Thanks for Breakfast

By Bruce P. Grether

Estes Park, Colorado, 1983: Magick is alive and well in this real-life Shangri-La where a bohemian underground thrives. Kitty Mar and Jimmy Thunder share a special relationship, which is challenged when she meets a Tantrick Cowboy from Texas. A handsome young auto-mechanic named Lance lusts after Beth Gardens, a beauty scarcely old enough to be legal.
A young artist named Paul Goodfellow encounters the Great God Pan, and feels attracted to Dennis Giddings, a sanitation engineer, but he is too uncertain to make his feelings known. The long-empty family home of Jimmy is clearly occupied—the question is, by whom, or what?
A Dragon Prince and his mother embark on a journey to Colorado to find his long-lost father...
All of these happenings are intimately connected—but how?
In this tale of what the author calls “Rocky Mountain Magickal Realism,” the author returns to his personal roots.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce P. Grether
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311906854

Bruce P. Grether

BRUCE P. GRETHER lives in the Hill Country of Texas with his beloved partner. Bruce grew up in Southeast Asia as the son of Protestant missionaries. He lived in Berkeley, California off and on during the 1960s, and later spent twelve years living in Estes Park at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park in the high Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Later, Bruce completed his university studies at CSU in Fort Collins, and has continued to write ever since. Though the people and events portrayed in Thanks for Breakfast are fictional, many of the places actually exist.

Book preview

Chapter One:

Star Over Blue

His mother was known as the Mermaid from Atlantis, and how she got stranded in the Rocky Mountains was a wild tale in itself. Only this is the story of her son, who was in appearance at least, quite human. When for the first time since his boyhood, Jimmy saw the valley of Estes Park on that spring morning, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Snow-laden peaks marched across the west in a dazzling series of summits.

Geeze, this place looks like Shangri-La! he exclaimed aloud. If I go on down there into that valley, I may never leave again. He had driven his faithful old Dodge Power Wagon across the pass from Boulder.

On the farthest horizon the Never Summer Range spoke silently of even deeper mysteries. And tucked below that vision of alpine splendor, the little resort village nestled where two rivers converged to fill the lake.

That day, he was just having fun driving in the mountains. In fact, his late mother, Gloria Thunder, had lived in Estes Park for years. For him that was a perfectly good reason to avoid the place. In his distracted rambling he had almost forgotten.

Before he really thought about it, he fell in love with the place.

That’s how he came to live high up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

At the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, in a rambling neighborhood called Eagle Cliff, with money from his mother’s estate he purchased a small dilapidated house.

He fixed the place up—sort of.

Now for twenty-three years he had kept a secret: the boy-sized rifle that his mother gave him for Christmas all those years before. The rifle kept him too. Though he hardly ever looked at it, in fact it had been waiting in the back of a cluttered closet for years. The little rifle had unfinished business with him.

As did his late mother, who had not actually been estranged from him at the time of her death, rather it was simply that in the messy divorce so long ago his father had won custody of the tow-headed angel-child and managed to somewhat poison the boy’s heart against her. Jimmy had adored her early on, and then later just tried to forget.

Now, in that little house just below the humble granite crag called by the rather magnificent name of Eagle Cliff, at four in the morning Jimmy awoke with a full erection under his pile of tattered quilts on the lambskin of his heated waterbed.

He stared straight up at a large NASA poster. The planet Saturn dimly radiated digitally enhanced colors. The rings shone as iridescent as a compact disc. Several moons—golf balls and marbles—cast precision shadows on Old Father Time’s immensity. Jimmy’s friend Paul Goodfellow adored that poster; their beloved friend Kitty Mar found it gaudy and unnatural.

What’s wrong with how it really looks? she said, more than once.

At present Jimmy wondered why he felt so alert and aroused as if all of his dreams had definitely finished—THE END—and the lights came on in his brain. Some slightly incestuous, not-so-funny sitcom: My Mother the Mermaid?

His astral body finished its re-mesh to his flesh and then it told him, Get up, get dressed and go outside.

Naked he rolled out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom.

