One Door From Heaven

can't avoid asking."
        "Sure, I know," the girl said, lowering her gaze to her plate, but hesitating with her fork poised over the pie.
        in a miserable voice, Aunt Gen said, "It's never this bad in the movies."
        And Micky said to Leilani, "Did he kill your brother, Lukipela?"
        "Yes."

Chapter 12
        
        INSIDE THE RESTAURANT, which must have the capacity to seat at least three hundred, the boy, without dog, glides past the distracted hostess.
        Quickly glancing around as he moves, he notices only a few children here and there, all with their families. He'd been hoping for more kids, lots of kids, so he won't be so easy to spot if the wrong people come looking.
        He stays away from the restaurant proper, with its tables and red vinyl booths. Instead he goes directly to the lunch counter, where customers occupy fewer than half the stools.
        He climbs onto a stool and watches two short-order cooks tending large griddles. They're frying bacon, hamburger patties, eggs, and mounds of crispy hash browns glistening with oil.
        As if there's already something of the dog's heart twined with his own, the boy finds his mouth filled with saliva, and he swallows hard to keep from drooling.
        "What can I do ya for, big guy?" a counter waitress inquires.
        She's a fantastically large person, nearly as round as she is tall: bosoms the size of goose-down pillows, fine hulking shoulders, a neck made to burst restraining collars, and the proud chins of a fattened bull. Her uniform features short sleeves, and her exposed arms are as big as those of a bodybuilder, although without muscle definition- immense, smooth, pink. As if to provide the illusion of height and to balance her spherical body, she boasts a colossal mass of lustrous auburn hair, twisted and braided and flared and folded into an amazing work of architecture, high at the top of which is pinned a little yellow-and-white uniform cap that could be easily mistaken for a resting butterfly.
        The boy marvels, wondering what being this woman would be like, whether she always feels as great and powerful as she looks, rhino-powerful, or whether sometimes she feels as weak and frightened as any lesser person. Surely not. She is majestic. She is magnificent, beautiful. She can live by her own rules, do as she wishes, and the world will treat her with awe, with the respect that she deserves.
        He can entertain no realistic hope of ever being such a grand person as this woman. With his weak will and unreliable wits, he's barely able to be poor Curtis Hammond. And yet he tries. He says, "My name's Curtis, and my dad sent me in for some grub to go."
        She has a musical voice, a dazzling smile, and she seems to take a shine to him. "Well, Curtis, my name's Donella, 'cause my dad was Don and my mom was Ella-and I think what we serve here is a few notches above plain grub."
        "It sure smells fantastic." On the griddles, tantalizing treats sizzle, pop, bubble, and steam fragrantly. "Boy, I've never seen a place like this."
        "Really? You don't look like you've been raised in a box."
        He blinks, thinking furiously, striving to comprehend what she has suggested, but he can't avoid the question: "Were you?"
        "Were I what?"
        "Raised in a box?"
        Donella wrinkles her nose. This is virtually the only part of her face that she can wrinkle, because everything else is gloriously full, round, smooth, and too firmly packed even to dimple. "Curtis, you disappoint me. I thought you were a good boy, a nice boy, not a smart aleck."
        Oh, Lord, he's put his foot wrong again, stepped in a pile of doo-doo, figuratively speaking, but he can't understand what he's done to offend and can't imagine how to get himself admitted to her good graces once more. He dare not call undue attention to himself, not with so many murderous hunters looking for someone his size, and he absolutely must obtain food for himself and for Old Yeller, who is depending on him, but Donella controls his access to the grub, or to whatever you call it when it's a few notches above plain grub.
        "I am a nice boy," he assures her. "My mother was always proud of me.
        Donella's stern expression softens slightly, though she still won't give the enchanting smile with which she first greeted him.
        Speaking his heart seems the best way to make amends. "You're so fabulous,