Pod (18 page)

“Why?” I ask, wondering how this can possibly be a bad thing.

“One of those deer could feed us for a month.”

And there you have it, folks. I see Bambi. He sees deer cutlets frying in a pan.

That’s
why I didn’t want to tell him.

The Introduction

I’m standing on the ladder and spying through a dusty vent with my good eye. My other eye, the one with the patch, sends spikes of white-hot pain stabbing into my head every time I touch it or I bump it by accident. Which is exactly what happens every time my legs cramp from standing on tiptoe. This is my second day in the hotel and I have no idea where Cassie is, or even if she’s alive. Richie went into the restaurant about an hour ago. He’s probably having a sandwich and a beer.

Mom would scream like a boiling monkey if she knew what I was doing and why, but here I am anyway. She didn’t call me Crazy Megs for nothing. I’ll give it one more day, just one, then it’s back to the garage for me. Back to the smashed-up cars and moldy crumbs and stinking bloaters.

The door to the restaurant opens. Two men walk into the lobby, one behind the other. The first one is Richie. Still wearing the hoodie. I wonder what’s up with that. From what I can see, he looks as mean as ever. The other man I’ve never seen before. He’s at least a head taller than Richie and has wide shoulders and a big, square face. While everyone else looks ratty and tired, he seems like he’s fresh out of the shower with his black hair slicked back. He’s wearing tan slacks, a white shirt, and a blue sport jacket. There’s some kind of logo on the jacket so maybe it’s a uniform. He could be a soap opera star, or the ex-con who sold Mom our piece-of-crap Nova. Whoever he is, when he walks into the center of the lobby the rooms falls so quiet you could hear a mouse breathe.

He raises his arm and says, “I apologize, but certain unfortunate events require that I intrude on your day. I’ve been informed that two bottles of medicinal alcohol and some aspirin were stolen from one of my staff. This is truly disappointing. Those items were being used to improve the comfort of guests in need. When someone steals from one of us, they steal from all of us.”

He moves in a slow circle while he talks, pausing to look at individual faces, like he’s in a wax museum and they’re the statues on display. Sometimes he smiles, sometimes he doesn’t. Once or twice when his jacket opens I see a flash of brown under his arm. I’m thinking it’s a holster and gun.

“Only one person is in charge of who gets what and
when, and that person is me. There are
zero exceptions
to this rule.” His voice picks up an edge that startles me. I bump my bad eye and instantly feel jolts of scorching pain. My good eye starts to water.

The man takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, and says, “As director of security in this hotel, it’s my job to maintain safety and order. We must catch this thief and deal swiftly with the problem. I’m offering one bottle of water and five cigarettes to the person who turns the thief in. Your cooperation will be strictly confidential. If I don’t have an answer by this time tomorrow morning we will skip a water day. I assure you that would be very bad for the folks up on floor ten. If I don’t have an answer in two days, well—we don’t want to see that happen, do we, Mr. Smith?” He turns to Richie.

Richie, underneath that hood, smiles like a wolf and says, “No, sir, Mr. Hendricks. We sure don’t.”

“Good. Now if you will all excuse me, I need to get back to my appointments. Mrs. Solomon is having problems with her ankles.”

Mr. Hendricks raises his arm and waves to the group like this is no big deal, but everyone knows it is. I see that flash of brown again. Definitely a holster and gun. He walks into the restaurant and closes the door.

It takes a few moments for air to come back into the room, a few more minutes for people to start whispering and nodding in clumps of two or three. Richie and Hacker return to their posts. A line forms in front of me. They
used to talk. Now they just stare straight ahead, silent and still.

I look across the lobby and out the windows. It’s a sunny day.

No one seems to notice except me. The fog is gone.

Final Answer

I’m sitting at my post in front of the living room window, binoculars in hand, waiting for her to grace me with a visit. I’m like Dutch in the old days. He’d wait right here, muzzle resting on the windowsill, for me to come home from school. In fact, there’s a permanent drool stain in the wood. I’m pathetic, I know, but what can I say? It’s not like this place is a hub of activity. I already checked out the pantry. The cans are back in their appropriate rows, minus the niblet corn and the pickled artichokes we had for breakfast this morning.

A thought comes to me, and it isn’t the first time for this one. Why is the bike still there?

I mean, the POD commander deleted everything else—cars, trucks, planes, you name it. But the bike— it’s still there. Is it some kind of reminder, to make sure I don’t forget who’s in charge? If so, then it’s working like
a freaking stroke of genius. I can’t look out this window without seeing Jamie disappear, not ten steps from where I’m sitting. But then a hairy pair of arms kept me from helping her. Because of him I’ll be seeing Jamie, her wide-eyed mix of hope and fear and—

“You up for some Scrabble?”

Speaking of Pod-Zilla, here he is, stomping into the living room.

