by Andrew Post
“But didn’t the president get busted for—?”
She waved me off. “Yeah, but it was okay. It was just part of the fun, a square that made up that neon quilt of the ’90s. People were happy nonetheless, liked that our president was human and capable of mistakes. That was before the whole epic fail and tearing everyone down just because they’re artistically constipated or too scared to put anything out in the world for others to judge. We accepted faults. Maybe I’m looking at it through rose-colored glasses, but the Internet hadn’t gotten its hooks into all of us—yet. We still had privacy and wonder in the world and mystery about things. Information and answers weren’t always right fucking there and . . . according to the trendoids themselves, the music was good. I mean, I like it. For what it was. Sugary, a little tongue-in-cheek, sourpuss, I-hate-my-parents, lyrics borne out of boredom, but good for the most part. The ’90s were kind of the prototrendoid years themselves, bringing back the ’60s. Some of that attitude bled through, I think. People were dreamers, tinkerers; everyone was obsessed with aliens.” Snaggletoothed smile, a chuckle. “It was just . . . interesting, and everyone was interested.” She looked around us, at the empty storefronts and weedy sidewalks.
“And I think people like to go back to that because it’s comforting. They like Namaste & Jeff because it shows them a simpler time when people talked about relationships and, you know, didn’t get hitched just because they wanted to crap out a gaggle of kids for the free labor. Back then, we had oodles of time to think and analyze and form complaints and rants and . . . the complete opposite of now. Then, the good ones used that time not to pretend to be depressed or feed their Tamagotchis or go shopping for little backpack purses but to dream, then make those dreams into art, not giving two rat craps what anyone thought of it, just doing it and making it because they wanted to and felt they had to. Their muses, uncuffed—even if it did have to have a music video to move copies of their album.” She smirked. “At least, that’s what I make of it anyway. The good parts.”
I liked the sound of that. “And Doogie Howitzer . . . Is that for you, what comes from your uncuffed muse?”
“Doogie Howitzer is how I escape,” she said. “I get onstage, and I’m not in this thing anymore, and I’m not . . . stuck. I’m not me. I’m not what I have to do to get food on the table. I become what I want, not what I have to be.” Her cigarette flew when she flicked it, trailing orange like a GlowSquiggle with a dying battery. Its arc terminated, bursting into a puff of sparks on the asphalt. She began moving up the street again, push-one-two-three-push. I followed.
“What I mean is,” she continued, “I consider my life split into BT and AT. Once I had that notion in my head, it was kind of hard to get rid of it. Meeting Thadius put me on a new track and all, but really, if it weren’t for him, I’d be in rough shape. I think we probably both would’ve been . . . honestly.”
“You said you guys used to make drugs?”
She nodded, gravely. “There was that, yeah, but listen, I shouldn’t have brought it up. You clearly think highly of him, and who am I to mess with it? Far as I know, he’s changed; done with drugs. I can’t speak for him, but I’d like to believe we both learned our lesson. Besides, you’re already disabled. What more damage could he do?” She cringed weakly as if immediately regretting saying it.
Before I could demand an explanation, she braked and indicated a house to our right. “Casa de Thumb.”
On a hill with a winding path leading up to it, the house wasn’t fabulous. Lights glowed inside the bungalow with chipping blue paint. The lawn was like many in Duluth: overgrown, more weeds than grass. The yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence that didn’t look original to the house. Ten foot high with small metal signs riveted in here and there, warning about possible electric shock. Beth bobbed her head toward a keypad and a black screen, her bangs flipping out with the motion. “Press that button there?” she said.
I let go of a crutch and did.
“Yeah?” Thadius’s voice blasted through the tiny speaker. His image appeared on the screen, warped and discolored, as if we were viewing him from the perspective of a goldfish inside a scummy bowl.
“It’s me. I got the dough from tonight,” Beth said.
For a moment I wondered if Thadius saw it was more than just Beth out here, but then I noticed the camera lens in the panel had been gouged out.
