Set This House in Order (27 page)

“I'm still here.”

“I assume you're calling about your friend?”

“Yes. She's ready to meet with you, if you're feeling—”

“Excellent. How does tomorrow sound?”

“It sounds great! I'll have to double-check with Penny, but I think—”

“Good. I'm looking forward to it.”

But Penny, as it turned out,
wasn't
looking forward to it. When I first got her on the phone she seemed very disoriented; I had to explain twice why I was calling before I was sure she understood. “Tomorrow?” she finally said, sounding dismayed.

“Yes—tomorrow morning. I'm sorry it's such short notice, but you'll be glad you went. I promise.”

“I don't know,” Penny said. “I'm very sorry if you went out of your way to arrange this, but I've been thinking it over, and I—”

There was a loud clatter, as if Penny had dropped the phone. Then Maledicta came on the line: “Don't pay any fucking attention to her. Just say what time you want us to pick you up.”

The Buick was out front of Mrs. Winslow's at 8:00
A.M.
the next morning. My relief at discovering that Penny herself was driving faded as I realized how miserable she was. She looked like she hadn't slept much, and her neck was still troubling her; and though she didn't say so, it was obvious that she didn't really want to be doing this. I considered offering to cancel the appointment with Dr. Grey, but held off for what was, I admit, a very selfish reason: I didn't think Penny would be
allowed
to cancel, and I didn't want to have to spend the entire trip to Poulsbo in Maledicta's company.

At Dr. Grey's house, Meredith was in a bad mood too. I couldn't tell if she was mad at me specifically, but when Dr. Grey asked to be left alone with Penny, I decided to go for a walk outside rather than hang out in the kitchen.

I came back an hour later, curious to see how Penny was faring. My father warned me not to expect any miracles; it would take a lot longer than sixty minutes to put Penny's life in order. I knew that, but even so I was surprised to find Penny looking
more
miserable than when we'd first arrived. What had gone wrong?

During the drive back to the ferry, Maledicta popped out, furious, and blurted a profanity-laced explanation: with Dr. Grey's help, Penny had met
some of her other souls in person for the first time. Evidently they hadn't hit it off too well. Maledicta seemed personally insulted, and she was revving up for a lengthy tirade against Penny when Penny forcefully retook control of the body, nearly wrecking the car in the process.

Penny stayed in control until we reached the ferry landing; then another soul took over. At first I thought Maledicta had come back, but when she didn't start cursing right away, I realized it was her twin.

Malefica reached across to the glove compartment and pulled out a fifth of vodka. “Hey!” I objected. “Hey, what are you doing?”

Ignoring my protest, Malefica spun the cap off the vodka flask and started guzzling the contents.

“Get out of this car right now,” Adam said—a completely unnecessary piece of advice. I was already reaching down to unbuckle my seat belt.

But just then Malefica gasped, as if she'd been stabbed through the back of the driver's seat. She stiffened, and a new soul took charge of Penny's body.

The new soul was male—and sober, in all senses of the word. Glancing at the vodka bottle in his hand, he let out an irritated sigh and shook his head. He recapped the bottle, and instead of putting it back in the glove compartment slid it temporarily under his seat. Then he turned to me and apologized: “Sorry about that. Sometimes when they're very upset they get self-destructive—or just plain destructive. I try to keep things from getting out of hand.”

His name was Duncan; he introduced himself as Penny's designated driver.

“Is Penny all right?” I asked.

“She's asleep right now,” Duncan said. “I don't know how she'll be when she wakes up.”

“What about Maledicta and Malefica?”

“They're awake. But”—and here he was speaking to a larger audience than just me—“they aren't getting out again until they settle down.”

The ferry arrived and opened for boarding. After we were safely parked on the car deck, Duncan got out of the Centurion, taking the vodka bottle with him; when he came back a moment later he was empty-handed.

“I'm sorry about all the turmoil you're going through,” I told him, after he'd settled back into the driver's seat. “I wish I could make it easier, but I'm not really sure what to do.”

“You've been through this yourself, haven't you?”

