Pandemonium

his lair, shattering it. The doctor lies on the floor, stunned, shards of glass around him.

r a d a r m a n : Now I won!

d r . aw k wa r d : Drat such custard!

Then the big revelation: Dr. Awkward pulls down his mask, and it’s Bob’s own face! (As much as I could make it look like the same face. I wasn’t good at faces, or consistency. My specialty was biceps and thigh muscles.)

r a d a r m a n : Is it . . . ? ’Tis I!

The truth finally revealed: Dr. Awkward is Bob’s evil clone. Or, is Bob Dr. Awkward’s good clone? Tune in next month, reader!

O’Connell stepped out of the bathroom, walked toward me. The white motel towel barely reached the tops of her thighs. She looked tiny, birdlike. Fuzzed scalp, nearly translucent ears. Her expression was grave.

I sat up. “What is it?” I said softly.

“I need to know something.” She stood in front of me without moving. Her pale shoulders, still glazed by wet, had pinked under the hot shower. I glanced at the white on white swell of her breasts against the frayed cotton towel, looked away.

I could smell her. Soap, and the danker scent that slipped from between her thighs. From that shadow beneath the hem of the towel.

“I need to know if the boy is watching.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.” On the video he’d come awake as if he’d been jolted from a nightmare. He’d yelled for his mother like a five-year-old. “I don’t think time passes there.”

I lifted a hand, touched the back of her knee, still damp. She closed her eyes. I moved my hand up, fingertips drawing a line of moisture. She gripped my forearm, stopping me. Opened her eyes again. “Please. Does he know what happens to you? Will he remember?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how it all works.”

She stepped back. My fingers slipped from her skin. She turned and walked to her bed. She pulled a handful of clothes from the case and stepped back into the bathroom. I lifted my hand, touched dewy fingers to my lips. I could smell nothing, taste nothing, but the subtle scent of her was still in my mind.

“Shit,” I said quietly.

After ten or fifteen minutes she came back out, dressed in a long T-shirt and nylon running shorts. She brushed her teeth at the sink without looking in the mirror. She straightened the clothes in her suitcase, shut the lid, and set it carefully on the dresser. Then she pulled back the heavy polyester bedcover and slipped under the sheets. She lay faceup, eyes closed.

I picked up my shaving kit and a pair of gym shorts. I turned out the light by my bed, then the overhead light, leaving only the fluorescent above the sink and the light from the bath. As I passed the foot of her bed, she said, “Don’t worry about the lights.”

I stopped. “Are we going to talk about this?”

“I’ve taken a vow of celibacy, Del.” Her voice was flat. Her eyes stayed closed. “I’m your pastor. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

She didn’t answer.

After my shower, I turned out all the lights, and in the dark stuffed my dirty clothes into a corner of the duffel, next to the bike chains. I left the slingshot in the back pocket of my jeans. I hadn’t shown that to her, maybe afraid she’d throw it away like my father’s pistol. I lay in the dark between the scratchy sheets, listening for O’Connell’s breathing. All I could hear was the thrum of trucks on the overpass. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my legs.

A moment before, I’d been dreaming of water, and cold. Paralyzed, I sank through the icy dark. The Black Well filled my vision,