“Just toss it over the fence. I’ll pick it up in the morning.” He looked disheveled, his moustache wasn’t finely styled, and he wasn’t wearing what I could now confirm was his toupee. The screen went dead.
Beth sighed. “Press it again.”
I did.
He reappeared, his annoyance plain. “Yes, Beth?”
“There’s someone else out here, Thad. I was trying to tell you that if you hadn’t decided to be so rude about it.”
“Who?” He disappeared from the screen on the panel. The curtains shifted in the window. We met eyes, and I freed a hand to wave. He didn’t return it, simply let the curtains fall back and came outside onto the porch. He flipped a switch, snuffing a faint buzz emanating from his fence that I hadn’t noticed until it was gone.
In a bathrobe and slippers, he slapped down the bendy path of his sloped front yard and came to the gate, undid the latch, and rushed out onto the sidewalk. Getting behind Beth, he shoved her in through the gate, ignoring her protests of “No one pushes me, asshole! Let go!” while frowning at me.
“Close the gate,” he barked. “In the house. Now.”
Track 18
COME CLEAN
Inside the warm living room, several mounted TVs displayed a crackling fire, and ornately framed pictures displayed famous people, some of whom I recognized. The boom of the slamming door probably echoed all the way out to the rig. Standing behind us, breathing hard, Thadius glanced past me, his robe partly undone from the effort, revealing a remarkably hairy chest. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
Beth obliged, set the money bag on the coffee table piled with books and CDs, and with a little trouble on the orange shag carpet, moved into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.
Once she was gone, Thadius’s gaze landed on me.
“I can explain—”
“First, we have a crappy turnout at the Siren. Second, I forget to put the scythe into its hidin’ spot at the store. So I rush over there, only to find the canister I had in the harvester mysteriously gone, even after I thought I talked to you about going behind my back, and the whole way back, I’m thinking, No, that can’t be it. We talked about this. And then I think: The Smocks must’ve come back, found the canister with their buddies in it, taken it back to home base, reassembled them, and now they’re tellin’ them everything. About me, about my new friend Cassetera—whom I thought I could trust—all of it. And then I remember my new friend has this bug up her butt about trying to bring someone back from the dead.”
“I didn’t—”
“But I decide I should sit down for a minute and not jump to conclusions. I should think before freakin’ out. My new friend deserves the benefit of the doubt.” He collapsed onto the couch. “So I sit right here and think I’m bein’ paranoid. My friend has a good head on her shoulders. She wouldn’t try somethin’ like that. We talked about it. I got her to understand. Or so I thought. So, to get my head straight, I decide to go through the mail, read some letters from our fans, and what do I find instead? A package with a thumb stick inside. On it? A video of a scratcher bein’ tried by the Smocks. And which scratcher? None other than Mosaic Face.”
The air fought me. “What?”
His gaze was locked on my legs.
I looked down and saw I’d bled through my jeans at the knee.
He pointed. “So I was wrong about you takin’ the fixins? They’re onto us?”
“No. That’s . . . That’s a long story, but go back. They got Mosaic Face?”
Thadius stood, went to his wall of screens and clicked one on. When the screen came to life
, I looked away at once.
But it only took that glimpse to see it, to know what it was. An overweight man, just some regular guy—patchy facial hair, big cheeks, small eyes behind glasses with circular lenses—being swallowed by flames. The image was paused between frames. Mosaic Face, no longer digitally masked, twitched ceaselessly in a loop as if the scene were being played on a malfunctioning projector. His face, openmouthed, roaring in agony. His eyes. Open. Wide. Like they too were screaming. His eyes. That look. That look . . .
“Could you turn that off now please?”
But he didn’t. Thadius stood in front of the herky-jerk image, stared into it.
Gaze firmly averted, I asked, “So what does that mean?”
