The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  Still, a sensible person might have said: you know, there are multiple unknown men who are going to meet me aboard a steamboat. One of them may have lured me to find a corpse. Another wants me to wear tightly fitting T-shirts. Maybe, just possibly, this would be a good opportunity to take a sick day.

  Can private eyes do that? Did Sam Spade ever just tell a guy, listen, this Maltese Falcon sounds intriguing, but today I’m just staying in bed and watching the Game Show Network? They should be able to do that. The sensible ones would, at any rate.

  However, as we have thoroughly established, I am not a sensible private eye. Technically I’m not even a private investigator, but it’s fun to say. I got up extra early—so full was my hope—and found Charice making eggs in our kitchen.

  Alone.

  She was back in Balrog gear, and sure enough had put enough foundation on her bald cap that she was entirely Charice colored.

  “Egg?” she asked me.

  “Where’s Daniel?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Charice. “He said he had some business to take care of.”

  It was seven thirty in the morning, and I could not possibly imagine what sort of business that might be. Banks were not open yet. Target wasn’t even open yet, and it certainly wasn’t the right time of day for drug deals. But the difference between Charice and myself was that I was consternated by this mystery and Charice was dreamily scrambling eggs.

  I didn’t know what to make of Daniel, with his meeting men in bathrooms and disappearing at dawn. I asked Charice:

  “So how serious are you about Daniel anyway?”

  Having not answered her question about eggs, Charice apparently decided that I did not want one, and sat down at the table with her own breakfast, which she proceeded to cover with inhuman amounts of pepper and shredded cheese.

  “Daniel’s a blast,” she said. “But you know me, I’m not really much of a planner.”

  Honestly, superhuman amounts of black pepper. If you ate this egg, you could possibly become a superhero with pepper-based powers.

  I both wanted to ask more and not ask more. Charice liked saying that she was not a planner, but it was transparently not true. Last week, she had engineered a pillow-fort party that actually involved multiple floors and a Slip ’N Slide. She planned plenty; she just liked to pretend that it happened by accident.

  It seemed like the next question would be “So have you and Daniel thought about getting married?” but I didn’t want to give Charice the idea. And hell, it was Charice. Maybe they had already gotten married. Maybe they had eloped in the night.

  Whatever discomfort I was feeling was completely ignored by her, however. She just ate her egg.

  “I’m glad you spent the day with Daniel. I’m glad you had fun,” she said. Charice was just glossing over that I hadn’t had fun, really, although this wasn’t particularly Daniel’s fault, even though he did leave me in a room with a corpse.

  “You are my best friend,” I told Charice. “So please don’t move to California.”

  “Dahlia,” she said, “I love your nonsequiturs.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I did not expand upon my reasoning to Charice, which had many parts. They were:

  1. Daniel and Charice fall hopelessly in love.

  2. They become married or domestically partnered or enter into some kind of Vulcan wedding ritual.

  3. Daniel is lured by the call of the greasepaint to New York or California.

  4. Charice follows him.

  5. I am left alone, and I suppose devolve into some sort of Grey Gardens spinsterhood, which doesn’t quite work because I was never a socialite, but I’m painting with broad strokes here.

  I did not expand upon this reasoning, because it is mostly a stupid reasoning and largely based on irrational fear. Besides which, who’s to say I couldn’t move to New York or California myself, aside from the fact that apartments in New York are priced and also sized about the same as Faberge eggs. And that California is basically God’s sunbaked rebuke of hippies.

  But I digress.

  Charice’s car was, of all things, being detailed. For reasons that were unclear to me—and by unclear, I mean that I did not want to ask—Charice was having fake-wood detailing put on her Scion. Was this some part of her nesting process with Daniel that she wanted her ride to look like grandma’s station wagon? Who knows? But it was a thing that was happening, regardless.

  So we took a cab instead. And since Daniel was meeting us there, we’d have a ride home. Assuming nothing terrible happened, hahahahahahahahaaha.

  The Major Redding was much more of a destination than the Endicott. It was a steamboat docked along St. Louis’s riverfront. Even just pulling up to it, you felt like you were in for an experience. I wouldn’t exactly call an old-timey steamboat geeky, per se, but there was something geek-like about it, at least in its insistence about what it was. It was like a boat doing cosplay—even from a great distance, it looked kooky and weird, and you could see what it was going for.

  Charice paid our cabbie, tipping generously, as was her habit, and we made our way toward the dock. Another observation: it was crowded today. I don’t know if it had been press from the murder (there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?) or just the natural interest in the finals of the tournament, but there were folks here. Waiting to get in, even.

  The line aboard the Major Redding snaked beyond a long red-carpet-covered ramp leading to the harbor, and scads of pale, scowling gamers waited in a line. The scene was a lot more luxe than yesterday. The carpet leading to the Major Redding was luxe. The air around the Major Redding was luxe.

  I, for one, kept staring at the boat, which was sort of hypnotic. It looked like the offspring of a luxury liner and a wedding cake. There were so many white arches. And so many layers. It was a beautiful piece of architecture, and I’m sure someone who was knowledgeable about that sort of thing would say something like “an excellent example of antebellum embellisment huma-dah huma-dah huma-dah,” but mostly I was wondering if I could break off parts of the arches and eat them.