As he washed his face in the copper basin with cheap Bee & Flower Sandal Wood soap from China he watched his face in the ancient mirror. A slightly gaunt, wide-eyed face, pale with deep-set eyes and rumpled blond hair like a baby bird in a nest. Stubbled cheeks like an old wino. Between the nestling and the skid-row derelict, a total stranger looked out at him through the mildewed spots of the antique mirror backing.

No point in freaking myself out over it!

He danced like a bear into his greasy red mechanic’s jumpsuit, and took care to avoid those belly hairs with the totally unforgiving zipper. On automatic pilot he went to the upper shelf of the closet in the jumbled back room off the kitchen, where he had to half-climb over who-knows-what to reach the boy-sized rifle and the last box of bullets. He hauled them out from under a heap of old curtains that no one wanted, including Jimmy himself. What’s goin’ on here? He wondered. I don’t even like guns…

I hated the Air Force and thank the Gods I never saw action!

Outside, the night sky still appeared indelible and frosted with stars.

The frigid air smelled like cocaine. Like it would never defrost except for a belt of creeping indigo eastward that hinted at black peaks in that direction. The cold made his body aware of warmth inside and he felt even more awake.

His breath puffed opaque in front of his face as he climbed into the cab of the Dodge Power Wagon. After several false starts, it growled into action faithful as ever with a virile rumble that settled to a steady growl. He pulled on a pair or worn and grubby sheepskin gloves, and at least the fleecy inner lining helped him to tolerate the icy cold of the steering wheel.

Instead of driving the truck west and north into RMNP, he went west and south into National Forest.

His own aura of humidity combined with a touch of body odor because he had not showered yesterday enclosed him in a condensing sense of conspiracy.

In a deep evergreen forest that still clung to the Witching Hour of midnight though it was closer to the Gates of Dawn and their Piper, Jimmy parked on a dirt road far from any pavement. He cradled the rifle in one arm aimed away from himself and anyone else, according to the safety rules he learned as a boy, and hopped out of the cab.

He slammed that heavy door with the back-kick of a boot.

He slowly swung about to face the east.

At the edge of the trees he saw it—the morning star over blue: Lucifer, Lord of Light, Prince of Air, Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, Lord of Dawn, Fallen Angel, Son of Morning.

Please allow me to introduce myself—the song antler-danced through his head—I’m a man of wealth and taste…

Jimmy felt blank, a tabula rasa, an empty room he could see into yet from which he stood outside. Inside a red couch in the shape of Mae West’s lips provided the only furnishing. The star winked like Mick and Keith telling him that everything would be all right: wink/wink. I’ve been around for a long, long year…

He spun on his heel and climbed a steep trail through trees. Pebbles crunched under his boots. Even so early in the numbed predawn a few birds sang intermittently, as if they could not help themselves.

Several hundred feet up the slope of that spur he perched his butt on a granite boulder to watch the canyons reveal only part of their mystery. By growing light a Waxwing called urgently, then swooped into view and landed atop a tall spruce below him. It stayed there while breath caught in his lungs, which felt like a pair of old leather footballs.

Unthinking, Jimmy took the small heavy box from his pocket.

He thumbed out a tiny golden bullet, pushed it into the loading chamber, and flexed the rifle straight with a muted click. All smooth as could be, no hesitation, no haste, no fumbling. The gun itself did not feel too small so much as he felt too large for it. Slowly, with great care and deliberation he lifted the barrel, sighted and aimed.

Atop a spruce, the bird sat looking around at everything but him. If I miss this shot, he vowed silently within his heart, to celebrate, I’ll stop shaving and grow a beard!

The bird’s pure creature awareness flowed into him through his line of sight, one-way. Jimmy absorbed that connection, a delicate balance that rode gracefully upon the downward pull of gravity. He consciously forced himself to inhale a deep breath in order to find the still point within his heartbeat—the eye of the crimson storm. His finger delicately poised on the trigger already knew the outcome… yet he had to connect with this crazy, irrational, non-Jimmy intent to kill. Seemed like someone else’s idea.

Again: What is this? I hate killing! Only my dad taught me all this macho hunting stuff… is that where it comes from? No, nothing so obvious as that…

Jimmy understood Real Magick well enough to know the actual nature of sacrifice: the deliberate taking of a life or the destruction of something extremely precious to the destroyer would rip a hole in the fabric of reality.