“No. No, no. We’re not going to just dodge what you did,” he said, only then shutting the TV off and having a seat again. “We’re going to get that out of the way right now.” He collapsed into a Louis XIV armchair done over in gold spray paint. “So, tell me, girlie, did it turn out like you expected?”
I moved toward the couch, lowered Squishy to the floor, and dropped myself onto the cushion. I collected my crutches, stalling by adjusting their foam grips and wing nuts.
“Did you get the answer you wanted?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He shot forward in his chair. “Tough shit. I do.”
“Okay, all right. I should’ve listened to you.” I tried my best to say it without crying, but it was impossible. “I took the canister back home, put it in, and made them. I—”
“Is that what happened there?” he asked, indicating my bleeding knee.
“No. That was Squishy, telling me the same thing you told me. And even when he shot me, accidentally, I still didn’t listen.”
Thadius glanced at my book bag on the floor. I leaned down, unzipped it partway. Squishy looked about the room—at me, at Thadius—and retreated back inside.
“That true?” Thadius asked the closed grille.
“It was an accident,” Squishy replied. “I reminded her what you told her, Mister Thumb. But she wouldn’t listen.”
Thadius raised his gaze to me. “Never would’ve thought the cartoon character would be the person with the most sense in the room.” He sighed. “And what’d you end up with?” he asked quietly.
“Please. I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Thadius blinked at me. “I think you should tell me.”
I couldn’t say it. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“Fine. Do you understand now?”
“Not really,” I grunted and slumped back in my seat. The couch hugged me, the thing well dented on my side, where I guessed Thadius normally sat. “I mean, if we can make him”—I waved a hand at Squishy in his kennel—“I don’t understand why other things can’t be brought back.”
“I saw what you did with my cauldron at the store,” he said. “You analyzed what was in the canister, saw it was six Smocks, and just okayed it. You didn’t specify in the recipe that you wanted six separate Smocks. You just hit that you wanted six in no discernible formation. The machine can’t read minds.”
“But they were alive,” I said, throat crowded with knots. “In a way. I just don’t understand why I couldn’t take something else and—”
“Your mom’s dead,” Thadius said with tenderness. “Sorry to say it, but there really are no two ways about this. If you and your dad tried putting her back together after she was dead, that’s all you were going to get: a corpse. You want to bring somethin’ back that’s got a pulse, you got to put somethin’ in that had one when harvested.”
“But what about him?” I threw a finger at Squishy’s kennel. “He never existed. He never had a pulse before you gave him one. How does that work? I mean, if I can make a recipe of my mom, can’t I get the right fixins and—?”
“It may look like your mom, but it wouldn’t be her. I’m fine with jazzin’, but as far as making somethin’ that was someone else, someone real. And—no. We’re not even going there. And even jazzin’ livin’ things . . .” His gaze drifted to my book bag Squishy. “I think we might have to cool it on that front as well.”
“But why not try and bring her back?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
“Don’t you have someone you’d want to bring back?”
Thadius flinched. “Cass, I’m not entertaining this. And we’re not talking about me. What you did was wrong. You could’ve gotten hurt—more hurt. Killed. You could’ve gotten us found out. With them nabbin’ Mosaic Face, we’re now halfway up shit creek. We don’t need any more help paddlin’. I—”
Beth wheeled from the kitchen, pushing aside the door with her knees. On her lap was a tray with two coffee cups, a French press, and a half-empty bottle of sherry. Thadius and I halted our argument there, as if behind that thin door Beth hadn’t been able to hear any of what we were saying. I now knew she knew about jazzing, about cauldrons and all that, but at the same time, I agreed with Thadius and didn’t continue while she was present. Obviously feeling the awkwardness of it, she moved into the room and put the tray down on the coffee table. “I’m gonna head.”
“Thank you, Beth,” Thadius said, “but unfortunately, it’ll only be sherry and coffee for one tonight. Do you mind if Cassetera here stays at your place?”
