Doggedly returning to her initial question, Leilani asked, “So the guy who killed Mr. D — was he caught?”
“No,” Micky said. “Cops haven’t had one lead in eighteen years.”
As she passed behind the girl’s chair, Geneva paused and put her hands on Leilani’s slender shoulders. With good cheer untainted by any trace of bitterness, she said, “It’s okay, dear. If the man who shot my Vernon isn’t already roasting in Hell, he will be soon.”
“I’m not sure I believe Hell exists,” the girl replied with the gravity of one who has given the matter considerable thought during the lonely hours of the night.
“Well, of course it does, sweetheart. What would the world be like without toilets?”
Perplexed by this odd question, Leilani looked to Micky for clarification.
Micky shrugged.
“An afterlife without Hell,” Aunt Gen explained, “would be as polluted and unendurable as a world without toilets.” She kissed the top of the girl’s head. “And now I myself am off to have a nice sit-down with Nature.” ,
As Geneva left the kitchen, disappeared into the short dark hallway, and closed the bathroom door behind her, Leilani and Micky stared at each other across the dinette table. For languid seconds in the time-distorting August heat, they were as silent as the trinity of flames bright upon the smokeless wicks between them.
Finally, Micky said, “If you want to establish yourself as an eccentric around this place, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“The competition is pretty stiff,” Leilani acknowledged.
“So your stepfather’s a murderer.”
“It could be worse, I guess,” the girl said with a calculated jauntiness. “He could be a bad dresser. A weaselly enough attorney can find a justification for virtually any murder, but there’s no excuse for a tacky wardrobe.”
“Does he dress well?”
“He has a certain style. At least one isn’t mortified to be seen in his company.”
“Even though he kills old ladies and boys in wheelchairs?”
“Only one boy in a wheelchair, as far as I know.”
Beyond the window, the wounded day left an arterial stain across the western sky, pulling over itself a shroud of gold and of purple.
When Micky rose to clear away the dinner dishes, Leilani pushed her chair back from the table and started to get up.
“Relax.” Micky switched on the light above the sink. “I can handle it.”
“I’m not a cripple.”
“Don’t be so sensitive. You are a guest, and we don’t charge guests for dinner or make them work it off.”
Ignoring her, the girl plucked a roll of plastic wrap from a counter and began to cover the serving bowls, which were half full.
Rinsing the dishes and the flatware, stacking them in the sink to be washed later, Micky said, “The logical assumption is that all this talk of the killer stepfather is just a vivid imagination at work, merely an attempt to add some dark glamour to the image of Ms. Leilani Klonk, flamboyant young mutant eccentric.”
“That would be a wrong assumption.”
“Just a bunch of hooey — “
“I live in a hooey-free zone.”
” — but a bunch of hooey that maybe has a second and more serious purpose,” Micky suggested.
Returning the potato salad to the refrigerator, Leilani said, “What — you think I’m talking in riddles?”
Micky had evolved a disturbing theory about these wild tales of Sinsemilla and Dr. Doom. If she stated her suspicions directly, however, she would risk driving Leilani to further evasion. For reasons that she hadn’t yet found time to analyze, she wanted to provide the girl with whatever help was needed if indeed help was being sought.
Instead of making eye contact, avoiding any approach that might seem like an inquisition, Micky continued rinsing dishes as she said, “Not riddles exactly. Sometimes there are things we can’t easily talk about, so we talk around them.”
Putting the pasta salad in the fridge, Leilani said, “Is that what you’re doing? Talking around what you really want to talk about? And I’m — what? — supposed to guess the true subject?”
“No, no.” Micky hesitated. “Well, yes, that is what I’m doing. But I meant maybe you’re talking around something when you tell these tall tales about Dr. Doom murdering boys in wheelchairs.”
From the corner of her eye, Micky was aware that the girl had stopped working and had turned to face her. “Help me here, Michelina Bellsong. This little chat of ours is making me dizzy. What is it you think I’m talking around?”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking around,” Micky lied. “That’s for you to tell me… when you’re ready.”
“How long have you been living with Mrs. D?”
“What’s that matter? A week.”
“One week, and already you’re a master of hugely befuddling conversation. Oh, I’d love to hear what a chinfest between the two of you is like when I’m not here to provide some rationality.”
“You provide rationality?” Micky rinsed the last of the dishes. “Just when was the last time you actually ate tofu and canned peaches on a bed of bean sprouts?”
“I never eat it,” Leilani said. “The last time old Sinsemilla served it was Monday. So come on, tell me, what do you think I’m talking around? You brought it up, so you must suspect something.”
Micky was flummoxed that her amateur psychology was proving to be no more successful than would have been a little amateur nuclear-reactor engineering or a session of brain surgery with kitchen utensils.
Drying her hands on a dishtowel, she turned to the girl. “I don’t have any suspicions. I’m just saying, if you want to talk about anything instead of just around it, I’m here.”
“Oh, Lord.” Although the sparkle in Leilani’s eyes might have been read as something other than merriment, the mirth in her voice was unmistakable: “You think I’m making up stories about Dr. Doom killing people because I’m too fearful or too ashamed to bring myself to talk about what he really does, and what you think maybe he really does is have his sweaty, greasy, drooling, lustful way with me.”
Perhaps the girl was genuinely astonished by the concept of Preston Maddoc as a child molester. Or perhaps this was nothing more than a pretense of amusement, to cover her discomfort at how close Micky had come to the truth.
The only thing trickier than an amateur using a psychologist’s techniques was an amateur trying to interpret a patient’s responses. If this had been nuclear-reactor engineering, Micky would already have been reduced to a cloud of radioactive dust.
Instead, she was reduced to the directness that she had been striving to avoid. “Does he?” she asked Leilani.
Picking up Micky’s second can of Budweiser from the table, the girl said, “There’s at least a million reasons why that’s an absurd idea.”
“Give me one.”
“Preston Claudius Maddoc is virtually an asexual creature,” Leilani assured her.
“There’s no such thing.”
“What about the ameba?”
Micky understood this special girl well enough to know that the mysteries of her heart were many, that the answers to them could be learned only by earning her complete trust, and that her trust could be gained only by respecting her, by accepting her highly ornamental eccentricities, which included playing her baroque conversational games. In that spirit, Micky said, “I’m not sure amebas are asexual.”
“Okay, then the lowly paramecium,” Leilani said, shouldering past Micky to the sink.
“I don’t even know what a paramecium is.”
“Good grief, didn’t you go to school?”
“I went, but I didn’t listen much. Besides, you aren’t studying amebas and parameciums in fourth grade.”