Pandemonium

“Holy shit,” I said. It was the Armenian kid. “I talked to this guy that night. He was at the party—a big fan of Valis’. He said Dr. Ram was trying to cut out our connection to God.” I skimmed the article and found the phrase I was looking for. In his confession, Kasparian said that Ram was trying to close the “Eye of Shiva.”

“He wasn’t lying,” I said.

“Kasparian?” She tapped a cigarette from the pack.

“Dr. Ram. He was on to something. The cure. He could have helped me.”

“Somebody else, maybe,” she said. “Not you.” She lit the cigarette, exhaled in the direction of the half-open window, but the smoke seemed to eddy in the cab. I think I was up to a pack a day in secondhand smoke. “It’s been twenty-five minutes,” she said.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Go by the house again, and I’ll scrunch down.”

“Fine.” She put the truck in reverse, turned to look over her shoulder as she started to roll, and hit the brakes. I looked up in time to see a maroon Corsica cruise by, the driver oblivious to the near crash.

“Was that . . . ?” O’Connell said.

“Yep.”

“Oh my.”

“Her peripheral vision’s not so good on that side.”

“Then I suppose we should go.”

O’Connell pulled into the driveway and I hopped out. It was Thursday, and I didn’t know anymore when Mom did her big shopping. She could have just been running to the store for milk. She could be back any minute.

“Keep it running,” I said. I’d always wanted to say that. I walked briskly around to the back of the house, pushed through the chain link gate that never stayed shut, and stepped up to the back door, ready at any moment for SWAT teams to burst from the bushes. How in the world did people work up the nerve to break into strangers’ houses?

The key was under the windowsill to the right of the door, in the notch my dad had cut out for that purpose. I dropped the key, finally got it into the lock, and quietly pushed open the door. The kitchen smelled like chocolate chip cookies. Warm cookies. On the counter was a cookie rack loaded with six rows of happy, chunky mounds. Mom never made them just for herself—they were always for company, or for some special occasion. I couldn’t count the number of times she’d slapped our hands away from the plate. If we begged, she’d give us one apiece—one—and then banish us from the kitchen.

I reached out, stopped, my hand hovering over the rack. Heat rose off them. She must have pulled them out of the oven right before leaving for the grocery store. She wouldn’t have counted them, would she?

I pulled back my hand. Not yet. Take one on the way out. And one for O’Connell. That would be our reward. Surely Mom wouldn’t miss two.

I went down the basement steps, my hand automatically finding the lightbulb chain.

The brown box marked “DeLew Comics” was right where I remembered seeing it with Amra. The box was suspiciously light. I set it on the ground and pulled off the lid.

Inside, a thin stack of comics, maybe twenty issues, fewer than a dozen pages each of faded, 81⁄2-by-11 sheets. I picked up the top issue. A muscular man in red-and-yellow striped spandex floated above a city street, surrounded below the waist by a massively overinked tornado. Shakily drawn cars flew through the air; bystanders cowered. Mister Twister #2. There’d never been a #3.

I exhaled, laughed to myself. I’d been afraid the comics would be gone, evaporated like an imaginary friend. There were fewer copies than I remembered—weren’t there like a hundred left over?—but at least they existed. I wanted to sit down and read them right there, but there was no time. I fit the lid back onto the box and tucked it under my arm.

I glanced around to see if there was anything else I needed, and