Tick Tock

yet,” she said.
    He counted them off, then looked at her and smiled ruefully.
    The rain continued to fall.
    At fifteen seconds, the rain abruptly stopped.
    Tommy's smile faded, and Mrs. Payne's returned.
    “You were five seconds off,” he said.
    “I never claimed to be God, dear.”
    “What do you claim to be, Lilith?”
    She pursed her lips, considering his question, and then said, “Just an ex-ballerina with a considerable amount of enriching and strange experience.”
    Slumping back in his armchair, Tommy said, “I'm never going to doubt a Payne woman again.”
    “That's a wise decision, dear.”
    “What's a wise decision?” Del asked as she returned.
    Mrs. Payne said, “He's decided never to doubt a Payne woman.”
    “Never doubting a Payne woman,” Del said, “is not just wise. It's the prerequisite for survival.”
    “Although I keep thinking about the female preying mantis,” Tommy said.
    “How so?”
    “After she mates, she bites the head off her partner and eats him alive.”
    Mrs. Payne said, “I think you'll discover that Payne women will usually settle for a cup of tea and a scone.”
    Indicating the portable telephone on the coffee table, Del said, “Did you make the call, Tommy?”
    “What call?”
    “Your brother.”
    He had completely forgotten Gi.
    Del handed him the phone, and he punched in the number for the back-office line at the New World Saigon Bakery.
    Leaning forward in her chair without disturbing Scootie, Mrs. Payne switched off the trans-temporal radio, silencing the Glenn Miller band in the middle of “Little Brown Jug.”
    Gi answered on the second ring, and when he heard Tommy's voice, he said, “I was expecting you to call an hour ago.”
    “I was delayed by a yacht wreck.”
    “By what?”
    “Have you translated the note?”
    Gi Minh hesitated and then said, “Are you still with that blonde?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wish you weren't with her.”
    Tommy looked at Del and smiled. To Gi, he said, “Well, here I am.”
    “She's bad news, Tommy.”
    “More like the comics pages.”
    “What?”
    “If Jeffery Dahmer were a cartoonist.”
    Gi was silent. It was the silence of confusion, with which Tommy was too familiar.
    Tommy said, “Were you able to translate the note?”
    “It didn't dry out as well as I hoped. I can't give you an entire translation of it—but I figured out enough to scare me. It's not any gang that's after you, Tommy.”
    “Who?”
    “I'm not sure. What you've got to do is, you've got to go see Mom right away.”
    Tommy blinked in surprise and rose from his armchair. His hands were suddenly clammy with the sweat of familial guilt. “Mom?”
    “The longer I worked on the note, the more it worried me—”
    “Mom?”
    “—and finally I called her for some advice.”
    “You woke Mom?” he asked in disbelief.
    “When I told her about the note, as much as I could understand of it, she got scared too.”
    Pacing nervously, glancing at Del and her mother, Tommy said, “I really didn't want Mom to know about this, Gi.”
    “She understands the old world, Tommy, and this thing is more a part of the Old World than it is of this one.”
    “She'll say I've been drinking whiskey—”
    “She's waiting for you, Tommy.”
    “—like my crazy detective.” His mouth went dry. “Waiting for me?”
    “You don't have much time, Tommy. I think you better get there as fast as you can. I really think you better. Fast. But don't take the blonde.”
    “I have to.”
    “She's bad news, Tommy.”
    Tommy glanced at Del. She sure didn't look like bad news. She had combed her hair. Her smile was sweet. She winked at him.
    “Bad news,” Gi repeated.
    “We've been on this page before, Gi.”
    Gi sighed. “Well, at least cut Mom a little slack. She's had a terrible day.”
    “Mine hasn't exactly been a piece of cake.”
    “Mai eloped.”
    Mai was their younger sister.
    “Eloped?” Tommy said, thunderstruck. “Eloped with whom?”
    “A magician.”
    “What magician?”
    Gi sighed. “None of us knew she was dating a magician.”
    “This is the first I've heard she was dating any magician,” Tommy said, eager to establish that he could not be accused of complicity in his sister's astounding act of independence.
    From her armchair, the ex-ballerina who hadn't slept since Mud Lake said, “A magician—how romantic.”
    Gi said, “His name is Roland Ironwright.”
    “Doesn't sound Vietnamese.”
    “He isn't.”
    “Oh, God.” Tommy could too easily imagine the mood in which his mother would be stewing when he arrived at her doorstep with Del Payne.
    Gi said, “He performs