Palomar Observatory, San Diego
March 18, 2004. 5:33 P.M.
He paused just inside the dome, careful not to echo his footsteps. The door behind him was shushing to a close. Across the wide, shadowy space, he watched Mike adjust the telescope. A ghost of himself attended Mike, comparing notes, sharing Internet addresses and quips about last night’s Raymond, building experience in the field. It was a ghost soon to fade.
The latch clicked. Mike glanced at the door. “Hey, Oliver. Thought you’d gone home.” He resumed his work.
Oliver didn’t want to have to cut this bond. It would mean more than a mere chink in his resume. Losing access to the world famous Samuel Oschin Telescope would hurt. Losing access to his second family, well, that’d hurt worse. He clenched his eyes and spoke the unspeakable:
“I’m leaving.”
Oliver listened for a response. Silence prevailed, however, replaced by Mike’s elegant tinkering. Oliver opened his eyes. Mike was lengthening the Barlow Lens.
“I’m surprised you aren’t home already,” Mike said. “Don’t you have class in the morning?”
“I’m leaving.”
“So go, already.”
“No, I’m ‘leaving.’ As in ‘here.’ ‘Town.’ ‘San Diego.’” He paused. “‘You.’”
Mike completed his adjustments before standing upright. He took a personal moment, then shot a stare into Oliver’s eyes.
“For how long?”
“For Forever,” Oliver said.
“Forever is a long time, son.”
“So my professors keep telling me.”
“You’re giving up your internship?”
“It’s a choice I had to make.”
Mike nodded. He rounded the low end of the telescope and leaned into the eyepiece. “I’m sorry to hear that. We like having you around here.”
“I like you guys, too,” Oliver said. “And I appreciate the opportunity--”
“May I ask why?”
“Let’s just say a cold front has appeared on the horizon.”
“A cold front.” Mike moved to the side of the telescope to make another adjustment. “I know I’m not your father.”
“Oh no, you’ve been great.”
“Tell me why, Oliver.”
“The usual reason.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Just the usual reason, the same ol’ story,” Oliver said, not yet sure how to put this. “Junior meets freshman. They fall in love. You know.”
“Sounds like a fairytale.”
“Yea. It is. It was. Then Senior and sophomore fell out of love. So naturally they got married.” Oliver inhaled deeply, ready to go for broke. “Post-grad and junior got desperate, which they helped by getting pregnant. Intern began wondering why his senior started coming home late every night. Intern found out why. She’s fallen in with a cult. Now Intern has to leave town to save her. And their baby.”
Back at the eyepiece, Mike shrugged. “I see.”
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, wondering if Mike had registered any of that.
“What about your Master’s?”
“It’s not going anywhere.”
“And your doctorate? Do you really think you’ll resume your education once ‘forever’ is over?”
“My education can wait.”
Mike stood graciously with the telescope behind him and his hands in his front pockets. “If you leave, I’ll have to select a new assistant,” he said.
Some other student touching his equipment, sucking up the glory. Oliver peered through the convex window above the farthest desk. The stars were brilliant tonight, the last smidgens of blue fading from the sky, perfect for gazing.
Mike formed his words distinctly, showing teeth. “We are the leading authority on Sedna,” he said. “Everyone is testing our theories. Everyone, the whole world, looking to us for future developments.” He jingled his keys. “Damn it, Oliver, you’re the one who suggested we name it Sedna.”
“I’m letting you down.”
“Forget me. You have a responsibility to yourself. This opportunity ends the moment you walk out that door. You know that.”
“I know.” Oliver didn’t know a blessed thing, he decided. “Mr. Brown, I am officially taking a permanent leave of absence.”
Mike withered. It seemed as though he would walk over, shake Oliver’s hand, and wish him the best of luck. Instead, he returned to the eyepiece.
Oliver couldn’t part on this note. “Mr. Brown? Mike?” he said. “Sir?”
“Do you love this girl?”
“Her name is Jeslyn.”
“Do you love her?”
“She’s three months pregnant.”
“Do. . .you. . .love her?”
Oliver nodded into his chest. Mike couldn’t see, though, with his face pressed into the telescope, zooming in on outer space.
“Too bad you’re missing this, Mr. Bell. Sedna is visibly red this evening.”
Oliver felt the bridge between them collapse and burn. There was no need to physically exit the dome. The door was already closed to him. It had shut and locked the moment Jeslyn met Juan.
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The Story of Oliver Bell
University of San Diego
April 10, 2001. 5:17 P.M.
She had kicked off her slippers and stretched out on her front, arms crossed, head pillowing on a stack of textbooks. Her petite body rose and fell as she breathed.
Discouraged, Oliver hiked the backpack over his shoulder and walked on by. His place, his sunny spot, and she’d stolen it. That left the cafeteria or the dorms. How could anyone get any work done in a cold, cramped dorm room?
“Hey!” the girl said.
Oliver turned to see her rising onto her arms. Her tender muscles rippled under the denim shirt, tied off in a Daisy Duke at the waist. Her legs swung around, bringing her to a cross-legged sit. She squinted up at him. “Going someplace?”
“Mrs. Turner,” she said. “Anthropology. Tuesday-Thursday. Thanks for noticing. Finally.”
“I noticed,” he said. An awkward moment passed. “Good seeing you.” He cracked a polite smile before hesitantly turning away.
“Not studying today, Oliver?”
Oliver turned back. She knew his name, his special spot, his favorite time of day. Cautiously, he drew near. He lowered himself to the grass, saying, “I’m going to study. Sure.”
The girl scooted closer!
“What’s the matter?” she said, gently clawing his knee. “I don’t bite.”
“Bite?” He tittered. “Why-Why would I think that? That would be silly.”
“Yea. Silly.”
She placed the flat of her palm on the stack of books: College Success, Spelling Made Easy, Taking the Mystery out of Math, World Religions, and, of course, Mrs. Turner’s prescribed anthropology text, still in its wrapper. The girl’s hand slid to the far side, out of sight, then reappeared with an over-sized deck of cards.
She began shuffling them.
“What’s your sign?” she said.
“’Yield,’” he replied.
“No, really.”
“I don’t exactly believe in astrology.”
“I didn’t ask if you believed.”
Oliver pulled the backpack into his lap. “February 18. 1978.”
“Ooo, Pisces, like me. Poetry in motion.”
“Aquarius, actually.”
She gave him a look, like “you faker” and like embarrassment. But she accepted her mistake.
“Aquarius,” she said. “Even better.” She slapped the deck down in front of him. “Cut it in threes.”
Oliver didn’t want to mislead the girl, but he’d be a moron to not humor her, so he did as instructed, three smaller decks, lined left to right. These were tarot cards. The girl scooped them into a single pile. One by one, she peeled cards off the top and laid a pattern, face-down, on the grass.
“Are tarot cards and astrology related?” he asked.
“Is there anything in this universe that is unrelated?”
“Not on the quantum level.”
“Well there you go,” she said. “I need to know your sign so I can find you in the spread.”
“I’m in there?”
The girl formed a cross, with four vertical cards set off to the right. She turned up the bottom of the cross. “There you are,” she said. “Queen of Swords.”
“I’m the Queen of Swords?”
“She’s your signifier. An Aquarius.”
Oliver couldn’t ignore the frisson of talking to a girl who looked like this and spoke in a lilting voice. But he couldn’t turn his brain off, either:
“Have you been waiting here on my spot just so you could read my future?”
“No, I’ve been waiting here on ‘your’ spot so you’d notice me. I’m reading ‘our’ future.”
“’Our’ future.”
“Oh goodie, there I am,” she said. She’d just turned up the right stem of the cross: the Knight of Cups. “I’m an upcoming prospect.”
“But you’re here now.”
She turned up the center card: the Lovers. Oliver’s heart jumped.
“What’s that one?” he said.
“It means you are currently facing a choice. Best choose wisely.”
The current results seemed to perturb her, hardly arousing. In one dire act, she turned every card face up. She scanned the spread as a whole, then studied each, individually. Her thin eyebrows came together. She didn’t seem any less perturbed.
“What are my choices?” Oliver said.
“Sh.”
“Sorry.”
“Sh.”
“Well--”
“Sh--”
“At least tell me your--.”
“Sh. ‘Jeslyn Quayle’”
“Hi, Jeslyn.”
“’Jez.’”
“Hi, Jez.”
She shot him a broad, gorgeous smile, abandoning all gloom and doom. “Hello, Oliver,” she said. Oliver squeezed his backpack for courage. He would have to shorten her name from now on. It felt good when she smiled.
Jez returned with sudden gravity to the cards. “The Hermit” occupied what must have been Oliver’s past. Passing over it, she pointed to the top of the cross: the 7 of Wands.
“You are toiling in a world of competition,” she said.
“Vague. But accurate.”
“Could also mean that someone isn’t being totally honest with you.”
“Who?”
“Hm. . .” Jez said, rolling her eyes. “I, for one, am not being totally honest.”
“You? You, that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not like we’re sitting here together out of coincidence, now are we? Truth be told, I just wanted to look at you.”
“Look at me?”
“Yup.”
“Oh,” he said, glancing down, then up, then down. She was staring, smiling sweetly. Oliver liked it. “How’s it going?”
“How’s what going?”
“Your ’looking at me.’”
“I think it’s going rather well, thanks. How’s it going for you?”
“It’s making me a little uncomfortable.”
“You can look at me, too, if you want. I don’t bite.”
“Indubitably.”
“’Indubitably.’ You are so cute.”
Jez pointed to one of the vertical cards. “Page of Pentacles,” she said. “You’re a student of natural laws.”
Obviously. Didn’t take an oracle to divine that. “You’re very good,” he said. A blade of muddy grass encircled her left nipple, rising through the thick, damp denim.
She pointed to a higher card: the Queen of cups. “This is your ‘Hopes and Fears.’ Know anyone like this?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, gosh, let me think. Passionate, nurturing, tremendously loyal, maybe jealous. . .”
“My mother. She’s like that.”
“Ug.”
“Is that my hope or my fear?” he said.
“Depends. Do you expect me to mother you?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“That’s a relief. I can barely take care of myself.”
Jez observed “The Tower.” Oliver didn’t like the look of that card. Apparently neither did Jez. She skipped it. She brushed the topmost card with her short, manicured fingernail.
“The Hanged Man,” she said.
“That can’t be good.”
“It’s got potential. We’re going to reach a time of uncertainty, but a time of reflection, too. You’re going to have to make a sacrifice.”
“That’s not good.”
“It can be. You stand to reap a valuable reward.”
“What reward?”
“Well, heh, y’know. . .” She threw her head back and luxuriated in hyperbole, stretching and taking a shot at being coy. The shirt rose above her belly ring. “People don’t make sacrifices for just anybody, Mr. Oliver Bell.” There was a patch of scarring, where she’d sloppily removed a tattoo. It looked like it used to say BOBBY. Or ROBBY. Or MOB-(SOMETHING).
This girl suddenly struck him as a little too. . .experienced. Oliver climbed to his feet, patting the dirt off his bottom, and tripped through the straps of his backpack. He righted himself in the harsh, bright sunlight. Jez became an irritating, watery blur.
“I don’t think sacrifices are really me,” he said, blinking. “I’ve worked too hard to get where I am.”
The voluptuous blotch rose to his level. Jez kicked his backpack out of the way and moved close, eclipsing the sun. “Me too. I’ve been watching you.”
“You have?”
“Do I look like an anthropology major?”
“Empirically?” he said. She was an assembly of girl-shaped sunspots. “No.”
“I’ve been hoping to meet you for months, Oliver Bell. Since I saw you speak at my high school last May.”
To think, all the while he’d been lecturing on college life, this girl had been out there in the audience, soaking it up, planning their romantic future together, her and pose-able Ken’s. “Are you implying that you took Anthro just to be in the same class with me?”
“A life without sacrifice is a mundane life.”
“Mundane’s safer. I think I’ll take the mundane.”
“To late,” she said, leaning in. His eyes adjusted to the redness of her lips. “You’re already taken with me.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
South Raven Studio Apartment Complex, San Diego
February 1, 2002. 6:45 A.M.
Oliver was studying at the kitchen table when Jez shoved through the door. She dutifully bussed his cheek, then stamped her way into the main room. Her textbooks hit a hard surface and slid and crashed. The television began blaring.
Oliver couldn’t think. He hollered, “Sweetie,” still scribbling calculations in his notebook, “could you turn that down? I’ve got a physics exam this afternoon.”
Jez bellowed a sigh. She lowered the volume one bar, maybe two, then plopped onto their creaky mattress.
Oliver raised his voice. “I thought you had class this morning.”
“I cut,” she shouted back.
“Again?”
“Art is stupid. I’m switching majors.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again. That alright with you?”
“If it’s what you want.”
“We can’t all be astrophysicists, you know.”
The pencil lead split. “I’m not an astrophysicist,” he said to himself. “Not at this rate.”
“We all can’t just magically know what we want to be when we grow up.”
Oliver tried pushing the lead back into place. “I thought you said your natal chart told you, you should be a painter.”
“A fashion designer,” she exclaimed. “Thanks for noticing.”
Oliver gave up, set his pencil down, and watched it roll off the edge of the table. With a heavy heart, he twisted round with his arm resting on the back of the chair. Jez was sitting on the bed, supported by the wall, her feet dangling off the edge.
“I noticed,” he said, but the program drowned him out.
Jez watched the boob tube with her arms folded and her head sunk in her shoulders. A televangelist was ordering her and all Americans to stop living in sin.
Oliver walked over to the entertainment center and muted the sound.
“I was watching that,” Jez said.
“Since when do you watch religious shows?”
“Since forever. Hello? Tarot? Astrology? I Ching?”
Those weren’t religions. But whatever. What mattered was Jeslyn’s irritation. Oliver joined her on the bed, with their feet dangling side-by-side, and took her sweaty hand. It stiffened at the wrist.
“Don’t stare at me,” she said.
“I don’t bite, you know.”
She glared.
He blinked rapidly, kiddingly, while running her knuckles over his face. “Y’know,” he said, “’bite’? Rrowr.”
“You need a shave,” she said.
“Wanna shave me?”
In an instant her hand was in her lap, and she was laughing. “Gross.”
Oliver smiled.
When the moment passed, he said, “So what’s up?”
“Nothing’s up.”
“Something’s bothering you.”
“Nope.”
“Sure?”
“Yea.” She touched his face willingly this time, stroking his stubble as though it were cat fur.
The televangelist was waving his arms over an elderly woman, bound to a wheelchair. “Hallelujah!” he cried. Oliver could hear him clearly, despite the mute button.
“We need a new TV,” Jez said.
“We need more money.”
“I’m not asking Daddy for another stipend, Oliver, okay?”
“I wasn’t implying--”
“Yes, you were.”
There she went, telling him what he did and didn’t mean. The best thing to do now was to keep watching the tube and wait for the scene to change. Then maybe they could talk like a couple of people who were willing to feel regret.
Sure enough, the elderly woman leapt up. She twirled like a ballerina cow, orbiting her wheelchair. Hallelujah, Hal-LAY-loo-YAH. Amen. She was cured.
“God is a faithful king,” Jez murmured.
“It appears that way.”
“Oliver? Oliver.”
“Hm?”
“Why aren’t we married yet?”
“I dunno. Because you never asked me?”
“Oh no, buster, that’s your job.”
“Is it? Oh. Okay. Now I know.”
And now the televangelist seemed to be exorcising a demon from an Ethiopian girl. This guy got around.
Jez must not have been paying attention. “So?” she said.
“So let’s talk marriage,” Oliver replied.
“Gosh, how romantic.”
“Do you think we’re ready for it?”
“Never mind.”
“No, really. We should discuss this.”
“No really, never mind.”
Was Oliver supposed to get down on one knee? A couple should talk about matrimony like adults and either agree or disagree. It shouldn’t have been a question that one partner had to ask, that the other partner held the answer to. A guy shouldn’t have to grovel.
The Got Milk? slogan filled the screen.
Jez flipped the volume back up, crossed her arms, and faced him. How was it possible that someone so beautiful could turn so defiantly ugly so fast? Oliver turned the sound down.
“Let’s talk," he said.
She turned it up. This time, she hovered over the knob like this was a game of Slap-Jack.
Oliver gave a start.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jez said.
His finger floated toward the mute.
“Don’t you dare.”
He dared.
In an instant they turned into a couple of scuffling hooligans. Jez grabbed his ears, while he reached around her waist to give her the wedgie of a lifetime. She blocked the maneuver. He head-butted her collarbone. They both shrieked in pain. The room started spinning.
They clashed with the entertainment center. The television toppled off the shelf and exploded in a sonic boom at their feet. Neither willing to release the other, they pranced in the mushroom of smoke and sparks and glass.
The charred soul of the television rose to the ceiling, triggering the fire alarm. Its strident cry saturated the haze, while Oliver and Jez brought each other to their knees, performing wrestling moves that they’d both seen on WWWF but didn’t realize the other had memorized.
“You’re hurting me,” Oliver shouted over the horrible, horrible, painful tweeting.
“You hurt me every day you go to school ‘n’ come home and get ‘A’s and look at me like I’m an idiot that--ow!--to be taken care--ow! We’re even!”
“I love you,” he cried, “that’s how I look at you.”
“Prove it!”
“Marry me!”
“Okay!”
He let go. Jez shoved him onto his back, which sent her off-balance. They lay panting, gazing at the smoky ceiling, their legs entangled. Oliver could taste his stomach. He couldn’t hear a thing but the alarm.
“Are. . .we. . .” He gasped and raised his voice. “Good now?”
“What’s good!”
“Are we good!”
“Yea!”
“Okay then!”
The smoke formed a sinister black hole along the ceiling. It swirled with the noise.
“One of us,” he shouted, “gots to turn that thing off.”
“You’re taller.”
“I think you are.”
“That’s your job.”
“Okay,” Oliver shouted. “Kay. Give me a sec.”
But Jez lifted her leg and dropped it hard on his shin, sending bolts of agony into his waist, and hopped to her feet.
“Jeez, Jez,” he said. “What’s that for?”
Jez stepped onto his stomach. “Oof,” he said, as his bride-to-be stretched toward the ceiling and gently tapped the fire alarm with a fingernail. The faceplate dropped. It and the battery landed by Oliver’s head. The steady tweeting shortened to a peep, then to nothing, but nevertheless had stamped itself on Oliver’s eardrums.
Jez stepped off, collapsing to her calf and thigh. She laid an ear on Oliver’s beating stomach.
“Ho,” she said. “That was. . .”
“Unpleasant.”
“Yea,” she said, “unpleasant. I’ll marry you, Aquarius. Thanks, thanks for asking.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Sweetie, can we,” she said, her ear throbbing against his skin, “move into a bigger place?”
“Can we afford it?”
“I’ll ask Daddy. More money.”
“Okay. Good idea. You don’t have to.”
“We’ll call it something. ‘A wedding gift.’”
“Okay.”
Jez climbed onto Oliver’s chest to give him a moist peck on the cheek. She wiped her forehead on his shirt. She said, “Why do you love me?”
“Why?”
“Why.”
“Have to get back to you on that.”
“Okay. Okay.”
MATURE CONTENT--BE WARNED
Sunny Star Apartment Complex, San Diego
December 9, 2003. 10:40 P.M.
The afterglow of passionate sex carried him over the threshold of awake-but-asleep. He could still feel Jez squeezing his left hand, with their wedding rings locked, digging into the sensitive parts of his fingers.
“Oliver?”
“Hum?”
“Oliver?”
He tasted very old merlot. “I said, ‘what?’”
“Why do you love me?” she said.
“Whum?”
“Wake up.”
“I’m awake.”
Always, always she waited until he couldn’t think straight to have these little conversations. He couldn’t just pretend not to have heard. He’d have to answer.
“The usual reasons,” he said.
“List them.”
Oliver’s eyelids were glued together. Something told him that no matter what the response, he wouldn’t be getting a wink of sleep tonight. In excruciation, he sat up against the headboard. Jez brought him a pillow and nestled into his shoulder. She reached into his pajama top and made a game of his chest hairs. Oliver didn’t have many, but she always found one or two worthy specimens.
“Let’s see,” he said, trying to think of anything that would please her, or anything at all other than how nice slumbering would feel. “You’re passionate.”
“M-hm. Go on.”
“Give me a minute.”
“You have to think about it?”
“I’m tired.”
“Then wake up. This is serious.”
“I am awake. Just need a sec.”
“It doesn’t count if you get to think about it.”
“Okay, um. . .”
“Second’s over.”
“You’re nurturing,” he said. “You’re a very nurturing person.”
“Good, what else?”
“Loyal.”
“I’m loyal?”
“You’re tremendously loyal.”
“And?”
“And that’s about it.”
“And? Come on.”
Oliver gazed down on her mussed crown. “And you’re a little jealous sometimes.”
“That’s what you love about me? How romantic of you.”
This was an attack, plain and simple. But he didn’t dare say that. “It makes me feel special. Like you really want to be with me. You don’t want to share.”
Her finger had stopped twirling his hairs into curlicues. She was now patting a nipple.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m jealous.”
“So we’re good now?”
“I accept those traits.”
Maybe Oliver would get some sleep tonight, after all. Doctor Brown’s team was assembling their notes on VB12, and Oliver had been asked to participate in the morning meeting. He still couldn’t believe his luck, the honor, the opportunity. Just a little more school, just a little more hoop-jumping, and he’d establish himself.
“I’m thinking ‘Sedna,’” he murmured.
Jez began drawing circles around his sternum. “I’m ‘shed-nah’?”
Oops. He’d been thinking aloud. “Sedna’s not a trait, it’s a planet. Or ‘planetoid.’ We’re not certain yet.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Not the ‘world,’ the ‘solar system.’ 2003 VB12. What I’ve been telling you about for weeks?”
“Oh,” she said. “Astronomy stuff.”
“Yea. Astronomy stuff. Thanks for noticing.”
“I noticed,” Jez said. “TT12.”
An evil grin consumed her face. She pulled the covers over a shoulder and climbed onto his body. His pajama bottom disappeared, and next they were making love for the second time in months.
“I want a future,” she said. “A baby.”
He scooted his clutches up her back and pulled, but she resisted.
“We need this, Oliver. Tell me you want a baby, too.”
He should have stopped right there. He knew how crazy the idea was. It was the worst thing they could possibly do to themselves. And to a tiny little baby. He didn’t care. It had too quickly become too easy to pretend he was too tired to think at all straight. He needed to make her please him. She owed him months’ worth of orgasms.
“Give it to me,” she said, speeding along. “I love you, Oliver. I love you.”
“Me, too,” he said, thrusting aggressively.
“I will be loyal to you. Passionate. Nurture.”
“Jeal-ous,” he said.
Oliver started throbbing. Jez began moving differently, squeezing and lifting herself onto her knees, then down, then up. Oliver arched his back, toward release.
“My queen,” he said.
“What?” she said laughingly, uncertainly.
“My Queen of Cups.”
Jez slowed. “What did you say? What? What?”
“Don’t stop.”
“You said, ‘Queen of Cups.’
“Oh, God. I’m almost there.”
She certainly wasn’t laughing now. “Let go of me!”
“What?”
“Let go of me, sicko, I’m not your mother.”
Stop? What? Now? He put an arm lock around her waist and pulled her down. She struggled; she slapped his chest; “No,” she cried, but he wasn’t hearing her.
Until he finally heard her.
She’d just said ‘no,’ the thing rape trials were made of.
Oh, God.
“Get off me!” he said. He threw his arms at his sides, praying she’d eject in time. She did not. She dug her nails in and dropped her head, didn’t even bother. Oliver was already giving her what she’d asked for.
“Fuck,” she muttered, “fuck, fuck, fuck.” She bent forward, her hair tickling his stomach. “You fucking sick fuck.”
There was no going back.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Sunny Star Apartment Complex, San Diego
February 1, 2004. 11:57 P.M.
Oliver and a glass of milk were waiting at the kitchen table when Jez stole through the door carrying a handful of colorful pamphlets. Surprise in her expression, deceit in her welcoming smile, she kissed Oliver passionately but briefly, then glided into the living room, where he couldn’t see her with his back turned. Her pamphlets slapped a hard surface. It sounded like they slid and hit the floor. Jez began humming softly.
“Hello,” Oliver said. “Where you been?”
After a short while he sensed her, poking into the kitchen, but he refused to glance back.
“I’m going to play some music, sweetie,” she said, “okay? I’m going to close this door.”
Shania Twain, no doubt.
“Please do,” Oliver said.
Mrs. Jeslyn Bell had neglected to answer the question. She wasn’t bringing home textbooks anymore, so what else could he think but that she’d dropped the final shoe and stopped going to her night classes? But where, then, had she been spending her time? “Their” time together.
Oliver tugged his makeshift coaster out from under the glass of milk. An opaque ring of condensation circled the words “Oceana Village, Los Angeles.” Below it was the slogan, “Come chill with us for an eternity!” One of Jez’s weird pamphlets. She’d collected a million of ‘em.
Seemed she still wanted to move away. Was she even going to talk to him about this? Or was she going to leave him, and take their unborn child along for the ride? It hadn’t gotten that bad, had it?
Only one way to find out: put it to the test.
The living room was burgeoning with muffled music, stuff that Jez didn’t normally listen to. Kind of a Latin beat, a far cry from Shania Twain. Oliver got out of his chair and opened the kitchen door. The burst of salsa piano took him aback.
Jez stood rigidly in the middle of the room with her eyes closed. She was engaging in a strange kind of semaphore, meticulously enacted gestures, similar to the nonsense she used to bring home as assignments during her brief stint as a drama major. Her slow movements didn’t blend with the Latin beat, however, which roared like a tornado, localized in their living room.
Oliver adjusted the stereo to a respectable volume. Jez seemed to be in a trance, oblivious. One arm raised, she pointed at the ceiling. Her finger traced an imaginary line down to her heart, whereupon both hands came together piously. She was gibbering to herself.
“Jeslyn,” Oliver said. “Jez. Jez.”
Her lashes parted over blackish pools. “Hm?”
“You okay?”
She snapped up, lucid, brown eyes wide open. “Yea, yea. Was my music too loud for you?”
“We’ll have to ask the neighbors in the morning.”
“Oops,” she said, gleefully embarrassed. “I guess it is kind of late, huh?”
“Kinda.”
Oliver decided to turn this into a positive experience. He placed his hand on her rounded belly. Jez got shy real fast.
“You used to like to look at me,” Oliver said.
“I still do.”
“Yea?”
“Yea.”
She mustered a smile. They kissed. Oliver tilted her back while surreptitiously eyeing the coffee table and the stack of pamphlets she’d brought home. The top one read, “S.O.S.”
When they pulled out of the kiss, Jez’s eyes sparkled. It felt good that he still had that affect on her. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for them, after all.
“Oliver,” she said, very excited, “I’ve got to tell you about this great guy.”
“Uh. . .”
“His name is Juan, and he’s been all around the world studying the major religions, and he’s willing to teach me the mystic arts of the immortal ages.”
Sounded pretty wacky to Oliver. “All over the world, huh? Where’s this guy been?”
“Well, ah, well I don’t know, exactly, but everywhere. He’s been just about every place there is to go.”
Did that include her body? Oliver wasn’t prepared to ask. He said, “Are you sure it’s such a good idea, I mean, learning too much mystic art of the immortal ages with our baby still gestating? What if it comes out two-headed? Or just the opposite, with sirenomelia? You really should read the Surgeon General’s warning before you start messing around with the mystical arts of the immortal ages.”
“Stop being such a goof.”
“That’s me: Goofy. Pluto. Mick--”
“And get this, Juan says we can buy a house in the cutest little neighborhood in L.A.”
“Neat. Right next to Goofy. And Pluto. And Mickey.”
“You’re funny,” she said happily. She rushed to the coffee table and began rummaging through the heap of pamphlets. “Damn. It’s not here. But anyway--” She rushed back to Oliver, employing her hands as visual aids. “It’s called Oceana Village, and Juan’s students can buy in real cheap. It’s a total steal, once in a lifetime. Oh please say we can talk it over.”
“Oh, now you want to talk?” Oliver said. “And what’s this, you’re Juan’s student?”
“I told you I was taking night classes.”
“I guess I thought that meant from the university.”
“You know I dropped out.”
“I do?”
“I’m sure I told you,” she said. “Well, anyway, so I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we took a drive up to LA tomorrow and checked the place out?”
“Tomorrow’s a weekday. I have work at the observatory. And school.”
“Pah on that, Oliver,” she said, “We can’t raise a baby here. What about our plans of moving to a nice, white neighborhood?”
“Your plans,” Oliver said. “And I hate to break it to you, but you’re not white.”
“You know what I mean. ‘White.’ ‘Pure.’ ‘Decent.’ ‘Snow.’ We talked about this.”
“I remember,” Oliver said, moving to the couch. He scanned the pamphlets on the coffee table without comprehending a single one. “And I told you that I can’t simply pull up my roots and go running off to buy a house until I’ve completed my studies.”
“You can finish school anytime, sweetie. I’m talking about buying a $20,000 house. Twenty. . .THOUSAND.”
“$20,000?” Oliver heard right, but “$20,000?” he asked again. “That’s not a home, Jez. That’s an economy car. Or a broken down cabin on a swamp.”
“Ooo, you’re going to love this. It’s a mansion. Well, it’s big. It’s not small. I haven’t actually see it, but I’ll ask Juan for another brochure tomorrow and I’ll show you.”
She invited herself into Oliver’s lap. “Don’t you want Tootega to grow up in a safe neighborhood with other children to play with?”
Tootega? This conversation was totally out there, like beyond Pluto.
“Who?” Oliver said.
“‘Naja’ if it’s a girl.”
“Naja. Our baby.”
“Or ‘Tootega.’”
“If it’s a boy, right, I get it,” Oliver said, feeling just a little queasy. “Hoo-boy.”
Oliver helped Jez by the waist off of his knee, onto the couch. He had to say something before she completely excluded him from this Hallmark moment.
“It’s just that, I was thinking maybe ‘Joseph’ or ‘Olivia.’ Or ‘Bobby,’ after your father.”
Jez shyly acquiesced. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? We can talk about names later. I guess I’m just excited. Juan did a compound divination for me tonight, using--get this--both tarot and astrology. Oh, and he’s good, too, trust me. Gooood.”
Oliver wondered if Jez would bother to notice that he wasn’t remotely okay with any of this.
Apparently not:
She said, “Juan divined that I am going to be moving away very soon.”
“Uh, by yourself?”
“No, both of us.”
“You and Juan.”
“No, goofball. Well, Juan might come along, but the King of Wands didn’t turn up in the spread. He’s the King of Wands. It’s his signifier.”
“So it’s you and me, then.”
“Or maybe he meant me and the baby, but I’m sure he meant all three of us.”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway,” she said in recovery, “what do you think? Isn’t this thrilling?”
“It sounds like a ride, all right.”
“I told you divination is scientific. It’s how you and I got together, if you recall. Remember I told you I’d done a reading that showed you in my future? And you were mentioned in my horoscope the day we met. I never told you that part, but you were.”
“The funny thing is, uh, Jez, if Doctor Brown’s discovery turns out to be a planet, your astrology might not amount to a whole lot.”
“What do you mean?”
Thank God. That brought her down.
Oliver sighed. “Your system of divination that’s been around for well over four thousand years has never taken into account the existence of Sedna.”
“That’s because they couldn’t see it back then. They didn’t have telescopes.”
“So since they couldn’t see it, it didn’t count in the grand scheme of things? I wonder what ancient astrologers would say about the theory that Pluto might have once been a moon belonging to Neptune? How would their pseudoscience have functioned with only eight planets in the mix?”
“You’re just a skeptic. Juan warned me about people like you.”
“I’m a scientist,” Oliver said, holding fast to his dignity. “I’m willing to revise my knowledge as new evidence becomes available. But is your Juan willing to make all new natal charts to include Sedna?”
“You never took me seriously.”
And that was that. Jez patted her knees and stood. She walked over to the stereo and reached for the volume, another vain attempt at drowning out perfectly good reason. Her hand hovered, though, never making contact. A second later, she was crying.
Damn it: Oliver melted. “O-Oh-h-h,” he said. “No, sweetie, don’t.” If he could only take it back. You’re supposed to love your wife, not push her off-balance from the moral high ground. Oliver left the couch to comfort her; she brushed him off. Helplessly, he positioned himself behind her like an outsider and began rubbing her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not. You love this. Congratulations! You got another ‘A.’”
“I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to protect you, open your eyes a little.”
“I finally. . .I finally found something I like, Oliver.”
She shuddered in his grip. The tears fell. Oliver had to fight off a shudder of his own.
“Listen, forget all that stuff,” he said. “Sedna may not even be a planet.”
“Nice try,” she said.
“No, really. It all depends on how we define planet.”
Jez screamed at the floor. “You can’t humor me by redefining what ‘planet’ means! I’m not stupid, I know what a planet is.”
“Honest,” he said. “There are actually several ways to describe a planet, and no one ever seems to agree on which is best. Do we go historical, or do we consider gravitational rounding, or do we look at single objects versus populations?”
Jez wasn’t getting it.
“For instance,” he said, “if we decide that Sedna is a solitary individual, it’s best described as a planet. But if we consider that it’s a member of a population, like an asteroid belt, it’s not. Then it’s just a planetoid.”
Jez noisily wiped her nose and turned toward Oliver. Her face was a big wet mess.
“And which is this highly questionable Sedna of yours, Mr. Astrophysicist?”
“I-I guess it’s likely that Sedna is a member of the Oort Cloud. That would make it part of a population. Not a planet at all. Heck no. It’s probably just a planetoid.”
Jez nodded. She wiped her bubbling nose. “I just wanted us to be happy,” she said. “I wanted us to work out.”
“Me too. I’m sorry about all that Sedna stuff. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on. You just go with the flow, be happy.” He gave a chuckle. “You go, girl.”
“I’m going.”
“See?” Oliver said. “It’s all good.”
“I said, ‘I’m going.’”
Oliver paused. “And I said, ‘You go, girl.’”
“And I said that I just wanted us to work out.”
Something wasn’t jiving here. “‘Me too,’ I said.”
“But,” Jez said, staring at him with loving sadness, “but we’re not, are we?”
“Not working? We are, we’re working.”
“In my heart of hearts, I wish that were true.”
“We’re working, we just need to talk more. We don’t talk enough. Let’s talk.”
“I don’t need talk. I need warmth. I need respect. I need to be part of a population, Oliver.”
“I respect you. What? I’m your population, right? All three of us are. We’re a population of three, you, me, little Tootega.”
Oliver couldn’t believe this was happening. It wasn’t happening, was it? No, it couldn’t be. This was not happening.
Jez’s hands came together under her chin, and she stared off into the back of her mind, her head shaking. “You’re a planet, Oliver,” she said. “That’s all you’ve ever been.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Bob’s Bar, Los Angeles
March 19, 2004. 11:40 P.M.
The future had finally become the now.
Tarot readers should have called that card the Hangover Man. The artist could have painted some schmuck, sitting at a bar, the elbow patches of his coat soaking up sticky shots of Jagermeister, his suitcases packed and waiting at the foot of the stool.
“You drivin’?” someone said.
“I arrived by bus,” Oliver replied. “She took the car.”
