Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  Thraex paused at the door, recognizing thoughts that he himself had had innumerable times about the Westgates and their line of work. “I’m told it’s a ‘bold new direction.’” He finally got out.

  “The Donner Party took a bold new direction too. Didn’t turn out so well for them.” Clayton sounded disgusted with the state of the world. “Sometimes it’s best to stay on the well-traveled road.”

  They were both silent for several beats, Thraex’s hand still on the door. “How’s your mama?” He asked softly, not knowing what else to say.

  “Trying to convince my father to bungee-jump into a volcano with her.” Clayton nodded. “The Dare’s don’t slow down, even when they’re her age.” Clayton let out a long sigh. “To be honest, I don’t know why things had to change. Now, a team has to do its own adventuring and its own science and its own Caping.” He made a disgusted face. “Nonsense. That’s what got us all into this mess. It worked just fine the way it was, checks and balances, I don’t know why superheroes need to change that. They’re everywhere now, and when everyone has to do everything, nothing gets done well. There’s no thought or expertise. No quality anymore. No one takes pride in their job.”

  A woman on the far side of the store walked over to the counter, carrying a T-shirt which showed the logo for the upcoming Reichelt Park Festival. It was literally the only thing in the entire store manufactured in the last 100 years. “Do you have this in a boy’s size?” She held up the pink frilly garment. “I’d like to get one for my son.”

  Clayton shook his head. “No, but I have an enchanted Shroll amulet from the Hyance Dynasty which will physically turn your son into a girl, and then it would fit him perfectly.”

  The woman dropped the shirt and fled the store.

  “Damn tourists.” Clayton let out with an irritated sigh, like the woman had dishonored his store with her mere presence.

  “You’re a natural salesman, Clayton, I’ll give you that.” Thraex intoned sarcastically, leaning against a display case filled with shrunken heads. “With your skills, ever thought about doin’ one of them infomercials on the TV? Folks’ed be linin’ up just to get this kind’ah service.”

  “Some kind of normie gentrification, that’s what it is.” Clayton insisted, ignoring Thraex’s mockery. “Regular people have no business living in this neighborhood if they’re not in the super-science business, and you know it. Ruins the character of the place. But mainstreamers are moving in anyway, because rent here is cheaper due to risk of catastrophic scientific disaster or radioactive insect attack.” He flipped his hand in the air dismissively. “It’s all Pericles Merridew’s fault.” He decided. “Half this damn town voted for him on his truly magnificent name alone, and all it got us was trouble. He’s the one that decided that we needed to allow Triumph Industries to let all these new folks in. Cleared up the red tape for them.” He pointed at Thraex. “Killing that man was the best thing you ever did for Reichelt Park. We should hold you a parade.”

  “I didn’t kill Merridew.” Thraex snorted. “Don’t be stupid. The building blew and he was inside it, neither of those things were my doin’.”

  “That’s not the way the people around here are telling it.” Thraex warned. “They’re already saying you did him in, because of that mess you and he had with Anderson Observatory.”

  “Well, they’re wrong.” Thraex informed him, not even caring enough to defend himself. “Whenever something goes wrong in this town, they always look to me.”

  “Can you blame them?” Clayton arched an eyebrow. “Your father is a mad demon god.”

  “And?” Thraex crossed his arms over his chest. “Just ‘cause my daddy wasn’t the right kinda man, that don’t mean they gotta judge me by him.”

  “In Reichelt Park? That’s precisely what it means.” Clayton began folding up the shirt. When he finished, he shook it in the air at Thraex. “My mother wants to stock things like this now, to appeal to tourists and keep the doors open.” He rolled his eyes. “But I think that’s crazy. Mainstreamers will be the death of us. Mark my words.”

  Thraex shrugged. “Seems like money is money, whether it’s from souvenirs or cursed statues.”

  “Sure, says the man trying to get the Westgates into the security alarm business.”

  “That was a one-time thing, and it paid well.” Thraex defended. “I ain’t embarrassed about any job that pays. Half this damn town is gonna find themselves on the street ‘cause they’d rather be proud than eat.”

  Clayton met his eyes. “They won’t accept them back, you know.”

  “Who?”

  Clayton spread his arms out, indicating the neighborhood. “’They.’” He refocused on organizing his shelves. “They’re not liable to forget what Sasha’s done anytime soon, and the others are just complete…”

  “Tread real careful, Clayton.” Thraex warned. “I don’t mind you callin’ me a murderer, but don’t go sayin’ things you’ll regret mighty quick.”

  The man held up a calming hand. “Just saying that even a community on the decline still has a long memory. I mean, my mother was basically the star of the Adventuring scene for years, they love her, and the old guard of this community doesn’t even accept me. All because my father was Native Feriramaian and not quuuuuuite pale enough for them.” He pointed back and forth between them. “They are set in their ways and they’re unwilling to change, even as the world changes around them.” He gestured out the window. “In another couple years? All of this is gone. Maybe sooner. Triumph Industries is trying to buy up this whole neighborhood, tear everything out and build themselves a ‘city of tomorrow.’” He rolled his eyes at the thought.

