One Door From Heaven

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        Face. Eyes. So much to lose. Get out. Leave. But they'd bring her back. And where would the snake be by then? Somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, waiting. And what if her mother took it with them when they hit the road in the motor home? In that tin can on wheels, already trapped with Preston and Sinsemilla, she'd have this third snake to worry about. There's no way to flee outside when you're cruising at sixty miles per hour.
        Holding the pole in front of herself with both hands, Leilani wondered what maximum distance a snake could travel through the air when it flung itself out of a tight coil. She thought maybe she'd read that it could shoot twice its length, in this case five to six feet, which might leave her unbitten, but if this particular specimen happened to be ambitious, if it always gave that extra ten percent, like the hero of some demented children's book-The Little Snake that Could-then she was screwed.
        Leilani didn't have a fearsome capacity for violence, maybe not any. She never fantasized about being a whole-of-limb, hard-bodied, martial arts wunderkind. The Klonk way wasn't the way of the Ninja. The Klonk way was to ingratiate, to amuse, to charm, but while you could expect a high degree of success with this approach when you were dealing with schoolteachers and ministers and sweetly daffy pie-baking neighbors, all you would get for trying to charm a snake was your eye on the end of a fang.
        "Better go, thingy, better squiggle," Sinsemilla advised gleefully. "Here come bad-ass Lani, and dis here girl mean bidness!"
        Because any hesitation would lead to the complete collapse of Leilani's will, she had to act while desperate with fear and fierce with anger. She surprised herself when she choked out a strangled cry, part misery and part fury, as she jabbed the lance hard at the coiled target.
        She pinned the thrashing serpent to the baseboard, but only for two seconds, maybe three, and then her sinuous whipping adversary nailed loose.
        "Go, thingy, go, go!"
        Jabbing, jabbing, Leilani poked the villain once more, crushed it against the baseboard, bearing on it with all her strength, trying to hurt it, cut it in half, but again it writhed free, no easier to kill than a serpent of smoke, as hard to nail down as your father's identity, as what happened to your brother, as just about anything in this screwy life, but all you could do was keep jabbing, keep trying.
        As the snake slithered along the wall and under the tall chest of drawers, Sinsemilla bounced on the bed: "Oh, trouble now, trouble with a capital S-n-a-k-e. Thingy's pissed, hidin' under the highboy, him bruised and bitter, him havin' a hissy fit, him broodin' up bad snaky revenge."
        Leilani hoped to see bloodstains on the baseboard-or if a snake didn't have exactly blood in it, then a smear of something else that said mortal wounds as clearly as a lot of good red gore would have said it. But she saw no blood, no ichor, no snake syrup of any kind.
        The sawn-off circular end of the hollow tubular pole wouldn't be as effective as a sharp knife, but it would cut even tough scales and muscled coils if driven hard enough, if a lot of insistent pressure was put behind it. Her sweaty hands had slipped on the polished steel, but surely some damage had been done to the snake.
        The chest of drawers stood against the wall, on four stubby legs. More than live feet high. Four feet wide. Maybe twenty inches deep. The bottom rail cleared the floor by three inches.
        Snake; under there somewhere. When Leilani held her breath, she could hear the angry hissing. The reverberant bottom of the lowest drawer amplified the sound in that confined space.
        She'd better get a fix on the creature while it was stunned. She backed away, dropped awkwardly to her knees. Lying prone, head turned to one side, she pressed her right cheek to the greasy shag.
        If Death had pockets in his robe, they smelled like this filthy carpet. Nauseating waves of righteous anger still churned Leilani, and the rotten-sour sludge of scent that pooled on the wall-to-wall gave her another reason to worry about losing her apple pie.
        "Oh, listen to that snaky brain a-hummin', listen to old thingy schemin' up a scheme, like when he wants to kill him a tasty mouse."
        The silk-textured light, as red as Sinsemilla's favorite party blouse, barely brightened the