One Door From Heaven

by an Angel or an episode of Miracle Pets, might even have been setting snakes loose on one another and killing young women; but here at the start of a new day-well, eleven o'clock-the differences of the past could be set aside, and new harmony could be built on the old discord. Here they could plan together for the future, share new dreams, and reaffirm their mutual devotion.
        Old Sinsemilla made her breakfast from twenty-seven tablets and capsules of vitamin supplements, a bottle of sparkling water, a small tub of tofu sprinkled with toasted coconut, and a banana. After slicing the unpeeled banana in half-inch circlets, she ate the peel and all, for she believed that good health could be achieved only by the consumption of whole foods as often as possible. Considering her understanding of the term whole foods, dear Mater was well advised never to touch red meat; if she prepared a hamburger, she would also have to whip up a side dish of hoof, horn, and hide.
        Dr. Doom breakfasted on chamomile tea, two coddled eggs, and English muffins spread with orange marmalade. Not sharing his wife's preference for whole foods, he failed to eat the tea bags, the egg shells, the cardboard containers in which the muffins had been packaged. He was such a supernaturally neat eater that in his hands the toasted muffins left not one crumb on table or plate. He took small bites and chewed his food thoroughly, ensuring against the possibility that he would choke to death on a honking big piece of something. The best that his optimistic stepdaughter could hope for seemed to be salmonella contamination of the undercooked egg yolks.
        Leilani enjoyed a dish of Shredded Wheat garnished with a sliced banana peeled and doused in chocolate milk. The doctor of doom had purchased this forbidden beverage without the tofu-eater's knowledge. Though Leilani would have preferred regular milk, she used chocolate on the cereal to see if her mother would have a cerebral aneurysm at the sight of her child ingesting this hideous poison. The taunt was wasted on Sinsemilla. Crimson-eyed, gray-faced, she languished in the morning-after slough of despond. Whatever drug she'd taken as an eye-opener had not yet delivered her into the Mary Poppins mood that she desired. She probably wouldn't be flying around under a magic umbrella, singing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," until late afternoon.
        Meanwhile, as she ate, she read a tattered copy of Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar. She had read this slim volume twice every month since she was fifteen. With each reading, the book had a different meaning for her, although to date none of the meanings had been entirely coherent. Sinsemilla believed, however, that the author represented a new step in human evolution, that he was a prophet with an urgent message to those who were further evolved than the human society that had produced them. Old Sinsemilla sensed that she was a further-evolved human, but in all modesty, she wasn't prepared to make this claim until she fully understood Brautigan's message and, in understanding, achieved her superhuman potential.
        While immersed in the book, Sinsemilla was no more communicative than the tofu that quivered on her spoon, yet Dr. Doom frequently addressed her. He didn't expect a response, but seemed to be certain that his comments reached his wife on a subconscious level.
        Sometimes he spoke of Tetsy, the young woman whose heart he had "burst" with a massive injection of digitoxin less than twelve hours ago and whose fate he had shared with Leilani upon returning home in the dead hours of the night. At other times he relayed to Sinsemilla and to Leilani the latest gossip and news circulating on the various Internet sites maintained by the large international community of UFO believers, which he monitored on the laptop computer that rested on the table beside his breakfast plate.
        Details of the Tetsy snuff were mercifully less vivid than had been the case with other killings in the past, and the latest saucer stories were no weirder than usual. Consequently, the creepy quality of the conversation-and there was always a creepy quality to the most casual chats in this family-was provided by Dr. Doom's coy references to the passion that he had visited upon Sinsemilla during the night.
        Over dinner with Micky and Mrs. D the previous evening, Leilani had said that the doom doctor was asexual. This wasn't