Shawn, apparently, didn’t have the same problem. Gus looked up over his last bite of ice-creamy goodness and was about to propose they move on to the burger stand when he noticed Shawn staring off into the distance, looking troubled.
“Is something wrong?” Gus said.
“Is something wrong?” Shawn repeated. “Oh, yes, my friend, there’s something wrong. Something very, very wrong.”
“Oh, yes, my friend?” Gus said. “You mean it’s something so bad you’re required to talk like a character in one of those Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs Tom Selleck used to star in?”
“It’s worse. It’s the return of an evil so malevolent, so hideous, the entire civilized world cheered when it was finally vanquished from the earth at the end of the eighties.”
“The Soviet Union has reestablished itself in a public garden?”
“Even worse than that,” Shawn said. “Look.”
With a mounting sense of dread, Gus turned slowly to see what Shawn was talking about.
Shawn was right. As horrifying as the Beast prowling through Gus’ heat-induced hallucination had been, this was worse. Its face was waxen white, its lips bloodred, its eyes ringed with thick black. Gus’ first instinct was to run screaming out of the snack bar area; his second was for a frontal attack. Before he could decide between fight and flight, though, he noticed that the creature was slamming its blue-and-white-striped appendages uselessly against some kind of invisible barrier.
“It’s trapped in the box,” Gus said.
“For the moment,” Shawn agreed. “But that’s not going to last long. Before we can do anything, it will be out of the box and then it will start walking into the wind. And after that, well, you know what happens.”
Gus did. Once the wind stopped blowing, the demon would turn its bereted head on the innocent people in the garden and start to imitate them. But this wouldn’t be just any imitation. It would be vicious caricature, emphasizing the least attractive aspects of its victims. Or, far more likely, emphasizing whatever set of moves it had been taught in mime class that week.
“Should we alert security?” Gus whispered.
“It’s apparently neutralized the guards.” Shawn pointed down at the second beret lying at the mime’s feet. It was dotted with coins, mostly pennies, but also the occasional nickel or dime, along with a single quarter. One lone dollar bill was tucked into the brim, obviously placed there by the mime itself to plant the idea of donating paper money in the minds of its viewers. “To haul in that much cash, it must have been here for hours.”
“Without us noticing it?”
“It’s very quiet,” Shawn said. “Which is what we should be. Let’s put our trash in the wastebasket and walk out of here.”
“But if we leave first, he’ll target us for sure.”
“Just look straight ahead and keep walking,” Shawn said. “Whatever happens, keep walking.”
Gus didn’t need Shawn to tell him that. He still remembered that terrible day on the Santa Barbara Pier fifteen years ago when he had been targeted for mockery by a particularly cruel mime. By the time he escaped into the crowd, Gus had witnessed such a vicious deconstruction of his walk that he was paralyzed by self-consciousness and unable to get out of bed for a week.
Balling up their trash and tossing it in a receptacle, Shawn and Gus walked slowly but determinedly away from the snack bar, past the bathrooms, and towards the exit. As they rounded the ticket booth, Gus noticed that Shawn wasn’t next to him anymore.
“He’s gone,” Shawn said.
Gus stopped walking, but refused to turn his head to see Shawn behind him.. “You looked back?”
“No,” Shawn said. “Not really. More of a glance. A glimpse, maybe.”
“That’s what they all say, right before they turn into a pillar of salt.”
“Better than being a pillar of Jell-O,” Shawn said.
“Yeah?” Gus said. “Wait until it rains and see which pillar lasts longer.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Shawn said. “There’s more to life than how long you can stand out in the rain without melting.”
“If there is, I haven’t come across it,” Gus said, still refusing to cast a backwards glance. “Can we go now?”
Apparently not. Shawn hadn’t moved. He was staring back towards the snack bar, looking for the vanished mime. “There was something wrong with that mime,” Shawn said.
“By definition,” Gus said.
“No, something else,” Shawn said, still looking back where they’d last seen the mime. “Something I noticed but didn’t register until after we left.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Gus spoke quietly. “You mean like he had a gun pointed at my head?”
“I think I would have noticed that a little quicker,” Shawn said. “No, it was-”
“Shawn!”
“Yes?”
“The mime has a gun pointed at my head.”
Shawn turned back to his partner. The mime stood in front of Gus, his white-gloved hand leveling a gleaming pistol at Gus’ forehead.
“Please,” the mime said. “Don’t make me kill you.”
Chapter Six
There was another long, silent moment.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to talk,” Shawn finally said.
“Put your hands up,” the mime said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
“Absolutely.” Shawn’s arms shot up in the air. Gus’ followed quickly.
“Now turn around and walk towards the bathrooms.”
Shawn and Gus turned around, their hands high in the air. Shawn waved his back and forth, trying to attract some attention.
“You’re never going to get away with this,” Gus said. “There are dozens of witnesses.”
“And they’re all staring right at us,” Shawn said, waving his hands wildly. With each wave, another few people turned towards them.
Gus and Shawn exchanged a look; then Gus shouted to the throng of parents, kids, and gardeners who were staring at them from the snack bar area. “Help! He’s got a gun!”
