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We drifted down the escalators from the south entrance of Clary-Lamarr and stepped onto the large concourse outside, which was dominated by the thirty-foot-high bronze statue of Lola Vavoom. We had missed the rush hour, and only latecomers and shoppers were walking out of the travelport.
“What were we just talking about?” I asked.
“Stuff,” replied Landen vaguely, taking a deep breath. “You know, I’m not sure I’m going to get used to living out of town. To me, grass is simply a transitional phase for turning sunlight into milk.”
“You’re changing the subject,” I replied suspiciously.
“I do that sometimes.”
“You do, don’t you?”
But Landen was right. He wasn’t really a country dweller.
“After a few months, you’ll be wondering how you lived anywhere else.”
“Perhaps.”
We’d moved out of Swindon four months before, not long after I’d been discharged from the hospital. The main reason was that our daughter Tuesday needed more room to experiment, but an equally good reason was security. I had more enemies than was considered healthy for the peaceful family life I had half promised myself, and a country home was more easily defended— from enemies on either side of the printed page.
“I think the city council is taking the threat of a smiting a bit lightly, don’t you?” I asked, as aside from a few billboards outlining the possibility that the Almighty would lay the center of Swindon to waste in an all-consuming fire next Friday, little seemed to be going on.
“Joffy said the cathedral received a leaflet slipped under the west door,” murmured Landen. “It was called Vengeful Cleansing by a Wrathful Deity and You.”
“Helpful?
“Not really. A few tips for a safe evacuation when the order is given—covering the windows with brown paper, hiding under tables, mumbling— that sort of thing. I’m not sure they’re taking the threat seriously.”
“It was serious enough for Oswestry,” I replied, recalling the first of the nine random smitings that had been undertaken around the globe by a clearly disgruntled deity, eager to show His wayward creations the error of their ways.
“Perhaps so, but that was the first time, and no one believed that it would happen. If they’d evacuated the town, all would have been fine and only the buildings destroyed.”
“I suppose so. Did they ever decide whether it was ethical for those turned to pillars of salt to be ground up for use as winter road grit?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” He looked at his watch. “What time are you meeting with Braxton?”
“As soon as I’ve had the psychological evaluation.”
“I thought you’d have to be a bit nuts to want to run SO-27,” mused Landen.
“Undoubtedly,” I replied, “but it’s not so much a question of how mad applications for the job might be as the style of madness. Obsessive drive is probably good, speaking in tongues and shouting at the walls less so.”
“Do you think Phoebe Smalls has the requisite loopiness to get the job?”
Detective Smalls, it should be noted, was the only other person who could realistically lead the re-formed Literary Detectives division. She was good, but then so was I.
I thought for a moment. “Perhaps. She applied for the job, after all—no-one would do that unless a little bit odd.”
“She hasn’t got your experience,” said Landen. “Running SO-27 isn’t for tenderfoots.”
“But she’s got the youth,” I replied, “and her health.”
“Phoebe Smalls might look a sound bet on paper,” he replied, “but when weird comes knocking, gray hairs count. Braxton knows this. Besides, the boss need never leave the office. Consign the running around to the young pups.”
He smiled at me, but he knew I wasn’t happy. I ha
d yet to walk without a stick, or pain. My broken femur had knit badly in the two weeks before I was found following my accident, and it had to be broken and reset with pins, which is never satisfactory. I wasn’t particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees. Besides, Landen had been missing his leg above the knee for longer than he hadn’t, and he was fine. In fact, since he had a left limp and I had a right one, if we walked side by side, it apparently looked quite comical. I told Tuesday we were her “cute cripple parents,” and she retorted that “cripple” wasn’t really a polite term, and I told her that since my leg got mashed, I could define myself in any way I chose. In answer to that, she huffed, glared and then pouted, as teenagers are wont to do.
“She’s right,” Landen had remarked when I told him. He’d lost his leg to a land mine in the Crimea almost three decades before and referred to himself as either a “deconstructed bipedalist” or, more simply, “a man unjustly overcharged for socks.” “Will you be okay?” he asked now.
