Odd Thomas - Страница 50

Although I had no person-no name, no description-as a focus for my psychic magnetism, I drove at random through Pico Mundo, hoping to be brought to a place of enlightenment.

The brilliant Mojave day burned at white-hot ferocity. The air itself seemed to be on fire, as if the sun-by speed of light, less than eight and a half minutes from Earth-had gone nova eight minutes ago, giving us nothing more than this dazzling glare as a short warning of our impending bright death.

Each flare and flicker of light flashing off the windshield seemed to score my eyes. I hadn't brought my sunglasses. The searing glare soon spawned a headache that made a fork in the brow seem like a tickle by comparison.

Turning aimlessly from street to street, trusting intuition to guide me, [found myself in Shady Ranch, one of the newer residential developments on the Pico Mundo hills that a decade ago were home to nothing more dangerous than rattlesnakes. Now people lived here, and perhaps one of them was a sociopathic monster plotting mass murder in upper-middle-class suburban comfort.

Shady Ranch had never been a ranch of any kind; it wasn't one now, unless you counted houses as a crop. As for shade, these hills enjoyed less of it than most neighborhoods in the heart of town because the trees were far from maturity.

I parked in my father's driveway but didn't at once switch off the engine. I needed time to gather my nerve for this encounter.

Like those who lived in it, this Mediterranean-style house had little character. Below the red-tile roof, ornament-free planes of beige stucco and glass met at unsurprising angles arrived at less by architectural genius than by the dictates of lot size and shape.

Leaning closer to a dashboard vent, I closed my eyes against the rush of chilled air. Ghost lights drifted across the backs of my eyelids, retinal memories of the desert glare, strangely soothing for a moment-until the wound in Robertson's chest rose from deeper memory.

I switched off the engine, got out of the car, went to the house, and rang my father's doorbell.

At this hour in the morning, he was likely to be home. He had never worked a day in his life and seldom rose before nine or ten o'clock.

My father answered, surprised to see me. "Odd, you didn't call to say you were coming."

"No," I agreed. "Didn't call."

My father is forty-five, a handsome man with thick hair still more black than silver. He has a lean athletic body of which he is proud to the point of vanity.

Barefoot, he wore only khaki shorts slung low across his hips. His tan had been assiduously cultivated with oils, enhanced with toners, preserved with lotions.

"Why have you come?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't look well."

He retreated one step from the door. He fears illness.

"I'm not sick," I assured him. "Just bone tired. No sleep. May I come in?"

"We weren't doing much, just finishing breakfast, getting ready to catch some rays."

Whether that was an invitation or not, I interpreted it as one, and I crossed the threshold, pulling the door shut behind me.

"Britney's in the kitchen," he said, and led me to the back of the house.

The blinds were drawn, the rooms layered with sumptuous shadows.

I've seen the place in better light. It's beautifully furnished. My father has style and loves comfort.

He inherited a substantial trust fund. A generous monthly check supports a lifestyle that many would envy.

Although he has much, he yearns for more. He desires to live far better than he does, and he chafes at terms of the trust that require him to live on its earnings and forbid him access to the principal.

His parents had been wise to settle their estate on him under those terms. If he had been able to get his hands on the principal, he would long ago have been destitute and homeless.

He is full of get-rich-quick schemes, the latest being the sale of land on the moon. Were he able to manage his own fortune, he would be impatient with a ten- or fifteen-percent return on investment and would plunge great sums on unlikely ventures in hopes of doubling and tripling his money overnight.

The kitchen is big, with restaurant-quality equipment and every imaginable culinary tool and gadget, though he eats out six or seven nights a week. Maple floor, ship's-style maple cabinets with rounded corners, granite counters, and stainless-steel appliances contribute to a sleek and yet inviting ambience.

Britney is sleek, as well, and inviting in a way that makes your skin crawl. When we entered the kitchen, she was standing hipshot at a window, sipping a morning champagne and staring out at sun serpents sinuously flexing across the surface of the swimming pool.

