The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “No!” Daniel and I said together, as involuntary a reaction as heartbeats.

  “It does make my hair look weird, though.” Charice was wearing a bald cap—a dark-skinned bald cap—with Balrog’s triangular hair stitched into it. “Weird” wasn’t even close to being the right word.

  “Why are you dressed as Balrog, Charice?”

  Charice laughed. “To celebrate your victory, obviously. I’m going to wear this tomorrow to the tournament. If I’m going to be there, I may as well make an entrance.”

  “Where did you even find that?” asked Daniel.

  “I’m borrowing it from a friend,” said Charice. “I wouldn’t have gone with Balrog if I’d more time to put this together. I’d be Cammy or Rose or something.”

  Now that I had gotten over my initial shock, it actually was pretty apparent that Charice’s costume was a hand-me-down. Her blue tank top and pants hung off her obscenely. But dear God, her head.

  “You know you can’t wear that bald cap,” said Daniel whose thinking was running alongside mine.

  “Oh,” said Charice. “I’ll rouge this thing up so much, you’ll never know.”

  Then we had pasta. Charice was unwilling to take off her boxing gloves—“I’m feeling the fantasy,” she said—and so this forced Daniel fully into chef mode. A role he seemed to relish, actually, although his cooking was always more enthusiastic than skilled.

  “So,” said Charice, once we had food. “Tell me about this murder, and your tournament, in that order.”

  I told Charice everything, who could, despite all appearances, be a pretty good listener. She was especially piqued around the part about the naked guy, which I expected, but also about the appearance of Shuler. I won’t say that Charice didn’t like Shuler, because Charice likes everyone, but she was wary of him. This was perhaps because of her frequently illegal behavior, but also because she was more firmly in the camp of Nathan.

  But I digress.

  “You need to figure out who this Doctor XXX is,” she observed when I was done with the story.

  “Do I, though?” I asked. Now that I’d had a moment to not be in the maze, as it were, it seemed to me that it would be much easier to not figure this out at all. Not everything that happens around you is a mystery to be solved. Besides which, I didn’t actually have a client here.

  I explained this to Charice.

  “Then I’ll hire you,” said Charice. “What do you charge?”

  “You can’t afford me,” I told her, although this was plainly untrue. Charice made obscene amounts of money and, despite her apparent extravagances, didn’t actually spend all that much. Take our apartment—it wasn’t that nice. Charice could afford a house in a suburb. But making cuts on housing things meant that she could go big on places where it really mattered, like colorful hats or randomly assigned detective work.

  “One month’s rent, free,” said Charice.

  “If I solve the murder? That’s nuts, Charice.”

  “Not even that,” said Charice. “Just figure out who this guy is who lured you into the storeroom.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m curious,” said Charice. “Besides, it will make you proud, and you’ll walk around for the next month all puffed up, and that makes you easier to live with.”

  For the moment, let us skip over the implication that I am difficult to live with. An implication made, once again, by a woman who had released a Gila monster in our apartment.

  “Why would that make me happy?” I asked, very honestly.

  “Because you are a person who yearns for vengeance.”

  I was prepared to argue this point, but it was, like many things Charice said, uncomfortably true. It would be nice to stick it to “Doctor XXX,” even if he was, I don’t know, a twelve-year-old girl in Guatemala.

  “Fine,” I said. “But how would I make that happen?”

  “Beats me,” said Charice. “You’re the detective. Have you tried googling the guy?”

  I had, actually. I had figured it wouldn’t work. I needed someone with a username like VertiginousPigeon or Topiary-Spider. Doctor XXX was too common. Also, when I did a search for “Doctor XXX,” the first hit was for—and I quote—“a crazy nurse with a dick.” This did not inspire me to do a lot more searching, although if your tastes run toward crazy nurses with dicks, consider yourself in the know.