Gus didn’t know what to expect. Best-case scenario would be a squad of beefy, well-armed security experts descending on them. Second best might be dozens of cell phones dialing 911 at the same instant. He would have settled for one irate mom with a canister of pepper spray on her keychain.
What he didn’t expect was what happened. The crowd was still for a moment. Then they burst into laughter.
“Don’t laugh,” Gus commanded them. “This is serious. He could kill us!”
But the crowd only laughed harder.
“Has this whole town gone crazy?” Gus asked Shawn.
“Look behind you,” Shawn said.
Gus risked a glance over his shoulder. The mime had hidden his gun under his shirt. To the crowd of onlookers, it might well have been his finger. His painted face was alternating between a mask of furious anger and an impressively accurate impersonation of Gus’ fear.
“I so do not look like that,” Gus said.
“Really?” Shawn said. “This man is holding us at gunpoint, and you’re worried that his imitation of you is too mean?”
The killer mime said something urgent and harsh. It sounded like “ash oon.” Shawn and Gus turned back to look at him and saw that as he said the syllables again, his ruby lips were locked into an evil scowl. Because of course he couldn’t let his audience see him speaking.
“Ash oon?” Shawn said. “I’m afraid we don’t know what that is.”
There was a click from under the mime’s shirt. He had cocked the pistol.
“But if you wanted us to step into the bathroom, we could do that,” Shawn said.
As the crowd cheered them on, Shawn and Gus marched towards the public restrooms, a low, wide building faced with river rock and brown-painted wood.
“Inside,” the mime hissed. Shawn pushed the door open and led Gus in. The mime followed them inside an
d slid a latch locked behind them, as the faint sounds of applause came through the walls.
The bathroom was surprisingly clean for a public facility in midsummer. The linoleum floor was shiny and dry; the three stalls’ white paint was fresh and unmarked by graffiti. All the discarded paper towels had somehow made it into the receptacles. And the room deodorizer was a mild clove scent.
Still, there were many other places Gus would have preferred to be. And none of them contained gun-toting mimes.
“Take off your clothes and throw them on the ground,” the mime said.
Shawn winced. “My mother always told me not to take off my clothes for strange men in a public restroom.”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” the mime said. “If I have to kill you to protect Rushmore, I will.”
“I know some people really love that movie,” Shawn said,
“but this seems a little over the top. And can you really tell me that Olivia Williams would have ever forgiven that idiot kid after he almost killed Bill Murray?”
“Stop it!” the mime shouted. “Get undressed now!”
“I don’t see a back door in this building,” Gus said. “Once you pull that trigger, everyone outside will know you’re not an adorable mime.”
“If such a thing exists,” Shawn said.
“How long do you think that latch will hold out once the police bring the battering ram?” Gus said.
“I’ve got six bullets in my gun,” the mime said. “Two for you, three for him, and one left over for myself. The latch will hold out long enough for that.”
“How come I get three and he only gets two?” Shawn said.
“Take off your clothes,” the mime said. “I won’t tell you again.”
“What do we do?” Gus whispered to Shawn.
Shawn stared at the mime. Then he lowered his gaze and pulled off his T-shirt.
“You, too,” the mime snapped at Gus.
It took Gus a lot longer to get down to his boxers than it did Shawn, who had apparently dressed with exactly this scenario in mind. Even his shoes were slip-ons, which he slipped off in less than a second. Everything Gus was wearing seemed to have more buttons than he remembered, and his fingers slipped and fumbled with every one. Somehow the laces on his standard brown dress shoes had been tied into triple knots, and it took what felt like hours for him to undo them. After a few more hours, Gus stood next to Shawn, dressed only in his boxer shorts, his bare feet adhering to the linoleum.
“I didn’t say get ready to go swimming,” the mime said.
“All your clothes.”
Gus wanted to sneak a look at Shawn to see what he was going to do. But he didn’t dare. He was afraid he’d find courage in his friend’s eyes, and then he’d refuse to do what the mime was demanding, and then they’d both be dead. He bent down and quickly stripped off his shorts, covering himself with both hands as he straightened up.
“Now kick them over here,” the mime commanded, and Gus did. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blur of movement that must have been Shawn also following the order. The mime scooped up all the clothes with his free arm, then gestured with the gun. “Into the stall.”
“Could we go into separate stalls?” Shawn said. “Because they’re really only meant for one person, and I don’t think we should be doing a lot of touching in our present condition.”
The mime didn’t answer. He lowered the gun to where Shawn had strategically placed his hands.
“You know, one stall sounds fine,” Shawn said. “It’ll be much warmer that way.”
Shawn and Gus scurried into the middle stall and slammed the door shut behind them. Gus turned the latch firmly, locking them in.
“Oh, yeah, that will do a lot of good,” Shawn said. “No one’s ever gotten through one of these before.”
“You want me to leave it open?”
Shawn didn’t. Each stood pressed against a stall wall, trying to pretend the cold metal wasn’t lowering their body temperatures with every passing second.
“Are you almost done with our clothes out there?” Shawn finally called out.