“Not me personally. I have an idea what Penny's experiencing right now, but I don't really
know,
firsthand.”

“Well then,” said Duncan, “do you suppose you could let her talk to someone who does know?”

It was such an obvious suggestion that I was amazed I hadn't thought of it myself—and I knew just who Penny should talk to, too.

“I don't want to get involved in this,” my father said.

“It wouldn't have to be a
long
conversation,” I suggested. “You could just, I don't know, give her a sort of pep talk.”

“A pep talk…”

“Yes! Just let her know, you know, that however frightened she is now, it all works out in the end. Like it did for you.”

“You don't know what you're asking, Andrew.”

He was right, I didn't know—but ultimately, my enthusiastic ignorance won out over his reluctant wisdom, and he agreed.

When we got back to Mrs. Winslow's, Duncan woke Penny up. As soon as she realized she'd blacked out most of the trip home, she got very upset, and it was a while before I could calm her down enough to suggest that she have a talk with my father. In the end, though, she also agreed. I called out my father, and while he and Penny talked, I went inside and took a long stroll around the lake, which was very misty that day.

When I came back out, nearly three hours had passed—so much for a quick conversation. My father was wiped out.

“Did it go all right?” I asked him. Penny had already gone home.

“She's better,” my father said. “For now.” Then: “I'm very unhappy that you put this on me, Andrew.”

“Well,” I said, “it's all over now anyway, right?”

“No,” my father said. “I don't think it is.”

The next morning, Penny returned to her job at the Reality Factory as if she'd never left. At first Dennis tried to tease her about her week-long “vacation,” but she was so matter-of-fact about it that he soon gave up. And by midafternoon, having observed how easily Penny picked up the thread of her work, Julie seemed to have forgiven her her unexcused absence. “Say what you want about her,” Julie remarked to me at one point, “but she sure can write code…So I take it things are better?”

“Better,” I conceded.

“Good,” said Julie, and patted me on the shoulder.

After work that day, Penny came up to me and asked, somewhat hesi
tantly, if she could “talk to Aaron some more.” The request caught me by surprise, but my father seemed to be expecting it; he was already waiting in the pulpit. “Tell her yes,” he said. So I took another stroll around the lake, and my father and Penny had another lengthy “pep talk.”

…and the next day, another. Each succeeding conversation left my father more drained, but by Friday night he reported what sounded like real progress. “She's going to make an appointment with Dr. Eddington next week,” he told me. “She's going to start regular therapy.”

“That's great!” I said. “So the worst is over, then—”

“No, Andrew, it's just starting.”

“I'm sorry…I know she's still got a lot to go through, but—”

“You don't have the first inkling!” my father snapped. “This is…I know this situation isn't entirely of your own making, Andrew, but I still really resent being made a part of it. Certain things I just don't care to relive.”

I apologized, of course, but secretly I was still gladdened by the thought that, whatever hurdles lay ahead for Penny, my own life was starting to return to normal.

On Saturday around noon I ran into Julie on Bridge Street, and after some initial awkwardness, she invited me to lunch. While we ate I filled her in on what had been happening—it was much easier now that I actually had something to tell her—and when I finished, she told me she was sorry for the way she'd been acting.

“I can see where this must have been a hard week for you,” she said.

“It's all right, Julie,” I told her. “I know it was hard for you too, feeling left out…”

“Well…”

“Adam told me you were jealous.”

Julie blinked. “Jealous,” she said.

“In a special-friends kind of way,” I added.

“Jealous. Huh.” Julie tossed her head, in what might have been a sideways nod. “Oh-
kay.
”

“So how are things with your mechanic?” I asked, trying to sound positive. “Reggie.”

Julie made a seesawing gesture with her hand.

“Not so good?”

Julie shrugged. “He called me a couple weeks ago, after one of his friends gave my car a tow. It was the first I'd heard from him since, well, since the last time we were together. We've been having fun, but…” She shrugged again. “It could still turn out to have been a mistake. Probably will, in fact.”

