The Einstein Prophecy Read Free Page B

always treated him like a mother, fretting over his late hours and bachelorhood. Once or twice, single women had shown up at the boardinghouse table, and Lucas had guessed they had been invited there to audition.
    “Your rooms are ready,” she said, brushing at her eyes, “and I’m going to roast a whole chicken. Amy’s all of nine now, but she’ll be sure to tell you that when she gets home from school.”
    They both laughed, and Mrs. Caputo helped carry his bags up the creaking wooden stairs to the top floor, where the door was already open. It was as if time had stood still, and all the horrors he had witnessed abroad had never happened. The single bed was made up in the corner, with the same patchwork quilt he remembered. The hot plate and radio were on the bookshelf, the desk in front of the dormer window. Outside, the leaves, just now starting to turn color, clung to the branches of the old oak tree. He could even hear the drip from the makeshift shower Tony Caputo had installed in the tiny bathroom under the eaves; to get his hair wet, Lucas had to stoop at a nearly impossible angle.
    “I’ll let you get settled,” Mrs. Caputo said. “Dinner’s ready at five thirty. It’s good to have you back home,” she added, referring, as people did these days, not to any particular address, but to America.
    “Hope Tony’s not far behind me.”
    “I hope they all are.”
    Once the door was closed, Lucas simply stood at the window, staring out at the trees and the scruffy yard, with its ramshackle swing set and cyclone fence. He’d stood at this very spot shortly before he’d left for basic training. Maybe time was an illusion after all, as some of the latest scientific theories seemed to suggest. Maybe he’d never left this room. Maybe he was whole again. But then he caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the glass, and the black patch brought him right back to reality.
    After unpacking his bags, hanging his spare pants and jackets in the closet, and concealing the bottle of scotch in the bottom drawer of the dresser, he swallowed two aspirin and lay down on the bed. His shoulders ached from carrying his bags. His forehead hurt, too; the doctors had said the pain would dissipate over time, but it could still be pretty bad. They’d also told him he’d get used to the monocular vision, but he still found himself bumping into things on his blind side. Under the patch, he wore a glass eye, but people seemed perturbed by the fake eye, and were never sure where to look when they were talking to him. The patch made things simpler for everyone concerned.
    Quite unannounced, sleep overcame him. The only sounds were comforting ones—the rustling of the leaves outside the window, the rattling of the pipes, the creaks and groans that any frame house, particularly one this old, was sure to emit—and together they acted as a powerful soporific. So, too, did the soft and familiar bed and the fading light of an early autumn day. When he awoke a couple of hours later, he wasn’t sure at first what had roused him. There was the smell of roasted chicken wafting up to him, the banging of the radiator, and a moment later, the thump of footsteps racing up the stairs. He had barely raised his head from the feather pillow when his door flew open and a girl in a red coat, squealing his first name, leapt onto the bed.
    “Amy, I told you not to wake him!” Mrs. Caputo cried from the bottom of the stairs, but it was already too late for that. Amy squirmed like a puppy, hugging him with all her might.
    “Oof,” he said, “you’ve got to take it easy. I’m an old man now.”
    “You’re not old! But I am—I’m nine now!” she said, pulling back her head to look at him. “What happened to your eye?”
    “I had a little accident over there.”
    “What kind of accident?”
    He could see that her mind was already running on two tracks—she wanted to know what had happened to him, but she was worried that the same thing might