Fractal Mode

CHAPTER 13—ESTA

THEY were just in time; school was letting out, and the students were surging forth in waves. Slick let Colene off on the sidewalk where Esta normally walked alone toward her home.

“I’ll be near if you need me,” he said.

Colene watched the car pull away. She turned to look at the surroundings. This was a typical suburban neighborhood. It reminded her of her own—and of how she, hardly more than a month ago, had spied a man in a gully, and helped him, and that was Darius. How her life had changed, because of that one encounter! Of course nothing like that was in the offing now, but it did give her a certain perspective.

The girl appeared, crossing the street at the intersection. She was small and thin, her hair reddish and somewhat frizzed. Slick had said she was thirteen; she looked eleven. Youth was supposed to be the time of carefree innocence; Colene knew better than that, and the sight of this approaching girl was further evidence. Esta’s head was bowed, her body slumped, and her clothing was careless. A rumpled dark green skirt, an olive-green shirt—a bad combination. This was a nothing girl; It showed all over. She surely had no friends.

Slick thought she was suicidal. He could be right. What reason would such a person have for living? Colene herself had been popular, yet possessed of a deathwish. How much easier it must be to fade away if one’s prospects really were blah.

The girl passed without pausing. Colene, surprised, hurried to catch up. “I must talk to you.”

“No.” Esta walked on.

“Look, I know you don’t know me, but I really need to—” Colene broke off, because the girl was ignoring her.

This was a problem Colene hadn’t quite anticipated. But she regrouped. “I’m not exactly a stranger. I know your name. Esta. Just wait a moment.”

“Anybody could have told you,” the girl said, not breaking her stride. “Leave me alone.”

“Just listen a moment. Are you okay? I mean—”

“Not supposed to talk to anyone. Go away.”

This wasn’t working. Colene was starting to feel desperate. So she took a chance. “Slick,” she said. “Slick sent me.”

Now Esta reacted. “Uncle Slick,” she breathed.

“Oops,” Colene said, with partially feigned chagrin. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. He’s under court order not to see you.”

The girl abruptly halted. “Court order?”

“You didn’t know? You thought he didn’t care?”

Esta stared at her, and Colene realized that this was exactly it: the girl had not been told. So she rushed on. “He loves you, Esta, but he’ll be arrested if he’s caught close to you. So he just sort of watches from afar. But none of your folk know me, so I can be with you, if they don’t catch on. Talk to me, Esta; I can be awful good company when I try.”

The slight humor of her phrasing was lost on the girl. “Why can’t Uncle Slick visit me?”

This was definitely not the time for the whole truth. “Your mother thinks he would be a bad influence.”

Esta made a sound. It was, Colene realized, a laugh, but it was so forced and pained that it sounded more like a cross between a bark and a whine. Colene had never heard such an utterance before, but she recognized it instantly: it was sheer misery. This was indeed a lost soul, and there was absolutely nothing funny about it.

“Esta, we really have to talk,” Colene said.

But the girl had recovered her isolation. “No. You’re just more trouble. Go away.”

Time for another desperation ploy. Colene kept pace, unwrapping the band of cloth around her left arm. She held it up before the girl’s face. “See what I am,” she said.

For there were the scars of her nature: many thin white welts across her wrist, and one great long one on her inside forearm. The average person might mistake their significance, but Esta should recognize it.

The girl’s eyes widened. “But you’re pretty!” she exclaimed.

Now it was Colene’s turn to laugh. “Do you think that matters?”

Esta shook her head. “I guess not.” But she kept walking.

Colene followed up her opening. “Okay, so you’re not supposed to talk to anyone. I don’t want to get you in trouble. But your uncle really wants to know how you’re doing, and now I know he has reason to be concerned. Look, I don’t have to go in your house or anything; we can talk outside—no, I guess not, because people would see. I know: your bike! I can maybe fix it. I know about bikes.”

“Flat tire,” Esta said. “Keeps leaking air. Overnight, or in the day.”

“I know something that’ll stop that,” Colene said eagerly. “Tire sealant. I can get it at a hardware store. Is there one near here?”

“No.”

So much for that. But Colene refused to be balked, now that she was making progress. She looked around.

Sure enough, there was Slick’s car parked around the corner. He was watching.

She beckoned to him. Meanwhile, to Esta: “Pretend you don’t see anything.”

