Bravely, Super-Wade sneaks into Prometheus, where a hot brunette provides a fake ID and disguises me as someone who works for a living. Hunchback-Ant, the guy I backstabbed in reality, spots me, only here he’s as evil as Particle Dude. When he screams, everyone chases me, but I make it to the computer and whip out a James Bond iPod-like flashy drive. It’s so cool I wish I had one in real life. All I gotta do is push a button and save the world! But… but… something freaks me out. What? I don’t know, but I go from Bond to emo in ten seconds. I start to faint. Where’s Denby when I need her? Oh, yeah…
I stand at her door in my bathrobe, boxers, and new hospital scrubs. At least they were washed. Light dribbles onto the floor from under the door. Inside I hear music and girls. They’re laughing in that special giggly way boys give up on in their teens. Beneath my feet, the floor rumbles from the freezers in a deli below. I could stay here forever, wedged between the giggles and the hum, but my pinkie hurts so bad.
Bracing myself against the throbbing, I knock with my good hand. Nothing. I knock harder. Shadows move behind the peephole.
A muffled voice sounds, “Who is it?” Not the voice I expect. Too hoarse. Older.
I’m too close to the peephole. I step back so whoever it is can get a good gander at me. I think of myself as looking cute and harmless. They disagree.
“Ew. Go away or I’m calling the police.”
“Denby,” I say. “I’m a friend of Denby’s.”
The eye vanishes. A few seconds later, another eye appears. It’s blue, younger, more familiar. The door rattles and creaks open. The music gets louder, but no one’s giggling anymore. Denby’s face drops when she sees me.
“Jesus, Wade, you look awful. Anthony find you?”
“Yeah. Denby, can I… can I crash here?”
I don’t think the question surprises her as much as my tone of voice. She scans me up and down, the same way Ant did, glances back inside, then at me again.
“You just… wait there,” she says.
She goes inside. There’s talk. It gets kind of loud. Someone, probably Denby, is smart enough to raise the volume on the music, so I don’t have to hear what a bad idea they think letting me in is. The voices grow resigned, then quiet. The music is lowered. Denby opens the door and nods for me to enter.
I walk in to the stares of two girls I’ve never met, but who’ve obviously heard of me. One looks like a librarian, glasses and her hair tied in a bun. The other’s a dancer, in a black leotard, glaring at me as she stretches her leg muscles. I manage a weak smile and a wave of my hand, too late realizing it’s the one with the bandage. The dancer hisses, like “Oooo, that must hurt.” The librarian’s all about the data.
“How’d that happen?”
“A mobster thought I stole his diamond-studded Hot Wheels car, so he cut off the tip of my pinkie to prove a point.”
“Nice,” the librarian says. Her tone tells me I scare her and had best be gone soon.
“He’s kidding!” Denby says. “He’s always saying things like that, trying to be funny. It doesn’t always work. You’re kidding, right, Wade?”
I shrug. Can’t lie, can’t tell the truth.
Denby grabs me by the arm and pulls. As we exit, I see the dancer and the librarian eye each other knowingly. I’m sure they’ve told her a million times she shouldn’t have anything to do with me. Probably the one thing all three of us agree on.
Since she split from home, Denby’s shared this place but, like I said, I’ve made a point of never being here, not wanting to give the wrong impression, like if I came in, I might stay. It’s nice. Peaceful. No sharp edges. There are lit candles all over, casting grand wobbly shadows. The mattress on the floor is arranged like a couch, with long thick pillows to lean back against. There’s a dresser, some posters, and a quilt hung on the wall like a decoration.
She leads me to the mattress and gently pushes me down. I feel myself relax into it and almost fall asleep right then and there. But Denby lies next to me, puts her head on a pillow, and asks with her eyes what the hell’s going on.
Struggling to keep the duck off my head, the one with my crazy carefree persona, I tell her. I don’t elaborate. I just watch those blue eyes the whole time, little candle flames flickering in them. I see her concern, her worry. I see her opinion of me confirmed but, even after the worst of it, I see her still caring. She believes me, but I show her the toy car anyway.
“And now Klot thinks you’re the one who stole it from him?”
“I’m sure Alek and his dad will do their best to convince him.”
“Oh, Wade. Something finally caught up with you, huh? I’m so sorry.”
“I guess the question is, now what? I show up with the car, Klot will probably just kill me, which may be better than losing more fingers.”
She shivers. “I don’t know! This is so crazy, I have no idea. Maybe find someone who does? Someone smarter. I’d ask a teacher. Do you know anyone who could at least give you some advice?”
I shake my head no.
“Family?”
Again, no.
“I know your mom died, but you never told me about your dad.”
That’s Denby, filling in the blanks, moving in that invisible furniture again, like in her Rumi poem. No reason not to say. “He was a recovering alchy, fifteen years sober. When mom died, he tried to hold it together, pay the mortgage. We had a little house by the bay. But without her part-time income, he could barely keep it. When I said I was quitting school to be a singer, he had a shit-fit. Told me if I did, to find my own place. So I did.”
“And you never went back to see him?”
“Once. He was gone. House for sale. Guess he bagged it. Probably in an alley somewhere with a bottle in his hand.”
