The Mall of Cthulhu (7 page)

Okay. He'd need an apartment, but he couldn't rent the apartment, because then he'd have to put his social security number into circulation, and they had to assume that the Cazulu people had that from the hard drive at Queequeg's. So she'd get her bar ring (a big cubic zirconia engagement ring she'd bought for twenty bucks that helped her ward off male suitors when she was in a non-lesbian bar) and say she needed a place for her and her fiancé.

This was a good plan, but now she reached the problematic part. She was sure that she couldn't keep Ted from going to Providence, and going there would make him marginally safer from the Boston Police and FBI and whoever else was looking for him. But if the Cawhatever cult was real, and they really were in Providence, then they'd be looking for Ted while he was looking for them. And it just seemed very unlikely that Ted would be able to poke around so discreetly that no one would know he was poking around. So she would have to supervise any serious surveillance on the weekends. In the meantime, she needed to give him something to do that seemed like real work but would actually keep him out of harm's way.

She needed to do some research. She went to the kitchen, grabbed a container of Clorox wipes from under the sink, and wiped down the outside of her computer. Then she opened it and gingerly wiped down the keyboard. She replaced the Clorox wipes under the sink and found her screen-cleaning wipes in the top drawer of the desk. She wiped the screen clean and stuck her face up close to the computer to make sure the stench was completely gone.

"Did you just sniff your computer?" Ted called out. Laura gritted her teeth and fought back the tirade about how somebody had to make sure all the toxic filth was off of it.

Ted had said something about a temple, so Laura searched for Jewish houses of worship in Providence and found ten different temples scattered all over the city. If she put him on surveillance of each temple for a day, that would buy her two work weeks of Ted doing probably pointless stakeouts. During that time, she might be able to figure out whether it was worth going down there and doing any real investigating.

"Oh my God, you have to watch this! This girl Nadine has already made out with two women and a man, and it's only day 2! She's such a ho!"

Laura didn't even respond, because she didn't have the energy to lecture Ted about his outmoded patriarchal judgments of female sexuality. She printed the map of Providence with the locations of the temples circled and typed up detailed instructions for Ted about inconspicuous surveillance. She knew she was risking offending him, but she felt like she had to be really basic, so she included instructions such as "Do not ask anybody anything while you're doing surveillance."

She flipped her laptop closed and found that, though she'd been up for over thirty-six hours, she was too hyper to sleep. Ted was asleep on the couch in front of the
Ten O'clock News
. Laura sat down to watch, and reflected that Bridget Tran y Garcia was pretty hot, and the next thing she knew it was five a.m.

Laura explained the plan to Ted and called in sick. She then dug out a needle and an old hoop earring and explained to Ted that he needed his ear pierced.

"No way! It's gonna hurt!"

"Don't be a baby. You got shot at, and now you're whining about getting your ear pierced."

"Yeah, well, he didn't shoot at me with needles, okay?"

"I don't care. You need stuff to distract people from your face. You wear a big earring, people will see that and not pay attention to your identifying features that can't be removed."

"Gah, okay, be quick! I hate this!"

Five minutes later, Ted was successfully pierced. Bald and clean-shaven with a gold hoop earring, he looked like a gangly Mr. Clean. Laura changed into exercise clothes, walked down the stairs and started up her Nissan Altima. She drove the five blocks to the Glen Road entrance of Franklin Park and parked her car in what she judged to be the most inconspicuous spot.

She got out of the car, popped her headphones on, and ran the tree-lined path up the hill, around by the high school football stadium, past the basketball and tennis courts and the back entrance to the zoo, and through the dirt path through the woods, and then back up the Hundred Steps, always her favorite place to end a run, even though she almost always had to stop running and start staggering by about step sixty. When she got back to her car she was covered in sweat but felt more awake and alert than anyone carrying as big of a sleep debt as hers should feel.

She got behind the wheel and said, "Ted? Are you in here?"

