Odd Thomas

caused this sudden urgent thirst for academic pursuits?"
        "I need to think more seriously about the future. I'm getting married on Saturday."
        "Would that be to Ms. Bronwen Llewellyn?"
        "Yes, sir."
        "Mr. Thomas, you have a rare opportunity for perfect bliss, and you would be ill advised to poison your life with either academia or drug dealing. I have a class this morning, followed by two student conferences. Then I'm having lunch and seeing a movie with my family, so I'm afraid tomorrow is the absolute earliest we can discuss this self-destructive impulse of yours."
        "Where are you having lunch, sir? At the Grille?"
        "We're allowing the children to choose. It's their day."
        "What movie are you seeing?"
        "That thing about the dog and the alien."
        "Don't," I said, though I hadn't seen the film. "It stinks."
        "It's a big hit."
        "It sucks."
        "The critics like it," he said.
        "Randall Jarrell said that art is long and critics are but the insects of a day."
        "Give my office a call, Mr. Thomas. We'll talk tomorrow."
        He put up his window, backed out of the driveway, and drove off toward the university and, later in the day, an appointment with Death.
        

CHAPTER 47
        
        NICOLINA PEABODY, AGE FIVE, WORE PINK sneakers, pink shorts, and a pink T-shirt. Her wristwatch featured a pink plastic band and a pink pig's face on the dial.
        "When I'm old enough to buy my own clothes," she told me, "I'll wear nothing but pink, pink, pink, every day, all year, forever."
        Levanna Peabody, who would soon be seven, rolled her eyes and said, "Everybody'll think you're a whore."
        Entering the living room with a birthday cake on a plate under a clear-glass lid, Viola said, "Levanna! That's an awful thing to say. That's just half a step from trash talk and two weeks with no allowance."
        "What's a whore?" Nicolina asked.
        "Someone who wears pink and kisses men for money," Levanna said in a tone of worldly sophistication.
        When I took the cake from Viola, she said, "I'll just grab their box of activity books, and we'll be ready to go."
        I had taken a quick tour of the house. No bodachs lurked in any corner.
        Nicolina said, "If I kiss men for free, then I can wear pink and not be a whore."
        "If you kiss lots of men for free, you're a slut," Levanna said.
        "Levanna, enough!" Viola reprimanded.
        "But Mom," Levanna said, "she's got to learn how the world works sooner or later."
        Noticing my amusement and interpreting it with uncanny skill, Nicolina confronted her older sister: "You don't even know what a whore is, you only think you do."
        "I know, all right," Levanna insisted smugly.
        The girls preceded me down the front walk to Mrs. Sanchez's car, which was parked at the curb.
        After locking the house, Viola followed us. She put the box of activity books in the backseat with the girls, and then she sat up front. I handed the cake to her and closed her door.
        The morning was pure Mojave, blazing and breathless. The sky, an inverted blue ceramic cauldron, poured out a hot dry brew.
        With the sun still in the east, all shadows slanted westward, as if yearning for that horizon over which the night had preceded them. And along the windless street, only my shadow moved.
        If supernatural entities were present, they were not evident.
        As I got in the car and started the engine, Nicolina said, "I'm never going to kiss any men, anyway. Just Mommy, Levanna, and Aunt Sharlene."
        "You'll want to kiss men when you're older," Levanna predicted.
        "I won't."
        "You will."
        "I won't," Nicolina firmly declared. "Just you, Mommy, Aunt Sharlene. Oh, and Cheevers."
        "Cheevers is a boy," Levanna said as I pulled away from the curb and set out for Sharlene's house.
        Nicolina giggled. "Cheevers is a bear ."
        "He's a boy bear."
        "He's stuffed ."
        "But he's still a boy," Levanna contended. "See, it's started already - you want to kiss men."
        "I'm not a slut," Nicolina insisted. "I'm going to be a dog doctor."
        "They're called veterinarians, and they don't wear pink, pink, pink, every day, all year, forever."
        "I'll be the first."
        "Well," Levanna said, "if I had a sick dog and you were a