  I don’t know why the line was moving so slowly, however, and Charice and I had been there for a while before Tricia and Kyle came up to us.

  “Dahlia,” Tricia called. Oh, and also Undine, I suppose, because they were walking around with that child carrier again. “You decided to stick it out to day two!”

  At the time, I thought that Kyle and Tricia must have been happy to see me, although now that I think back over it, I think mostly that they wanted to break in the line. That’s what they managed, anyway.

  “Nice Balrog play,” said Kyle.

  Charice punched him. Not a hard punch, by any means, but not mime either.

  “Wow,” said Kyle. “Not in the face.”

  “You guys seem chipper,” I said. And they did. There was almost a rosy glow about the two of them. “Undine let you sleep last night?”

  “Undine lets us sleep every night,” said Tricia.

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “Eh,” said Tricia. “She not at the no-sleeping stage. We’ll suffer in a couple of months.”

  Two thoughts at once. One, it struck me that I really didn’t know anything about babies. Well, perhaps not _nothing_ but it certainly wasn’t a topic that I should be making small talk on. I’d put it about at my knowledge of African capitals. Cairo, Cape Town, and … I’m out.

  The other thought was a dim surprise that Charice wasn’t picking this baby up and, I don’t know, running off with it as though she were Rumpelstiltskin. But Charice wasn’t doing anything. She had removed her gloves and was checking her phone. Aside from the punch, which was pretty half-meant, Charice seemed completely absorbed in her own world.

  Probably texting with Daniel.

  “You feeling good about your odds today?” I asked Kyle, although Tricia answered.

  “I’m feeling great about it,” she said. “It was a tragedy about what happened to Karou, but you know, i
t’s working in our favor.”

  “He would have wanted us to win this money,” said Kyle.

  “You still stuck with the fourteen-year-old?” I asked Kyle.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “But it could be worse. The kid’s not half-bad.”

  The line breaking continued when Remy joined our group—not immediately, but after a little small talk that I’m neglecting to include. I couldn’t tell you what was taking the front of the line so long, though, because there was no movement whatsoever. Maybe everyone was breaking.

  “So my mother knows nothing about the murder,” said Remy.

  “Oh, good,” said Tricia. “We were so worried.”

  “I stole her phone, just in case,” said Remy.

  “Really?” I asked, getting involved with this kid despite myself.

  “Well, not stole. Took. I took her phone. I figured she was less likely to read about the murder if she didn’t have it. Also, if she learns about it later and tries to pick me up earlier, it will be hard for her to find me.”

  The line started moving all at once, and very quickly. Charice looked a bit sad, although she may have been acting, since Balrog was not really known for a sunny disposition.

  “I’m surprised that Daniel’s not here yet,” she observed, which at least answered the question about why she was down.

  I wasn’t sad about Daniel not being here, because I really wanted to be eliminated from this damned tournament. As a rule, I try to avoid abject humiliation. It’s my least-favorite humiliation. And our next match was going to be streamed and commented on. Literally commented on. There would be sportscasters saying things like: “Frank, it looks like Dahlia has no idea what she’s doing. Do you think that’s possibly a ruse to lure her opponents into overconfidence? / No, Terry, I don’t.”

  “He’ll show up,” I told her, and really wasn’t very concerned about the matter either way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Charice had been glumly hoping that Daniel had gotten here ahead of us, but at the registration table our regular redhead—now dressed in a suit—ooh la la!—confirmed that he was still among the missing. Our match was one of the earlier ones of the morning, and I had a bad feeling that we’d get disqualified. Did I type “bad feeling”? I’m sorry, I meant “exuberant feeling.”

  Regardless, as much I didn’t want to lose a match in front of a crowded group of spectators, I wasn’t overly rattled about it until I got to the room in which the match was being shown. This was the opposite of yesterday, with its modest little viewing room. It was a damned theater, with seating for maybe a few hundred folks, and it felt huge. Part of it was the bedecked nature of the Major Redding, which was everything you could possibly want from a vintage theater. Cream-colored columns, red carpet, lush seating, and my God was there gold paint in there. There was enough gold paint in that room that a Bond villain might plausibly ask: “Too much?”

  The person who was not in there, however, was Daniel. In a few minutes, they’d call our names and we’d lose, I supposed, although this was only fitting given how many times we had won by our opponents doing the same thing.

  I was feeling smug about when I felt cold metal claws at the back of my neck.

  “Charice?” I asked, because who else would sneak up behind me and gently touch the back of my neck with metal claws?

  But first I should explain: Vega. In case you don’t know who that is, Vega is a Street Fighter character who is sort of a cross between the Phantom of the Opera and Wolverine. He wears a white mask with a cursive “V” on it, has a creepy-ass metal claw, and is also kind of wearing a Spanish bolero. Put all together this way it sounds like he should look ridiculous, but in fact the effect is rather alarming, particularly when those claws are at your neck.

  “Why did you change costumes, Charice?” I asked, rather hopefully, given the circumstances.