"Yes, and I'm already cramped up, and my testicles aren't used to this kind of compression. I think I'm gonna be sterile by the time we get to Providence. Isn't this kind of excessive?" he said. "I mean, we couldn't have just left the house normally?"

"Listen. You think there is a far-reaching conspiracy, and that these people want to kill you. We know for a fact that the latter part is true. So if the first part is true, we have to be extra careful. We can't be seen together at all, at least not within a mile of the Queequeg's where they knew you were yesterday."

"So you really think I'm on to something?"

"I think you're nuts, but I'm going to run this operation as if you're not nuts. Whether these people are supernatural cultists or just gangsters, we proceed extra carefully so we can keep you safe."

Ted was silent for a moment. "That's sweet!" he said, and Laura suddenly felt embarrassed. Fortunately, any maternal tenderness she felt toward Ted quickly evaporated when he said, "But wouldn't I be safer with a seat belt on? I'm just saying. In addition to my testicular discomfort, I'm gonna have such a knot in my back by the time we get to Providence that I won't be a very effective investigator, especially given . . . " Laura turned up NPR and tried to drown him out.

Once they arrived in Providence, Laura drove up the hill to Brown University and pulled the car over. "I'm going to go walk down the street to the admissions office to ask for some information for my niece who's coming to visit. Wait five minutes and get out of the car. Spend a couple of hours ogling Brown girls or something—"

"Are we near RISD?" Ted called out from the floor. "Because while I certainly have nothing against the Ivy League cuties, I think I'm more in an art school mood today."

"Knock yourself out. Walk down to the river and ogle the secretaries having lunch if you want."

"Hmmm . . . professional façade, wild, untamed interior? I like the way you think!"

"Christ, Ted, that's the way
you
think. All I meant was that I don't really give a shit what you do for the next four hours as long as you stay inconspicuous. So listen. Right now we are at the corner of Prospect and College streets. Okay?"

"Got it."

"What's the corner?"

Ted paused. "Prospector something?"

Laura gritted her teeth. "Prospect and College. Say it back to me."

"Prospect and College."

"Good. Now if you walk down the hill on College, you'll come to a coffee shop on the left before you come to the river. Got that? If you get to the river, you've gone too far."

"Got it."

"Just be in the coffee shop at 4. Hopefully I'll be able to give you the key to the apartment I'm renting for me and my fiancé."

"Okay, honey! Have a good day apartment hunting, sweetie!"

"Fuck you, sweetums!" Laura trilled in return. When she returned from the admissions office, Ted was gone.

She went and met the real estate agent, a woman named Aline who was wearing a rhinestone pin in the shape of a house with the word "Sold!" written in fake rubies across it. Aline took her first to a building with peeling paint and split banisters that looked like it might be condemned, then to a building where the blue vinyl siding was separating from the exterior walls and the interior doors appeared to be made of cardboard, and finally to a utilitarian gray box of a building containing six tiny, spartan studio apartments. It was not a nice place by any means, but it was the Taj Mahal compared to the other places she had seen.

"So as you can see it's a little snug, but it's easy walking distance to Brown and downtown, and of course the mall. The State House—didn't you say you'd be working at the State House?"

"Yes."

"That's great. You can walk to work in twenty minutes, or drive in five. And hopefully you and your fella can put some money away while you're here so you can afford a better wedding."

Laura pasted a smile onto her face. "That sounds great. I haven't even dared to tell him what the dress cost."

"Honey, take my advice. Don't. Don't tell him what anything costs. What he doesn't know won't hurt you." Aline grinned conspiratorially at Laura, who gave a giggle that she hoped was the appropriate response for one of these "we sure do put one over on the boys" conversations that her real self would never have.

She went back to Aline's office, signed a check and the rental agreement and got the keys. She spent the next hour procuring a futon with sheets and a blanket and a prepaid cell phone for Ted's use. She dumped all the stuff in the apartment and went to the coffee shop to meet Ted.

