Later

44

I got back home around quarter past two, a little late but not where-have-you-been-I-was-so-worried late. I had a long scrape on one arm and the knee of my pants got torn when one of the high school boys bumped me and I went down hard, but I felt pretty damned fine just the same. Valeria wasn’t there, but two of her girlfriends were. One of them said Valeria liked me and the other one said I should talk to her, maybe sit with her at lunch.

God, the possibilities!

I let myself in and saw that someone—probably Mr. Provenza, the building super—had closed the mailboxes that had popped open when Therriault left. Or, to put it more accurately, when it fled the scene. Mr. Provenza had also cleaned up the broken glass, and put a sign in front of the elevator that said TEMPORARILY OUT OF ORDER. That made me remember the day Mom and I came home from school, me clutching my green turkey, and found the elevator at the Palace on Park out of order. Fuck this elevator, Mom had said. Then: You didn’t hear that, kiddo.

Old days.

I took the stairs and let myself in to find Mom had dragged her home office chair up to the living room window, where she was reading and drinking coffee. “I was just about to call you,” she said, and then, looking down, “Oh my God, that’s a new pair of jeans!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Maybe you can patch them up.”

“I have many skills, but sewing isn’t one of them. I’ll take them to Mrs. Abelson at Dandy Cleaners. What did you have for lunch?”

“A burger. With lettuce and tomato.”

“Is that true?”

“I cannot tell a lie,” I said, and of course that made me think of Therriault, and I gave a little shiver.

“Let me see your arm. Come over here where I can get a good look.” I came over and displayed my battle scar. “No need of a Band-Aid, I guess, but you need to put on some Neosporin.”

“Okay if I watch ESPN after I do that?”

“It would be if we had electricity. Why do you think I’m reading at the window instead of at my desk?”

“Oh. That must be why the elevator isn’t working.”

“Your powers of deduction stun me, Holmes.” This was one of my mom’s literary jokes. She has dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. “It’s just our building. Mr. Provenza says something blew out all the breakers. Some kind of power surge. He said he’s never seen anything like it. He’s going to try to get it fixed by tonight, but I’ve got an idea we’ll be running on candles and flashlights once it gets dark.”

Therriault, I thought, but of course it wasn’t. It was the deadlight thing that was now inhabiting Therriault. It blew the light fixture, it opened some of the mailboxes, and it fried the circuit breakers for good measure when it left.

I went into the bathroom to get the Neosporin. It was pretty dark in there, so I flipped the light switch. Habit’s a bitch, isn’t it? I sat on the sofa to spread antibiotic goo on my scrape, looking at the blank TV and wondering how many circuit breakers there were in an apartment building the size of ours, and how much power it would take to cook them all.

I could whistle for that thing. And if I did, would it come to the lad named Jamie Conklin? That was a lot of power for a kid who wouldn’t even be able to get a driver’s license for another three years.

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Do you think I’m old enough to have a girlfriend?”

“No, dear.” Without looking up from her manuscript.

“When will I be old enough?”

“How does twenty-five sound?”

She started laughing and I laughed with her. Maybe, I thought, when I was twenty-five or so I’d summon Therriault and ask him to bring me a glass of water. But on second thought, anything it brought might be poison. Maybe, just for shits and giggles, I’d ask it to stand on its Therriault head, do a split, maybe walk on the ceiling. Or I could let it go. Tell it to get buzzin’, cousin. Of course I didn’t have to wait until I was twenty-five, I could do that anytime. Only I didn’t want to. Let it be my prisoner for awhile. That nasty, horrible light reduced to little more than a firefly in a jar. See how it liked that.

The electricity came back on at ten o’clock, and all was right with the world.