The car glided up. The window rolled down halfway. “Bike tire sealant,” Colene said. “One package. We’ll wait.”

The car glided away. Esta’s eyes were round. “That was—”

“Remember, court order,” Colene said. “You didn’t see anyone.”

The girl was impressed. “You really are from—”

“A friend,” Colene finished. “Let’s just walk slowly. No one’ll care if you have company one day.” She realized that this was a good break; it verified her authority.

“Oh, God, I wish—” Esta started, but didn’t continue.

“I don’t know if I can help,” Colene said. “But tell me. I’ve got a notion what it’s all about.” For surely Slick’s worry had substance, and this girl wanted to die.

But Esta was silent. Colene saw the fear in her. She didn’t dare talk to any stranger about it, however well connected that stranger might be. This was understandable.

“Let’s do this,” Colene said. “Let’s just walk around this block, waiting for that tire sealant to get here, and I’ll talk and you listen. Okay?”

Esta didn’t answer, but she did turn the corner when Colene did, walking down the block instead of crossing the street. She was listening.

“I’ll tell you about Vincent,” Colene said. “He’s one of my favorites, for all the wrong reasons. He was the son of a pastor, and he was sort of restless and moody, so he didn’t succeed in anything. He was a salesman in an art gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among the miners. All he did was get more depressed. So at age twenty-seven he tried painting. He figured he wouldn’t live many more years, so he might as well do what he could while he could.

“The truth is, he wasn’t much. His first paintings were dark and somber and maybe sort of crude. He was trying to express the misery of the poor miners he had seen. But he kept plugging away, though no one cared, and he turned out a lot of stuff, something like sixteen hundred sketches and paintings in ten years. But he seemed pretty crazy to the neighbors, and nobody much wanted the paintings. He talked another painter, Paul, into joining him for a while, but then he got mad at Paul and threatened him with a razor. Then he cut off his own ear. No question about it: he was mad, and they put him in a madhouse for a year. When he got out, he painted seventy paintings in seventy days, standing out in the hot sun.

“But he was having hallucinations, and he couldn’t stand it any longer, so one day he took a gun out to the field. He went behind a pile of manure and shot himself in the chest, maybe figuring that manure was all he was worth. But he messed up again, and didn’t make a clean job of it. He staggered back to the house. He smoked his pipe through the night, then got a bad fever, and the next night he said, ‘There is no end to sorrow,’ and died. He was thirty-seven.”

“There is no end to sorrow,” Esta repeated.

Colene glanced at her. The girl was listening, but her expression was inscrutable. Girls were good at hiding their feelings, when they had reason, even from other tormented girls. Colene realized why her own parents hadn’t understood her; she had been too good at hiding. She continued with her story.

“But that wasn’t the end of it, quite. Later they figured out that maybe he wasn’t mad, he just had a bad ear infection. The pain was so bad he cut off part of his ear trying to get at it. And his paintings really weren’t bad. In fact some were pretty good. In fact he was later credited with being the ‘Archetype of Impressionism,’ which was the idea of being emotionally spontaneous in painting. His paintings made it into the best museums, and finally one sold for about eighty million dollars. So maybe poor Vincent Van Gogh should have hung on a little longer. He wasn’t the failure he thought he was.

“I came to know him sort of by accident. There was this print on the wall, titled Van Gogh in Aries, and it was like the dabbling of a child. I mean, I’m no painter, but I could do as well as that. I saw the guy had just spread bands of color sideways across the canvas, and then dabbed splotches of color on to represent flowers. He didn’t even try to shape them; they were just blobs. He had part of a house to the side, and a tree. I figured he spent maybe ten minutes on the whole thing. But here it was on the wall, so somebody must have liked it. So, well, I’m sort of ornery, and I wanted to know what was in this painting that would make anybody want to hang it on a wall. It’s like not getting the joke when everybody else is laughing; maybe the joke’s not worth getting, but still your nose is out of joint because you don’t like feeling stupid.”

“Yes,” Esta breathed. She was coming to life.

“So I looked at that painting a lot. And you know, it changed. When I caught a glimpse of it from afar, those splotches really did look like flowers; my imagination filled them in the way I thought they should be, and it was better than meticulous detail would have been. And I saw that what I had figured was a supernatural red ocean beyond a white beach with a blanket on it was really the roof of a house, and the beach was the wall with windows. What had looked like a sailboat was a vent in the roof. But I also saw that the tree looked sort of like a monster with a trunk, maybe an extinct elephant. And some of those carelessly scraped lines formed tulips. It was really a very nice garden, and I’d have loved to be there, instead of in my own dingy little life.”

