Set This House in Order

“South Dakota…” I went off for a moment, trying to picture where in the country that was—east of the Rocky Mountains, I recalled vaguely, and at least two or three states over from Washington. But this was procrastination, a way of delaying the big question: “How did we get here?”

  “That…” said Penny, and sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  20

  As they follow the truck across Washington state, Maledicta and Malefica take turns at the wheel; Mouse is relegated to backseat driver status, stuck in the cave mouth. This is not what Mouse had in mind when she asked the Society for help. But she’s learning there’s a price to be paid for requesting the Society’s assistance—and for voluntarily giving up control.

  “Which way did Andrew go?” she had asked, back in Autumn Creek. It was a simple question, and the answer, when it came, was one that Mouse could have guessed on her own: west. He was headed towards the highway, probably intending to hitch a ride to the airport.

  “But what the fuck are you going to do when you catch up to him?” Maledicta inquired, as Mouse started up the Centurion and got rolling. “Run him down? Punch his fucking lights out?”

  “No,” said Mouse coolly, not interested in talking to herself now that she had what she needed. “Leave me alone now, please.”

  “Cunt.”

  Mouse reached the Interstate junction without catching sight of Andrew. Crossing her fingers that he had not already been picked up by someone, she drove up the westbound on-ramp. At the top of the ramp, as she paused to scan the road shoulder in both directions, she saw brake lights flaring on the other side of the median—an eighteen-wheeler was pulling into the eastbound breakdown lane.

  “Oh God,” said Mouse, as a figure came running up behind the truck and was briefly illuminated by its taillights. It was Andrew. Mouse was on the wrong side of the highway. “He said he wanted to go to the airport!”

  “He said he wanted to go to Michigan,” someone corrected her. “And you told him he couldn’t afford a plane ticket.”

  Mouse glanced at the broken, rocky strip that separated the two sides of the Interstate. She recalled how, coming to work the first day at the Reality Factory, she’d missed the Autumn Creek exit and had to go miles out of her way before she could turn around.

  “Let me drive,” Maledicta suggested from the cave mouth. “I’ll get you over there in no time.”

  Andrew had boarded the truck. The eighteen-wheeler’s brake lights went off and it started moving again. At the same moment, there was a surge in westbound traffic, vehicles whizzing by so close together that now even getting on the highway going the wrong way was going to be a challenge. Mouse started to panic.

  “Come on!” Maledicta pressed her. “Let me fucking drive. He’s going to get away!”

  The truck was out of the breakdown lane now, picking up speed, about to disappear around a curve.

  “You’re going to fucking lose him!”

  “All right,” Mouse said, and let go. Reality telescoped; Mouse flew back into the cave mouth. She braced herself there, expecting Maledicta to tromp the accelerator and cut right into traffic. She wondered what a car crash would feel like from inside the cave.

  But instead of going onto the highway, Maledicta threw the Buick into reverse and started backing down the on-ramp. “Oh God,” Mouse said, cringing, as another car appeared behind them. “Ah, you cocksucker,” Maledicta exclaimed. Steering one-handed, she swerved around the other car; the Centurion’s fender scraped a guard rail, but there was no collision. Maledicta repeated the maneuver a few seconds later, dodging around another car. And then they were at the bottom of the ramp, coasting backwards onto West Bridge Street. “Fuck but I’m good,” Maledicta praised herself.

  She braked and shifted into drive. She should have gone straight forward, taking the underpass to the eastbound side of the Interstate, but once again she behaved unexpectedly, pulling a U-turn and driving back towards Autumn Creek.

  “Hey,” cried Mouse, “what are you doing? You’re going the wrong way!”

  She tried to step forward and take the body back, but found that she couldn’t. It wasn’t even a question of a struggle, like the last time Maledicta had tried to keep the body from her; Mouse simply couldn’t get beyond the cave mouth.

  “You’re going the wrong way!” Mouse repeated, frustrated. “We’re going to lose Andrew!”

  “The fuck we are,” said Maledicta. “That’s a long-haul truck he’s on; it’ll stay on the fucking Interstate, and we’ll fucking catch up to it, no problem. But”—she flicked a finger at the gauges on the Buick’s dashboard—“before we drive over the fucking Cascades, we need gas. Gas and supplies.”

