Part 24 (1/2)

Julie made a seesawing gesture with her hand.

”Not so good?”

Julie shrugged. ”He called me a couple weeks ago, after one of his friends gave my car a tow. It was the first I'd heard from him since, well, since the last time we were together. We've been having fun, but. . .” She shrugged again. ”It could still turn out to have been a mistake. Probably will, in fact.”

After lunch, I went and hung out at Julie's apartment for several hours. It was the best, most relaxed visit I'd had there in over a year, and when I finally went home it was with a renewed sense that, yes, things were definitely looking up. I realize now that this was naive -- that even if nothing else had happened, there would still have been plenty more problems with Julie and Penny both. But just then, and for the time being, I was blissfully, naively serene.

My serenity lasted about twenty hours, until Sunday afternoon, when I killed Warren Lodge.

After that, things started to get bad again in a hurry.

14.

I was coming out of Magic Mouse Toys when I saw him, head down, hands jammed in his pockets, face buried deep in a blue jersey hood: a cougar in Pioneer Square.

After breakfast on Sunday I decided to take a day trip into Seattle. I wanted to get away from Autumn Creek for a while, to not be home if Penny or even Julie decided to call. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to make things up to those souls in the house who'd felt shortchanged on time outside recently. So as I waited at the Metro bus stop on Bridge Street, I called Angel and Rhea out to the pulpit and asked them each to think of something they'd like to do in the city.

Predictably, before Angel and Rhea had even had time to start considering possibilities, Jake, Adam, Aunt Sam, Drew, Alexander, and Simon all came crowding onto the pulpit as well, each clamoring for their own time in the body. Pretending to be surprised, I reminded them all that they'd already had their special outside time, during that first trip to Poulsbo to visit Dr. Grey. ”Angel and Rhea are the only ones who didn't get a turn. Fair is fair.”

”Fair is not fair,” Simon complained. ”The only outside time I got on that trip was five minutes on a stupid ferryboat. I didn't get to pick what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was go to the Westlake Center mall. What I wanted to do --”

As I say, this reaction was predictable, and I'd already discussed it with my father when I'd asked his permission for this special outing. Now, following my father's advice, I hushed Simon and laid down the law: ”All right,” I said, ”these are the rules. Everybody gets to pick one thing that they want to do in Seattle. It has to be something within reason; it has to be in downtown, so we don't spend the whole day traveling around the city; and it can't take more than ten minutes or cost more than two dollars. Because they got skipped last time, Angel and Rhea's choices take precedence, and they get twenty minutes and four dollars each. Finally” -- I focused in on Simon -- ”anyone who complains, gets impatient, or is rude not only forfeits their choice, they also spend the rest of the day in the house, locked in their room.”

Drew still wanted to go to the aquarium, and Rhea decided that was a neat idea, so that was our first stop. The Seattle Aquarium, conveniently, is divided into two buildings; Rhea got to visit the seahorses, the tropical fish, and the giant octopus, while Drew checked out the salmon hatchery and the marine mammals. Next came rides on the waterfront streetcar: Angel rode from the Aquarium stop out to Pier 70; Alexander got the body for the return trip. We got off at Occidental Park, in Pioneer Square, where Aunt Sam found a cafe that served chocolate-covered croissants for $1.95.

It was a little after noon now. Simon still wanted to go to Westlake Center. Adam was the only soul who hadn't totally made up his mind, but he suggested that, if he couldn't just go into a bar and have a beer -- and he couldn't -- he might want to visit a ”special” bookstore he knew of on Pike Street.

Both of those places were at the opposite end of downtown from where we now were, so it was Jake's choice that came next: a stop at Magic Mouse Toys. This is Jake's favorite Seattle toy store. It's smaller than FAO Schwarz, but the selection is good and includes a lot more items in Jake's typical price range.

Not that Jake really needed to spend any money. There's a trick most souls can do, that Jake has a special knack for: by holding an object in his hands, studying it from every angle, he can bring it inside, creating an imaginary copy of it in the house. This is a great way to acquire luxuries that you can't otherwise afford, and, if used more generally, it would probably cut down a lot on the real-world clutter that makes life as a multiple so c.u.mbersome. But the trick has its limits. It works best with simple objects, or complex objects that can be thought of simply -- a rocking horse or an electric train set being much easier to bring inside than, say, a jigsaw puzzle. Also, not all souls are equally skilled copiers -- Aunt Sam and I are both pretty good at it, but my father is surprisingly bad (building the house and the geography, he says, is enough creation for one lifetime), and Adam, to his eternal chagrin, can't do it at all. Jake is a natural at it, but like most five-year-olds, he's also greedy: given a choice between real toys and imaginary ones, he wants both. So I knew that however many stuffed animals and tin soldiers he duplicated, he'd ultimately find something to spend his two dollars on.

I entered the store on the lower level, where most of the more expensive toys are kept, and turned Jake loose. He made a quick pa.s.s by the model trains; most of the locomotives and train cars were ones he already had copies of, but there were some new pieces of model scenery that he spent a moment absorbing. Then he moved on to the board games section.

