One Door From Heaven

aisle, between two other motor homes, kicking up plumes of dust and bits of dead dry grass, thus in and around the wheel of campsites, through the area of brightly colored tents, eventually back among mechanized campers, dodging grownups and kids and a barbecue and a sunbathing woman in a lounger and a terrified Lhasa apso that squeals away from them. When Curtis at last glances back, he sees that their pursuers, if ever there were any, have given up, proving that he's better at adventuring than he is at socializing.
        He remains mortified and shaken.
        For a while at least, he doesn't want to leave the commotion and cover of the crowd at this contact vigil. Tonight or tomorrow, maybe he can hitch a ride with someone headed for a more populous area that will provide even better concealment, but right now this is as good as it gets, better than the lonely country road. As long as he avoids another encounter with Mr. Neary, he should be able to hang out in the meadow safely enough-assuming that Clara the smart cow doesn't suddenly drop out of the sky and crush him to death.
        Old Yeller whimpers, sits next to a huge Fleetwood motor home, and tilts her head up in the posture of a dog howling at the moon, although no moon rides the sky this afternoon. She's not howling, either, but searching the heavens for a plummeting cow.
        Curtis crouches beside her, scratches her ears, and explains as best he can that there's no danger of a Holstein flattening them, whereupon she grins and leans her head into his ministering hands.
        "Curtis?"
        The boy looks up to discover that an astonishingly glamorous woman looms over him.
        Her toenails are painted azure-blue, so it seems as though they are mirrored to reflect the sky. Indeed, she's such a magical-looking person and the color on her toenails has such lustrous depth that Curtis can easily imagine he is looking at ten mystical entry points to the sky of another world. He is half convinced that if he drops a tiny pebble on one of her toenails, it will not bounce off, but will disappear into the blue, falling through into that other sky.
        He can see her perfectly formed toes, for she wears minimalist white sandals. These have high heels made of clear acrylic, so she appears to be standing effortlessly on point, her feet as unsupported as those of a ballerina.
        In tight white toreador pants, her legs look impossibly long. Curtis is sure that this must be an illusion fostered by the woman's dramatic appearance and by the severe angle from which he gazes up at her. When he rises from beside the dog, however, he discovers that no trick of perspective is involved. If H. G. Wells's Dr. Moreau, on his mysterious island, had been a success at his genetic experiments, he couldn't have produced a human-gazelle hybrid with more elegant legs than these.
        The low-rider pants expose her tanned tummy, which serves as the taut setting for an oval-shaped, bezel-faceted opal the exact same shade of blue as the toenail polish. This gemstone is held securely in her navel by either glue or a cleverly concealed tension device of unimaginable design, or by sorcery.
        Her bosoms are of the size that cameras linger on in the movies, brimming the cups of a white halter top. This top is made from such thin and pliant fabric, and supported by such fine-gauge spaghetti straps-capellini straps, actually-that as a wonder of the man-made world, it rivals the Golden Gate Bridge. Scores of engineers and architects might require weeks to study and adequately analyze the design of this astonishingly supportive garment.
        Honey-gold hair frames a centerfold face with eyes that match the color of the opal. Her mouth, the ripe centerpiece of a lipstick advertisement, is a frosted red like the petals of the last rose on a November bush.
        If the boy had been Curtis Hammond for more than two days, say for two weeks or two months, he might have been so completely adapted to the human biological condition that he would have felt the stir of male interest that apparently had begun to tease the original Curtis into adding Britney Spears to the big posters of movie monsters that papered his bedroom. Nevertheless, although he's largely still a work in progress, he undeniably feels something, a dryness of the mouth that has nothing to do with thirst, a peculiar tingle along the nerves of his limbs, and a tremble short of weakness in his