With any luck you could slip through that hole in space-time/time-space.

Then it happened!

A little boy’s punch hit his shoulder. His ears held onto the hollow echo of the shot and kept the actual blast at a distance.

Stole many a man’s soul to pay.

Awareness crept back in from the edges. Perhaps he blinked, for he had not seen what happened when the kick of the rifle butt slammed his shoulder. No explosion of feathers; no bright flicker of escape from a close call.

Only an empty treetop.

His gaze traced what would have been the tumble of a small shattered body. He saw nothing that resembled a dead bird near the bottom of the spruce.

Safety-catch dutifully latched he went sidestepping down the soft slope. Jimmy’s heart expanded to an immense room—his complex mind worked that way—an enormous room filled with nothing but his beloved Kitty Mar’s face in living colors.

At the moment she seemed more real to him than he to himself.

Kitty’s total lack of bullshit and her rare beauty made any guy feel flattered to be her friend. She had many friends, most of them male, yet none so close as Jimmy and Paul. Then that radiant visage frowned darkly and appeared disgusted, as if she had seen what he just did. Kitty would find this episode not just crazy, but insane. Repugnant.

Her face cross-dissolved into that of his mother, Gloria Thunder, in B-movie black and white. A great beauty in her own way: carmined lips black, sultry eyes blind to even the faint possibility of her son. She too dissolved.

His own face, not totally unlike it, replaced hers and filled that room of awareness, then the face began to shrink—the amazing shrinking Jimmy.

Almost gone…!

He shook himself out of that reverie. A thorough search of the brush around the base of the tree confused him. Do I want to find a dead bird? He wondered desperately.

Not even feathers hinted at it.

He sniffed the crisp air, and though the daybreak was as clear as it was cold, he scented the immanence of a snowstorm. Somehow that smelled to him like hope.

Must have missed, he decided, only I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded or failed today.

Then he heard the refrain of the Waxwing’s trill and he knew.

Gratefully he laid the little rifle down across a gap between the rocks.

He jumped up and crashed down upon its middle with both boots. It broke, and then he used a fist-sized granite rock as a sort of prehistoric hammer to smash the parts, to make sure that the barrel, firing chamber and trigger were broken beyond repair.

The weapon itself became his deliberate sacrifice.

Chapter Two:

All the World’s a Page

No particular reason brought Paul Goodfellow trekking some miles from where he lived at Elkhorn Lodge to Jimmy’s house through deep snow that had fallen the night before. Paul did not own a vehicle, only he never let that get in his way.

Morning sparkled irresistibly in all directions.

He knew that with any luck, Kitty Mar would show up also.

He knocked on Jimmy’s front door and a leonine growl of welcome emerged.

Almost shaved off my beard yesterday, Paul said as he stomped the extra snow and ice from his boots and went inside. As you can see, I chickened out.

Jimmy chuckled. Who knows who you might find under there! Our sandy-haired hero usually kept himself more or less clean-shaven, however today those sandy whiskers had grown longer than usual.

In fact, beneath his customarily unkempt exterior he was quite a handsome man, and might have more closely resembled his famous namesake James Dean, but for the scruffy veneer. At that early hour his hair stood out in tufts; his eyes had the look of cracked marbles. He seldom combed his shaggy head with more than a few blind jabs of his fingers anyway.

Did you see that Full Moon, Jimmy? Paul gushed with typical enthusiasm. Like an acid-etched silver dollar under a spotlight! I could feel its tidal power pulling intensely on my blood.

Jimmy ushered Paul inward and latched the door behind him. You, my friend, need a carefully controlled program of reduced metaphors.

His accomplice stared at the mounted head that hung on Jimmy’s burnt orange living room wall. Assembled by a cunning taxidermist from the head of a jackrabbit and some neat little antlers, the unlikely hybrid comprised a familiar western joke.

Paul said, Interesting that we still have a need to populate the world with mythological animals, like jackalopes and fur-bearing trout. Like those postcards they sell in the tourist traps downtown, you know.

