Lizard People (7 page)

Marco thought the doctor was starting to shift color. He tried to distract her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I have an idea.” He realized the genius of it. “I'll go back after him. That makes sense because I know how to get around in 2007, and you all don't. I'll bring him back. He's probably just sightseeing. When I bring him back, you guys tell me how to cure my mom's mental illness and I go home to Riverton and never bother you again. Everybody gets what they want.” Marco was very pleased with himself as he watched Dr. Gila confer with Yellow. That good feeling was short-lived.

“Inspector Anole and I agree.” Dr. Gila was removing buttons and stick pins from her smock, taking small gadgets out of her pockets, and handing them to the constable, one by one. She turned around so the woman in yellow could inspect her. Yellow nodded and produced a two-inch capsule from her tunic's chest pocket. She twisted it open and withdrew two copper BB things and an inch-long needle. Dr. Gila put one BB in her ear and one in Marco's. It tickled for a second, and then he lost track of it.

“Translators,” she said. She lifted the earphone and wire mic from his head and pulled the two buttons from his cheek. She took the needle and pushed it into the soft flesh just below his shoulder. That stung, but when he reached for the wound with his other hand, he couldn't find it.

“Stabilizer,” she said. Dr. Gila unfastened her smock and took it off. She stepped out of her skirt and stood under the tree in her pale blue swimsuit. “I'm ready,” she said.

“Ready?” Marco asked.

“If it is possible to time travel or shift dimensions, it is very dangerous,” Dr. Gila said. “Something from another time or place might seriously alter our future here in 4000. If a person could go back in the past, and somehow affected that world, a killing, or an invention, then the whole future would change from that point on. Novikov's Paradox. Unless there are completely parallel universes. Our science is still some distance from resolving such questions. Right now, I'm guessing nothing bad has happened, because here we are, getting ready to do this. But you may need help with Monitor and I'm in charge of this sector, so I'm coming with you. It's my responsibility.”

Marco could sense it wouldn't do any good to argue. Plus, if he decided to, once he got home, he could give her the slip. “Okay,” Marco said, “but I wouldn't wear that.”

Dr. Gila gave Marco a once-over. “I see what you mean,” she said. “I thought your garb was another manifestation of your illness, but if this is a portal, then your outfit is indicative of the primitives.”

“I guess you could say that,” Marco said, feeling slightly offended.

Dr. Gila put her top and skirt back on. “Does this mark me as a medical in your time?” she asked.

No, Marco thought, it marks you as frumpy, but he didn't say anything. He heard the constable ask the doctor how they would communicate with each other.

“I don't think we'll be able to,” Gila replied. “I don't want to take any more of our equipment back into their time, and, besides, I don't think we have anything that would transmit through a wormhole. Please cordon off the park and post a watch, and I'll be back as soon as I can.” She touched the middle two fingers of her left hand to the middle of her forehead in what looked like a salute to Yellow and gave Marco a nod, signaling she was ready.

“Uh, my jacket?” Marco felt embarrassed about asking, especially since he had used it to evade the disk, but heck, it was his best jacket, leather and everything.

Gila said something to Yellow that Marco didn't catch. Yellow pulled a cord and whistled into some kind of retractor pin on her lapel. Within a minute, a pale blue tube appeared, escorted by a silver tube. The blue had Marco's coat attached to its flexible arm. Yellow snatched it and handed it to him. When Yellow turned to further instruct the tubes, Dr. Gila turned to Marco.

“Ready now?” she asked.

Marco guessed that he was. They walked into the wavy stuff.

This time when Marco stopped, I opened my eyes right away. I had my questions. But he was just sitting there. Like the Buddha.

“Marco.”

He didn't move.

“Marco?”

Nothing.

“Marco, dammit!”

Nothing. His eyes were closed but his posture was straight, chin up, so he wasn't conked out. I reached out to shake him but stopped. What did they say about disturbing a sleepwalker? What if I touched him and he went ballistic? This was all so … what if he had gone somewhere in his mind and couldn't come back now?

Strings and Wormholes

After
school the next day, I drove by Marco's house to ask him what he thought he was doing, to confront him. Make him tell me the truth about that story. He wasn't home.

