I'm lying in bed and thinking about baths.  It's been a long time since I took one, and we've even got a lovely clawfoot bathtub that's too small for Ren but just right for me.  Not that it matters anymore, to him.  There's a fluttery feeling in the back of my throat like a tear, but it doesn't condense into one.  There's a glass of orange juice on the armoire and I can't remember if I put it there today or yesterday, or if I didn't put it there at all.

I can hear water running in the tub.

It's probably not my imagination.  Of course, a lot of things are these days, so I don't rule it out.  I get up to see anyhow, though, and take the glass of orange juice with me.  I hit my head on my door as I open it, too.  It doesn't hurt but it's sort of annoying.  I should stop drinking the funny-tasting juice, which I know are the pills in liquid form. 

Curse the pills again; if I could keep my thoughts free of pink goo I could've figured out who was taking a bath without taking a walk.  It's Nikki.  She and Dr. Sharp are the only other people here, and Dr. Sharp isn't the bath type.  If asked, I would say that he's the type to...hey, Nikki's talking to Malice.  I can hear the cat meowing.  She's left the door open a crack, and she's walking back and forth getting ready for her bath and talking to the cat.  Malice is a talkative cat, very easy to talk to.

"Okay, then, I'll tell you a story," Nikki says, "but only if you promise to keep it a secret, okay?  This is how Nicole Kerry Saxen comes to find herself about to take a bath in an old house in Michigan." 

Well, that's funny.  I'd have thought Nikki was just here working for Dr. Sharp.  The story is apparently more complex than that, though.  Then again, everything usually is, isn't it?  Ian mentioned something about moving me down closer to Detroit, and I can't recall him asking me if I wanted to move.  I like this house.  I haven't much wanted to be anywhere else, since...well, since Vermont.  And apart from that trip to the food festival in Hart Plaza, I haven't really had much fun being dragged out when I didn't want to go out, either.

There are a lot of strange things going on.  I need to call Molly.  When did I call her last?  I can't remember if it was yesterday or on her birthday in August.

I'm too caught up in my own thoughts to eavesdrop on Nikki's story.  When I tune back in, she's talking about being kidnapped by her own uncle, of all things.  It's an interesting story, but it's hard for me to concentrate on it without any pictures to feed my mind.

She's still talking about herself in the third person, which is a neat, gothy affection that's somehow just like her.  Even though I just met her, I think it's just like her.  "Nikki made new friends at her new school, although she didn't traditionally go in for the popularity contests.  Around November, death took all of her new friends in a single spectacular car crash, and put Nikki in the hospital for four months.  Brad and Janet and Trish and Jack and Mark and Erin and Tom all died.  Nastily, too.  They were fucking roadkill.  But Nikki survived.  She was becoming convinced that she could survive anything, whether she wanted to or not."

I find myself nodding.  I can understand that.  I want to go in there and pat her shoulder and tell her I understand, but from the glimpses I get of her as she moves back in forth in front of the door, she's already mostly undressed.  I don't mind people hanging around when I'm undressed, myself, but I am not most people.  Malice trills at her though, and that seems to be answer enough.  Good cat.  If I were there, I'd trill too.  Nikki starts running water in the sink, probably to wash her face, and I miss some of what she says.

"And then," she says when the water stops, "Taiisha found her."

Ooh, now that sounds interesting.  I scoot closer to the door to hear better.  Malice gives her a sad meow--that cat speaks English, I've known this for years--and Nikki agrees.  "Yes, I know.  Taiisha took Nikki into the desert, and trained her.  She said she had been watching Nikki, watching what the world was doing to her, and that she would make her stronger.  She was willing to kill Nikki to do so.  Training, living, and torture became synonymous during the two years that followed.  And Taiisha did make Nikki stronger, in the most terrible ways."  She's so comfortably, unconsciously melodramatic it makes me smile, it's a perfect way to tell a story and with her little whispery voice I almost wish she'd been here at Halloween to read ghost stories to me and Cygnet.  That would've been fun.