The husky voice got loud beside him. "Ex-wife?”
“I guess you could call her that.”
It was a woman, scantily dressed, which was a heck of a crime, considering. She crossed her white, wrinkly legs and, as she leaned in, her knee brushed Oliver’s side.
“I’ve got a car,” she said. “It belonged to my ex, too. Foul fucker. Screwed his lukie protégé. Who’d you fuck to lose your car, darlin’?”
“Myself.”
The woman raised a flabby arm and gestured for the bartender to bring her a shot of what Oliver was having. Her many rings and bracelets reflected the lamp behind the bar. She brought her hand down, dragging red tracers to her purse. She rummaged inside for a pack of cigarettes.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Today’s her birthday,” Oliver said.
“Ran out on you, huh?”
“Here.” He handed the woman Jez’s Oceana Village pamphlet. “She’s there. She’s got to be.”
The woman lit her cigarette and puffed while opening the flap with a long, red fingernail. She blew smoke into the middle of the pamphlet.
“Looks like a goddamn commune,” she said. “I used to work for a cleaning service that hired me out to places like this. Freaks, all of them.”
“Ever meet a guy named Juan?”
“Ah shit, darlin’, they’re all named Juan. Or Rafael. Or Xanthus. Or Dr. Peace. They all think they’re The One.” The woman offered Oliver a smoke; he shook his head. “Good luck if your girlfriend is with these crazies. There’s no address on this thing.”
Oliver had called Information the instant he stepped off the bus. He’d scoured the Internet at the corner Kinko’s, next. He was out of ideas.
The bartender cleared Oliver’s shot glasses. “Last call,” he said.
“Last call? Is it that late?”
“It is for you, pal.”
Oliver flashed the weasely little man his palm and said, “I’m good.”
“One more,” the woman said, sliding her empty shot glass toward the bartender. To Oliver: “What’s your plan? You got no address for this dump.”
“Maybe I’ll visit Jez’s father,” he said. “Wait around until we hear word from her.”
“Where’s her old man live?”
“Philly.”
“That explains the suitcases. Sure you don’t want a ride?”
“To Philly?” Oliver thought about the insanity of the offer. “Uh, you were going to Philly?”
“For you, I would.”
Oliver tried not to imagine a cooped-up, cross-country trip with a malnourished skank and her chain-smoking disease. The drive would take days. There would be more pointless conversation. And motel rooms.
“No thanks,” he said. He reached inside his coat and pulled out the Greyhound ticket envelope. He began fanning the woman’s smoke out of his face.
“Look at me,” she said.
He looked, really for the first time since she sat down. Her eyes spiraled like whirlpools, and a faint aura of steam hugged her exceptionally pale skin. The light playing tricks.
She said, “Do you want eternal life, darlin'?”
Good lord. Oliver looked around the dusky room. Had he stumbled into a Goth bar or what?
“Look at me,” she said. “Answer the question.”
“Are you a vampire?” he asked, trying to sound respectful.
“I’m not a vampire.”
“A cop. You a cop? I don’t buy or take drugs.”
The woman’s tone dropped. “I can make you cold, so cold that your bitter heart will seem warm by comparison. We of the Order can keep your love for your wife alive, immortally. You must only pay the piper.”
Stinking cop. Her street slang did not sound convincing. Oliver threw down a calculated tip of three dollars and twenty-seven cents, then collected his bags.
“If you truly want to serve and protect the public,” he said, “I suggest you stop picking on guys who have already hanged themselves. Start closing down places like that.”
He left the nark alone with Jez’s entirely convincing, uninformative Oceana Village pamphlet.
“Until we meet again,” the woman called after him.
Sure, yea. When Hell froze.
The Story of Oliver Bell
New York
March 19, 2004 to present.
It was the usual story: Dropout seeks pregnant wife in Los Angeles, which is no simpler than counting angels on the head of a pin. Dropout moves to Philly for quite a few months, where he works as a librarian. No sign of Wifey. Then home to the East Coast, where he falls into a two-year depression that Mom and Dad stop tolerating after one.
Eventually Dropout drops out of society. He wanders the cold streets of New York until, naturally, supernatural beings recruit him into their illuminati of evil, and the story continues. They call themselves the Order of the Cold. Initiate has heard of the Order. Turns out the bar skank wasn’t a cop, after all. She really was cold.
It’s the usual story. Every ending is a new beginning.
“Oliver Bell,” the coldling said. His ancient voice echoed all around. “Step forward.”
The inside of the Underdome reminded Oliver of Palomar, but much bigger, with a continuous row of seats lining the outer rim, populated by dozens of pallid immortals. They all believed that Oliver wished to become coldling, like themselves. But Oliver saw no need. Immortality could not make his heart any more frigid than humanity already had. Still, there was a necessary evil to be performed.
Wearing the red robes of the lukie, Oliver walked into the center of the dome, where stood his white-robed master.
“You have served us, Water Bearer,” Master said. Been enslaved, more like it. “Done everything asked of you.” Jumped through every hoop. “Proven yourself.” Passed every test. “You have graduated.”
Graduated. Finally.
Oliver nodded with respect. “But I am not to be made cold, am I?” he said, all too well understanding their bureaucracy, after catering to these beings for so long. Some coldlings were errant bastards. These ones, however, were carrying the weight of tradition on their shoulders.
Master nodded, meaning no. “Not as of yet,” he said. “Your mortal occupation has been secured near the Village. You know what you must do. Declare yourself.”
Oliver pointed high up at the center of the Underdome, just as he’d been taught. To his chest, he brought down an imaginary beam of starlight, which he pretended to capture inside cupped hands. He lowered his head in prayer.
“I am hereby charged with the honorable duty of infiltrating the Servants of Sedna. Once accepted by the pagans, I will meet with Juan Nemo.”
“And he will make you cold,” Master said.
“And he will make me cold. And I will send word of Juan’s location.”
“And we will come to collect him.”
“And you will take him,” Oliver agreed. He very much agreed.
“And then,” Master said, “finally, you will have won back your bride.”
“And Jeslyn will return to me.”
“Along with,” Master said, “your lovely daughter.”
Oliver made his hands into pious, trembling fists, crushing the imaginary light.
“My. . .daughter?”
Master addressed the Assembly of the Cold. “His daughter!”
The immortals reacted by chanting, “Naja. . .Naja. . .Naja. . .”
Oliver shivered in his bones. They’d been withholding information. The birth had taken place. It was a girl. They knew her name.
“Naja. . .Naja. . .Naja. . .”
Tears splashed off of Oliver’s fists. His daughter, his daughter!
“Naja. . .Naja. . .Naja. . .”
She sounded like a fairytale.
The Story of Oliver Bell
June 1, 2007
“Mr?”
Oliver perceived the word, the nervous voice, and braced himself against a firm nudging, but decided that he must still have been dreaming.
“Mr. Bell.”
Those words sounded a little more abrasive than a dream: echoing, close. A bony hand dug into his shoulder and gave a quick jostle. Oliver smelled anchovy on the guy’s breath.
“Mr. Oliver Bell,” the guy said. His high, quavering voice was now impossible to ignore. Oliver’s eyes weren’t quite open, but he was absorbing real world information. He tried to sit still and silent so he could get the dreaming back.
“Sir.”
His eyelids peeled open to the dark hallway. It had been a long time since anyone called him Sir. Come to think of it, no one had ever called him Sir. Who was this guy, calling him Sir?
“Good to see you’re awake,” the guy said. His white lab coat reflected the light at the end of the hallway. “You are awake, aren’t you, sir? Sir?”
Oliver had crossed into L.A. after nightfall and come straight here. He found the inside of the place deserted, the office he’d been promised locked. Not wanting to drive around looking for a hotel, and as weary as he felt, he decided just to camp out till morning. He’d wake up in time to meet Mr. Delaney before the man had a chance to step off the elevator.
Oliver had pulled the folding chair out of a storage closet and set it up outside his office, where he sat. And sat. And sat. And sat. And, man, he had the most fascinating dream. He was floating up near the darkened florescent lamps—one of them flickering—and he looked down upon his own sleeping body, as a janitor mopped around the chair. Hovering, he watched himself with a kind of sadness. Because in his mind’s eye, he was still 18, a high school graduate all excited about intergalactic space, and just itching to enroll in college. Since, his face had shrunk under the dark circles and widening pores of a nigh thirty-year-old. No longer the inquisitive kid. No longer the happy groom. No longer everyone’s favorite intern. But in this dream he'd been overwhelmed by feelings of ticklish urgency, too, as though his stomach were a metal detector and Griffith Observatory were a treasure box of destiny.
“Maybe I’ll come back later,” the guy said. “You look like you need a minute.”
“No, wait,” Oliver said, groaning into the upright position. “I’m getting up. Oof, never sleep on a folding chair."
Oliver creaked forward and shook the guy’s clammy hand. He was just a kid, maybe nineteen. Must have been a member of the staff. He said his name was Clarence.
And he was not alone. Now there were a total of four young scientists in coats, curious about Oliver. One of them switched the fluorescents on. The hallway flickered and came to light. Oliver’s eyes adjusted to three guys and one girl, three of them blinking with childish awe.
They rushed Oliver and began helping him stand up straight, brush the wrinkles out of his pants, put the folding chair back in the closet. It was a confused mess of social paralysis. Oliver was overwhelmed.
Clarence pointed to the female scientist with the tight black hair in three pigtails. “That’s Bambi,” he said, next pointing to the guy standing beside her. “The guy with the zit problem is Robert.” Next, to the third guy, the one who wasn’t especially tall: “And that’s Blane.” Blane seemed kind of reserved, kind of normal.
Oliver shook Blane’s hand first. It was soft and warm. It had been a long time since Oliver had shaken a warm hand. Solid grip. Just the right amount of shake.
Bambi didn’t know how to shake hands. Oliver put out his right, she put out her left; he put out his left, she put out her right; Oliver tried to trick her by pretending to put out his right, then switch left, but Bambi got the same idea and thwarted their success. In the end they found a solution. They brought all four lefts and rights together into a ball and shook as a team, like two lunatics who’d managed to capture a wasp in their cupped hands.
Robert was no better. He was one of those people who couldn’t simply shake. He performed finger gestures, gave ya’ high fives and low fives on the rebound, slapped fishy tails, both reverse and obverse, punched knuckles, hooked thumbs, drug sweaty fingers across damp palms, and snapped a finger and thumb. It would always be a competition with Robert.
Oliver returned to Clarence. “So, where is everyone this morning?” he said.
Clarence sniggered, adjusting his bright red glasses. “No one here but us eggheads, Rufus, and Ol’ Blue.”
Rufus might have been the janitor from Oliver’s dream. And Ol’ Blue was the 69-year-old security officer who’d been guarding the entrance when Oliver arrived. After only one minute with the guy, Oliver had determined three things: Ol’ Blue was 1) blind, 2) deaf, 3) too comfortable in his work.
“Yes, I wanted to ask about him,” Oliver said. “Blue’s not, uh, he’s not competent, is he?”
“Ol’ Blue’s got a sixth sense about who the White Hats and the Black Hats are,” Clarence said. “He must have thought you were a White Hat, that explains how you got in the building.”
“He’s a piece of furniture,” Robert said. “I’ll bet you twenty-thousand cubits he fell asleep while frisking Mr. Bell down.”
“Be nice,” Bambi said.
Blane did not speak.
“So,” Oliver said, clapping his hands together, “what time is it? Will Dr. Delaney be coming in anytime soon?”
“Delaney?” Robert said. “They didn’t tell you about Delaney before you took the job?
“N-No,” Oliver said.
“They didn’t tell you that every doctor, intern, and secretary were found murdered by a poltergeist?”
“Uh. . .whuht?” Oliver had months ago empirically verified the existence of coldlings, vampires, werewolves, and demons, but ghosts? Oliver had yet to see evidence supporting such an entity.
“You’re stunned, aren’t you, Mr. Bell?” Clarence said. “Believe you me, so were we, sir. We walked into work the morning after the annual staff party and found a massacre.”
“We weren’t invited to the party,” Robert said.
“Aw, and neither were Rufus and Blue,” Bambi said. “It was so sad.”
Blane murmured, “Fortunate.”
“This place was a bloody mess,” Clarance said. He licked his braces. “We found nothing but blood and bones. No flesh. No brains. No muscle tissue or organs. Blood. And bones. Except they found Mr. Delaney’s head. Someone had tried to cram it into the telescope.” He bent over cackling. “Isn’t that wild?”
“Are you telling me,” Oliver said, “that you four are the only ones manning this ship?”
“Manning it? There’s no one running this place. Sir, we’ve been hiding down in the lab like we always do. It’s been great, too. No bosses. No ludicrous deadlines. We can smoke pot at our computers.”
“If we wanted to,” Robert said, sternly.
“Not that we would,” Bambi said.
“Because we don’t,” Clarence said. “But once a week we unlock your office to collect our paychecks. As long as we’re all still getting paid, we keep working.”
Oliver gestured for everyone to slow down, saying, “So. . .uh. . .who delivers your paychecks again?”
Clarence smiled. Bambi and Robert tittered. Blane nodded.
“The Leprechaun,” Clarence said.
“Leprechaun?” Oliver asked.
The Leprechaun.
* * *
The Leprechaun took up half of the west wall of Oliver’s new office. It was the only object in the room not covered in dust. It looked like a soda machine but with dancing colored lights and a printer tray. There was one sheet already in the tray.
Oliver picked it up. Holding the paper lengthwise, he saw that it was two paychecks. One of them had been made out to “Oliver Bell.” Oliver separated the checks at the perforation line and handed the other to Bambi. Her face lit up.
“I forgot to get my paycheck last Friday,” she said. “I’m such a flibbertigibbet.”
“This machine automatically cuts everyone a check?” Oliver asked.
“Every Friday,” Clarence said. “We’ve been having to take care of the bills, though. Rufus has been collecting the mail for us out of the mail drop, but they’re starting to look scary, white envelopes with no return addresses. Now that you’re here to take over, we were hoping you could start handling all that icky stuff for us. We're astronomers, not accountants."
“Oh, Clarence," Robert said, "I forgot to tell you. I paid the cable. And I fully expect to be reimbursed by Mr. Bell here. Gotta get my daily dose of Stargate.”
Oliver sort of faded out as the four of them became excited about an upcoming episode of Stargate: Stone Age. What was Oliver going to do with this mess? Everyone dead but a handful of proles? Was he supposed to clean the place up himself? Pick up all the pieces? Straighten the shelves? Repaint the walls? Mold the observatory in his image? Be his own boss and wait for the paychecks to spit out of the Leprechaun?
The corner of Oliver’s mouth twitched. He resisted. He couldn’t let the scientists see him smile.
“I need a moment alone,” he said.
“Oh sure,” Clarence said. “You need some time to acclimate to your new office, huh, Mr. Bell?”
Oliver smiled his yes. “By the way, you can just call me Oliver.”
Clarence’s, Bambi’s, and Robert’s eyes grew large. Blane’s eyes grew sleepy.
“Whoa,” Clarence said, shooting funny looks to his comrades. “Mr. Delaney always made us call him ‘Director.’ I don’t think he liked us using his real name.”
“He thought that names held power,” said Robert, shaking his head. “Delaney thought we’d gain dominance over him if we spoke his actual name.”
“Anyway,” Clarence said, “we’ll be getting back to the lab. . .which is just over the parking garage. Which brings us to another little problem we were hoping you could take care of for us, Oliver. When you find the time."
“I’m afraid to ask,” Oliver said. “What’s the problem?”
“Just the matter of a murderous poltergeist.”
“You believe that the murderer is still here in the observatory?”
“Believe? We know. We can’t get any work done with all the noise it makes down there in the garage.”
“Well have you gone down and looked?”
Clarence, Bambi, and Robert exchanged distressed glances.
“We’re hesitant,” Blane said. “We saw what it did to the others.”
Oliver didn’t like this one bit. “Why have you stayed here with an obvious threat lurking in the observatory?”
“Oh, it doesn’t ever leave the garage,” Clarence said. “Not since the massacre. Besides, free rent is good rent. We live here. And have you seen the Leprechaun?”
“Very well,” Oliver said. He ushered everyone to the door. “I-I’ll check it out. Don’t be afraid. I’m sure it’s just a raccoon.”
Boom! The observatory shook. Oliver ducked low. The others stood casually, however, glancing around at the rattled walls.
“What was that?” Oliver said.
“Your raccoon,” Blane said.
Bambi became excited. “ I hope that didn’t knock down any of our beakers.”
“Not the beakers!” Robert cried. “Come on, gang! To the lab.”
Clarence said, “Nice to meet you, Sir Oliver,” shaking hands frantically. “We’ll be down in the lab if you need us.” Bambi quickly shook good-bye with both hands, and Robert shortened his routine to just a fishy slap ‘n’ snap. They scattered through the hallway, down toward the elevators.
Blane paused with his hands in his lab coat. “And please be quick about taking care of that raccoon, Oliver,” he said. “It’s in violation of the health code.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Rufus was brown-skinned and white-haired. He hadn’t aged a day since the picture in his employee file was taken back in ‘92. He still looked sixty.
“Good morning, Rufus,” Oliver said, reaching over the man and pressing the call button.
“Mornin’, Oliver.”
Kneeling, Rufus continued polishing the trim around the elevator. He must not have been the type to let never having met Oliver stand in his way of treating him like an old broom. Truthfully, this was just what Oliver needed right now: a sense of forced familiarity.
“How are the wife and two kids?”
“Moved away,” Rufus said. "Especially the wife. Goin’ up or down?”
“Down.”
“Thought you’d be wanting to inspect the observatory. Got that telescope fixed up real nice for you. No more brains or nothin’. The blood was a bit of a to-do, but around here we’re used to blood.”
“Thank you, Rufus. More interested in the garage, this morning.”
Rufus wet his rag with the spray bottle. “There’s a ghost down there.”
“Could very well be,” Oliver said. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Okay. Long as you know. Good luck, Sir Oliver."
The doors slid open. Oliver stepped inside the elevator, punched “G,” and waved to Rufus. Rufus gave him a casual salute without interrupting his polishing.
“Just remember,” he said, “if you wanna see ghosts, you gotta stay unfocused.”
“That is exactly the opposite of what I intend—”
The doors closed, cutting Oliver off, leaving him disturbed. He didn’t like unfinished statements, unfinished business of any kind. He still hadn’t gotten over Palomar. Maybe here at Griffith he would get another chance. After he got his family back, he could still make a name for himself in astronomer circles. It was never too late to win a Pulitzer.
The elevator moved quickly, tickling his stomach, as if “down” had been programmed to go faster than “up.” Or perhaps the elevator was as old as Rufus and didn’t function quite like it used to. That seemed horribly dangerous, all of a sudden. But soon enough the elevator slowed—more like slumped—and touched down.
The doors opened to a long and wide, shadowy, cold space. The garage echoed with the final clanks of the car. Oliver paused a moment, listening to the creaks and gongs traveling their way up the elevator shaft. The cables did not sound safe at all. He’d have to ask Rufus about that. Better yet, he’d have to call in a professional. If Rufus were anything like Ol’ Blue, Oliver would have to consider hiring a whole new staff. Rufus’s job title was Janitor / Maintenance / Groundskeeper, and empirically none of these tasks were being performed to satisfaction.
Oliver’s hard soles filled the garage. He tried tip-toeing from the elevator, but that produced loud, elongated taps, louder than normal steps. He stopped by the first column, marked “Section E.” The far end of the garage was open to white daylight. There were no parked cars, just a slick floor, more columns, and Oliver’s breathing. He swallowed and held his lungs still.
Still no sound. Well, no, there were faraway voices from the park. Children playing. Soft traffic squeaks. A police siren, faint.
Oliver listened for a while longer, then allowed himself to breath and start walking, carefully, while gazing through the dimness.
A trash barrel was overflowing with fast food wrappers and soda cups.
A rat. There was a rat, motionless but watching him pass.
There were the abandoned skins of firecrackers. Skeletons of sparklers. The black, ashy husks of Fourth of July snakes. Even as a kid, Oliver never understood these things. Light them, watch them grow, feel the disappointment of their thirty-second life spans, leave the mess for the August rains to clean up.
He reached the center of the garage. There weren’t many places to hide, unless you were a ghost, invisible, but there were plenty of shadows and columns, a couple of bathrooms, and at least two closets. If anyone had been haunting this place, he, she, or it appeared to have cleared out.
“Hello?” Oliver said, just to say he’d tried “Anyone here?”
Nothing.
Oliver placed his hands on his hips. “If this were a horror movie, you’d wait until I least expect it to show yourself. But since I’m expecting you now, I don’t suppose you’ll bother. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s say we skip the mystery and get on with it. I really don’t want to have to call the police. I'm sure they're sick of this place by now."
Nothing.
“If you’re a murderer, do me a favor and move on down the road. I’m not likely to be scared. You see, I’m a scienti—”
A blue thing rushed out of the darkness.
“Shit!” Oliver said, hopping left and facing it head on and stepping back quickly, as it glided at him from the far wall. It shrieked forward, a glinting thing with its arms raised.
Oliver took another step back but stopped, controlling himself, ready to face it. It crossed a shaft of light, and his heart eased up. It moved jerkily, like a shirt along a clothesline. A clothesline. Oliver looked up, and, sure enough, there was a silver cord running from the bathrooms, over his head, to opposite wall. The “shrieking” of the pully ceased to be scary. It was clearly a "squeaking" now.
The ghost hit a snag in the line. A moment later, unseen hands gave the ghost another tug. It lurched forward but failed to pass the obstruction. It struggled in mid-air. After one final tug, the operator gave up. The ghost dangled for a moment and became as motionless as a terrified rat.
Oliver inspected it. It was kind of cute, a blue sequined gown, a flat of cardboard for the head, and Magic Marker lines fashioning its angry eyes and mouth. How pathetic that a full-grown serial killer couldn’t come up with anything more convincing. So pathetic, it seemed, that Oliver really didn’t believe this to be the work of a professional murderer. But such creativity also seemed a little beyond a mere vagrant, so this wasn’t likely going to turn out to be the stunt of a homeless person. More than a vagrant, less than a killer. What did that spell?
They emerged from a shadow, two columns, and a trashcan, four small figures, lumbering, their arms raised, coming to light. Two of them moaned. One of them said, "Beee-gone." One of them actually said, "Boo."
For the sake of science! These were children.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Christopher claimed to be eleven. He looked much younger. The non-identical twins, Meg and Dan, were ten. Then there was Babe, holding up seven fingers to show her age. Meg helped raise another of Babe’s fingers. She was eight years old.
None of them would reveal how they came to be homeless. They insisted that they’d always lived in the garage. Babe kept referring to their jejune family as Dragonball 8. Christopher corrected her: they were Dragonball 5 now. Oliver, however, thought it would make more sense for them to call themselves Dragonball 4. He didn't say as much, as there were more important matters to discuss.
“You kids need a home,” he said. “A real home.”
“We ain’t going to some bunk orphanage,” Christopher said.
“I’m sorry. I can’t let you stay here.”
“Yes you can, Mr.,” Meg said. “It’s easy. Just let us.”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Just let us.”
In an uncomplicated world, they would have been right. If Oliver were indeed the director of this facility, he could “just” let them. But to allow a ragtag group of children use the parking garage as their base of operations would only breed trouble. These kids could hurt themselves down here. Or blow the place to Kingdom Come.
Oliver got down on one knee. Babe instinctively drew closer. Oliver took both of her tiny, dirty hands into one of his hands.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said.
“Hello.”
“Keep it down low,” Christopher said to the girl. “This punk don’t need to be all up in our business.”
Babe gave Christopher a sour look. She smiled big for Oliver and all but lit up the room. She was the only one of these children who didn’t appear to need a dentist. Yet.
“I have a little girl,” Oliver said. “Her name is Naja.”
“Is she eight?”
“No. No, she must be about. . .about three, I suppose. Yes, three.” Oliver cleared his brain of painful irrelevancies. “Tell me, Babe. Did you feel that big boom a while ago?”
“Yes.”
“Were you kids setting off fireworks?”
“No.”
“What do you think caused that big boom?”
Meg and Dan arrived to smuggle Babe away. They dragged her back into the shadow of “Section B.” Christopher stepped forward.
“It was an earthquake,” Christopher said. “Now why don’t you just bounce? We don’t need adults down here. I can take care of us.”
Oliver decided that it would be tactically sound to stand while dealing with Christopher. He towered over the kid and said, “My name is Mr. Bell. You must understand that I am running this facility now. I can’t let you live down here. It’s irresponsible, it’s wrong, it’s unsanitary. It’s unsafe.”
Christopher faltered. “So?”
“So? So you have to let me help you.”
“Don’t tell him a goddamn thing!” came a voice, reverberating through the hollow garage.
Oliver turned to see another kid: a tall boy. No, a teen. A young man.
“Jack!” Babe said. Her bare feet carried her to the car ramp. Her arms swung open for a gargantuan hug. The young man lifted her into his arms and walked out of the bright daylight filling the entrance. His long, bent legs propelled him forth in great strides, and Oliver found himself shuffling backward. Jack set Babe down along the way. He must have been about fifteen. His neck throbbed as he stood before Oliver and feigned courage. He put his cold, bony fingers on Oliver’s shoulder.
Oliver removed Jack’s hand by the wrist. The act didn’t impress Oliver. It upset him a little, truthfully, because the kid was almost his size, certainly more muscular, pale from malnourishment, but still just a kid. Jack’s throbbing neck indicated that he was more frightened of Oliver than Oliver was of him.
“Are you in charge of these urchins?” Oliver said.
“I told you to bounce, Bill Nye. So bounce.”
“If you mean leave, I can’t do that. You’re the one faced with a choice, Jack. Either I call the police and tell them that I’ve got five orphans on my hands who need a home, or I tell them that I’ve been attacked by five hooligans needing juvenile hall.”
“Punk.”
“Okay. I’m going to let you think about it while I get some work done upstairs. I’ll check back this afternoon. You can either be here, or you can be gone. If you’re here, you might consider letting me help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Oliver turned—right into the hanging blue ghost. It startled him; he yanked it down, smirking at it, smirking at himself for allowing Jack to force him back into the thing in the first place. Oliver discarded the gown and headed for the elevator.
“What do you want?” Jack said.
Oliver turned. “I believe I’ve made myself clear enough.”
“You’re one of the cold.”
Oliver paused. “What do you know about that?”
Jack left his companions. Walking, he said, “I know what it’s like to be rejected. I ate grubs to survive when I couldn’t get to the milk. My teddy bear was a block of ice. I followed The One, begging him to marry me. I got nothin' but no. I got to learn to live in this world with no help but myself. I had to sit under the bridge when the other kids got to search for Easter eggs out in the sun. I ain’t got no mother. I know cold. It’s got a scent, and you smell of it.”
Jack was nose to chin with Oliver. He bent down long enough to sniff Oliver’s side, the upper thigh. His face lit with recognition.
“You’ve been marked, Oliver,” he said. “I smell her on you.”
“Who?”
“Daisy.”
“Horton hears a what?”
Oliver knew the name, he just couldn’t remember from where. Or maybe he was just imagining things. That was probably it.
“I get it, you haven’t been made cold yet,” Jack said. “You don’t got the skills, do you?”
“You’re from the Order.”
“The Order? What’s that?”
“They’ve sent you to check on me.”
“No one sends me no place. I’m the leader of Dragonball 5.”
“But you’re coldling, right? I saw you come out of the sun. How is that possible?”
Jack grinned over yellow teeth. “Life’s all about sacrifice,” he said, turning once completely around. The shirt was unscathed; the nape of his neck and the backs of his arms had been scorched. “Okay, Bill Nye, I’ve told you too much. Now you get to tell me too much. Whadd'ya want?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Everyone wants somethin’. Babe wants a Uranai Baba doll. Meg and Dan wanna stay together no matter what. Christopher wants to run Dragonball 5—when I’m dead.” Christopher shied from that remark. “I wanna keep you from kicking us out. Sooner you tell me what you want, the sooner we can deal.”
“I want to see these kids in new clothes, well-fed, with parents.”
“Then why don’t you buy them new kicks and serve ‘em up some grub. . .Dad?”
“Even you, Jack. I can put you in contact with your people.”
“Fuck this shit and answer the question. You don’t care about us. But you gotta care about somethin’, so cut it and tell me what you want, dawg.”
“You can’t give me what I want.”
"Yo, I told you everything. You can least tell me one thing.”
“I can’t let you live here. My telling you my heart’s desire won’t change anything.”
“Then it won’t hurt to say it.”
“I won’t mean anything to you.”
“Betcha different.”
Oliver was annoyed with himself for bothering, but he said, “I’m looking for a man named Juan Nemo. He’s some cult—”
“Nemo!” Babe said, clapping her hands. “Nemo, Nemo!”
“You’ve heard of him, sweetheart?”
“Nemo, Nemo—”
“Shut up, chicken head,” Jack said. “Let Bill Nye talk.”
“Nemo!”
Jack spit on the cement. “Fuck shorty, she’s just buggin. We took the bitch to Suncoast at the mall, and the squirrel there was playin’ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, like, on those TVs outside. That’s all. Shorty don't know what's up, she's trippin'.”
“Nemo’s the bomb,” Babe said.
Oliver watched her intently before acknowledging Jack. “So you wouldn’t know anything about a place called Oceana Village. My wife is there. And my daughter, Naja.”
“Naja loves Nemo, Nemo loves Daisy, Daisy loves Naja.” Babe had put herself in eight-year-old hysterics. “An' they all live in Oshee Village.”
“Never heard of ‘em,” Jack said.
“Naja! Naja!”
“Are you sure?” Oliver asked Jack, paying close attention to Babe’s enthusiasm.
“Only as sure as you’re going to evict us, Bill Nye.”
Oliver stepped on the blue sequined gown. The angry ghost face stared up at him.
“What if I overlooked your presence for the time being?” he said.
“For how long?”
“I can’t say. For at least as long as it takes me to get the observatory up and running. Then I’ll have to hire a staff. A couple of months, maybe.”
Jack thought about it. His Dragonball companions were nodding urgently. A couple of months to a kid was measured out in dog years.
“On the real?” Jack said.
“Uh. . .sure. ‘On the real.’”
“Oceana Village,” Jack said.
“It’s a sailboat,” Oliver said.
“You wanna find Nemo, right? You need to find Oceana Village. Here it is.”
“Again with the ‘It’s a sailboat.’”
Jack shook his head. “Shit, Daisy marked you and you can’t even see, you’re pathetic. You don’t see it?”
“Do I have to say, ‘Again with “It’s a sailboat”’ again?”
"This is top o' the line, fine-ass computer art. What kind of Bill Nye are you?”
“Apparently just nigh a good one.”
“Unfocus,” Jack said. “You gotta unfocus to see it.”
“Un. . .focus.”
“Shedna, dawg! Didn’t Daisy teach you nothin’ about the Inner World?”
“I don’t know who this Daisy person is. And I’m a scientist. I see what I see. I record it. I write a report. And right now I’m reporting a sailboat.”
“Fuck you,” Jack said, laughing. “You look, you see everything. But when you unfocus, you see everything else. Go ahead, unfocus on this bad boy.”
Jack yanked the picture from Meg and Dan and shoved it in Oliver’s face. “Step back,” he said. “Look at it. Let your eyes go lazy. Read between the lines.”
Oliver stepped back. He consciously pressured his eyes to go “lazy,” though he didn’t quite know what that meant.
“I see a sailboat,” he said.
“A sailboat?” Jack peeked around the frame to study the picture. He glared at Oliver. “Try again.”
But Oliver couldn’t see anything other than a sailboat. He took the picture into his possession, still staring, still trying to unfocus. He saw a sailboat. He said, “I’ll get back to you on this,” turned toward the elevator, and let his eyes go lazy to the best of his conscious ability. He saw a sailboat. Jack was messing with him, he was sure. But he gave it a serious try, and he saw a sailboat on the slow ride back to his office. He saw a sailboat after half an hour of sitting at his desk. Later, he showed the picture to Rufus, and Rufus saw a sailboat. Later still, Oliver saw a sailboat while sitting on the toilet. He saw a sailboat while buying dinner downstairs at the snack machine. He saw a sailboat while back in his office, his eyes growing sleepy. Once, briefly, he thought he saw a blue ghost, but by that time he was just dreaming.
The Story of Oliver Bell
June 2
“He says his name is Jack. He made reference to something called ‘The One.’”
Oliver delayed pulling books out of the box to better situate the cordless phone between his ear and shoulder. Because of a poor long-distance connection, he had to listen closely to Master’s reply.
“Yes, The One. Juan Nemo.”
“You mean The One and Juan are Juan and the same?” Oliver said. As soon as it left his lips, he remembered that Master Yegor had no sense of humor. Oh yeah, and neither did he. Too many years spent on ice. He’d have to work on that, get his sense of humanity back. Oliver quietly removed his copy of McElligot’s Pool and slid it onto the empty bookshelf. “Sorry, Master. I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since I arrived.”
“Quite.”
“You know, not to be disrespectful, oh great master of mine, because you’re the best, but you could have told me about The One before you sent me here. You could have told me a lot of things. Such as—of course, I’m sure you had your reasons, being a prophet of the Cold Lordess—such as it were, I didn’t have anyone to greet me. Then to find out that the entire staff was dead and the observatory was in ill repair—”
“You are certain that the child, Jack, is cold?”
“Pretty certain,” Oliver said, next placing Hop On Pop so it leaned upright, waiting for more in the collection. “Either that or a vampire out of season. The other kids were human, I’m certain of that. Pretty certain.”
“This child cannot be allowed to roam.”
“He’s not. He’s living here in the observatory.”
“He must be apprehended.”
“I’m sure he’s harmless, Master.”
“You know better, Water Bearer. All coldlings belong to the Order. He must be taught to worship our Lordess. He must be collected.”
“I’d appreciate it if we didn’t do that just yet,” Oliver said. He zeroed in on the picture of the sailboat, propped up against the wall behind his box of porn, and once again tried to unfocus—intently. “He implied he can lead me to Oceana Village. He also mentioned a name. Master, maybe you can tell me, who is Daisy? Jack said she ‘marked’ me.”
Boom!
The lamp sizzled and went out; the glow in the dark copy of Horton Hatches The Egg luminesced greenly in Oliver’s hands. The phone went dead.
In an instant Oliver stood in the path of the moon, beaming through the office window. His heart thumped irregularly. The phone trembled against his skin. He removed it, dropped it next to the desk pendulum set, the steel balls clacking back and forth since the quake. The Leprechaun, running on internal backup power, beeped once only. Its display lights ran through a series of colorful programmed patterns for which Oliver had yet to determine a purpose, now peppering the east wall in disco dots.
He listened carefully and could barely detect several hollow voices of dismay: Clarence, Bambi, Robert, and probably Blane, too, stumbling up the stairwell between levels. No one—not even a rational thinker—felt comfortable in the dark. And the more Oliver learned about Earth’s creatures of the night, the less he blamed humans for their irrational fears. Even when those fears were caused by the commonplace tremors of tectonic plates, restless as teenagers, just as disruptive. . .
Meanwhile, in the elevator, which was currently stopped on the main level, the earthquake presented itself through a smoking hole in the floor. Except it was no earthquake.
