He said, “I did this for you, you know.”
That got her. She looked at him, and her disgust sliced through the smoke.
“For you and the girls,” he said.
“You lost the house,” she said. “For us.”
She spoke! He tried not to show his relief. “That’s true,” he said. “But the reason—”
“You made your children homeless.”
“Temporarily,” he said. “I’m going to make this right.”
She shook her head, her eyes on the middle distance. Took a drag on the cigarette. Exhaled. He’d become invisible again.
“Loretta…”
“No one would blame me if I left,” she said quietly. “When you went bankrupt and lost the business, my friends said I should leave. When you spent a year pretending to run a casino in our garage, I said nothing. I stayed silent even when you dropped a safe on my car.”
“The casino thing was only a few months,” he said. “And the safe was an accident.”
“But this. You borrow money from the mob? For what, Frankie. What the hell are you trying to do?”
Polly noticed them, and ran over, followed by Cassie and an older Chinese girl. They all carried bright-colored water pistols. “Can we sleep in the basement tonight? With Jun?”
“Jun lives in the desert,” Cassie said. “She sees scorpions all the time.”
“When’s the picnic?” Polly asked.
“Didn’t you just eat cinnamon rolls?” Loretta asked them.
“We want hot dogs,” Polly said.
The youngest Pusateri boy, who seemed to be the same age as the twins, gave up on trying to shoot his brother and ran over to them. “When are the hot dogs?”
Frankie said, “Go play, kids. The adults have to talk.” Smalls and the rest of the family were in the house, and Buddy wasn’t moving. He nodded toward the garage. “Give me two minutes,” he said to Loretta. “Please.”
He went in through the side door. He was surprised to see a long Mercedes station wagon—with the hatch up.
Loretta closed the garage door. She surprised him by talking first. “I know you love the girls. Mary Alice as much as the twins.”
“That’s true. And I love you. I’m going to make this right. I have plans. I’m going to get the house back, and things are going to be great.”
“I don’t need great,” Loretta said. “I don’t need you to be great. I just need you to be here.”
“I am here! I’m here for the family!”
“No, I don’t know where you are. And I’m not going wherever that is. I can’t live like this,” she said. “I can’t take—” They’d both heard the noise. An animal grunt.
Loretta frowned at the side window of the vehicle. Frankie turned. In the back of the wagon were two shapes. He leaned forward, put a hand on the glass.
Irene and some Chinese guy looked out at him. They were stretched out in the cargo area, and the skin-to-clothing ratio was higher than he would have expected.
God damn it. Was there nowhere in this place to be alone?
Loretta walked out of the garage.
“Now you decide to get laid?” Frankie said. “Jesus, Reenie.” He followed his wife into the yard, and hoped she’d still be his wife when the day was over.
22
BUDDY
The World’s Most Powerful Psychic will never be twenty-eight years old. He wonders if it’s the stress of the day that will kill him. For example: the damn window shades! The garden-level windows run along the patio, and yet again, the metal blinds he installed have been hauled open.
He’ll also never get to eat these lamb sausages. With Joshua’s help he managed to chop all the garlic, and on his own blended four pounds of ground meat and another pile of the mint-feta mixture, but now he’s almost out of time, and he has to make all the patties. He’s preparing the food outside because this is where (a) there’s enough room, and (b) he remembers doing the cooking for the morning.
Loretta walks out of the garage, looking sad, and Frankie comes out after, talking talking talking. He wants to tell them both that it will all work out, but he doesn’t know that, not really. After 12:06 today, they’ll be in uncharted territory.
He’s having trouble concentrating as time rolls closer to zero hour. And zero minute, and zero second. Though which second has always been a mystery. What knowledge he has is accurate, but it’s not precise. Exactitude escapes him.
He takes out his crayoned checklist and goes over it for the third time in ten minutes:
clean grill
squirt guns
drill (F’s bag)
compressor
window shades
potatoes
lamb patties
front door
potato salad?
basement door
hot dogs
other dog
window shades AGAIN
At the bottom, he scrawls an addition:
LOCK WINDOW SHADES!!!!
He checks his watch. The patties will have to wait. He goes inside to the kitchen sink, washes his hands, and walks into the living room.
Graciella spots Buddy and says, “Are you sure I can’t help?”
He waves her off, then remembers something. “When the doorbell rings, have Teddy answer it.” Then he grabs his toolbox from the hall closet and retrieves his drill from Frankie’s tool bag.
“Can we have the boy?” Archibald asks.
“Try to sound less ominous,” Teddy says. He calls for Matty, and he comes up from the basement, freshly showered and changed, but wary.
“Sit over here,” Archibald says. “Right here on the couch.” To Buddy this sounds equally ominous.
Destin Smalls says to Matty, “Remember what I told you about your grandmother? Later, you’ll look back on this as the moment you stepped into her shoes.”
“What, high heels?” Teddy says, and Graciella laughs in her low, throaty way. Teddy does love an audience.
Archibald tapes electrodes to the backs of Matty’s hands, humming as he works. Matty sits very still, like a prisoner being prepped for the electric chair. Buddy has much to do, but he wants to see this part. And because he remembers seeing it, he knows he has enough time before he has to go downstairs to the fuse box.
“Now please, I want you to concentrate,” Archibald says to Matty. “Focus your attention on the silver van outside. Can you see it?”
“I can’t,” Matty says.
“Close your eyes, and do what you normally do when you’re remote-viewing.”
“That’s what I’m saying—I can’t do that.” He looks at Teddy. “I have a…routine I’ve got to follow.”
“What kind of routine?” Smalls asks. “Meditation? Some of our operatives—”
“You don’t need him to leave his body,” Teddy interrupts. “Just record his resting tau state and we can get down to business.”
“Will that give us what we need?” Smalls asks Archibald.
“One way to find out,” the tiny bald man says. He flips two switches on the control board, and puts his finger over a third button. “Beginning measurement…now.”
He presses the button. The needle of the biggest gauge slams into the red zone and stays there. A whine starts in one of the machines, and grows higher in pitch.