“Do that,” Theo said. “But it’s not a hoax. My car is smashed. That’s evidence. I’m going to Molly’s tonight and wait for her. The door was unlocked when I checked earlier and I can’t go home.”
“You think it’s that dangerous?” Val asked.
“I know it is.” Theo stood and started to pull some bills from his pocket. Gabe waved him off. Theo said, “Doctor, can you give Gabe a ride?”
“Sure, but…”
“Thanks,” Theo said. “I’ll call you, Gabe. Thanks for letting me join you, Doctor. I thought you’d want to know about Bess. I’m afraid I’ve ruined your date.”
I’ll say, Val thought as she watched Theo leave the restaurant. A sense of alert exhaustion washed over her like an espresso fog bank.
“He just quit smoking pot,” Gabe said. “He’s feeling the stress.”
“He has a right to. You don’t believe any of that stuff about a monster, do you?”
“I have some theories.”
“Would you like to come up to the house and explain them over a bottle of wine?”
“Really? I mean, sure, that would be nice.”
“Good,” Val said. “I think I need to get hammered and I’d like your company.” Had she used the term “hammered” since college? She didn’t think so.
“I’ll get the check,” Gabe said.
“Of course you will.”
“I hope you don’t mind having a dog in your car,” Gabe said.
I’m not slumming, she thought. I’ve moved to the slums.
Twenty-two
Theo
The walls of Molly’s trailer were plastered with movie posters. He stood in the middle of the living room among the scattered videotapes, magazines, and junk mail and slowly turned. It was her, Molly. She hadn’t been lying all this time. Most of the posters were in foreign languages, but every one featured a younger Molly in various states of undress, holding weapons or fighting off bad guys, her hair flying in the wind, a nuked-out city or a desert littered with human skulls and burned-out cars in the background.
The adolescent male part of Theo, the part that every man tries to bury but carries to his grave, reared up. She was a movie star. A hot movie star! And he knew her, had in fact put handcuffs on her. If there was only a locker room, a street corner, or a second-period study hall where he could brag about it to his friends. But he didn’t really have any friends, except for Gabe maybe, and Gabe was a grown-up. The prurient moment passed and Theo felt guilty about the way he had treated Molly: patronizing her and condescending to her; the way many people treated him when he tried to be something besides a pothead and puppet.
He kneeled down to a bookshelf filled with videotapes, found one labeled KENDRA: WARRIOR BABE OF THE OUT
LAND (ENGLISH), and slipped it into the VCR and turned on the television. Then he turned off the lights, laid his guns on the coffee table, and lay down on Molly’s couch to wait. He watched as the Crazy Lady of Pine Cove battled mutants and Sand Pirates for half an hour before he drifted off to sleep. His mind needed a deeper escape from his problems than the movie could provide.
“Hi, Theo.”
He came awake startled. The movie was still casting a flickering light over the room, so he couldn’t have been sleeping that long. She stood in the doorway, half in shadow, looking very much like the woman on the television screen. She held an assault rifle at her side.
“Molly, I’ve been waiting for you.”
“How’d you like it?” She nodded toward the television.
“Loved it. I never realized. I was just so tired…”
Molly nodded. “I won’t be long, I just came to get some clean clothes. You’re welcome to stay here.”
Theo didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem like the time to grab one of the pistols off the table. He felt more embarrassed than threatened.
“Thanks,” he said.
“He’s the last one, Theo. After him there aren’t any more of his kind. His time has passed. I think that’s what we have in common. You don’t know what it is to be a has-been, do you?”
“I think I’m what they call a never-was.”
“That’s easier. At least you’re always looking up the ladder, not down. Coming down is scarier.”
“How? Why? What is he?”
“I’m not sure, a dragon maybe. Who knows?” She leaned back against the doorway and sighed. “But I can kinda tell what he’s thinking. I guess it’s because I’m nuts. Who would have thought that would come in handy, huh?”
“Don’t say that about yourself. You’re saner than I am.”