  “Oh,” said Mouse. “Oh, OK, that’s fine then…but let me drive…”

  Maledicta laughed. “Fuck you.”

  There was a gas station and convenience store right next to the west bridge; Maledicta drove in there and pulled up to the self-service pumps. She started one of the pumps running, using a Shell credit card that Mouse had never seen before (come to think of it, Mouse couldn’t specifically recall ever buying gas before). While the Buick’s tank filled, she went into the convenience store to get junk food and cigarettes.

  As Maledicta pawed through a Hostess display rack, Mouse made another attempt to retake control of the body. No use: it was as though an invisible barrier had been stretched across the cave mouth, a force field that only got stronger the harder she fought against it.

  “Give it up, fucking give it up, baby…” Maledicta sang. She went to the register and tossed two packages of Ding Dongs on the counter. “Winstons,” she told the clerk. “Unfiltered.”

  The clerk reached up to a rack above his head. Mouse, still pushing futilely against the barrier, tried calling to him: “Help!…Help!” The clerk dropped Maledicta’s Winstons next to the Ding Dongs and began ringing up the purchase.

  “Hey,” Maledicta asked him, “do you hear something?”

  The clerk gave her a blank look. “Like what?”

  “Sounded like a fucking mouse squeaking.”

  “Probably just my new shoes,” the clerk said. He demonstrated by squeaking a heel against the floor behind the counter.

  “Yeah,” Maledicta laughed, “that must be it.”

  Maledicta paid and returned to the car. Mouse, defeated, tried to resign herself to captivity inside her own head. But when Maledicta still didn’t head for the Interstate, Mouse lost her composure again: “What are you doing?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Maledicta said, puffing on one of her new Winstons. “Get off my ass.”

  “We’re supposed to be following Andrew! We—”

  “I want to get a fucking drink first.”

  “There’s no time for that!”

  “If you don’t get off my fucking ass,” Maledicta warned, “I’m going to stop the fucking car and not go another mile until I smoke every fucking cigarette in this pack. And then I’m still going to get a drink. You can’t fucking handle that, then go back down in the cave and sleep—it’s what you’re fucking best at anyway.”

  There was a liquor store on Bridge Street, but it had closed at nine o’clock, so Maledicta went to a bar instead. As they swung around to park, Mouse recognized Julie Sivik’s Cadillac among the other cars along the curb. She thought she might have seen Julie sitting in the Cadillac, too, but because Maledicta controlled the view, Mouse couldn’t look around to make sure.

  “Hey,” said Mouse, as Maledicta lit a fresh cigarette and hopped out of the Buick. “Hey wait, turn right, is that Julie over there?”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Maledicta said, and entered the bar.

  This late on a weeknight, the bar was almost empty—just a few couples in booths (including a raucous pair of drunks near the back), and no one at all at the bar counter except the woman tending it.

  The bartender was a vampire: white skin, black hair, black eye shadow, black lipstick, black nail polish, and stainless-steel piercings in her nose, eyeb
rows, and both cheeks. Mouse thought she looked hideous. Maledicta thought she looked hideous, too, and for that very reason warmed to her—briefly.

  “Popov,” Maledicta said, stepping up to the bar. “No ice.”

  “Ah,” said the vampire, sourly. “The good stuff.”

  As the vampire poured her a shot of cheap vodka, Maledicta asked: “How much for the whole fucking bottle, to go?”

  “We don’t do carry-out,” the vampire informed her. “Liquor store’s down the street.”

  “Liquor store’s closed,” Maledicta said.

  “Well, that’s too bad then, huh?”

  “I’ll give you forty fucking dollars,” Maledicta offered, holding up Mouse’s wallet.

  “Wow!” exclaimed the vampire sarcastically. “Forty fucking dollars! Let me think about it…no!”

  “Lousy cunt,” Maledicta muttered, as the vampire replaced the bottle on its shelf. She picked up the shot and downed it in one angry gulp. Up in the cave mouth, Mouse heard a soft scraping sound and saw Malefica come crawling forward, panther-like.

  Then someone behind them said: “Mouse?”

  Maledicta looked around. It was Julie Sivik. “Fuck off,” Maledicta greeted her, and turned back to the bar.

  “Maledicta,” said Julie.

