Odd Thomas

Chief Porter shifted from one butt cheek to the other, causing Barney to groan. “Son, you figure to be a short-order cook forever?”

“No, sir. I’ve been thinking about a career change to tires.”

“Tires?”

“Maybe sales first, then installation. They’ve always got job openings out at Tire World.”

“Why tires?”

I shrugged. “People need them. And it’s something I don’t know, something new to learn. I’d like to see what that life’s like, the tire life.”

We sat there half a minute or so, neither of us saying anything. Then he asked, “And that’s the only thing you see on the horizon? Tires, I mean.”

“Swimming-pool maintenance looks intriguing. With all these new communities going in around us, there’s a new pool about every day.”

Chief Porter nodded thoughtfully.

“And it must be nice working in a bowling alley,” I said. “All the new people coming and going, the excitement of competition.”

“What would you do in a bowling alley?”

“For one thing, take care of the rental shoes. They need to be irradiated or something between uses. And polished. You have to check the laces regularly.”

The chief nodded, and the purple Barney chair squeaked more like a mouse than like a dinosaur.

My clothes had nearly dried, but they were badly wrinkled. I checked my watch. “I better get moving. I’m going to have to change before I can go to the Grille.”

We both rose to our feet.

The Barney chair collapsed.

Looking at the purple ruins, Chief Porter said, “That could have happened when you were fighting Harlo.”

“Could have,” I said.

“Insurance will cover it with the rest.”

“There’s always insurance,” I agreed.

We went downstairs, where Stevie was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, happily eating a lemon cupcake.

“I’m sorry, but I broke your bedroom chair,” Chief Porter told him, for the chief is not a liar.

“That’s just a stupid old Barney chair, anyway,” the boy said. “I outgrew that stupid old Barney stuff weeks ago.”

With a broom and a dustpan, Stevie’s mom was sweeping up the broken glass.

Chief Porter told her about the chair, and she was inclined to dismiss it as unimportant, but he secured from her a promise that she would look up the original cost and let him know the figure.

He offered me a ride home, but I said, “Quickest for me is just to go back the way I came.”

I left the house through the hole where the glass door had been, walked around the pool instead of splashing through it, climbed the slumpstone wall, crossed the narrow alleyway, climbed the wrought-iron fence, walked the lawn around another house, crossed Marigold Lane, and returned to my apartment above the garage.

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_391bf74e-7489-5262-949a-3b6a961529a4)

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE. BUT THEN, BY GOD, I DO something about it.

This proactive strategy is rewarding but dangerous. Some days it results in an unusual amount of laundry.

After I changed into clean jeans and a fresh white T-shirt, I went around to Mrs. Sanchez’s back porch to confirm for her that she was visible, which I did every morning. Through the screen door, I saw her sitting at the kitchen table.

I knocked, and she said, “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I hear you just fine.”

“Who do you hear?”

“You. Rosalia Sanchez.”

“Come in then, Odd Thomas,” she said.

Her kitchen smelled like chiles and corn flour, fried eggs and jack cheese. I’m a terrific short-order cook, but Rosalia Sanchez is a natural-born chef.

Everything in her kitchen is old and well worn but scrupulously clean. Antiques are more valuable when time and wear have laid a warm patina on them. Mrs. Sanchez’s kitchen is as beautiful as the finest antique, with the priceless patina of a life’s work and of cooking done with pleasure and with love.

I sat across the table from her.

Her hands were clasped tightly around a coffee mug to keep them from shaking. “You’re late this morning, Odd Thomas.”

Invariably she uses both names. I sometimes suspect she thinks Odd is not a name but a royal title, like Prince or Duke, and that protocol absolutely requires that it be used by commoners when they address me.

Perhaps she thinks that I am the son of a deposed king, reduced to tattered circumstances but nonetheless deserving of respect.

I said, “Late, yes, I’m sorry. It’s been a strange morning.”

She doesn’t know about my special relationship with the deceased. She’s got enough problems without having to worry about dead people making pilgrimages to her garage.

“Can you see what I’m wearing?” she asked worriedly.

“Pale yellow slacks. A dark yellow and brown blouse.”

She turned sly. “Do you like the butterfly barrette in my hair, Odd Thomas?”

“There’s no barrette. You’re holding your hair back with a yellow ribbon. It looks nice that way.”

As a young woman, Rosalia Sanchez must have been remarkably beautiful. At sixty-three, having added a few pounds, having acquired the seams and crinkles of seasoning experience, she possessed the deeper beauty of the beatified: the sweet humility and the tenderness that time can teach, the appealing glow of care and character that, in their last years on this earth, no doubt marked the faces of those who were later canonized as saints.

“When you didn’t come at the usual time,” she said, “I thought you’d been here but couldn’t see me. And I thought I couldn’t see you anymore, either, that when I became invisible to you, you also became invisible to me.”