Denby’s eyes get all wet.
“What about Po?” she asks.
“Po? What about him?”
“Maybe he’ll have some idea what to do.”
“Oh, he’ll know exactly what to do. He’ll laugh his head off at me.”
“So let him.”
“Then he’ll kick me out.”
“He won’t. He loves you. You remind him of his uncle.”
“The idiot who lost his kidney?”
“Yeah, but don’t you see the way he gets all misty whenever he talks about him? Besides, why do you think he puts you up?”
“Because my music keeps him in business?”
She shrugs. “Barely. He didn’t open a coffee shop in that part of Rivendale because he was planning to make money. He did it for the same reason you sing, because he loves it. He’s been around a lot. He’s perfect. Get some sleep and go talk to him in the morning.”
I bristle. I want to grab my duck, shove it back on my head, and leave. But my options are limited. “Maybe you’re right.”
She twists her head, surprised. “You’ve never said that before.”
“Really? Then I take it back,” I say with a wicked grin.
She pushes me down with a little slap to my chest, then kisses me. I grab her warm arms, tug her closer, keeping our lips together all the while. She’s so warm. It’s all so peaceful. I feel the candlelight flickering against us, even with my eyes closed.
I hold her tighter, press my hands along her back, let my fingers touch the colors of her tattoo. I think about getting a little closer physically. Denby never wanted to go too far without that commitment thing; now I’m thinking that since I might die any day this might be a good time, but… it feels kind of slimy. I hesitate. She pulls away, kisses me on the forehead, and says, “Sleep.”
She’s right. I’m almost unconscious as it is. Before I catch the next wave to dreamland, I take the precious plastic bag with the car and the wheel and put it on a small nightstand, next to a dark brown candle, round and curly. In the flickering light it takes me a second to recognize that the candle has a face.
It’s a bust of Pan, the Greek satyr, one of the original tricksters. I remember Denby showing it to me at The Rat. She said she planned to pretend it was a gift from me, since I never bought anything for her. It’s a good candle. I have great taste in non-gifts.
She curls up into me. I turn from Pan, fall asleep, and dream.
No Super-Wade. Just me, just dreaming I am where I am, quiet and sad on the mattress. There is one difference, big one, kind of hard to miss, really; there’s a giant head hovering over me, even bigger than a cow’s. It’s not real or fake, it’s both, half in my mind, half in the room, looking familiar, like it’s been here as long as the air and I’m the upstart newcomer. It grins, waving its fire red hair, making lines in its thick white skin, showing cracks in its teeth like black rivers, burning me with the mad gleam in its bloodshot eyes. It’s him, the guy Po always said would turn on me. Trickster, and he’s eyeing me like he’s hungry, famished for a good joke. I’m it. Why me? Because I used to not care, but can’t anymore. He chuckles like he’s watching a chicken dinner try to fly. Then he laughs his horrible laugh. Molten hot, it rips chunks from my edges, blows holes in my gut, shreds every piece of me-meat, like wet dirt, till I’m all gone, not even a punch line anymore.
I wake. Denby’s snoring peacefully. The candles are out. The beginnings of morning leak through the windows. Drowsy, I turn to candle-Pan. His face is half-melted. He looks the way I felt in the dream, but the crazy eyes and hungry grin are still there, perfect and pointed. The dripping wax around his eyes makes it seem as if he is looking at something, down and to the right.
What’s so damn funny, Clown-king? What are you looking at?
The plastic bag. Only… what? The car’s not in it, or the wheel. They’re gone! I bolt up, fast enough to make Denby mumble. I look closer. There’s some kind of computer part inside. It’s sleek plastic, so cool I remember wishing it were real.
I know that flash drive. It’s from my dream. From my frakking dream! It’s the one with the program that’ll save the world. I must be asleep, or half-asleep, or a tenth asleep—enough asleep to allow me to believe that that thing is here.
I pick it up, squeeze it, roll it through the bag. Feels real. So do I.
I’m just wild about Harry! And Harry’s wild about me!
What the hell is that? Denby’s cell phone? Where’d she get the crappy ring tone? She stretches and answers it in a mumble. Her eyes are closed, so she doesn’t see my panicked face. On the other end, someone screams, as loud as Trickster’s laugh, but much, much sadder.
“I’m sorry… could you… what?” Denby starts off trying to calm whoever she’s talking to but winds up getting upset herself. “No! No!”
I’m still trying to get this all to be a dream, but she shoves the phone against my ear and I hear the pained screecher call my name: “Wade did this! That selfish monster!”
I look at Denby and furrow my brow to say, “Who is this?”
She mouths, “Ant’s mother.”
“Who… who did what?” I manage.
“They took him! They said Wade would know what it was about. I can’t even get the police to—”
“Took him? Who took him?”
She describes a clean-cut police officer and a man with a very big head, then asks, full of venom, “Who is this?”
I’d like to answer, but I don’t know. I don’t know who I am anymore. The duck is gone. Blew off in a storm. And Ant? I don’t even have the car that might have saved him, just a piece of a dream I barely remember and a life I wish I could forget.