  Maledicta turned around again. “Well,” she said, “I see somebody’s got a big fucking mouth.” Then she shrugged, and held up her shot glass. “You drinking?”

  “What?” said Julie, as if she hadn’t noticed they were in a bar. “Oh…oh God, no, no more for me tonight. The past couple hours I’ve been, well, hiding, I guess…but I’m on my way home now, so I just thought I’d stop and get my car, and then I saw you coming in here…”

  “Uh-huh,” Maledicta said, already bored with this story.

  “Anyway, listen, have you seen Andrew? I don’t want to see him,” Julie added hastily, “but I’m a little worried about him, and I wanted to make sure he made it home OK. And I thought, if you’re still here in town this time of night—”

  “You’re the one who got him shitfaced,” Maledicta guessed. “Good fucking job.”

  “Shitfaced,” Julie echoed. “So you have seen him, then…”

  “Fuck yeah,” said Maledicta, grinning. “We saw him.”

  “Is he OK? Did he get home?”

  “For about ten seconds,” Maledicta told her. “Then he fucking took off again.”

  “Took off?”

  “He said he was leaving town…what the fuck did you do to him, anyway? I’ve never seen anyone so fucking upset before.”

  “Don’t do this,” Mouse spoke up, from the cave mouth. “This is mean.”

  “He told you he was leaving town?” said Julie. “What does that—you don’t mean leaving for good, do you?”

  Maledicta crooked a finger, gesturing for Julie to lean in close. When Julie did, Maledicta whispered in her ear: “I need you to do me a fucking favor. You see this fucking cunt behind me? I need you to get her away from the bar for a minute.”

  “What?” Julie said.

  “Just go back to the bathroom for a few seconds, then come back up here and tell her there’s no fucking toilet paper. Or no, wait, that might not be fucking good enough, she might not give a shit…I know! Tell her the fucking sink is broken, that it’s flooding back there…”

  “Mouse—Maledicta!” Julie said. “What did Andrew say to you?”

  “Ah!” Maledicta dismissed her, annoyed. She turned back to the bar, and rapped her shot glass on the wood counter to get the vampire’s attention. “Hit me.”

  “Love to,” said the vampire. She started to pour another shot of vodka, but suddenly there was a loud crash from the rear of the barroom, followed by roars of laughter. It was the two noisy drunks, who had somehow contrived to smash the light fixture above their booth. “Goddamnit!” the vampire spat. Leaving the vodka bottle on the counter, she went to yell at the drunks. Maledicta was delighted; as soon as the vampire’s back was to her, she snatched the bottle and ran out of the bar.

  “Hey!” Mouse squeaked impotently from the cave mouth. “You can’t do that! That’s stealing!”

  “Fucking-A,” said Maledicta. “The stupid cunt should’ve taken the forty bucks when she had the chance.”

  “But…I’m going to be blamed for that!”

  “Yeah.” Maledicta laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  They were at the car now. Julie Sivik came running after them: “Maledicta!…Maledicta, wait! You have to tell me what happened with Andrew!”

  “Don’t fucking stress about it,” Maledicta said, fishing for her keys. “We’re going to bring him back.”

  “Bring him back? You mean you know where he is?”

  “We know how to fucking find him.”

  “I’m coming with you…”

  “The fuck you are.”

  “Maledicta—”

  The front door of the bar banged open; the vampire came out. “Hey!” she yelled.

  “Gotta go,” Maledicta said, ducking down into the driver’s seat. As she sped away, she looked back to see Julie making a dash for her own car, only to be body-checked by the vampire. No doubt they would have an interesting conversation.

  “Ha ha ha—fuck!” Maledicta hooted joyously. She tipped up the vodka bottle, which was still capped by a speed server, and poured a perfectly measured shot into her open mouth. “Aaaahhh…that was pretty fucking exciting, huh?”

  “You’re horrible,” said Mouse.

  “Yeah, I’m a worthless piece of shit, all right,” Maledicta said, and laughed again.

  That was two and a half hours ago. Once they were on the Interstate, it took them less than an hour to catch up to the truck (or what Maledicta says is the truck; Mouse hopes they’ve got the right one). Since then they’ve been tailing it in a relatively low-speed pursuit that, after the previous excitement, has already become tedious.

