last shot of vodka hits her brainstem hard -- she drops the gla.s.s, and has to grab the edge of the bar to steady herself.

"You don't look fine," Officer Cahill observes. "You look green."

Maledicta doesn't answer; her stomach's rolling over.

". . . ten thousand dollars," Chief Bradley was saying, his voice slightly m.u.f.fled by the closed door between us. "I know that may not sound like much, but you understand, the cottage is almost surely a loss. I would love to save it if I could, if there were some way to fix the foundation, but my sense is I'm going to have to tear the whole place down and build new. And there's also the matter of the maintenance work I've done over the past two years -- I know you didn't ask for that, but I did pay for it out of my own pocket and I believe it deserves some consideration. . . So what are your thoughts, Andrea?"

"I think it sounds. . . fair." I kept my head raised as I spoke, so he'd be able to hear me. "It's just, I'm still not really ready to make a decision about this."

"Well, and I don't want to rush you," Chief Bradley said, "but from what you've told me it sounds like you're pretty set against staying on in Seven Lakes yourself."

"That's true. But --"

"Right, and I don't imagine you'd be visiting much either. . ."

"That's true, too."

"Right! So there you go -- it seems like a waste to leave a perfectly good property abandoned, if you have no intention of using it yourself. And you know. . ."

But the rest of his words were lost as another wave of nausea gripped me, and I bent my head once more to the bowl.

I was tempted to blame my current distress on Chief Bradley's chili: a mostly bland hamburger stew spiked here and there with chunks of incredibly hot pepper. But I'd eaten very little of it -- I could see, gazing into the toilet, that I'd eaten very little of it -- maybe five or six spoonfuls in all.

The beer was a more likely culprit. I wasn't sure how much I'd drunk. I'd only become aware that I was drinking at all when we were about to sit down at the table, and Chief Bradley, pointing to the bottle in my hand, asked if I wanted another. Startled, I told him no, and yet only moments later, as I hurried to wash down a bite of chili, I found myself tipping up a fresh Budweiser, still cold from the fridge. And then a little while after that, when a sliver of jalapeno got stuck on the way down and started spot-welding the back of my throat, I reached coughing for what I thought was a water gla.s.s, only to taste still more beer as I swallowed.

That was when I'd started to feel ill. The jalapeno, though safely extinguished, left an after-impression that was like a finger pressing down on my gag reflex. As the feeling rapidly grew worse, I stood up and asked where the bathroom was. I barely made it in time.

At least Chief Bradley didn't seem offended that I'd lost his lunch. Indeed, he hardly seemed to have noticed at all.

". . . and if you'd like to get a better sense of the local property values before you make up your mind, of course I understand. I want you to be comfortable about this, Andrea. But what I think you'll find. . ."

My nausea seemed to have run its course. I waited another minute just to be sure, then got up to use the sink. I was dizzy from being hunched over so long, so after rinsing my mouth out, I plugged the drain and let the basin fill with water. As I splashed my cheeks and forehead, I heard a creak of hinges and felt someone come up behind me. "I'm OK, Chief Bradley," I said, but when I looked up into the mirror the bathroom door was still closed, and the face peering over my shoulder wasn't the chiefs.

"h.e.l.lo again, figment," Gideon said.

A plastic cup on the back corner of the sink held a toothbrush and a steel-pointed dental pick. I made a grab for the pick, but my left hand got there first and knocked the cup away. Then the hand was at my throat, and the bathroom walls faded into open sky as I was dragged from the body. I looked down and saw the lake far below me, its dark waters swirling around the gray dot of Coventry.

"Andrea?" Chief Bradley called, his voice echoing with distance. "What just fell?. . . Andrea, are you all right in there?"

"I'm fine," Gideon replied. "I'll be right out."

There's a soda machine outside the grocery store on Main Street. Mouse is hoping it's the kind of soda machine that offers bottled spring water as a selection -- that's what she really needs right now, fresh water -- but this is Seven Lakes, not Seattle, and the machine is stocked only with pop. She could go into the store to buy water, but the idea of waiting in a long checkout line, trying not to pa.s.s out or faint from shame as the cas.h.i.+er and the other customers catch a whiff of her, is more than she thinks she can stand.