“Yes!”

“So I knew I’d misjudged Vincent, and he was a good artist. He just wasn’t wasting energy on unnecessary frills; he was going for the essence. Maybe a critic would see only the quickly clumsy brush strokes and the places where bare canvas showed through, but a real person can see the garden and just about smell the flowers. That’s the difference between critics and real folk: the critic sees only the hole, while the real person sees the donut.

“But the point is, it was a tragedy that Vincent killed himself. He was a genius in his own peculiar fashion, and no one knew it then, but now they do. I wanted to kill myself, but I hung on just a little longer, and then I got into such a wonderful adventure you wouldn’t believe. It would have been a real shame if I hadn’t lived for that. And I know your life may not stem like much now, but—”

“I’m not suicidal,” Esta said.

“Because you just never can tell what’s around the corner, and—” Colene paused. “What?”

“Well, I’ve thought of it, but I don’t want to die, really. I just wish—” She shrugged.

They had completed their circuit of the block, and now the car was gliding up. A hand extended from the window, holding a package. Colene took the package, and the car went on without stopping.

“Let’s go fix your bike,” Colene said. She realized that she had blundered, going on an assumption. Esta showed all the signs of being severely troubled, but there were other ways to be troubled.

“But maybe the way Vincent thought he was mad, when it was in his ear, I’m like that,” Esta said. “I guess it really hurt in there.”

“I guess it did,” Colene agreed. “I had a pinched nerve once, and it laid me up for three days. If he had something like that in his head, maybe he was hearing things and hurting and getting dizzy, and it was all just that bum nerve in his ear. If it could have been treated, he would have been all right. But they didn’t know about that sort of thing, so they just called him mad. Maybe he wasn’t suicidal either, but there just wasn’t any other way to get away from it.”

“Yes. There is no end to sorrow.” It was evident that she related well to that thought.

At least she was responsive now. The story about Van Gogh might have been misplaced, but it had evoked several reactions and seemed to have broken the ice. Colene chatted about inconsequential things as they completed the distance to the house. It turned out to be an ill-kept place with an un-mowed lawn and peeling paint. Colene knew how it was; her folks both worked, and when they were home they had other—not better, but other—things to do than keep the grounds in order. So they did the minimum to keep up appearances.

The bicycle was in the garage. It was a standard ten-speed model, with a flat rear tire. That was always a mess, because the derailleur got in the way and it was hard to take off, and the adjustments were always out of whack in little invisible but critical ways when it got put back together.

Colene turned it over and spun the wheel. There was no visible damage. “This will fix it,” she said. “I just have to take out the valve core, here. Do you have a tool?”

“A what?”

Evidently not. “Then tweezers will do it.” The girl found tweezers, and Colene used them to twist the core out of the valve. Then she shook the bottle of sealant, and opened it, and squeezed its thick yellow juice into the tube via the valve. She screwed the core back into the valve and spun the wheel around. “See, this gunk clogs up the pinprick hole, and presto, no leak. It’s like magic. Got a tire pump?”

Esta didn’t answer. Colene looked at her, and caught a look of horror on her face. What was there about fixing a tire that bothered her? “Got a tire pump?” she repeated.

Esta found one. It was inefficient, but they took turns pumping until the tire was firm. It did hold air now. “And it shouldn’t go flat overnight,” Colene said. “Mine didn’t. It’s the easiest leak to fix, and it won’t puncture again soon, unless it’s really bad.”

“It went down in half an hour,” Esta said. “I barely made it home from school.” She seemed to have recovered from her horror of the tire repair.

“Well, then, you can try it now, and if it’s still solid after half an hour, you’ll know. You have time?”

“He doesn’t get home until five-thirty,” Esta said. There was a tightness about her that Colene picked up on. That would be the stepfather, and it was evident that the girl didn’t like him.

“Okay, let’s try it,” Colene said. She wanted the girl to see that the bike really was fixed, because that would indicate that Colene knew how to fix things. Then maybe Esta would tell her what was going on with that stepfather. Maybe it was just firm discipline, which nobody liked. But Colene feared that it was more than that, because of the girl’s repressed state and weird reactions. Slick wouldn’t have been concerned otherwise. Slick thought that maybe someone needed killing, and he just might know, because that was his business. So the job wasn’t done yet.