There was no answer.
“Maybe you could finish up with our underwear first?” Shawn suggested hopefully.
Still no answer came.
“What do you think he’s doing out there?” Gus whispered.
Shawn pressed his eye to the crack at the edge of the door and tried to peer out.
“One of two things,” Shawn said. “Either he’s taken our clothes and woven them into a cloak of invisibility, or he’s gone.”
Shawn pulled open the stall door and stuck his head out. The mime was gone. And so were their clothes. Shawn checked every stall and tore through all the trash cans, but the mime hadn’t left them so much as a sock.
“What do we do now?” Gus said.
“We’re taking him down.” Shawn bolted to the door.
“You can’t go out there,” Gus said as Shawn reached for the door handle.
“Watch me.”
“It’s not me who’s going to be watching,” Gus said. “It’s all the moms out there with their little kids.”
“So what do you suggest? That we just stay in here until everyone has gone home and we can slip out without anyone seeing us?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Gus said. “But my car keys were in my pants pocket. So even if we do get out of here, we’ve got to walk through one of the San Gabriel Valley’s least progressive suburbs stark naked. How long do you think we’ll last out on those mean streets without any clothes?”
“I’m still waiting for a suggestion.”
“There are a lot of people out there,” Gus said. “Sooner or later, most of them are going to need to use the bathroom. And when they come in, we can beg them for a piece of clothing. It may take some time, but we can piece together enough clothes to walk out of here.”
“Because most people who come to a public garden wear an extra pair of pants just in case.”
Gus fumed. Of course Shawn was right, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to have his only idea shot down.
“Maybe if we wish really hard, the magical elves will hear us and weave us a new set of clothes,” Gus said.
Shawn beamed as if Gus had said something brilliant. “That’s it,” he said.
“Elves are it?”
“Not elves,” Shawn said. “We’ll make our own clothes.”
Chapter Seven
When Gus was four years old, his mother dressed him up as Cupid for a Valentine’s Day party. He wore a fluffy cotton diaper, a pair of wings, and a halo. And nothing else. She paraded him through a houseful of adults, all of whom cooed over the adorable little cherub.
For the rest of his life, Gus treasured that memory. Not because he enjoyed the evening; it was as miserable an experience as anything he’d ever suffered. But from that night on, no matter what happened to him, no matter how great the humiliation, he could always think back and tell himself, “At least it wasn’t as bad as being Cupid in a diaper.”
That thought never failed to make him feel better. When he was in first grade and spilled water down his pants, giving the entire school the impression that he’d wet himself, he took solace in the knowledge that this moment was less embarrassing than parading around in a diaper and wings. When he mistimed a kiss aimed at Santa Barbara High School’s third-string cheerleader Missy Summerland at a victory rally and ended up locking lips with a wide receiver, he knew that this was not as bad as being naked Cupid. Even the time that he and Shawn gave a lengthy and thorough reveal to a baffling case only to be informed that a different suspect had confessed hours before, Gus comforted himself with the thought that at least he wasn’t wearing a diaper and wings while presenting the conclusion.
But that memory could do him no more good. Because he’d finally experienced something more humiliating than that Valentine’s Day appearance. And it involved diapers, too.
These weren’t the fluffy, opaque, completely secure diape
rs his mother had dressed him in. No. These were made out of flimsy paper toilet seat covers. Flimsy, near-translucent paper toilet seat covers.
Shawn had emptied the dispensers from all the stalls and both men had done their best to wrap the covers around their midsections in such a manner that they’d stay up on their own. But without tape or pins, there was no way to keep them together, and Shawn and Gus had to walk out of the men’s room clutching wads of paper to their fronts and backs. If there was a single person in the Gardens who didn’t stare at them until they were out of sight Gus never noticed him.
The humiliation might have been terminal for Gus. Fortunately, the burning sun had heated the asphalt path almost to the melting point, and he could use the agony he felt every time he set down one bare foot to take his mind off the embarrassment.
Beyond the mortification of both soul and flesh, there was one other major problem Gus was wrestling with: What were they going to do once they reached his car? He supposed they could use a brick to smash one of the windows, if there happened to be any bricks lying around the parking lot, but smashing wouldn’t get the car started. That was, if the mime hadn’t used Gus’ keys and driven off in the Echo.
He hadn’t, which was the first good thing that had happened to Gus all day. But when they got to the parking lot, Shawn didn’t go to the Echo. Instead he started looking in the trash barrels that stood outside the park’s wrought-iron fence. The first two were empty aside from trash. The third, however, held their clothes.
“How did you know they’d be here?” Gus said as he pulled his underpants on under his tissue paper diaper.
“I sort of figured that not even a mime would risk life in prison to steal some clothes he could buy at Goodwill for under a buck,” Shawn said, slipping on his jeans before he stepped into his shoes.
“Then what was that all about?”
Shawn dug in his pockets. “Not my wallet,” he said, fishing it out and flipping through it. “Or any of the four dollars left inside it.” He checked Gus’ pants before tossing them to him. “Or your wallet, or your car keys.”
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