Part II
"Gees, Mom. You look like me before I've had coffee," Jane tried to sound jovial, but she was obviously worried. Daria stood silently next to her, expression unreadable as always. "Are those neighbors still keeping you up at night?"
"They're a real drag, honey," Amanda nodded wearily. She did a double take and stood up from her workbench. "Wait. You've seen them too?"
"Nope. I just know you talk about them."
Amanda glumly went back to painting her pots. "They're really awful. You and Trent must have heard them at least once or twice."
"'Not that I can remember. Of course, I usually have loud music on. All us teenage hooligans do these days. Nothing like a little Sonic Youth to drown out our own, right Daria?"
Daria shrugged. "I don't know about 'hooligan'. I'm really more of a scofflaw."
"Can we settle on 'rabble-rouser'?"
"No dice. 'Rouser' suggests physical activity."
Amanda interrupted their word game with some reluctance. "It's getting late, Janey. Will Daria be staying with us?"
Jane blinked and turned to her friend, as though she hadn't planned on this but was not averse to it either. "Oh. Well..."
"I really shouldn't. It's a school night."
The brush slipped in Amanda's fingers.
"There's supposed to be a marathon of that show you girls like to watch," she said as nonchalantly as possible. "I think it started already."
"Correction. I am staying with you."
The girls retired to Jane's room as Amanda breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief. She didn't have to tell them that. But the truth was, she wanted Daria here. The only time when thoughts of the neighbors didn't overwhelm her was when that girl was around, and maybe...maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she was in the house.
She knew how desperate that sounded. But anything was worth a try. She walked upstairs to her room where she could hear them across the hall. Predictably, Jane's TV was already going.
"So tell us, sir. Is it really true that your flatulence can predict the future?"
"It's a blessing, ma'am. A blessing and a curse."
Amanda sat on the edge of her bed and waited to hear the man arrive. Seconds stretched into minutes, minutes into hours, and hours into a very long night.
When she opened her eyes again, the color-changing clock read 2:24 PM.
PM? Had she slept? She sat up, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sunlight. She felt wonderful. And that meant...
"He never came," she whispered dully. "The man next door never came home." She jumped up from the bed in amazement. "DARIA-!"
It was her! Amanda didn't know how, but it must be because of Daria! She looked in Jane's room, which was empty, then jogged downstairs to find a note on the table.
Thanks for the heads up Mom, it said in Jane's familiar scrawl. Don't worry, we'll get our sleep in class. Jane.
Things like this were also new, and Amanda wanted to hold on to them. Years of trips-some physical, some mental-and a poorly applied butterfly metaphor had taken their toll, that was undeniable. She couldn't undo the damage of those things, but she could put a hard surface under her feet and start building something. She'd been doing that since she came back last week. If only they didn't have that man next door, she was sure it would be okay. They could make the Lanes a real family, fragmented but functional.
Until midnight. Then, there was no rest at all.
She laughed softly. This intolerable man, whoever he was, left her three choices. One, take her family and leave, which was out of the question right now. Two, get rid of the man, and unlike Daria's fictional secret agent, she had neither the spine to 'neutralize' someone nor the clearance to do so with impunity. Which left number three: avoid the man in any way she could.
"Sure is a thick one tonight," the security guard remarked as she jotted something down in her log book.
"Yup," the hotel clerk replied after an awkward pause. "It's great, isn't it? I like fog."
"What, even when you're driving?"
He smiled and nodded. He hadn't looked up from his computer screen.
"I don't know how I'm going to get home in the morning."
"Stick around," he shrugged, with no indication of whether he was joking or not. "Plenty of empty rooms."
A pair of headlights finally cut through the night as an old beat-up sedan parked at the front.
The clerk winced and stood up from the chair. "Who would be out in this?"
The woman was somewhere in her forties or fifties, in that undefined place where women with outer and inner beauty seemed to reside forever. Her outfit was nothing special, though-moccasins, drawstring pants and a light spring jacket. A holdover hippie if he'd ever seen one. She smiled kindly as she approached the desk. But as she got closer one could see a vague, haunted look about her, a few too many glances over the shoulder.
"Hi. Do you have any single rooms available?" she asked.
Her voice was like the rest of her, dreamy and pleasant and somehow, not completely of this world.
By the time she'd pulled into the lot, the fog was so thick that it was easy to forget what state she was in. She left a note with some excuse and took off at 11, knowing nobody could find her in a place like this if she didn't want to be found.
It was an old motel, with all the doors opening to the outside. Her room was small, but adequate, and at least the TV worked. She flipped numbly through the channels as she'd seen her son do so many times. She understood him. Looking for something to watch was easier than looking for something to do. And what could someone do with herself under these circumstances? Hide, she decided. She didn't like leaving Jane and Trent alone, but Daria wasn't visiting tonight-and the neighbors couldn't bother her if she wasn't there.
She pressed the remote again. The TV switched from the weather to some reality show with a lot of young people screaming at each other.
Amanda sighed and switched the TV off.
The screaming didn't stop.
"I done told you I was gonna be here! Open the fucking door!"
"I got the phone in my hand right now! I'm calling the cops right now if you don't leave me alone!"
Icy terror settled in the pit of her stomach as she jumped off the bed and peeked out through the curtains. Just outside, arguing loudly with someone in another room, was the very same man.
The man next door.
Amanda recoiled against the far wall, barely swallowing a scream. Her whole body shook.
The sound of screeching tires and a car tearing out of the parking lot was audible at the desk.
"What the hell?" the clerk glared, vaguely upset at the distraction as he picked up a walkie-talkie. "Front desk to security."
"Sorry Dusty, it happened so fast I didn't see who it was," she replied on the other end.
"Well, is anything else going on out there?"
A pause, then the walkie crackled again.
"Nope. I don't see anything."
She hadn't stopped shaking when she raced back into the Lawndale city limits. It was a small miracle the police didn't stop her. She wanted nothing to do with them either. They would probably think she was high as well as a speed demon.
But she'd been sober for seven years, seven whole years. Wake up Amanda, one of her friends told her, it's 1993. She had no notion of where she was, nor that the new year had come and gone. She'd called it quits after that.
But then the fear started. The fear of responsibility, of seeing the toll those years had taken on her family. That was what kept her away from home so much, and perhaps it was the same for Vincent. She'd never asked what his reasons were. He was a bit of a puzzle himself; it was what had attracted her to him so long ago, that and the promising haze rising from the communal tent...
But she forced herself back into the present. It was the year 2000, and a terrible man was tormenting her. Chasing her. No matter where she was at night, he would be there somehow. And the only thing that could keep him away, the only one who had given her one night's reprieve, was...
"Daria," she whispered plaintively.
Amanda drove faster.