They wheeled the bike out to the street, and Esta got on and rode. For the first time the girl seemed other than hangdog; the breeze of motion tugged her reddish hair out a little and her green dress too. She almost had a little sex appeal as her thighs showed. A couple years’ development and competent makeup might do a lot for her. But first she would need a sizable attitude transplant. The way a girl acted, the way she felt about herself had a lot to do with how she looked. A homely face wasn’t necessarily a liability.

“It’s holding,” Esta called, pleased.

“Well, it’s too soon to tell. But it should be okay.”

They took the bike back to the garage. “Look,” Colene said. “Your Uncle Slick is worried about you. He thinks you’re suicidal, and since I’m suicidal, he figured I might be able to talk to you. I guess we missed on that. But I can tell that something’s bothering you, and I’d sure like to know what.”

Esta remained guarded. “Why are you suicidal?”

Would candor bring forth candor? It was worth a try. “I think I’m just a depressive type. But it got worse once I hit puberty. Maybe the hormones—I don’t know. But what happened to me didn’t help.”

“What happened to you?” This was good; the girl was showing interest.

“I got raped,” Colene said flatly. “It was supposed to be a party, but I was the only girl there, and these four guys—I had some of their drinks, and I didn’t know how to handle it, so I was pretty dizzy drunk, and they just did it, all four of them. I thought I’d never get the filth-feeling out of me, and I still feel like such a fool. My folks never knew. After that, well, things just sort of progressed.”

Now they were sitting on the step leading to the house from the garage, out of sight of the front. It was reasonably cozy. “I heard four men talking, once, about it,” Esta said. “I was lying on my bunk in the corner of the room and I guess they thought I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. They were friends of him.” She didn’t identify the last, but it had to be her stepfather. It was as if she couldn’t say the man’s name.

“Four men,” Colene said. “They—how old were you?”

“Six. It was right after Mom married him. She was in town, and he was baby-sitting me. I didn’t like him even then, but I knew I had to keep my mouth shut. So I was pretending to sleep. They had been helping him move stuff in, and then they sat down and drank beer and talked, and I just kept on playing dead. He was on the phone, getting something straight, so they were just waiting for him. But it was interesting, I guess.”

“You guess? Now I’m interested!” Because if Colene’s mention of the gang rape had triggered this memory, it might be relevant.

“It was about women. The men were all married, and I guess they didn’t much like it. The first one said that his wife was fat, so that the thought of having candy with her turned his stomach. She had been thin when they married, but then she ate herself fat, and he thought she must want it that way so he would leave her alone. So he went somewhere else for it. The second said that his wife picked a fight every time he mentioned it and wound up shutting him out of the house, so he had to go somewhere else too. The third said that his wife always said no, and if he got really tough about it, she suffered through it with such tragedy that he lost his taste for it, so he went away too. The fourth one said that his wife arranged always to be away, busy, or asleep, so he could never catch her, and he had to get it somewhere else.”

“I guess that’s what men say,” Colene said. “But let me tell you—”

“I know. But I didn’t know then. I thought those wives must be really stupid not to give their husbands what they wanted. I thought it was a box of candy they meant, and one wife got fat from eating it all herself, and another shut him out of the house so she wouldn’t have to share it with him. I thought they should get two boxes so each could have one. I really sort of sympathized with the men, because their wives were all treating them so bad. I knew how good candy was, and my mother never let me have much of it either. So I hoped Mom would let him have all the candy he wanted, even if I didn’t like him, so he wouldn’t be mad about it. Because I knew it wouldn’t be any good if he got mad. That was the way it was with Dad, and he finally left for keeps.”

“Candy,” Colene said with irony. “When did you learn what it was?”

“When I was seven. He—I think she gave him all he wanted, but he got tired of it with her. Then her job hours changed, and she was home two hours after he was. He was drinking—”

“I know how that is,” Colene said. “My mother usually gets home after my dad.” But the pattern seemed to have changed, because yesterday Colene’s mother had come home first. Maybe to spend more time with him.

“I don’t think so.”

Colene realized that something more was in the offing. “What did he do?”

“He—I can’t tell. He’d kill me. He said he would.”