Jimmy stuffed some wood into the old iron stove that crackled and shuddered. Fierce waves of heat pounded from it. Only fur-bearing trout I know, he grinned wickedly, is my trouser trout, this pocket snake here. He grabbed his crotch.

That’s just what I mean.

Don’t get too scholarly on me this early, Paul. Jimmy lurched back and squinted. In his leaky little four-room house, the withering heat would rapidly dissipate once the blaze settled a bit.

He dropped his lanky frame onto the creaky rocking chair across from the ratty armchair that Paul had taken. Jimmy began to fiddle with a pipe of carved elkhorn. Got something that should cure you.

Makes me worse! Paul watched, and smiled eagerly.

Jimmy Chuckled. In your case, who can tell the difference?

He blew through the pipe stem to clear out the screen. Then he broke fragrant little grains from a precious pebble and dropped them into the bowl. He had just lit up with his antique silver lighter when a loud knocking sounded on the front door.

Both men jumped to their feet in a surge of panic.

The pipe disappeared as if by Magick.

Who is it? Jimmy called.

A muffled and annoyed response. "It’s fucking cold out here!"

Paul stepped over to the door and let her in, cowboy Stetson and all.

Smells mighty good. Kitty Mar dripped melting crystals as she skimmed inside like a hummingbird zeroing in on a fragrant blossom. What are you guys up to?

Beaming, the petite woman shed her long snaky scarf onto a hanging slab table and looked at them. As usual, she wore a raggedy old sweater and tattered jeans, plus hiking boots, which only made her look better somehow.

We’re talking about mythological animals… modern ones, that is, Paul confessed.

She nodded. We’ve got modern gods too. Like Patti Smith, movie stars, next year’s cars, MTV, refined sugar. Of course, the first I mentioned is the only one of those that I’d worship.

On his knees Jimmy tinkered with the stove again, adjusted the flue, and grinned over his shoulder. I’m afraid the list’s a lot longer.

Endless! Kitty sighed, sprawled back on the saggy old sofa, and put her feet up on a small mountain of last year’s laundry.

Those bewitching eyes that reminded Paul so much of Grace Slick in her younger years, so clear and bright under the brim of her cowboy hat, the drift of wavy auburn hair, made Kitty a magnificent sight. "Smells excellent, whatever you dudes were doing.

Abruptly she sat up straight and tucked her legs under herself. Bombay? Maybe Afghanistan.

Jimmy returned to his rocker and the elkhorn pipe reappeared. Jesus, I almost started a fire! When you knocked, I hid it under the cushion. He relit the savory grains, hollow-cheeked and lizard-eyed. Good thing it went out.

Sorry Jim-boy. She sounded unrepentant.

He passed it to her. Don’t be, gruffly.

Paul said brightly, Then there’s the hoop-snake. Supposed to travel fast because it bites its own tail and rolls along like a wheel.

That one’s an update of an old Greek symbol, Jimmy said as he shared his often-fuzzy brand of erudition. Ouroboros: the wurm that eateth its own tail.

Kitty chuckled. Sounds a mite kinky t’me!

Sounds mighty flexible to me, Paul said. I’ve tried that one. Yeah, I can manage it ’cause I’m skinny and not underendowed, but it’s hard on the neck and spine.

Both of his friends laughed uproariously. I believe it, Kitty said at last, when able to speak at all. You really succeeded?

Yoga helps a lot, Paul said—Mr. Mysterioso. It’s not all that comfortable. Otherwise, it’s so nice I might never leave the house.

Lighter please Jimmy handed it to her. She flicked it, the flame flared, and she sat in Little Mermaid asana, then after a long pause, she exhaled. So, this Uber-Ouroboros is a symbol of…?

Jimmy guffawed. Flexible spine! Never leaving the house!

Huh? Kitty said, baffled, then her face suddenly grew sly with understanding, which was unusual as she was usually ahead of both these guys. Okay. So.

Paul shook his head slowly side-to-side. It means, like, continuity, he said, accepting the pipe from her. Cosmic cycles, endless circles, like the seasons. The Medicine Wheel, he gasped wastefully. The event-horizon around a black hole, maybe.

Jimmy winked at Kitty. You can eat my tail anytime, darlin’!

