‘I couldn’t know you’d come back. As far as I knew, you’d never come back or you’d come back dead.’
‘I had to come back alive,’ he assured her, ‘so you’d have a fair chance to kill me.’
‘Don’t joke about this.’ She tried to wrench loose of him but couldn’t. ‘Let go of me, you bastard.’
‘Are you going to hit me again?’
‘If you don’t let go of me, I’ll tear you to pieces, I swear.’
‘Time to shower.’
Dylan released her, but he kept both hands raised as though he expected that he would have to catch further punches. ‘You’re such an angry person.’
‘Oh, you’re damn right I’m an angry person.’ She trembled with anger, shook with fear. ‘You said you wouldn’t go in there, then you went in there anyway, and I was alone.’ She realized that she was shaking more with relief than with either fury or fear. ‘Where the hell did you go?’
‘California,’ Dylan said.
‘What do you mean “California”?’
‘California. Disneyland, Hollywood, Golden Gate Bridge. You know, California?’
‘California,’ said Shep. ‘One hundred sixty-three thousand seven hundred and seven square miles.’
With a thick note of disbelief in her voice, Jilly said, ‘You went through the wall to California?’
‘Yeah. Why not? Where’d you think we went – Narnia? Oz? Middle Earth? California’s weirder than any of those places, anyway.’
Shep evidently knew a lot about his native state: ‘Population, approximately thirty-five million four hundred thousand.’
‘But I don’t think we actually went through the wall,’ Dylan said, ‘or through anything at all. Shep folded here to there.’
‘Highest point, Mount Whitney—’
‘Folded what to where?’ Jilly asked.
‘—fourteen thousand four hundred ninety-four feet above sea level.’
As her anger settled and as relief brought with it a measure of calm and clarity, Jilly realized that Dylan was exhilarated. A little nervous, yes, and maybe a little fearful, too, but largely exhilarated, almost boyishly exuberant.
Dylan said, ‘He folded reality maybe, space and time, one or both, I don’t know, but he folded here to there. What did you fold, Shep? What exactly was it you folded?’
‘Lowest point,’ said Shep, ‘Death Valley—’
‘He’ll probably be on this California thing for a while.’
‘—two hundred eighty-two feet below sea level.’
‘What did you fold, bro?’
‘State capital – Sacramento.’
‘Last night he folded stall one to stall four,’ Dylan said, ‘but I didn’t realize it at the time.’
‘Stall one to stall four?’ Jilly frowned, working the pain out of the hand with which she’d punched him. ‘Right now Shep’s making more sense than you are.’
‘State bird – California valley quail.’
‘In the men’s room. He folded toilet to toilet. He went in number one and came out number four. I didn’t tell you about it, because I didn’t realize what had happened.’
‘State flower – golden poppy.’
Jilly wanted to be clear on this: ‘He teleported from one toilet to another?’
‘No, teleportation isn’t involved. See – I came back with my own head, he came back with his own nose. No teleportation.’
‘State tree – California redwood.’
‘Show her your nose, Shep.’
Shepherd kept his head bowed. ‘State motto – “Eureka,” which means, “I have found it.”‘
‘Believe me,’ Dylan told Jilly, ‘it’s his own nose. This isn’t a David Cronenberg film.’
She thought about that last statement for a moment while Dylan grinned at her and nodded, and then she said, ‘I know I haven’t even had breakfast yet, but I need a beer.’
Shepherd disapproved. ‘Psychotropic intoxicant.’
‘He’s talking to me,’ Jilly said.
‘Yeah,’ Dylan said.
‘I mean not at me. Talking to me. Sort of.’
‘Yeah, he’s going through some changes.’ Dylan lowered the lid on the toilet. ‘Here, Shep, sit down here.’
‘Time to shower,’ Shep reminded them.
‘All right, soon, but sit down here first.’ Dylan maneuvered his brother to the closed toilet and persuaded him to sit.
‘Shep is dirty. Time to shower.’
After kneeling in front of his brother, Dylan quickly examined his arms. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Time to shower. Nine minutes.’
Dylan removed Shepherd’s bedroom slippers, and set them aside. ‘Want to bet which cartoon?’
Bewildered, Jilly wanted that beer more than ever. ‘Cartoon?’