Torturing him with triple-word scores is fun but not high on my list right now. I have something better to do. Like looking at this cul-de-sac, at the bike that’s always there, the POD that never moves or sleeps, the girl who should be in the window but isn’t. So instead of saying yes, I set down the binoculars and say, “What happens when our food runs out?”

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.” He sits on the floor facing me, leans back on his elbows.

“So?” I say. “What’s your plan?”

“It’s a complicated question.”

“No. Either you have a plan or you don’t. You always have a plan.”

He says, “Okay, you’re right. I have a plan. But it’s … evolving. I’d rather not talk about it now.”

“You’d rather play Scrabble?”

“Yes.”

“Than talk about our future?”

“Scrabble is more fun.”

“There you go again, Dad, avoiding the harsh realities of life.”

He smiles.

“You want to know what I think?”

“Always,” he says.

“Okay. The way I see it, there are only two choices.”

This gets the silent nod. I
hate
the silent nod.

I say, “One, we starve to death, or two, we get deleted.”

“Which do you pick?”

“First, a question: Does starvation hurt?”

“For a while,” he says. “But I’ve heard that once you get past the point where the organs shut down, it’s painless. Even peaceful.”

“Like drowning?”

“The romanticized version, yes.”

He transitions from sitting to lying down, head propped on his fingers, staring up at the ceiling. We have a fine collection of cobwebs up there. Now that Dad has seen them, I expect they’ll be gone by tomorrow. At this moment, when I should be contemplating the moral implication of choosing death by POD or death by starvation, I realize I don’t even know what day it is—Monday, Wednesday, Sunday? Then again, so what? Time is no longer measured in units, it’s just the indefinite space between waking and sleeping. Sooner or later that won’t matter because—

“So?” he says.

I say, “Uh, deleted. Definitely the way to go.”

“Final answer?”

It sounds like he was thinking door number two and I went for door number one. “Deleted. Final answer.”

“Why?”

“Very quick, probably painless, and maybe we’re not really killed. Maybe we’re beamed somewhere.”

“Like heaven?”

“I’m not ruling it out. But it could be another planet, or another dimension—like a flowery meadow where singing butterflies ride on the backs of unicorns.”

He says, “Maybe it’s a place where you’re forced to work in alien mines deep below the surface of some barren asteroid, digging with blistered fingers for toxic fuel. Or maybe you’re kept in feed lots, like those cows we pass on the way to Seattle.”

No one kills a buzz like Dad. “Whatever,” I say. “I go with the freaking unicorns.”

He stands up. When I say “freaking” he usually leaves the room. For him it’s the verbal equivalent of a fart. But this conversation needs closure, so I ask, “Which do you choose?”

He rubs the hair on his face and says, “I defer my vote to a later date. There may be other options.”

“Avoiding reality again?”

“It’s my prerogative as the elder statesman.”

“Well, you better hurry,” I say, picking up the binoculars and turning toward the window. “We’re running out of kidney beans.”

Later that night a howling wind comes up. This seems to happen a lot, way more than in the pre-POD world. Tonight it happens well after I’ve gone to bed, rattling the window and shaking me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. I try going
back to that place, where emptiness actually feels good, but I can’t. I’m thirsty. I need a drink of water, just a sip, something to help peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Dad will never know. I slip out of bed. Dutch thumps his tail twice and goes back to sleep.

As I feel my way down the stairs, I notice a flickering light from somewhere below. Did someone forget to pinch out a candle? Fire Marshal Dad wouldn’t approve! Down a few more steps and I hear a sound. Something rhythmic and steady, mixed in with a dose of heavy breathing. Is that
him
?

I’m at the bottom of the steps, staying on the carpet as I creep down the hall toward the kitchen. When I reach the corner I have a view of the patio door. I see Dad’s reflection in the dark glass. He’s in the kitchen, a burning candle on the counter beside him. There’s also a white spray bottle and what looks like a glass of water. He rubs the counter with a rag, his hand moving in slow, meticulous circles. He’s really leaning into it, concentrating, bald patch down, like there’s some stain that just won’t come out. After a few more rubs he picks up the spray bottle, squirts a few blasts at another spot, then goes back to work. Then he takes a spoon, dips it in the glass, and drizzles it over the spot. He rubs that down with a different rag. Then he picks up the spray bottle, moves slightly to the right …

I’ve seen enough. I turn around and slip back to my room.

With the door closed and absolute darkness enveloping me, I contemplate this new rip in the fabric of my life. And Dutch starts licking his balls. Perfect.

The Whispering Women

I think my eye is infected. It’s gone from sore when I touch it, to a steady throbbing pain no matter what. I feel a whopper of a headache coming on, too. I can’t do this ladder thing anymore. I need to find Cassie before it’s too late, for her and for me. There are two ways I can do that. One is to walk right in and tell Richie that I’ll give him the gun if he’ll give me Cassie. The other way is a lot harder and I start sweating just thinking about it, but if it means avoiding Richie and Mr. Hendricks, then I’m ready to try.