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XAVIER
     
    “Hey, kid.”
    Xavier Toutant was startled by the harsh voice behind him. After an hour of tugging and sweating, he had managed to pry open one of the jammed cabinets inside the back two thirds of the big diesel Fleetwood Freightliner 2020—not that he would have known the name, but it was plastered on the side of the recreational vehicle. It was dark; this whole weightless thing made you feel like an idiot even trying to open a door. Every time you pushed, you were the object that gave.
     
    Now there was some other fool floating in here…white, thin, balding, midthirties, wearing a pair of slacks and a dress shirt that had suffered some major distressing. Even in the shadowy interior, Xavier could see that his face was red and his eyes small and mean. “Ass eyes” was what his uncle Clare would have called them.
     
    “What are you doing in here?”
     
    There were several possible responses, ranging from
None of your fucking business
to his usual noncommittal shrug. But Xavier had been upside down and dizzy and hungry for two days.
     
    And he had watched this particular cracker lurking around the RV for the better part of a day. So he said, “Same thing you are.”
     
    “Oh really. And what’s that?”
     
    “Checking things out.”
     
    “Like, what, you’re in a goddamned library?”
     
    So far, in fact, Xavier had found nothing worth having in this wreck. Unless you counted a pair of battered lawn chairs, and in the weightless world of the bubble, he did not.
     
    “So, then, what if I told you it was closing time?”
     
    Xavier was getting tired of this clown. “Is this your ride?”
     
    “What if I said yes?”
     
    Xavier had to smile. “If this was yours, you wouldn’t have said that. So…I’m just scrounging, man. Don’t know what’s here…might be useful to find out.”
     
    The cracker had wedged himself into the open front, which had gotten squished down either by the initial scoop or by being slammed into the walls of the big bubble afterward. Either way, it was a tight fit…which was one of the reasons little Xavier Toutant was one of the few people, if not the only one, to wriggle inside to see what was what.
     
    He wasn’t worried that the cracker would try to tackle him. He would have to swim at him, allowing plenty of time for Xavier to wedge himself and either take a swing at him, or even rip off the open cabinet door and swat him like a big old bug.
     
    “Not the worst idea I’ve heard,” the cracker said, confirming what Xavier had immediately suspected: This guy was a spiritual cousin, which is to say, he was a scrounger, a runner of errands. No matter now nicely he dressed back on Earth.
     
    Or, to be more accurate, he was just another low-level criminal. “Find anything useful?”
     
    “Not yet. Just started.”
     
    For Xavier Toutant—formerly of New Orleans, Louisiana, but for the past fourteen years, an unhappy resident of Houston, Texas—the big white scoop came just in time.
     
    Following that afternoon’s rain, he had gone out to the secret spot near the inlet to check on his plants. He had nine different sites, including the one up near La Porte. That and seven others were on slightly higher ground, less prone to flooding.
     
    But not the one down near the new park. (Funny how everyone kept calling it “new,” since it was already in existence the day Xavier and his mother and sister arrived from New Orleans.)
     
    So he’d put on his galoshes and the big raincoat, grabbed a flashlight, and climbed into his Chevy. As always, Momma had asked him where he was going. As always, he had simply said, “Out! Back in an hour!”
     
    They had a good understanding. Momma didn’t pry into Xavier’soutings, and he didn’t pry into the collection of Chardonnay bottles that grew by one each day throughout the week, dropping to zero on Tuesday, when trash was picked up.
     
    Not that he blamed her. They had lost everything in the Ninth Ward back