NOS4A2(134)

Her bridge had steered her wrong. Her bridge, which always led her across the distance between lost and found, had not set her down in the right place at all. Maybe this was the House of Sleep, this derelict church, this litter of charred beams and broken glass, and she had wanted to find this place, had wanted it with all her heart, but only because Wayne was supposed to be here. Wayne was supposed to be here—not out on the road with Charlie Manx.

That was it, she supposed, in a weary sort of way. Just as Maggie Leigh’s Scrabble tiles could not give proper names—Vic remembered that now, was remembering a lot this morning—Vic’s bridge needed to anchor either end on solid earth. If Manx was on an interstate somewhere, her bridge couldn’t connect. It would be like trying to poke a bullet out of the air with a stick. (Vic flashed to a memory of a lead slug tunneling through the lake, remembered slapping at it, then finding it in her hand.) The Shortaway didn’t know how to carry her to something that wouldn’t stand still, so it had done the next-best thing. Instead of leading her to where Wayne was, it had brought her to where Wayne had last been.

Lurid red flowers grew along the foundation of the strawberry pink house. It was set up the street and away from other houses, a place nearly as lonely as a witch’s cottage in a fairy tale—and in its own way as fantastical as a house made of gingerbread. The grass was neatly kept. The ugly little man led her around back, to a screen door that opened into a kitchen.

“I wish I could have a second chance,” he said.

“At what?”

He seemed to need a moment to think about it. “A chance to do things over. I could’ve stopped them from going. The man and your son.”

“How could you have known?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Did you come a long way?” he asked in his thin, off-key voice.

“Yes. Sort of,” she said. “Not really.”

“Oh. I see now,” he said, without the slightest trace of sarcasm.

He held the door open for her, and she preceded him into the kitchen. The air-conditioning was a relief, almost as good as a glass of cold water with a sprig of mint in it.

It was a kitchen for an old woman who knew how to make homemade biscuits and gingerbread men. The house even smelled a little like gingerbread men. The walls were hung with cutesy kitchen plaques, rhyming ones.

I PRAY TO GOD ON MY KNEES

DON’T LET MOMMY FEED ME PEAS.

Vic saw a battered green metal tank propped in a chair. It reminded her of the oxygen tanks that had been delivered weekly to her mother’s house in the last few months of Linda’s life. She assumed that the man had a wife somewhere who was unwell.

“My phone is your phone,” he said in his loud, off-key voice.

Thunder cannonaded outside, hard enough to shake the floor.

She passed the kitchen table on her way to an old black phone, bolted to the wall next to the open basement door. Her gaze shifted. There was a suitcase on the table, unzipped to show a mad tangle of underwear and T-shirts, also a winter hat and mittens. Mail had been pushed off the table onto the floor, but she didn’t see it until it was crunching underfoot. She stepped quickly off of it.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t worry!” he said. “It’s my mess. It’s my mess, and I’ll clean it up.” He bent and scooped up the envelopes in his big, knuckly hands. “Bing, Bing, you ding-a-ling. You made a mess of everything!”

It was a bad little song, and she wished he hadn’t sung it. It seemed like something someone would do in a dream beginning to go rotten around the edges.

She turned to the phone, a big, bulky thing with a rotary dial. Vic meant to pick up the receiver but then rested her head against the wall and shut her eyes instead. She was so tired, and her left eye hurt so f*cking much. Besides. Now that she was here, she didn’t know who to call. She wanted Tabitha Hutter to know about the church at the top of the hill, the torched house of God (GOD BURNED ALIVE ONLY DEV1LS NOW) where Manx and her son had spent the night. She wanted Tabitha Hutter to come here and talk to the old man who had seen them, the old man named Bing (Bing?). But she didn’t even know where here was yet and wasn’t sure it was in her interest to call the police until she did.

Bing. The name disconcerted her in some way.

“What did you say your name is?” she asked, wondering if she could’ve heard him wrong.

“Bing.”

“Like the search engine?” she asked.

“That’s right. But I use Google.”

She laughed—a sound that expressed exhaustion more than humor—and cast a sidelong glance toward him. He had turned his back to her, was tugging something off a hook next to the door. It looked like a shapeless black hat. She had another glance at that old, dented green tank and saw that it wasn’t oxygen after all. The stenciling on the side said SEVOFLURANE, FLAMMABLE.

She turned away from him, back to the phone. She lifted the receiver but still didn’t know who she wanted to call.

“That’s funny,” she said. “I have a search engine of my own. Can I ask you a weird question, Bing?”

“Sure,” he said.

She glided her finger around the rotary dial without turning it.

Bing. Bing. Less like a name, more like the sound a little silver hammer would make hitting a glass bell.

“I’m a bit overtaxed, and the name of this town is slipping my mind,” she said. “Can you tell me where the hell I am?”