Arthur said good-bye and hung up. Marty was owl-eyed, Francine only slightly more restrained. “It’s all right,” he said.
“Is it starting?” she asked. Marty began to whimper. Arthur had not heard his son whimper in recent memory — months, a year.
“No. I don’t think so. This is far away, in the asteroids.”
“Are they sure it’s not shooting stars?” Marty asked, a very adult rationalization.
“No. Asteroids. They’re out beyond Mars, most of them between Mars and Jupiter.”
“Why out there?” Francine asked.
Arthur could only shake his head.
33
Minelli had spent the night lying in a lounger by the broad picture windows. He was there now, head lolling, snoring softly. Edward tightened the knot on the bathrobe he had borrowed from Stella and walked past the lounger to stand by the glass. Beyond a concrete patio and a dried-up L-shaped ornamental fishpond, frost whitened several acres of winter-yellow grass.
Coming here had been a good idea. Shoshone was peaceful, isolated without being cut off. For a few days at least, they could rest, until the crowds of reporters found them again. The few townspeople aware of their return were making sure nobody knew where they were. They spent most of the day indoors, and only Bernice answered the phone.
He heard Minelli stir behind him.
“You missed the show,” Minelli said.
“Show?”
“All night long. Like a parade of lightning bugs.”
Edward raised an eyebrow.
“No joking, and I’m not crazy. Out over the mountains, all night long. Clear as a bell. The sky twinkled.”
“Meteors?”
“I’ve seen meteors, and these wasn’t them.”
“End of the world, no doubt,” Edward said.
“No doubt,” Minelli echoed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Rested. Better. I must have given everybody a bad time back there.”
“They gave us a bad time,” Edward corrected. “I was feeling a little nuts myself.”
“Nuts.” Minelli shook his head and cocked a dubious glance at Edward. “Where’s Reslaw?”
“Still sleeping.” He and Reslaw had shared a middle bedroom.
“These folks are real nice. I wish I’d had a mother like Bernice.”
Edward nodded. “Are we going to stay here,” he asked, “and keep imposing, or are we going back to Texas?”
“We’re going to have to face the music eventually,” Minelli said philosophically. “The press awaits. I watched television a little last night. The whole country’s gone nuts. Quietly, mind you, but nuts all the same.”
“I don’t blame them.”
The phone rang.
“What time is it?” Minelli asked. Edward glanced at his watch.
“Seven-thirty.”
On the second ring, the phone was silent.
They stared at it apprehensively. “Bernice must have answered it in the back bedroom,” Minelli said.
A few minutes later, Stella came out, followed by her mother, both unselfconsciously attired in flannel pajamas and flower-print robes. Bernice smiled at them. “Breakfast, gentlemen? It’s going to be a long day.”
“That was CBS,” Stella said. “They keep sniffing.”
“We can only fool them so long,” Bernice said.
Edward looked across the quiet, frosty field. A pickup truck parked just off the highway held two men in brown coats and cowboy hats — locals sworn to keep “snoops” from setting up cameras and interfering with the Morgan family’s privacy. Even at a hundred yards’ distance, they looked formidable.
Stella shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. We didn’t do anything important. I didn’t, anyway. You found the rock.”
Edward shrugged. “What’s to say about that?”
Reslaw, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white-striped long-sleeved shirt, walked out of the hallway, past the entrance alcove and the baby grand piano in an adjacent corner. “Somebody ask about breakfast?”
“Coming up,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“You know,” Edward said, “it was probably a bad idea to come here. For you two. We all need our rest, but your mother has been through a lot.”
Bernice Morgan walked stiffly into the kitchen. “It was exhilarating, really,” she said. “I haven’t had a fight like that in years.”
“Besides, she got to talk to the President,” Stella said, grinning.
“Makes me ashamed to be a Democrat,” she said. “Mike and the boys are keeping a watch. I just have to make sure they don’t get too zealous. You stay as long as you want.”
“Please stay,” Stella said, looking at Edward. “I have to talk. To all of you. I’m still confused. We should help each other out.”
“What about the fireworks?” Minelli asked. “Maybe there’s something on the news now.”
He stretched and swung his legs off the lounger, then stood and walked across the linoleum floor and wide Navajo rugs to the living room, a few steps from the marble-top pedestal table in the open dining area. He sat in front of the television. Slowly, as if it might be hot, he turned it on, then backed up, licking his lips. Edward watched him with concern.
“Just cartoons,” Minelli said quietly. Without changing channels, he lay back to watch, as if he had forgotten his original purpose. Edward walked over and changed channels for him, looking for news. On the twenty-four-hour News Network, an announcer was finishing a story on conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
“Nothing,” Minelli said pessimistically. “Maybe I was seeing things.”
Then, “Astronomers in France and California have offered varied explanations for last night’s unprecedented meteor activity in the solar system’s asteroid belt. Seen throughout the Western Hemisphere, clearly visible to the naked eye in areas with clear skies, bright explosions flashed throughout the ecliptic, the plane occupied by the Earth’s orbit and the orbits of most of the sun’s planets. Speaking from his phone in Los Angeles, presidential task force advisor Harold Feinman said it might take days to analyze data and learn what had actually happened deep in space, beyond the orbit of Mars. When asked if there was any connection between the meteor activity and the alleged spacecraft and aliens on Earth, Feinman declined to comment.”
“Smart man to admit he’s an idiot,” Minelli said. “Asteroids. Jesus.”
Edward flipped past other channels, but found nothing more.
“What do you think, Ed?” Minelli asked, slouching back in the corner of the broad L-shaped couch. “What the hell did I see? More end-of-the-world shit?”
“I don’t know any more than they do,” Edward said. He entered the kitchen. “Do you have a doctor in town? A psychiatrist?” he asked Bernice.
“Nobody worth the name,” she answered, her voice as low as his. “Your friend’s still not doing too well, is he?”
“The government got rid of us in a real hurry. He should be in a hospital somewhere, resting, cooling down.”
“That can be arranged,” she said. “Did he actually see something?”
“I guess so,” Edward said. “I wish I’d seen it.”
“Day of the Triffids, that’s what it was,” Minelli said enthusiastically. “Remember? We’ll all go blind any minute now. Break out the pruning shears!”
Stella stood by the stove, methodically cracking eggs into a pan one by one. “Momma,” she said, “where’s the pepper mill?” She brushed past Edward, tears in her eyes.
34
Walt Samshow stepped from the cab on Powell Street under the shadow of the St. Francis Hotel awning and turned around briefly to look across at long, silent lines of hundreds of marchers parading around Union Square, a cable car grumbling by covered with swaying tourists, spastic traffic of cars and more cabs, civilized mayhem: San Francisco, other than the marchers, not terribly different from his memories of it in 1984, the last time he had been downtown.