Unblinking she said, But when I do that you always tell me to watch my teeth. And speaking of seasons, you guys, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. I’m ready for spring. You guys wanna go down to the Molly B. for some coffee?

Paul felt a bit cooped up by this time. Let’s do, he said. Lean and angular with Jesus-blue eyes and long brown hair which added to his Christ-like appearance, he sat with arms folded, and watched them. They formed a tight threesome in an inexplicable way. He also felt that Kitty and Jimmy were closer than he could ever get to either of them—but then they were sometimes lovers, which could be part of it.

He had not made love with either one of them. At least not so far.

Jimmy said, I don’t know. He stretched his arms and as part of the movement he returned the pipe to Paul.

It’s kissed. Paul set it down on the hanging slab table.

He stared beyond the glassy-eyed jackalope at a 1957 movie poster: King Kong in Atlantis. In lurid process colors the giant ape trampled an erupting city of pyramids and minarets while holding aloft a screaming mermaid who looked a lot like Jimmy’s late mother. SEE: Volcanoes Destroy the City of Sin! Thrill to Total Destruction!

’Course it would be fun going into town, Jimmy muttered. Only the Power Wagon’s low on gas. Plus I just got this fire going real good. Don’t want to leave it untended, and why heat up an empty house, right?

Paul said, Might keep the pipes from busting.

Kitty said, I’ll make some coffee.

Jimmy looked sheepish. Sorry . . . been meaning to get some.

Oh well. She leaned back. Those extraordinary eyes rolled heavenward. Paul found this exchange hopelessly funny, and giggled, then shrill hoots overcame him. By contagion they all collapsed in spasms of helpless laughter.

Paul pulled out a tiny spiral notebook and furtively jotted some notes.

Somebody refilled the pipe and it began to circulate again.

Kitty twinkled. Ouroboros, she intoned in a blue cloud, rolling the Rs.

I think when we create mythological animals,— Paul studied the carved piece of elkhorn in his hand. —we do it to make ourselves feel more real. He too grew hazed in blue.

Oooooooor-r-r-robor-r-r-rossss.

Jimmy dismantled the topic with a grand gesture. Everything is real, you guys.

Kitty appeared extra thoughtful, a cinnamon girl.

Paul disagreed. We make it all up as we go along.

Kitty’s eyes narrowed. We have to create a lot of illusions before we can shed them for our own benefit, like a snake skin that gets crusty, so we can be all shiny and new again. She doffed her western-style Stetson, which had a bandana tied around it for a hatband, deftly re-shaped it to hillbilly and put it back on her head. Who says what’s real? That instantly switched her from hip cowgirl to Arkansas hick.

Paul stifled optimum hilarity.

Jimmy smiled enigmatically, a sort of sphinx thing.

Want some juice? he said. It’s all I’ve got in the house besides one fur-bearing trout. And if you want that, you’ll have to eat it alive. He winked at Paul and went into the kitchen.

Kitty shook her head in slow motion. She observed sunlight as it poured through the window past some hanging crystals onto a large green moth pressed under glass that hung on the opposite wall. Luna Moth, she murmured softly, opened like a book of dreams you cannot close…

Just then the sun angled up an increment—just enough to cast beams all through the living room to ignite a host of shimmering, swimming rainbows from one of the hanging crystals.

Maybe, Paul nodded, it’s only the Moon doing this to all of us.

Doing what? Kitty ascended to stand on the couch and peered closer at the framed insect on the wall. After death and mounting, the moth had excreted a mass of eggs under the glass. Then they too dried out and became preserved as part of the story.

Whatever, Paul said, for he had lost the thread.

Before Kitty’s eyes those delicate, exquisite wings shimmered like the untold dreams of a mermaid.

Chapter Three:

Flashback —

Silence as a One-Way Signal

When Jimmy was ten years old, Christmas presented him with a lightweight, boy-sized actual rifle that could kill.

His beatnik father objected that Jimmy might be too young for an actual hunting weapon, however his far more affluent, glamorous, and rather cool-hearted mother only laughed at that, and dismissed those concerns with a wave of her martini. By then, she had moved back to her summer home in the mountains.