Colene already had a notion. The way Esta had reacted to that tire repair—it was that oozing gunk from the tube! Sexual molestation—at age seven. That was something Colene herself had never suffered. This girl had reason to be unhappy! “So you didn’t tell your mother?”

“I—I tried to, after a year—”

“A year! This went on for a year?”

“Every day. But Mom said I was making it up, and she would punish me if I ever tried to tell such a lie again. She wouldn’t listen.”

Colene knew that this, too, was tragically typical. The woman might love her daughter, but she was part of the problem. “Esta, I’ll listen. Tell me.”

“But I don’t dare!”

Colene pondered ways and means, and came up with something she hoped would work. “Esta, I heard somewhere that depression is anger turned inward. You’re depressed. I think you have reason. I think you’re really angry, but you can’t let it out, so you just get worse. I’m suicidal. I know how it is. Tell me what it is that is making you so angry you can’t even talk about it. Only to me. I promise I won’t laugh and I won’t be angry. I just have to know. Because I think I can help you.”

The girl gained some courage. It was clear that she wanted to tell, and was waning with her fear. “He hurt me—”

“There,” Colene said, indicating her own lap.

“Yes, some. But mostly there.” Esta indicated her chest.

“There?” Colene couldn’t fathom this. The girl had not yet developed in that region.

“Yes. It hurts real bad. And I can’t scream, because—”

“Because he’d kill you?” The horror of this was growing.

“Yes. And because I deserve it, because I’m no good.”

Emotional abuse. That was in certain ways the worst of all, because it destroyed the victim’s will to resist. “You don’t deserve it!” Colene declared.

“Yes, I do! I know I must.”

Pointless to argue that case right now. There were still facts to ferret. “How did he hurt you on the chest?”

“With a—he smokes—it—”

A new horror dawned. “Show me.”

Slowly, reluctantly, the girl unbuttoned her shirt. She wore no bra, but did have a band of gauze around her chest. She drew away the gauze to bare her skin. Colene stared, appalled.

There, where the breasts would develop, was a mass of scar tissue. The girl had been burned repeatedly with lighted cigarettes. Some of the burns were ancient; some were recent.

“He’s still doing it?”

“Every day.”

Every day—for six years. Torture. No wonder Esta had thought of suicide. This was so much worse than Colene had imagined that it took her a while to grasp it. “But why?”

“Because I’m bad.”

“Exactly how does he do it?” Colene hated delving into this, but she was afraid she was misunderstanding. She had to get it right.

“He—he makes me take off my clothes, and he says, ‘Open up,’ and then he does it.”

Colene questioned her further, completing the ugly picture. What took shape was an incestuous molestation of such ugliness that Colene found it difficult to keep her face straight. She did not want her reaction to make the girl stop talking; she had to get it all. Esta herself did not realize the full significance of it; she thought she was being punished for her continued badness.

“Didn’t you try to tell anyone else?” Colene asked. “What about a school counselor? Didn’t they tell you that this sort of thing is wrong?”

“They did, but I didn’t know who to believe,” the girl said. “Maybe for good girls it’s wrong, but for me—”

“Did you ask a counselor?”

“No. I didn’t dare.”

“So the school never knew.”

“No. Only, maybe…” Esta did not finish her thought.

“What was it?” Colene asked sharply. She realized that she had assumed the authority of an official in Esta’s view; the girl was responding to her tone of command.

“I—I wasn’t doing well in school,” the girl confessed, ashamed. “My badness was showing. The teacher said I fit a profile. I didn’t mean to!”

“Not your fault,” Colene said. The profile of an abused child! “So what happened?”

“They made me go to a doctor. A psy—psy—”

“A shrink. And?”

“He was in his office, and so—so—”

“So sure of himself?”

“Yes. And he said, ‘Come on, girl, open up.’ ”

“And you freaked out,” Colene said, recognizing the horrible coincidence of words. The abuser had told her to open up, meaning something else.

“I was very bad,” the girl admitted. “The teacher was mad. She said I didn’t want help.”

So it had come to nothing, because of people who were too quick to judge on the basis of too little understanding. Colene knew the type.

A decision was growing in her. “Esta, do you love your Uncle Slick?”

“Oh, yes! He’s nice!”

“You know he would never do a thing like that to you? Or even let it happen, if he knew?”

“I know.”

“Pack your things. I’m taking you to him.”

“But I couldn’t—”

“Before your stepfather gets home and does it to you again.”