He was in line right in front of her and surprised her by not waving and smiling and blowing their cover. As Laura added milk and Splenda to her coffee and Ted fumbled with the half-and-half, she laid the key and Aline's card with the apartment address on the counter by the stirrer sticks and Ted palmed it like a pro. She took her coffee to go and looked back at Ted sitting alone at the table. As she walked back to the car, she felt a terrible sadness and longing to go back and be with Ted. She wondered if this was how parents felt when they left their kids playing in the block corner in preschool and went off to work for the first time.

It was dark as she drove back to Boston, and she tried listening to NPR, but she couldn't focus. She found herself worrying about Ted. She resisted the urge to call him until she got half an hour away, and he didn't answer. Her heart started pounding, and she wondered if she should turn around at the next exit. She told herself she was being silly, that she'd try him again in ten minutes, and she was reaching for her phone to call him again when it started ringing. She saw it was Ted and felt a surge of relief.

"Hey," he said. "Sorry I missed your call, but I kinda had my hands full, if you know what I mean. You think you could have furnished some tissues here?"

"Aaagh! I just wanted to check and make sure you were okay, but obviously you're well enough to be disgusting. Good night."

"Good night. Oh, and, um. Thank you. For everything."

"You're welcome," she said, and hung up the phone.

Ted woke up disoriented, then realized he was in his new apartment in Providence. He shuffled to the bathroom, his footsteps echoing loudly through the nearly empty apartment, peed for a really surprising length of time, and went into the kitchen nook. The peeling brown linoleum on the floor felt disgustingly moist on Ted's feet. He opened the fridge and found it empty and smelling slightly musty. Okay. He had to get out of here.

He padded back to the futon and found the instructions Laura had written out for him. She really did think he was an idiot. "Drink only enough caffeine to stay alert—you don't want to pee too much," she'd written, followed by, "Bring a container to pee into if you think you can do it discreetly. Getting arrested for indecent exposure would compromise your investigation. ☺" The smiley face was doubly annoying because it was so un-Laura and seemed to be saying, "I am completely serious but I think you'll take my condescension better if I present it in a semi-joking way."

And, anyway, temple surveillance sounded boring as shit. Laura had obviously spent too much time in a cubicle doing the boring scutwork of law enforcement. Well, she had to do what her superiors said, but Ted sure didn't. He wasn't going to lurk around watching kids go to Hebrew school while a pack of deranged killers who were, at least in their minds, in league with supernatural forces of evil, roamed the streets free. No. The hell with that. He was going looking for the
Necronomicon.

Or at least looking for the people looking for the
Necronomicon.
The first stop was the library at Brown. He went back to the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror.

He was unshaven, he hadn't brushed his teeth, his head was looking slightly stubbly, and he was wearing clothes he'd slept in. "Perfect day to impersonate a grad student," Ted said to his reflection. He grabbed the stack of cash Laura had left so that he could go to the mall later and get himself a new wardrobe, pocketed his key, and left the house.

Ted walked down the street in the direction he thought he remembered Brown being in. He knew he was on the right track when his surroundings turned from working-class Italian to broke-upper-class college student and the bakeries and corner markets turned into used CD stores and coffee shops. Finally he reached the Brown campus.

It was a beautiful spring day. Ted enjoyed the smell of the air and the slightly cold breeze on his face. He found a campus map and located the bookstore and the Rockefeller Library and wandered slowly across the campus. The streets, sidewalks, and greens were full of students, and there was infectious joy about the end of winter in the air. All of the students were rushing the season—they'd shed their parkas and sweatshirts and were strolling around in shorts and short-sleeved shirts and even, right across the street, a tank top, though it couldn't be sixty degrees yet. Ted just took in the parade of undergraduate girls. Legs were visible, arms were visible, breasts were concealed by only one or two layers, and, thanks to the wind, nipples were, for the most part, erect. It was springtime, and everything seemed beautiful, and for the first time in ten years, Ted had something important to do. For the first time since Half-caf had shot up the Queequeg's, and probably for the first time since the fire, Ted had the fully formed thought that he was glad he wasn't dead.

He exited the gate on Prospect Street and realized Laura had parked right across from the Rockefeller Library yesterday.