  “I suppose I could do that,” I said, not bothering to expound upon the nurse with dicks angle. Because there were things I could do. If the guy had used the handle for anything else, I could search for pairs: “Doctor XXX” + “Dark Alleys” or “Street Fighter.” Or hell, I could just try names. “Doctor XXX” + “Mike3000.” These were all long shots, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Honestly, I suspect that in this day and age most murders could be solved by the correct Google search. It could be a web series. CSI: Bing.

  I had an idea to try that now, which seemed a natural thing to do, because Charice and Daniel were beginning the long process of retreating to their bedroom, which was presaged by Daniel feeding her pasta. Looking at the two of them, I was simultaneously sort of disgusted and struck with the thought that if Charice was going to get engaged, it was good that she was going to do it with a man that cooked and fed her pasta.

  But the doorbell rang, and I had a visitor. Nathan Willing.

  Nathan was wearing a green-and-white-checked blazer and a V-neck, which on its own would have looked plausible on a nice Floridian golfer lady. But on him, it looked great. Nathan looked, as he always did, scruffy and winning, and with a grin big enough to be seen from space.

  “Dahlia,” he said. “I’ve come bearing gifts.”

  He held out a small ornamental cactus. This happened because Nathan, a botanist, is fonder of buying flowers for women than most fellas. I told him I did not want flowers, because I am not good at keeping things looking good or alive. His response to this was, apparently, to simply switch to xerophytic plants. And he held one out now, a small round cactus with tiny purple flowers and needles that looked a bit like snow.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  I gestured to come in, and Charice stopped being fed pasta and waved at him.

  “Don’t I have one of these already?” I asked. I was amassing quite a little cactus garden, because Nathan had taken to giving me one of these every time he saw me.

  “Not one like this,” he said. “I’m keeping a database. How was your day?”

  And more pasta.

  Here’s the thing about Nathan Willing. I feel about him a little the way that I feel about the cactus garden. If you asked me if I wanted a cactus garden, I would have said no. I even would say that in the middle of the day, when the cactus garden was not around. But then I get home, and there’s this beautiful little oasis of plants that are hard to kill that makes me sort of happy.

  I feel iffy about my relationship with Nathan, at least when he’s not around. It happened too quickly, too easily. I’m suspicious. He’s a boyfriend that just sort of fell out of the sky. It was as if I had tripped over a tree root and landed in a relationship. It didn’t feel like it should have happened. Or at least, that’s how I felt until he showed up, and then I was grateful to have something that was wonderful and easy to keep alive.

  It’s complicated.

  “Dahlia stumbled into another murder,” said Daniel.

  “You’re kidding,” said Nathan. “You should have called me.”

  This was a fair point, but Charice had her own issue to pursue.

  “What do you mean Dahlia stumbled into a murder, Daniel?” asked Charice. “You were there too. You stumbled together.”

  “I suppose,” said Daniel. “But Dahlia threw up on the guy. And she was possibly lured to her doom. I’m just the bodyguard.”

  “Why wasn’t I the bodyguard?” asked Nathan.

  “You had to teach,” I said. “And besides which, I don’t need a bodyguard.” Which is again, a terrible thing to say, because as this story will bea
r, I apparently need a bodyguard very badly. Foreshadowing.

  But this didn’t impress anyone, particularly Charice, who was now onto stage two of her what I can only assume was foreplay with Daniel, which was that she was now feeding the pasta to him. It was like watching Lady and the Tramp, but with humans instead of dogs, and filthy.

  I got up and sat down in our common-room sofa. Nathan followed along.

  “Tell me about your day,” he said. Nathan sat down next to me, very next to me, and I sort of fell over onto him. He’s a very thin guy, Nathan, with a bony lap (and shoulder blades that can cut glass), but I couldn’t think of a better lap to be in at the moment.

  “It was horrible,” I said. And I gave him all the details. Swan, and Doctor XXX, and the whole terrible business. Nathan, unlike Charice, has a real weakness for interrupting narratives with witty remarks, but this time he took the whole story in without comment.