Though Jimmy had lived with his father after his parents separated when he was seven, the outcome of that parental tussle proved who wore the pants in the family when they had all lived together in Boulder some years earlier. Or at least she wore the pants with a thicker wallet in the back pocket.

The rifle used little pointed bullets that looked like solid gold, felt almost that heavy and shiny, and came perfectly packed in small boxes. Jimmy had used all of the Magickal Arts at his command when he was nine-going-on-ten in order to invoke the rifle’s appearance on that delirious winter morning.

In reality, his father, an auto mechanic, might have been hard-pressed to afford such a fine gift for him. However, Gloria Thunder still had some money from her close encounter with Hollywood fame—which ended up as a near miss. Actually she made much of her money from her subsequent career as a sort of minor-league Jacqueline Susann writing trashy novels about promiscuous drugged-out starlets and hustlers.

At any rate, little Jimmy wanted the weapon mainly because all the boys he knew wanted something like it and none of them was likely to get anything of the kind. If anything, they might get an air-pressure powered BB gun.

Initially the tiny golden bullets packed in neat rows entranced him so much that he forgot that he wanted to actually shoot the rifle.

His kindly and gentle father solemnly instructed little Jimmy in the proper and safe use of the weapon. Jimmy got impatient with how seriously Ray Brightlook took all that training. Jimmy was forced to put up with all that caution and those precautions—the only way to keep sole custody of his Christmas present.

He would not let what had happened to him in the custody battle of his parents happen to this marvelous weapon that was no toy.

He loved to carry it around the yard, held properly and carefully aimed at the ground, never at hard pavement from which it could ricochet dangerously if it fired by mistake. Of course it was never loaded unless he actually planned to fire it under the proper circumstances. Even unloaded, he never would point it anywhere near a person.

The rifle made him feel larger, connected intimately with big and important responsibilities in the world beyond his personal horizons—that unimaginably big world that had not even noticed his existence.

Following the safety and handling drills, Ray began teaching him how to shoot at targets. The boy’s erratic aim improved with regular practice, though Ray could still hit within the paper bull’s-eye a lot more consistently. When they went together onto the forested slopes above their house in Boulder, Jimmy kept missing the birds and squirrels he aimed at, sometimes not by far.

That power over the life and death of other creatures he could not decide if he actually wanted now that he held it, shiny and new and undeniable, in his hands. He kept telling himself he did want that power—only deep inside he did not, not at all. Ray would be so proud, he figured. Ray who responsibly filled the freezer with venison or elk meat each year.

Ray would otherwise not hurt a fly, except he grew up in that Colorado deer-hunting cult of manhood and justified bloodshed.

Once Jimmy earned approval in terms of safety, not until sometime in his eleventh year actually, Ray also authorized him to take the rifle and hunt by himself in the woods of the area, just so he kept well away from houses, roads and well-traveled trails. Jimmy swore solemnly to abide by every precaution.

One spring morning in his twelfth year in the cheery yellow kitchen he poured himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes, drowned them in pasteurized whole milk, and filled a plastic glass with reconstituted orange juice. He gobbled and gulped it down. He stood up from the table with its red and white checked oilcloth, pulled on his blue jacket and ball cap.

At the stove where he had just poured himself another cup of coffee, Ray turned to inspect Jimmy up and down.

Thanks for breakfast, the boy said gruffly.

Where are you going?

Out.

Ray nodded. Be careful. Jimmy mutely returned the nod.

Instead of using the back door, Jimmy went out the side of the house. Along the way, he picked up his rifle from his bedroom. Why don’t I want him to know I’m taking it? he wondered silently; his heart sped up a bit and his skin flushed warm. He skirted the chokecherry shrubs west of the house so that no one could see him go.

The fair-haired, angel-faced lad trudged among those quiet giants, the trees, and carried his rifle properly. A box of bullets in his shirt pocket bumped heavy against his heart in the young boy’s chest as he walked.

His blood raced, yet he felt peaceful in a way, like an unwritten page.

Birds chased his transparent thoughts across the gaps of blue overhead; squirrels raced skillfully along possibilities of bark.

As with the wider world, he felt somehow connected with the forest life by the means of destruction he carried. Though that Real Magick could be called dark, its undeniable power flowed from him through that wand of steel and wood, circulated through everything around him, and then back into him. It was a real connection.