That persuaded her. Esta hurried into the house.

Colene walked out to the street. She peered each way. When she spied the distant car, she beckoned.

It approached. The window rolled down. “Slick, trust me. It’s worse than we thought. We’ve got to take her out of there. Now.”

“I can’t—I’m not set up to—the court order—”

“Listen to me. Those don’t mean anything. You’re in trouble anyway, right? You have to go away already. Take her with you.”

“But I don’t know a thing about—”

“Slick, you’re her only hope. Just take her. You can learn what you need to. Right now, she can come to my hotel room. Believe me, I’m not joking. You sent me to find out, and I found out.”

“What is it?” Slick demanded. “What’s with her?”

“I’ll tell you when we have her safe. But you decide now: which do you want, vengeance or to save Esta?”

There was a long pause. “Bring her out.”

Colene turned away, and the car moved on. Colene knew it would return the moment they were ready for it.

She went to the house and helped Esta pack. “We’ll get you clothes and stuff there,” she said. “Just take underwear and what you value most.”

Esta took a doll and a picture of a man who must have been her father. She crammed them into the suitcase with her underclothing. She seemed eager to get out of the house, as if afraid that something would stop her from escaping, now that she was taking the plunge, or that she would lose her fragile nerve if she paused.

They hurried out. The car approached.

Esta looked around. “My bike!” she cried.

“We can’t—” Colene started. Then she reconsidered. If they thought the girl had fled on her bicycle, it might distract them from a more accurate search. “Okay, if it’ll fit. Go get it.”

Esta shoved the suitcase at her and ran to the garage. Colene went for the car. “Can her bike fit?”

“On the roof.” Slick opened the trunk.

Colene tossed in the suitcase. Then Esta came with the bicycle, and Slick heaved that up onto the rack on top and quickly fastened it down with a strap. They piled into the front seat of the car.

“Now explain,” Slick said grimly as he drove.

“I don’t think now’s the time.”

“I’m trusting you. Now you trust me. Why am I doing this?”

Colene realized that he was as doubtful about this as Esta was. On her own authority, she was drastically changing both their lives. She had to tell him, without mincing words. She braced herself.

“Her stepfather gets his kicks from making her hurt,” Colene said evenly. “He has sex with her every day, but it’s not enough, so he burns her on the chest with a cigarette, and when she stiffens in pain, that’s what brings him off.”

Slick almost drove off the street.

“Maybe you think I’m lying,” Colene said. “Stop for a minute, and I’ll show you.”

He drew to the side and stopped. It was just as well, because his hands were shaking.

Colene turned to Esta, who was to her right. “It’s okay, Esta. He needs to know. He won’t laugh or be mad at you. Show him your chest.”

Esta obeyed the voice of authority. She opened her shirt and parted the gauze.

Slick stared. “Oh, my God, honey,” he breathed. Probably for the first time in years, he had been truly shocked.

“No killing,” Colene reminded him. “That’d bring them right to you. We have to let them think she just ran away on her own. Anyway, she needs you with her. To protect her. You’re the only man she can trust.”

“Killing?” Esta asked as she buttoned her shirt.

“Hyperbole,” Colene said quickly, before realizing that the girl might not know the meaning of the word. “I mean he’s mad enough to kill, but of course he wouldn’t do that.” It was a lie, and she felt guilty, as if she had betrayed Darius, but it was necessary.

Slick kept quiet. He resumed driving. His knuckles were white against the wheel.

“I don’t want to get Uncle Slick in trouble,” Esta said.

“You have it backwards,” Colene told her. “He’s getting you out of trouble.”

They arrived at the hotel. “But you know, this is only for one night here,” Colene said to Slick. “Tomorrow I have to see the professor, and you—”

“I will get tickets to far away,” Slick said. “We’ll go right after you have your information.” Then he thought of something. “My sister—”

“She doesn’t want to know. You can send her an anonymous note or something, saying Esta’s all right. Which she will be now. Believe me, your sister can’t protect her, and Esta can’t go back there.”

He nodded, appreciating the cruel logic.

They got out and unloaded the bicycle and suitcase. Colene held up the room key so that he could see the number, then realized that it didn’t match the room. Hotels did that to protect their guests from getting robbed if they lost their keys. So she told him the number. “Come see us as soon as you’re ready. Esta needs you. Don’t go near that house. When the cops investigate the disappearance, chances are they’ll catch on to what was going on. Then they’ll be on your side, in a way. They’ll make him pay.”

