Odd Thomas

enhanced with toners, preserved with lotions.
        "Why have you come?" he asked.
        "I don't know."
        "You don't look well."
        He retreated one step from the door. He fears illness.
        "I'm not sick," I assured him. "Just bone tired. No sleep. May I come in?"
        "We weren't doing much, just finishing breakfast, getting ready to catch some rays."
        Whether that was an invitation or not, I interpreted it as one, and I crossed the threshold, pulling the door shut behind me.
        "Britney's in the kitchen," he said, and led me to the back of the house.
        The blinds were drawn, the rooms layered with sumptuous shadows.
        I've seen the place in better light. It's beautifully furnished. My father has style and loves comfort.
        He inherited a substantial trust fund. A generous monthly check supports a lifestyle that many would envy.
        Although he has much, he yearns for more. He desires to live far better than he does, and he chafes at terms of the trust that require him to live on its earnings and forbid him access to the principal.
        His parents had been wise to settle their estate on him under those terms. If he had been able to get his hands on the principal, he would long ago have been destitute and homeless.
        He is full of get-rich-quick schemes, the latest being the sale of land on the moon. Were he able to manage his own fortune, he would be impatient with a ten- or fifteen-percent return on investment and would plunge great sums on unlikely ventures in hopes of doubling and tripling his money overnight.
        The kitchen is big, with restaurant-quality equipment and every imaginable culinary tool and gadget, though he eats out six or seven nights a week. Maple floor, ship's-style maple cabinets with rounded corners, granite counters, and stainless-steel appliances contribute to a sleek and yet inviting ambience.
        Britney is sleek, as well, and inviting in a way that makes your skin crawl. When we entered the kitchen, she was standing hipshot at a window, sipping a morning champagne and staring out at sun serpents sinuously flexing across the surface of the swimming pool.
        Her thong bikini was small enough to excite the jaded editors of Hustler, but she wore it well enough to make the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
        She was eighteen but looked younger. This is my father's basic criterion in women. They are never older than twenty, and they always look younger than they are.
        Some years ago, he got in trouble for cohabiting with a sixteen-year-old. He claimed to be unaware of her true age. An expensive attorney plus payoffs to the girl and her parents spared him the indignity of a prison pallor and jail haircuts.
        Instead of a greeting, Britney gave me a sullen, dismissive look. She returned her attention to the sun-dappled swimming pool.
        She resents me because she thinks my father might give me money that would otherwise be spent on her. This concern has no validity. He would never offer me a buck, and I would never take it.
        She would be better advised to worry about two facts: first, that she has been with my father for five months; second, that the average duration of one of his affairs is six to nine months. With a nineteenth birthday looming, she would soon seem old to him.
        Fresh coffee had been brewed. I asked for a cup, poured it myself, and sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island.
        Always restless in my company, my father moved around the room, rinsing out Britney's champagne glass when she finished with it, wiping a counter that didn't need to be wiped, straightening the chairs at the breakfast table.
        "I'm getting married on Saturday," I said:
        This surprised him. He'd been married to my mother only briefly and regretted it within hours of exchanging vows. Marriage doesn't suit him.
        "To that Llewellyn girl?" he asked.
        "Yes."
        "Is that a good idea?"
        "It's the best idea I've ever had."
        Britney turned away from the window to study me with beady-eyed speculation. To her, a wedding meant a gift, a parental boon, and she was prepared to defend her interests.
        She didn't stir in me the slightest anger. She saddened me, for I could see her deeply unhappy future without need of any sixth sense.
        Admittedly, she scared me a little, too, because she was moody