After lunch, I went and hung out at Julie's apartment for several hours. It was the best, most relaxed visit I'd had there in over a year, and when I finally went home it was with a renewed sense that, yes, things were definitely looking up. I realize now that this was naive—that even if nothing else had happened, there would still have been plenty more problems with Julie and Penny both. But just then, and for the time being, I was blissfully, naively serene.

My serenity lasted about twenty hours, until Sunday afternoon, when I killed Warren Lodge.

After that, things started to get bad again in a hurry.

I was coming out of Magic Mouse Toys when I saw him, head down, hands jammed in his pockets, face buried deep in a blue jersey hood: a cougar in Pioneer Square.

After breakfast on Sunday I decided to take a day trip into Seattle. I wanted to get away from Autumn Creek for a while, to not be home if Penny or even Julie decided to call. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to make things up to those souls in the house who'd felt shortchanged on time outside recently. So as I waited at the Metro bus stop on Bridge Street, I called Angel and Rhea out to the pulpit and asked them each to think of something they'd like to do in the city.

Predictably, before Angel and Rhea had even had time to start considering possibilities, Jake, Adam, Aunt Sam, Drew, Alexander, and Simon all came crowding onto the pulpit as well, each clamoring for their own time in the body. Pretending to be surprised, I reminded them all that they'd already had their special outside time, during that first trip to Poulsbo to visit Dr. Grey. “Angel and Rhea are the only ones who didn't get a turn. Fair is fair.”

“Fair is
not
fair,” Simon complained. “The only outside time
I
got on that trip was five minutes on a stupid ferryboat. I didn't get to
pick
what I wanted to do. What I
wanted
to do was go to the Westlake Center mall. What I
wanted
to do—”

As I say, this reaction was predictable, and I'd already discussed it with my father when I'd asked his permission for this special outing. Now, following my father's advice, I hushed Simon and laid down the law: “All right,” I said, “these are the rules. Everybody gets to pick
one
thing that they want to do in Seattle. It has to be something within reason; it has to be in downtown, so we don't spend the whole day traveling around the city; and
it can't take more than ten minutes or cost more than two dollars. Because they got skipped last time, Angel and Rhea's choices take precedence, and they get twenty minutes and four dollars each. Finally”—I focused in on Simon—“anyone who complains, gets impatient, or is rude not only forfeits their choice, they also spend the rest of the day in the house, locked in their room.”

Drew still wanted to go to the aquarium, and Rhea decided that was a neat idea, so that was our first stop. The Seattle Aquarium, conveniently, is divided into two buildings; Rhea got to visit the seahorses, the tropical fish, and the giant octopus, while Drew checked out the salmon hatchery and the marine mammals. Next came rides on the waterfront streetcar: Angel rode from the Aquarium stop out to Pier 70; Alexander got the body for the return trip. We got off at Occidental Park, in Pioneer Square, where Aunt Sam found a café that served chocolate-covered croissants for $1.95.

It was a little after noon now. Simon still wanted to go to Westlake Center. Adam was the only soul who hadn't totally made up his mind, but he suggested that, if he couldn't just go into a bar and have a beer—and he couldn't—he might want to visit a “special” bookstore he knew of on Pike Street.

Both of those places were at the opposite end of downtown from where we now were, so it was Jake's choice that came next: a stop at Magic Mouse Toys. This is Jake's favorite Seattle toy store. It's smaller than FAO Schwarz, but the selection is good and includes a lot more items in Jake's typical price range.

Not that Jake really needed to spend any money. There's a trick most souls can do, that Jake has a special knack for: by holding an object in his hands, studying it from every angle, he can bring it inside, creating an imaginary copy of it in the house. This is a great way to acquire luxuries that you can't otherwise afford, and, if used more generally, it would probably cut down a lot on the real-world clutter that makes life as a multiple so cumbersome. But the trick has its limits. It works best with simple objects, or complex objects that can be
thought of
simply—a rocking horse or an electric train set being much easier to bring inside than, say, a jigsaw puzzle. Also, not all souls are equally skilled copiers—Aunt Sam and I are both pretty good at it, but my father is surprisingly bad (building the house and the geography, he says, is enough creation for one lifetime), and Adam, to his eternal chagrin, can't do it at all. Jake is a natural at it, but like most five-year-olds, he's also greedy: given a choice between real toys and imaginary ones, he wants both. So I knew that however many stuffed animals and tin
soldiers he duplicated, he'd ultimately find something to spend his two dollars on.