Though he did not yet understand, the power to kill was the other side of the power to preserve and protect life.

On a soft shady slope deep in evergreen needles he halted.

A yearling mule deer stepped cautiously into a clearing no more than fifty feet from him. At that close range with a target that size he had a far better chance than with a bird or a squirrel.

The boy stood still. He scarcely breathed for several minutes. Trancelike fortitude of the trees that held up the sky like the roof of a temple seemed to prevent him from doing anything. Jays scattered noisily behind him. They set off the interspecies warning systems that other creatures would most likely heed.

Once the jays had gone, all else settled to a primeval silence, and the warning seemed forgotten. The yearling turned its body partly towards him and then swung its head away from where he stood. Jimmy held the young deer in his eyes, shaped it in his mind. His hammering heart gripped it with awareness over and over again. Unaware, upwind from him, it flicked its long ears, and lowered its head to graze.

Wind dragged through the treetops. Chickadees called monotonously. Why on Earth am I here? Jimmy wondered. Suddenly he felt at a total loss.

He realized then that he had not even loaded the weapon. His hand slipped inside his jacket, subtle as a serpent.

The yearling lifted its head and looked directly at him with huge black eyes.

Beast and boy gazed directly into one another’s souls.

There, Jimmy saw Jimmy, suddenly afraid.

Chapter Four:

The Universe Next Door

Jimmy woke later than usual that morning—not that he actually had a usual anything.

Do you think— He scrubbed his face with callused fingers. —maybe dreams are like, alternate timelines? Paul’s always babbling about quantum physics, you know. The Everett Tree, infinite numbers of timelines forever branching off… parallel universes. How each choice we make collapses the probability wave and creates a different universe…

Kitty groaned under the quilt on his waterbed. "What choice are you babbling about?"

Not actually getting up, when I thought I’d woken up.

She threw back the covers impulsively. Jimmy curled up in reaction like a pill bug. All that weird shit you told me about your mother last night, Jim… Her huge yawn showed shiny white teeth, large and even except for the unusually sharp canines. I never knew most of that. Only had a general idea.

He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat with his back to her. What about it? he grunted as he reached for an old green silk kimono and wrestled it on over his broad shoulders inside out. The kimono had a musty smell, and was badly wrinkled.

I just never knew much about her… Kitty stretched, glossy as mocha flavor at a taffy pull.

Jimmy sat down again on the gently rippling edge of the waterbed, elbows on his knobby white knees.

According to Paul, we can never be certain what’s in the other timelines that create universes except that they actually do exist. Some are really similar to this universe; probably it’s a gradient of slightly different universes to totally bizarre and surreal, and maybe completely different laws of nature. That’s what’s sort of scary—they’re parallel, but totally inaccessible. Scientists say we can never visit them, or actually know anything about them. Strangers next door. Maybe completely alien. We’ll never know them.

Like your mother, Jim. Maybe in some other universe she’s Greta Garbo, a world-famous mystery behind big sunglasses. Only the thing is, when your mother said ‘I vant to be alone,’ everyone forgot about her. They did leave her alone!

Jimmy chuckled, though it sounded a bit forced. What she said was more like, ‘I vant to be a vife and mudder and fulfill my vooooomanhood,’ then everyone sure did forget her! It wasn’t her idea, actually, but I got born and she felt she had to raise me. ’Course my dad did most of the honors on that score. Like I said, supposedly some timelines are a lot like this one and others are radically different.

So I don’t get why we can’t visit the universe next door. Seems to me I do that sometimes.

Jimmy shrugged. Ask Paul to explain. The gown slithered from his shoulders and left them bare, so he pulled them back up, but one side instantly rebelled again.

So… Gloria Thunder did a belly flop with her retirement. Only she invested well and started to write those steamy show-biz romance novels, so you’ve got a lot more stashed away than anyone suspects. Always thought I had more money than you, Jim. Now I don’t need to feel embarrassed when you insist on paying for breakfast.

"You, embarrassed? He gave out a ragged chuckle. Doesn’t help me much that I don’t really need to work. Probably hurts my motivation, in fact. Thing is, I never have a lot more than I need to pay the bills. It’s a monthly trust. Not big."