Molly laughed, and Theo could see her movie-star teeth shine in the light of the television. “You’re a neurotic, Theo. A neurotic is someone who thinks something is wrong with him, but everyone else thinks he is normal; a psychotic thinks something’s wrong with her. Take a poll of the locals, I think I’d come out in the latter category, don’t you?”
“Molly, this is really dangerous stuff you’re messing with.”
“He won’t hurt me.”
“It’s not just that. You could go to jail just for having that machine gun, Molly. People are getting killed, aren’t they?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“That’s what happened to Joseph Leander, and the guys working the drug lab, right? Your pal ate them?”
“They were going to hurt you, and Steve was hungry. Seemed like great timing to me.”
“Molly, that’s murder!”
“Theo! I’m nuts. What are they going to do to me?”
Theo shrugged his shoulders and sat back on the couch. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re not in a position to do anything right now. Get some rest.”
Theo cradled his head in his hands. His cell phone, still in the pocket of his flannel shirt, began ringing. “I could sure use a hit right now.”
“There’s some Smurfs of Sanity in the cupboard over the sink—neuroleptics Dr. Val gave me, antipsychotics—they’ve done wonders for me.”
“Obviously.”
“Your phone is ringing.”
Theo pulled out the phone, flipped it open, hit the answer button and watched as the incoming number ap peared on the display. It was Sheriff Burton’s cell phone number. Theo hit disconnect.
“I’m fucked,” Theo said.
Molly picked up Theo’s .357 Magnum from the table, held it on Theo, then picked up Joseph Leander’s automatic. “I’ll give these back before I go. I’m going to get some clean clothes and some girlie things out of my bedroom. You be okay here?”
“Yeah, sure.” His head was still hung. He spoke into his lap.
“You’re bumming me out, Theo.”
“Sorry.”
Molly was gone from the room for only five minutes, in which time Theo tried to get a handle on what had happened. Molly returned with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing the Kendra costume, com-plete with thigh-high boots. Even in the dim light from the television, Theo could see a ragged scar over her breast. She caught him looking.
“Ended my career,” she said. “I suppose now they could fix it, but it’s a little late.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo said. “I think you look beautiful.”
She smiled and shifted both of the pistols to one hand. She’d left the assault rifle by the door and Theo hadn’t even noticed. “You ever feel special, Theo?”
“Special?”
“Not like you’re better than everyone else, just that you’re different in a good way, like it makes a difference that you’re on the planet? You ever feel that way?”
“I don’t know. No, not really.”
“I had that for a while. Even though they were cheesy B movies and even though I had to do some humiliating things to get into them, I felt special, Theo. Then it went away. Well, now I feel that way again. That’s why.”
“Why what?”
“You asked me why before. That’s why I’m going back to Steve.”
“Steve? You call him Steve?”
“He looked like a Steve,” Molly said. “I have to go. I’ll leave your guns in the bed of that red truck you stole. Don’t try to follow, okay?”
Theo nodded. “Molly, don’t let it kill anybody else. Promise me that.”
“Promise to leave us alone?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Okay. Take care of yourself.” She grabbed the assault rifle, kicked open the door, and stepped out.
Theo heard her go down the steps, pause, then come back up. She popped her head in the door. “I’m sorry you never felt special, Theo,” she said.
Theo forced a smile. “Thanks, Molly.”
Gabe
Gabe stood in the foyer of Valerie Riordan’s home, looking at his hiking boots, then the white carpet, then his boots again. Val had gone into the kitchen to get some wine. Skinner was wandering around outside.
Gabe sat down on the marble floor, unlaced his boots, then slipped them off. He’d once been into a level-nine clean room at a biotech facility in San Jose, a place where the air was scrubbed and filtered down to the micron and you had to wear a plastic bunny suit with its own air umbilical to avoid contaminating the specimens. Strangely, he’d had a similar feeling to the one he was feeling now, which was: I am the harbinger of filth. Thank God Theo had made him shower and change before his date.