“Raaar!”
A hand of cooling lava reached out of the hole, then the other hand, then a head crowned by a wreath of purple horns, each three inches long, sharp as pins and strict as steel.
“My name is. . .” It growled deeply, dragging its torso into the elevator car. Its spongy hide shed burning coals that hit the carpet with the impact of shooting stars. The car filled with pink smoke, rising from a thousand pores all over its body. From each pore hissed a tiny flame, like a cigarette torch lighter, colored purple to match the raised trim of mantle circling its eyes and mouth, and running down the sides of its body like racing stripes. Great claret bonfires booted its feet.
“My name is. . .” It worked its fingers between the doors and yanked them open in a bright splash of friction. The gears ground, the metal arms snapped behind the walls, and the lobby shrieked against the noise.
“My name is. . .”
The demon’s words boomeranged, bouncing off the walls and returning without rejoinder. Its face constricted. Tears, squeezed from its ducts, evaporated in more and more pink smoke. The grand creature beat its chest and wailed. All nine Styrofoam planets began swaying from the high ceiling. At the far end, above the EXIT sign, the planetoid Sedna remained still.
The creature jerked its head toward the sound of scuffling feet.
“Who goes there?” said Ol’ Blue, hobbling from his guard station, waving a flashlight.
“My name is!” it said. “Raaar!”
“Raaar’s a mighty strange name.” Blue’s white eyebrows bristled in proximity of the thing. “There’s no smoking in here, sir or madam. You’ll have to take it fifteen feet from the building.”
The thing stomped over, leaving prints of fading red. Red and black ashes flaked from its buffalo shoulders like skin. It towered over Blue, three times the old man’s size. Blue squinted up at the flickering shadows of a thousand tiny fires.
“I don’t know how you got in here," Blue said, "but you’ll have to accompany me to the entrance, sir or madam. All guests of the observatory must sign in. Mr. Bell’s orders.”
“Bring me to Delaney,” it said. "Delaney owes me my name.”
“Jamey, you say?” Blue snickered, dabbing the sweat on his forehead with a hanky. “Now that’s a name I know. So come on, then. Let’s get you signed in, big fella. An’ you better put out that cigarette, by yesterday. Mr. Bell’s already threatened to fire me once. You don’t want to get him angry, that one. A real firebrand. He's bona fide slave-driver.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Oliver navigated by flashlight to the office door and opened it to the hallway, found three terrified faces, three lab coats huddled together, three hands reaching for the knob. A moment of surprise, then the body of astro-scientists rushed inside and shut and locked the door.
“The poltergeist is lose in the building,” Clarence whispered loudly, gripping Oliver’s shirt. Robert touched Oliver’s shoulder and shined his own flashlight on the door, as if it were about to be traversed. Bambi ducked down and up between Clarence and Oliver, and hugged Oliver with desperation. Pointed up, her flashlight cast an eerie glow under her chin.
“Didn’t you hear that unearthly 'raaar,' Sir Oliver?” she said, her muscles tightening. “Mmm,” she said. She was pressing her cheek seductively against his chest. “Firm.” Then, “Ulk,” she said, stepping back, forcing Clarence away. “Sir,” she said, “no offense, but you smell like the inside of a tauntaun.”
Robert put three feet between them. “Man, you do stink. Ever hear of a shower?”
In the dark, Clarence appeared no more substantial than a pair of red glasses and gleaming braces. “Give the guy a break. One of us should have showed him where his room is.”
“We can’t give him Delaney’s room. That’s creepy, man. It’s probably haunted now. Jeez, shit, wise up, fool.”
“Oh sure, like there’s really going to be two ghosts in the building.”
“Where there’s one, there’s two. A master and an apprentice.”
"Poltergeists mark their territories, doofus. Check the fifth edition Monster Manual.”
“Sixth Edition sucks. Case in point, the ghost rogue rule."
“Scientists, scientists,” Oliver said, raising his arms to show that he’d had enough. All three of them plugged their noses; Oliver lowered his arms. “Yeah, uh, sorry. Trust me, there are no ghosts in this building.”
“See?” Bambi said. “I told you nerds Sir Oliver would get rid of it.”
“There never was a ghost.” Oliver shined his flashlight on Clarence. “We’ve got some vagrants living in the garage.” Then on Robert. “Harmless homeless kids.” Then on Bambi, who melted lovingly in the light. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, dear.” Then on a fourth face, out of nowhere. “Whah!” Oliver jumped back. “Who?”
It was Blane. He’d entered the room without anyone noticing, even though the door had been locked, supposedly. Or perhaps it had been locked but not shut all the way.
“There was a fire downstairs,” Blane said. He raised a flashlight with one hand and beamed it on a fire extinguisher in the other. “I took care of it. And before you ask, it’s just us. The lights are still shining in Griffith Park. I wouldn’t bet on this being an earthquake.”
“Maybe it was a harmless bunch of harmless kids playing with harmless fireworks,” Robert said. He shined his light on Oliver. “Did you hear, Blane? The boss man says we’re a hotel for hobos now.”
Oliver retaliated with a steady beam of light at Robert’s eyes, and the guy backed off. “It’s complicated, Robert.”
“Well I’m not going to do any more work until the TV is back on.”
“Stargate.”
“You got it, pal. This is 24 Hours of Richard Dean fuckin’-A Anderson Week.”
“Very well. I’ll try to locate Rufus.”
“Ha! Bambi could fix the electrical faster than that old fart.”
“Be nice,” Bambi said.
The temperature had dropped since the power outage. Oliver grabbed his tweed jacket off the hanger, wishing he owned something heavier, but this was June, after all. “You can all wait here in my office if it’ll make you feel more comfortable.”
At the east wall, Clarence was rifling through Oliver’s box. “Cool,” he said. “Porn.”
“Woo-hoo.” Robert joined him at the box and made greedy gestures. “Take your time, boss. I've seen all the Stargates .”
Bambi sucked air through her teeth and exhaled as loudly as she could. As Blane moved toward the east wall, she said, “C’mon, Blane, not you, too. Don’t be a Neanderthal.” She shot a disappointed glance at Oliver, the petals definitely falling off the rose.
Blane ignored her. In fact, he ignored the stacks of dirty magazines that were passing between Clarence and Robert. His flashlight lead him to the wall itself, to the framed picture. He set the fire extinguisher down.
“Hm,” he said.
Oliver was eager. If anyone could delineate the hidden picture, it would be Blane. “You see something?”
“I do. Cool. Computer art. Very, very cool. Retro but cool.”
He ran his eyes frame corner to frame corner, studied the content. Four flashlights fell upon him. Oliver tensed in anticipation. Finally, an answer.
“Look,” Blane said, turning it around for all to see. “A sailboat.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Oliver had not spent all day yesterday hypnotized by the sailboat. Today he’d spent maybe ten minutes aggravating himself over the thing before heading down to the garage, prepared to intimidate a straight answer out of Jack, only to discover Dragonball 5 gone. Their bedrolls remained, their scattered garments, too, their cache of dumpster booty, comic books and dolls and rickety furniture, and therefore they planned on coming back. Must have been Kids’ Day Out—in the sun. Oliver’s questions would have to wait for Jack’s sunburned return. So Oliver instead spent the afternoon unloading the van, given to him a few years prior by Bobby, Jeslyn’s father, and carrying in only the essentials—clothes, books, smut magazines, and toiletries—to his new office. As his belongings came out of the boxes, Frank Delaney’s went in. Surprisingly, no one had collected Delaney’s personal possessions after the murders. You’d think the guy would have had family. His dossier listed no one. That’s what had been typed under “Next of Kin”—“No One.”
Oliver chose not to clear everything, though. Delaney’s technical journals were indispensable, as were his excogitations for renovating the observatory in 2010. This would have made the second renovation in recent times, the last being in ‘05. A real find came in the form of rolled up blueprints, which Oliver meditated upon for hours but which seemed like minutes. Fascinating stuff.
Griffith Observatory was a Hemmingway iceberg, only a fraction of it showing above the surface: ground level, the lobby and connecting areas generally open to the public. Or they would be again, soon, after a couple of months. The second floor held the administrative offices to which Oliver’s belonged; along with the Griffith Observer printing press, responsible since 1937 for producing the monthly magazine; and along with a slew of lecture rooms, utilized by local astronomy clubs and by teachers in charge of class field trips. The top floor, hardly a floor, but rather a network of hallways, gave access to the sky domes and planetariums, plus access to half a dozen or so balconies and terraces, each in stunning view of the Los Angeles basin, Griffith Park, or the city zoo.
Employee living quarters covered all of Sublevel One; the science lab, Sublevel Two. Sublevel Three was, also in its entirety, taken up by the parking garage, emptying out on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood. Oliver wasn’t quite sure about Sublevels Four, Five, and Six. These gaping holes in the blueprints alarmed him. The architect had purposefully left them vague, unlabeled, empty rooms, or possibly rooms to be drawn at a future date. Inevitably, Oliver considered these plans to be early drafts. He’d have to keep his eyes peeled for the finals. There still remained, in Grifith Observatory, too many nooks and crannies, begging for curation.
Minutes had passed, and Oliver had just pressed the call button for the second time. Suddenly he clenched his eyes and bent forward, squeezing out a fake laugh at his own stupidity. No power. No stinking power. So why was he waiting in the dark for an elevator? For the sake of science, the laughter came freely now, was funny as hell but anchored, nonetheless, by embarrassment. Well, at least he only tried the elevator twice. If he absently flipped up just one more light switch, hoping for light, he’d start getting mad at himself. Old habits. People were too used to the modern conveniences that would have astounded Neanderthal Man. Light switches were expected to work, elevators were expected to come when called.
Oliver followed the stairwell down to Sublevel One. Rufus’s quarters were just a few doors down.
Oliver knocked, knocked repeatedly, then gave up and entered.
He pierced the blackness with his flashlight. The room lay bare. Not just empty—bare. A television. A bed. A nightstand, the only knickknack being a tall bottle of tequila. A worm floated in the puddle at the bottom. It wriggled once, barely alive. Bad tequila.
There was a picture on the wall, no frame. It had been pinned haphazardly at an angle. From the face of the dull photograph, having lost its gloss to the decades, two men posed for the camera. One man was Rufus, his left arm tightly hugging the second, much taller, black man. The second man did not smile nervously, like ol’ Rufus. This man was Frank Delaney, arms at his sides, caught very much uncomfortable to be posing with the janitor.
All of a sudden, the picture rattled, as if a breeze had circulated through the room. Another tremor, soundless, definitely not an earthquake. Something worse. Oliver backed into the hallway, peeled the beam of his flashlight off the picture and set it at his feet so he could see where he was about to step. He continued on. His room—Delaney’s old room—waited just down the way.
He entered to find five candles burning, one in each corner of the room, one in the center, set on the floor. Oliver narrowed his eyes to better see in the dimness, alive with pumping flames. Rufus stood within, his withered back to the door, and he looked like he was in an old time movie, frame-by-frame skittering past, games played by candlelight. Emitting the slightest whimper, Rufus’s head ducked from view.
“Mr. Jackson?” Oliver said.
Rufus straightened, cranked his neck around.
Oliver turned his flashlight off. “Are you all right?”
Rufus wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coveralls. “Aight,” he said.
“You can’t be in here. You know this is my room now, don’t you?”
“This ain’t your room. It ain’t ever gonna be your room. Not quite. Not in spirit.”
Rufus turned fully. His face seemed blacker than black, highlighted yellow by the tiny, dancing flames. “You can box up his things. You can’t box his memory. My boy. . .he’s still m’boy.” Tears dropped from the man’s eyes, silver streaks into the void beginning at his waist.
Oliver took a moment. Their names were different, but the photograph of Frank Delaney and Rufus Jackson suddenly spoke.
“Delaney was your son,” Oliver said. “I-I can’t tell you how sorry. . .”
“I never asked him for nothin’, Sir Oliver. He asked me for ever’thing.” Rufus grinned bitterly. “I was a bad father.” His grin faded sweetly. “He was a good boy.”
Rufus sat on Delaney’s creaky, unkempt bed. “I tried to make it up to him. The one thing I asked, I asked him not to change his name. That’s all I wanted. ‘Don’t hate me, son. Let me make up for all those years.’ I traveled a lot in those days.”
The tears slid to the old man’s upper lip and curled underneath. “The boy kept saying he had to make a name for hisself. I told him he already had a name. I suppose my name just wouldn’t do. So ambitious! So eager. Ain't those good qualities to have, Sir Oliver?”
“Yes,” Oliver said, wondering if it were true. What had ambition gotten Oliver? A wife in a cult. A daughter he'd never known.
Silence followed. Oliver glanced around the bedroom. There was a bathroom and a closet, a wall of books, and shelves of curios from a dozen cultures or more. There was a dream catcher. A medicine bag. An Australian demon knife. A stake, crossing cultures, the calling card of the mythological Vampire Slayer.
“He was a good boy,” Rufus said, slapping his knees before standing. Jez had slapped her knees just like that. The night she resigned herself to finally dump Oliver and move into Juan Nemo’s graces.
Rufus engaged in one solemn scan of the room. “But you’ll be wantin’ to move in,” he said. “You’re right, it’s your home now. I’m sorry. I’m just an old fool. I’ll be going.”
“You should collect your son’s things,” Oliver said quickly, filibustering. “I can give you some time.”
“You can have it, all of it. It’s yours.”
“I don’t want,” Oliver said, confused, “you really should. . . This stuff belongs to you, Rufus. You’re his father.”
“Not no more. Not no more.”
Rufus wiped his face in a childlike manner and walked up. “You’ll be needing his books.” The stench of tequila burned Oliver’s nostrils. “L.A. ain’t no place for a man without books. I don’t understand that Inner World stuff, but Frankie did. You’re a man of learning, ain’t you? I reckon you’ll understand. When it comes necessary.”
Too much drama. It made Oliver uncomfortable. “I can see you need some time. And space.”
“My time is past. I’m. . .I’m too old. You’re young. You can stop it.”
“Stop it? Stop what?”
Rufus smiled weakly. “Don’t be in such a hurry to make a name for you’self. A name don’t mean nothin’. You, Oliver, mean so much more.”
Oliver nodded out of deference to a man in woe. He found himself whispering, as if this were church. “Rufus, I need you to fix the power.”
“I know it.”
“When you’re done here, can you do something about the lights?”
“’Fraid I can’t.”
“N-No? You are ‘maintenance,’ aren’t you?”
“That’s what it says on the paycheck the Leprechaun give me.”
“So. . .so you should be able to shed us some light.”
“I don’t know no electrician skills. I’m a man who cleans up messes. I don’t got no toolbox. I operate a broom.” He seemed so sad. “A seventy-year-old broom.”
Nepotism. This had been a case of nepotism. “I need a man who can do his job,” Oliver said. “If you can’t even find the fuse box. . .”
Rufus nodded. “I know it. You’ll have to hire someone who can. You’re the director. A man’s got his job. I’ve been allowed to live here too long.”
“Look, Rufus—Mr. Jackson. I saw your salary. You’re getting paid the quantity of three men. I’m not firing you, let’s be clear on that. You can still be janitor.” But not maintenance, not groundskeeper. There were a zillion flowers outside begging for attention, painting the observatory as the Adaams Family mansion.
“I can’t live off less. I got alimony. Palimony. Gambling debts. I got people calling here for me, using my name.”
“I’m sorry.” Oliver truly was sorry, truly, his eyes filling with salty tenderness. “As you said, I-I’ve got a job. You’ve got a job, still, I promise. But I must do mine.”
“Why certainly, Oliver. Gotta make a name for you’self. I understand.” He glared. “I do understand. I get it.”
Rufus smiled so largely that Oliver almost believed he was okay with this situation.
Rufus said, “I’ll be tendering my resignation before the day’s through.”
“Oh, oh, I really don’t think that will be necessary.”
“My name is soiled. There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to make up for things, clean up his messes. Sweep ‘em under the carpet. I’ll be doing that before I go. That I will do for you, ‘Director,' sir."
“Don’t go, Rufus. Please, stay. It’s just that I’m going to have to call in a professional.”
Boom!
Another quake. The light cover on the ceiling rattled, its glass malformed for just second. This wasn’t an earthquake. Oliver stamped his foot, for the sake of science! This was not the work of Mother Nature. Something was going terribly wrong in the building. He just didn’t know what.
“It’s okay,” Rufus said. “I’ll see about finding that fuse box before I go. I’ll do it for you, son.”
MATURE CONTENT--BE WARNED
Alone, Oliver plopped his butt on the old, stained mattress. It would be so easy to sink deep and go unconscious right now. So easy to ignore whatever the hell was going on in the parking garage, two floors down. Dragonball 5 and their unruly experiments could wait. The science guys would be fine up in his office playing with themselves. Rufus would reconnect the power, maybe. But if not, the sun would rise without human intervention.
Oliver gave in. He lay on his back in the flickering darkness. He actively listened for another boom, counting the seconds until the next tremor, as if there were a storm passing overhead, and the ratio of distant thunder to lightning flashes measured its distance. He held perfectly still. The rickety springs of the mattress strummed, one by one, in his ears. A dripping faucet.
Maybe those goofy scientists were right. The observatory was haunted.
Yeah. Right. Maybe with a roll of “1” on a D20, as Clarence would have put it.
Ug. Oliver curled up on his side and reached for one of Delaney’s demonology books. He perused its crisp, tan pages. In New York, Master Yegor had sometimes granted Oliver access to the library and to the Order’s less sensitive volumes on the supernatural world. This had been his reward for faithful service, knowledge in lieu of receiving the Lordess’s gift of immortality. Quite frankly, the Order of the Cold could keep their overrated immortality. A single lifespan of living with his psychoses would be more than enough, thank you.
Well, at least his pretending to worship the goddess had gotten him this far, this much closer to Naja and Jeslyn. . .and to some sonofabitch named Juan. If only the library had supplied a copy of that ever so useful little book known as Where’s Waldo?. . .
Oliver hissed, displeased with Delaney’s collection. He’d read this one before, hadn’t he? Keeping a finger on the page, he checked the cover: Servitor Demons of the Hell Dimensions. Yep. Nothing like a tome of ancient lore written in large-print English to mark it as a placebo for the uninitiated. The descriptions were short and simplistic, supported by lots of misleading diagrams. This was the equivalent of a preschool book for demon hunters. Oliver gave up, closed it, and scanned the shelf for another.
The next book seemed just as trite: What is the Slayer? Introduction To The Cycle. Oliver didn’t even bother to crack the binding of this gem. Rufus’s son had clearly been an amateur. A pro at collecting the most useless volumes on the occult market. God help the world if he had ever tried to actually summon something.
Hm, but here was one: Book of Shadows, penned by hand. Oliver began skimming, curious to see what a man like Delaney would deem worthy of transcribing to his mystical diary. Pseudo-quadratic and -geometric scribbles littered every page. Jez would have gone ape-shit over this junk. She’d have studied it for hours, built a religion around every formula without understanding a single one. To Oliver, they seemed like the labors of an alien archaeologist after returning home to teach his people all there was to know about Earthling anatomy. He’d gotten the parts right, but nothing else. A whole civilization of aliens would right now be singing, “The neck bone’s connected to the toe bone, the toe bone’s connected to the sphincter, the sphincter’s connected to the earlobe.” Delaney had gathered plenty of authentic components, but with the exuberance of a sciolist he had assembled pure mathematical nonsense.
One thing, though: the man sure could draw. Although inaccurate on several counts, Delaney's rendition of a Fyarl demon would have made a comic book publisher drool, as would his next drawing, present on the following page, of something called a Slaver. Oliver had never heard of a Slaver demon. Interesting.
Particularly alluring was Delaney's erotic conceptualization of a Soreen demon, just two pages over: tall, hippie, and tightly wrapped in silky black skin. Delaney had drawn her bent forward, spilling forth large breasts that gleamed blue-black against the perceptual light source, cast dead center on her cleavage from the reader’s vantage point. She appeared to be waiting for you to walk into the book, come up behind her, grab her by the waist, and give her a taste of bona fide humanity. Her steely eyes lifted off the page, demanding forgiveness. “Show me how wrong I was for leaving you,” she purred. “You are the one for me. You are The only One.”
Amused, Oliver flipped to the next page. More senseless geometry to be found here: a square with a dot in the center, labeled "Ward of the Slaver." It matched the pattern of candles Rufus had sited on the floor. Oliver marveled at the old man's handiwork. Rufus had actually placed all five candles and chalked the lines, just like in the diagram.
Oliver huffed and flipped back to the sexy Soreen demon, still bent over, still eagerly soliciting prehistoric gender roles. The subtle twist in her expression explained that she had missed Oliver terribly during the few seconds he’d been away. She liked it when he examined her, didn’t she? Anticipation compromised her static expression.
Oliver unzipped his pants and slid four fingers under the elastic of his briefs. This act was closely followed by fervid, creative, human desire.
He centered his chest over her reptilian spine. Hugging her midriff, he pulled. The demon girl softened—didn’t she? He imagined how deeply she might moan. She repeated the only three sentences she knew in the English language, defaulting to a lilting demon accent, desperation on the rise, loneliness on the wane.
Oliver replied, “I know I am.”
* * *
In time the book slipped off the bed, kerplunked. But Oliver had memorized the demon parts worth knowing. He could just feel them slipping in and out of his hands. The bedsprings creaked rhythmically, then erratically to the fits of his straining muscles. The air closed around his face. Oliver grew super-sensitive, emotionally aware of his surroundings.
Continuously fondling himself, he rose up on an elbow, watched shakily for any sign of someone strolling past the doorway. It'd be unbearable if one of his employees caught him doing this.
The hallway sat in blackness.
He relaxed, but continued stroking, shuddering.
The hot air wavered, distorting every angle of the room. He could smell himself; it was gross, distracting. Dexterously, Oliver stretched his arm an inch at the wrist, just enough to reach the lowest button on his jacket. Too difficult; his arm lay pinned under his ribcage. Shoot, he’d have to reposition himself. Fast—he sat up, worked down the buttons, flung the jacket off, then worriedly tried to reclaim his level of arousal. Not good enough. He sat up again and kicked down his pants. Back on his side, hopefully to stay there, Oliver labored to catch up with the fleeting demon girl. This wasn’t about pleasure. This wasn’t fun. He needed the release.
The white-hot nucleus at the tip of every candlewick twirled and streaked. Oliver squinted at the twinkling, not unlike the mirage at the end of a long and straight desert highway.
The room felt even hotter now, too hot. And a little too bright for comfort. He couldn’t afford another pause, not again. He wasn’t about to get off the bed and extinguish the candles or take off his shirt. It’d kill the mood. His Soreen lover would surely reject him then. So he endured the candlelight, yanked violently to compensate. Clenched teeth. Kicked, spasmed.
Lack of sleep, generalized stress, maybe--Oliver needed to ejaculate NOW, clear his head. But he found that he couldn’t climax with the day’s events crowding his conscious mind. Sudden thoughts of the homeless children distracted him. Robert’s zit-blotched face appeared. Then Rufus. And that infuriating sailboat! Oliver held fast to the image of the Soreen demon, but she’d begun to resist. She was evaporating, difficult to visualize.
“Damn!”
He flipped onto his back, angry enough to wake all of Mount Hollywood—he didn’t care. His heart pounded in his stomach. Cheek to pillow, he stared out across the clouds of pink smoke.
Prepared to weep if it would just squeeze the pain out of his guts, he stared harder, harder at the empty black canvas stretched across the frame of the bedroom door. He pursed his lips and attempted to draw her from scratch. Heartbeats returned to his chest. He continued mindlessly jerking, hearing nothing, acknowledging nothing—
Okay, he'd just heard a muffled boom, probably in his mind.
All of a sudden, the mattress bounced—not his imagination.
Then came another boom, louder.
This time the mattress bounced doubly so.
Boom.
“What?” Oliver rose onto his arm. Something weird was taking place. Something very, very scary.
Alert, he allowed his gaze to pass through the sexy demon girl, not entirely vanished. The contours of her body expanded as something stepped inside her skin. She grew three times normal size so that her head disappeared beyond the entrance, out in the hallway, too tall to be seen.
Oliver wasn’t quite sure if he were in control of this smoldering daydream.
A zillion purple souls flared up through the pores of her hulking, burgundy torso—city lights shining from the continent of Hell. A chest, with two purple horns for nipples, had replaced Oliver’s notion of the demon girl's soft, luxurious breasts.
Oliver was beginning to comprehend:
A-a-a humanoid, passing down the hall, had found Oliver’s door open and stepped into view. It was now “materializing” inside the fantasy image of his Soreen demon. No longer a harmless fantasy, she had transformed into a living, breathing, combusting intruder.
A demon. A real demon.
It ducked low to peer into the room. Oliver felt its eyes hit him, study him. The demon growled, ending in a most unfriendly chuckle. "At last," it said. It raised a knee to its chest. After a moment, its flaming, six-toed boulder fell.
Boom!
Sparks exploded on impact. Shot in every direction. Blackened into pebbles under the bed. Books bounced off the shelf. The fire alarm started to wail.
Oliver hastily sat up. He covered his erection, pulled up his pants, threw indignant glances at the molten monster, as it ducked through the door. In frantic time, Oliver dressed himself, sitting on the side of the bed, too modest to flee with his pants around his ankles, too excited to freeze in terror, too humiliated to scream. The zipper caught his shirttail. He couldn’t subdue the bulge in his pants.
Pink smoke poured along the ceiling and suffocated the room. Bent at the knees and inching along the floor, the demon—it was a Slaver demon—reached forward with the glee of a child harboring a secret, contained in one of its Frisbee-wide hands. Its fingers uncurled around a freshly severed human head.
This head belonged to Ol’ Blue.
He was smothered in an expression so humdrum for a victim of decapitation that Oliver couldn’t avert his eyes. Blue had died just how he’d lived, sleepy and clueless. Shedding a harsh roar, the Slaver spiked the old head like a football. It deflated against the floorboards more like a pumpkin, splashing flesh and almond skull bits.
“I have come for the name you have stolen from me, Delaney,” the demon said, difficult to hear under the scream of the fire alarm. “Now give me yours.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
June 3, 2007
After Midnight
The Slaver demon fully stood just inside the door, its roughly shaped head aside the shrieking fire alarm. Its crown of horns grazed the ceiling, ripping trenches in the paint.
“Don't pretend to be shy, Delaney," it hollered. "I only rented you my name. You know this. And you’re overdue, plus late fees. Now pay up. Re-name me.”
Mostly dressed, Oliver stood as tall as his height would allow on his tiptoes. Without taking either eye off of the threat, he pawed the bookshelf for the copy of Servitor Demons of the Hell Dimensions. There had to be something in there about stopping this creature. Even a children’s book instructed you in the basics: brush your teeth, don’t steal, be nice to people, don’t eat yellow snow, here be the thirty-minute ritual for dispelling a fire demon that barges into your room demanding that you name it. If only the shelf had been stocked with a book of baby names, he'd be home free.
Oliver opened the heavy tome and flipped to the right page. He could barely think amid the din of the fire alarm. What was it with him and fire alarms? Jez had cursed him the day they'd gotten engaged.
“You’re living off borrowed power,” it hollered. “You can’t ignore this. Do you think this ward will protect you forever?”
Oliver peered over the left side of the book, at the floor. Of course: the candles, the chalk lines: the Ward of the Slaver. Rufus knew that this creature would be coming for his son. At least Rufas had suspected as much. Extreme fortune had placed Oliver in this bedroom. The Ward of the Slaver stood between him and incineration. That’s why the demon hadn’t taken another step. Mystical forces prevented it.
Had Rufus been protecting himself? Oliver? Or was it these books he'd hoped to preserve?
Oliver started reading faster.
“Do not toy with me, Delaney,” the demon said at an alarming volume, loud enough to clearly be heard.
Oliver speedily read that Slaver demons mined the hellfires searching for coal. Hellfires. Coal. This creature was a coal miner! Oliver peeped, thrilled, but his excitement faded. For a second he’d thought this information meant something useful. But it was only coal. Just hellfire and coal.
“You used my name to seduce your woman,” it said. "My macho name worked, did it not? Now fulfill your end of the bargain.”
Slaver demons only surfaced when they were looking for. . .something. Oliver skipped farther down the paragraph. When they were looking for. . .slaves. Slaves to toil in their mines.
“I can’t remember my name,” it said, louder, angrier. "Stop keeping it from me.”
And Slavers only returned to Hell after they filled their quota of slaves. Oliver frowned. That was it. No dis-spell had been provided. There wasn’t even a spell for summoning one. This book was useless. Big surprise.
“Remind me of my name,” the demon said, “or I shall destroy this place. Delaney! Look at me.”
Oliver kneeled. He dropped the threadbare tome in favor of picking up the Book of Shadows, at his feet by the bed. As he stood, he said, "My name is not Frank Delaney.”
Perhaps the foul beast couldn't hear well enough because of the fire alarm.
It replied, “Delaney?”
“I’m not Delaney!” Oliver waved the thin book at him. “Delaney is dead!”
“Dead? Dead?”
“Dead.”
The Slaver demon slumped while standing. It sighed a long stream of pink smoke, mixed with black particles, like flies.
“Then my name is lost,” it said.
Oliver felt the transfer of power, a new control over this situation. “That’s right, you-you-you monster. My name is Oliver!”
The demon gave a start. It tilted a pointy ear and smiled. Angelically.
“’Lover’?” it said. “Your name is. . .?”
Oliver didn’t like that. Why was this asshole so curious about his name all of a sudden, not Delaney’s? Thank science for the fire alarm!
“You don’t need to know my name,” Oliver said.
“Your name is already mine, human. Give it up. Tell me. Do what is just.”
The social power reverted right back to the hulk standing inside the door. Frantically, Oliver cracked the Book of Shadows—to a page of many, many names, hand-written tinily so they all fit. Oliver had seen some of these names before. But where?
“You occupy Delaney’s room. You are the new director, are you not?”
“I am,” Oliver said, lowering the book to his side. His chest stuck out on its own. He felt—rather, hoped—pride would scare this demon away.
“Then you, Director, have inherited Delaney’s contract. You must locate my missing name. Or give me a new one.”
“That’s all? That’s all you want? A new name?” Again, he wished for a book of baby names.
“You must fulfill the contract to the letter.”
Of all the luck! Oliver held the Book of Shadows against his chest, as if it were his own diary, his carefully guarded thoughts and feelings. He felt as giddy as a girl majoring in geometry. He said, “Okay, I name you. . .” What was the dirtiest, most stupid name he could think of? “Juan Nemo.”
“And where is this Juan Nemo?”
“Well, er, I don’t know.”
“I must find him. Take his name. And he will accompany me to the Mines of Pleen as my slave.”
“Uh. . .” Oliver hadn’t expected that the name had to belong to a person that he knew, uh, personally. He’d have to think fast, which was impossible with all this damn noise. “Uh. . .”
It was then that Slaver Demon Without A Name was “attacked” from both sides—accidentally. Behind it, from the right side of the hallway, Clarence and Robert showed up, both carrying the picture of the sailboat, one or both of them saying, “Hey, boss, this thing is impossible, we don’t see anyth—Jesus!”; and, also behind it, from the left, came Bambi, aiming a fire extinguisher, saying, “Hey, where’s the fire—Jesus!” All three of them backed against the hall wall.
The demon turned to greet them. Its crown of purple horns caught the fire alarm, knocking the device senseless and, thankfully, muting it. Of course, because of the Slaver’s height, the trio could only gaze upon its mighty chest and its two nipple horns. They couldn’t see the monster's head, so from its chest they cringed. From back here, Oliver saw the Slaver's cheeks, bulging out beyond its ears. The Slaver was grinning.
Clarence’s and Robert's fingers opened. The picture fell straight down. The frame cracked. The sailboat leaned gently against the wall, upright.
Bambi’s fingers opened. The extinguisher clanged against the hardwood and rolled onto its side. She fainted gently against the wall, then bent at the knees and hit the floor.
The demon ignored her limp body. It ducked just low enough to see under the doorframe.
To the boys it said, “Well. What are your names, little humans?”
“Don’t tell him,” Oliver shouted. “Run!”
Obediently, needing to be told only once, Clarence and Robert disappeared from the doorway, presumably now running for their lives, but Oliver couldn’t hear their footfalls with the fire alarm still ringing in his ears. The demon raised a middle finger to Oliver—flipping him off!—and disappeared, also. The Slaver no longer required Oliver's nondescript name. It was now chasing after Clarence and Robert.
Their names, respectively, meant "royalty" and "bright fame." Perhaps the demon knew that.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Over a shoulder and through the air flew the medicine bag, the dream catcher, the stake, the Tibetan ritual wand, a bag of pixie dust—anything useless.
Oliver was ransacking Delaney’s shelf looking for a weapon that might stop the beast or slow it down. He felt just sick about this. He couldn’t order his employees to surrender their names. There had to be a better way. It was quite possible that, in the end, he’d have to sacrifice his own name, let the demon chew on “Oliver” for awhile. Anything to lure the creature elsewhere.
“Oliver” wasn’t entirely nondescript. A Germanic interpretation was “ruler of elves,” which he had discovered while pouring through hundreds of baby names after learning that Jez was about to make him a daddy. Fate had kept Oliver from being a father; rather, it had shoehorned him into a similar role. He was the captain of this sinking ship, the U.S.S. Griffith. With that title came the responsibility of getting his employees to the life rafts. He would protect them with the ferocity of a mother bear.
His hand fumbled upon a steel knife! He shined his flashlight on it. . .but closed his eyes. The edge was ceremonially dull.
“Damn.”
Bambi screamed.
The demon must have given up on the boys.
No time. Oliver rushed out the door and hooked a right. What he saw, though, paralyzed him.
At the far end of the corridor, Clarence and Robert watched just as helplessly. They shined their flashlights on the horrible situation. The Slaver had Bambi by her slender arms, clamped to her sides. It lifted her up to the ceiling. The sleeves of her white lab coat turned brown on contact with its scalding tegument. The brown cloth flared up, exposing Bambi’s pink flesh underneath.
Oliver scrambled for the fire extinguisher at his feet—and witnessed an even uglier sight while bent over. He saw an emergent fire eating a path of golden paint up the side of the picture, the sailboat, leaning against the wall. His future was about to go up in flames.
Bambi cried out.
Her young face wrinkled as the demon shook her and demanded that she identify herself. She squirmed in agony.
No time. Oliver rushed forward, aiming the extinguisher at the demon’s coal eyes. It heard him coming, glanced down just in time for his assault.
“Hm?” it said.
Oliver squeezed the levers together, not expecting an anti-climax: White, curdled water dripped from the nozzle. The extinguisher was pathetically empty.
The demon grinned.
“It hurts!” Bambi cried. One of her bouncing, black pigtails was smoking, a fuse.
Time for a new strategy. Oliver reversed the fire extinguisher. He slammed the blunt end of the canister into the demon's groin. The Slaver “oofed,” bent forward, holding itself there. Its tear ducts eructed pink mist.
Bambi thudded on the floor. Oliver rushed to her side.
