One Door From Heaven

week."
        "One week, and already you're a master of hugely befuddling conversation. Oh, I'd love to hear what a chinfest between the two of you is like when I'm not here to provide some rationality."
        "You provide rationality?" Micky rinsed the last of the dishes. "Just when was the last time you actually ate tofu and canned peaches on a bed of bean sprouts?"
        "I never eat it," Leilani said. "The last time old Sinsemilla served it was Monday. So come on, tell me, what do you think I'm talking around? You brought it up, so you must suspect something."
        Micky was flummoxed that her amateur psychology was proving to be no more successful than would have been a little amateur nuclear-reactor engineering or a session of brain surgery with kitchen utensils.
        Drying her hands on a dishtowel, she turned to the girl. "I don't have any suspicions. I'm just saying, if you want to talk about anything instead of just around it, I'm here."
        "Oh, Lord." Although the sparkle in Leilani's eyes might have been read as something other than merriment, the mirth in her voice was unmistakable: "You think I'm making up stories about Dr. Doom killing people because I'm too fearful or too ashamed to bring myself to talk about what he really does, and what you think maybe he really does is have his sweaty, greasy, drooling, lustful way with me."
        Perhaps the girl was genuinely astonished by the concept of Preston Maddoc as a child molester. Or perhaps this was nothing more than a pretense of amusement, to cover her discomfort at how close Micky had come to the truth.
        The only thing trickier than an amateur using a psychologist's techniques was an amateur trying to interpret a patient's responses. If this had been nuclear-reactor engineering, Micky would already have been reduced to a cloud of radioactive dust.
        Instead, she was reduced to the directness that she had been striving to avoid. "Does he?" she asked Leilani.
        Picking up Micky's second can of Budweiser from the table, the girl said, "There's at least a million reasons why that's an absurd idea."
        "Give me one."
        "Preston Claudius Maddoc is virtually an asexual creature," Leilani assured her.
        "There's no such thing."
        "What about the ameba?"
        Micky understood this special girl well enough to know that the mysteries of her heart were many, that the answers to them could be learned only by earning her complete trust, and that her trust could be gained only by respecting her, by accepting her highly ornamental eccentricities, which included playing her baroque conversational games. In that spirit, Micky said, "I'm not sure amebas are asexual."
        "Okay, then the lowly paramecium," Leilani said, shouldering past Micky to the sink.
        "I don't even know what a paramecium is."
        "Good grief, didn't you go to school?"
        "I went, but I didn't listen much. Besides, you aren't studying amebas and parameciums in fourth grade."
        "I'm not in fourth grade," Leilani said, pouring the warm beer into the sink. "We're twenty-first-century Gypsies, searching for the stairway to the stars, never staying in one place long enough to put down a single rootlet. I'm homeschooled, currently learning at a twelfth-grade level." The beer, foaming in the drain basket, produced a malty perfume that at once masked the faint smell of the hot wax from the candles on the table. "Dr. Doom is my teacher, on paper, but the fact is I'm self-taught. The word for it is autodidact. I'm an autodidact and a good one, because I'll kick my own ass if I don't learn, which is a sight to see with this leg brace." As though to prove how tough she was, Leilani crumpled the empty beer can in her good hand. "Anyway, Dr. Doom might have been an okay professor
        when he worked at the university, but I can't rely on him to educate me now, because it's impossible to concentrate on your lessons when your teacher has his hand up your skirt."
        This time, Micky resisted being charmed. "That's not funny, Leilani."
        Staring at the partially crushed can in her small fist, avoiding eye contact, the girl said, "Well, I'll admit it's not as amusing as a good dumb-blonde joke, which I enjoy even though I'm a blonde myself, and it isn't a fraction as hilarious as a highly convincing puddle of plastic vomit, and there's no chance whatsoever I'd be making light of the subject if