White River Burning. John Verdon

just the G. The whole house. A work of ironic art. A rebellion against humorless, boring modernism. The fact that this house and everything in it was designed by Kiriki Kilili says it all. Kiriki loves to stick it to the modernists with his cube jokes. The modernists want a house to be an impersonal machine. Pure efficiency.” She wrinkled her nose as if efficiency had a foul odor. “Kiriki wants it to be a place of fun, joy, pleasure.” She held Gurney’s gaze for an extra couple of seconds on that last word.

      “Does the big G stand for something?”

      “Giddy, goofy, Gelter—take your choice.”

      “It’s a joke?”

      “It’s a way of treating the house as a toy, an amusement, an absurdity.”

      “Your husband is a playful fellow, is he?”

      “Marv? Omigod, no. Marv’s a financial genius. Very serious. The man shits money. I’m the fun one. See the fireplace?” She pointed to one of the walls, at the base of which was a hearth at least ten feet wide. The flames across the width flickered in the full spectrum of a rainbow. “Sometimes I program it for all those colors. Or just green. I love a green fire. I’m like a witch with magic powers. A witch who always gets what she wants.”

      Mounted on the wall above the hearth was a TV screen, the largest he’d ever seen. It was displaying three adjacent talking heads in the divided format of a cable news program. Several of the party guests were watching it.

      “Trish?” A loud male voice from a corner of the room broke through the general hubbub.

      She leaned close to Gurney. “I’m being summoned. I fear I have to be introduced to someone horribly boring. I feel it in my bones.” She managed to make her bones sound like a sex organ. “Don’t go away. You’re the first homicide detective I’ve ever met. An actual murder expert. I have so many questions.” She gave his arm a little squeeze before heading across the room, sashaying through an obstacle course of cubes.

      Gurney 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