It was, for a wonder. Mingus, in fact, looked as if he hadn’t been to bed yet, which didn’t interfere with his cooking. I looked around for his sister Electra, without much hope; she’s not the kind of girl who sees eight o’clock in the morning very often. If she was seeing it that day, she wasn’t doing it at Taco Hell. One less compelling distraction. I had, suddenly, an urge to know what Sunny Rico was doing at eight in the morning. Idle curiosity.

The Ticker and I ate, and talked about nothing very consequential. We avoided the matter that had absorbed us all day yesterday as if we were under a compulsion. Tick-Tick explained to me that fresh salsa was the best remedy for a cold the world has ever known, and I wanted to know, if that was true, why hospital food was bland.

She laughed, and coughed, and, suddenly serious, said, “I’m sorry I told Rico that you didn’t like hospitals.”

I shrugged. “No reason why you shouldn’t. I didn’t think you knew.”

“You’ve never said, all in one piece, what your life was like before you came to the Borderlands. But you’ve said bits of things… I suppose it’s like knowing who lives in a house by the washing they hang on the line. I’ve come to understand that your family thought of your talent much the way my family thought of mine.” She began to pleat her napkin. “I believe that your mother didn’t like you very much.”

“No, she just had a lot on her mind.” It still bothered me, though. You’re supposed to be able to count on your mother putting in a good word for you in spite of everything. All those serial killers, down through history, whose mothers swore to the reporters, “He would never have done that—he was a good boy.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?” I’d lost the thread.

“Why did she have such a lot on her mind?”

“Oh. Because I busted up her marriage. Or at least that’s what Dad said in the message on the answering machine.”

Her brows climbed up her forehead. “The answering machine?”

“He’s a modern kind of guy. Mom picked me up after track practice, we came home, she played back the messages while I made us a snack, and there it was.”

Tick-Tick sat with her mouth open, until another round of coughing seized her. She gulped water and croaked, “Mab and all attendants. What did he say?”