She studied his profile, and felt sincere admiration for his clarity and self-honesty on that matter. Still, she said thoughtfully, for weird mothers, I can top yours.

His blue eyes rounded, not at her, rather at gaudy Saturn, which hurt his neck. Oh yeah? Geeze, I’ve known you how long? It’s so weird because, like, telling you about Gloria it’s like a door did get opened into another universe next door!

I know. There are reasons… or maybe it’s synchronicity.

Well, you never said much about your family, Killian. Except your sisters and that cute gay brother of yours that you all adore. He most often used that rather masculine nickname for her that her siblings had bestowed. They’re all, like big-time success stories, or living in Europe or something, right?

Yup. There are reasons I never said much about Ma, Jim. She came from Haiti. Her father was Jewish.

Not from the Big Apple? But her father…

Died when she was little. Grandma used to take her to this synagogue in Harlem. Supposedly some kind of fundamentalists, a sort of Kabbalistic offshoot. The so-called ‘synagogue’ sucked a lot of money out of all those poor immigrants, like Lestat on a binge. Then when she was barely outa high school, Ma married a nice Jewish doctor, kinda like I did. Hopefully that’s about the only way I’m like her. Then that weird group could suck even more money out of her, because she had more money.

He blinked at her like an owl startled by daytime. He had known her for years, and this seemed bizarre that he didn’t know. Mar is a Jewish name?

Marcovicz-Bzdek is. Only who can spell that?

Not me! Jimmy rolled back onto the bed, which made bigger waves, just briefly. Is that why you always say religion sucks? That it’s the heroin of the masses? Kitty nodded, though she only smiled slightly at one side of her mouth. So you’re actually three-quarters Jewish!

In this timeline, at least. She regarded him with unusual detachment. When he stood entirely naked he seemed heroic to her—some kind of admirably fallen angel. Yet in that frayed kimono with the robe fallen open at his white chest, one shoulder bare and with pallid thighs he appeared poignantly mortal and vulnerable. One dusky rosebud nipple retreated into shadow. Somewhat spindly mushroom legs that seldom saw sunlight appeared to have grown too long in the dark.

"Listen, Killian, your mother couldn’t be stranger than Gloria Thunder was."

She grinned. Is this a contest?

Maybe.

Her face sobered again. You might not believe the rest of this, Jim.

Would you lie to me?

Anything’s possible. But some things are more likely than others.

Jimmy gave a hearty chortle. Hey, that’s my line!

Anyway, turned out that group in Harlem was a cover for some kind spirit cult. They had this leader named Mark Anthony Duvalier. I think they actually did things more like Voudon or Santeria, only more wicked and depraved: blood orgies. You know… like sacrificing goats, and mass possession frenzies, and dancing out of control all night. Who knows…

"Wait a minute, little darlin’! I can still top that one: my mother was the Zombie Queen of the low-budget flicks for several years!"

Duvalier seriously brainwashed his inner circle of followers—Ma included.

She’s still into that shit?

I hope not. He scared her out of her wits, and me too, my sisters, my bro. That Duvalier guy is no B-movie monster. He produces bleached and fabric-softened brains.

Jimmy giggled and fell onto his back again. How am I supposed to take this seriously?

She tried to kill me.

No shit!

Nope. Sad but true. Kitty stood up abruptly and left the bedroom to get the coffee she had set in motion earlier. She had bought the expensive Ethiopian beans herself down in Boulder, and ground them herself. Now that potent aroma alone stirred something deep and dark in her blood. After a long night of Jimmy’s rambunctious yet meticulous Caucasian farm-boy lovemaking, she felt capable of almost anything.

The orgasms left her feeling serene yet ruthlessly honest.

Jimmy, on the other hand, always grew humbled and nearly helpless in the afterglow. She left his headlights on high beam so he could see his way until she would need to give him another jump-start.

She returned to his bedroom with two steaming redolent mugs to find him far more subdued, shoulders slumped and head down. Thanks, he turned slowly to accept the idiotic Happy Face mug, yet stared right through her. "What happened? I mean, what happened that scared your mother so much? What twisted her