Soda pop it is. She puts coins in the machine and punches the b.u.t.ton for ginger ale. The can comes out of the machine warm, and the ginger ale tastes like something you'd clean dentures with, but Mouse forces herself to drink it anyway. She needs the fluid.

She looks across the street to where the Centurion is parked. Andrew has still not reappeared.

Mouse tells herself that she can't blame him for wandering off, but the truth is she does blame him. He should have waited. He should have come after her. All right, no, he shouldn't have come after her -- Maledicta was being abusive, and if he'd followed her to the bar it would have just made a bad situation worse -- but he should have waited.

Mouse leans back against the soda machine and slides down until she is sitting on the sidewalk with her knees up under her chin. She drinks warm ginger ale and feels wretched. People coming in and out of the grocery store give her funny looks, as if she were a homeless person.

She feels homeless. She's got no motel room, no safe place in this town where she can go to sleep for a few hours. And she can't go somewhere else, because even if she were willing to abandon Andrew -- the way he abandoned her, she thinks petulantly -- she can't drive. A lot of the vodka that Maledicta drank got left behind in the bar, but enough of it is still in Mouse's system that she doesn't dare get behind the wheel.

The only remotely good thing about her current circ.u.mstance is that she's pretty sure Officer Cahill won't be bothering her again. When Mouse ran out of the bar he was still in the men's room, cleaning himself up, but that was just a temporary measure -- he's going to have to go home and change, and probably take a long hot shower. Mouse knows she shouldn't be happy about this -- she should be disgusted with herself, and furious with Maledicta -- and she is -- but at this point anything that cuts down the number of obstacles between her and a clean getaway from this town is a welcome occurrence.

"Come on Andrew," she says. "Come back. Let's get out of here."

But it's a while yet before Andrew comes back. The sound of his voice rouses Mouse from a drunken doze; she wakes confused, needing a swallow of warm ginger ale -- it's gone flat now too, yuck -- to remind her where she is.

Andrew is across the street, shaking hands with Chief Bradley through the window of the chiefs police car. "Seven-thirty tonight," Mouse hears Andrew say; then he steps back, and the chief drives off.

Mouse gets up from the sidewalk. "Andrew!" she calls.

He turns towards her, caught off guard, in his surprise looking almost hostile. . . but then he smiles. "Hey there, Penny!" he greets her. "How's it going?"

Mouse waits for another car to pa.s.s and crosses the street. "Andrew," she says, drawing near him. "Where were you?"

"Chief Bradley's house." Belatedly picking up on her mood: "Gosh, Penny, I hope you weren't worried."

"I was," says Mouse. "But never mind that now. Are you ready to go?"

"Well, actually," he says, "that's kind of what I came back to tell you: I can't leave yet."

"What?"

"I've decided to sell the cottage to Chief Bradley," Andrew explains. "It won't be official until I can establish clear t.i.tle to it myself, of course, but we've agreed to do the deal, and he's even going to give me a down payment. I'm going back to his house tonight to pick up the money."

"Tonight? So we have to stay here?" Please, no.

"We don't have to stay," Andrew says. "I have to, but there's no reason for you to hang around.

In fact, if you wanted to head back to Seattle on your own. . ."

"No," says Mouse. "I can't do that."

"Sure you can. Don't worry about me, I --"

"No, I mean I can't do that. Maledicta got us drunk, got me drunk. I can't drive."

"Oh." He leans forward, sniffs. "Wow! Gee, Penny. . ."

"So I need you to do it." Mouse shoves her car keys into his hands before he can refuse. "Please.

. . just take me somewhere, anywhere I can rest. And then if you want to borrow the car and come back and see Chief Bradley tonight, I guess that's OK, I'll just wait for you wherever."

Andrew bounces the keys in his palm and looks thoughtful. "Hmm, OK, I suppose that could work. . ."

