One Door From Heaven

panes and peered into the motor home as though spirits strove to channel themselves from their plane of existence to this one through the transmitting power of the storm. Thunder boomed, and after the last peal had tolled to the far end of the sky, a tinny vibration lingered in the metal shell of the motor home, like the faint screaky voices of haunting entities.
        Proceeding toward the back, he called out once more, "You okay, neighbor? Does anybody need help here?"
        In the bathroom, hula dolls flanked the sink.
        At the open bedroom door, Noah hesitated. He called out again, but received no answer.
        He stepped across the threshold, out of the shadowy bath, into the crimson glow, which had been achieved by draping the lamps with red blouses.
        Beside the rumpled bed, she waited, standing straight, head held high on a graceful neck, as though she were a titled lady who'd risen to grant an audience to an inferior. She wore a brightly patterned sarong. Her hair appeared windblown, but she had not been out in the storm, for she was dry.
        Her bare arms hung slackly at her sides, and although her face was a mask of serenity, like the peaceful countenance of a Buddhist meditating, her eyes were as twitchy as those of a rabid animal. He'd seen this contrast before, and often in his youth. Though she didn't appear to be amped out on meth, she was operating on a substance more potent than caffeine.
        "Are you Hawaiian?" she asked.
        "No, ma'am."
        "Why the shirt?"
        "Comfort," he said.
        "Are you Lukipela?"
        "No, ma'am."
        "Did they beam you up?"
        On his long trip to Nun's Lake, during all his planning, Noah had not anticipated, under any circumstances, that he would boldly reveal his intentions either to this woman or to Preston Maddoc. But Sinsemilla-easily identifiable from Geneva's description-reminded him of Wendy Quail, the nurse who had killed Laura. Sinsemilla didn't resemble Quail, but in her serene face and her bird-bright busy eyes, he detected a smugness, a self-satisfaction, a self-adoration that the nurse, too, had worn as though it were the aura of a saint. Her attitude, the atmosphere in this place, the sound of the front door banging in the wind, cranked up the heat under the stew pot of his instinct, and he suspected that Micky and Leilani were someplace beyond mere trouble. He said, "Where's your daughter?"
        She took a step toward him, swayed, stopped. "Luki baby, your mommy's glad you got healed all righteous and then got fast-grown into a whole new incarnation, been out there to the stars and seen cool stuff. Mommy's glad, but it scares her, you comin' back here like this."
        "Where's Leilani," he persisted.
        "See, Mommy's got new babies comin’, pretty babies different only in their heads, not like you used to be different, all screwed up in your hips. Mommy's movin' on, Luki baby, Mommy's movin' on and don't want her new pretty babies hangin' with her old gnarly babies."
        "Has Maddoc taken her somewhere?"
        "Maybe you been to Jupiter and got healed up, but you still got the gnarly inside you, the little crip you used to be is still like a worm inside your spirit, and my new pretty babies will see all the sad gnarly in you 'cause they're gonna be true wizard babies, got themselves total psychic powers."
        Until now loosely cupped at her side, Sinsemilla's right hand tightened into a fist, and Noah knew that she held a weapon.
        When he backed off a step, she rushed him. Her right arm came up, and she slashed at his face with what might have been a scalpel.
        Past his eyes the keen blade arced, glimmering with red light, two inches short of a blinding cut.
        He leaned away from the attack, then came in under it and seized her right wrist.
        The scalpel in her left hand, unanticipated, punctured his right shoulder, which was a stroke of luck, pure good luck. She could have slashed instead of jabbed, opening his throat and one or both of his carotid arteries.
        The wound registered more as pressure than as pain. Rather than struggle to disarm her, when suddenly she was spitting and screaming like a Tasmanian devil, he kicked her legs out from under her and simultaneously pushed her backward.
        As she fell away, she held fast to the scalpel with which she'd scored, yanking it out of him. That was all pain, no