I entered the store on the lower level, where most of the more expensive toys are kept, and turned Jake loose. He made a quick pass by the model trains; most of the locomotives and train cars were ones he already had copies of, but there were some new pieces of model scenery that he spent a moment absorbing. Then he moved on to the board games section.

To better entice passing children, Magic Mouse keeps open demonstration copies of many of the games it sells, and on a previous visit, Jake had become fascinated with one of these, a German import called The A-Maze-Ing Labyrinth. The price was twenty-five dollars, way beyond Jake's means, but he'd been trying—unsuccessfully so far—to copy it.

Board games are hard to duplicate inside. Even the most basic ones tend to have a lot of details to memorize, and chance elements, like die-rolling, raise thorny metaphysical problems. This particular game was especially detail-heavy: the labyrinth of the title was constructed from several dozen cardboard tiles, all different, which got shifted around during play. There were cards, too—just thinking about it makes my head hurt. But Jake was determined to possess the game, in installments if necessary. He squatted down by the demo copy, which was on a low shelf, picked up a handful of maze tiles, and concentrated.

“Now, you know,” a voice boomed, “the required number of players is written on the side of the box.”

Jake startled and dropped the tiles. A salesclerk, an older man with glasses and a goatee, had come up beside him. I'm sure the clerk was only intending to be helpful, but having an adult stand over him—tower over him, from his small soul's point of view—is inherently terrifying for Jake. “Wh-what?” he stammered.

“The required number of players,” the salesclerk repeated. He tapped the side of the game box. “It's written right here, along with the recommended age range and other useful information.”

“Oh-oh-
kay,
” said Jake.

The clerk nodded and wandered away.

Jake picked up the tiles again.

“Have you been to the store before?” the clerk asked, reappearing. Jake let out a cry and, losing his balance, started to fall over; the clerk caught his arm to steady him.

“What is it you want?” I asked, standing up. Jake had left the body the moment the clerk touched him.

“I asked whether you'd been in the store before,” the clerk said, smiling pleasantly, oblivious to the distress he'd just caused.

“Yes,” I said, “we've been here before.”

“Ah,” said the clerk. “Then I don't have to tell you about Take Off.”

“Take off?” I said, and for a dark moment wondered whether this pushy man really was a salesclerk after all. “Take off
what?
”

“Take Off, the airplane travel game,” the clerk replied, indicating another, more prominent board-game display. “It's our most popular seller, by far.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that's nice, but…the fact is I'm interested in
this
game, over here, and I'd really prefer it if you left me alone.”

“Of course,” the clerk said, unperturbed. He nodded and wandered away again.

“Jake?” I said, turning back to the cardboard labyrinth. “Do you want to give it another try?” He didn't; his concentration was shattered, and he was so spooked that it was all I could do to coax him back out onto the pulpit. “It's all right, Jake; we'll go upstairs now.”

Magic Mouse's upper floor is largely devoted to novelties, things like Silly Putty and Pez dispensers. I browsed, picking up various items and commenting on them in a leisurely tone of voice. Eventually Jake calmed down enough that I was able to pique his interest with something: a spotted yo-yo that made a mooing sound as it traveled up and down its string. It cost more than two dollars, but I bought it for him anyway.

With the yo-yo in my pocket, I stepped out of the store onto First Avenue. “My turn next,” Simon said. “Your turn next,” I agreed, trying to decide whether to catch a bus or just walk to Westlake Center.

It was then, as I stood distracted on the sidewalk, that a tall figure in a hooded blue jersey brushed past me, headed south along First Avenue. The man—I assumed it was a man—jostled me as he went by; ordinarily I might have ignored this, but coming so soon after the incident with the salesclerk it made me angry, and I called after him: “Hey!”