Back at my place, I was sitting in the living room, planning, while Mom was napping in her bedroom. I would wait for midnight, until she was down for the night, and then I'd go motel hunting again. Bars would be closed, and Dad would have sacked for the night. Dad's sneaky but he's lazy. I didn't think he'd be farther than ten miles from the bar where I found him earlier.

I called Hubie, who had most of the same classes I did, to see if I could get some back homework.

“What all have you been doing?” He sounded like he was eating.

“Uh, some family stuff came up and I've been trying to take care of it.”

“Your mom again? Tough.”

“Hey, could you tell me any homework I missed early in the week?” I didn't want to talk about Mom.

Hubie filled me in.

“If you want to come over, I'll copy the stuff.”

“Thanks, but I can't tonight.”

“Okay. They'll let you hand them in next week. What else do you have? Chem with Sarah, right? You could call her and she'd tell you the work. Anything else?” he asked.

“History, but we're just reading Zinn and discussing it.”

“Cool. Hey, you want to come eat with us?”

“Hey, Hube, I'd like to. Tomorrow maybe.”

“Well, if there's anything else you need, call,” Hubie said. “You want me to call Sarah about the Chemistry assignments?”

“No thanks. I'll get it later … but there is one more thing. Uh, what do you know about wormholes?”

“I thought you only fly-fished.”

“No, I mean like in physics. Something that connects two places in space-time? Or even one universe to another?”

“Are you writing a paper of some kind?”

“No. Uh, a friend mentioned the idea, and I wasn't sure I understood about them. Can you … could a person go from one time to another, if they found one?”

“Wow. I don't think even Stephen Hawking can answer that question. They're just theoretical, you know. Einstein's relativity, or maybe Witten's string theory, suggests it, I think. And there are a zillion unanswered questions about how they would even work. Like, could information pass through and maintain its integrity?”

“Whoa! Whoa. I just want to know could they jump through time?”

“Well, jump is probably a misnomer.”

“Hubie!”

“Okay. Okay. Theoretically, uh, maybe. I have to get through my post-doc at MIT before I can really answer that question.”

“Okay,” I said, “that's good enough for a start.”

“You should be asking Kaitlin about this space stuff,” he said. “I think she went lunar several years ago.”

Hubie knew I had a thing for his sister. He put up with it. Barely. He never called her Z like she wanted. I bet that made for some fights.

Drug Dealer?

I
woke up at the kitchen table about midnight, Trig problems and sheets of scratch paper in a mess around me. I checked on Mom. She was snoring. I wasn't hungry, I wasn't sleepy. I was ready to find Dad.

Before I got in the car, I stood on the porch and closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to get a feeling about where Dad might be, like I had before with the bar. Out of plain sight, I thought, so neither Mom nor Charlene would be likely to run into him. Cheap, but somehow a good deal, like maybe it had refrigerators in the rooms. Close enough so he wouldn't have to drive too far drunk at closing time. He might switch bars since I'd found him, but I didn't think he'd move to a different motel. What was halfway between here and Lake Vista? There were some chains like Budget Lodge on Market Street, north of downtown. They might cut him a deal, like every seventh night free.

I tried those first.

Nothing.

I remembered some cheesy motels on the old highway between Riverton and Lake Vista. His car was parked outside Room 20 in the second one I found, the Eaz-On Inn. I hesitated when I got to the door. What if he wasn't alone? As I stood there, I began to have second thoughts. What if he just agreed to everything I said and then took off again as soon as I wasn't looking? I might not find him next time. I stood outside his door a few seconds longer, thinking, then walked back to my car. Maybe there was a card I hadn't played.

I fell asleep again, trying to finish my homework at the kitchen table. The recycling truck's clanking bottles woke me the next morning. My neck was stiff and I was hungry. I sliced an apple and fixed some cereal. The milk was sour, so I put a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt on the cornflakes. It tasted annoyingly healthy. I added some blackberry jam. I wondered what Hubie was having. And then I wondered about Marco. Had I seen any food in his house?

Mom padded into the kitchen in her pajamas. She looked all wooly, like she had been hibernating.