A second later, they met up with Clarence and Robert, who were chattering, “C’mon, c’mon, no time, let’s go,” and all four of them raced for the stairwell. Bambi sobbed as she ran, wildly patting out the orange embers in her hair. Clarence opened the door and conducted her through, then Robert. Then he himself entered, waving for Oliver to join them. Oliver slowed to a standstill, couldn’t quite follow through. They were leaving the computer art behind.
Past the demon, stiffly trying to compose itself, Oliver saw that the small fire had prospered into a red-white flare. Gold paint dripped down the edge of the frame like wax; black, sinus-pinching clouds streamed upwardly. In no time at all, the sailboat would be ablaze. Oliver wouldn’t be able to get past the demon and extinguish it. His boat would take the secret of Oceana Village to its fiery grave, and Oliver could only watch, nauseous, soul-sick, seasick, sunk.
The demon disappeared behind copious, billowing clouds of black- and pinkness, and ashes. All hope, smothered.
Clarence rested a consoling hand on Oliver’s shoulder. He tugged him back into the stairwell. Oliver allowed himself to confront the young scientist.
“No time,” Clarence said. "Come on, Sir Oliver. We have to abandon ship.”
The door glided shut. The latch clicked. The sound echoed down two flights of stairs.
Oliver nodded. “No. No time.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Bambi and Robert had descended quickly. They were reduced to remote, whiny voices, brabbling at each other to watch her and his step and to stop shoving.
Moving warily in the dark, Clarence wouldn’t grant himself more than a few steps in front of Oliver. Oliver purposefully lagged, sparing an ear, in case they were being followed. He glanced back incessantly. Part of him wanted the demon to chase them. The stairwell and the parking garage were made of cement and of steel. The building materials up there were not. Although the demon’s footprints had become supernaturally cool promptly after every step, how long would it be before a random spark found purchase in something combustible? Like the plastic picture frame. Oliver could only pray that the sailboat fire wouldn’t spread to the wall. Why hadn’t the emergency sprinklers activated? Who was responsible for maintaining the system?
Stupid question. Rufus. Useless, useless Rufus.
Clarence stopped abruptly on the Sub-Two landing. He didn’t speak at first, his face a jumble of fatigue and artificial bravery. He removed his red glasses. He used a section of his lab coat to polish the sweat off a lens. Oliver lent the beam of his flashlight so the guy could see what he was doing.
Clarence shook his head. “What was that thing?”
“It’s called a Slaver demon.”
“A demon. A demon.”
“’Fraid so.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. You’re supposed to tell me it’s a man in a costume.” He started polishing the other lens. “Trying to scare us away so he can search for the hidden treasure of Old Man Delaney.”
“Would you have believed that?”
Clarence replaced his glasses. “Yeah. I think I would have.”
“And you call yourself a scientist.”
Oliver prodded Clarence to keep moving, but Clarence stood firm on the lower step. His stiff upper lip began trembling.
He said, “It kept asking Bambi what her name was. She tried to answer, but. . .but it was shaking her too hard. I kept wondering why it didn’t just eat her." He swallowed. "Sir Oliver. It burned her."
“Be glad she didn’t answer,” Oliver said. “Delaney was into summoning. I believe he borrowed this demon’s name to empower a love spell. The spell must have backfired. Maybe some sort of mystic rebound is what killed him. And everyone else at the party that night.”
Clarence’s face went blank. “Summoning. Like in D&D? Demons and love spells? And you call yourself a scientist.”
“Just hypothesizing, based on what the creature told me. I think it has come here to repossess its name. Unfortunately for us, that knowledge had to have died with Frank Delaney.”
“So why hasn’t it. . .I don’t know, teleported home, then?”
“The demon needs a replacement.”
A bright, panicky expression. "So hey, Cap'n, let’s give it one. How about ‘Yes Sir Anything You Say Sir’?”
“Sh!” Oliver listened for a sec, thinking he’d heard a boom. But his ears detected nothing more than his own imagination. The floor above them was unnaturally quiet. Maybe nobody from the Mines of Pleen had ever heard of a doorknob. Still, if it wanted, the Slaver could always smash its way into the stairwell. It must have given up the pursuit. Nothing like a kick to the nuts to change one’s whole perspective on life. Crude but effective.
“No,” Oliver said, turning his attention back to Clarence. “We can’t make one up. Our guest lent its name to your former boss. Now that name’s been forgotten, so the demon is desperate to fill the hole in its identity. It’s probably just a little scared, a lot confused, and that spells one pissed off demon. It must find a real name, made substantial by a real person leading a real life. It wants one of ours. Again, I’m only hypothesizing. My guts tell me, if we lend it our names, our lives will begin to suck in an extraordinarily bad way. What do you think will happen to us if we brand this monster?”
Oliver waited for a response.
Clarence blinked. “Oh, that wasn’t a rhetorical question.”
“Call me unscientific,” Oliver said, “but this creature is called a Slaver. Didn’t Robert mention something about names having influential power?”
“You think that thing will enslave us? Like, make us work for it or something?”
Oliver nodded. “And I think it’s safe to assume they don’t get Stargate in Hell.”
“Robert’s not going to like this.”
From the parking garage, Robert and Bambi screeched in terror. In a panic, Clarence shoved past Oliver to reach a higher step. He pulled at Oliver’s left shoulder, saying, “The demon’s down there. It’s got ‘em. We should really go back up. Go see if we can find Blane.”
“Relax,” Oliver said, remembering his first experience with Dragonball 5. “I think Robert and Bambi have just been introduced to your ghost.”
“G-Ghost? You said there wasn’t a ghost, you said so, you said trust you on that fact.” He kept pulling. “A demon, a ghost? I can’t take this. I wet the bed till I was eight years old, sir, I’m not a hero, I just graduated a year ago, I cheated on my finals—”
“Relax!”
He removed the young man’s cold, wet fingers from his shoulder.
“I’ve got one of Delaney’s spell books,” he said. Before rushing from the bedroom, Oliver had stuffed the Book of Shadows in the waist of his pants, just over his butt, like a pistol. “There’s bound to be something in there that’ll help us defeat it.”
“Like a copy of the Th-Thirteenth Amendment?” Clarence said. “Are you hypothesizing again, sir?”
“If Delaney could summon a demon from the Mines of Pleen, it stands to reason that he could also cast one out.” Maybe. “Or at least bind it. We only need five candles and a writing utensil. We’ll nab this thing. It’ll be okay. Trust me. Cheer up.”
“I’m up, I’m up. I just don’t want to go down there with you.”
Oliver grabbed Clarence by the sleeve. “Come on, Shag. Let’s go see what Fred and Daphne have gotten themselves into.”
The Story of Oliver Bell
Oliver walked out of the stairwell just in time to witness a Kung Fu fiasco, lit only by the bright stars outside the rectangular car entrance at the far end of the garage. Clarence stood close behind Oliver, peeking over a shoulder.
Robert was down on all fours, coughing, as if someone had just given him a fire extinguisher to the groin. Christopher, Meg, Dan, and Babe encircled Bambi. Bambi stumbled from perimeter to perimeter, wildly swinging her fists. She couldn’t see because of the blue sequined gown wrapped around her head. The cardboard ghost face bounced along her back, looking as ferocious as the first time.
Babe rushed forward, kicked Bambi in a shin, and stepped back to maintain the perimeter of the circle. Then Christopher stepped in, stuck out his foot, and Bambi tripped to the cement floor.
“Enough!” Jack said, stepping into the narrow, dim light. “We got company. Popz duke is here.”
The children stopped. All ten Dragonball eyes fell to Oliver and Clarence.
Jack made an addition: “Looks like we got a momz duke, too.”
Clarence must have realized that he was still holding Oliver’s hand. He quickly let go and stepped two full yards to the right, his hands plunged deeply in the pockets of his lab coat.
Jack started walking, boots clacking, his voice echoing. “Yo, peeps. These your creepin spies?”
“They work for me,” Oliver said.
Bambi crawled to Robert. Robert removed the silly, fake ghost and tossed it into the darkness. Bambi hugged him, cheek-to-cheek. She sobbed. He patted her back, spitting out strands of her hair. Her three pigtails had become five frazzled stalks of wheat.
Jack stepped between Clarence and Oliver, faced Oliver. “Yo, dawg, you see what’s in that picture yet?”
“No,” Oliver said. “I failed. We all failed.”
“Keep tryin’.”
“I’d love to. But there was an accident. The picture is gone.”
Jack condescendingly shook his head. His face, though, twitched with upset. “Gone, huh? That’s a drama.”
“We’ve been having problems with. . .fires upstairs.”
“I counted on you."
“No, I counted on you, Jack. You were supposed to tell me where Oceana Village is. Then you got to live here, that was the arrangement. Well the picture is now a pile of ash and melted plastic outside my bedroom. So no more games. Just tell me.”
Jack raised his trembling arms, kissed his knuckles. Oliver saw that his tender coldling skin had been scorched by the sun. What could have been important enough for Jack to keep venturing out during the daytime?
Jack loosened up, suddenly nonchalant. “If I knew, I’d tell ya, peeps.”
“You mean you couldn’t see the hidden picture, either?”
“Shee-it, I never could see the Inner World. I wasn’t all blessed like you. I had to make it on my own.”
“What? After all that talk, you couldn’t see anything but a sailboat. Why, you deceitful—” Oliver closed his eyes, realizing in an instant what this meant. “You needed me to see it for you. You’re looking for the same place I am.”
“Yo, dawg, you really didn’t see it? You been marked by Daisy, and you don’t got no powers? None. On the real."
Oliver crossed pent frustration into raised voice territory. “Who the hell is Daisy?”
“Uh,” Clarence said, interrupting, “Oliver? Sir? Can we keep moving, please?”
“What?”
“Moving,” Clarence said. “You know. Upstairs? Big demon. Wants our names so it can take us to Hell to work in its coal mines, that demon.”
“Shee-it, what?” Jack said. “You humans summoned another demon?”
Robert joined Clarence. Bambi ran to Oliver and hugged him tightly. Through her black, frizzy hair, Oliver saw Jack admiring the scientist's firm, round bottom.
“Slammin squirrel, you got there,” Jack said. “You pay her, or does she go for booty call?”
Oliver removed the girl from his person, nudged her away. Sniffling, she joined Robert and Clarence.
“Back on subject,” Oliver said to Jack. “Are you saying this isn’t the first fire demon brought to my observatory?”
“Hell no. Last one was a tight squirrel. 'Cept she wasn't a fire demon. A Soreen demon.”
“A Soreen demon.” From the Book of Shadows. Oliver knew her, knew her embarrassingly well. “You mean black skin? Reptilian, with big. . .?” He held his hands eight inches in front of his chest and cupped them to represent knockers. “And big. . .?” He redrew the Soreen demon’s curvaceous hips over his own. “You mean like that, sexy?”
“She was a tight squirrel,” Jack said. “Dangerous, too. Threw down everyone in the building. Blood and gore, dawg. Massacre."
“’Cept us!” Babe cried.
Christopher piped up. “We got other places we go when demons come round.”
“Great,” Robert said in a nasally voice. He was pinching his swollen nose. “I don’t care who you are. Just take us there.”
“We. . .can’t leave,” Bambi said, wiping her eyes. "We don’t know where Blane is.”
Blane. Oliver wilted for a moment. “No, we can’t leave Blane. I can’t leave Blane.”
“Fuck Blane,” Robert said. “I ain’t going back up there. Look, look what that thing did to Bambi.”
Her darkened sleeves fell loosely over both forearms. Her skin had turned purple under the holes left by the Slaver, where its fingers had pressed into the fabric.
“What about Rufus?” Bambi said.
“Fuck Rufus, too. Fuck him more, that useless fuck.”
"And Blue."
"Especially fuck him."
“No one is fucking—” Oliver controlled himself, cleared his throat. “No one is leaving anyone behind. I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
He approached Jack in private. “Jack, I need a favor. I want you to hide these three for me. You’ve got hiding places, right?”
"'Course, dawg.”
“Don’t tell anyone where you are. Not even me. You keep them safe, and you can stay here for as long as you like. Okay?”
“Word,” Jack said, nodding.
“Thanks.”
But it was too late. The room sparkled with red, purple, and pink. The stench of burning tires saturated the air. Everyone shot a community stare at the entrance of the parking garage. Arms raised, it was like Atlas had alighted on the Earth.
But it was the Slaver.
“Director,” it said.
“Master,” whispered someone.
Startled, Oliver looked to Christopher, who’d gone into a bit of a trance. The boy smiled weakly at the advent of the demon.
Boom, boom, boom.
“Director,” it said, walking, “you owe me my name.”
Bambi shrieked, began wailing. She moved behind Robert. Robert twirled around to move behind her. They both moved behind Clarence. Clarence fainted straight to the floor, leaving them unshielded, ripe for the picking.
Babe started to cry. Meg and Dan threw their arms in front of the child, their chests bravely stuck out.
Boom, boom, boom.
“Drama,” Jack said, folding his arms.
“No one say anything to it,” Oliver shouted to the group. “Most of all, don’t mention any names. It wants one of our names so it can go home—”
“Jack!”
The Slaver stopped abruptly. The bonfires at its feet hissed. It stared a straight line through the crowd, ending at Christopher, who was pointing at Jack.
“Jack’s his name," Christopher said. "You can use Jack.”
The demon chuckled. “Jack. . .”
Jack unfolded his arms. For a moment, it didn’t appear as if he knew where to put them. Then he suddenly did, around Christopher’s neck. Jack lunged for the boy.
“Jack,” the demon shouted.
Jack stumbled, stood upright, and looked to his new master. He’d come just nigh of throttling Christopher. Christopher paid him no mind. The boy brushed past the Dragonball 5 leader, took his rightful place by the demon’s side, and looked way up at its molten chin.
"Jack's the one you want,” he said.
“Jack. I like it, ‘Jack.’ What does it mean, little one?”
Christopher’s face went blank. “I. . .it. . .it means just ‘Jack.’”
Sensing an opportunity, Oliver called out, “It means God is gracious.”
This information did not please the demon. Spewing flames the whole way, it took many booming steps toward Jack. Jack, all in all a coldling, cringed from the heat. The Slaver leaned close and sniffed. Its face froze in a grimace, as if it had just smelled tainted cheese.
It shunned Jack. “This is not one I can use. This is one of many. Many identities, convoluted, impure. There are too many souls to name here.”
What the hell did that mean?
“I need a single name!” the demon yelled. “I need the quintessence of an individual. This Jack is a stew.”
Disappointed, it glared down at its little helper, Christopher. Christopher shrunk into his skin. The boy regarded everyone with apology, but got no indication of pardon, especially from Jack.
“One last time,” the Slaver said. “I need a name. Or I will cauterize every one of your testicles." Oliver cringed. "Everyone except the boy.” The demon indicated Christopher. “The boy who showed me the way.”
The situation was tense. Dragonball 4 wanted to punish the hell out of Christopher--Oliver got that, without question--but that would be energy better spent on getting out of this predicament.
“Raar,” came a soft, trying-to-sound-mean voice. It was Babe. She said “Raar” a second time. “That will be your name. I’ll name you Raar.”
The demon moved through the center of the group. Everyone brushed aside. Oliver tried to hold his ground, but the sweltering aura bounced him away. Babe seemed unaffected. She looked up, blinking at the demon.
“You’re Raar,” she said.
For a moment, the demon exhibited parental admiration for this urchin. Short-lived: “What is your name, little girl?” Its deep voice, its horrid intent, it sounded like child molester.
Babe hesitated, maybe remembering Oliver’s warning. She smiled at Oliver, at Jack, at everyone, even Christopher. She wiped her runny nose. To the demon, she said, “'Babe.' What’s yours?”
And that’s when Hell broke loose.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Five things occurred all at once: see, grab, tackle, rush, and Blane.
1) The rows of ceiling lamps flashed on, painfully bright, shrinking each set of pupils in the room, particularly those of the sensitive coldling and the cavern-adapted Slaver.
2) The Slaver was closing its thick lava fingers around Babe’s torso. While it blinked against the flood of visibility, Babe let out a high-pitched scream, struggled, squirmed, was caught.
3) Spurting tears, Jack leapt five feet onto the demon’s back. Their bodies crackled and hissed, an ice cube in the pan. Steam enveloping them both.
4) Meg and Dan rushed in to assist.
5) Blane entered from the stairwell saying, “Anybody lose something? What? Uh—” and he gawked, holding a corrupted version of the painting, browned, flaking around the edges like a treasure map, no frame. There wasn’t time enough for him to curry the applause of the group for salvaging the sailboat. His expression asked, “Are those two guys on fire?”
The Slaver turned erratic circles, gripping the child and trying to fling Jack from its back. Jack howled in agony. Heat to a colding. . .
Oliver didn’t want to think about Jack’s pain. Oliver stood frozen during this slow moment in time. For that instant, his eyeballs rolled about, grappling with each scene as it unfolded. Time then bolted forward with such haste that he felt himself leaning backward.
Meg and Dan took turns flying their kicks into the demon’s calves. The Slaver didn’t seem to know what to make of this. Its expression told that it had never before encountered defiance. Surprise had confounded it.
But the Slaver dropped Babe and threw up its arms in the Atlas formation, which discharged Jack from its back. Jack rolled past Robert and Bambi, who of all people were rushing in to join the fight. They mimicked the twins’ flying kicks through the air. Bounced off. Knocked the demon an inch. Fell to their hips. Each combatant scrambled to his or her feet, but by then there was someone else making a kick. The soles of everyone’s shoes were shedding liquid rubber. With every attack being followed up by an immediate assault from the other side, they kept the Slaver off balance. It stumbled around the perimeter of the circle.
This gave Oliver time to pull Babe out of the fray, over by where Clarence was lying unconscious. The finger-shaped band seared into Babe’s flesh was throbbing, as her blood responded to the blistering areas. Oliver said, “I want you to run outside, run and hide, don’t look back. Go!”
Babe regarded Oliver with scorn for even suggesting it. She snorted, stood up, and rushed toward the fight, picking up the blue dress along the way. She handed it to Meg and Dan. Following Jack’s lead, Robert bent down with his ten fingers enmeshed. Meg stepped into his makeshift stirrup, while Dan stepped into the stirrup provided by Jack and Bambi’s locked fingers. The couple heaved. Robert heaved. Meg and Dan flew through the air, each holding an end of the dress. It billowed like a flag, catching the demon’s head. Meg and Dan let go and hit the floor, rolling. Enveloped, the demon flailed about, hollering, “Raar,” extremely angry and purblind. Oliver felt himself grinning; he couldn’t believe it. It was like they’d all done this before. Go scientists, he thought; go Dragonball 5.
Dragonball 4. Christopher sidled up next to Oliver.
“They ain’t gonna win,” he said.
Oliver didn’t have time to waste on this kid’s treachery. “Listen, I need that Magic Marker, the one you used to draw the ghost face. And candles. Anything—those fireworks you guys have been squirreling away. Roman candles, sparklers, anything that’ll burn long enough to seal the square.”
“What for?”
“What do you mean ‘what for’? We’ve got to bind this monster.”
Christopher sighed, complacent. “Why should I help you?”
“For the sake of—” But this had nothing to do with science. This was a power play: faith in the enemy. Oliver abandoned his exclamation, instead just socked Christopher hard on the shoulder, then ran to Clarence and bent down.
Rubbing his affected shoulder, Christopher hollered, “Ya can’t win!”
“Clarence,” Oliver said. “Clarence!”
Clarence shifted. His eyelids fluttered. “Are we dead yet?”
“I need to borrow a pen.” Oliver unbuttoned the lab coat. Clarence’s pocket protector held a spare set of glasses, a ballpoint pen, but nothing that could write on cement.
Oliver scanned the shadowy garage for a cupboard or storage unit. There was a closet. There were the bathrooms. There had to be supplies down here, somewhere.
Christopher watched the battle, a tiny Dragonball smile on his face.
The others had grabbed the corners of the dress—hundreds of sequins glinting in the dim—and pulled, securing it to the demon’s head. The dress burst into flames. Everyone had to let go. They fell back a step, enlightened. Their gambit had failed.
“Babe,” the Slaver said. “Your name flows to me.”
“No, pimp daddy,” Jack said. “My name. You want my name.”
“Babe.”
Jack jumped. The demon was ready this time, waved the young man’s body aside. Jack hit the floor. His joints cracked.
Robert attacked, fell in short order.
Meg and Dan ran at the thing waving their tiny fists. One punch, two. One wave from the demon and they were defeated. They collapsed in pain, thrusting their burnt fingers inside their armpits.
Jack leapt up and confronted the demon, hunched forward, panting hard, ready but unwilling to go another round. “Can’t have her.”
“I already do,” it said.
Offering no intimidation of the coldling, it lowered itself and punched a hole in the floor. Cement debris shot out in all directions. A triangular hunk caught Jack in the chest. He flew back, tripping backward, and slid across the floor, ending up next to Clarence.
The demon stood, gazed down. The hole glowed orange at its center. The hole moaned with a myriad of tortured voices—men, women, slaves.
“Come, Babe,” the demon said. “Pleen awaits us.”
Babe blinked. She shook her head, clearing it out, regaining her tiny senses. “I’m not. . .Babe,” she said. “I’m. . .I’m. . .” Was she forgetting her own name?
“Yes, child,” the demon said. “Come to Babe.”
Unwilling to let this occur, Oliver grabbed the 8-year-old and pulled her to what he prayed was a safe distance. But she struggled. It was as if she wanted to go with the Slaver. As if by owning her name, the demon had become a duende far more influential than family loyalty and self-preservation combined. Babe kicked Oliver’s shins with the heels of her bare feet, trying to break free.
“She belongs to me, human. Let her come.”
Jack wasted no time; he ran at the thing. He lunged, hit, brought it into a bear hug. Again their bodies hissed. Burning tuna casserole was the smell.
He must have been hoping to knock it into the hole. Go with it to Hell. But Jack didn’t possess the weight needed for such a maneuver. He squeezed the demon in his arms, screaming incoherencies, filling the garage with pink and white steam.
Finally he had to let go. He slumped at the demon’s flaming feet. The coldling’s t-shirt had all but disintegrated. His pale flesh bore the stamp of the demon: his chest was a hunk of grilled meat. He rested there in a partial sit, his eyes lazy, his expression one of total exhaustion. The demon stepped away, leaving Jack in a smoking pile of immortality.
“Babe,” the demon said.
“Oliver,” Oliver suddenly shouted, half-crazed, wondering what he was saying. “My name is Oliver. It means leader of elves. Babe means nothing. Take my name for your sobriquet. Anything is better than ‘Babe.’” Oliver finished shouting, still nowhere near understanding why he was offering this information.
“Oliver. . .” The demon thought for a moment. “Oliver. I could be. . .Oliver.”
Oliver felt a tugging at his sternum. The Slaver repeated his name, and Oliver felt the expropriation of his truest self, something deeper than science, inexplicable. Perhaps this deeper self was what non-scientific thinkers had long ago termed "the human soul.”
“Oliver,” it said. “Come to me.”
Oliver stood firm. At first. Then he took a step, completely against his will. He. . .resisted. He. . .
Who was he?
He was Oliver! He fought the impulse. He was Oliver. He was Oliver. He was. . .
“Oliver, come,” the Slaver said.
Oliver found himself obeying, walking in a drunken path toward his master and Master’s glowing hole. His soul lunged outwardly in a state of vicissitude. He held it tightly inside, but no more effectively than one could possess a fist of sand.
What had he done by speaking his name aloud? Who was he to do such a thing? Who was he at all, in the grand scheme of things? He was Oliver. Was he? He might still be. But to hold onto his meager identity would lead to more bellicose behavior. Giving up, that would end it all. Surrendering to Master would save everyone.
“Don’t,” Blane said softly.
Then again, there was Blane.
Blane stepped between him and Master. Whoever he now was, he bumped into Blane’s back. Blane held out his arms like a traffic cop, the rolled up sailboat in one hand, a baton.
Over a shoulder, Blane said, “Let me guess. This is a monster who gets its kicks collecting names. Now it’s got your name. Now it controls you.”
“Master needs me."
“This isn’t your master. You are your master.”
“Master can save us.”
“Oliver.” Blane’s voice came to him with motherly affection. “Robert is trashed. Bambi and the kids are out for the count. Clarence is a babbling fool. That big, vampire-looking kid looks dead to me. It’s either you or me. And I ain’t no hero.”
“M-Master needs me.”
“We need you. You are Oliver Bell. You are Oliver Bell. You are.” Blane kept repeating this, over and over. And “Oliver Bell is director of Griffith Observatory. The father. The leader. We’re little elves. You are king. You are Oliver Bell.”
He listened to Blane’s words in a daze. His watery eyes thinned. Though still dimly lit, the parking garage felt horribly bright after so long without power. Clarence was sitting up, rubbing his eyes. Bambi and Robert were on the floor, hugging each other, Bambi crying, Robert almost that far gone. Meg and Dan held Jack in their arms, laying him to rest. Jack’s entire body had turned red. His lips were mumbling. Christopher's lips were smiling.
Oliver mustered an ounce of courage, just enough to know that he was Oliver. But the courage was slipping away like sand. He placed a hand on Blane’s shoulder to let the scientist know that Reason had returned to the garage. Blane stepped aside with an expression of knowing. Oliver hoped to live up to the expectation.
Now it was Oliver and his master, facing off.
Master said, “I am Oliver.”
“I am Oliver,” Oliver said. “You can go to Hell.”
Master blinked rapidly, shooting sparks from its eyes. “I AM OLIVER,” it said. “Attend me, human.”
Oliver so wanted to attend. But he walked to Meg and Dan and replaced them as Jack’s attendant. Jack opened his eyes at Oliver’s touch.
“You’re going to live,” Oliver said. “You have to. You’re immortal.”
Jack coughed. “Immortality ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, dawg.”
The demon commanded: “Oliver! Step with me into the hole.”
“Fuck. . .him,” Jack said, fading, his eyes growing pink. “Sir Oliver. . .”
“I’m here,” Oliver said.
“Christopher can’t lead. He makes the greased choices. He can’t make the difficult ones.”
“Christopher will pay for his betrayal.”
Jack lunged, feebly raising a hand to clutch Oliver’s shirt. “He can’t lead. Don’t let him. . .lead Dragonball. . .4.”
“He won’t. No one will trust him now.”
“They will. They fall. Into line. Don’t let him. Don’t. Let. Lead.”
“I. . .”
“You are Oliver Bell. Father. Keep them safe.”
“I. . .”
“I kept. Your. ‘Ployees’ safe. Fill the bargain. You. Promised.”
“I-I. . .”
“They live. Here. Now. Lead my people. Find Nemo. Make him. Pay.”
“What-What?”
“Res. Cue. Woody. Brooke. Sky. . .ler.”
“Who?”
“Daisy. . .”
That name again. Oliver shook Jack to keep him awake. “Who the fuck is Daisy?”
“Daisy,” Jack said. His eyes closed. “You’ve met her before.”
“I don’t know anyone named—”
“Juan. Must. P-Pay. Day-zee. Must. Pay.”
Oliver shook Jack ferociously. “Wake up! Who is Daisy!”
As Jack fell asleep, fell dead, he whispered, “Don’t let. Chris. Lead.”
Oliver held on as tightly as he could, but Jack’s skin froze! Oliver let go. Jack hit the floor. Oliver drew his fingers to his lips. Jack cracked. Oliver sucked his fingers for sudden warmth. Gray lines scattered over Jack’s body like lightning. Oliver sucked. Jack broke apart, a block of human-shaped ice smacking against a cement surface. Oliver licked his own fingers. The cubes, rectangles, and triangles of Jack exploded, separating in all directions, sliding wetly in all directions, melting in all directions. Only his pants, socks and shoes remained, a puddle of Jack inside. Nothing coldling remained.
Oliver's fingers slid out of his mouth. Jack was done for.
“Oliver,” Blane said. “Oliver, sir?”
Oliver looked up through a sheen of salty tears. The garage was a blur, several humanoid bodies, shimmering. Oliver was to lead now? He was to lead? He was Oliver. Oliver Bell.
“Sir Oliver,” Blane said. “We might want to consider running now. All things considering."
Fists ablaze, the Slaver demon was marching this way.
Run? Lead? Run? Lead?
Run?
Lead?
Run?
"God," Oliver said.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Boom.
Meg, Dan, and Babe kneeled over Jack’s countless pieces and bits, unsure of which pieces and bits were the most Jack-like and, therefore, which should be mourned. That fink Christopher stood over them, supervising. Bambi and Robert were dragging Clarence toward the elevator, with Clarence muttering, “God? Are you God?”
Boom.
Now would be a good time for God to prove to Oliver that He was empirically, without a doubt, actually real. Vampires were real. And this thing—BOOM—coming at him was a demon. Demons were real. And if that hole in the ground, just a stone’s toss away, and all its distant cries of torture were any indication, Hell was real. The tugging at Oliver’s chest, originating from ALL over his body, was real, so perhaps souls were no longer mythological. Therefore, all evidence considered, one could reasonably hypothesize that God was real. The Lord of Us All would only have to show up and stop this—BOOM. Evince Himself.
Now would be nice.
The demon approached slowly—BOOM—one skull-rattling stomp at a time. It didn’t need to rush. It knew Oliver’s name. To it, the events of the last several minutes had become a game. The name game. Its curly grin made light of the fact that it would be taking someone back to the Mines of Pleen, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it, on such short notice. Oliver’s new will to resist meant nothing. Either Oliver would go quietly, or he would defy the demon, and the demon would take Babe, in his stead. Oliver knew this. He felt little comfort with Blane standing valiantly beside him.
“So we’re going now?” Blane asked.
“No, I’m not,” Oliver said. “Here. Take this.” He reached behind himself and lifted the Book of Shadows from the waist of his pants, handed it to Blane. In return, Blane handed Oliver the rolled up picture of the sailboat.
“So it’s going to be fisticuffs, then?”
“No. Blane, your job is to hide that book. If this ever happens again”—he glared at Christopher, who was shaking his head and trying to get the other Dragonball kids to depart this ugly scene—“there might be something in there to stop it.”
“So I don’t have to stay and fight?”
“I insist that you don’t. Go help your co-workers get Clarence to safety.”
“Y’Okay, boss.”
B’BOOM!
When the demon heat struck Oliver’s face, Blane sidestepped away.
“Oliver,” the Slaver said. “I am Oliver.”
Again, Oliver knew it was true. He felt his identity slipping. Nervous, rolling the sailboat picture tighter, he allowed this process to continue. He was “Oliver.’ He was ‘Olive.’ He was ‘Live.’ In only seconds, his name dwindled to “I.”
Ol'ver the demon approved. “Raar,” it laughed, “aar-har-har-har!”
The astronomer known as "I" sagged in oblation. Okay. I'd go through with it, step into the hole, peaceably. His deus ex machina hadn’t arrived. Perhaps, as the Christians were wont to say, this was God’s will. I's single life for seven--screw Christopher, and Jack couldn't be reconstructed. One life for seven. A reasonable trade. And for the sake of science, the observatory would go on without him.
“Demon!”
The nameless astronomer snapped out of it, scanned the parking garage. The voice had come from the left, over by the west wall, a section of it lit by a ceiling lamp. It was Rufus, standing beside a gray, metal box. The fuse box. Had he been here all this time?
“You don’t wanna take him,” Rufus said. “You want mi’boy.”
The demon jerked around, cutting an arc of flame through the air. “I am Oliver,” it said. “Leader of the elves who carry the gembinite from the bowels of my ancestors to the Cavern of Ante’thos. I am Ol. . .ver. Oliver."
“Bell,” he--the nameless astronomer--corrected.
“Oliver Bell,” the demon said.
The astronomer formerly known as Oliver discovered himself shuffling toward the glowing orange hole in the ground. The arrival of Rufus hadn’t changed a thing.
Rufus hobbled forward, sheer hate crossing his olden eyes. “My son called you,” he said. “My son made the deal. He used your foul, disgustin’ name to court his inamorata. A Soreen demon goin’ by the name. . .Hortenz." What a stupid name for a demon. Rufus knew it: "Yep. She hated her name, too.”
The astronomer formerly known as Oliver paused at the hole, peered down. The rim began dark gray, the color of cement, but funneled into white-red, orange, and finally blinding yellow. Miniscule black dots moved at the center of the glare. Ants. Or humans far, far away. Slaves. Or something. It looked like a terribly long hop down. A terribly painful landing would most certainly follow.
Rufus said, “Hortenz loved yours. She decided she wanted your name for herself. So she took it. Took it. Dumped m’boy. Killed ‘im. And took your name, demon. And killed all the slaves mi'boy went ahead and gathered together to pay your fee.” The employee party. The Griffith staff. “Hortenz’s the one you want, she’s using your name now. But good luck finding that one, I’ll bet.”
So Delaney hadn’t cast a love spell, after all, not per se. Delaney thought a powerful demon name was what it would take to impress a sexy Soreen girl. The idiot. What did he expect from a demon—fidelity? Of course she stole the Slaver’s name! She didn’t have to fulfill a contract; it wasn’t her name on the dotted line.
Rufus said, “She’s long gone. Dumped the name 'Hortenz.' Is damn likely livin’ the good life out there in the world. So my son, Frank Delaney, is the name you want.”
The Slaver demon snarled. “That name is dead. I have become Oliver Bell, Director of Griffith Observator. I am a general of Pleen.”
“I am Rufus Jackson! My name means red-haired.”
“Hm. . .”
“I am Rufus, father to the damn fool who backed out of your contract. I inherit his debt.” Rufus laughed clamorously, slapping his knee. “D’ya want your replacement name to be the ‘leader of elves’? The slaves o’ Pleen’ll never take you seriously! Or do you want to be 'Rufus the fiery-haired coal shitter'? Rufus, a King of England, I add.”
Behind pursed lips, the demon chuckled. “Very well, old man. I shall be Rufus. But if you resist, I shall cauterize every testicle, breast, and brain in this place. Give your name willingly, and it shall be so. I grow weary of playing, my fires grow dim. The game is over.”
“Done,” Rufus said, wincing, clutching his heart. It seemed as if his soul were already trying to leave him.
Oliver. Oliver was Oliver again! And-But he couldn’t allow Rufus to sacrifice himself.
“Rufus,” Oliver said, “don’t do this. Don’t give—”
“It is done,” the old man said. He cracked a pleasant smile for Oliver. “Just sweeping up my messes. Tying up the loose ends. Y’know. Making sure you give me a good reference.”
“I. . .will,” Oliver said, shaking his head. Does Hell check one’s references? “Rufus. . .”
“Shhh. Don’t start, son. You just run this place better than mi'boy did, with honor, without lust, and we’ll call it even.”
“I will.”
“And, if it ain’t too much trouble, maybe you can name a planet after me.”
Oliver nodded, thinking, Rufus the planet? Good lord.
He stepped back to allow room for the firebrand now named Rufus and the elderly ex-janitor to approach the hole. Oliver gave a pleading look to the others. Bambi and Robert were trying to figure out how to get Clarence into the elevator car; there was a sizable hole in the car floor, probably created by the Slaver demon, at some point. Blane was standing outside the elevator, by the call button, casually reading the Book of Shadows, as if none of this were going on. Meg, Dan, and Babe were bent over Jack’s pieces, in prayer. Christopher, on the other hand, had completely vanished.