Nikki moves in front of the door and I get a glimpse of her through the crack.  She's taken off her shirt, and her arm and shoulder are covered with nasty, spiralling bruises.  Apparently she isn't making her story up.  She starts to peel off her skirt and undies, and I look down the hallway.  I can see a light from downstairs, where Doctor Edward probably is.  I haven't heard anything about him yet in Nikki's story.  I wonder if he knows who Taiisha is.  Maybe it's his secret name, but I don't think so.  He doesn't look like a "Taiisha."  The pink clouds make it hard to think much more than that.  "And now after this long dance," Nikki says, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."  Hee, hee!  She's quoting Oppenheimer, that's so cool.  Creepy, judging by the way she's looking at herself in the mirror, her face a mask of they'll never find your body, but cool, too.

"Are you confused?" Nikki asks.  For a moment I think she's talking to me, but she's turned away from the mirror and is talking to Malice.  I think.  "This is what that means.  Taiisha gave Nikki a task.  That's how she ended up with Eddie Sharp, to whom she was delivered."  Ah!  That's where Doctor Edward comes in.  "Eddie thought he had met her by chance, and he took her in."  She turns the water off, sits on the edge of the tub, and tests the temperature with her fingers.  "He didn't know it, but he was in for a nasty surprise, when the game was finished.  Meanwhile, Eddie taught Nikki things, too."

"Doesn't sound like there was much left to learn."  I don't mean to say anything, it just falls out of my mouth.  Nikki shoots to her feet like she's being electrocuted.  She seems to turn around in mid-spring and lands with her feet wide apart, hands coming up like she's getting ready to put a fist through my head.  Now I really wish I hadn't said anything.  I didn't mean to come so far into the room, either.  "No more horrible things, anyway," I say.  "Maybe you learned something pleasant--oh, don't stop, keep telling your story.  Malice likes stories."  When the cat hears her name, she hops off the edge of the tub with a little feline burble and walks over to rub my feet with her head.

Nikki grabs her skirt off the floor and holds it up in front of herself.  "Go away!" she screams.

I really ought to, but somewhere back in the pink clouds there's something I have to ask.  "Go away for now or forever?"  I hope she doesn't hate me.  It's just...I just...something.

"Just go!"

I do.  Nikki slams the door behind me.  I wander back to my room.

Swish-click. I'm sitting on a stack of pillows with most of a mass airflow meter and intake for a Crane-Packard in my lap, and I'm listening to the noises the house makes.  There are quite a few of them; I can hear the wind fluttering in the flue, and the refrigerator, and the tiny chirps and sighs the floors make when everyone moves.  I can hear Mister Doctor Edward up in his room, and I know Nikki's coming toward me before she arrives.  She wasn't so angry after the bath incident that she won't talk to me, which is nice.  Sometimes I notice she's got a funny, guarded way when she's around me though.  I guess that's to be expected.  Still, she's willing to chatter aimlessly with me, and I like that.  Not everyone's capable of chattering aimlessly, you know, but she does quite a decent job of it.

After Nikki's satisfied that I'm not going to either spill her secrets or kill myself in the next half hour or so, she goes, and I have a sudden urge to call Molly. 

"The dead have risen, Miss Molly Snow, and they're walking the earth," I say when she answers the phone.

"Are you telling me something I already know, Lexi, or are you talking about yourself?" 

"I'm talking about the snow.  Did you get snowed on?"

"Good God, did we!  I think a foot and a half fell last night, and Boston didn't even get the worst of it.  I hear that Detroit is completely shut down.  Like, calling-the-National-Guard shut down.  I tried to call Cygnet, to see how things were, but she's not at home."

My sinuses suddenly hurt like I've been crying.  I miss my friends.  "Up here it's business as usual," I say.  "Snowmobiles in the woods, everyone socked in for a long winter's nap.  We have provisions!  We need no National Guard.  It's a goddamn winter wonderland, is what it is.  I'd go make a snow angel, but I just washed my hair and I'm not wearing panties."

"That sounds like the Lexi Crane that I know," Molly says.  "It's good to hear you so chipper."

"So how's life, apart from the snow?"

"Pleasant.  Busy.  You?"

"No, not me, for a while.  It's been too much me for too long.  I want to hear about you."

"If you feel that you must.  Most important business of the day is that I have a name for the column, finally.  What do you think of 'Porch Swing Tales?'  It's not too predictable, and it's not a goddamned pun."

"I like it.  How many papers are buying it now?"

"Eleven.  Mostly little newspapers. The biggest one's got a circulation of maybe fifty thousand.  Of course, Dad still thinks it's a dumb idea."

