One Door From Heaven

declares. "It's a wide place in the road where people throw away all their money."
        "Does this have religious significance?" he wonders. "Only if you worship a roulette wheel," Polly explains from the lounge, where she's resting on the sofa with Old Yeller. Though she's gotten no answers, she's been whispering questions to the dog. She speaks in a normal voice to Curtis: "Jackpot's got like five hundred hotel rooms and two casinos, with a couple of first-rate buffets for six bucks, surrounded by thousands of empty acres. After a satisfying dinner and bankruptcy, you can drive to a nice barren place, commune with nature, and blow your brains out in private."
        "Maybe," Curtis theorizes, "that's why so many people back at the Neary Ranch were buying Grandma's locally famous black bean-and-corn salsa. Maybe they were going to use it in Jackpot."
        Polly and Cass are quiet. Then Cass says, "Things don't often go over my head, Curtis, but that one cleared my scalp by six inches."
        "It was so far over mine," Polly admits, "I didn't even feel the breeze when it passed."
        "They were selling cold drinks and T-shirts and stuff off the hay wagon," Curtis explains. "The sign for Grandma's salsa said it was hot enough to blow your head clean off, though I personally doubt that any method of decapitation could be clean."
        The twins are silent again, this time for a quarter of a mile. Then Polly says, "You're a strange lad, Curtis Hammond." "I've been told that I'm not quite right, too sweet for this world, and a stupid Gump," Curtis acknowledges, "but I sure would like to fit in someday."
        "I've been thinking sort of Rain Man," says Cass. "Good movie!" Curtis exclaims. "Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Did you know that Tom Cruise is friends with a serial killer?"
        "I didn't know that," Polly confesses.
        "A guy named Vern Tuttle, old enough to be your grandfather, collects the teeth of his victims. I heard him talking to Tom Cruise in a mirror, though I was so scared, I didn't register whether the mirror was a communications device linking him to Mr. Cruise, like the mirror the evil queen uses in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or just an ordinary mirror. Anyway, I'm sure Mr. Cruise doesn't know Vern Tuttle is a serial killer, cause if he did, he'd bring him to justice. What's your favorite Tom Cruise movie?"
        "Jerry Maguire," says Cass.
        "Top Gun," says Polly.
        "What's your favorite Humphrey Bogart movie?" Curtis asks.
        "Casablanca," the twins say simultaneously.
        "Mine too," Curtis confirms. "Favorite Katharine Hepburn movie?"
        Polly says, "Woman of the Year," Cass says, "The Philadelphia Story," but they change their minds in unison: "Bringing Up Baby."
        And so they proceed north through the night, socializing with the ease of old friends, never once discussing the shootout at the crossroads store, the shape-changing assassins, or the dog's use of the laptop computer to warn Polly of the presence of evil aliens.
        Curtis doesn't deceive himself that his rapidly developing ability to socialize and his conversational legerdemain will distract the sisters from these subjects forever. Castoria and Polluxia aren't fools, and sooner or later, they are going to request explanations.
        In fact, recalling the aplomb with which they handled themselves at the crossroads, they are likely to demand explanations when they are ready to broach the subject. Then he'll have to decide how much truth to tell them. They are his friends, and he is loath to lie to friends; the more they know, however, the more they'll be endangered.
        After topping off the fuel tank in Jackpot, pausing neither for one of the buffets nor to observe a suicide, they cross the state line into Idaho and continue north to the city of Twin Falls, which is surrounded by five hundred thousand acres of ideal farmland irrigated by the Snake River. Curtis knows a great many facts about the geological and human history of the city, the "Magic Valley" area, and the vast lava beds north of the Snake River, and he dazzles the sisters by sharing this wealth of knowledge.
        With a population of more than twenty-seven thousand Twin Falls offers some cover, making the boy less easily detectable than he's been since he arrived in Colorado and first became Curtis Hammond. He is safer here, but not reliably safe.
        Dawn is not yet