  “I didn’t change costumes,” said Vega. “This is Daniel.”

  Of course it was. Charice was the only person I could think of who would do something so creepy and awful without any reflexive regret or concern, and now that I knew it couldn’t have been her, I should have guessed. It was Daniel, the Other Charice.

  “You realize how awful it is for you to sneak up on me this way, given the whole corpse-lure situation, right?”

  I would say that Daniel looked chagrined, but he didn’t really, given that I couldn’t see his face through that white mask. He sounded chagrined, though.

  “You know, you’re right,” said Daniel. “I didn’t even think about it. But I’m trying to be secretive.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if you must know, I’ve decided to propose to your roommate.” I turned to look at him, I suppose to hug him, but he said, “Just keep looking forward.”

  “What do you mean just keep looking forward?”

  “I’m in disguise,” said Daniel. “I didn’t want her to see that I was here.”

  “You’re the worst fucking bodyguard. You sneaked up behind me and put a claw at my neck.”

  “I couldn’t cut bread with these,” said Daniel.

  “This is not the point,” I said. And really it wasn’t. “Why are you in disguise? Why not just propose to Charice?”

  “Well, I thought I was going to do it today—because you know, scenic beautiful steamboat and everything. That’s why I wanted to advance to day two—but then she got that Balrog costume, and I felt it would make the moment look all weird. You know, with her dressed up as a Street Fighter villain and me not.”

  “So you could wait until later,” I said.

  “Or,” said Daniel, “I could also dress up like a Street Fighter villain. Then we’d match!”

  It was simultaneously hard to argue with and also comprehend this logic. As much as I hated the idea of Charice getting hitched, I had to admit that there was insane logic to the two of them together. Although I could only imagine what that wedding was going to be like.

  “Isn’t she going to know that the gig is up the moment that you play with me?”

  “I’ve taken care of that,” said Daniel. “Someone has sent her a distracting message to go off into a storeroom.”

  This idea was so repellent and obviously in bad taste that I could instantly see how it would appeal to Charice.

  “That someone is you?” I asked.

  “I have an accomplice,” confessed Daniel.

  “So if Charice isn’t around, why can’t you talk to me, then?”

  “I’m hedging my bets. Besides, she might come here first to try to pick you up before she heads off on her little mini-adventure.”

  I was flattered, frankly, that Daniel would think this. But as a rule, Charice did not include me on all of her adventures. Honestly, I’m not even sure that she told me about all of them, which was fine, because they were often deeply illegal.

  “Who are we playing, anyway?” asked Daniel.

  “That is so not what I’m concerned with right now,” I told Daniel. Why should I be? We were so clearly going to be crushed by whoever had fairly fought their way to day two that I wasn’t particularly bothered by the open question.

  But the question didn’t stay open, because Swan came in and sat down next to me.

  “Dahlia,” he said. “Well, that’s awkward.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” The joke didn’t land any better this time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I told Swan yet again. This is a habit that I’ve picked up from my father, which is that when jokes fail, you repeat them. I don’t know why I’ve adopted this particular tic, because it hasn’t done much for him, but genetics are destiny, I suppose.

  Anyway, I don’t even think that Swan processed that I was joking.

  “I think the odds of us continuing to meet, under any circumstances, are probably pretty low.”

  This was undoubtedly true.

  “Why are you here now?” I asked, havi
ng not yet put together the obvious.

  But Daniel had, and he moved his claws from my neck to Swan’s. He really couldn’t be blind to the effect that the claws were having on people, because the responses were far from subtle, and Daniel was no dummy. Swan actually sprang up in his chair.

  “He’s our opponent,” said Daniel. “We must have gotten paired against Swan and Chul-Moo.”

  I watched Swan’s face as Daniel said this, and he gradually calmed as he realized that this Vega was not a demented Spanish psychopath plotting to kill him. He relaxed only moderately after putting it together.

  “Is that Daniel?” he asked.

  “Yup,” I said. “A little cosplay Vega for ya nerve,” I said.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” asked Swan, looking at me uncertainly. “Are you … Dolores Claiborne?”

  I was, for the record, wearing a black floral-print blouse that I thought looked very lovely, along with peach H&M pants that, honestly, I didn’t think looked that lovely, but were really cheap, and looking lovely is overrated. But Dolores Claiborne? What the actual fuck?

  “No,” I said. “I’m just me,” I said. “What the hell?”

  “Oh,” said Swan. “I don’t know why I said that. Never mind.”

  “Dolores Claiborne? Kathy Bates is, like, sixty years old.”

  “She was younger when that movie came out,” explained Swan.

  “These are some next-level mind games,” said Daniel. “He’s trying to get in your head.”

  “I’m not!” said Swan.

  I preferred the idea, actually, that Swan was being manipulative to the idea that my regular clothing and stature would lead an independent party to think that I was doing Kathy Bates cosplay. But I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on the idea, because an organizer came up to us—thankfully not that damned redhead.

  Not much to say about the organizer, but I will note that he had a green cap on, which did put him on my radar. Actually, all of the tournament people did today—green ball caps with the words “Dark Alleys” emblazoned in black on them. Was this a clue, or just the universe making fun of me?