He didn't break stride or turn around; he gave no sign of having heard me at all, just kept walking, crossing Yesler Way against the light. Which might have been the end of it, except that on the far side of Yesler, two other men were loading an antique wardrobe into the back of a truck. As he stepped onto the far curb, the man in the blue jersey looked up, so that his face was momentarily reflected in the mirrors on the wardrobe doors. It was only a brief glimpse, and the man's face was still partially obscured by the jersey hood. But I recognized him.

Warren Lodge.

I didn't really believe it at first. He'd been on the run for ten days, and by now I would have expected him to have left the state, if not the country—the Canadian border is only a hundred miles away, after all. Then too, I'd only ever seen him on TV, and as a picture in the newspaper; to literally bump into him on the street, in the flesh, was like spotting the boogeyman on line at the post office.

But as the blue-jerseyed figure ducked past the men with the wardrobe, Adam, who'd gotten the same glimpse I had, spoke up from the pulpit. “It's him,” he said.

You know that sensation when you're going along, not really paying attention to the weather, and all at once the sun goes under a cloud, and with the sudden dimming of the light you find yourself in a different landscape than the one you were walking through a second ago? This was like that: in an instant, the whole character of the day changed.

“You're sure?” I said.

“It's him,” said Adam. “It's Warren Lodge.”

Then Simon—who didn't know or care who Warren Lodge was, but was smart enough to guess that the afternoon's itinerary had just been revised—chimed in: “Hey! What's the holdup? It's
my turn
now!”

“Go to your room, Simon.”

What do you do when you spot a cougar running loose on a city street? That's easy: get the police. But looking around me I couldn't see any, not even a traffic cop. There
were
some tough-looking civilians—the wardrobe-movers, for example—and I suppose I could have tried to enlist their help in detaining Warren Lodge, but even if that had occurred to me, it would have taken time to explain what I wanted…and meanwhile the figure in the blue jersey was getting away.

I started after him.

“Andrew,” Adam said, “what the hell are you—Shit! Watch out!”

The light for the Yesler Way crossing was still red, and as I stepped out into the street, a car very nearly ran me down. Fortunately the driver was more attentive than I was and slammed on the brakes.

“Andrew,” Adam tried again, when we were safely across the street, “what are you doing?”

“Following him,” I said, “what do you think? That's Warren Lodge, we've got to catch him!”

“Catch him? Are you crazy? We've got to get the police. Let
them
catch him.”

“I don't see any police here, do you?”

“So go to a pay phone—right there, there's one.
Call
the police.”

“Not until I know where he's going.”

Warren Lodge was half a block ahead of me now, still heading south. I made an amateurish attempt to hide the fact that I was tailing him, pausing every few yards to stare into the window of whatever building I was passing, whether or not there was anything to see. If Warren Lodge had looked behind him even once, it would have taken him all of three seconds to figure out what I was really up to.

But he never did look back; just kept plodding forward steadily, block after block. Then, as he neared the intersection of First Avenue and King, he suddenly pulled up short, seeing something that he didn't like. He darted across the Avenue and vanished around the corner.

I hurried to the end of the block. Off to the right, I saw what had frightened Warren Lodge: a police car sat parked by the curb. But it was empty, and there was no sign of the officers who'd left it there.

I turned left, looking down King Street in the direction Warren Lodge had run. The sidewalk was empty all the way to the Amtrak station, two and a half blocks away. I broke into a jog, checking side streets and alleyways as I went, but reached the train station without catching sight of him again. Intent on picking up the trail before it went completely cold, I ignored a side door that said SECURITY OFFICE and entered the main terminal on my own.

“This is
really
dumb, Andrew,” Adam said. “I mean, he's not going to be in here, but it's really dumb anyway.”

King Street Station is small, and it took me less than a minute to check the lobby and the passenger waiting area. I got excited when I spotted someone in a sports jersey standing at the ticket counter, but it turned out to be a woman with short hair.

By now my father had got wind that something was up. “What's going on out here?” he said, following Seferis onto the pulpit. “Simon is running all over the house complaining that he's been cheated.”