  “You don’t have to go back, you know,” said Nathan. Which was sensible, really, but the wrong thing to say, because I wanted to go back. It wasn’t smart, but it’s what I wanted.

  “Charice has hired me to figure out who Doctor XXX is,” I said. “So I guess I kind of do.”

  “Plus I want to win!” shouted Daniel.

  Nathan, for his part in this, shot a look at Charice that was perhaps the most irritated I’ve ever seen him. This made me strangely happy. Both because he was being protective of me, which was nice, and because it’s rewarding to be reminded that normal people should be irritated by Charice’s behavior.

  “You know what I think we should do,” said Nathan.

  “Something with model trains?” Nathan was obsessed with trains, and while I’m willing to geek out over just about anything, model trains are one of the few things that I have no patience for.

  “No,” said Nathan. “Although,” he added, his face transforming, “if you’re up for that, I did get the Walthers catalog. We could look at it together.”

  “That will never happen,” I said. “And not just tonight. I mean ever.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Well, it wasn’t my suggestion anyway. I say we go out!”

  “That sounds exhausting.”

  “We can go to the Tivoli. We’ll see the most foreign movie they have. Super foreign. Something in Khoe or Pitjantjatjara.”

  Is Nathan a hipster? He generally denied the idea, but then he was given to saying things like “Let’s see a movie in Khoe or Pitjantjatjara.” You decide.

  “As tempting as that sounds,” I told Nathan, “I don’t think I want to partake of any plan that involves me moving even slightly.”

  “We could Netflix and chill,” said Nathan. “Or even just Netflix.”

  “Or even just chill,” said Daniel, who really ought not to be eavesdropping on our conversations. But I digress.

  I enjoy Nathan Willing. I like his clothes. I like his cacti. I can even put up with his shoulder blades, which, seriously, can cut your face. But I didn’t want him around just right now. Mostly because I planned on doing unwise Internet stalking, and I knew that Nathan would disapprove. I didn’t feel like telling him that, though, and so I went with:

  “I’m thinking I’m just going to pass out,” I said.

  “You could pass out at the Tivoli. They have alcohol.”

  “Let’s just connect tomorrow instead, okay? Vomiting on corpses will really take it out of you.”

  Which is a line that’s hard to argue with.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Nathan left and Charice and Daniel retreated to their room, leaving a trail of noodles behind them, I popped open my laptop and took to the searching. Well, eventually, I did that. I did make myself a gin and tonic, which I know is a little like drinking alone, but my feeling is that you can’t drink alone when you’re on the Internet. Besides which, I went light on the gin and heavy on the tonic.

  Searching was a waste of time, however, because Doctor XXX was not connected to anyone. The name had never been used previously, as far as I could tell, never competed in any other tournaments, never had any connection to anyone I had met.

  That sounds like striking out, but it actually was a piece of information in and of itself. Someone had created this identity, just for me. And for Imogen, apparently, which was strange. Why? What was the connection between us?

  When you have very little information, the bits that you do have are important. And this was important. If I could figure out what Imogen and I had in common, maybe I could make this whole thing unravel.

  I logged back in to Twitch TV and started broadcasting again. This time, I actually was playing a little Hearthstone, which I find relaxing and helps me think. The usual gang of knuckleheads were there watching me, and it was nice to have an audience. I did an Arena run as a Paladin this time, winning the first three games in a row. It seemed like I was having a great evening until chat went crazy.

  Doctor XXX was back.

  “Hey,” typed our mysterious doctor. “Do you have a second?”

  Twitch chat was like, Girl, no!, but I did have a second. I told Twitch to keep it together, and opened up a private conversation with the doctor.

  “So,” I typed. Initially it was going to be a prelude into something else, but after I looked at it, I felt like it was salvo enough. I didn’t know who I was addressing here—this guy could be anything from a murderer to the fan that sexed up Swan (unlikely, but still hypothetically possible) to some rando that wasn’t even in town. “So” would do.

