The voice in the mirror?
But right now her hair is just long enough that sometimes — frequently, in fact, while she’s listening to guys on the phone tell her what they want to do to her — she can take one end and put it in her mouth to suck on while she passes the time until they’ve finished with wherever their wishes take them (often, nowhere good).
Would Raymond like her better with short hair?
Is Viktor making as much money from his numerous investments in the stock market as he claims? Jeffery wonders. If so, he’s some kind of genius, and possibly the most successful investor in all of history. But if that is the case, why is he still living in the Burrow? Or, could it be, as someone — Raymond? Madeline? — once suggested as a joke, that Viktor is no investor at all, but a drug lord lying low inside the Burrow until the gangland war going on aboveground dies out. Also, could Viktor’s presence here be somehow related to those so-called wandering strangers on the news? Is it possible they are not strangers at all, but hired assassins looking to put “a hit” on Viktor? Did the strangers exist before Viktor’s arrival?
Or, taking a different approach, could Viktor have been placed in the Burrow as a part of the Federal Witness Protection Program? Is the Burrow actually what they call in espionage parlance a “safe house”? If so, is Jeffery the only one who doesn’t feel particularly safe?
And by the way, what is going on with all those sounds of grinding coming from the earth? Why doesn’t everyone think this is a problem? Could this new activity be related to the sudden influx of strangers? Is it possible, as sometimes happens in science fiction movies, that these noises have disturbed some long-buried race of monsters who are now coming up to the surface? As interesting as this thought may be, Jeffery doubts it’s true.
In Raymond’s most recent dream Viktor and Madeline are standing next to a float left over from the Founding of St. Nils Day, a day celebrated every year with a parade that features several floats in the form of ducks (Could that be why Raymond chose St. Nils to settle in?), because, indeed, the city was founded after its first settlers followed a flight of waterfowl to a quiet marsh at the edge of the sea.
In his dream, however, the parade has long since been over, and Madeline and Viktor, dressed in black, are wielding axes as they hack apart one of the larger floats, a fairly accurate representation of a blue-winged teal. It’s a male, with the usual slate-colored head, white crescent band behind its bill, blue-gray inner wings, light-brown flight feathers, and brown speckles on its body, only it’s about eighteen feet tall. As they work, they turn to Raymond.
“Look,” Viktor shouts, “we have an extra axe,” and sure enough, there is an extra axe lying against the bumper of the vehicle the float was built on top of, now exposed by their hacking.
“Yes,” Madeline adds, “and when we’re done, I’ll cook it all up into a nice stew for us to eat.”
Raymond starts to explain that it goes against his innermost nature to take up arms against a duck and, besides, because the float is made of wood and wire, plus other materials, he’s pretty sure it won’t be good to eat, but before he gets a chance to say anything, Madeline walks up to him and puts an axe in his hands.
“Raymond,” she says, “if you love me you must do this.”
Against his better judgment, Raymond takes it, shuts his eyes, and swings.
“So, Junior,” Tammy is saying, “why don’t you tell me something positive that happened this last week?”
Tammy’s favorite word is positive and Junior hates it. Today she is wearing a charcoal turtleneck and a dark skirt that makes her look smaller than she is, although she is pretty small. The ankh is gone, and in its place is a shiny gold necklace where the links are in the shape of jumping fish, kind of like he’s seen on the backs of old guys’ RVs, but these are a lot more elegant, at least when Tammy’s wearing them, and if she’s angry about the fact that he was late to his appointment, she’s not showing it, except maybe by the way she is clamping down on her pen.
“Well,” Junior says, and stops to think, because this being positive is truly a burden, “as I was driving here a cat ran out in front of my car, but I managed to swerve just in time, which was good because it was a momma cat, and she was carrying a kitten in her mouth.” He’s taking a wild guess that Tammy is a cat lover.
“And yet you still missed the time for your appointment by a whole ten minutes,” Tammy says with a cute, ironic smile.
Or course, Junior has made up the story about the cat. There wasn’t any cat or any other animal, and the day he’ll stop for one, that will be the day, all right, so now he’s glad he told a lie because it proved Tammy had been angry about his being late and, when you think about it, ten minutes is nothing in the course of a lifetime. He can feel a twinge inside his stomach — a sure sign that what he likes to call his Rage Meter is on its way up.
“But let’s not dwell on that,” Tammy says. She crosses, then uncrosses her legs, and her stockings make the tiniest scritch. “Remember your homework for the week — to imagine a happy moment you might have had with your father, the one you told me was a sea captain, if he had stayed around to raise you.”
“Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure he was a captain,” Junior says. “I mostly just think that. I don’t know why but I do.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Tammy says. “I was asking you about your homework.”
“Sorry,” Junior says. “It’s gone. I guess the cat ate it. I mean, just kidding. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“With what?”
“Oh, sports. The archery thing,” says Junior.
Safe or not, the truth is that Jeffery sees the Burrow as only temporary, a stopping place, or maybe more accurately, a pausing place, on the road to where he wants to go. So if Viktor is a drug lord, or even if he makes as much money as he claims to, well, let him, Jeffery thinks. It’s only temporary.
But where does Jeffery want to go from the Burrow? That’s the question. At what point on the axis of his life will the Present Jeffery finally intersect with the Future Jeffery, the one he’s certain he’s on his way to meet? And needless to say, when he does join him, the Future Jeffery will be 1) sexually magnetic but not obsessed; 2) well-read but not a nerd; 3) moderately good at all sorts of sports and board games, too, but not too much of a fan — he’ll be much too busy with his own career to waste time that way. The Future Jeffery also will be 4) well-groomed but not a fop; 5) kind to animals (which reminds him that down here in the Burrow it’s been ages since he’s seen an actual animal, even a bug); 6) will have an appreciation for the arts and finer things, including dining, in part thanks to Madeline; 7) be an excellent judge of wine but never drink to excess; 8) will always be happy to lend a hand if he has the time; 9) will believe in socialism; and 10) will have a job. . well, not a job, exactly, but an inclination to do things that bring him the approval of others, especially beautiful women, which, coincidentally, will also happen to make him a lot of money. But how will the Future Jeffery be born out of the present, Present Jeffery? How are all these things going to be achieved? Actually, it’s not so obvious. Because it’s way too late for medical school, and even if he wanted it — which he doesn’t — to prepare himself for such a life of wealth and compassion would mean Jeffery would have to go back, maybe as far as the third or fourth grade, and retrain himself to direct his thoughts along more scientific lines. Business doesn’t interest him at all — or investing — that he’ll leave to Viktor. Being a rock star is out of the question. Jeffery has no musical aptitude whatsoever.