One Door From Heaven

them in here, I suppose."
        "Holy smokes, we'd want twenty-four/seven video of that!"
        "But they'd never send Clarissa to prison. She's sixty-seven year old, weighs two hundred fifty pounds even though she's just five feet three -and, of course, there's the goiter."
        Leilani didn't ask the obvious question.
        Geneva answered it anyway. "Strictly speaking, it's not really a goiter. It's a tumor, and because it's benign, she won't have it removed. Clarissa doesn't trust doctors, and given her history with them, who can blame her? But she just lets it hang there, getting bigger. Even if they could cope with her age and weight, prison officials would worry about that goiter scaring the other inmates."
        Leilani drained the last of the vanilla Coke from her glass. "Okay, so when the obituary appears, if you'd track down an address for Tetsy's parents and mail the penguin back to them, that would be swell. I'd do it myself, but Preston doesn't let me have money, not even enough for a few stamps. He buys me anything I want, but I think he figures that if I had an allowance, I'd ramp it up with shrewd investments until I had enough to afford a hit man."
        "You've still got half the Coke in the can, dear. Would you like me to add some fresh ice and vanilla to your glass?"
        "Yes, thank you."
        After Geneva had built a second serving for each of them, she sat opposite Leilani once more. Worry drew connecting lines through her constellations of coppery freckles, and her green eyes clouded. "Micky will think of something we can do."
        "I'll be okay, Aunt Gen."
        "Honey, you're not going to Idaho."
        "Just how big is the goiter?"
        "Can you come for dinner this evening?"
        "Great! Dr. Doom is supposed to be out again, so he won't know..He'd stop me, but old Sinsemilla's too self-involved to notice."
        "I'm sure Micky will have some strategy by then."
        "Is it, say, bigger than a plum?"
        "I'll turn on the air conditioning this evening, so we'll be able to think clearly. You can bet the governor never does without."
        "Bigger than an orange?"

Chapter 43
        
        RESPLENDENT in acrylic-heeled sandals and navel opals, these two Cinderellas have no need of a fairy godmother, for they are magical in their own right. Their laughter is musical, infectious, and Curtis can't help but smile even though they're laughing at his ridiculous and shakily expressed fear that they might be clones.
        They are, of course, identical twins. The one he met outside is named Castoria. The one he encountered second is Polluxia.
        "Call me Cass."
        "And call me Polly."
        Polly puts down the big knife with which she was chopping vegetables. Dropping to her knees on the galley floor, with squeaky baby talk and vigorous ear scratching, she reduces Old Teller at once to licking, tail-lashing adulation.
        Placing a hand gently on Curtis's shoulder, Cass brings him out of the lounge and into the galley.
        "In Greek mythology," says Curtis, "Castor and Pollux were the sons of Leda, fathered by Jupiter disguised as a swan. They're the patron deities of seamen and voyagers. They're famous warriors, too."
        This knowledgeable recitation surprises the women. They regard him with evident curiosity.
        Old Teller turns to stare at him as well, though accusingly, because Polly has stopped the baby talk and the ear scratching.
        "They tell us half the kids graduating from high school can't read," says Cass, "but you're mythology savvy in grade school?"
        "My mother was big on organic brain augmentation and direct-to-brain megadata downloading," he explains.
        Their expressions cause Curtis to review what he has just said, and he's chagrined to realize that he revealed more about his true nature and his origins than he ever intended to share with anyone. These two dazzle him, and as with Donella and Gabby, dazzlement seems to evoke in him either a looseness of the tongue or a tangling of the same potentially treacherous organ.
        In a lame attempt to distract them from what he revealed, Curtis continues with a harmless lie: "Plus we had a Bible and a useless 'cyclopedia sold to us by a mercantile porch-squatter."
        Cass plucks a newspaper from the table in the dining nook and hands it to Polly.
        Polly's sparkling eyes widen, and blue beams seem to