Supervolcano All Fall Down(28)

“Thank you,” Mom said. “Do you want to stay for dinner? I’ve got enough ground round to make us both hamburgers.”

“That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” Marshall got out of there as soon as he politely could, or else a little sooner. He’d take Mom’s money and help her out of a tight spot. Past that, though, he didn’t want anything to do with her.

The sun was setting in the usual Technicolor splendor when he walked out to his car. The wet-dust smell of rain filled the air, as it did so often these days. He was getting used to both the gorgeous sunsets and sunrises and the crappy weather. Eventually, he supposed, he’d forget things had ever been any other way. So would everyone else his age. And people like James Henry wouldn’t even know things had changed.

* * *

Louise Ferguson didn’t mind too much when James Henry woke up once in the night. She could even deal with twice. She was tired enough, going back to sleep was no big deal.

But three or four times . . . That wore you down. That had worn her down even when she was half her current age. She remembered. And it was more than doubly tough now that she’d reached her present state of decrepitude. Caffeine helped, but only so much. She didn’t know what she would have done if coffee hadn’t started tasting good to her again. Cocaine and crank were uppers, too, but she’d stayed married to Colin too long to look at anything illegal.

When the baby left her really exhausted, she thought that was a goddamn shame.

Mr. Nobashi gave her a fishy stare when she sat down at her desk in Ramen Central. “You good, Mrs. Ferguson?” he asked. What he did to her last name was a caution. It sounded like Fugu-san, as if she were an honorable puffer fish.

“Ichi-ban, Mr. Nobashi,” she answered. He giggled, so her Japanese was probably even lousier than his English. Well, too bad. She was also lying through her teeth—she was a long way from being A number one.

Ichi-ban or not, she could do the job. Riding herd on noodles and flavoring packets was a hell of a lot easier than taking care of a baby, as a matter of fact. She hadn’t exactly missed it while she was having the kid, but she didn’t mind coming back to it.

She also didn’t mind when Mr. Nobashi started yelling for coffee and sweet rolls, just as if she’d never left. If he was dead set on jitters and Type 2 diabetes, she’d lend a helping hand.

Patty came by and asked, “Everything okay?” in her harsh Midwestern tones.

“Could be worse,” Louise answered.

“I bet,” the other woman said. “So, who’s taking care of Junior now that you’re back here?”

“One of my sons. He needs money, and I need a babysitter. It works out.”

Patty nodded. “That’s handy, anyways. You prolly don’t gotta pay him as much as you would if you hired somebody from an agency or somewheres, either.”

“I wish!” Louise exclaimed. “It’s cash on the barrelhead with Marshall.”

“Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child, the Good Book says,” Patty clucked. “It knows what it’s talking about, too. It mostly does.”

“I guess,” Louise said uncomfortably. She’d ditched her family’s stern Presbyterian faith a long time ago. Despite endless New Age experiments, though, she’d never found anything that really filled the gap. Her kids seemed to get along fine with Nothing, but she couldn’t. She wanted Answers, dammit. As the old TV show said, the truth was out there.

Somewhere. She was sure of it. Where was a different question, and one of the Answers she hadn’t found. Yet.

To her relief, Patty didn’t push it. Louise couldn’t stand people who liked their religion so much they tried to sell you on it, too. There she agreed with her ex, and with her children. She couldn’t think of many other places where they were all in accord.

What had felt strangest about coming back was how normal it seemed. She knew the inventories she needed to ride herd on. She hadn’t seen the latest and greatest numbers since she went on maternity leave, but they were in ranges and patterns she found familiar.

The more it changes, the more it stays the same. There was a reason clichés got endlessly repeated. They were the ramen of thought: quick, easy, and filling, but without much real nourishment.

She remembered how to ride herd on Mr. Nobashi, too. He’d changed even less than the inventories. He still spent a lot of the time on the phone, spewing impassioned Japanese laced with English profanity. Louise presumed he was talking to the home office in Hiroshima, but for all she could prove he might have been getting bets down with his bookie. She knew a few Japanese words and phrases—anybody who’d lived in San Atanasio for a while picked them up, the same way Southern Californians generally had fragments of Spanish even if their folks came from Denmark—but she didn’t speak the language.