All Around Atlantis Read Online Free

behind a door, and Francie jogged from foot to foot to warm herself—it had been a long walk from the last stop on the bus line. She looked around. Not much to see: a counter holding some file folders, a calendar and a mirror on the wall, several chairs, and a round table on which lay a dog-eared copy of Consumer Reports . So this was where her mother had got to—nowhere at all.
    â€œWon’t be another minute.” The man was back in the room. “Teddy T.’s just doing the finishing touches.”
    Finishing touches? Francie blanched—she’d almost forgotten what this place was. “You’re not using lipstick, are you?” she managed to say. “Mother hated it.”
    The man glanced rapidly at the mirror and then back at Francie.
    â€œLipstick,” Francie said. “On her.”
    â€œâ€˜On her…’” the man said. As he stared at Francie, the room lost its color and flattened; swarming black dots began to absorb the table and the counter and the mirror. “I’m very sorry if that’s what you had in mind, Miss, ah…” dots streamed out of the dot man to say. The riffling of file folders amplified into a deafening splash of dots, and then Francie heard, “I’m very, very sorry, because those were definitely not the instructions. I’ve got the fax right here—from your dad, right? Yup, Mr. McIntyre.”
    Francie’s vision and hearing cleared before her muscles got a grip on themselves. She was on the floor, splayed out, confusingly, as her mother must have been on the ice, and the man was kneeling next to her, holding a glass of water, although, also confusingly, her hair and clothing were drenched—sweat, she noted, amazed.
    â€œO.K. now?” the man asked. Next to him was a cardboard box, about two feet square, tied up with twine.
    Francie nodded.
    â€œHappens,” the man said, sympathetically.
    Francie finished the water slowly and carefully while the man fetched a little wooden handle and affixed it to the twine around the box. Things had gone far beyond misrepresentation now.
    â€œAnd here’s the irony,” the man said. “We deliver.”
    Â 
    All night long, Francie fell, plummeting through the air. When she finally managed to pry herself awake with the help of the pale wands of light along the blinds, she found herself sprawled forcefully back on her mattress, aching, as if she’d been hurled from a great height. On the kitchen floor was the cardboard box. Francie hefted it experimentally—yesterday it had been intolerably heavy; this morning it was intolerably light.
    O.K., first in the phone book, true enough. (“See display ad, page 182.”) “Hi,” Francie said when the man answered. “This is Francie McIntyre. The girl who fainted yesterday? Could you—” For an instant, Miss Healy stood in front of her again, looking helpless. “First of all,” Francie said. “I mean, thanks for the water. But second of all, could you give me my father’s address, please? And, I guess, his name.”
    Kevin McIntyre—not all that amazing, once you got your head around the notion that he happened to be alive. And he lived on a street called West Tenth, in New York City. Francie looked out the window to the place where there had been for some years now a silently shrieking crowd and a puddle of blood, into which long, splotty raindrops were now falling. Strange—it was raining into the puddle, but at the level of the window it was snowing.
    In the closet she found an old plastic slicker. She took it from the hanger and wrapped it around the cardboard box, securing it roughly with tape. Yes, everything had to be just right . But the only thing she’d actually said to Francie in all these sixteen years was a lie.
    Francie looked around at the bluish stillness. “Hello hello,” she called. Was that her voice? Was that her