One Door From Heaven

he is seriously unnerved by socializing. The simple act of showering, with all the complications that arose, reduced him to this imperfect Curtis.
        With deep chagrin, he decides that he is the Lucille Ball of shapechangers: physically agile, admirably determined, and recklessly courageous in the pursuit of his goals-but socially inept enough to entertain demanding audiences and to exasperate any Cuban-American bandleader crazy enough to marry him.
        Okay. Good. He is being Curtis Hammond once more.
        He finishes drying himself, all the while inspecting his body for weirdnesses, but finding none.
        A beach towel has been provided as a sarong. He wraps himself in it but feels nonetheless immodest.
        Until his clothes are washed and dried, he must stay with Cass and Polly; but as soon as he's outfitted once more, he'll slip away with Old Yeller. Now that he can be easily detected by his family's killers-and perhaps by the FBI, as well, if they have developed the necessary tracking technology-he can't any longer justify putting the sisters at risk.
        No more people should die just because fate brings them into his life at the wrong time.
        The hunters are surely coming. Heavily armed. Grimly determined. Thoroughly pissed.

Chapter 44
        
        THE SUN WORKED PAST quitting time, and the long summer afternoon blazed far beyond the hour when bats would have taken wing in cooler seasons. At six o'clock, the sky still burned gas-flame blue, gas-flame bright, and southern California broiled.
        Risking economic ruin, Aunt Gen set the thermostat at seventy-six degrees, which didn't qualify as chilly anywhere other than in Hell. Compared to the furnace beyond the closed windows and doors, however, the kitchen was luxuriously comfortable.
        While Micky brewed a large pitcher of peach-flavored iced tea and set the table for dinner, she told Geneva about Preston Maddoc, about bioethics, about killing as healing, killing as compassion, killing to increase "the total amount of happiness," killing in the name of sound environmental management.
        "Good thing I was shot in the head eighteen years ago. These days, I'd be environmentally managed into a hole in the ground."
        "Or they'd harvest your organs, make lampshades out of your skin, and feed your remains to wild animals to avoid despoiling the earth with another grave. Iced tea?"
        When Leilani hadn't arrived by 6:15, Micky was certain that something was wrong, but Geneva counseled patience. By 6:30, Geneva was concerned, too, and Micky heaped chocolate-almond cookies-sans almonds, plus pecans-on a gift plate, providing an excuse to pay a visit to the Maddocs.
        The blue ceramic curve of sky, firing in a fierce kiln, offered a receptive bowl if the earth, as seemed likely, melted quick away. A long day's interment of heat shimmered out of the ground as though spirits were fleeing up through the open gates of perdition, and the air had a scorched smell.
        Perched on fence pickets at the back of Geneva's property, near the bloomless rosebush, crows shrieked at Micky. Perhaps they were familiars of the dark witch Sinsemilla, posted to warn her of the approach of anyone who might be armed with the knowledge of her name.
        At the fallen fence between properties, Geneva's green lawn gave way to the withered brown mat that had served as Sinsemilla's dance floor. Micky's nerves wound tight at the prospect of coming face-to-face with either the moon dancer or the philosophical murderer.
        She didn't actually expect to meet Preston Maddoc. Leilani had told Aunt Gen that Dr. Doom would be out all evening.
        The drapes were shut, the windows bright with the dragon glare of the westering sun.
        Standing on the concrete steps, she knocked, waited, and raised her hand to knock again, but took the cookie plate in both hands when suddenly the knob rattled and the door opened.
        Preston Maddoc stood before her, smiling, barely recognizable. His longish hair had been shorn; he wore it now in a short punkish bristle, which didn't lend him an edgy quality, as it might have given most men, but made him look like a tousled boy. He'd shaved off his mustache, too.
        "Can I help you?" he asked pleasantly.
        "Uh, hi, we're your neighbors. Me and Aunt Gen. Geneva. Geneva Davis. And I'm Micky Bellsong. Just wanted to say hello, bring you some homemade