Chapter 15

A couple hours after Celestine left, Joshua stood in his kitchen and watched the sky outside his window turn orange. For the fifth time, he redialed Ann's number. When he put the phone to his ear, he heard the same thing he'd already heard four times. "Hey, it's Ann," her voice said. "Leave a message. Or don't."

Joshua sighed and dropped his phone. He glanced over at Ava. Already in her flannel PJ's - orange with bright blue stars all over - she was sitting on the sofa. She had her Finizen plush tucked under one arm, and her drawing pad was on her lap. Of course, she was drawing. The TV was on in the background, and of course, she didn't seem to be paying attention to it.

Joshua looked back outside again. The sky was still orange, and the orange color was getting deeper. He looked at his watch; he was running out of time.

"Where are you?" he said out loud as he dialed Ann's number for the sixth time. He listened to Ann's message once again. He heaved another, louder sigh. He looked over at Ava. She lifted her head and met his gaze.


Rubber crunching over loose rocks and broken gravel, engine lugging, Joshua's old car coughed to a stop against the curb in front of Spriggy's. He looked through his windshield at the old building. This is a very bad idea, he thought.

When the sun had gone down, a thin fog had rolled down out of the hills at the edge of Cabo Poco. The moon, slightly larger tonight than the night before, still managed to deliver its shine, but that shine was smeared by the dense, moist air.

The hazy moonlight on the pizzeria made the building look otherworldly. Joshua's imagination turned the building into a big hand, just wanting to reach out and grab the car.

He turned and looked at Ava, who sat primly upright in the back seat. Still in her PJ's, and still clutching the Finizen plush, she was ensconced next to a large backpack, which Joshua had stuffed with blankets - for a tent - and a sleeping bag. Ava was looking eagerly at Spriggy's, as though they were right outside an amusement park.

"This isn't a vacation, Ava," Joshua said. "You're not here to have fun."

Ava kept her gaze on the pizzeria. "Okay," she said.

Joshua talked a little lower in an attempt to sound stern. "I will work, and you will sleep," he said, "and under no circumstances are you to leave my office."

Ava kept staring at Spriggy's.

Joshua leaned over the seat and waved a hand in front of his sister's face. "I need you to look at me and tell me you understand."

Ava finally looked at her brother. "I understand." she said plainly.


The heavy metal door clanged shut, as usual, after Joshua ushered his sister inside the restaurant. As the bone-rattling clank stopped reverberating, they stared at the lobby in dismay.

"What happened?" Ava asked.

Joshua's gaze hopped from the broken glass to the ragged holes in the drywall. He took in the benches' torn vinyl. He frowned at a stream of quarters that seemed to lead down the hallway. He adjusted the strap of the large backpack he had slung over his shoulder. He looked down at his sister. "Gimme your hand."

Surprisingly, she did so without hesitation. Joshua began guiding her forward. He did his best to weave around the worst of the glass shards, but navigating Ava through the destruction was unnerving.

"It smells funny in here," Ava said as Joshua deliberately put his body between hers and the archway to the dining room.

One glance through the arch told them that the damage in the room was even worse than what he was seeing in the lobby. Not that the hallway was much better. Like the lobby, the hallway floor was carpeted in glass. And the trail of coins continued.

Ava was right about the smell. Spriggy's had never smelled great, but now its odors were even worse. The smell was pungent and made Joshua's nostrils burn.

Continuing to step carefully, he got Ava down the length of the hall, and ushered her into the office. Once there, he let go of Ava's hand and shut the door. Ava stepped forward and looked around, her eyes bright and curious.

The office, strangely, appeared to be untouched by the vandals. All the electronic equipment was as it should be.

Dismissing the mystery of why the vandals hadn't destroyed the CCTV monitors, Joshua turned his attention to getting Ava settled. He slipped the backpack off his shoulder.

"Can you help me out here?" he said to Ava.

Ava, who had been inching toward the desk - and the monitors- turned back toward Joshua and nodded.

For the next few minutes, they both worked together to form a tent from the blankets, using the filing cabinets as tent posts. They unrolled Ava's sleeping bag, and Ava crawled inside of it. Once there, she snuggled into a ball on her side, the Finizen plush firmly pressed against her chest.

Joshua, crouching on his heels in front of the makeshift tent flaps, was happy to see that Ava's eyelids were drooping. "Do you want me to turn off the lights?" he asked.

Ava shook her head, her eyelids fluttering even lower.

"Goodnight," Joshua said.

Ava didn't respond. Her eyes had closed.

Joshua backed through the overlapping blankets. He started to let them fall together, but he paused when Ava spoke.

"It's like we're camping," she said. Her voice was nearly whisper-soft, groggy.

Joshua opened his mouth to respond, but he saw his sister's mouth drop open slightly. Her breathing slowed.

Camping? Joshua thought. It was then that he had remembered the dreams he had last night, and every night before. He saw himself on the beach with his parents again…and Sunny.

Sunny?

Joshua took a step back from the tent, feeling his hands tremble at his sides. The grief had begun to come back to him. He began to question his position. Why was he here? Why did he and Ava end up the way they did? Why did their parents have to abandon them? Why did it have to be after Sunny was taken?

Regaining his composure, Joshua closed up the tent. He exhaled softly, the concern that he was making a mistake bringing Ava to Spriggy's abating now that she was tucked in.