He nodded. He got back in the car and moved out.

They went into the hotel and up to the room. The door opened as they approached it; Provos had remembered their arrival.

“This is Provos, my companion,” Colene said. “She’s a little strange, but she’s a good person. She—”

But Provos was already embracing the girl, who looked startled but not alarmed. Then the woman led Esta to the bathroom, where new gauze was laid out. Any explanations would have to wait until later, when the woman did not remember the girl.

Colene got on the phone and ordered a good meal for three. She wanted to eat early, in case things got complicated later. She had proceeded as if Esta’s presence were routine, but knew that she was technically guilty of abduction. She didn’t think that Esta’s family would be able to locate her within a day, but it was best not to gamble.

Room Service delivered the meal. The three of them were completing it when Slick returned. He had two airplane tickets to Mexico City. No doubt he had contacts there, and it would be almost impossible to trace his route thereafter. He also had a small collection of comic books. “I thought—I didn’t know what you might like, honey,” he said to Esta, pushing them at her.

The girl gazed up at him. “Are you really going to take me away?”

“I have to, honey. If you stay anywhere near here, they’ll find you and make you go back. I’m breaking the law just being with you now.”

“But you live here! You’ll lose your job!”

He shook his head, smiling grimly. “Honey, I didn’t really like my job anyway. Maybe I can get a better one, and just take care of you, and we’ll never speak of the past. Would you like that?”

She stood. “Oh, Uncle Slick, just hold me.”

They embraced, somewhat awkwardly. Esta was nervous about being close to a man, even this friend of her childhood, and Slick did not know how to hold a girl who was a relative. But Colene knew they would work it out. Each of them was the one good thing in the other’s life. Each could have a better life with the other.

Then Esta looked at one of the books he had brought. She smiled, accepting it. Colene saw the title: Morning Becalms Electro. That was probably humor. Better that than horror.

“I have to call my folks,” Colene said. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them where I am.”

She went to the phone. Provos wheeled the dishes out to the hall, remembering how it would be done in the morning. Provos’ lack of concern was a good sign; it meant that there would be no trouble in the night. Slick and Esta shared the couch and talked, seeming happy to get better acquainted.

Colene’s father answered the phone. That was probably best, because it meant he was home, rather than out with a woman. “Dad, I won’t be home tonight,” Colene said. “Something came up. But I’m okay, and I’ll be back there probably tomorrow afternoon.”

“Back to stay,” he said.

The guilt welled up again. “Dad, I can’t stay. I have commitments. This is just a visit.”

He was persistent. “Where do you have to go that’s more important than your family?”

“You wouldn’t believe it, Dad.”

“Try me.”

Why try to lie, when the truth would not be believed? “I have to go on the Virtual Mode. That’s like a path across realities, and every few steps I cross into a new reality, until I get to another anchor site. I have—I have a man from one of those other worlds, and a telepathic horse. Provos is from one of those realities. But there’s trouble, and our friends are caught in a reality where we don’t want to stay. So I had to come back here to—to get something. To help them get back on the Virtual Mode. And I’m going back. You and Mom are better off without me anyway. Just forget me.”

“How do you get on this path?”

Was he actually believing her, or just humoring her? Did it matter? “My anchor is in Dogwood Bumshed; that’s where I step through. That’s where I got on the Virtual Mode, and where I came back here. It’s my connection.”

“You just go in your shed and disappear?”

“I guess I do, really, the way it must look from here. Because I step into the next reality. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way it works. The next reality looks the same as this one, but the people are different, I think. Some of the other realities are really weird, and some are dangerous. Magic works in some of them. But I don’t expect you to believe any of this, Dad. Just take my word that I have somewhere to go, and I can’t stay here.”

“I understand. We’ll see you here tomorrow, then.”

Colene laughed. “Yes. I have to go there, to get to my anchor. Bye for now, Dad.”

“Goodbye, honey.”

She hung up, struck by the similarity between the way her father addressed her and the way Slick spoke to Esta. A girl one cared for was “honey.” It meant so little, and yet so much. Why did it make her feel so horribly guilty?

Her father had taken it surprisingly well. He had really seemed to believe her, or at least to accept it for now. He hadn’t tried to argue. Yet he had seemed to care. Maybe he figured that he would be able to talk her into staying when she showed up there.

