One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

freckled face. “He was so handsome, so sensitive—”
    Sighing, Micky got up to retrieve a second beer from the refrigerator.
    “—but he was on the needle,” Geneva said. “Heroin. A loser in everyone’s eyes but mine. I just knew he could be redeemed.”
    “That’s monumentally romantic, Mrs. D, but as my mother’s proved with numerous doper boyfriends, it always ends badly with junkies.”
    “Not in this case,” said Geneva. “I saved him.”
    “You did? How?”
    “Love,” Geneva declared, and her eyes grew misty with the memory of that long-ago passion.
    Popping open a Budweiser, Micky returned to her chair. “Aunt Gen, this sensitive junkie from Chicago…wasn’t he Frank Sinatra?”
    “Seriously?” Leilani’s eyes widened. Her hand paused with a forkful of pasta halfway between plate and mouth. “The dead singer?”
    “He wasn’t dead then,” Geneva assured the girl. “He hadn’t even begun to lose his hair yet.”
    “The compassionate young woman who saved him from the needle,” Micky pressed, “was she you, Aunt Gen…or was she Kim Novak?”
    Geneva’s face puckered in puzzlement. “I was attractive in my day, but I was never in Kim Novak’s league.”
    “Aunt Gen, you’re thinking of
The Man with the Golden Arm.
Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak. It hit theaters sometime in the 1950s.”
    Geneva’s puzzlement dissolved into a smile. “You’re absolutely right, dear. I never had a romantic relationship with Sinatra, though if he’d ever come around, I’m not sure I could have resisted him.”
    Returning the untouched forkful of pasta salad to her plate, Leilani looked to Micky for an explanation.
    Enjoying the girl’s perplexity, Micky shrugged. “I’m not sure I could have resisted him, either.”
    “Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop teasing the child,” Geneva said. “You’ll have to forgive me, Leilani. I’ve had these memory problems now and then, ever since I was shot in the head. A few wires got scrambled up here”—she tapped her right temple—“and sometimes old movies seem as real to me as my own past.”
    “Could I have more lemonade?” Leilani asked.
    “Of course, dear.” Geneva poured from a glass pitcher that dripped icy condensation.
    Micky watched their guest take a long drink. “Don’t try to fool me, mutant girl. You’re not so cool that you can roll with that one.”
    Putting down the lemonade, Leilani relented: “Oh, all right. I’ll bite. When were you shot in the head, Mrs. D?”
    “This July third, just passed, made eighteen years.”
    “Aunt Gen and Uncle Vernon owned a little corner grocery,” Micky explained, “which is like being targets in a shooting gallery if it’s on the
wrong
corner.”
    “The day before the July Fourth holiday,” Geneva said, “you sell lots of lunchmeats and beer. It’s mostly a cash business.”
    “And someone wanted the cash,” Leilani guessed.
    “He was a perfect gentleman about it,” Geneva recalled.
    “Except for the shooting.”
    “Well, yes, except for that,” Geneva agreed. “But he came up to the cash register with this lovely smile. Well dressed, soft-spoken. He says, ‘I’d be really grateful if you’d give me the money in the register, and please don’t forget the large bills under the drawer.’”
    Leilani squinted with righteous indignation. “So you refused to give it to him.”
    “Heavens, no, dear. We emptied the register and all but thanked him for sparing us the trouble of paying income tax on it.”
    “And he shot you anyway?”
    “He shot my Vernon twice, and
apparently
then he shot me.”
    “Apparently?”
    “I remember him shooting Vernon. I wish I didn’t, but I do.” Earlier, sadness had cast a gray shadow across Geneva’s face at the counterfeit memory of her anguish-filled love affair with a heroin junkie; but now a flush of happiness pinked her features, and she smiled. “Vernon was a wonderful man, as sweet as honey in the comb.”
    Micky reached for her