It's gonna be okay, he thought. I'm gonna do better, for her…better than I had for Sunny.

He straightened and crossed over to the desk. He checked the CCTV monitors, scanning all of the interior feeds. Wow, he thought. Someone really did a number on the place. He frowned. He was sure he'd locked up the night of the storm. But he still felt guilty about what happened.

He glanced at the tent. Peewee, childish snoring sounds came from within the overlapped blankets.

Joshua looked back at the monitors. He sighed. Vandalism cleanup wasn't in his job description, but he couldn't leave the place this way. He listened to Ava's snoring for a few more seconds. Then he left the office, closing the door behind him.

Looking at the closed door for a moment, he hesitated. Ava was safe in there, wasn't she?

He shook off his willies. Sure, she was.

He took a step forward…and cringed at the crunching glass beneath his feet. Step one, he decided, had to be sweeping up all the glass.

Resolved, he strode down the hall. He ignored the crackling and tinkling sounds that his feet made as they shattered more glass and kicked errant quarters.

Halfway down the hall, he stopped in front of the frosted-glass-fronted door of the supply closet. Opening the door, he reached in and up. He put his hand on the pull string that hung from the closet's single bulb. Then he hesitated. The closet wasn't covered by CCTV, and given the chaotic shambles in the rest of the pizzeria, he wasn't sure what he was going to find in here.

He yanked on the pull string.

The bulb came on, and he gazed at…

…a perfectly ordinary collection of janitorial equipment. Maybe it was a little jostled, but otherwise, all seemed to be…

What is that thing?

Glancing at the open door, Joshua noticed a few drops of red on the frosted glass. And a faint smear. Was that blood?

He shrugged. Maybe one of the vandals cut themselves.

He stepped forward and turned to his left. Instantly, he jumped back. "For the love of God!" he shouted.

What had startled him was the stupid Foongus doll. Joshua made a face at the grinning, little, bug-eyed doll. How'd you get in here? He thought internally. Those damn vandals must have a real sense of humor.

He turned the Foongus' face toward the wall. Ignoring the little pit-a-pat of his nerve endings - why did the stupid doll get to him? - he grabbed a push broom. He quickly turned around, tugged on the light cord, and left the supply closet. He shut the door firmly behind him.

For the next couple hours, he put his nose to the grindstone. Having been a janitor several times, he could handle a push broom like a pro. So, the work, though not the most fun in the world, wasn't difficult.

Starting in the hallway, he swept everything that littered the floor into a pile that he pushed against one side wall of the dining room. The pile included all the glass from the hall and the lobby and all the coins that were strewn around. He was tempted to go through the pile and pull out the coins - it would be kind of like panning for gold - but he decided to deal with that later.

He consolidated all of the dining room furniture, making another pile of broken chairs and tables. In the arcade area, he couldn't really do much with the destroyed game cabinets. All he could really do was more sweeping. The glass that littered the floor there soon joined the other glass in the dining room pile.

When he was sweeping in front of the stage, he encountered a yellow puddle of urine and a strong ammonia order. "Gross," he said.

Pushing his broom ahead of him, he headed into the kitchen. When he passed through the service doors into the vast stainless-steel domain, he sighed. This was going to be another big job. But he tackled it. Righting shelving units, returning pots and pans - dented but still usable - to their places, and sweeping up more broken shards - these were thicker pieces of dinnerware, he got the kitchen back in semi-order. Then he returned to the task that he originally brought him in here. He filled a couple buckets with warm, soapy water.

Taking the water-filled buckets to the stage, he returned to the supply closet to get a mop, and then headed back to the stage again. He spent the next several minutes thoroughly cleaning the area at the base of the center stage. He even cleaned past that area, wanting to be sure he didn't miss a single speck of what one of the vandals had left behind.

Once Joshua was done with that cleanup, he left the buckets where they were. He'd take care of them later. He was running out of steam, and he still had a lot to do.

Returning to the supply closet, he found a dustpan and a box of heavy-duty garbage bags. He then tackled the task of turning his pile of glass and debris into four tidy bags of vandal detritus. And he filtered out the coins. Not sure what to do with the pile of quarters, he put them in another bag. He took the overstuffed bags back to the loading dock, where he discovered how the vandals had gotten in. He found a broken padlock lying on the floor (a new one had already been installed on the outer door), and he saw that the back door to the kitchen was broken down. The break-in hadn't been Joshua's fault at all.

Finally, finally, he retreated to the archway with the bag of coins and his mop and broom. He stopped there to survey his handiwork…and he wasn't fully satisfied with it. The room looked…better than it had. And it was the best he could do at the moment.

He took the mop and broom back to the supply closet. He stowed the bag of coins there, too. Then, his shoulders and back yelling at him for all the physical labor he'd put them through, he returned to the office.

He opened the office door slowly, and he stepped softly as he entered. Looking toward the tent, he was happy to hear Ava still quietly snoring away. He glanced up at the clock above the tent. It was almost four a.m.

He looked at the desk chair. Briefly, he thought about the promise he'd made to Celestine. But the chair beckoned, and he was wiped out.

He gave in to his need for rest and the compulsion of his routine. He set up his cassette player, rested his gaze on his taped-together poster, and in seconds, his eyes were closing and the pine trees were swaying, turning into palm trees in his mind. No pills needed.