One Door From Heaven

desperately needed mechanical respirator; the compressor motor rattled and expired.
        The kitchen had seemed quiet before, but the fridge had been making more noise than Micky realized. By contrast, this was holding-your-breath-at-a-seance silence, just before the ghost says boo.
        Micky found herself staring up expectantly at the ceiling, and she realized that the timing of the power outage, just as Leilani was talking about UFOs, had given her the crazy notion that they had suffered a blackout not because of California's ongoing crisis, but because a pulsing, whirling disc craft from a far nebula was hovering over Geneva's motor home, casting a power pall just like alien ships always did in the movies. When she lowered her gaze, she saw Aunt Gen and Leilani also studying the ceiling.
        In this deep quiet, Micky gradually became aware of the whispery sputter-sizzle of burning candle wicks, a sound as faint as the memory of a long-ago serpent's hiss.
        Gen sighed. "Rolling blackout. Third World inconvenience with the warm regards of the governor. Not supposed to have them at night, only in high-demand hours. Maybe it's just an ordinary screw-up."
        "I can live without power as long as I've got pie," Leilani said, but she still hadn't forked up a mouthful of her second piece.
        "So Dr. Doom is a UFO nut," Micky pressed.
        "He's a broad-spectrum, three-hundred-sixty-degree, inside-out, all-the-way-around, perfect, true, and complete nut. UFOs are only one of his interests. But since marrying old Sinsemilla, he's pretty much dedicated his life to the saucer circuit. He has this honking big motor home, and we travel all around the country, to the sites of famous close encounters, from Roswell, New Mexico, to Phlegm Falls, Iowa, wherever the aliens are supposed to have been in the past, we go hoping they'll show up again. And when there's a new sighting or a new abduction story, we haul ass for the place, wherever it is, so maybe we'll get there while the action is still hot. The only reason we're renting next door for a week is because the motor home is in the shop for an overhaul, and Dr. Doom won't stay in a hotel or motel because he thinks they're all just breeding grounds for legionnaires' disease and that gross flesh-eating bacteria, whatever it's called."
        "You mean you'll be gone in a week?" Aunt Gen asked. A web of worry strung spokes and spirals at the corners of her eyes.
        "More like a few days," Leilani said. "We just spent July in Roswell, actually, because it was July 1947 when an alien starship pilot, evidently drunk or asleep at the joystick, crashed his saucer into the desert. Dr. Doom thinks ETs are more likely to visit a site at the same time of year they visited it before, I guess sort of the way college students go to Fort Lauderdale every spring break. And isn't it amazing, really, how often these weird little gray guys are supposed to have totaled one of their gazillion-dollar, galaxy-crossing SUVs? If they ever decide to conquer Earth, I don't think we've got much to worry about. What we're dealing with here is Darth Vader with lots of Larry, Curly, and Moe blood in his veins."
        Micky had figured to let the girl wind down, hut the longer that Leilani circled the subject of her brother's fate, the more tightly wound she seemed to become. "Okay, what's the point? What's all this UFO stuff have to do with Lukipela?"
        After a hesitation, Leilani said, "Dr. Doom says he's had this vision that we'll both be healed by extraterrestrials."
        "Healed?" Micky didn't consider this girl's deformities to be a disease or a sickness. In fact, Leilani's self-assurance, her wit, and her indomitable spirit made it hard to think of her as disabled, even now when her left hand rested on the table, obviously misshapen in the otherwise forgiving glow of the three candles.
        "Luki was born with a wickedly malformed pelvis, Tinkertoy hip joints built with monkey logic, a right femur shorter than the left, and some bone fusion in his right foot. Sinsemilla has this theory that hallucinogens during pregnancy give the baby psychic powers."
        The night heat couldn't bake the chill from Micky's bones. In memory she saw the fury-tightened face of the woman in the frilly slip, and moonlight painting points on the teeth in her snarl.
        "What do you think of that theory, Mrs. D?" Leilani asked with little of her usual humor,