She looked up. The others were watching her. They had overheard her description of the Virtual Mode. Maybe they thought she was crazy. Except for Provos, of course.

“I guess you’d have to be there,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy. My father must think I’ve gone over the edge.”

“You’re like me,” Esta said. “Nobody knows what’s in your mind.”

“Close enough,” Colene agreed.

Slick stood. “I have things to do,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

“Remember, no—” Colene started.

“I have to arrange for funds to be where we’re going. And to put my house on the market. You have changed my life, little girl.” He left.

“Which one of us did he mean?” Esta asked.

Colene considered. “Both of us. But mostly you. I think you may be doing as much good for him as he’s doing for you.”

Esta laughed, unable to believe that. But Colene suspected it was true. She remembered her brief dialogue with Slick on the notion of being like a father. Now it was happening, and she knew he wasn’t faking his desire for it. There had been truth in him as he spoke. Unless she was fooling herself about her ability to read minds, a little, here in this reality.

There were two beds in the suite. Provos had taken one, so Colene decided to share the other with Esta.

They slept, but in the night Colene dreamed. A balding man was approaching her, taking her onto his lap, telling her to “open up” her legs, and she was terrified of what was coming but unable to resist. Suddenly her chest was bare. Then she saw the burning cigarette. She tried to scream, but couldn’t open her mouth. The pain started.

She snapped awake, shaking and sweating. Esta was writhing beside her, making little strangled moans. It was Esta’s dream she had shared!

Colene caught the girl’s hand. “It’s gone,” she said, trying to project the thought to Esta’s mind. “It’s over. Never again. He can’t touch you any more. It’s just a bad memory, and it will fade. You’ll have a normal life.”

Esta slowly relaxed. Colene continued to hold her hand and project calming thoughts. She knew that the victims of abuse could suffer post-traumatic stress, much the way soldiers and the victims of torture did. In fact Esta was a victim of torture. She had suffered all three forms of abuse: physical, sexual, and emotional. Systematically. Before she was ten years old, and continuing thereafter. She had massive horror to work out of her system. Could just going away with her uncle be enough? Colene herself had suffered much less, yet remained somewhat fouled up; how much worse it was for Esta!

Yet what else could they do? Slick would try his best to make a good life for them both. That would have to be enough.

Colene relaxed herself, still holding Esta’s hand, and drifted back to sleep.

Only to have her own bad dream. She saw a wedding, and heard the Bridal Chorus, a piece of music she had always loved; pursuing its origin she had learned of the German composer Richard Wagner, and become a passing devotee of his music. There was something about it that fascinated her, and not merely its beauty. But this was not an ordinary wedding; she knew it. She strained to see the bride, but the heads of everyone else were in the way and she caught only snatches until she was past. Then she watched the bride’s rear, noting how beautiful she was, how elegantly slender yet full, her brown/black hair spreading down across her back.

The bride came to the front, and Colene saw the groom. It was Darius! He was so sternly handsome it was almost unbearable. Her love for him suffused her heart and burst beyond it, rising up to her stunned brain and forging down to her genital region, infusing both with longing. She wanted him in every way possible, as much as possible, as long as possible.

Then the bride lifted her veil, and Colene finally saw her face, so beautiful that there was a murmur of awe throughout the congregation. She was absolutely perfect, and so was he, and they made the most wonderful couple. They kissed, and it was the fulfillment of the lifelong dream of every man and every woman who had ever lived.

But Colene watched with horror shading into grief. Because the bride was not herself. She was Nona.

“Oh, Colene,” Esta said as Colene struggled awake, shaking. She had shared the dream, because of their linkage. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve got to get back to the Julia universe,” Colene said. “Before it happens for real.” But she was afraid it was already too late, because she was so hopelessly outclassed. Nona had everything: beauty, maturity, innocence, and terrific magic. How could anyone compete? “If I could even only play an instrument the way she does,” she added wistfully. “But her hammered dulcimer is like the music of heaven, while my guitar is like strictly amateur.” She sighed, experiencing a whiff of suicidal inclination. Maybe it had been too late the moment the anchors changed and Nona had appeared. Maybe this was her punishment for getting them out of their prior predicament by practicing deceit. Darius had come to accept what she had done, but did she accept it herself?

“You’re such a good person,” Esta said.

“I wish,” Colene said, echoing the girl’s own expression.