Forever Odd

by God, and that counts for something, too.”
        No sixth sense was required for me to understand that it would be pointless to try to negotiate her up from eight hours to ten.
        “Eight hours,” I agreed. “I’ll call you before then.”
        After I had started down the open stairs again, she said, “Oddie, the main reason you came here really was to borrow my phone- wasn’t it?”
        When I stopped and looked up again, I saw that she had come off the landing, onto the first step.
        She said, “I guess for my own peace of mind, I’ve got to lay it out there…You didn’t come here to say good-bye, did you?”
        “No.”
        “True?”
        “True.”
        “Swear to God.”
        I raised my right hand as though I were an Eagle Scout making a solemn pledge.
        Still dubious, she said, “It would be shitty of you to go out of my life with a lie.”
        “I wouldn’t do that to you. Besides, I can’t get where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I’ve got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can-that’s how I buy the ticket to where I want to be. You know what I mean?”
        “Yeah.” Terri settled down on the top step. “I’ll sit here and watch you go. It feels like bad luck to turn my back on you just now.”
        “Are you okay?”
        “Go. If he’s alive, go to him.”
        I turned away from her and descended the stairs once more.
        “Don’t look back,” she said. “That’s bad luck, too.”
        I reached the bottom of the stairs and followed the alleyway to the street. I didn’t look back, but I could hear her softly crying.

----

    FIFTEEN
        
        I DID NOT SCOUT FOR OBSERVERS, DID NOT LOITER IN the hope that an ideal opportunity would arise, but walked directly to the nine-foot chain-link barrier and scaled it. I dropped onto the property of the Maravilla County Flood-Control Project less than ten seconds after reaching the alley side of the fence.
        Few people expect bold trespassing in daylight. If anyone saw me scale the fence, he would most likely assume that I was one of the authorized personnel referenced on the gate sign and that I had lost my key.
        Clean-cut young men, neatly barbered and beardless, are not readily suspected of nefarious activity. I am not only barbered and beardless but have no tattoos, no earring, no eyebrow ring, no nose ring, no lip ring, and have not subjected my tongue to a piercing.
        Consequently, the most that anyone might suspect about me is that I am a time-traveler from some distant future in which the oppressive cultural norms of the 1950s have been imposed once more on the populace by a totalitarian government.
        The slump-stone utility building featured screened ventilation cutouts under the eaves. They were not large enough to admit even a trim young man with a low-profile haircut.
        Earlier in the morning, peering through the chain-link, I had noticed that the hardware on the plank doors appeared ancient. It might have been installed back when California’s governor believed in the healing potential of crystals, confidently predicted the obsolescence of the automobile by 1990, and dated a rock star named Linda Ronstadt.
        On closer inspection, I saw that the lock cylinder was not only old but cheap. The collar did not feature a guard ring. This offered a level of security half a step up from a padlock.
        During the walk here from the Grille, I had paused in Memorial Park to take a pair of sturdy locking tongs from my backpack. Now I withdrew them from under my belt and used them to rip the lock cylinder out of the door.
        That was a noisy business, but it lasted no more than half a minute. Boldly, as if I belonged there, I went inside, found a light switch, and closed the doors behind me.
        The shed contained a rack of tools, but primarily it served as a vestibule from which to gain access to the network of storm drains under Pico Mundo. Wide spiral stairs led down.
        On the twisting staircase, picking out the perforated metal treads with my flashlight, I was reminded of the back stairs at the Jessup house. For a moment, it seemed that I had been swept into some dark game in which I had already once circled the board and had been brought by the roll of the dice to another dangerous descent.
        I didn’t turn on the stair lights because I didn’t know if perhaps the same