  “I’m not selling.” Thraex shook his head. “No way, no how. I’ll be buried here and anyone who tries to change that is gonna be buried right along with me.”

  “It won’t matter. People in this neighborhood need the money, and Triumph is paying plenty. You ruin that for them, they’ll hate the Westgates all the more.” Clayton moved to get something from below the register. “So all this work you’re doing? It’s just trying to charm your way into a promotion while the Titanic is sinking.” He reappeared with another box. “Some free advice.”

  “This community isn’t going anywhere. It’s survived worse than Triumph Industries and your ‘Mainstreamer Invasion’ and Councilman Pericles fucking Merridew. It’s hobbled, it ain’t dyin’.” Thraex crossed his arms over his chest. “And they’ll accept the Westgates, they’ll have to. Because otherwise, I’m going to buy them out and replace them with someone who will. Triumph can’t take over Reichelt Park once I own it all.”

  Clayton ruefully shook his head. “Good luck, my friend.”

  “All I need to do is help her get back on her feet some, and then they’ll see.” Thraex continued, now talking about Sasha. Thraex treated the rest of the world with well-deserved ambivalence, but he cared about this neighborhood. In his mind, Sasha and her home were close to inseparable. One couldn’t survive without the other. It was her natural habitat, and if you wanted to keep her, you needed to maintain it. “Once she’s back with her family, where she belongs, they’ll all see.”

  “Back with her family.” Clayton repeated. “Which means… back with you, right?” He let out a low whistle. “Seems like that quasi-incestuous decision about your step-sister was one of the driving factors behind the Westgates getting knocked off the society pages to begin with.”

  “You’re angering me, Clayton.” Thraex warned coldly. “That’s a mighty bad idea. I like your mama, but you aren’t my favorite of her children. I think she’d be better off without you.”

  “You can lie to yourself and to Sasha, but not to me.” Clayton held up a hand, bowing out of the fight. “And at the very least, you should understand what’s really going on here. As my brother’s coach used to say: ‘If you want to make the team, play whatever position they’re offering.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Clayton went back t
o polishing the glass case. “Let’s be honest here, Thraex: you’d sleep with Kurtz if it got you a ticket into that family.” He told him dryly, but with complete sincerity. “You want to belong there. I’ve known you almost since you got here, and it’s the only motivation you’ve ever had for doing anything. You want to be a Westgate and you’ll do anything to accomplish that. …Or anyone.”

  Thraex shook his head. “That’s not true.”

  Clayton made a non-committal “Mmm” sound, acknowledging the denial but not giving it the dignity of a reply. “I’m just saying that you need to be careful not to lose sight of the fact that Sasha Westgate is a woman.”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Clayton, I’ve never once lost sight of that in my life! It’d be pretty damn hard to miss, she’s the most feminine thing I ever saw.”

  “What I mean is,” Clayton met his eyes, “she is more than simply your entryway to her family. And she’s more than just the woman you want in your bed to get revenge on her parents. Sasha is more than merely being a Westgate. She deserves to be loved as an individual, and not just as your magic ticket to being part of her family.” He pointed at him. “And until you recognize that fact, I don’t think you should be pushing her too hard on anything.”

  Thraex just stared at him. “I think you should mind your own damn business, Clayton.” He finally told him, voice hard. “All this time you’re runnin’ your mouth about matters which don’t concern you, is time you should be spending finding my damn statue.”

  The man made another non-committal sound.

  Thraex started to leave, then paused. “Clayton?” He asked, door half open. “What can you tell me about Periallian wire?”

  “That’s an odd thing to ask about.” The man’s eyebrows rose, obviously not expecting that question.

  “Well?” Thraex prompted, wanting an answer.

  “It’s… it’s bad juju.” Clayton decided after a moment. “It’s used in all those mixtures of science and mysticism which the first year magic textbooks warn you about. Smart people messing with stuff they don’t understand, because they think being smart somehow means they can’t make a mistake. Magic and science don’t mix, it just multiplies the problems of each.”

  Thraex thought that over. “What could you do with it? I mean, if you had, say, an entire spool of the stuff?”

  “If you had enough of it, the right power source behind it, and something to focus it?” Clayton’s voice was grim. “Anything you wanted, lad. …Anything you wanted.” He brightened and pointed over his shoulder. “Got a good deal on a focusing crystal that’ll work with it not too long ago, if you’re interested. Picked it up at a garage sale in Jersey that some villains were having, for some damn reason. Only suitable crystal around at the moment, it’s not something that you’re going to find anywhere else. Ever since Theophilus Chapman defeated Kronindød, The Hollow King, they’ve been in real demand in magical circles.” He straightened his tweed suit jacket in obvious pride. “We only stock the best here.”

  Thraex thought back on Sasha’s worried face as she tried to determine what the thieves had wanted with the wire.

  And then to Clayton’s dire warning about what someone could do to Sasha with that same wire…

  His thoughts were cut off as he spotted Beaumont Doucet once again stalking towards him, looking even drunker than he had before. He looked downright panicked about something now though, eyes scanning the street around him, as if searching for monsters about to jump out of every shadow.