Her thong bikini was small enough to excite the jaded editors of Hustler, but she wore it well enough to make the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

She was eighteen but looked younger. This is my father's basic criterion in women. They are never older than twenty, and they always look younger than they are.

Some years ago, he got in trouble for cohabiting with a sixteen-year-old. He claimed to be unaware of her true age. An expensive attorney plus payoffs to the girl and her parents spared him the indignity of a prison pallor and jail haircuts.

Instead of a greeting, Britney gave me a sullen, dismissive look. She returned her attention to the sun-dappled swimming pool.

She resents me because she thinks my father might give me money that would otherwise be spent on her. This concern has no validity. He would never offer me a buck, and I would never take it.

She would be better advised to worry about two facts: first, that she has been with my father for five months; second, that the average duration of one of his affairs is six to nine months. With a nineteenth birthday looming, she would soon seem old to him.

Fresh coffee had been brewed. I asked for a cup, poured it myself, and sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island.

Always restless in my company, my father moved around the room, rinsing out Britney's champagne glass when she finished with it, wiping a counter that didn't need to be wiped, straightening the chairs at the breakfast table.

"I'm getting married on Saturday," I said.

This surprised him. He'd been married to my mother only briefly and regretted it within hours of exchanging vows. Marriage doesn't suit him.

"To that Llewellyn girl?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is that a good idea?"

"It's the best idea I've ever had."

Britney turned away from the window to study me with beady-eyed speculation. To her, a wedding meant a gift, a parental boon, and she was prepared to defend her interests.

She didn't stir in me the slightest anger. She saddened me, for I could see her deeply unhappy future without need of any sixth sense.

Admittedly, she scared me a little, too, because she was moody and quick to anger. Worse, the purity and the intensity of her self-esteem ensured that she would never doubt herself, that she could not conceive of suffering unpleasant consequences for any act that she might commit.

My father likes moody women in whom a perpetually simmering anger lies just beneath the surface. The more dearly that their moodiness indicates genuine psychological disorder, the more they excite him. Sex without danger does not appeal to him.

All of his lovers have fit this profile. He doesn't appear to spend much effort seeking them; as if sensing his need, drawn by vibes or pheromones, they find him with dependable regularity

He once told me that the moodier a woman is, the hotter she will prove to be in bed. This was fatherly advice that I could have lived without.

Now, as I poured coffee into a gutful of Pepsi, he said, "Is this Llewellyn girl knocked up?"

"No."

"You're too young for marriage," he said. "My age-that's when it's time to settle down."

He said this for Britney's benefit. He would never marry her. Later, she would remember this as a promise. When he ditched her, the fight would be more epic than Godzilla vs. Mothra.

Sooner or later, one of his hotties, during a bad mood swing, will maim or kill him. I believe that on some deep level, even if subconsciously, he knows this.

"What's that on your forehead?" Britney asked.

"Band-Aid."

"You fall down drunk or something?"

"Something."

"You in a fight?"

"No. It's an employment-related fork wound."

"A what?"

"A flipped fork flicked my forehead."

Alliteration seems to offend people. Her expression soured. "What kind of shit are you on?"

"I'm fully amped on caffeine," I admitted.

"Caffeine, my ass."

"Pepsi and coffee and No-Doz. And chocolate. Chocolate contains caffeine. I had some chocolate-chip cookies. Chocolate doughnuts."

My father said, "Saturday's not good. We can't make Saturday. We've got other plans we can't cancel."

"That's all right," I said. "I understand."

"I wish you'd have told us earlier."

"No problem. I didn't expect you'd be able to make it."

"What kind of dork," Britney wondered, "announces his wedding just three days before the ceremony?"

"Go easy," my father advised her.

Her psychological engine didn't have a go-easy gear. "Well, damn it, he's such a freak."

"That's really not helpful," my father admonished her, but in a honeyed tone.