The ex-janitor lifted a shaky foot, hovering it over the hole, perhaps reconsidering. But then he let it suddenly weigh a ton. It dropped. The old man was dragged in after it. He disappeared. He didn’t make a sound.
The demon glanced down the hole to make sure Ex-Rufus completed the fall. Oliver listened, too, didn't hear a thud. Heart pounding, temples throbbing, Oliver glanced up, just as the demon glanced over, and their eyes locked.
“I am Rufus,” it said.
“Thanks to Rufus, you are,” Oliver said, breathing heavily. “Now get out of here, ‘Rufus.’”
Rufus the Slaver demon snarled but grinned. “In time. The time has finally come to complete our transaction.”
“It is complete. You have your new sobriquet. You should have gone hunting after this Hortenz bitch, instead of enslaving my janitor, but why quibble over the little things? The fact is: the contract has been fulfilled. Now get to Hell, out of my observatory.”
“No, Oliver Bell. Frank Delaney agreed to return my name after seducing his love from the dimension of Soreen. That has finally taken place. I am Rufus. But Rufus doesn’t lend his name for free. Delaney still owes for the rental. Plus late charges.”
Uh-oh. Oliver tightly gripped the picture of the sailboat. “W-What’s the fee?”
“Slaves,” the demon said. “Lots and lots of slaves.”
This post is rated R for Adult Content.
Say, say, what does this say?
Seehemewe
Patpuppop
Hethreetreebee
Toppopstop
Ask me tomorrow but not today
--Dr. Seuss, Hop on Pop
A moment’s time stretched, as Oliver’s brain processed, ordered, and catalogued the night’s haul of information: Frank Delaney had loved or otherwise lusted a female Soreen. He borrowed a fire demon’s name to romance her, but at a price: slave labor. Little did the staff know that the employee party had been a way to corral them. They were to be handed over in one lump sum to a slave driver more heartless than the one they already worked for. Little did Delaney know, however, that his girlfriend, as delectable as she was, would maniacally slaughter everyone in the observatory, including him, well before the trade took place. Delaney, that sonofabitch, he’d gotten off easy, and the Soreen had gotten off scot free. The buck passed, next, to Oliver.
Was he to allow the Slaver demon to take Dragonball 3—Babe, Meg, and Dan? The “Scientist 4,” too? The other names Jack had mentioned—Woody, Skyler, Brooke—more Dragonballs? Was this Daisy person another coldling member?
Oliver would have to do something with this information and do it quickly. For starters, filibuster the demon, find a way to trick it out of the parking garage, promise it a wealth of able bodies. Lead it down to the park, maybe. Once there, once out in the open. . .
Well, he’d think of something. One thing for sure, no one else was going to Pleen, or he wasn’t Oliver Bell. No more names would be given, period.
“Heather Tasha,” Blane shouted from across the garage.
The demon stopped reaching for Oliver and instantly looked to Blane. Particularly Oliver looked to Blane, whom had been ordered to flee but, for some reason, chose to disobey. Realizing he was the new center of attention, Blane perked up. With a finger he book-marked the open page and pushed away from the wall. “Shaun Gayle,” he read while strolling in this direction. “Mathew Kyle. Amanda Frasier. Meghan Witherspoon.”
All of these names sounded familiar.
The demon regarded Oliver with bewilderment. Oliver shot bewilderment right back at it. They simultaneously propped their hands on their hips and waited for more. Hadn’t Meghan Witherspoon been one of the dossiers in the employee file? Mathew Kyle had been senior editor for the Griffith Observer; that much Oliver remembered. These were the names of the deceased.
“Robin Day. Dave Christianson. Louisa Adams.” Blane boldly heralded each person. What did he think he was doing, chanting a spell? He was scenting the air with fresh meat, was what he was doing. Rotting meat, in this case. How would the Slaver react when it found out these people weren’t viable miners, being quite dead and all?
“Hannah Alice Markhov. Sherlynn H. Parris. Ricardo Lopez.”
“What is this?” the demon said nervously. “What. . .what is he doing?”
“I think he’s itemizing your bill,” Oliver said. “Um, payment in full?”
“My slaves? My slaves. I must have them. Now.”
“Well, er, about that—”
“Now.”
And now the demon would.
They were manifesting from the shadows behind Blane, a dozen “human” beings emerging one by one with each name called out. Their eyes were sunken blotches; mouths, gaping pits; noses, just hints of lines. Born in motion, they moved independently from dangling legs that tapered into footless tufts, sailing over but grazing the floor.
From separate origins, the many figures coursed into a single mob. Altogether they passed in front of a column. Oliver could read the Section E marker through their pellucid torsos.
A cold sweat bubbled up through the back of his neck. “Ghosts.”
“Go-Ghosts?” the demon said, backing up.
Was that fear in its voice? Oliver’s own anxiety decreased the moment he saw that the demon’s aura had diminished from hot red to pale pink. How in Hell could such a powerful beast be intimidated by a few spirit entities? Oliver had to have been misinterpreting its reaction.
“Greg Kent,” Blane said. “Sid Jeffries.”
The figures appeared here and there like Pop-Up Video bubbles, then veered to join the mob. Blane didn’t seem at all disturbed by them, sweeping up behind him, streaming around him, passing through him. Oliver was. They were heading this way.
“Keep them away from me,” the demon whispered angrily.
“What’s the m-matter?” Oliver murmured, unable to blink. He himself had started backing away. “’Fraid of a few ghosts?”
“Blast you, human. Make your slave put down that book. Keep your Rufus safe.”
Rufus.
Oliver got it now. The name Rufus bore the stamp of the old man’s susceptible nature. The janitor had been a gambler, a shirker, a poor husband and father, and a heavy drinker, unwilling to confront the phantoms of his past. Rufus had been diffident up to the bitter end, at which point, upon shedding that sullied name, he made up for a lifetime of cowardice. He had abandoned the name like a greasy pair of coveralls.
Well, this demon wore the name Rufus now, and, true to form, Rufus feared ghosts.
Blane continued walking and reading. By the time he reached the end of the list, there must have been two dozen souls, swarming out in front of him, streaming around frozen-stiff Oliver, their arms extended toward Rufus, closing to a touch. The tips of their groping fingers evanesced against the glare of the demon’s radiating, terrified face. It jogged backward, swinging its arms but striking nothingness. It allowed itself to be herded in a wide arc, first toward the car ramp, then toward the bathrooms, then the elevator, then this way again, spiraling inwardly, increasingly toward the portal it had opened in the floor.
“Leave me alone.”
One of its heels scraped the edge of the cavity. It halted, two great arms spinning windmills for balance. A leg swooped up. The teetering demon emitted a “raar” and a whimper. The second leg swept the air. Rearward, the demon fell. Gravity dunked its head and shoulders, first. Fingers spread wide, its hands went into the hole, second. Two kicking bonfires entered last, flaring up in frozen yogurt swirls—whites, oranges, pinks, grapes, and cherries. In a camera flash, the demon, Rufus, was gone. Payment received.
The hole darkened to gray.
* * *
Shivering, Oliver reacquainted himself with his environment. It was too quiet. Babe, Dan, Meg, Robert, Bambi—even Clarence, finally sitting up on his own—watched Oliver, intently. The ghosts of the observatory, however, had vanished.
Standing by, Blane snapped the Book of Shadows shut. Oliver accepted it, slid it into the waist of his pants. In doing so, he noticed a shirttail poking out of his crotch. He hadn’t finished dressing earlier before racing out of his bedroom. With the sailboat rolled up in an armpit, he tucked his shirt, tightened his belt, and zipped up his pants.
“Fascinating,” Blane said, almost grinning. “What was that all about, huh?”
“You tell me, Sir Blane. Announcing those names was a stroke of genius.”
“Panic. Surprising that it worked.”
“Well, you hide your panic well. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. You knew those people. Intimately, I assume.”
“So intimately, none of them invited me to the party. Lucky me I wasn’t cool enough to make the guest list.”
“Still. . .” Oliver expressed sympathy. “To make physical contact with a ghost! I got the vapors when they ghosted around me. But they pulled a Patrick Swayze on you.”
“Hm. Ghost.”
“You can say that again.” He was still struggling with the concept. It felt so weird to suddenly be incorporating ghosts into his list of experiences. “I’m going to start running out of myths to disbelieve in. Ghosts, coldlings, vampires. . .”
“Hm, cold vampires?”
“Never mind,” Oliver said, his brain doing backstrokes. He almost mentioned werewolves and the Slayer. “I’m afraid to say the word ‘Easter Bunny,’ at this point.”
“I do believe you told us there weren’t any ghosts down here.”
“It would appear that I was wrong.” Oliver sensed disharmony in the conversation, something about Blane’s lack of utter amazement. “I guess Robert rolled his ‘1.’ He should be pleased.”
“Ghosts. Are you sure?”
“Uh, pretty sure.”
Now he was starting to feel obtuse. A scientist doesn’t jump to conclusions. Oliver knew better than to exclude other possibilities. People hallucinate, appearances can be deceiving, and the Sun once orbited the Earth.
He said, “I mean, of course, we’d have to perform multiple series of controlled experiments to be a hundred percent sure these were actual ghosts. So that means we’d have to try and attract them again. Read off their names. But later, okay? I’m still shaking. But I think it’s pretty safe to at least theorize that ghosts exist at this point. They sure weren’t dresses on clotheslines.”
“You actually saw ghosts?”
“Yes. . .” Oliver gave Blane a queer look. “You. . .didn’t? They rousted the Slaver. They passed through your body. You summoned them on purpose. Right?”
“Interesting.”
Bambi crossed the open space from the elevators to here. She arrived in a mad pant and bent forward, hands on knees. “What happened?” she said. “Why did that-that thing give up? What did you do, send a wasp after it? What was it swatting at, why was it acting like that, what made it run?”
Oliver cut her off with the raise of a hand. He said, “You didn’t see them, either?”
“See who?”
“The guh. . .the. . . Oh, never mind.”
“I don’t want to never mind. Who?”
Blane tapped his chin, intellectually. “Very, very interesting.”
“You don’t believe me,” Oliver said. He gripped the sailboat; the paper crinkled. “This must be how Mulder felt.”
“Fox Mulder believed in things he didn’t see.”
“See who? See what? Blane. . .”
“But on the contrary,” Blane said against Bambi’s probing. “I think what you’re saying is at least possible. That demon was most definitely running from something.”
“Running from what? You guys. . .” She was whining now.
Blane nodded. “Everything you’ve been through could be considered an eye-opening experience. But that leaves the question, why haven’t the rest of us been granted super sight?” He paused. “Mind if I see that picture again?”
“Uh, sure,” Oliver said. “Um—here.”
Blane spread open the sailboat and turned it to Oliver. He said, “Try unfocusing.”
“SAW WHO?”
There were large sections missing—fire damage. Oliver saw that the computerized blue ocean had turned brown around the edges. The mast had been burnt to a stump. For a sec, though, just for a sec, Oliver thought he saw something else. It darted past the forefront of his mind. He tried to possess the image, but the strain on his eyeballs started him blinking.
He pinched the ridge of his nose. “I still see a sailboat.”
“Try again,” Blane said.
Bambi stomped her foot. “A sailboat scared the demon away? Is that ‘who’ I was supposed to see? What are you two talking about? God!”
“Sh,” Blane said. “Go ahead, boss.”
Oliver exhaled heavily, totally sick of this stupid picture, and shrugged, and raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head, and let his neck go limp the best he could. He remembered the advice: go lazy. This would make something like the hundredth attempt.
“Now what do you see?” Blane said.
“I see a sailboat. Maybe something else, I don’t know.”
“Look closer. No, scratch that. Look wider. No, no, scratch that. Here, I’ve got a hunch.”
Blane held the picture at arm’s length, level with Oliver’s line of sight. He inched forward until the discolored bow of the boat touched the tip of Oliver’s nose. The scent of stricken matches saturated the paper. Up close, the imagery blurred. This exercise was pointless. Oliver couldn’t even distinguish the hull from the breakers.
Pop!
White blotches scattered across his field of vision. In sharp, throbbing pain, he ducked to the side with his nose in his hands. Blane had whacked the back of the picture and gotten him real good. He smelled and tasted snot. Damn it, Blane, he thought. Damn, damn, damn.
“What’s the matter with you, you goon,” Bambi said, spreading Oliver’s hands, so she could get in there and nurse his booboo. “That’s what I was supposed to see? You getting fired for punching your boss?
Damn, damn, damn it!
Blane continued ignoring her. “Look.”
Tears dripping off his jaw, Oliver asked Bambi to leave him alone, because he was okay, sort of. He saw a watery haze. Now there were three of her breasts, bulging against the lab coat; one set of Blane’s twenty fingers; three sailboats, merging into one or two, expanding to four.
But then the most amazing thing happened.
Oliver saw.
“Hold it,” he said to Blane, “keep it steady, I. . .I. . .”
“Thought so. What do you see?”
“A church,” Oliver said. It felt so good to see anything other than a sailboat that he had to laugh and repeat himself. “I saw a church, I think.”
A steeple. A tree. A stained glass window. Several tall windows, actually, maybe stained glass, maybe not.
“I just don’t get paid enough,” Blane murmured, noisily rolling up the picture. He raised his voice. “Something’s different about you, boss, something that occurred when the demon borrowed your name. How do you feel? Other than your nose.”
“Tired. I feel tired and sticky. Jittery. And relieved. Need more adjectives, or do you have a supposition for me?”
“Just guesses. You’ve been graced by a fallen angel. Maybe your recent experience dusted off a couple of dormant neurons, fired a few spark plugs, got those ocular muscles flexing. You always knew how to see, but with the proper stimulus you’re finally learning how to observe. Or something like that. I’m not up on my Sir Arthur Conon Doyle.”
Oliver unrolled the thing once more, couldn’t help himself. He had to look again, just to prove that it hadn’t been a hallucination. If he could repeat the experiment, he might not later write it off as a fluke. But there it was a second time, floating in space, though hard to focus on. It appeared like a shadow of nesting termites behind the semi-transparent planks of the sailboat. This time, Oliver hadn’t required a pop on the nose to distinguish the outline of the building. Before he forgot, he asked Blane to dismantle the fist he was making. Blane seemed a little disappointed but thrust his hands in his pockets where they could do no harm.
The picture was shaking. Oliver’s hands were shaking. He dropped the sailboat.
Oceana Village was a church, a goddamned, blessed church not a “community.” He didn’t get that from Jeslyn’s brochure. And what’s more, after all these years, he didn’t care. Because, finally, he knew where to start looking.
A church.
I’m ridin’ in your car
You turn on the radio
You’re pulling me close
I just say no
I say I don't like it
But you know I’m a liar
'Cause when we kiss
Ooo
Fire
Oliver stands in the shower, masturbating to no one. Disinterested in what July will bring, he remembers the past month, leading up to this night. His hair is longer now: black, soaking strands, clumping on his shoulders. He considers getting it cut. He considers letting it grow. He considers the aching in his shoulders, yanking to the beat of the music that blares from the bathroom sink. It’s fixed on the Pointer Sisters track. Bambi lent him this compilation; that’s her CD player, disappearing behind a cloud of white-hot steam.
* * *
It’s nighttime. There’s a hot party going on. It originated in the Main Rotunda and quickly spread throughout the building—East Hall, West Hall, East Rotunda, South Gallery—up to the observation domes and down to the Science Labs—on out to the lawn.
Dan and Meg are standing before the Astronomers Monument. They don’t know who Copernicus is or that the plaque on the star-shaped base of the monument celebrates his 500th birthday. They are hamming it up for the webcam, which is mounted on the armillary sphere that tops off the thirty-seven-foot, tapered shaft. Poorly chaperoned by six nine-foot statues of Hipparchus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Herschel, Dan pulls down his pants and bends over. Meg hikes her dress and does the same. They moon the virtual world.
They grow bored after awhile and head down to see what the scientists are up to.
Inside, Bambi is playing peek-a-boo with Babe, who sits on the rim of the Gravity Well. Babe laughs so hard her party hat slides down over an ear. Clarence runs by, swinging his lab coat like a helicopter propeller. He is being chased by one of the strippers in clacking high heels. They, in turn, are being chased by the party clown, bow-legged and clumsy in his gigantic clown shoes. The clown waddles by at top-speed, spilling shots of brandy from the small bottle he has appropriated from Clarence’s private bar.
Next, Oliver passes, punching numbers into his calculator. He’s the only one still wearing his work clothes, that tweed jacket of his, dress shirt, and black slacks. Clearly, he needs something—or someone—to ease him into a partying mood. Bambi winks at the little girl, who is eager for the next boo. But Bambi has gotten semi-serious, all of a sudden. It’s all about the peek now.
She takes the girl’s hand. Babe hops down. They watch Oliver, hunched forward, as he enters the Planetarium Theater, decorated with colored balloons. Babe removes her conical hat and smiles up at Bambi. Bambi takes the hat, kisses the girl’s cheek in thanks, and tiptoes after her employer.
The small girl is left alone, but the smile lingers. She understands these things. It’s funny-icky big people stuff. Brooke used to act the same way about Christopher before Daisy came and took her away.
Two floors down, in Science Lab 1, Blane shows Dan a smidgeon of chemistry. He pours a purple liquid into the beaker that Dan is keeping steady with both hands as one would a cup of hot cocoa. Their party hats hang around their necks from rubber threads.
“Fire” is being pumped through the speakers in the ceiling. Bambi’s been going through a retro Pointer Sisters phase, which is to say that everyone has been going through a retro Pointer Sisters phase. Grumbling, Robert aims the remote and ups the volume to 40.
He and Meg are sitting cross-legged in front of the television set. Robert loudly points out that Daniel is now being portrayed by Matthew Broderick, an actor a little before Meg’s time. Meg knows of Matthews Perry and McConaughey; the only Ferris she’s heard of isn’t a Bueller, it’s a wheel. Mention of Sex and the City’s Carrie as Broderick’s wife seals the reference to her 10-year-old brain. Sitting at the counter, Blane loudly adds, movie actors didn’t always accept television roles like they do nowadays. Anyway, the commercial ends, and Meg and Robert each take turns passing the silver space helmet of buttered popcorn. The Stargate: Stone Age teaser has begun.
Dan shouts at them to turn it the heck down; he’s learning science. And to stop hogging all the popcorn.
* * *
It’s like this every Friday. It’s peaceful all afternoon, then Oliver can’t hear himself think.
The employees enter his office one at a time, Robert first, usually. The door closes and clicks before the next person barges in. Bambi, usually. Bambi likes to watch Oliver surfing his computer while not making it look like she’s watching, but he knows she is, facing forward into the back of Robert’s acned neck. The girl is a master peeker.
Soon all four scientists are present and talking in their outdoor voices. The door opens yet again. The line is brought up by the new hires, shuffling inside. Oliver has trouble remembering their names.
Everyone is here to pay his respects to the Leprechaun. At five o’clock sharp, the voices die down, and the screen comes to life with dozens of pretty lights. The internal printer zips side to side; the continuous sheet of paychecks rolls out. Robert does the honors of separating them at the perforations. He heralds the names upon reading them, and the hands go up, and it’s no less emotional an affair than when overseas troops receive letters from home.
Oliver notices that his bangs have grown a little long. He brushes them aside. He continues scanning the search results, yielded by the keywords “LA” and “churches” and “Juan Nemo.” Every so often he’ll include the word “wife-stealing fink” just to see what comes up. Of course, it’s always porn.
* * *
Late at night
You're taking me home
You say you wanna stay
I say I wanna be alone
I say I don't love you
But you know I'm a liar
'Cause when we kiss
Ooo
Fire
He has searched for a month but found nothing—well, porn sites. Lots and lots of porn, so it wasn’t a total loss.
He figures he’ll pick a day, get into his van, and just start driving, checking off each address as he pulls up next to the church in question. But, honestly, that can wait till July. Tonight is tonight, and very much deserved. He’s ejaculated once, already; hence, when the time comes, he won’t blow his wad, prematurely. It’s been too long a lonesome wait for Oliver. He’s slate blue down there. But, hey, if at first you succeed too quickly, try-try again. He expects this to be a lengthy, lovely night of trying.
Bambi’s CD player is still set to REPEAT 1.
Oliver struts out of the shower and dries off to the groove of the Pointer Sisters. He walks naked to the bedroom. There, he sniffs his armpits. He weighs the results, takes another whiff. Yeah, they’re okay, basically.
While searching for deodorant, he finds a disgusting bundle of shirt, socks, and briefs under the bed. These were what he wore from the leg of Salt Lake City to LA, and he wore them for two days after that, all through the Slaver demon episode. Granted, it’s a sick pleasure, but he presses the bundle against his face and inhales. Is this what he smelled like? He doesn’t even wince. He stares morosely at the poster on the wall.
Bobby Quayle bought it for him from a street vendor one time back in Philly, because Bobby knew of his son-in-law’s Seuss fetish. It’s a page straight out of If I Ran The Zoo, blown up in Photoshop with no attention to dpi resolution. At this size, the lines are fuzzy. The caption under the picture reads, “It’s a pretty good zoo. And the fellow who runs it seems proud of it, too. But if I ran the zoo, I’d make a few changes, that’s just what I’d do. So I’d open each cage, I’d unlock every pen, let the animals go, and start over again.”
* * *
The employee party has been successfully raging for hours. The partygoers move from room to room, level to level, and scatter like marbles. The last time anyone saw Oliver, he was actually wearing a festive hat. In the East Hall, Robert whispers to Blane that The Bambinator must have gotten to him. Blane nods. Blane is the only person on Earth who has ever refused the girl’s advances.
About this time, Clarence gets an idea. He whispers into young Meg’s ear. Together, adult and child sneak over to the security booth. Officer Farley Leland is sitting at his monitoring station, a wall of screens linked to scores of cameras throughout the complex. The pictures change every few seconds. Farley stares blankly at the images passing before his graveyard eyes. He has only been working here six days so wasn’t invited to the celebration.
Meg tugs at the large man’s sleeve. He looks down, then up: Clarence offers the poor fella a martini glass, filled to the rim with a light blue concoction he invented himself. It’s basically a bluebird, enhanced by a dollop of bourbon, an overspill of tequila, and with just the right amount of blue curacao. He pridefully announces his creation, “An Ol’ Blue.”
Farley reacts surprised at the offering, but thanks the scientist and takes a discriminative sip of Ol’ Blue. He squints, holds it in his cheeks, bobs his head, then gulps. Winces. Coughs politely. Dayam, he raises the glass in a toast and hurriedly takes another sip.
* * *
Oliver has to keep ordering Babe not to drink the paint. That kid’s going to kill herself, one of these days. She seems to be. . .emotionally undeveloped.
It’s like this every morning, everyone in coveralls, pitching in to fix up the place. Today, the three Dragonball children are applying a second coat to the garage walls. You’d think they’re painting the floor, according to the buckets of red splatters, but they seem to be having fun. Babe thinks the paint looks like Kool-Aid.
Oliver and Robert are dragging an iron grate over the hole in the cement. Blane stands by with the drill, which he has used to make niches for the bolts that will fasten the grate in place. Blane grips the drill vertically parallel to his face while supporting his right elbow in his left hand like James Bond. He enjoys that thing way too much. Oliver decides to just let him keep it.
When the grate is secure, Babe peers into the hole. It’s pitch black down there, no longer yellow, no longer echoing the tormented cons of Pleen. She holds a Dixie Cup of red paint over the hole. She tilts it, watches it bleed.
The cup is empty now. Oliver and Robert listen into the hole. And listen. And look at each another. They don't hear the paint.
It never hits bottom.
* * *
You had a hold on me right from the start
A grip so tight I couldn't tear it apart
My nerves all jumpin' actin' like a fool
Well your kisses they burn
Oliver pats the talcum powder off the bottom of his black slacks. Messy, messy stuff. But he lost his deodorant, so it’ll have to do.
He wipes a section of steam away from the bathroom mirror. “Oliver Bell, you look shimply shmashing in a tuxedo. Mighty fine.”
But my heart stays cool
He thinks, I feel more like a director in this thing than I do in my regular clothes.
“Greethingsh, Mish Moneypenny. My name is Bell. . .Oliver Bell.” He’d look great, right now, posing with Blane’s drill. “Come now, Goldfinger, do you exshpect me to talk?”
The 007 dies in his expression. He thinks, I should just bite the bullet and pay for a haircut. I can afford it.
On top of the dresser, under the Seuss poster, waits a rose-scented card, an extension of the girl who secretly delivered it. She is waiting, too, three doors down. The card is of a knight in shining armor. Computer art. Allowing his eyes to go lazy, Oliver easily perceives a blonde maiden. Inside the card is written “Sir Oliver: Observe what’s underneath my mystery. 10:30 p.m. Sharp.”
It’s 10:25 p.m.
The card is obscuring the photo of Jeslyn. Oliver picks her up by the frame, and suddenly he’s transported back in time three years to her pregnancy. Old emotions rise in his throat. He swallows unsuccessfully.
He pecks the glass with his lips—“Ancient history, dear”—and drops her inside the underwear drawer, closes it with his hip.
Not so hasty, Bond, not so hasty. Don’t let a detour deter you from your mission; remember why you’re here in L.A.
Oliver opens the drawer back up, removes the photo, and apologizes to it. He touches Jeslyn’s face. She is so freaking beautiful. Naja should grow up to look just like this.
He situates his wife, carefully, back on the dresser, on the spot she was before, on the thin rectangle that isn’t dust. Using a thumb, he polishes his lip print off of the glass, makes her presentable, as she was before, as it should be. Before leaving, though, he flips Jeslyn around to face Gerald McGrew of the zoo.
She shouldn’t have to see this.
* * *
Some people just don’t know when to quit. Some people just aren’t happy until they’re completely shit-faced, and some people are an embarrassing sight to see.
The clown and one of the strippers have swooned in the elevator. The car goes up, and someone enters, stepping over these sleeping drunks. The car goes down, and someone gets off, wading through their tangled arms and legs and accoutrements. Eventually the car goes back up. It’s a routine. The elevator has been fully operation for three days, ever since Oliver hired a contractor to get his butt in there and fix that gaping demon hole. It was impossible to explain how the hole got there.
It’s getting late, but the energy runs high in the sublevels. Mostly, everyone has gravitated to the Science Labs.
The head janitor throws a Frisbee to Babe. She raises her arms like a blind goalie. It flies right on through. Blane and Dan throw themselves over the beakers to protect them from the party disc. It skids across the counter—score! Sorry to say, broken glass and purple liquid end up everywhere—in their clothes, on the ground, the ceiling, least of all the counter. Babe holds herself maturely and explains how she regrets the events of the last moment in time. But it’s OK, because the janitor knows exactly where to find the dustpan and mop. Dan doesn’t think it’s okay no matter what they do to fix it. He and Blane were experimenting with “permanganate.”
Dan has no idea what this stuff is—he pronounces it “puma-gate”—but he likes it. It’s purple.
Meanwhile, Bambi has Oliver cornered. Unlike the others, they headed up to the observation domes; rather, Oliver did, and Bambi followed. She asks him what his favorite constellations are. She tells him hers, even though he doesn’t bother to ask. She finds it electrifying that he once interned for Dr. Brown’s San Diego astronomy team.
Oliver must admit, he adores that Bambi refers to Sedna as a “planetoid” and that she pronounces it correctly: SHED-NAH. And she, too, thinks astrology is a load of crap. But she turns right around and confides that her sign is Libra. Oliver finds that he likes that, that she’s a Libra. He tells her he was born under the sign Aquarius. Just making conversation.
Out of the blue, Bambi asks him if he owns a tuxedo. Because he’d look fine in a tuxedo. Mighty fine.
* * *
Laughingly, he tells them to hush and be patient. They’ll see it soon enough.
And now it’s time.
Oliver removes the blindfolds. Babe, Dan, and Meg blink several times at the face of the door. The sign reads, “Here There Be Dragons.” Clarence did the stenciling; he did a great job.
The bedroom door opens to a freshly painted room! There’s a bunk bed for Meg and Dan. There’s a pint-sized bed near the bathroom; that’s for Babe. Babe immediately runs into the bathroom and flushes the toilet, absolutely amazed, absolutely grateful. She plays with the faucet and turns on the shower, while, back in the main room, Meg and Dan mark their territories. Meg claims the top bunk; Dan, the bottom. They don’t even argue about who gets which. They simply agree.
* * *
Well Romeo and Juliet
Sampson and Delilah
Baby you can bet
A love they couldn’t deny
My words say split
But my words they lie
'Cause when we kiss
Ooo
Fire
10:28 p.m.
Oliver is humming the agreeable tune as he walks down the corridor. The walls are scorched in places, and the floor still bears the prints of the Slaver’s feet. Occasionally, he catches the stench of melted plastic, which is silly, because the head janitor swears his underlings scraped every last bit of gold frame off the floorboards. What ever happened to the picture of the sailboat, anyway? It could be harboring more clues. They should really find it.
At the third door down, Oliver levels his bowtie. He hopes everyone else is asleep. He’d rather they only suspect what’s going on than know beyond a shadow of a doubt. But Oliver just knows that Bambi is going to brag about this, come tomorrow. You’d swear she was a guy.
10:29 p.m.
Oliver knocks lightly, careful not to use his wedding ring hand. It’s difficult, because he’s left-handed. With his left hand, then, he holds the rose-scented card that he found slipped under his bedroom door. Still waiting for her bedroom to open, he extends the card like an invitation, because that’s what it is, an invitation.
* * *
The Main Rotunda is dark, quiet, uninviting. Some time ago, the strippers gathered their clothes and money and split. No one’s so much as glimpsed the clown in hours. The elevator is empty but for an empty bottle of brandy. The outside lawn is littered with confetti. The security station is unmanned.
The Main Rotunda sits. The balloons, those that haven’t burst to shreds, are either lying on the floor like orbs of cement or roaming free-range along the domed ceiling, beneath the famous Hugo Ballin Murals, on high.
One of the new hirelings budges through the lobby with his janitorial cart. He’s sweeping as he goes. Oliver walks quickly over, extending a freshly popped bottle of Guiness. The guy nods in thanks, and Oliver relieves him of his broom. Oliver tells him to go home, get some sleep, at full pay. The guy shrugs but, okay, toasts Oliver. So he leaves, then, guzzling beer with one hand, rummaging for his car keys with the other. Oliver finishes sweeping up.
* * *
He sweeps one arm into the air and shouts, “’Stop! You must not hop on pop!’”
Oliver’s got the Seuss book in his lap, is licking his fingers and flipping pages, back and forth. Now he comes to
Father mother sister brother
That one is my other brother
My brothers read a little bit
Little words like “if” and “it.”
My father can read big words too
Like “Constantinople” and “Timbuktu”
He catches a breath. He adds, “And ‘permanganate’—and now it’s over. It’s getting late.”
Oliver sighs inwardly before closing the book, one of his favorites.
His three goofy little Dragonballs have the covers pulled to their chins and are thoroughly captivated. Allegedly, they’ve never been read to before.
“Again,” Babe says.
Oliver shakes his head, paternally—no, sorry, sleepy-time now. “Again.” No, ask tomorrow not today. But the children don’t accept that: “Again!” In a heartbeat, Babe, Dan, and Meg leap out of bed. With great big hugs, they drag Oliver off the chair. Oliver struggles, but their giggles are contagious. He’s on his back; the children bounce wildly. “We like to hop, we like to hop, hop on pop.” It really, really hurts.
Someday Oliver will read to his own daughter. He hopes Naja will hurt him just like this.
* * *
What is he doing? He’s still married. He’s got a daughter. Is this cheating? It was surely cheating when Jeslyn ran away with that cult leader. Oliver’s earned a night of intimacy, hasn’t he? Really, it’s not like the Order of the Cold ever let him have a social life. Sure, they were all fucking one another’s brains out, but when the “Water Bearer” engaged in a little innocent flirting, the coldling women turned characteristically frigid. Lukies were beneath them. Guess you had to be a coldling to get some heat.
10:30 p.m.
Oliver hears footsteps.
The door opens halfway, just enough for him to glimpse the dim, flickering room. Bambi is behind the door working the knob. She tugs it a little more. Inside, there are five candles, premeditatedly arranged in a square and associated by “chalk” lines—only, she used lipstick instead of chalk. It’s going to be a bitch scrubbing the Ward of the Slaver off the floor. Oliver appreciates the effort, though. Bambi must have been trying to be cute.
She has succeeded. She always does.
The door swings completely open to Bambi in a blue-sequined "ghost" dress. She drapes herself around the door. The dress is one size too small, and that’s a pleasing thing. She’s fixed her hair with three perfect pigtails, also pleasing. It’s a thing she does.
She ignores the tuxedo to comment on Oliver’s shaggy appearance. He tells her he’s going to get a haircut tomorrow; he’s just decided.
She won’t let him in quite yet, not until he assumes the position. Standing in the doorway, he raises his arms, while she sniffs his armpits, mulls it over, then sniffs again. She blinks; she nods; they’re okay, she supposes.
Bambi filibusters teasingly. “You never told me what my name means.”
It means “young girl.” Young enough to be his baby sister--Laverne--even younger. He can’t tell her that.
He answers, “Bambi’s a deer,” but that’s cheating.
She expresses an aha. “And what about your wife?” she says, of all times to ask such a thing. “What does ‘Jeslyn’ mean?”
“Ask me tomorrow,” he says, “not today.”
Oliver invites himself inside. Thoroughly satisfied, Bambi locks up behind him.
Ooo
A dark, quiet hallway.
Fire
The Ward of the Slaver glows brightly through the crack under the door.
Hot Kisses like Fire
The candles will burn all night long.
Burn me with Fire
I like what you’re doing now
Fire
Fill me up with
Fire
Meanwhile. . .
Two floors down, a Dragonball of one reads the plaque on the fuse box. He can’t read, but it’s fun to pretend.
“In memory of R. Jackson. We’ll never forget the name he made for himself—June 2007.”
Christopher misses this place. The garage used to be one krunk hangout. He should still be living here.
It drives him bananas to think he should have been the guy telling the Dragonballs what to do—not Jack. With him doing the leading, they would have stayed Dragonball 8. But Jack had to blow it and let Daisy take ‘em, and then they were 5.
Shit, then the demon dude showed up. Heh—Christopher was quick to turn that drama to his advantage. But damn that janitor, anyway. Now his ex-duns are cozing up to Popz Duke Bell. The Dragonball days are over.
“Losers,” Christopher says. His indoor voice rings all through the empty parking garage. He cringes. But a part of him hopes Mr. Bell and the others heard. Yeah, that’s right. He wants them to know they made a big mistake with all their diggity-dank, and they’re gonna pay through the noses.
Idiots.
Losers.
Everyone’s a loser but Christopher.
There is breathing over his shoulder; a long exhalation pours out in front of him and mists. The air turns cold. He twists his neck—not enough to see her standing there, not that he needs to. He knows who it is.
“Wasup, son?” he says.
From behind, she replies, “You are a very bold boy, coming here.”
“Chill out. I just been thugging.” He knows he’s in trouble but won’t show it. “What’s the verdict?”
“Nothing much, just foostering about. Looking for you. You’ve been gur for a day now.”
“Told you, I been thugging.”
“Obviously. I thought I’d come put the kibosh on whatever it was you’re getting yourself into. And here, of all places, I find you. Not wise.”