If I could’ve shot to my feet, I would’ve. “You can’t keep all this to yourself. We’re a team here, aren’t we? What’s our plan for stopping them? You know things, like about what you let slip on the way to the pit that one night—about my mom. And about me being a writer?” I got tongue-tied with so many questions. “I—I—I . . .”
He remained stern. “Stay with Beth tonight. You can’t go walkin’ around at night with him on your back, and I don’t really want you here.”
“Why? I . . . I think it’s really fucked that you get to have all the answers and I don’t get to know anything.” Tears were coming again.
“Take Squishy, stay with Beth, go home tomorrow. But I want you at the Siren sometime in the afternoon.” He poured some sherry.
My need to argue lost its oomph. I hiked up my shoulders, sighed, and struggled to my feet. He wouldn’t look at me, though I was sure he could feel me glaring at him. “Fine.”
Thadius stood, went to the door, peeked out at the front lawn, then unlocked the three dead bolts. He stood beside the open door. “They got Mosaic Face. If anything links him to us, I don’t need to tell you that’d be bad. I think it’d be in our best interest to lie low for a while. We’ll continue. I’ll tell you what I know, but it’ll have to be strictly in the off-hours and at the right place. Not here, not the Siren. Hopefully, what Mosaic Face was workin’ on got on a pony before they nabbed him. Until, if, and when that thing arrives”—he nodded at the open door leading out onto his front porch—“we’ve got to do this smart. Thanks for droppin’ off the tills, Beth, and I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
I stayed put. “Who is the Betrayer?”
The hardness of his face loosened, clicking directly into shock. “Who told you about that?”
“They did. One of the Smocks I rebuilt. The one that could actually . . . speak.”
He closed the door partway but kept his hand on the knob. “You ever see some hipster that hangs around the Siren House sometimes? Dark hair, glasses?”
“Clifford.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Well, actually, he was the one trying to talk to me.”
Beth rolled forward. “I’m going to have a smoke on the porch. Come on out when you’re ready, Cass.”
“Okay.”
She was barely past us before Thadius blurted, “Well? What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Blame Beth. She was the one pushing drinks on me all night.”
“Hey,” she said from outside, her words shaped by t
he cigarette in the corner of her lips, “you didn’t have to drink them.”
“Stop. Both of ya. Cass. This isn’t just office gossip here, girlie,” Thadius shouted. “This is important. Now what did you tell him?”
“He was like . . . just coming on to me. I don’t know. Asking me my name, asking about nothing really. No scratcher-type stuff. Just being a creeper.”
“So you told him nothing? Nothing I’d be mad if anybody besides us knew?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not dumb.”
“All right. Just, if you see him again, do the same thing and don’t tell him shit.”
“Who did he betray?”
“What?”
“Well, she called him the Betrayer. I’m sure it wasn’t because he’s really good at making coffee.”
“The Smocks. He betrayed the Smocks. Don’t tell him anythin’ and don’t go nowhere with him.”
“Okay, okay. I got that. But he was a Smock? Seriously?” I’d assumed as much, but it was still hard to believe. He was so gawky, awkward.
“Was. Not anymore. But he cannot be trusted either way.”
The rainbow poppers that’d lit up the sky a few minutes after he and I’d talked that night suddenly fit snugly together. He really did not look like a Smock. My chest felt tight. It was like I’d just crossed a wheat field as casually as could be and only told it was a minefield after reaching the other side, miraculously unharmed.
After three false starts, my words finally cooperated with me. “If you know that, why do you let him into the Siren House? What if he sees something, sneaks off, goes downstairs, and finds the tunnel, your cauldron, or Squishy?”
“I want him to come in,” Thadius said. “I’m watchin’ him. Tellin’ him to piss off would be as good as comin’ right out and tellin’ him I’m a scratcher. But, see, lettin’ him do his spy thing, as free as he pleases, ensures he doesn’t know that I know what he is.”
After a second of working that out, I said, “Okay, so how did he betray them? And how do you know all this?”