"Only let's go, " Mouse stresses. "I can't stand up much longer."

"Sure." He's smiling again. "You just lie down in back, I'll take care of the rest."

Before stretching out on the Centurion's back seat, Mouse rolls down the windows, hoping that fresh air will counteract any lingering urge to vomit. It works: her stomach lurches a little while Andrew is pulling out of the parking s.p.a.ce, but once they are on the move the cool breeze is very soothing. "Just one other thing. . ." she says, her eyes drifting closed.

"Hmm? What's that?"

"I could really use a drink of water. Could you run in somewhere, and get me. . ."

"Sure thing, Mouse," he says. "You relax, I'll get right on that."

"Thanks. . ." She settles down, lulled by the smooth forward motion of the car, and -- -- something is tickling her eyelid. A breeze is still blowing through the windows, but less steadily now; the Centurion is stopped somewhere. Mouse lifts a hand to her face, bats sleepily at the thing tickling her. A leaf.

She sits up, bunking away sleep. She tries to call Andrew's name, but her mouth and throat are totally dry. She glances at the driver's seat and sees that it's empty.

Mouse a.s.sumes they are at a rest stop off the highway somewhere. Andrew must have gone to get her water. She yawns deeply, and is surprised by how much better she feels: she's parched and she has a headache, but she's sobered up quite a bit, and if she didn't know any better, she'd almost think she'd been asleep all afternoon.

Huh. That's funny. According to the dashboard clock, Mouse has been asleep all afternoon. And -- taking a good look outside, now -- this is a very unusual rest stop: the parking lot is covered in gra.s.s, and there are no gas pumps or fast-food restaurants, just a single white cottage-like structure, tilted to one side. . .

Oh G.o.d.

Mouse twists around to look out the back window, hoping that this will turn out to be some sort of mirage. But there's no rest stop behind the car, either, just a dirt road that is becoming all too familiar.

Why would Andrew have come back here?

On second thought, never mind -- Mouse doesn't care why. She just wants to get out of here.

She leans over the seat back and honks the Buick's horn. Short honks, first, and then a sustained blast that causes birds to take flight from the surrounding trees. But Andrew does not come running.

d.a.m.n it. If the keys were in the ignition, Mouse would be tempted to drive away -- she's sober enough, now -- but they aren't, and anyway she knows it would be wrong to just leave. Whatever is going on here, it's at least partly her own fault. If she hadn't been too drunk to drive in the first place. . .

Mouse gets out of the car and goes up to the cottage. There's no answer to her knock on the front door, and she can't remember which stone the key is hidden under. She walks around the side of the cottage. Here she finds a clue to what Andrew may have come back for: the broken bracing planks have all been cleared away, and those planks that are still intact have been set back up, s.p.a.ced evenly to conceal the fact that there are fewer of them now. Chief Bradley will probably still notice, but without the debris lying around he'll have a hard time figuring out what happened.

Mouse continues around to the back door, which is unlocked. Inside, the cottage is dead quiet -- strong circ.u.mstantial evidence that n.o.body's home. She takes a look around anyway. Andrew is not in the kitchen, the pantry, the living room, or anywhere in the ground-floor bedroom that can be seen from the doorway. Mouse goes to the attic door next. She pokes her head in the stairwell and listens; there's no sound, not even the chittering of squirrels. Andrew could still be up there, lying comatose on the cot again, but if he is, he's on his own; not even a promise of fresh water could get Mouse to climb these stairs alone.

Water. The kitchen sink is right behind her; she opens both taps, but not a drop comes out. She makes a second check of the pantry, searching for beverages this time. Many of the gla.s.s jars contain vegetables or fruits preserved in liquid, but Mouse isn't desperate enough to drink vinegar or heavy syrup. As for the canned goods, it's obvious from the selection that Andrew's mother made a lot of soups and stews: there's an entire shelf stocked with nothing but salted beef broth, salted chicken broth, and condensed clam chowder.

She returns to the sink and looks out the window at the backyard, just in case someone's come by and installed a fountain in the last two minutes. No one has, but there is something else that's different: the footpath gate is hanging open.