I snort.  "Well, he would.  That's what he's for.  He's probably still mad that you got divorced instead of having a cute little kid like Katherine and David's."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Forty percent."  Molly and I deal in percentages a lot.  It's a habit and I can't remember which one of us started it but I know it was in a math class we both took around eighth grade.  The teacher looked like Bette Davis.

"Just checking.  Anyway, I don't expect to be rubbing Dad's face in my success any time soon.  Not that I'm going to stop, of course, I like writing the column, and the subject matter.  But it's not going to pay the bills by itself.  And, to be honest, it's nice to have something else for him to go on and on about--the 'my daughter has been married and divorced before thirty, woe is me' shtick has been done to death, it's getting stale.  It's gotten so that I can barely stand to see them every Sunday."

"So don't go.  Sillyhead."

"My mother would rend her clothes and take poison if I didn't show up to dinner.  You know that.  It's an Italian mother thing, so you'll just have to accept it.  Besides, they're the folks, what'm I going to do?  I love them to death, even if I do complain."

"I know."

"As long as they're getting the subliminal message that they wasted all of their time doting on Peter, I'm happy.  A little martyrdom doesn't bother me a bit."

"How's the big brother?  Still on parole?"

"Last time I checked," Molly says.  "I got your pictures, by the way."

"What pictures?"

"The ones you sent, of the factory?"

"What factory?"

"The Crane-Packard factory.  Are you being silly, or did you honestly not send them?"

"If I did, I don't remember doing it.  Did I leave a note?"

"None at all," Molly says.  "It was just a bunch of Polaroids in an envelope with a silly name on it and your return address."  I hear paper moving, and guess that she's just grabbed the envelope.  "Here it is.  Eight…no, ten Polaroids, I presume all taken at your factory."

"I don't know if it's technically mine any more, actually."  Is it?  I can't remember that, either.  "What's in them, though?  This could be a fun mystery."

I can practically hear Molly frown over the phone.  "I don't understand.  Are you sure you're not screwing with me?"

"Ninety-six percent.  I might've done it when I was all loopy, but I haven't been down there lately.  And I don't own a Polaroid camera, either."

"You…?  Shit."

"So what's on them?"

She's quiet for a moment.  "Front of the building.  Two of the side.  Two of the trucks out back, and boxes being loaded.  Two more of men on the loading dock."

"They must be new pictures then, from whoever's using it the place.  We never shipped anything out of there except whole cars."

"You didn't?"

"No. Of this I am positive."  And I am, too.

Molly can tell from my voice, and doesn't ask if I'm sure.  It's nice not being treated like something broken, even if I am somewhat.  "These pictures show boxes, going into trucks."

"Was it maybe taken before?"

"No, your paint is on the walls."  That's right, Ren and I painted the place black and white and red.  I can suddenly picture it.  "There are some pictures from inside, and the Crane-Packard logo is still there.  I can't tell what's in the boxes."

"I think Ian said something about renting the place out."

"He told me it was empty."

"Did he?  That's just silly, 'cuz it obviously isn't.  What do you think it means?"

"Depends on who sent it."

"Well, who sent it?"

"According to the envelope, someone named Langdon Quimby.  That can't possibly be a real name."

"That's what I said."  It just falls out of my mouth and I have no idea what I'm talking about.

"Huh?"

"I don't know.  It's vaguely familiar though, that name."

"Friend of yours?"

"I'm pretty sure I haven't baked bread for him yet."

"Oh, well then he's obviously nobody.  By the way, Glen Grant likes your bread."

"Glen Grant?  The journie?"

"Yup.  We've been talking back and forth, on email.  I called him a couple of times, too."

"Is it love?  Is it?"

Molly bursts out laughing so suddenly I don't think even she expected it.  "Don't be stupid," she tries to say, but she's laughing too hard.  Her laugh makes me laugh, and we giggle together.  "Anyway, that just reminded me that he mentioned having your bread when he was up there to see the collection and talk to you."

Our cars, yes.  Glen visited to interview me, and we talked about Daimlers and Triumphs.  He likes old British cars, and he's never ridden in a Corvair and I was going to let him drive ours.  The laughter sublimates into mist, like dry ice dissolving.  "Tell me another story."

"Was that a massive mood swing I just heard?" Molly asks.

"Yes."

"Are you on any pills?"

"Not right now."

"Good.  I'm proud of you.  For what it's worth.  What do you want to hear?"