  “Okay,” typed Doctor XXX, “I’m really sorry about today. Just so you know, I didn’t know anything about Karou. In case you got that idea.”

  Okay, I thought. So, not completely a rando. Someone who knew about Karou. Of course, news of Karou’s death had probably made the rounds on social media, so it still didn’t mean that he couldn’t be messaging me from Stratford-upon-Avon or the Antarctica research station. But it made it less likely. I almost told him that the police were looking for him, but this suddenly struck me as a comment that would likely lead to our doctor vanishing again.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Because I feel guilty,” said Doctor XXX. “I can’t imagine anything crueler than sending you to a room with a violently murdered person. It was an accident. I am so sorry.”

  It seemed an honest enough answer, but I wanted to plug in the only piece of information I had, even if the transition was a little dickish.

  “Why are you following Imogen?” I asked.

  There was a very long time before there was a reply. So long that I wondered whether I would have been better off with the police angle. I even alt-tabbed over to my regular Twitch chat channel, where people were taking bets on how I would eventually be killed. Twitch chat is sort of my Statler and Waldorf, now that I think about it.

  “I can only be killed by a Highlander,” I said into camera, which redirected them into a whole different conversation. Like Statler and Waldorf, they were easy to redirect. Why do we always come here? / I guess we’ll never know.

  Doctor XXX didn’t vanish, though. He finally responded.

  “What?” he typed.

  Three minutes for “What?” Either he was very VERY shocked, or he was just multitasking. I pressed further.

  “You’re only following two people,” I typed. “Me and Imogen. LadyBlazer is her username. I was just wandering why.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” typed Doctor XXX.

  Sure you don’t. I clicked on his profile and discovered that now he was only following one person. Me. I guess that explained what he was doing for those three minutes.

  It was my turn to take a moment. I could argue with this clown, but what was the point? I wish I had taken a screenshot, but what would I have done with it? Thrown it in his face? To what end? What I really wanted was more information from him.

  “Oh,” I typed. “I guess I got confused. Do you want to meet tomorrow at the tournament?”

  I sent him a link
to the Major Redding. Admission aboard the boat—in contrast to the hotel—wasn’t free. But it seemed unwise to point that out.

  “I’ll be there if you want to meet up,” I typed. “You can explain this problem of yours to me. Be sure to wear that green cap of yours.”

  And this time, Doctor XXX was gone for good.

  I streamed for a little bit more, although clearly I was elsewhere, because I lost the next three games. But the bizarre strangers of the Internet were not done with me, because I got yet another message. From another doctor.

  Doctor XY: “Hey babe!”

  It was only a matter of time before my problems became a meme, and I ignored this doctor, who I assumed was just a knucklehead having fun.

  “Do you know why they call me Doctor XY?”

  I also ignored this question, whose answer I assumed involved a penis.

  But Doctor XY kept sending me new messages.

  “Can you meet me tomorrow at the Major Redding? I have a special surprise for you. Something prickly.”

  Ugh, I moused over to mute the guy and he added:

  “You could wear that T-shirt I like. The black one with the pink unicorn that doesn’t fit you.”

  And that got my attention, because I didn’t wear that shirt when I streamed precisely because it didn’t fit me. I had left it in the dryer a little too long, and I just hadn’t gotten around to throwing it away yet.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Meet me on the main deck of the Major Redding. It’ll be a surprise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I awoke with a sense of hope. In itself, this is probably a mistake. But what can you do? Part of it was that I had slept, which is almost always helpful—to any problem, up to and including comas. Also, I felt better about Daniel and Charice. Still a little anxious—I’ll admit that I wasn’t entirely on board with friends of mine growing up without me. But I was coming to terms with it. And if I could accept that, probably solving a murder couldn’t be that hard.