To better entice pa.s.sing children, Magic Mouse keeps open demonstration copies of many of the games it sells, and on a previous visit, Jake had become fascinated with one of these, a German import called The A-Maze-Ing Labyrinth. The price was twenty-five dollars, way beyond Jake's means, but he'd been trying -- unsuccessfully so far -- to copy it.

Board games are hard to duplicate inside. Even the most basic ones tend to have a lot of details to memorize, and chance elements, like die-rolling, raise th.o.r.n.y metaphysical problems. This particular game was especially detail-heavy: the labyrinth of the t.i.tle was constructed from several dozen cardboard tiles, all different, which got s.h.i.+fted around during play. There were cards, too -- just thinking about it makes my head hurt. But Jake was determined to possess the game, in installments if necessary. He squatted down by the demo copy, which was on a low shelf, picked up a handful of maze tiles, and concentrated.

”Now, you know,” a voice boomed, ”the required number of players is written on the side of the box.”

Jake startled and dropped the tiles. A salesclerk, an older man with gla.s.ses and a goatee, had come up beside him. I'm sure the clerk was only intending to be helpful, but having an adult stand over him -- tower over him, from his small soul's point of view -- is inherently terrifying for Jake. ”Wh-what?”

he stammered.

”The required number of players,” the salesclerk repeated. He tapped the side of die game box.

”It's written right here, along with the recommended age range and other useful information.”

”Oh- oh-kay,” said Jake.

The clerk nodded and wandered away.

Jake picked up the tiles again.

”Have you been to the store before?” the clerk asked, reappearing. Jake let out a cry and, losing his balance, started to fall over; the clerk caught his arm to steady him.

”What is it you want?” I asked, standing up. Jake had left the body the moment the clerk touched him.

”I asked whether you'd been in the store before,” the clerk said, smiling pleasantly, oblivious to the distress he'd just caused.

”Yes,” I said, ”we've been here before.”

”Ah,” said die clerk. ”Then I don't have to tell you about Take Off.”

”Take off?” I said, and for a dark moment wondered whether this pushy man really was a salesclerk after all. ”Take off what?”

”Take Off, the airplane travel game,” the clerk replied, indicating another, more prominent board-game display. ”It's our most popular seller, by far.”

”Oh,” I said. ”Well, that's nice, but. . . the fact is I'm interested in this game, over here, and I'd really prefer it if you left me alone.”

”Of course,” the clerk said, unperturbed. He nodded and wandered away again.

”Jake?” I said, turning back to the cardboard labyrinth. ”Do you want to give it another try?” He didn't; his concentration was shattered, and he was so spooked that it was all I could do to coax him back out onto the pulpit. ”It's all right, Jake; we'll go upstairs now.”

Magic Mouse's upper floor is largely devoted to novelties, things like Silly Putty and Pez dispensers. I browsed, picking up various items and commenting on them in a leisurely tone of voice.

Eventually Jake calmed down enough that I was able to pique his interest with something: a spotted yo-yo that made a mooing sound as it traveled up and down its string. It cost more than two dollars, but I bought it for him anyway.

With the yo-yo in my pocket, I stepped out of the store onto First Avenue. ”My turn next,”

Simon said. ”Your turn next,” I agreed, trying to decide whether to catch a bus or just walk to Wesdake Center.

It was then, as I stood distracted on the sidewalk, that a tall figure in a hooded blue jersey brushed past me, headed south along First Avenue. The man -- I a.s.sumed it was a man -- jostled me as he went by; ordinarily I might have ignored this, but coming so soon after the incident with the salesclerk it made me angry, and I called after him: ”Hey!”

He didn't break stride or turn around; he gave no sign of having heard me at all, just kept walking, crossing Yesler Way against the light. Which might have been the end of it, except that on the far side of Yesler, two other men were loading an antique wardrobe into the back of a truck. As he stepped onto the far curb, the man in the blue jersey looked up, so that his face was momentarily reflected in the mirrors on the wardrobe doors. It was only a brief glimpse, and the man's face was still partially obscured by the jersey hood. But I recognized him.

Warren Lodge.

I didn't really believe it at first. He'd been on the run for ten days, and by now I would have expected him to have left the state, if not the country -- the Canadian border is only a hundred miles away, after all. Then too, I'd only ever seen him on TV, and as a picture in the newspaper; to literally b.u.mp into him on the street, in the flesh, was like spotting the boogeyman on line at the post office.

But as the blue-jerseyed figure ducked past the men with the wardrobe, Adam, who'd gotten the same glimpse I had, spoke up from the pulpit. ”It's him,” he said.

You know that sensation when you're going along, not really paying attention to the weather, and all at once the sun goes under a cloud, and with the sudden dimming of the light you find yourself in a different landscape than the one you were walking through a second ago? This was like that: in an instant, the whole character of the day changed.

”You're sure?” I said.

”It's him,” said Adam. ”It's Warren Lodge.”