The gate was closed when she and Andrew were here earlier today. Mouse tries to remember whether it was still closed when she came around the side of the cottage just now, but she can't recall.

Mouse stares at the footpath, and envisions the lake at the other end of it. About half a mile, Andrew said. She does not really want to go down there, but her options are limited. It's a much longer hike back to Seven Lakes, and she's not going to find Andrew or her car keys in town.

The woods beyond the gate are dense and shadowy; Mouse walks quickly. Soon enough she glimpses the lake through the trees up ahead. Even from a distance the water looks inviting; Mouse speeds up to a jog, and nearly goes tumbling when the path takes a final unexpected dip.

Quarry Lake is pretty much the way Andrew described it from his -- or the Witness's -- memory. A few things are different: there are no big shrubs at the end of the footpath, and the "island" at the Lake's center is even smaller than Andrew made it sound, really just a tip of rubble sticking up above the surface of the water.

The lake is certainly deep and cold -- and the water is delicious. Mouse cups her hands and scoops up mouthful after mouthful, until her stomach starts to cramp in protest. She pauses then, breathing hard, and becomes aware of a figure standing in the periphery of her vision.

"h.e.l.lo, Penny," Andrew says.

Mouse, her voice restored, lets out a healthy squeak and falls over.

"Penny. . ." Andrew says. He holds up his hands rea.s.suringly. . .

. . . and right in the middle of the gesture changes his mind, deciding not to bother.

"Forget it," he says. "You aren't worth the effort."

Mouse looks up at him and blinks. "Andrew?" she says.

He doesn't bother to correct her, just stares at her contemptuously until she figures it out.

"No," Mouse says. She rises slowly to her feet. "Not you. You can't --"

"Can't what'?" says Gideon. "Can't be out? And why's that, exactly? Because Andrew's brave and true? Because he doesn't run away from his responsibilities?" He laughs. "Andrew's not even real, Mouse."

"He is real!" Mouse protests. "He, he is brave."

"Compared to you, maybe. But it doesn't matter how brave he acts; he was born out of fear and weakness, and in the end that's all he really is: fear and weakness. Aaron's fear." Gideon is grinning as he says this, showing teeth, but his hands make little trembling movements of suppressed rage. "Aaron! Bad enough he steals my life, gives away my property, and tries to keep me bottled up like a G.o.dd.a.m.n genie!

But after all that, to turn around and just. . . abdicate, like he didn't even want it himself. . . Ah!" For a moment he's so mad he can't speak. "You have no idea, the frustration. . . but weakness is weakness. It was just a matter of biding my time, waiting for the right moment."

Mouse doesn't say anything to this, but Gideon suddenly glares at her as if she'd contradicted him. "I know what you're thinking," he says. "You're thinking I already got out once before and couldn't hold it. You're thinking I may keep the body for a day or even a week, but eventually Andrew will rally."

"I didn't --"

"Well f.u.c.k you, Mouse!" He stoops and s.n.a.t.c.hes up a rock; Mouse flinches, but rather than throw it at her he skims it out over the lake. It's a weak toss, and the rock only skips a couple of times before sinking; Gideon, seeming pleased rather than dissatisfied by this, watches as the splash-ripples spread across the lake's surface and begin to fade. Then he says: "Andrew won't be back. I wasn't really ready, before. But this time I put him down properly."

"So what. . . what happens now?" says Mouse.

"I told you what happens now: I'm selling the cottage to Chief Bradley. Once I've got my money -- all of it -- I'm going to get the h.e.l.l out of here. Go somewhere new, and start living the life I was meant to live."

"You know I'm not going to help you."

Gideon laughs at her. "You think I need your help? Here. . ." He fishes her car keys out of his pocket and tosses them at her feet. "Go ahead, take off. Go back to Seattle. Get yourself some therapy.

Hah!"

Surprised, Mouse picks up the keys.

"What?" says Gideon. "Were you expecting me to hold you prisoner or something?"