  Thraex wasn’t in a mood to verbally spar with the boy this time, his anger snapping. He shoved open the door to the store and prowled into the street to meet him. “You still want your stupid duel, you little twerp?” He loosened his tie. “I’m game. Come get it, boy. Just say…”

  The rest of Thraex’s words were cut off as the car behind Beaumont Doucet exploded in a fireball, pulverizing the man. The blast wave knocked Thraex off his feet and sent a cascade of flaming debris clattering down from the sky, along with the gruesome remains of everything which had once been Beaumont Doucet.

  Thraex righted himself a moment later, coughing and nearly deafened from the blast.

  Okay… maybe Miss Sasha was right and there was something bigger going on in Reichelt Park.

  Chapter 11

  “Azealia Westgate. Died 1999. Killed fixin’ the Y2K crisis. Don’t ask.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  The music playing softly over the speakers in the lobby of the Westgate building was mid-century era jazz. As far as Sasha knew, no one in the building liked it, but Thraex had decreed that it play anyway, because that’s what had always played in the lobby.

  So, it was basically the theme music of the complete lack of power the residents of the building had over their own lives. They were prisoners of their legacy, the mistakes their ancestors had made, and their own former greatness. They were being strangled by expectation and tradition.

  But at least their depressed misery had its own jazzy soundtrack.

  She absently stared through the window as the long-dead trombone player performed the same recorded solo he’d been performing every 55 hours and 42 minutes since 1958.

  Behind the pane of glass, her brother Baxter was sitting in the building’s interior atrium area, among the flowers.

  Bax had always loved the flowers there. And that apparently didn’t stop merely because the man’s mind wasn’t his own anymore.

  Rationally, she knew that whatever made Baxter Baxter was long gone now, and his body was just inhabited by a prehistoric animal… but…

  In 1915, paleontologist W. D. Matthew said, “We all believe that the Dinosaurs existed. But to realize it is not so easy.”

  Her relationship with Baxter was a lot like that. She recognized that he wasn’t entirely her brother anymore. She knew that, obviously. But she also believed that he would be her brother until the day both his mind and his body died. And until that happened, Baxter wasn’t really gone. She couldn’t let him go. And she’d always love the pieces of him she had left.

  The man looked over at her from his place in the enclosed clearing, and Sasha waved at him in greeting.

  He immediately slunk back into the bushes cautiously, disappearing from view like a skittish animal.

  She hadn’t been a part of his plan to rescue their grandfather, but the weight of Baxter’s accident still fell on her. She should be smart enough to somehow fix it and save her brother, but… she wasn’t. She just… wasn’t.

  She let out a long sigh and stepped away from the window, returning to the main part of the lobby area.

  Most of her earliest memories took place in this building. But that didn’t mean that it had aged particularly well. The Westgate Foundation building had a ‘photo analysis lab’ in an era of digital photography. It had a computer system on the 35th floor that took up several entire rooms, yet had the same processing power as the average iPhone. It had an observatory on the roof, in a city that was one of the worst in the world for light pollution. It had a mess hall which could feed close to a hundred, despite the fact that only a half dozen people lived here. And it had a room on the 34th floor which they referred to simply as “The Giant Map Room,” because that’s all that was in there. A giant map, featuring now outdated names for many of the countries.

  Sasha had once seen a Mega-Mart which had a cemetery in its parking lot, because modernity had caught up with a formally rural area, and there was no way to move the graves to make way for tomorrow. The graves stayed frozen in time, forever, surrounded by the modern world in an immediately apparent and jarring way. This building was a lot like that.

  This was what you got when you gave a lot of money to really inventive people, and let them do anything they wanted with a skyscraper for 70 or so years. It was a maze of craziness, design flaws, and outdated spaces.

  And its day was done.

  She’d loved the lobby space as a child. It reminded her of h
er family and their adventures, and of sitting around with the people she cared about.

  As she grew though, she began to notice that it always seemed out of step with the world. Like it was being left behind by the city. And it was taking her with it.

  Now, the space just reminded her of her parents screaming at each other and…

  She looked at the space over the reception desk, where a chunk of plaster was missing.

  It reminded her of her own failures.

  Of mistakes she couldn’t take back, no matter how long she obsessed over them.

  One day, when she somehow regained ownership of this building from Thraex and his mother, she fully intended to tear all of this out. Just renovate to bare walls and industrial flooring. Pretend that it was an entirely new space, with no connection to anything that had ever happened in her life.

  She hated this building. …Even as she loved it more than she’d ever admit.

  To her right, Thraex’s mother, Zhanna, appeared on the upper landing. Zhanna always got off the elevator on the second floor of the lobby, so that she could make a grand entrance down the building’s central staircase. The more dramatic the better. Zhanna liked to remind everyone that she lived here and that she wasn’t just Professor Westgate’s mistress anymore.

  It annoyed Sasha to no end.

  Just get off the damn elevator on the ground floor like a normal person! But Zhanna was a woman who always seemed to choose drama over practicality.