was trying to make sense of it all.
Postmodern irony?
The big G was a symbol of absurdity?
The whole house was a multimillion-dollar joke?
A witch who gets whatever she wants?
And where the hell were the other rooms?
In particular, where was the bathroom?
As he looked around at the chatting guests, he spotted Madeleine. She was talking to a willowy woman with short black hair and catlike eyes. He made his way over.
Madeleine gave him a funny look. “Something wrong?”
“Just . . . taking it all in.”
She gestured toward the woman. “This is Filona. From Vinyasa.”
“Ah. Vinyasa. Nice to meet you. Interesting name.”
“It came to me in a dream.”
“Did it?”
“I love this space, don’t you?”
“It’s really something. Do you have any idea where the restrooms are?”
“They’re in the companion cube out back, except for the guest bathroom over there.” She pointed to an eight-foot-high pair of vertically stacked cubes a few feet from where they were standing. “The door is on the other side. It’s voice-activated. Everything in this house you either talk to or control with your phone. Like it’s all alive. Organic.”
“What do you say to the bathroom door?”
“Whatever you want.”
Gurney glanced at Madeleine, searching for guidance.
She gave him a perky little shrug. “The voice thing actually does work. Just tell it you need to use the bathroom. That’s what I heard someone do a few minutes ago.”
He stared at her. “Good to know.”
Filona added, “It’s not just the bathroom. You can tell the lamps how bright you want them. You can talk to the thermostat—higher, lower, whatever.” She paused with a half-somewhere-else sort of smile. “This is the most fun place you could ever find out here in the middle of nowhere, you know? Like the last thing you’d expect, which is what makes it so great. Like, wow, what a surprise.”
“Filona works at the LORA shelter,” said Madeleine.
He smiled. “What do you do there?”
“I’m an RC. There are three of us.”
All that came to mind was Roman Catholic. “RC?”
“Recovery companion. Sorry about that. When you’re in something, you forget that not everyone else is in it.”
He could feel Madeleine’s be nice gaze on him.
“So LORA is . . . pretty special?”
“Very special. It’s all about the spirit. People think taking care of abandoned animals is about getting rid of their worms and fleas and giving them food and shelter. But that’s just for the body. LORA heals the spirit. People buy animals like they were toys, then throw them out when they don’t act like toys. Do you know how many cats, dogs, rabbits are tossed out every day? Like garbage? Thousands. Nobody thinks about the pain to those little souls. That’s why we’re here tonight. LORA does what no one else is doing. We give animals friendship.”
The voices of the TV talking heads had gotten louder, more argumentative. Occasional words and phrases were now clearly audible. Gurney tried to stay focused on Filona. “You give them friendship?”
“We have conversations.”
“With the animals?”
“Of course.”
“Filona is also a painter,” said Madeleine. “A very accomplished one. We saw some of her work at the Kettleboro Art Show.”
“I think I remember. Purple skies?”
“My burgundy cosmologies.”
“Ah. Burgundy.”
“My burgundy paintings are done with beet juice.”
“I had no idea. If you’ll excuse me for just a minute . . .” He gestured toward the cubical structure housing the bathroom. “I’ll be back.”
On the far side of it he found a recessed door panel. Next to the panel there was a small red light above what he guessed was a pinhole microphone. He further guessed that the red light indicated that the bathroom was occupied. In no hurry to get back to the discussion of burgundy cosmologies, he stayed where he was.
The variety of people with whom Madeleine cultivated friendships never stopped surprising him. While he tended to be attuned to the dishonesty or loose screw in a new acquaintance, her focus was on a person’s capacity for goodness, liveliness, inventiveness. While he found most people in some way warranting caution, she found them in some way delightful. She managed to do that without being naïve. In fact, she was quite sensitive to real danger.
He checked the little light. It was still red.
His position by the bathroom door gave him an angled view of the wide screen above the hearth. Several more party guests, drinks in hand, were gathering in front of it. The talking heads were gone. With a fanfare of synthesized sound effects, a swirling jumble of colorful letters was coalescing into words:
PEOPLE—PASSIONS—IDEAS—VALUES
THE AMERICAN DREAM IN CRISIS
The list then contracted into a single line to make room for three statements covering the width of the screen, accompanied by a martial-sounding drum roll:
EXPLOSIVE CRISIS—HAPPENING NOW
SEE IT ON BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT
NOTHING’S AS REAL AS RAM-TV
A moment later these statements burst into flying shards, replaced by a video of a nighttime street scene—an angry crowd chanting, “Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . .” Demonstrators with signs bearing the same message were thrusting them up and down to the rhythm of the chant. The crowd was being contained by waist-high movable fencing, backed up by a line of cops in riot gear. When the video source was switched to a second camera angle, Gurney could see that the demonstration was taking place in front of a granite-faced building. The words WHITE RIVER POLICE DEPARTMENT were visible on the stone lintel above the front door.
At the bottom of the video screen, the words BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT—ONLY ON RAM-TV were flashing in a bright-red stripe.
The video shifted to what appeared to be another demonstration. The camera was positioned behind the demonstrators, facing the speaker addressing them. He spoke in a voice that rose and fell, paused and stretched in the cadences