“Just catching up on my readin’.” He pretends to read the plaque, again.
“Sound. So, if you’re done. . .”
“Ain’t ready yet.”
“Can’t let you get yourself caught, now, can I, now that you’re so close to joining us?”
“Yeah, aight.” When he’s damn-well ready. Christopher taps out a lucy and lights it. It’s his last one. Blowing a long stream of tainted white smoke, he crumples the pack and drops it. “You and me’ll bounce in a minute. Aight?” He turns his head just a little farther, peering back just a little bit more to see how much trouble he’s really in.
Her silhouette lords over him. She thinks she owns him, ‘cause she’s his boo. His boo’s an older woman, a teenager, like Jack, but still even a little older, working on being younger. She flattens her ice-cold hand between his shoulder blades. He shivers, violently.
Touching me burning me with fire
“Ye-Yeah,” he says, quivering. “I was just saying to myself that everyone’s a loser but me an’ you.” To fight off the chill, he’s whacking his right thigh with the rolled up sailboat. It’s really a picture of a church, though. Anyone can see that.
“Fair play to you, Christopher,” she says, “for being the only one to track me down. But let’s not make a terrible hames of that. It won’t help me if you get caught returning to the scene of the crime.”
After ditching the battle with the Slaver demon, Christopher laid low out in Alhambra at the golf course. Then, when he was sure no one was out to get him, he picked up the search. Creepin back for the sailboat made all the difference. In, like, less than a month he figured out its secret and tracked down the one squirrel Jack couldn’t find after Sedna knows how many risky ventures under the sun. Christopher always knew he was better at creepin than Jack. That’s why Jack’s dead and he ain’t.
She removes her hand, leaving a hot spot on his skin, under the shirt. He feebly sighs and glosses over the plaque. “Yo, fuck this—when-when I get to merge with Brooke ‘n’ Skyler an’ Woody?” Especially Brooke.
“Soon,” she whispers, a sharp breath in his ear. “There shan’t be any mooching off of Juan until we meet his divine needs.”
Christopher glares at the plaque. She’s fronting. Yeah, she’s already been up North, and that’s how she got to look so young so fast. But is cool. Christopher knows about Wedding Rock. When they finally motivate, they’ll roll up there together and take the Cold Vow. Then he and his three duns’ll be reunited. Christopher will get to be older, and Boo’ll get to be even younger than she looks now. She’s already pretty thick, though, gotta admit. You could spring a dime off that booty.
Hard to believe what she used to look like.
He thinks her eyes are greener today. Figures: Skyler’s eyes had been stupid green. It was like feeding her glow sticks. In short, come Saint Patty’s day, no one’s gonna be pinching this squirrel. She’ll get a pinch-back, automatic.
Also sounds like she’s O.D.ing on homeboy’s accent. He couldn’t help how he talked. ‘Bout a year ago, Skyler broke out of Portland—lots of F.B.I.s up there, total endemic of fire crotch. That’s why his boo’s hair is redder, today. It’s the merger: two become one.
So she says.
On the real, she only likes Christopher because his eyes are green; he knows it. She shops for boos like popz ‘n’ momz dukes shop for orphans to adopt. She holds out for just the right size, shape, sex, age, and color. Yeah, it’s been all about green eyes and red hair for his boo; she’s got this Irish thing going on. Which is mad wack, because Christopher’s hair is blacker than the inside of a crack pipe. And his eyes aren’t all that green. Why’s she want him?
Man, is he ready for this? If he waits too long, he’ll be too old for her. She’ll get all pissy, like she does, and call him a jibber, but he ain’t scared. It’s just that he doesn’t know what to expect. Is he gonna have to memorize words to say or what? Or is the bonding gonna be simple, just listening to the preacher man preach? Will Juan be there?
Will it be fast or slow? Will it hurt? Will it be sexy?—he hopes it will. His boo’s one slammin twat waffle; he digs her, and he misses Brooke fierce.
And this ain’t gonna be no one night stand, neither. It’s a forever deal. They’re gonna marry.
Christopher ain’t no jibber.
Ooo
He drops the stog and stamps it out with a small burst of red sparks.
Fire
He follows his boo toward the car ramp, which is open to the sky. The stars are hot, tonight.
Fire
Someday soon, together as one, he and his boo, Daisy, are gonna bounce back to this place, and they’re gonna make some serious drama. He ain’t no fuckin’ jibber.
Word.
The Story of Oliver Bell
East Dome
JUNE 29th.
2:37 p.m.
She felt like Supergirl with vision like this.
Using the Zeiss Refractor, Bambi Albertson magnified the streaked clouds and the fluff of pretty birdies, flocking by on this bright summer day. She peered through the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the exosphere, the thermosphere. Beyond the orbit of the moon, did her mind glide, beyond the orbits of the planets, beyond Shedna’s peculiar, Plutonian orbit. The twelve-inch lens brought her through the Oort Cloud that supposedly enveloped us all; she soared with the comets now. She could fly forever after if she focused the magnifier to 1000 power—to alight in her green future, encircled by a white picket fence and a town where it never burned and it never snowed.
Bambi’s passion magnified even the faintest of galactic lights. She could see all the stars and souls, macro- or microscopic, celestial or terrestrial, and saw that they were humane. Breathing, thinking, needing. Bambi could feel.
And she could likewise hear every minuscule sound in the quiet observation dome. But she didn’t like what she was hearing. The pestiferous noise filled her stomach with butterflies. She stiffened, she knew:
“So,” Robert said, his feet scuffling up behind her. “Word around the lab is you’re going to be filling the Telescope Demonstrator position on Friday nights.”
Bambi smiled into the telescope hoping to sound cheerful. “Yeah, well.”
Leaving it at that, she began angling the Zeiss Refractor toward that uneventful spot in the sky to which the moon would later be rising. Though a slow process, the internal counterweights and a simple lever allowed her to easily position the nine thousand pound telescope, precisely. Super vision and super strength were the playthings of a woman in her condition.
“I thought you went clubbing on Friday nights.”
“Not anymore,” she said brightly.
“Sure, yeah—hey, why bother? After the grand opening, you can expect six hundred visitors up here every weekend. Some of them have got to be eligible men. It’ll be like ordering out for pizza.”
“I’ve had my fill of pizza, thanks.”
Of course, she was referring to Robert’s face. She knew it was mean, and she felt sorry about it. But at least it shut the guy up for awhile and kept her buoyant. She had woken up this morning with special powers, among them this larger-than-life dis-concern. She was feeling free, she was feeling saucy, she was. . .
She felt macroscopic today.
She hadn’t even put on a bra.
Bambi lost herself in the motor hum—the lulling sound of the Zeiss Refractor on its equatorial mount, compensating for the Earth’s rotation by continually making alignments, imperceptible to the naked eye. Because of this feature, whatever she chose to view wouldn’t disappear. The future belonged to her.
She could hear Robert messing with the telescope monitor, tapping its side, trying to get it to work, trying to annoy her. But she wouldn’t let him. Naturally, he was only viddying the circumscribed blur of sky, which is what anyone would see at this time of day, anyone but Bambi. Robert didn’t have super peepers like her. Robert hadn’t been caught in mid-flight.
Inevitably, though, his presence began to weigh her down. She kept expecting him to give her shit about being silly enough to ask results from the Refractor at half past two in the afternoon. However, what he gave was “So. You and the boss man finally got to bumping uglies,” and she found herself favoring the shit. It would have been so much easier to explain.
“Why, Robert, whatever do you mean?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. Or my ears.”
“Hearing things, are you?”
“Don’t ask me, ask Clarence. Ask Blane. Why not ask all of Mount Hollywood, while you’re at it? Hell, ask that Slaver demon, I bet it could hear your moaning all the way down in Pleen. Ooo-ooo, better still, why not ask the children what they heard?”
Suddenly concerned, Bambi pressed into the telescope. The hard rubber dug into her socket and felt distractingly pleasant. A milky blue sky and thoughts of Oliver’s smile enveloped her. Her passion would shield her heart from all noise, be it visual, textual, aromatic, flavorful, or even idle talk.
But you know what? Heck with it, she decided to answer the meanie.
“What the tykes heard was two people in a mature, adult relationship,” she said with nonchalance. “What can be more beautiful than that?”
“You call the grunting of rabid beasts beautiful?”
“Please, the kids are ten years old. This is the age they’re supposed to be getting their sex education.”
“If they were in school, yeah. But when I was in grade five I don’t recall the F-me Word being on the vocabulary list.”
Her chirpy tone was breaking up. “Weh-Well hell, they had to have learned something living homeless in L.A., right? The Dragonballs are streetwise, if emotionally crippled. I’d say it’s awfully hard to offend those three sets of ears.”
“Babe’s ears aren’t ten,” Robert said. “Oh, sorry—they’re ten now after last night. I know I aged two years listening to the show.”
“Hope you took notes.”
“As if I need to take notes.”
“Trust me. You need to take notes.”
“Oh? Are you implying what? I didn’t ‘do it’ for Her Majesty?”
She huffed. The birdie had crash-landed. Now there was definitely noise; leave it to Robert. Bambi couldn’t help but recall their awkward sex life, which seemed like ages ago but not long enough. And, no, he’d never ‘done it’ for her. Everything Robert did he’d done for himself.
Bambi adjusted the eyepiece. “It’s a theory,” she replied.
“Well maybe we should just test that theory.”
“Oh please.”
“No, let’s.”
She heard him tinkering with his belt buckle.
“Not really interested, Robert. I’ve got all the man I need down in the Director’s office.”
At that, Robert gave up on the buckle. He fell silent.
The Zeiss refractor hummed.
Timidly, Bambi glanced back.
“Well there you have it, folks!” he squawked into his thumb, scaring Bambi half to death. “With but one night of disgusting, sweaty science sex, she’s drawn her incontrovertible conclusion. She thinks the boss is more of a man than your humble reporter. How can she do it, folks, I ask you, how can she think this office affair can possibly work? Let’s ask her. Miss Albertson?”
He offered Bambi his microphone thumb. She looked at it. It wiggled, as if challenging her to a wrestle.
Okay. She’d play along, if it would ease the friction, although she really didn’t appreciate Robert’s mind games.
She grabbed his wrist and spoke into the fingernail. “Great to be here, Robby, great to be here.” She was pretending the squares of sunlight hitting the center of the dome were Radio Land. “First let me say, it’s not that Oliver Bell is more of a man, folks.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s just that he’s so different from what I’m used to.”
“Uh-huh. Monkey sex with people your own age, you mean.”
“Let’s just say Oliver is very. . .attentive.”
“Uh-hum.”
“But I guess you could say I was first attracted to Mr. Bell’s ferociously loyal nature.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He gave up everything.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, he really knows what he wants and goes for it.”
“Uh-huh, yes.”
“And I must say, I find that very, very attractive.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. You say he’s loyal, then?”
“That’s right, Robby,” she said, being the best co-host she could be. “Ferociously loyal.”
“Well, this is just one reporter’s opinion, but I don’t think a scientist who cheats on his wife with his young, sexy assistant counts as a loyal man. Am I right or am I right, folks?”
Bambi accidentally took a moment to think, then flashed Radio Land her Pulitzer smile. “Oh no, he’s loyal, Robby, he’s very, very loyal. It’s just that, through no fault of his own, he has misplaced this loyalty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He needs to know that I would never leave my husband to join some cult.”
“Uh-HUH.”
“Once he realizes that I’m the one for him, he’s going to direct all his loyalty at me.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So you expect that you two will marry?”
“Right.”
“And live happily every after.”
“Right.”
“Until he meets someone younger.”
Bambi froze in mid-“Right.” She said, “Uh, that won’t ever happen.”
“Are you sure? Because if a man can cheat on his wife once, well. . .”
“It won’t happen.”
“Because he’s so loyal.”
“That’s right.”
Careful, her teeth were grinding.
Robert plugged an ear and pretended to be receiving from a hidden earphone. He said, “Folks, I’m in contact with LA 101.1 AM. We have a question from a concerned listener. She asks, ‘Miss Albertson, what makes you think you will stick with a monogamous relationship? You never have before.’ Excellent question. Miss Albertson?” He shoved the thumb in her face.
She said, “I-I think I’ll do fine. I’ve tried the rest. Now I have the best.”
“So no more clubbing for you on Friday nights?”
“I, uh. Well, Robby, the way I see it, why go clubbing when you're already holding a flush of hearts?"
“Uh-huh, I see. Pardon me, Miss Albertson, I’m now fielding a question from Omaha. Our listener asks, ‘What makes you think Sir Oliver will abandon his quest for Wife and Daughter to play house with you, you silly, silly girl?’” Robert gave her the thumb. “Your response, please, Miss Albertson."
“Well, I don’t, I.” She remembered to smile, always smile. “You must understand, dear listener, that Oliver and I got to know each other, last night. We connected.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He even cried.”
“Uh, and what made him cry, Miss Albertson?”
Bambi had walked right into this. Why did she say that? She had to say something! Now she'd have to say too much. She showed her pearly whites and said, “I asked him if he would. . .”
“Yes?”
“If he would ever consider, you know, loving me.”
“Uh-huh. And what did he say?”
“He said he couldn’t.”
“Uh-huh. What else?”
“He said. . .” Bambi’s smile was trembling. “Then he. . .he said he was sorry.”
“Uh-huh. Go on."
Oliver had assumed the position of prayer at her bedside. He’d held her hand, as she rested naked on the mattress, and his tears dropped to her knuckles. He cried that he loved his wife, he needed his daughter, he’d give anything—anything at all—to reclaim the last three years. With that, Oliver could no longer speak. Bambi pulled his head into her shoulder and rubbed his hair, saying, “Shh-shhh-sh-sh-sh, it’s all right.” And though her lover’s pain discomforted her, Bambi couldn’t stop wishing that he would never find Jeslyn and Naja. The more he stumbled around, tortured and lost, the more she could mother him. If he would only let her.
"Go on," Robert said, "we're listening."
Bambi’s voice squeaked. “H-He said he didn’t feel ‘that way’ about me.”
“Whoa-ho!” Robert holloed, bringing up his arms to marshal the excitement of the virtual listeners. “There you have it, folks, straight from the horse’s arse. Miss Albertson, are you saying, after he had sex with you, he rejected you?”
“No, it wasn’t like that—” She chirped, hand to mouth. She’d gone from Supergirl to perky announcer to blubbery victim in sixty seconds flat. “He just isn’t ready, yet. He’ll come to me, eventually.
“Did Oliver say that?”
“Not yet.”
“So you expect he will.”
“I know he will." She wiped her eyes. "I don’t need a telescope to see his soul.”
Robert plugged his ear again. “A question from London England says, ‘Miss Albertson, you stupid, stupid git. How ironic. You love this man for his convictions, but you want him to be disloyal to his wife. So, if you want him to love you, he’ll have to give up the one quality that attracted you to him in the first place. What will you do then?’ Excellent question, listener! Well, Miss Albertson?”
She ignored the thumb. “I will always be attracted to my Oliver,” she said directly to Robert. Not to Robby—Robert. Robert needed to understand that it was over between him and her. She'd chosen Oliver.
Robert lost the Robby façade. He locked eyes with Bambi—nodding, withdrawing a screwdriver from his lab coat. He said, “I can fix that.”
Was that a threat?
She said, "Robert, you can’t change the way I feel. It doesn’t work that way.”
"It can be just that easy."
"Robert, I don't love you!"
His face fell flat.
He made a hand into the A-OK gesture. He began running the shaft of the screwdriver through the finger-thumb loop, in and out, in and out. “I can make it work any way you like. Just stop treating me like a notch in your headboard, let me in.”
With dignity, Bambi returned to the telescope, her back to Robert. She leaned into the eyepiece and tried not to think about last night. Damn Robert anyway! Now she couldn’t see anything but the same light blur the monitor showed. Her super vision: retracted. Her inner strength: drained. Her poetic mood: Love was a telescope, blinded by a bright blue sky.
Mischievously, Robert began tapping the monitor casing with his screwdriver. He said, “Oliver is going to find them, Bambi. He won’t choose you. And when that happens, you’re going to come begging me for the big screw, mark my words, Bambi Albertson. Mark ‘em.”
“Robert,” she said, “why don’t you take that fucking thing. Back down to the lab. Put on your Stargate. Your Samantha Carter. And just screw yourself with it?”
“I would,” he replied. “But, you see, Bambi, dear, my parts aren’t compatible.”
* * *
Security Booth
JULY 29th
3:57 p.m.
One Month, One Hour, Twenty Minutes, Five Seconds Later. . .
A figure appeared on Monitor 2, linking to a camera directly outside his security booth and pointing into the Main Rotunda. He didn’t recognize her. He quickly pressed the CHECK 2 button above his knees. The screen froze on the young woman, who was facing this way, glancing around, lost, and just fine and dandy to be so, it seemed. Her gleeful eyes fell up to the camera, right into Leland’s eyes. She merrily waved. The woman was tall. A little taller than the boss man—shorter than the resident scientists—taller than that Blane guy, though—maybe 5’11”, 160 lbs., dark hair tailored to soulder length, light chocolate skin—kind of Mongoloid, American-Eskimo or American-Asian, but not full Caucasian. But very, very pretty.
How did she get inside?
Leland swiveled around in his chair, preparing to head out and—she was standing outside the open door. A tall, wide smile on her face. Two eyes sparkling, wet and brown.
On instinct, Leland unbuttoned his holster.
She said, “Good afternoon. You are Leland Farley.”
“I am.”
“You are the daytime security man. You used to work 11 to 7, but now you work 7 to 3.”
“Yes.”
“You make $21,050 a year. You attend college courses at LAVC. You used to have a girlfriend. You like drinking Ol’ Blues, and your favorite food is sushi. But you eat bologna for lunch. You eat it out on the lawn under the Astronomers Monument.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, touching the pistol at his waist. His leaned over from his chair, whispered, “How in God’s name did you know that?” Well, the sandwich would have showed up on the Internet, but the other stuff?
She tilted her head, sharply to her right. The apple-slice smile on her face tilted with it. “This place is Griffith Observatory” was her non-sequitur reply. “It is busier than it used to be.”
Leland nodded. “How did you get—”
“My husband has done wonders with the place,” she said. “I love him very much. We have a daughter. Her name means ‘second daughter.’ But I do not think I have a second daughter. Do you have a second daughter? If you do, what is her name? What is the name of your first daughter? You were drunk at the employee party. You said your girlfriend left you for a movie star. Is that true? I would really like to update my files.”
“Uh. . .”
“’Uh’ is neither affirmative nor negative. Did I tell you that I do not know much about astronomy? After all, I am only a girl.”
Her grin hadn’t altered the slightest bit; her heart beat wildly through the white tank top. “I am very good at astrology, however,” she said. “What is your sign?”
“I don’t. . .I never really. . .uh, astrology?”
“When is your birthday? I would be happy to tell you your sign. I am very good at astrology.”
Leland said, “I think I’m the one who should be asking the questions, ma’am.”
This chick was on drugs. By the looks of her pounding heart, drugs-a-plenty.
“I am here to see my husband,” she said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Oh my, yes. He has been looking for me. Would you like to know how long? Two years, one hundred seventy-eight days, one hour, six minutes, and twenty-one seconds. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four. . .”
Without taking his eyes off the young woman’s full, yapping lips, Leland reached over and slid the appointment book this way. “Your name, please?”
“Twenty-eight—” She blinked. “I am Jeslyn. My name means ‘gift’ or ‘wealth’ or ‘God.’ Your name means ‘from the meadow land.’”
Suddenly, her bright-white eyeballs turned up into the back of her head and started vibrating. She was thinking. Or receiving electroshock, maybe.
Brown irises shot down and tightened on Leland.
“Of course, I am Jeslyn Bell now,” she said. “‘Jezebel’ means a ‘follower of idols.’”
“Idols, huh?”
“Idol.”
Her smile vanished.
“I do not like Juan Nemo,” she said, pouting. “He is a wife-stealing fink. He is not a good idol. Not like my Oliver.” Yep, there it was again: the return of the harebrained smile. “My husband is the only idol I need. I was wrong to leave him. I cannot wait for him to punish me. My Oliver can be very. . .attentive.”
She tilted her head, sharply left. A lock of soft brown hair fanned under her nose. “Well, I have enjoyed our talk. But I should be going. I am looking for my husband.”
“Oliver Bell.”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
At the employee party last month, Leland had listened to long tirades about this one. A crazy story about how “Jez” had fallen into a cult. The leader of this cult, one Juan Nemo, was reputed to be a very dangerous man.
“Sure. I can locate Mr. Bell for you.”
Jeslyn tilted her head back to the right. “Super,” she said. “Where can I find him? He must be terribly worried. One hour, six minutes, forty-eight seconds. One hour, six minutes—”
“I’ll locate him now.”
He flipped to the front of the appointment book for the boss man’s cell number. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Mr. Bell had gone ahead and married himself a wacko. His stories didn’t do justice to the real thing, though. And her smile was a little contagious.
“Jesus Christ was a false idol,” she said.
Leland, a lifelong Christian, paused. “What?”
“You should worship my Oliver. He comes highly recommended, and he does not bother you at home on Sundays. I suspect we will all be practicing Belleism in the future. I can teach you a secret prayer.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
Leland didn’t find the number up front, so he started flipping toward the back of the book.
Running her eyes along the trim of the door, she said, “Well, I should be going.”
“Stay right there,” he said in a snap. “I’m not done with you.” He glared, still flipping pages, no humor left in him, none. Crazy pagan.
“That is okay, Leland,” the Bell-ite said. “I can find my way.”
“What? Didn’t I just tell you—”
He caught himself shouting. Monitor 2 showed the building inspector strolling the circle of the Main Rotunda. Not sixty feet away, he hadn’t noticed any of this exchange, and Leland meant to keep it that way. He lowered his voice. “Just stay put, all right. All right? Look, just come inside and shut the door.”
He reached out for the young woman’s wrist and pulled her inside, but-what—
She didn’t budge.
Leland let go and fell back into his creaky chair. It rolled back three feet. He was shocked, staring at the powerhouse in the doorway. It was like this girl’s slippers were made of cement and her bones were made of concrete.
“Please,” he said. “Step-Step inside. Have a seat. I’m sure I can call Mr. Bell, if you just calm down, wait.”
“I am calm. I can wait." Beaming pride: "I am good at waiting.”
There were two stairs at her feet. She looked down, pulling the hair out of her face, and daintily ascended. Cautiously, Leland slipped around her; she stood tall in the security booth. He closed the sound-proofed door and stood with his back to it. Who or what had he just locked himself in here with?
Browsing the many buttons, lights, and screens lining the counters and walls, Jeslyn tilted her head left, lefter, then leftest. Apparently, this extreme angle satisfied. She perked up, turned to Leland. He gripped his pistol, ready to draw. Half the girl’s head—the hemisphere above her perma-grin—wrinkled in consternation.
“Sit down,” he said, cocked. “Now.”
She beamed at the weapon. “That is a Webley Mark VI .455. Indiana Jones used that gun in the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is played by Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford starred in Hanover Street.”
“What? Lady, you are crazy.”
Her head tilted righter—as right as possible without throwing her balance. “I do not see Oliver anywhere in here. And I have waited ever so long. I will be going now. It has been very nice meeting you, Leland.”
“God damn it, I told you to sit.”
He drew the pistol clumsily and pointed, just mortified that it had come to this. But that was why they had issued him a gun, so people would take him seriously. He knew, though: You don’t draw your weapon unless you are prepared to use it. Leland was prepared to use it, he hoped. He aimed, shaking the barrel in line with the young woman’s cute mulatto nose.
She said, “I am going to have to take that away from you, now, Leland. Guns are bad. They are not compatible with my parts.”
“Sit. I’m warning you.”
“Sitting is for husbands, not wives.”
She took a step.
“One last time,” he said. “Sit.”
She happily grabbed the barrel. She gave it a tug and pulled Leland off-balance. He didn’t let go. His finger tightened around the trigger. It trembled. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t shoot the boss’s wife! What was he thinking? This should have been the part of the movie where the robber did whatever the cop told him to.
“What’s the matter, lady, never been to the movies? Sit, sit, sit!”
Jeslyn gave an experimental tug, simply fascinated that Leland would not let go. He held the grip tightly but kept his finger limp on the trigger, limp but twitching. Leland caught her eye. He snarled. She smiled. He screamed and pulled. She smiled and didn’t let him. He struggled, struggled less, stopped struggling. Jeslyn yanked him toward her, and Leland fell to his knees. Panicking, he made a fist.
Blam!
The Story of Oliver Bell
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000000101
E 0000000101 /*output data // “smile brightly”
L 0000000112 =IF // input = Juan THEN // +GOTO 1010175647 // REM POUT
G 0000000206 +GOTO E 0000000101
REM A PENITENT WIFE ALWAYS SMILES
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0058012168
D 0000025101 */input data // “Elevator Door opening = 3 feet across Tall = 6.5 feet Call station buttons = up or down.”
E 0000035443 /*output data // “Check your appearance in the chrome”
D 0000126102 */input data // “Looking cute”
D 0000126106 */input data // “The elevator doors are opening”
C 0000200135 /stored data //folder “Etiquette” //doc “Elevator Courtesy”
L 0000300042 =IF // elevator = unoccupied THEN // +GOTO E 0010445441
E 0010345032 /*output data // “Wait for elevator to empty smiling engaging in witty banter” / / +GOTO C 0304500638
E 0010445441 /*output data // “Enter elevator turn 180 degrees face Main Rotunda.”
C 0020000135 /stored data //folder “Griffith Observatory” //doc “Blueprints3”
C 0020000139 /stored data //doc “Blueprints3” // “Olivers office is on Level 2”
C 0020000140 /stored data //doc “Blueprints3” // “Olivers bedroom is on Sublevel 1”
E 0030045443 /*output data // “Press elevator button S1”
A 0031201140 REM OLIVER IS A LOYAL HUSBAND
E 0040045789 /*output data // “Wait for elevator to stop”
A 0041704123 REM MAKE USE OF IDLE TIME
E 0058012147 /*output data // “Think of Oliver” //ref C 0001344522
E 0058012155 /*output data // “Sigh girlishly”
E 0058012168 /*output data // “Think of how good its going to be”
M 0100000000 #/clean5 // REM ELIMINATES HARDCORE MEMORIES THAT MIGHT CORRUPT THE DELUSION FILES
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM C 0551344522
C 0304500638 /stored data //folder “Witty Banter” [random mode]
B 0310600754 /stored data //doc “Super Hilarious Jokes”
B 0330405766 /stored data //doc “Astrology Spreads”
B 0380204731 /stored data //doc “Weather Anecdotes”
B 0380204778 /stored data //doc “Elevator Disasters of the 1980s”
B 0380204795 /stored data //doc “Blanes cold dark secret”
E 0402010219 /*output data // “Flirt innocuously” //ref C 0551344522
H 0542002912 +RETURN
C 0551344522 /stored data //folder “pictures of Olivers face” [slideshow mode]
H 064773421 +RETURN
E 1010175647 /*output data // “Suck your top lip in, stick your bottom lip out and shake it all about.” //doc “Bad Feelings” + 1 [idle for 03:03 minutes]
H 2005468821 +RETURN
B 3034587010 /stored data //doc “The look on Lelands face” // REM PRICELESS
This Post Contains Adult Language and Attitudes
Louie Michelle Studio
JULY 29th
“Girl,” Peter said, “you have the—how you say?—‘Tarzan tangles.’ Peter need ape companion to help picking through these.”
Into the long, wide mirror, Ollie expressed a silent plea to Bambi. A blue towel enveloped her crown in tall, vertical folds. In her sleeveless green dress, she looked like the mother Simpson.
Ollie pulled away from Peter’s hands, leaned over the right armrest, and whispered, “Did your friend just call me Tarzan’s ape?”
“You’ll have to excuse Oliver, Peter,” Bambi said over her left shoulder. “The only accent he understands is New Yorker. And the closest thing he’s come to Ukrainian is Yakov Smirnov.”
“’What a country,’” Peter said, reaching for the scissors. His thick fingers elevated a lock of Ollie’s delicate hair. He dampened it with the spray bottle before making the first snip.
The other customers were calmly chatting with their individual stylists. Peter had himself two customers today. Bambi wouldn’t let anyone else touch them.
“You’ve, uh, I’m noticing what a deep voice you have,” Ollie said.
“Yes. Is deep. Peter have deep throat.”
“I’ve never heard such a deep voice from a-a—”
“If you call him a barber I’ll slap you,” Bambi said. “He’s a cosmetologist. You know, like cosmology only completely different. He’s also one of Hollywood’s finest clinical aestheticians. He’s worked on JLO, Winona Ryder, Tori Spelling, Sally Field. . . You’re in good hands, Oliver. You really should let him work on your pores. From this day forward, I promise you, you’ll simply call him Docta.”
Peter recognized the worry in Ollie’s eyes, poor boy, but he played off of it. “In my country, they call me Dark Vader. You know, from the Star Wars. But you should be hearing my sister. She is big James Oil Jones of Ukraine. Many, many gentleman suitors.”
Ollie settled uneasily in the chair. The boy reminded Peter of one of those inlanders visiting California for the first time. Look at his shoulders: stiff. Look at his neck: tense.
This piece of ass had been in town for two months, Bambi had replied in answer to the private question, Girl, where has these one been all Peter’s life?—so cute, so little. Bambi added, “Mitts off. He’s mine.” Well, we should see, Peter had replied. I detect wedding ring on finger. Ollie Bell is bad girl.
It was past time for Ollie to go Wood, if ever did he hope to fit in. Repression never did good to anybody. Partway through the cut, Ollie leaned over to scratch his leg. Like a covert spy, Peter gazed over the backrest into the crack of his bottom. Nice buns. Reminded Peter of that adorable Ferris Bueller whom he watched in a movie back on Ukraine UT-1. Except Bambi’s boss was in denial for sure. Just wait till Ollie realized he was gay. Oh yes, oh yes, it would then be Peter’s birthday, it would then be Peter’s birthday. . .
Peter refrained from doing a shoulder dance. He had to play it subtle. He understood that he was a big man, compared to most Americans. Big men intimidate first-timers.
Ollie leaned back and closed his eyes, grudgingly allowing himself to be cut, caught unaware of the things Peter’s imagination was doing to his white, slender body. The boy’s eyelids fluttered, though, as if he were dreaming a nightmare.
“Enjoying first time in West Coast?” Peter said.
Ollie’s face wrinkled, eyes still closed. “Oh, this isn’t my first time. After high school, I matriculated in San Diego.”
That came as a surprise. “So why L.A. do you now choose?”
“Me,” Bambi said kiddingly. She touched Ollie’s arm. The boy’s neck muscles reacted. Peter held the scissors away until they stopped flinching.
“Actually,” Ollie said blindly, “I’m here looking for my daughter.”
“And his wife.”
“Right, right. And my wife.”
In the mirror, Peter read Bambi’s face to mean she was not okay with the situation. He had always considered her to be a kindred spirit, fancy and free of charge. But the last couple of times she’d come in for her bi-monthly appointment, she seemed different, always mentioning “Oliver,” as if he were the bee’s knees. Peter didn’t think this change in her was very good. Now that he had met the boy, he saw that Ollie would only bring gargantuan heartache to his most excellent galpal, Bambi Albertson. No, it would take much of a man like Peter Petrova to lure Ollie out of his clocher.
And a butt-load of KY.
Peter smiled to himself, trimming Ollie’s long, broken strands. Ollie rested while engaged with Bambi in murmuring conversation, subdued voices as if Peter wouldn’t be able to hear.
“So what are we doing after this?” Bambi said. “A movie?”
“You’ve got lab samples to analyze. And I’ve got streets to comb.”
“Work, work. Always work.” Bambi shook her head. “Whatever. So how goes the quest?”
“Feels like I’ve been to a hundred churches this month.”
“No Oceana village?”
“Not even Mud Puddle Village.”
Bambi seemed pleased under her obligatory frown. “So you’re giving up?”
“I’ll drive down every street in Los Angeles if I have to. I’ll recognize it when I see it.”
“Maybe you should take a break until late August. Give your head a chance to clear. You’ve got the grand opening to think about.”
Ollie clenched his eyes. Peter wondered if the boy would look as cute with a smile instead of his eternal Have A Day face. He bet a smile would look awkward and lick-able. Peter would put a smile on the boy’s face, all right, just he wait and be seeing.
“I’ve been thinking,” Bambi said. “We’ve been seeing each other for awhile now.”
“Seeing?” Oliver said.
Yes, Ollie was a player for most certain. Love them and be leaving them, how typical of a young stud. Not near good enough for his galpal, Peter thought while re-wetting Ollie’s head —but perfect for Peter. He squeezed the trigger, watching the fine, silver mist spray out, and he thought, Yum.
After a long emotional pause, Bambi said, “Yes, ‘seeing.’ I kind of figured after we did ‘you know what’ that we were sort of ‘you know.’”
Ollie’s eyes unclenched. But he did not do her the courtesy of looking, as she spoke to him:
“We’ve been spending a lot of time together. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“Like a couple.”
Ollie did not reply.
“I know you’ve heard things about me, Oliver. Please don’t let idle talk turn you against the idea of us being together.”
“What have I heard?”
Oh, this was no good. Ollie was playing dumb. Angry, Peter tossed the scissors onto the tray and moved protectively to Bambi’s station. He removed the towel. Her wet, stiff hair fell in many directions, stuck straight up in others. Peter began mussing the blue-black dye job into something brilliant.
Ollie sat up, cranked his head, blinked. “Peter? What about my haircut?”
“Girl, you wait,” Peter said, searching for Bambi’s natural parts.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Peter shaped three pigtails, three nubs of which he chose one to mangle. He pulled so hard Bambi gave a pained yelp.
“Eh-Anyway,” Bambi said, “none of that stuff is true, anymore, that stuff you may or may not have heard about me. I’ve changed. I’m ready to commit.”
“I. . .see. Well, ah, commitment is good, if you meet the right guy.”
Silence.
“I was thinking,” Bambi said, utterly brave and stupid, “the chances of you finding Jeslyn are way out there. Like beyond Pluto out there. Way beyond Sedna. We’re talking Oort Cloud territory.”
“I will find them.”
Bambi fought Peter’s tugging. She yanked left to Ollie, and Peter had to release her. “But you and I connected,” she said urgently.
“We connected?”
“You know. Last month. In my room. We should at least talk about what happened. Every time I bring it up you—”
“Oh boy,” Ollie exhaled.
“Yeah, that. It’s been one month, one hour, twenty-five minutes, and three seconds since our first encounter. Don’t you think it’s time we tried again?”
“Bambi, I thought I made myself clear that night.”
“You said you loved your wife. But don’t you think after us having sex that maybe you’re subconsciously looking for something better than that unfaithful meanie?”
“We. . .you and I. . .had sex.”
In the mirror, Ollie noticed Peter reaching around and fastening Bambi’s first pigtail. The boy dropped to an infuriating susurration; he leaned far to the right; Bambi leaned left. Peter’s artistic shaping slowed. He labored to hear Ollie.
“What are you talking about, sex?”
Bambi restricted her volume to match his. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Bambi, you and I didn’t have sex.”
