I don’t know why it never occurred to me that a family and kids would get in the way of her goals just as much as it would screw up my college aspirations.

[68] I found her car parked where she said it would be. I always worried a little when I saw it. It stood for all the things I couldn’t give her for another decade, if ever.

I put the top down and slid in on the leather seat. The engine growled at me and I wheeled around the lot and out onto the road. It would get up to sixty in about four seconds, I knew because I’d tried it. No chance to unleash the beast in the spring break traffic, though. I crawled down the highway, getting some very interested looks from some of the snow bunnies, parked in our lot, put the top up, grabbed the indoor silent car alarm, and carried her small suitcase up the stairs and into my room.

LATER THAT NIGHT, just before we finally got to sleep, I took out the silver bubble and showed it to her. I put it through its paces, showed her its tricks. I’d been a little worried that her reaction would be, more or less, So what?

But it impressed her even faster than it had fascinated me.

“It’s light as a soap bubble, and harder than a ball bearing,” she summed it up. “I don’t know of anything like that. You’re the science student, do you?”

“Nothing even close,” I told her.

She held it in her hand and frowned at it.

“Manny,” she said at last, “you know I’m not the type to worry about nothing or get premonitions. But there’s something frightening about this. Do you get a sense of great power from it?”

I had felt exactly that, but couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I think it has a lot of power, and it might mean a lot of money.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, something new, something really new, it just turns the world upside down. Think of what the world was like before electricity. Or television, or cars.”

“That big?”

“Maybe bigger.”

I HAD PLANNED to get out to Rancho Broussard the next evening, but we were just too busy. Spring break is one of the few times of the year we actually do some pretty good business. We had already been sold out twice that week, for the first times that year.

Mom and Aunt Maria had been working all day, every day. I’d been helping with the chores even though both of them said Let us handle this, you go study every time I picked up a mop. So that night I worked the late shift on the desk, and the night after that as well. The night after that Kelly had something, I think it was some of her volunteer work, and the night after that wasn’t good, either.

All in all it was a week before I got out there again.

This time it was in Kelly’s car. She offered to let me drive but I waved it off. I’d taken the Porsche through its paces once, right up to 150 miles per hour, and then I hung up my racing gloves. To tell the truth, I was terrified of getting into a fender bender that would cost more to fix than the city budget.

This time I saw the Autopike from the supersonic lane, at the head of a drafting pack of twenty vehicles no more than two inches apart. Dak says that’s no accident, that the software is set to always move the [70] bitchin’est car available to the head of the draft. Noblesse oblige, he says, and Kelly agrees with him… Me, I don’t have enough data, but it sure seems that way.

Not far from the gate of Travis’s place we got behind a flatbed truck with a big farm tractor on the back. The thing was too wide and the road too rutted for us to risk passing, so we settled in at a stately twenty-five miles per hour, the Porsche’s engine growling in frustration. We followed it for three miles, hoping for a turnoff. It did turn… right into the Rancho driveway.

We followed it in a cloud of dust until it reached the clearing, then it turned right toward the barn and the row of junked cars and we turned left toward the house.

Off to one side of us a dump truck had just spilled its load of crushed shell next to half a dozen other hills of shell. There was a guy using a weedeater to destroy the grass that had sprouted in the cracks of the tennis court concrete. He was wearing a blue coverall with a patch on the back that said HIAASEN LANDSCAPERS AND YARD WORK. So was another guy working in close among the plantings that surrounded the house. Already he’d rescued a few sick-looking rhododendrons and hibiscus from strangulation by morning glories and other vines.

“Are they tearing this place down, or building it up?” Kelly wanted to know.. “Don’t ask me. This is all news to me.”

We got out of the car and headed for the patio, where I could see Travis and Dak relaxing with tall drinks. The long hoses of an industrial carpet shampooer went from a van through the open patio doors and inside the house.

“Spring cleaning,” Travis announced, as we reached the patio. He raised his glass in a toast. “You want a Virgin Mary?”

“Are you on the wagon, Col… I mean, Travis?” I asked.

“You bet he is,” said Alicia, coming outside with another nonalcoholic cocktail in her hand. How do I know it was nonalcoholic? Because Alicia would have flung it as far as she could if it had any liquor in it. Alicia is death on alcohol.

[71] I introduced Travis to Kelly, and he turned on his good smile and natural charm, leaning over to kiss her hand. Kelly smiled and let him.

Travis took the girls inside for a drink and a tour of the house, leaving me alone with Dak and two empty cans of Coke.

“So when did all this happen?”

“All this what?”

“The spring cleaning. You trying to take over the man’s life?”

“Let me tell you, Manny. Dude’s life can use some cleaning up.”

Dak was silent for a moment, then made a sweeping gesture.

“All this, the spring cleaning and the Virgin Mary, this is all Alicia. I can hardly believe it, but she came out here and got to talking with him, and she says he sort of broke down. He found Jesus, and admitted to himself that he was wrecking his life.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous,” I said.

“Yeah, something like that. I don’t mean he found Jesus literally-”

“That’s a relief.”

“Alicia convinced him what he’s gotta do is clean up his act. Clean himself up, body, soul, mind, and surroundings. So we got half of northeast Florida out here doing they cleaning thing. Eat better, stop drinking, stop seeing your old friends-which is easy for Travis, since he ain’t got no friends left, just a couple regulars at the Apollo he says hi to on his way to his next bender. So the next thing is ‘Make new friends,’ and here we are, the four of us, ready-made, the assorted-varieties family-sized package.”

“Is that one of the twelve steps?”

“It’s one of ’Leesha’s steps. I don’t know if AA has any truck with it.”

We were quiet for a while, listening to Alicia, and then Travis and Kelly laughing loudly from the kitchen. I looked at Dak and saw he had a slight frown on his face.

“Are you okay with that?” I asked him.

“With what?”

“You know what.”

[72] He sighed. “It bugged me a little at first. Hell, at first I wondered if he wanted to get into our pants, you and me, but he didn’t act much like a fag… I know, I know, I’m stereotyping an abused minority, like they used to say in the Tolerance Workshop 101. They have that class at your school?”

“They called it ‘Struggling with Prejudice.’ Sounds like the same thing.”

“Right. Alicia says Travis ain’t gay, and girls always know. But the important thing about Travis is, he’s a drunk. Alicia would never allow herself to be interested in a drunk until he had five, ten years’ sobriety under his belt.”

“Besides, she loves you,” I pointed out. He grinned.