“You want some yogurt?” I asked.

She stood in front of the refrigerator, not opening it.

“I could make you a sandwich, if you want peanut butter and honey,” I said.

She shook her head and walked back down the hall toward the bathroom.

When I heard a door close, I went across the driveway to Mr. Bellarmine's. Why couldn't my dad be more like him?

He opened his door in a blue plaid robe over a white dress shirt, already sort of duded up. “What's happened?” he asked, concern in his voice. “Are you two all right?”

I realized that he knew Dad was gone, though I am sure no one had ever told him. I also realized the recycling truck came around before daylight, and that it must be close to six A.M.

“Yes,” I said. “Sure. Don't worry. I, uh, I'm sorry I'm bugging you so early, but I just needed to ask you a favor before I went off to school.”

“Do you always make social calls by dawn's early light?” he asked, his eyes quickly making the trip from my hair to my wrinkled clothes.

“No. No, I'm sorry. I just woke up too. I'm going to change clothes,” I said, “but I need some help with something later today.”

He looked stern but not angry, if that's possible. He nodded.

“That guy you saw … the guy who visits?” I tried to keep my voice even, like this was the most normal request in the world. “If you get a chance, would you copy down his license-plate number?”

He cocked her head and squinted at me. Curious.

“Uh, I just want to make sure he's on the up and up. Uh, like with my mom and all.”

“You think he's a drug dealer?” he asked.

Sheesh! I hadn't expected him to be so savvy. “I don't know,” I said. “Maybe. The thing is, I don't like him here with my mom.”

“I agree with your assessment,” he said. “Get on to school and I'll set up an observation post.”

Walking back to my house, I was trying to remember what work Mr. Bellarmine had retired from. Lawyer? Insurance claims? Whatever it was, it was no-nonsense.

School on Friday was useless. My brain was a cement mixer, Marco-Mom-Dad-Vinnie spinning around in there. I hope I got through the surprise English test fifth period.

First thing after school, I drove by home and checked with Mr. Bellarmine. No license number yet. He had gone grocery shopping and didn't know if Vinnie had come by.

Next, I went by Marco's to make him answer my questions about his story. Nobody home.

Nobody.

What a Party!

When
I got back home, I checked on Mom. She was asleep in her bed. The room smelled liked farts and cigarette smoke. I doubted if she'd gotten up or eaten or taken her meds.

I thought about fishing but didn't have the energy and fell asleep in the living room within minutes of turning on some college game on ESPN. I had a dream that I was walking down a school hall, a long school hall, and then the doors and lockers and bulletin boards faded and the hall became darker and smaller, more like a tunnel. Finally I was crawling forward, and it was pitch-black and then it just ended. There I was on my hands and knees in a black tunnel that stopped, and I didn't know if I even had room to turn around.

I awoke feeling churned up, funky, like I had been dragged through dirt back to the surface of the earth. I don't know if it was the dream or what, but I decided I'd get high. Friday night. I wouldn't do that if I was wrestling on the team, but I'd quit, so who cares? Time for the Mander boy to party! By myself. What a party! I stuck Miles Davis's
Kind of Blue
in my stereo and dug out my personal pharmacy: a jay, a mystery pill, and an unopened pint of Jim Beam.

Mom and Vinnie could go screw themselves. Not that they hadn't already. I was pretty sure I knew what he was doing, hanging around her. She was whacked, but she was still pretty. I figured meth and sex. She needed to feel good about herself and, even psychotic, she could get a rush off the powder. Feel high for a while. And he got free sex and a drinking buddy.

I took a long pull off the bottle and it burned. I nearly spit it back up. I wanted to break things! Shoot somebody. Shoot Vinnie. We didn't have a gun in the house. Where could I get a gun?

I decided to pass on the mystery pill. A kid at school had said it was a downer when he gave it to me, but who knew? I fired up the jay and got to work on the Beam. Plenty of benzos in the medicine cabinet if I wanted to get totally subterranean later. Now I was going to slow down a little. Make a careful plan. How'd it go? Revenge is best eaten slow? Something like that. I turned up my tunes, put on my headphones, and got back to the Beam. And my eyes were wet. What the hell was that about?