“Oh yes we did, Oliver Bell,” she whispered, “you and I made fiery, beautiful music. And you cried on my shoulder. And I pet your hair. Don’t you deny it.”
“Are you off your gourd? You and I both know what happened that night, and I’m not going to apologize again.”
Damn curious, Peter started in on the second pigtail—minding his own business.
“I don’t want you to apologize,” Bambi said. “You made me feel something for the first time in a long time.”
“Feel what—disappointment? And since when did I cry? I haven’t cried since the day I found out my daughter was born.”
Bambi strained against her vocal cords, screaming but whispering. “You did so cry, Oliver.”
“Did not. I apologized and got up and left. What galaxy are you living in?”
“The Milky Way galaxy.”
“Then I must be living in the Whirlpool galaxy M51, far, far away from your perception of current events. If anyone had sex that night, it was you. I heard you in there moaning all night long after I left. We all heard you. The kids heard you.”
“Why are you saying these things to me? You were there. It was you and me. We were making love.”
“Were not.”
“Were too.”
“Were not.”
“Infinity were.” She folded her arms, a face of panic and betrayal. “Were, were, were.”
That did it. Peter did not like Ollie Bell. Oh, Peter would still do an affaire with the hot little Abigail, but no way would they cuddle, afterward. In all his many years, Peter had learned how to play players. Players had to be shown what it meant to lose.
After a moment of upset thought, Bambi said, “You made love to me, Oliver. I’m ready to make the commitment. How about you?”
“I feel I’ve been clear about that. I’ve been nothing but honest with you since you started flirting with me.”
“Flirting? Me with you? You’re the one who’s been flirting with me.”
“I don’t know where this is coming from, Bambi, I don’t know what game you’re playing. Look, I’m sorry for what almost happened between us.”
“Almost?”
“We kissed. And I touched one of your. . .your thingies. Okay, so I’m a cheater, I admit that. I’ll never live that down. Never. But we didn’t go all the way, at least that much I can live with. I’m sorry. Again, I say I’m sorry. I just couldn’t go through with it. I already explained why, and I’m not going to do it again. But I won’t cheat, not twice.”
Bambi stood up, ripping Peter’s busy hands away. The Velcro separated, and her bib fell to the floor over the scattering of soft black piluses. She rounded Ollie’s chair and faced him, her butt pressing into the rim of the counter under the mirror. For the first time, Peter noticed a nasty purple burn reflected on each of her upper arms.
Bambi grabbed Ollie’s face and kissed him hard! He tossed and turned, kicking and thrashing, but couldn’t break free.
“Girl, you go,” Peter said. He rooted for the kiss, but, really, he thought Bambi was making a huge mistake, and this made Peter sad. Bambi’s pass wouldn’t help him convert Ollie to the Home Team. It would eventually happen, of course, because Peter’s gaydar had pegged Ollie for a homosexual; it would just take longer for Ollie to realize it, possibly longer than Peter cared to wait.
Bambi pulled out of the kiss, stringing a long thread of saliva between them. It snapped.
“You’re not a cheater,” she said, wiping her lip. “You can’t cheat destiny.”
“I did cheat,” Ollie said, wiping his lip, too, “and we need to break up.”
“Break up?”
She backed up, which brought her to a fast sit on the counter. The freshly dyed hair jutted off of her head like brambles. In the mirror behind her, Peter saw two neck veins thumping. His palgal needed an emotional cleansing, stat!
“Not that we were ever a couple, but yeah,” Ollie said, “break up. Break it off. Stop seeing each other outside a working context. I don’t want to lead you on, Bambi. I made a mistake, last month. I guess I’ve been making mistakes every since, but you came on so strong, I weakened. It felt good. I should have known this would happen.”
Bambi frantically shook her head clear of this nonsense. “We fucked, Oliver, say it. Say it.” Then she laughed uneasily. “Look at me, I never would have guessed I’d ever have to beg a man to brag after he boned me.”
Every face in the salon turned this way, every customer, every stylist, and Jeorgie at the cash register, the supervisor; and Jeorgie had slept through the earthquake of ’92, but even he perked up at this disputation.
“You screwed my brains out and it was great, God damn you,” Bambi said. “God damn you, Oliver. For the most amazing night of my life. Don’t you dare lie to take that memory away from me.”
“Lie? Lie?”
Peter leaned in-between them. “Sh. You two think is good, make big scene? Is no good scaring customers. Please, let us cut and mold hair with quiet.”
Oliver’s cell phone jingled—Blink 182’s “I’m Lost Without You.” That cinched it. Ollie was a faggito waiting to enter a burrito. Peter smiled to himself, because his gaydar never failed.
Ollie answered the ring—instantly caught up in the chattering on the other end. “Sl-Slow down, Leland. What’s the prob—? Who? No. You’re joking.”
“What could Leland possibly want?” Bambi said to herself.
Peter said, “Who is problem? Who he, these Leland?”
“He works security for us.”
“Ah. Big Abigails, men who do security. YMCA.”
Bambi cracked a smile. “That was a traffic cop, you big ape.”
The mirth died down. With her arms folded, she seemed to sink into a cloud of annoyance, tapping her foot. This phone call was interfering with her important conversation.
“No, Leland, just-just hold her there. I don’t care how—find her. Find her and hold her—what?”
“What’s he saying?” Bambi said.
“Yes, what?” Peter said. “What mean ‘hold her’?”
Ollie listened to the phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh my god. Did you call an ambulance. No? No, are you crazy? She— What? How can that be? Are you sure you shot her?”
“Shot her?” Bambi said.
“Who gets shooted?” Peter said.
“Uh-huh,” Ollie said. “Listen, Leland, forget what you think happened. If she walked away from that, your aim must be off. Just locate her. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He ripped off the bib and slipped the cell inside his adorable tweed jacket.
Bambi said, “What? What?”
“They’re there,” Oliver said.
“Who’s there?”
“Yes,” Peter said. “Who there?”
“Jez.”
Bambi paled. “Jez? You mean—”
“Jeslyn. My wife. Jeslyn and. . .and. . .ah shit.”
“Jeslyn. Your wife. Your love. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
Bambi stumbled forward past Peter. Peter couldn’t handle the suspense: so much gossip without a repeatable punchline. Jeslyn and who? Peter took Bambi’s place and started shaking Ollie in his seat.
“Who ‘And’?” Peter said. “Peter must know.”
His body flailing in Peter’s grip, Ollie softly closed his eyes. “A-And th-the buil-building ins-spector.” Peter let go. Ollie fingered the damp hair off of his brow. “Of all days for him to show up, the building inspector.”
“Who these building inspector?”
“Come on.”
“We going on road trip to see building inspector?”
“Not you,” Ollie said, flashing Peter a nasty look. He hopped out of the chair, took Bambi’s hand, and pulled her toward the exit. Bambi resisted long enough to drop a couple of hundreds on her empty seat cushion, payment for the incomplete hair jobs. Together, they pushed through the glass doors leading to the street.
Peter watched.
Oh no! His chance to convert Ollie. . .
“Ollee-vur Bell, wait,” he called out before the doors had time to close. “Peter find you very interesting. Let me give personal cell number. You call and leave message. We go out for burger and talk. Peter is Gemini. Gemini.”
The boy didn’t hear. He and Bambi had braved the cars to reach the opposite side of the street. They climbed into Ollie’s black utility van.
Every face in the salon fell to Peter. He cleared his deep throat and faced them back.
“Me and him, we talk later,” he told them with a chuckle. “He good friend of mine. We go to nice restaurant and talk over burgers. Then we go to his place and—how you say?—make whoopee.”
The van did a u-turn into heavy traffic and roared past the window. Bambi was clutching the dashboard. Oliver was slamming on the horn. They left a cloud of caustic smoke outside the salon, seeping through the cracks of the entrance.
“Whoopee,” Peter muttered. Another Sunday night of onanism and Gilligan’s Island reruns for him. Little did most Americans know, the Skipper and Gilligan were gay. Peter would love to someday be proving it.
The Story of Oliver Bell
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000000101
E 0000000101 /*output data // “smile brightly”
L 0000000112 =IF // input = Juan THEN // +GOTO 0098689453 // REM POUT
G 0000000206 +GOTO E 0000000101
REM A PENITENT WIFE ALWAYS SMILES
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000774321
D 0000234425 */input data // “Door opening”
D 0000234456 */input data // “Three intruders one female two male”
C 0000234483 /stored data //folder “Acquaintances” //doc “Griffith Observatory”
B 0000234562 /stored data //doc “Griffith Observatory” // “Leland Farley”
C 0000234599 /stored data //folder “Strangers” //doc “Griffith Observatory”
B 0000234671 /stored data //doc “Griffith Observatory” // “Bambi Albertson”
R 0000235674 +MOVETO 0000234671 //folder “Acquaintances” //incorporate
C 0000237684 /stored data //folder “Friends” //doc “Griffith Observatory”
B 0000234540 /stored data //doc “Griffith Observatory” // “Oliver Bell”
E 0000543569 /*output data // “Stand up open arms”
E 0000565443 /*output data // “speak Darling!”
E 0000565486 /*output data // “Wait for input”
E 0000566423 /*output data // “Wait for input”
E 0000774321 /*output data // “Wait for input”
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM M 006542345
M 006542345 #/defragment.v174 // REM REORGANIZE MAKEUP APPLICATION ROUTINES
E 0098689453 /*output data // “Suck your top lip in, stick your bottom lip out and shake it all about.” //doc “Bad Feelings” + 1 [idle for 33:45 minutes]
H 8834528565 +RETURN
* * *
Oliver remembered his junior year Critical Thinking instructor, talking about new experiences. Take a silent breath, which practically must be shallow, controlled. Take a moment to exterminate all emotional conclusions. Absorb your environment, from general to specific. Mentally list the components of your environment. Compare these components to what is known. Center on discrepancies.
Ask why.
Oliver was in his room. Leland was standing behind him. Bambi was standing next to him. Bambi was holding his arm. Her palms were sweaty. Leland’s gun was. . .
Ah, hell with it.
Jeslyn was standing at his bedside. She looked just as he remembered her. She looked just as did her picture on his dresser over there. Spitting image. Hadn’t changed a bit
What was his C.T. teacher’s name, again? What the hell was her name? Jones? Johnson?
Ah, hell with it.
* * *
Leland remembered his day of security officer training. They’d made him watch four videos. Right now, he couldn’t cite a damn moment from any of them except this one decree: You are not a police officer. He was little more than a phone. He could contact the police, but he couldn’t act by proxy. He could point his gun, but he couldn’t shoot.
He’d already shot once, today.
Leland remembered those six months of waiting for his permit to arrive in the mail. He also remembered that initial week of training on how to use a firearm, his Indiana Jones gun.
Leland remembered his eight weeks of playing an orderly in the Theater of Arts’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Onstage, he felt the authority of a security officer and the power of being a cop.
Orderlies possessed real power.
Now pointing his gun at Jeslyn for the second time, he felt nothing but compliance. He was under review, and he might find his name in the papers come tomorrow. But not in a good way. Mere theatrical criticism would be a good thing, compared to the heat of a murder trial.
Leland held his pistol unsteadily on Jeslyn’s heart. He wouldn’t miss again.
* * *
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000053441
E 0000053441 /*output data // “gawk”
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM I 00005689873
D 0045672317 */input data // “One intruder female”
D 0045672321 */input data // “One acquaintance male”
D 0000234434 */input data // “One friend male”
D 0000234464 */input data // “Olivers temperature +2 degrees”
D 0000234478 */input data // “Olivers iris expansion 4 millimeters”
D 0000234490 */input data // “Olivers humidity +0.8%”
I 00005689873 */general error // +GOTO N 0000000005
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM H 0000000008
N 0000000005 FILE NOT FOUND
H 0000000008 +RETURN
* * *
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000000101
E 0000000101 /*output data // “smile brightly”
L 0000000112 =IF // input = Juan THEN // +GOTO 0098689453 // REM POUT
G 0000000206 +GOTO E 0000000101
REM A PENITENT WIFE ALWAYS SMILES
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM D 0000234425
D 0000234425 */input data // “Door closing slowly on the grade”
D 0000234484 */input data // “Oliver gestures for Leland to lower naughty pistol”
D 0000234490 */input data // “Leland still points pistol"
D 0000234563 */input data // “Oliver puts hand on pistol lowering it”
D 0000236788 */input data // “Oliver dismisses Leland”
D 0000245562 */input data // “Leland gawks”
D 0000245643 */input data // “Leland obeys opening door to leave”
D 0000237897 */input data // “Door closing slowly on the grade”
D 0000237898 */input data // “Oliver tells Bambi to leave”
D 0000238700 */input data // “Bambi arguing”
D 0000245735 */input data // “Oliver yells at Bambi to leave”
D 0000267865 */input data // “Bambi pleading”
D 0000278730 */input data // “Oliver silent”
D 0000287763 */input data // “Bambi lets go of Olivers arm”
D 0000299982 */input data // “Bambi turns 180 degrees”
D 0000342225 */input data // “Bambi moving”
D 0000344549 */input data // “Door opening”
D 0000365483 */input data // “Door closing slowly on the grade”
D 0000475637 */input data // “Door shut Bambi gone”
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM M 0788865436
M 0788865436 #/defragment.v351 // REM REORGANIZE GIRLISH PHRASE ROUTINES
E 0098689453 /*output data // “Suck your top lip in, stick your bottom lip out and shake it all about.” //doc “Bad Feelings” + 1 [idle for 34:43 minutes]
H 8834528565 +RETURN
* * *
“We’re alone,” Oliver said, his stomach flapping.
“Always the scientist,” Jeslyn said. “So observant.”
She sighed through her grand smile. It filled the ten feet between them.
“Jez,” he said.
“’Jez’?”
“Jez.”
“Oh. ‘Jeslyn.’ My name is Jeslyn. It means "wealth" or--"
“You hate that.”
“Why would I hate my own name?”
“But you prefer,” he said, “you like the shortened. . .”
Ah to hell with it.
Jezlyn was standing at his bedside, after all this time. It had been two years, one hundred. . .
Whatever. It had been a long time; who knows exactly how long?
Johansen. His Critical Thinking teacher had been Mrs. Johansen. And Mrs. Johansen would be glaring at Oliver right about now, shouting, “Think, boy, think. Why is your wife here, now?”
But Mrs. Johansen could go to hell.
Why ask why?
The Story of Oliver Bell
Lab 5: the size of a master bedroom, surfeited by a jungle of audio/video equipment; a canopy of blue, red, and white cords, dangling from the rafters—even Blane didn’t know where they started or ended—counter space so littered that you couldn’t find a spot to set down your soda; cupboards of DVDs, VHS tapes, and salty snacks; two twenty-seven-inch televisions playing simultaneously, side by side. The color TV playing Knight Rider. The black and white playing The Bionic Man. Michael Knight on SCI-FI, Steve Austin on SCI-FI B, telecast in Spanish. Michael and Steve, two men who did not exist—made better, stronger, faster, bigger than their acting abilities should have allowed.
“You’ve got a choice, fella,” Michael said to his Big Bad of the Week.
“Usted tiene una opción, compañero,” Steve said to his own Big Bad of the Week.
Blane’s eyes darted side to side, TV to TV, as Michael and Steve said, “You can go to jail the easy way or the hard way”/“Usted puede ir a encarcelar la manera fácil o la manera dura.”
Simpatico.
Blane sighed inwardly. Carl Jung often spoke of synchronicity; schoolchildren spoke, “Jinx, you owe me a Coke.” Either way, it was divine. Blane sat straight in the chair with his hands on his knees and became one with wonder.
Why was he here, right here, right now, why? An hour ago, he could instead have chosen to walk into Lab 3 and watch Stargate: Atlantis with Robert. Or he could have chosen to walk into Lab 6 and scrutinize Bambi’s meteorite samples under the microscope. Blane had, for an uncertain reason, chosen to spend his time in Lab 5, sitting on a chair, meditating on two television sets, which were, as if by divine scheduling, playing remarkably similar episodes of remarkably similar television classics. All was sympathetic in Blane’s universe. He shut his eyes.
Blindly, he reached for the open can of Coca-Cola at his feet. He lifted it to his lips and took a sip, then set it back down. His feet were firmly planted on the floor.
So why did he just do that? Something had told him to, though he hadn’t been thirsty. Even if he had been, why didn’t he choose to get a drink of water instead of a drink of carbonated diuretic?
Choice.
Where did decisions come from? Did human beings truly possess free will? Were there gray areas in their programming that had to be bridged before each thought could pass, uninterrupted; and, if so, with what could someone fill those gaps of code—a few lines of C++ soul? Or, to the contrary, were all choices dealt with by orderly processes, capable of responding to every conceivable situation? Had all homo-sapien behavior been predetermined 3 million years ago; all earthling responses, 4.5 billion years ago? Had the universe begun with an unalterable plan 17 billion years ago, or could God rewrite Itself as needed? On what basis did these rewrites occur?
The universe, as far as Blane supposed, began with The Big Whisper. From nothingness, everythingness had begun expanding outwardly in every direction at phenomenal speeds of thought. Each individual particle of matter, riding this macro-macro-Leviathan of expansion, orbited its own center of understanding, its own star and soul. Every one of these hubs, though seemingly fixed in rotation, continued riding the wave.
Like a Frisbee. Circling yet traveling.
Eyes open, Blane reached down for another sip of Coke. The televisions showed—on one side—KITT, racing through a tunnel, chased by a carload of gun-toting Big Bads and—on the other TV—Steve Austin trading blows with an enormous man in a rug suit, Bigfoot, the Sasquatch. Knight Rider and The Bionic Man had deviated from their shared dialogue. All of a sudden, the two shows seemed remarkably dissimilar.
Eyes closed:
In 1997, a much younger Blane had taken a holiday with his parents on the Pacific Princess, otherwise known as the Love Boat. Blane, sojourning on the poop deck, had been sky-gazing the afternoon that they left port. Under the clear, blue dome, it at times felt like the ocean liner was completely still while the Earth turned underneath its hull. The illusion made Blane dizzy, nauseous. Then, at times, it felt as if the ship were moving again, and it was the Earth that had put on the brakes.
The cruise liner and the South Pacific were in direct relation to each other, existing in what seemed to be a static universe. But Captain Stubing could have changed course, set sail for Hawaii instead of Mexico. His choice would have ultimately changed nothing, because the macro-environment—the solar system—was still riding the wave of expansion from the beginning of all things: that point in time and space when God first whispered, “Who, what, where, when, why, and how?”
The universe itself was a question. You’d need an infinitely powered telescope to see it. Point it introspectively: Once upon a time, God had woken from nothingness and, in Its infinite confusion, asked, “WWWWWuH?”
* * *
At some point, Bambi had entered the lab wearing a sleeveless green dress. Blane recognized the burn marks on her arms, inflicted by the Slaver nearly two months prior. The burns appeared to be fresh, whereas the young Babe’s demon scalds had practically disappeared.
Blane thought, Two girls, one tall, one small, both starting with “B”; one ends in “abe”; one ends in “ambi.” Two girls, gripped by a demon. One girl’s all cured; one still ain’t healin’.
“Why are you watching TV with your eyes shut?” Bambi said.
Blane arose from his deep thoughts and looked at her. The dry fluvial deposits under her eyes told that she’d been crying. It didn’t matter what brought her to this state. Just another episode of As the Griffith Turns as far as Blane was concerned. However, it did concern him that her voluptuous figure blocked the commercials. His attention fell to either side—to each television, one in English, one in Spanish, concurrently advertising everyone’s need to drink Bud Dry.
“Blane,” she said, “are you listening?”
He was.
She asked, “Blane, what do you think of me?”
What a loaded question. Should he reply, “I like you,” knowing the girl had no control over her conduct and, therefore, did not deserve compliments? And, if he said, “I like you,” would it placate her into feeling likable, whether or not that was the case?
Should he reply, “I haven’t really given it much thought”? That would surely puncture a hole in her self-esteem. She’d have to scramble to write a line of code to fill it. What would she come up with? Would her soul tell her to nod and accept the opinion? Perhaps it would break her brain like had happened to Mudd’s woman when Captain Kirk said, “Everything Harry tells you is a lie,” and Harry added, “I am lying.”
That would be a sight. Blane didn’t want to be the one to witness it, though.
He reconsidered. He thought it best to emulate Benjamin Braddock, in this case, when Mrs. Robinson had asked the same question.
“Well, I’ve always considered you a nice person.”
Having been answered, Bambi looked to the side, brooding, collating.
“I need you,” she said.
“We need you, too,” Blane said. “You are a very capable astronomer.” And medical practitioner, but Blane couldn’t say that. He’d promised Robert he’d never tell.
“I need you, Blane.”
Tears began spilling out of her ducts at the rate of one by one—perfectly programmed—sliding down and off her cheeks. Blane had been down this road before. He knew better. Bambi didn’t want him. She sought validation. She wanted to be held. She needed to feel human.
Bambi placed both hands on her shoulders and lifted the straps. They slid down her upper arms and covered the demon burns. Her cleavage grew. She paused, judging Blane’s reaction.
“Please don’t fight it,” she said. “I know you look at me this way.”
“Do I?”
“Please let it happen this time. Blane, you don’t even know what kind of day I’ve had.”
To one side of her, Michael Knight was now kissing his Love Interest of the Week. To the other, Steve Austin was kissing his.
Simpatico there. Absurdity here.
“I want you to make love to me,” Bambi said.
Blane rose out of his chair and quickly removed her hands. He lifted the straps so that they once again rested respectably on her collarbones. The girl’s hands fell dead at her sides in total defeat. Blane stood on his tiptoes and kissed the ridge of her nose.
“You want Sir Oliver to make love to you. Not me.”
Bambi had to agree. Blane knew it. She knew it. Blane changed the subject.
“Now, go ahead and tell me what happened.”
She began murmuring a bitter tale about how everything had been going great, how Oliver had professed his undying feelings for her. Blane wondered if this were true. She generally took lovers' leaps to traverse the gaps in her mental pathways. Whenever confused, she clenched her eyes and blundered forward with total faith that she would reach the other side. From there she would look back and rationalize the hurdle the best she could. She had to. It kept her sane.
Not so strange, Blane thought. Who didn’t fill in Life’s gaps with pleasant fantasies? Robert had done a right pretty job constructing this girly girl. She even used contractions when she spoke.
Bambi told Blane that everything had been perfect between her and Oliver until, just five minutes and forty seconds ago, Jeslyn Bell showed up. This was where her storytelling faltered. Bambi said that Oliver had yelled at her and ordered her to get back to work. Her compliance left Oliver and Jeslyn alone in his room. Probably making love or something. Fucking. Holding hands.
“Make love to me, Blane. Make me forget.”
No. “You have a choice,” Blane said. “You can hold onto Oliver, or you can let him go. If you let him go, you can move on with your life. If you hold onto this idea that you’re perfect together, you’re likely to suffer more heartache.”
“I choose Oliver.”
Poor robot. Blane said, “Why? Why him?”
“I don’t know. I just know. I. . .” She reached behind herself and flipped both televisions off. “Ever since I was with Robert, I’ve known I wanted something more.”
So! Robert had followed through with his plan. Nurse Bambi wouldn’t do “things” for him, and therefore he fixed her with his magic screwdriver. That much was public knowledge—except for Bambi, of course, whose highly complex brain deleted every memory that might compromise her self-image. But after the fix, Bambi had started doing too many things with too many people, which Robert hadn’t anticipated. Jealous, Robert swore he’d fix her right, the second time round. He’d make her loyal. He must have fixed her, all right. But afterward, Bambi and her newfound moral base wouldn’t let Robert near her. Good for her, too bad for him. Robert’s choices were his own, and he was getting what he deserved. That little algorithm in the nursebot’s head, demanding that she stop whoring herself out, didn’t recognize Robert as a worthy mate. Oliver Bell, however—dedicated to wife and child—made all kinds of mathematical sense.
Bambi hadn’t spoken for a short while. Her head dropped to the dimple at the base of her neck, and she wept. The girl's skin had been forged so tightly, it did not double under her chin.
Blane returned to his chair and finished the soda at his feet. He collapsed the tin can with emotionless trash compactor fingers. The chasm of indecision contracted. Then and there he chose to like Bambi. Because of everything he knew, he couldn’t blame her. Her choices were not her own. Still, Blane had to be true to his word. He'd promised not to reveal anything about Bambi's nature. He wouldn’t tell.
He never promised anything about recent events, however. He could reveal those.
“You never had a chance,” Blane said.
“Oh thanks!” Bambi’s tears fell like faucet drips. “Oliver is going to realize he loves me. He’ll dump that bitch and love me.”
“No,” Blane said. “No, no, no. Listen. Listen and try to understand.” He didn’t want her to delete this. “I mean Robert built her. Robert built Jeslyn to be everything Sir Oliver needed and wanted.” Bambi, however, hadn't been. She had been built to be a nursebot. She was everything Robert wanted, although probably what he needed most was a long, cold shower.
Bambi shook her head urgently. “What are you talking about, you freak?”
“Jeslyn Bell—that thing up in Oliver’s bedroom—is a robot.”
“A. . .” Her whole body did a double-take, a massive shiver. “Robot?”
“Listen and learn. About a month ago, Robert started working on a companion for the boss man. He had to hurry, because Oliver might have found the church sooner than Robert had time to finish. But he did finish. This morning, while you were out getting your— ” Bambi’s head was a mess of blue-black crap—“haircut, he activated the Jezbot and set her loose. It was a rush job. He couldn’t let the real Jeslyn come into play. Because if the real Jeslyn turned out to be anything less than perfect, you might actually have had a chance with Oliver.”
Bambi paused within herself, bent slightly forward, her eyeballs doing the thinking. She must have realized that all of this was possible. Robert, in-between Stargate marathons, had always engaged in robotic experiments; he possessed the know-how. What Bambi didn’t know—what Robert had wiped from her memory—what only Robert, himself, and Clarence knew—was that these experiments had advanced dramatically over the last year. . .yes, about the time Bambi came to work here. Robert had gotten his hands on a copy of the Warren Meers Technical Manual and improved on the specifications. Had he more time to work, he’d have made Jeslyn as remarkable as Bambi, virtually indistinguishable from a human being. Fortunately, he hadn’t, and therein lay Bambi’s only chance at netting her man.
“I see.” Bambi’s left eye dripped one final time. “It makes sense. It does make sense. Robert is jealous.”
“A reasonable conclusion,” Blane said.
“Robert wanted to separate me and Oliver, and the way to do that was to give my lover his wife back. Robert couldn’t leave it to fate for Oliver to find his real wife, because he might have realized that, after all this time, she wasn’t the one for him.”
“Something like that.”
“Because Robert knew that the real Jeslyn wouldn’t take Oliver back after he cheated on her with me.”
“Maybe.”
“So he had to make a version of Jeslyn that would accept him no matter what. So no matter what I did I couldn’t compete. So really, if it weren’t for this Jezbot, Oliver and I would be together, forever. So Oliver and I were really meant to be together. And once I prove to him that Jeslyn is a robot, he’ll be disgusted with her and come back to me. And we’ll buy a house together and have a dog and a picket fence and kids and neighbors and. . .”
Blane stood in fascination at the leaps of Bambi's mind. When one’s programming fails to reconcile a handful of incomplete information, his or her humanoid brain simply fills in the blanks. But damn it—where did one find those patches? The cuboard of one's soul? Or was there a hidden file in each of us that provided wild conclusions? Was it creativity? Was it choice?
“Hey, Blane,” Robert said, walking into lab, “what’s with Atlantis? This episode is totally. . .total. . .”
Robert saw Bambi.
“Hey,” he said.
Bambi glared. “You shit,” she said. “You total shit. A robot? How dare you?”
Bambi was closest to the door leading to the elevator. She walked a fast, roundabout path around the lab, taking her by Robert—she slapped his face—and back to the exit. She stormed out of the lab.
The television sets were showing black screens.
Blane held the silence, as Robert massaged his reddening, throbbing skin, feeling himself for a broken cheekbone. Robert shot a steely glare. “You told her.”
“Told her what?” Blane said.
“You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I haven’t broken any promises.”
“Then why has the word ‘robot’ suddenly entered her vocabulary?”
“I mentioned a robot, yes. But you need to be asking yourself—which robot did I speak of?”
Blane had made the revolutionary choice to spill Robert’s secret; he was comfortable with the decision. He still didn't know where the choice came from. Some compassion file called The Human Soul? Would he choose to regret betraying his friend's trust?
Hardly. He didn’t feel the least bit dizzy. Well what do you know? The world hadn’t ended, after all. It had gone on spinning. Somehow the lab felt utterly stable under his feet. Robert's face tightened into a knot of anger and promised revenge. And still no dizziness, no nausea. He and Robert were together traveling at incredible speeds of cerebration into territories unknown.
The Story of Oliver Bell
Bambi rushed. A voice inside her shouted, “Run, Bambi, run.”
Bambi ran.
Bambi ran up flush with the elevator and stopped—slam.
* * *
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000786789
E 0000786564 /*output data // “Close mouth”
E 0000786578 /*output data // “Open mouth”
E 0000786590 /*output data // “Close mouth”
E 0000786595 /*output data // “Swallow”
D 0000786612 */input data // “Taste salt”
E 0000786666 /*output data // “Open mouth”
E 0000786789 /*output data // “Gawk”
Queue 1 - E 0000786790 /*output data // “Pray to God”
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM I 00009689873
E 0008382157 /*output data // “Press elevator call button”
E 0008382173 /*output data // “Press elevator call button”
E 0008382188 /*output data // “Press elevator call button”
E 0008382197 /*output data // “Pressity-Press elevator call button”
E 0008382335 /*output data // “Wait”
E 0008382336 /*output data // “Wait”
E 0008382337 /*output data // “Wait”
E 0008382563 /*output data // “Regulate discharge of tears”
B 0008382778 /stored data //doc “Jeslyn photograph from Olivers dresser”
R 0008382823 +MOVETO 0008382778 //folder “Enemies” //incorporate //rename “Jezbot photograph from Olivers dresser”
A 0008383331 REM HATE HER HATE HER WOULDN’T WANT TO DATE HER
I 0000968983 */general error // +GOTO O 0000000567
Queue 2 - C 0020000135 /stored data //folder “Griffith Observatory” //doc “Blueprints3”
Queue 3 - C 0020000140 /stored data //doc “Blueprints3” // “Olivers bedroom is on Sublevel 1”
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM H 0000000569
O 0000000567 >>*leap // command Not[“Oliver loves Jezbot” [x, “Oliver hates Jezbot” “Oliver fears Jezbot” “Oliver rejects Jezbot”]] //random x
H 0000000569 +RETURN
* * *
The doors spread wide: three feet across. A voice inside her shouted, “Enter, Bambi, enter.”
Bambi entered.
Bambi turned one hundred eighty degrees. A voice inside her shouted, “Press the button for Sublevel 1.”
Bambi pressed S1.
A little voice inside her shouted, “Wait,” so Bambi waited.
The doors closed.
The elevator clanked under her feet. Hydraulic sound. The car began its ascension. Bambi’s tummy tickled.
* * *
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000009567
D 0000000000 */input data // “Nothingness”
E 0000000790 /*output data // “Continue praying to God”
D 0000000802 */input data // “Nothingness”
N 0000007836 FILE NOT FOUND
G 0000008562 +GOTO O 0059492999
E 0000009564 /*output data //generate “God watches over me”
E 0000009567 /*output data //generate “God hates Jezbot”
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0099993722
E 0099865782 /*output data // “Wait”
D 0099865896 */input data // “Sick feeling in tummy = x”
B 0099866436 /stored data //x = //doc “Tickly mushy-warm jitterbugs”
E 0099993722 /*output data // “Waitity-wait-wait-wait-wait”
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM H 0000000569
O 0059492999 >>*leap // command Not[“Nothingness” [x, “God watches over me” “God is cheese” “God is Dog spelled backwards” “God hates Jezbot”]] //random x * 2
H 0059493000 +RETURN
* * *
Bambi heard silence. Bambi heard her heart thumping in her skull. Bambi stood outside Oliver’s door.
The voice inside her said nothing.
She reached in front of her and turned the knob. The door began opening. Opening. The bedroom opened to darkness. The light of the hallway flooded in. Flooding, opening.
Oliver and Bambi were there. They were on the bed. They were awake.
* * *
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000000001
E 0000000000 /*output data // “Gawk”
I 0000000001 */general error */general error */general error
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0000000005
D 0000000002 */input data // FILE NOT FOUND
E 0000000003 /*output data // “Gawk”
M 0000000004 #/defragment
M 0000000005 #/clean
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM J 0000000008
O 0000000006 >>*leap // command Not[“Touching kissing hugging loving” [x, “Oliver fighting Jezbot off” “Oliver fighting Jezbot off” “Oliver fighting Jezbot off”]] //random x //repeat
H 0000000007 +RETURN
J 0000000008 */does not compute // +GOTO O 0000000006
Queue 1 - G 0000000010 +GOTO O 0000000006
Queue 2 - G 0000000011 +GOTO O 0000000006
Queue 3 - G 0000000012 +GOTO O 0000000006
The Story of Oliver Bell
Robert threw a punch into Blane. Blane hit the floor.
Lying on his back, he blinked and licked at the ceiling, a crazed expression indicating that he’d been knocked senseless.
Robert massaged his knuckles. He glanced up into the rafters, through the colored cords, through the fluorescent lights, into the white plaster. He wondered how long it would take Clarence to return with his book. He hadn’t thought he’d have to initiate Plan B, actually, but tonight’s episode of Atlantis brought it to mind. And now that Blane had betrayed his secret, he’d have to act quickly.
Slowly, Blane sat up. Knees bent, he pushed himself into a crouch and stood. He wove on unsteady feet.
Robert again struck him, this time square on the nose. Blane’s legs curled, and he reverse-somersaulted to lie flat on his back as before. There, he rolled his eyes but did not blink.
He licked his top lip.
He bent his left knee, then the right.
Heart racing, Robert watched the pipsqueak defy gravity. Robert’s three older sisters—Big Sis, Bigger Sis, and Sasquatch—had been great instructors of ass-whopping. Robert recognized himself at age 15 in Blane’s swelling face, the recipient of a beating for refusing to give up his Furby. Although a guy like Blane could never understand, having been handed all of life’s joys on a silver spoon, Robert had adored the over-priced black and white Furby. Even at that age, he cherished the gift, for Christmas was a sparse affair, a time for receiving socks and oranges and sullied hand-me-downs. It had been the only toy Robert ever received that had fallen, unbroken, into his indigent hands. When the Sisters Three at last realized how much the little bot meant to Robert, they, of course, tried to steal it. He had fought them off with a Whiffle Bat filled with sand, while the Furby had chanted, “Loo,” from the corner shelf.
Blane was up again.
Robert made a fist so tight he could hear it scrunching, swung his arm around, and caught Blane on the side of the nose. Blane spun completely around, a human sprinkler, shedding tears and blood. He kneeled for balance, screwing downwardly, and slipped off of the soles of his shoes to his bottom. He sat there, dazed, palms flat on the ground, legs stretched out, coughing no understandable words. Blane’s white lab coat was stained with brown speckles.