  For the past hour Maledicta and Malefica have been spelling each other at the wheel, switching off every ten minutes or so; Mouse suspects she could probably cut in during one of these switches, but she doesn’t want to risk a car wreck, so she stays in the cave mouth and waits for a safer opportunity. It doesn’t look like they will be stopping anytime soon, however, and as the miles drag on, it gets harder and harder for her to stay alert—

  —and then she is back in the body.

  It’s dawn, the sky brightening to a gray overcast. The Buick is parked in a rest area off the highway, outside an International House of Pancakes. A memorandum tucked into the sun visor above Mouse’s head reads: I-90 REST STOP, 10 MI. PAST IDAHO BORDER.

  Mouse yawns and stretches, rubs her face. She checks the dashboard clock: 5:31. Strange. In one sense, she’s been asleep for the last few hours; in another sense, she hasn’t slept at all. Her soul is rested—sort of—but her body has been up all night. This is not a new experience for her, but it’s the first time it’s happened that she’s fully understood it, and the understanding leaves her feeling disjointed, punch-drunk.

  Or maybe she’s just drunk. She sniffs. Her breath, her clothes, her car, all reek of vodka and cigarettes. The pack of Winstons Maledicta bought in Autumn Creek lies crumpled on the dash, empty. The Popov bottle, on the floor beneath her feet, is empty too, but on closer inspection most of its contents appear to have been spilled, not consumed—the floor mat is soaked.

  Mouse pulls down the memorandum from the sun visor and reads the whole message: I-90 REST STOP, 10 MI. PAST IDAHO BORDER. 4-4-CAR PILEUP ON ROAD = SHIT TRAFFIC LAST HOUR, SHOUDVE LET YOU FUCKING DRIVE AFTER ALL. TRUCK DROPPED AND WHO OFF HERE & LEFT WITHOUT HIM SO YOUR UP DONT FUCK UP..

  Mouse is grimly amused by Maledicta’s gripe about the traffic—serves her right, she thinks, for stinking up my car. And Andrew…Andrew is on foot again, it seems. But where exactly is he? The memorandum doesn’t say.

  “Where’s Andrew?” Mouse asks, aloud. “Did he go into the IHOP?”

  No answer. Maledicta and
Malefica must be back in the cavern, sleeping off the drive; and whatever other Society members are awake either don’t know or aren’t talking.

  Mouse gathers the empty cigarette pack and the Ding Dong wrappers, and picks up the vodka bottle, holding it by the neck between two fingers. She gets out of the car. The air outside is bracing, but she doesn’t mind; after disposing of the trash, she just stands there for a while, leaning into the wind with her arms outstretched, letting the cold deodorize her. It’s not especially effective; what she really needs is a hot shower and a change of clothes. A good tooth-brushing wouldn’t hurt, either. But first things first.

  She goes over to the IHOP and peers in one of the windows. Sure enough, Andrew is inside: he’s got a big table all to himself, and is skimming a newspaper as he works his way through two separate stacks of pancakes—one swimming in butter and syrup, one dry.

  There’s a pay phone right outside the restaurant. Mouse doesn’t have enough change for a long-distance call, so she dials Dr. Eddington’s number collect. She gets his answering machine, and the operator won’t let her leave a message. Next she tries Mrs. Winslow’s number; her phone is busy. Mouse hangs up. Now what? She could dial 911, but she’s not sure the police would believe her story, particularly in her current condition; they might decide to lock her up for drunk driving and send Andrew on his way. She also doesn’t want to get Andrew in trouble: what if the police question him, and he starts talking about his stepfather?

  Still trying to come up with a plan, Mouse returns to the window. Inside, Andrew has finished one stack of pancakes and pushed the other aside. He sips coffee and reads his newspaper. Now he sets the coffee cup down, picks up a teaspoon, and begins beating on the tabletop with it.

  No, not beating—he’s drumming on it, tapping out a rhythm…

  “Hi,” Mouse says, as she slips into an empty chair at Andrew’s table.

  “Hello,” he says, looking curious but not all that surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”

  A high-pitched, quick-tempoed voice…Mouse guessed correctly: this is the person she met at the bus stop last night, the one who accepted her offer of a ride. Now if she can just finesse this next part without bringing out that other guy…