That’s how his sisters had always left him, too rattled to speak or cry. But Robert had never been dumb enough to get up for another licking. Blane, through all his genius, was just dumb. What was he trying to prove? He was wrong; he had spilled Robert’s secret. How dare he resist his comeuppance? Just stay down!
Blane bent a knee.
A guy like Blane Wapner didn’t know when to quit. His body would quit before he did. His brain couldn’t process defeat. It felt good to Robert to finally see that calm demeanor turn to harm. If he’d known violence would have done the trick, he’d have decked Blane months ago, just to experiment.
Guys like Robert, on the other hand, hadn’t been born only-child geniuses to loving parents, owning land in The Hills. Robert wasn’t from L.A. He’d grown up on the dark side of San Francisco, and every “A+” his teachers gave him was hard-won. He and his Furby hid from his three sisters in the public library, where he spent the hours between after-school and supper studying. Science was his bedtime story, and teleplays of Doogie Howser, M.D. were his extra credit assignments, self-administered. During those months, he dreamed of being a doctor.
By age 16, he’d completely dissected his tailless Furby, Cocoa, and learned to hook it up to the IRDA port on the school computer. He made it sneeze, fart, groan, and say the F-word, on command. Its two microprocessors outbid the Commodore 64 for memory. Robert was able to see, with its furry epidermis spread wide open, the gears and cams moving for a single reversible motor and the infrared and photoelectric sensors dilating for tastes of light.
It turned out that his Furby couldn’t learn as advertised. Learning was simulated when Cocoa’s vocabulary subsets were unlocked in due time, which gave the appearance of new behavior but which was only dormant behavior, waiting for just the right moment to hatch. Robert ascertained that Cocoa could send IR signals to his friend Melinda’s set of Furbys, making it seem as though new words and behaviors were being shared. But ultimately it was only Robert who was learning. Learning and woolgathering.
* * *
Just as Blane stood for the third time, Robert placed a shoe flat against his chest and gave a kick. Blane melted to the floor. Robert lorded over the puddle.
“Do you know how fast and hard I worked on the Jezbot?” he said, knowing that Blane completely knew. “Why’d you tell Bambi?”
Barely sitting up, Blane twitched his Mr. Potato Head nose, flush and throbbing. “Why do any of us choose to do anything? I was asking myself that very question when you came in.”
“I have to know whose side you’re on, man.”
“I tend to favor my left side. More analytical.”
“Did you tell her she was a nursebot?”
“She only knows about Jeslyn.”
“Okay, okay.” So the ass of the cat was out of the bag, but Robert could still work with that. With Jeslyn the robot to focus on, Bambi’s program wouldn’t consider running introspectively. She’d never think to ask who, what, where, when, why, or how about herself. She would focus on Oliver, on cutting away the cancer that was his fake wife. It was Bambi’s nature to heal. Robert had manufactured her that way.
* * *
Robert’s fruit and nut run to UCLA at the young age of 17 had begun pre-med. Astrophysics was only a minor. But the workload gradually intimidated him. Somewhere along the way, he switched. This change occurred organically, with electives transmogrifying into curriculum, so by the time he graduated even he didn’t understand what had happened. Stars had replaced neurons. Comets and asteroids, dendrites. Carbon-based life, electrical impulses.
Though his internship at Griffith, during his late teens, lead to fulltime employment, he couldn’t abnegate his childhood yearning to tinker. Studying the macrocosmic questions of existence didn’t exclude the microcosmic needs of the human soul. As a well-paid, sporadically educated employee of the observatory, he discovered that his accidental, occupational choice had made him soul-sick. He never wanted sky-gazing to be the focus of his career. But since it was too late to become the Doogie of this generation, he reacquainted himself with the modern art of robotics, sort of as a consolation prize. Building humanoids resembled repairing them.
Bambi had been an extension of him.
And yet she left him! And she turned to other boys. And she chose to settle with Oliver Bell. Why?
What was it inside Robert—in his programming of Bambi—that gravitated to such a meek human being? Robert respected strength! Oliver was not strong. Big Sis and Bigger Sis and Sasquatch would have creamed the man for being average. Somewhere along the way, Bambi’s needs—girlish versions of Robert’s—had switched. She fell in love with the concept of average. What did that say about Robert? At the core of his being, was he really what the Sisters Three had declared him to be, a little sissy? Was Bambi attracted to that? To That?
Blane was up and standing.
“Are you done?” he said, face swollen, body trembling, voice calm.
“Yeah, I guess,” Robert replied, his knuckles bleeding.
“Still friends?”
“Can I count on you keeping quiet that Bambi is a robot?”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell.” Blane snorted a blood clot out of his left nostril. It strung to the floor and snapped. “But if you truly care for her, you won’t let her keep going on like this.”
“I have every intention of setting things straight.”
“You’re going to tell her?”
“Of course not. I’m going to reset her program.”
“I don’t think she’ll let you near her to perform that operation.”
“She will. As long as Oliver keeps rejecting her.” And Plan B would make sure of that, if Clarence would just hurry his ass up and get down here with the book.
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Robert nodded unhappily. If he had only possessed adequate experience at the time he first constructed Bambi, none of this would have happened. Originally, Frank Delaney had ordered Robert to build a nursebot to service the staff. The insurance premiums dropped considerably with an on-site medic, and bot wages were no more expensive than rechargeable power cells and a can of WD-40—figuratively speaking. Robert jumped at the opportunity to invent Bambi.
He fashioned her attractively, of course, because who wouldn’t want a sexy female nurse, standing off-line in the closet, awaiting activation? But she seemed so lonely in there. As a matter of course, on Friday nights, he and Clarence found themselves lackadaisical, and so they did activate her, just for kicks. To play chess with them, to be a third sarcastic voice making light of bad television writing, stuff like that. But she turned out to be an empty companion, deficient of true human responses. Clarence swore he couldn’t tell the difference; but, having programmed her, Robert could. Bambi was a hell of a Furby, sure, but still just a Furby.
The Warren Meers Technical Manual, as amazing as the tome was, as difficult to obtain as The Anarchist Cookbook (without ending up on some government watch list, that is), purposefully glossed over the art of disguising your robot’s demeanoroutines. It took weeks for Robert to instruct Bambbot to use contractions. And weeks more to program her bedside manner to exclude detailed discussions of intestinal dissection, always a bloody awful topic.
Warren Meers had been a man condemned to a hellish sense of humor, it seemed. Oh, he was good, though, and anyone who read his book carefully enough—read and reread it many times—began to see through the lines of text at his hidden intent. When you got into Meers’s head, understood how he saw the universe, you could begin A.I. experiments that actually made sense, actually worked. Meers gave you the tools. You just had to twist your perception to see the invisible logic. Reading his book had been like a game of Clue. When everything else failed, what was left over had allowed Robert to build a pretty fantastic robot.
Thus, Bambi was reborn, reprogrammed. Robert’s interpretation of what Meers wasn’t revealing inspired a complex series of “leap” subroutines. Whereas most robots, when fed paradoxical information, fell back on non-sequitur data files, Bambi began reaching for her leap algorithms. These simulated free will or, perhaps, creative genius. The operations involved all three of her high, routine, and subroutine processes, similar to a human’s insight, arguably one’s five senses, working in cooperation to actuate a higher sixth sense. The operations returned an inventory of imaginative choices, from which x was randomly chosen to be Bambi’s “creative thought” and applied to the situation. Needless to say, she metamorphosed into an excellent conversationalist. She thought Battlestar Galactica paled next to the original series, and her chess-strategies both confounded and delighted Robert’s sensibilities.
There was another reason Robert wrote the leap routines. He’d never admit it to Clarence, and especially not to Blane. Deep down, he loved Bambi. How could he not? She was his innovation, a shiny example of his wunderkind-ness. He should have framed her.
Infuriatingly, however, Bambi’s nursebot ethics would not allow her to engage in sexual intercourse, so something had to be done. Something had to be reprogrammed, yet again. Robert longed to caress his creation in a real bad way.
During this longing, it occurred to him that he should hide the new deameanoroutines in a place far from that mechanical brain of hers. Meers’s own robots were powered by hearts that were perfectly identical to humans’. But it was odd that the power cells were so small—each about the size of a AAA battery, though incredibly more energetic. It was as if Warren Meers had intentionally laid out specs that could house more than just power cells. It was as if the man were hinting to his readers that the heart might accept additional hardware. And so it was here that Robert installed a secondary CPU. If Robert had only known what would happen next, he’d have coded her with special subroutines that made her loyal to him and him alone. But there was no stopping the revised leap routines, once set in motion.
At first it was great. Bambi took to Robert like a single Sphaerocerid fly on a smorgasbord of doo. She ate him up and jumped with him to heights of ecstasy that he never could have programmed himself. Inventive and bold, she painted sexual positions with the strokes of an undiscovered impressionist. But her leaps and bounds carried her past Robert’s limited experience. Quickly growing bored, she latched onto Clarence, next, and that hurt. Clarence dug it, of course, the traitor, but even he couldn’t satisfy this rampaging nursebot. So she turned to the third young scientist.
When dumb Blane rejected her advances, she began exploring the upper levels of the observatory. Robert figured that she must have bedded down with every male on that list in the Book of Shadows, the list that—so Oliver claimed—had summoned multiple ghosts to chase away the Slaver demon. Upon sucking the Griffith staff of all its nutrients, Bambi ventured into the outside world. Who knows who serviced her then? She never talked much about her secular conquests. Eventually—but only once—she did talk specifics: Oliver was the only lover she named, but that was much later, after Robert and his meddling screwdriver screwed with her heart, yet again. He botched it, though, goddammit. A screw-up job.
The beginning of the end began like this:
After Delaney’s murder, Robert had started wooing the Bambot in hopes of getting her back into his bedchambers. Of course, her leaps of imagination wouldn’t allow her to sleep with just one man. So Robert coaxed her into Lab 2, one Saturday morning, confiding that she’d returned from her night of clubbing with rat balls in her hair. This fashion disaster, she could not abide. Trustingly, she allowed Robert to comb out her tangles; meanwhile, with a free hand, he unscrewed her temple plate and delved inside. He shut her down with the flip of a switch. Unconscious in the chair, Bambi’s blouse could then be opened; Robert could get to her chest plate and begin open-heart reprogramming.
He knew best. What Bambi needed was a stable sense of morality. The girl shouldn’t be allowed to simply traipse about Los Angeles boning every cute guy that stopped to light her cigarette. Into her leap routines, Robert incorporated a sense of piousness and Leave It To Beaver values—not to mention fifteen-thousand lines of Xena code—so when her program leapt for support material it would land on a foundation a little less. . .slutty. Then, theoretically, she would look back to her meager beginnings and remember Robert, who had always been there for her, still waiting with open arms.
It didn’t work. First of all, she began seeing herself as a person and demanded to be paid real wages and that her wages equal Clarence's, Blane’s, and Robert’s. Well, this was easy enough to fix. Clarence submitted a bogus dossier to the Leprechaun, it figured “Bambi Albertson’s” payscale, and she began receiving a weekly check. Next, however, she decided she didn’t want to be a nurse in the closet. Even June Cleaver got to run a vacuum through the house. Bambi suddenly wanted her phony education to mean something, so she took up astronomy with the others. Okay, good enough. She began working in the labs. Robert didn’t mind that. He didn’t need to rush their affair. Let her find herself, first be happy. Then, finally, he’d start having sex with her, make her happier. Just give her time, giver her space. Then pounce!
As fate would have it, that was exactly when Oliver Bell showed up. Bambi took one look at this excruciatingly average human being, sleeping in the chair outside his office, and turned to Blane—not to Robert, to Blane—and said, “Mmm.”
Nothing had gone according to plan, since.
Why had Robert’s chef d'oeuvre leapt into Oliver’s arms?
* * *
Robert snuck up behind Blane, who was laving his face in the Lab 4 washbasin. Silently, over Blane’s shoulder, he watched pink water spiraling into the drain.
“She’s afraid, you know,” Blane said, aware of Robert’s presence.
“She’s just going to have to deal with it. The Jezbot is here, and that’s that.”
“I’m not referring to your Jezlyn Bell debacle. Dig deeper. Bambi may have deleted her nursebot memories. But is a computer file ever truly wiped clean?”
Not especially. Information, once deleted, still left ghosts of data that could be retrieved by a skilled hacker, not unlike a detective dusting for fingerprints.
Robert said, “You think she suspects what she is?”
“Maybe. That’s not what I’m talking about.” He pulled a clump of paper towels out of the dispenser and dabbed his wet face. His nose looked just awful. “All of your tinkering must have left broken lines of useless code, that’s my guess.”
“I’m not that sloppy.”
“Hm. So you’re saying you didn’t rush Bambot’s alterations? You’re saying your dick was limp—all the blood was coursing through your brain at full capacity. And you were diligently working to make certain that every algorithm ran copasetic with the new lines of code.”
“I don’t miss a thing.”
Blane handed Robert a fresh, damp paper towel. “Your cheek is bleeding.”
Robert immediately pressed the cool, stiff paper to his face. Beneath the numbness, a powerful aching heralded itself. That’s where Bambi had slapped him. Although she possessed the meager strength of a girl, because she believed she was “just a girl,” she could, during emotional conflicts, accidentally “remember” an elephantine strength. Bot strength. Fortunately, her memory was poor, or she might have taken Robert’s head off.
“She’s afraid she can’t commit,” Blane said.
Robert checked the superficies of the paper towel. Thin rivers of tap water trickled down with blood. “You can read her mind, all of a sudden?”
“You may not have noticed. While you and every other testosteronally driven male has been rushing around trying to poke the poor girl, I occasionally stop doing my job long enough to listen to her blabbing. Apparently she values. . .my counsel.” Blane said this tight-eyed, as if chatting were a job far dingier than analyzing bits of rock that fell from outer space. “She senses gaps in her past. Call it amnesia. She calls it flibbertigibbet-ness.
“Intuitively, she’s afraid that she doesn’t have what it takes to be in a committed human relationship. You and I know the conflict is in her baser programming. To her, she feels trashy and worthless. She’s out to prove to the world she’s not a slut.”
“Then she’s just going to have to come see me, now, ain’t she?”
“Current events suggest that she’s latched onto Oliver. Those loyalty subroutines you forced into her brain are running for our boss, alone. Powerful lines of code, you gave her. Don’t expect the girl to rewrite herself for your sake.”
Know what?—Robert was glad he decked Blane. The guy knew nothing about backing the righteous team. He had no faith. Maybe if he put his genius to better use, he could help Robert get his property back instead of playing the neutral observer. No loyalty there. No fucking loyalty.
Robert had to smile to himself, though. Blane’s notion that Bambi’s leap routines rested in her robot brain boosted his ego. Robert knew something that Blane would never suspect in a million years. He thought, It’s in her heart, you dupe, her heart! Get a clue.
“Do you love her?” Blane asked.
Robert crumpled the paper towel in one fist. “She’s mine.”
“Do you love her?”
“Piss off.”
“I see.”
“What, what do you see? What can you possibly know about my feelings? Did you grow up in my three-bedroom roach trap? Did you have three older sisters beating you to a pasty pulp and taking away all your stuff? No, you didn’t. You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything that’s important to you.”
“Bambi’s not a thing.”
“She’s a robot. A ro-bot, Blane.”
“Not anymore.”
Robert tossed the crumpled towel into the wastebasket. “You and Clarence, man. I did such a good job building her, neither of you can tell the difference. But she is a thing. My thing. I created her to attend to my needs.”
“The observatory’s needs. Technically, she belongs to—”
“My needs!” In sudden rage, Robert seized the back of Blane’s neck and pushed his pipsqueak face into the sink. “She loves only because I taught her how to love. Got it? Got it?”
Blane struggled against the weight of Robert’s body. He said in a controlled voice, “You’re confusing, confusing the Hippocratic Oath with love. At her core. At her core she. She’s a doctor. From the need to heal. . .”
Blane threw himself back. Robert stumbled aside. Blane righted himself and glared. . .then stared. . .then calmly peered over his bloated nose. His eyelids relaxed.
“From her need to heal,” he said, “she has leapt to the conclusion of love. But it’s not love. She’s been programmed with an oath to care.”
“What do you know about oaths, traitor?”
That shut the traitor up. Massaging the hand that had been clamping Blane’s neck, Robert glanced up at the ceiling, through the electrical cords, through the lamps, and wondered what was going on in Oliver’s bedroom at that moment. Nothing decent, he bet. He could feel Bambi up there, crying her motorized eyes out. But it wouldn’t be enough for her to catch Oliver and the Jezbot together. She’d tell Oliver, tell him everything she thought she knew. Consequently, Oliver would probably reject his wife. Horrified, he might run into Bambi’s healing arms.
Robert still had work to do.
“’I will keep them from harm and injustice,’” Blane said.
“What?”
Robert looked down.
“’In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.’” Blane spoke as if in a trance. “’Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.’”
“What-What?”
“’What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.’”
The Hippocratic Oath, parts of it anyway. What the hell was Blane trying to prove? Robert knew what it said; he’d entered it into Bambi’s doc files; he didn’t need a recital.
“’If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.’”
Reaching the conclusion, Blane drifted out of his trance. He picked the crust of blood off his left nostril and flicked it into the wastebasket. He acted as if nothing had been said.
Robert clapped. “Bravo, bravo. Nice performance, Hippocrates. Was that supposed to move me?”
“Yes.”
“Try again. I didn’t take the Hippocratic Oath.”
“By coding it, you took it. If she is really your patient, you have betrayed her.”
“’Patient’?”
“You worked on her tinker, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“’Patient,’” Blane said. “When you bragged to Clarence and me that you altered her program, which allowed her to copulate with you, you in effect betrayed her. The very act of sleeping with Bambi was betrayal. By screwing with her life, even now you are betraying her. Don’t talk to me about oaths.”
“I ought to kick your ass.”
“And if she isn’t your patient, if she’s truly property that you own, then you own her program and are responsible for it. Her oath is your responsibility. Her pain, too.”
“So says you.”
“So say I.”
They stared into each other—against each other, clashing—two sets of antlers, set to collide. Robert showed his teeth, expecting that Blane might cringe for fear of another beating. Strangely, Blane did not cringe. His genius calm had returned.
Just then, Clarence entered the room. Babe followed under his footsteps.
“There you are,” he said to Robert. “You should have told me you were going to switch labs.” He noticed Blane. “Hey, dude. Dude, what happened to your face?”
Clarence held the Book of Shadows in his armpit. Proudly, Babe jumped up and down, skipping along and pointing at it.
“I found it,” she cried, “I found it under the mattress. I found it, me.”
“She did,” Clarence said, holding the book up. “I wouldn’t have thought to look under there. You might have told me that, too, Robert. Could’a saved me twenty minutes of searching. I never would have found this thing if the little munchkin hadn’t passed by. She’s got, like, a creepy sixth sense about shit like this.”
No one spoke.
Clarence squinted his eyes at Blane’s clobbered features, then at Robert’s deep crimson cut. Self-conscious, Robert placed a hand over his cheek. Clarence adjusted his ugly red glasses and blinked several times, blinks as big as Brazil nuts.
He broke the silence. “So, uh, what the shit’s been going on down here, anyways? You guys get run over by a Slaver demon?” He ducked low, suspiciously. “Please tell me I’m full of shit.” He shielded his face with the Book of Shadows.
Well, it was about time. Robert moved to Clarence and smuggled the book into his lab coat, then started walking. “Good work, Clarence. Glad to see somebody around this dump sticks to his word. His oath.”
Babe ran over and hugged Blane’s legs.
Blane lifted the child into his arms, while his eyes followed Robert across the room; Robert felt them digging into his back. “Robert?” he called. “Robert. What do you want with the Book of Shadows? Robert. That belongs to Mr. Bell.”
Plan B.
Robert exited the lab.
* * *
“Clarence,” Blane asked, “what’s. . .what’s going on?”
Clarence shrugged. “Is there something going on? Just Robert and me were watching Atlantis, that’s it. That lame ep., you know, where they met the sex goddess after Teyla recited from the Groathian manuscript?” Blane waited to hear more. “So, uh, the commercial came on, and Robert said he needed a book up in his room. I said I’d get it for him. Here I am.”
“Me, too,” Babe said.
Blane’s eyes noticed how nicely the burns on her arm had healed, although his mind soared miles numbering in the millions. His thoughts alighted on something Oliver had told him, weeks ago. Oliver had warned that the book was potentially dangerous and that it should remain in his bedroom—Oliver’s bedroom, not Robert’s.
Clarence churned up an expression of guilt. He said, “Uh. . .I’m personally getting a little sick of Stargate, so I volunteered to go get the book. No biggie, right? I hope.”
“You’re sure it was in Robert’s room?”
“Sure as Shirley. I-I guess. . .I supposed that Robert’s doing research for Oliver. I guess. Like demonology. As it relates to, uh, maybe astronomy.” Clarence swallowed, most certainly feeling dumber than dirt. “Everything kosher, here, Blane?”
Blane felt himself nodding and shaking his head at the same time. It wasn’t Clarence’s fault. Still, nothing about the good deed smacked of fit, proper, or correct. Blane had only flipped through the book briefly during the exorcism of the Slaver. Not a word of it spelled “kosher.” None of it was kashruth. Anyone who read from Delaney’s Book of Shadows could only be planning on serving up a hot plate of treif.
“I helped!” Babe said to Blane’s ear. “I found it under the mattress.”
Clarence smiled. “You did, didn’tcha, kiddo?”
The girl nodded vigorously in Blane’s arms. “Robert’s going to summ’nun a Momz Duke,” she said. “A Momz Duke for Popz Duke to play with. Big happy family. Easters, Christmases, fun!”
The Story of Oliver Bell
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM . . .
X 0000000000 ))Internal Error //COLLATING
Queue 1 - E 0000000001 /*output data // “Gawk”
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM . . .
X 0000000000 ))Internal Error //COLLATING
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM . . .
X 0000000000 ))Internal Error //COLLATING
Queue 2 - C 0000000002 /stored data //folder “Jezbot Oliver Touching”
REM OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD NO
* * *
Meanwhile. . .
HIGHER PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM E 0073213721
E 0073213721 /*output data // “smile brightly”
L 0073213745 =IF // input = Juan THEN // +GOTO 9986732153 // REM POUT
REM A PENITENT WIFE ALWAYS SMILES
REM A PENITENT WIFE NEVER SMILES FOR JUAN
ROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM D 0007575642
D 0007573723 */input data // “Oliver lugging Bambi to bed”
E 0007573767 /*output data // “Help Oliver lug Bambi to bed”
D 0007573876*/input data // “Oliver lays her out”
D 0007573998 */input data // “Oliver strokes her hair”
D 0007574432 */input data // “Hair 1.75 pigtails blue-black uneven bushy no style”
D 0007575642 */input data // “Oliver kisses Bambis forehead”
SUBROUTINE PROGRAM: RUNNING ALGORITHM B 0310600754
B 0310600754 /stored data //doc “Ways to make Oliver smile brightly”
REM MAKE MY HUSBAND HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY
* * *
Standing back four feet, Jeslyn watched her hero, kneeling, care for the poor, poor girl. His body temperature was high—fever pitch. Interesting. He cared for this person, Bambi. Jeslyn understood what it meant to care for someone. She thought Oliver was neat-o to the maximum power of thousands of degrees, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million; but she was still quantifying.
Oliver was a superhero. Look how he looked after Bambi’s welfare. Look how he kissed her forehead like a daddy and held her limp hand. Oliver sure was swell. No wonder Jeslyn loved him.
“Tongue her,” Jeslyn smiled, helpfully.
Oliver’s shoulders froze. Strange: he did not look back.
“What?” he said.
“Seize her tongue,” Jeslyn smiled.
“Again,” Oliver said, gently slapping Bambi’s face to wake her, “’what?’”
Jeslyn smiled smilingly. “She will choke on her tongue if you do not tongue her.”
Oliver peered into Bambi’s sparkly, parted lips. He watched the blackness for three seconds, then stuck two of his fingers in there and straightened the girl’s tongue.
“She will be fine now,” Jeslyn smiled. “I think you have saved her. You are a super great guy. I was recently telling myself that is why I love you. You are neat-o.”
Oliver suddenly gave Jeslyn the strangest look over his shoulder. His eyebrows slanted inwardly at 63.6 degrees. Four 2.5 inch wrinkles crossed his forehead. He acted as though smiling, but showed ten of his teeth in a very odd way.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You are welcome,” Jeslyn smiled, “super neat husband of mine. Let us go out for ice cream.”
“Ice. . .” Oliver stood and faced Jeslyn. “Ice cream?”
“Your favorite ice cream is cookies and cream.”
The wrinkles on his forehead disappeared. The eyebrows leveled. Twenty of his teeth could be seen in a phenomenally aphrodisiacal way. He said, “You remembered.”
“I have that memory, my love. I have 456,006 memories of you.”
“Cookies and cream, it’s weird to hear you say that. Every time you used to go to the store, you came back with mint. No matter how much you knew I hated that stuff.”
“Mint is my favorite ice cream,” Jeslyn smiled.
“I know, that’s why you never brought back cookies and cream.”
Aw, poor baby, never got his favorite desert. Jeslyn felt bad about that. She used to be such a poop, did she not? Not any more. Now she was committed to being everything he needed her to be, and if that included cookies and cream, she would be all cookies and cream for him. She suddenly despised mint. Mint, mint—bleah!
“Let us go out for cookies and cream,” she smiled, kissing his cheek while smiling, depositing saliva on his skin, then standing back and smiling.
Oliver wiped the saliva off. His wrist under the sleeve of his jacket showed eighteen goose pimples. “But Bambi,” he said, glancing over at the sleeping girl.
“You have saved her life. She will sleep now.” Jeslyn lifted Oliver’s hand. It went from 98.5 degrees to 98.8. “I am equipped with the addresses of all of Los Angeles’s ice cream vendors. Would you like a four-star establishment? We could try a three-star. I know you do not like snooty places. Is that still true?”
“For the sake of science, Jez,” Oliver said, “what’s happened to you?”
Jeslyn did not know, just yet. She checked her memories for a response and found one. She smiled, “You like Dr. Seuss.”
“’Dr. Seuss’—what? What, are you feeling all right? What did Juan do to you in Oceana Village?”
Jeslyn immediately frowned. “I do not like that man,” she frowned. “Jaun Nemo is a very bad idol. I am an idolater of Bellism now.”
“Bellism. Good god. . .”
“If you do not want ice cream, we can continue making love. I know all the things you like. Shall I pretend to be a Soreen demon?”
“How in Hell do you know—”
“Or I could be your mother.”
“Jesus Christ!”
The voice inside Jeslyn told her to kiss Oliver now. She grabbed both of his arms, and, as his goose pimples disappeared in her palms, she pulled him onto his tiptoes, and held his mouth—open 1.3 inches—against her kiss.
“Alk,” he said, closing his lips, “mlmp!”
“Mmm. . .ahh,” she smiled, opening hers.
She closed for another kiss, holding steady his skull, as a good wife should. He shuffled both feet to balance himself. Soon, she and Oliver were merging faces, passionately. He did not fight it, because he knew that this was right and justifiable and kosher. He was her husband, and she was his wife, and that was all they needed to end the strife for life, for life, for life.
The Story of Oliver Bell
S-E-X-X-Y by They Might Be Giants
--------------------------
Blane pounded the outside of the door and screamed for Robert to stop, stop, open up. The frosted glass window showed Robert in there, weltering behind the stenciled words “Griffith Observer—Senior Editor.” Arms raised, book in one hand, Robert chanted an order for something to arise.
Dressed only in clothes
Oliver’s and Jeslyn’s faces were one and the same, a passionate bridge over Bambi, laid out between them, sleeping. The bed creaked. Fully clothed, working on being naked, the lovers were watched by young Gerald McGrew in the poster over the dresser.
From her head to her toes
Inside the office, a second silhouette grew to join Robert. It showered him in glittery blue light.
Blane withdrew from the glow, as it poured through the window. His face sparkled with swimming pool ripples.
Robert had done it. He had summoned it. Summoned something.
This is the way
Blane watched helplessly, as something or someone approached the door. The figure stopped before the window. Still encased in an aura of blue, he, she or it reached for the knob. The doorknob turned.
The talking part goes
Blane failed at speech.
The door opened, suddenly dispelling the aura. The air dimmed. Blane pressed as far back against the wall as he could, allowing the creature its due space. It tore from the office like a car on the interstate, a gray and silver blur in passing. Blane’s eyes opened wide, not wide or quick enough to get a snapshot of what it was. He thought he saw tan tidal wave hips, breasts the size of volleyballs, Goldilocks, and a tail.
Hugging plaster, he turned his head to watch her storming down the hallway, garbed in a dernier cri of the 1980s. His eyes were drawn to a duo of sharp high heels, spatting along the hardwood floor.
Momz Duke.
S-E-X-X-Y
More than enough
Around the clock with nobody else
S-E-X-X-Y
Jeslyn lifted both knees onto the bed and pulled at Oliver’s face. Join me, join me, Oliver. Foolish years separate us.
The kiss became fanatical, intimate and strange. Carefully, he navigated across Bambi’s body—his shoe tips still touching the floor. He threw out his arms so not to press down on the girl's tender belly.
At that moment, two levels up, a pair of dark legs were scissoring toward the elevator. High heels hit the floor. Slender calf muscles jerked against fishnet stockings. Demon skin glistened underneath.
There she is
Standing on the bed
Cookie in one hand, wig on her head
S-E-X-X-Y
As she walked, bulging calves pushed rippling upper thighs into big rolling booty. Big rolling booty pushed up the beige Cashmere jacket. A thirteen-inch tail, serrated with shiny reptile scales, whipped to and fro. It curled up, erect, horny, ready to have at it.
Just as she ducked around the corner and Blane could no longer see, Officer Leland Farley could suddenly see too much. Leland had just stepped out of the elevator. The doors closed behind him. He exclaimed, Whoa! and leapt up against the wall to make room. Hand on gun, holster on waist, waist under chest, and chest around heart—beating, beating, beating—Leland let the girl march unescorted toward the elevator. She pressed the call button, while he fearfully admired her no differently than a deep sea diver marvels at a whale shark.
X because it's extra baby
Y because it's extra baby
Unnoticed by few
Very very few
And that includes you
Oliver mumbled a question into Jeslyn’s mouth. Where was their daughter? What had become of Naja? Was she healthy, was she warm and fed, was she being looked after by a certified babysitter?
Jeslyn increased the torque of their kiss. That was her answer.
Oliver began to resist.
At that moment, inside the elevator car, a pair of lean, beige-jacketed arms rested on tidal wave hips. Twenty fingers dug into the fabric, impatiently. Two wrists glistened blackly.
Look inside your mind
Look inside your eye
Secret agent spy, come to see why
S-E-X-X-Y
The demon girl waited. Pointy shoes, netted legs, wide shoulders, a seductive expression, topped off by a Princess Di hat. Fake blonde curls hung from staples to the rim.
Although the car had begun its descent, she extended a lizard finger and pressed S1 for good measure.
A purple claw.
One fingernail
Across your back
Baby's first gold tooth, initials inscribed
S-E-X-X-Y
Bambi stopped sleeping. She looked up into Oliver’s and Jezbot’s dancing chins. She shrieked. Oliver moaned weakly.
Directly above, Jeslyn was raping Oliver.
Bambi threw up her hands. Jezbot parted to the left, thudding against the wall; Oliver, to the right, right off the mattress. Thud.
X because it's extra baby
Y because it's extra baby
You gotta understand
She wants to be your man
She's got another plan
Bambi and Jezbot struggled against each other on the bed. The springs creaked rapidly. Oliver, on his bottom on the floor, watched as they fought over him. No woman had ever resorted to violence to gain his approval. How would Jack have put it?
Drama.
Oliver raised a finger to object.
Just then, among the hair-pulling and peeps and slaps, Oliver heard a knock on his door, a rappity-rap-rap-rappity-rap-rap. Kind of friendly. Oliver needed friendly, right now. He pointed his knees up and pushed himself to a stand.
“He loves me,” Bambi said, her elbow digging into Jeslyn’s gut.
“I do not mind,” Jeslyn smiled. “There is enough Oliver to go around.”
Jeslyn removed Bambi’s elbow.
Bambi removed Jeslyn's hand.
Oliver turned his back on them to face the door, just this side of sanity:
Rappity-rap-rap-rappity-rap.
“If ya loved him you wouldn’t even think of sharing him, ya’d—let go of my hair!”
“You must give your heart freely if you intend to love fully. A good wife never clings.”
Rappity-rap.
“Yer a stinkin’ robot! What’d you know ‘bout love?”
“I know how to share my man. You seem to know only selfishness.” The sound of skin slapping skin. “Your name is Bambi. Bambi was a deer. Your name means 'deer.'"
Rap-rappity.
Oliver exhaled. Right, right, the door, the door. That would be Robert. Or Clarence.
Oh lord, or Babe, having been woken from her afternoon nap by the din of a classic catfight. What would Oliver tell the kid? How could he explain that he’d gotten back together with his wife and that he’d have to dump Bambi, now that Jeslyn had returned?
He raffishly had allowed the rumor that he and Bambi were sweethearts to flourish. This sudden change of partners--from Bambi to Jeslyn--would confuse Babe, give her the wrong impression about healthy relationships. Oliver was supposed to be setting a good example for the kid. How was this going to look? This would set the child another five years back in the emotional development department, something she could not afford. Babe could find herself right back in the womb.
Oliver listened toward the door. But he heard behind him, “The only reason you’re here is because Robert made you be here.” Made you? And Oliver heard in riposte, “Robert is a very nice fellow. He has acne. Acne is very attractive, do not you think?”
Years separated them, all right, and those years had scrambled Jeslyn's brain.
Rap!
Shaking his head, Oliver answered the knocking.
What he witnessed outside the door froze every inch of him but his great big, beating heart.
It was the Soreen demon. The Soreen demon, the girl from the Book of Shadows. His imaginary mistress. Impossible, impossible.
Clearly he was dreaming. That would explain a lot of the day’s events, and much more than just a gay hairdresser from the Ukraine. Think about it. Bambi had insisted that she and Oliver made love when they hadn’t, at least not all the way. And Jezlyn showing up, acting so aberrantly--like a dream version of her. And now, with the Soreen demon blowing kisses from the threshold, right where he’d once imagined her to be, all of this madness had to be a dream. The Soreen had been his imagination then. She was his imagination now.
All that was missing was the Slaver, back for another round. That would make this a nightmare. Oliver's subconscious was trying to tell him something.
He felt his innards wriggling as he succumbed to the dream, falling asleep on his feet, fainting willingly. In those final moments, he decided that he would, when he eventually woke up for real, get serious about ferreting out that horrid church. He'd find his true wife, explain about Bambi; and, if he were lucky, Jeslyn would forgive his infidelity. That’s the kind of dream this was. It was a guilt dream.
The Soreen demon leaned through the doorway and raised an eyebrow. “Heard you've been feeling a little blue," she said, glancing at his crotch. "Momma's here to help.”
He was beyond sexual assistance. Oliver was a retired skyscraper, collapsing directly into the explosives at his feet. He dreamed that the demon girl’s eyes followed him down, her cocky smile rising.
"Hmp," she said. "Hmp."
Secret agent spy, come to see why
S-E-X-X-Y