A painting was the Good Deed on paper. A good painting, Heck believed, made the world worth saving. You could love a pot, or an old man, or a dirty window, or the color red if you looked at it enough to see it, and see it enough to paint it. With paintings, the world was as small as a canvas—you could just pick it up and kiss it.
“Can I help you?” A man with a ponytail approached him. His shirt was so baggy it hung on him like a robe. Still, he managed to look clean and well-groomed. Heck was suddenly aware that he probably looked anything but clean and well-groomed.
“I’m here to apply for the job of gallery assistant,” Heck said. He had to enunciate clearly because his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth.
The man laughed. When Heck continued to gaze soberly at him, the man stopped laughing. “Well, sure,” he said, “why don’t you leave us your résumé.”
“I don’t have a résumé,” Heck said, “but I got ninety-eight percent in Art last year.”
“Last year in grade … ?”
“Eight.”
The man smiled. “What happened to the other two percent?”
“Room for improvement,” Heck said. “My mom’s taken me to art galleries before.”
“Well, I think we’re looking for someone a little older.”
“I scrub toilets,” Heck said.
The man nodded as if this were a curious thing, a matter of distinct interest.
“I need a job,” Heck said. He swayed on his feet when he said it, as if the word “job” were big enough to bowl him over.
The man tugged on his ear. “I guess I have some cleaning that could be done around here before the contest.”
“Can you pay me today?”
The man smiled. “So now he negotiates. Yes, I can pay you today, in cash. The cleaning gear is in the furnace room behind the bathroom.”
Heck found the equipment. It was next to some shelving stacked with dust-covered art supplies. From a small, beat-up window in the furnace room Heck could see into the alley. He picked up some cloths and a blue spray bottle and began in the bathroom.
He cleaned the toilets, the sink, the taps, and the mirrors. He emptied the garbage and filled the paper-towel dispenser and mopped the floor. He tidied and swept the furnace room and the coffee room, and polished the microwave oven. He knew how to clean. His mom had worked as a cleaning lady for a while and sometimes she’d brought him along with her. On the wall in the coffee room was a poster about the high school art competition. He read it while he washed cups and spoons.
He vacuumed the main gallery area and surreptitiously examined the artwork. He loved the way some of the paintings opened up windows to other worlds. Others said there are no other worlds, this one is it, look at it, see it for what it is. Heck stopped for a moment and realized he was in the middle of a triangle of three paintings. The vacuum screamed at his side. They were all by the same artist, entitled One, Two, and Three. All three were of people running away from the viewer, from the artist, from the canvas. No full faces, just backs of bodies running into the paint. In each one, one person was glancing back in terror.
Heck took in a deep breath. He was too unround to cope with a flat world that said there was nothing to do but get sucked in.
The man turned the vacuum off.
“You like this?” he asked, nodding at the paintings. “All the art in here is by senior high school students. Very prestigious contest—the winner gets a full scholarship to the art college. There’re second and third prizes of five thousand and one thousand dollars. Hey, the place hasn’t looked this good in a while. Here. Thanks.”
There were two crisp twenty-dollar bills. One for food and one for Spence.
“I run errands, too,” Heck said.
“Okay. Sure.”
“I noticed you have art supplies here,” Heck said.
“Just a few old things in the back.”
Maybe tomorrow he’d ask to work in exchange for art supplies. He could get a few things done to replace his lost portfolio. Which was due Friday. First, though, before he worried about the portfolio, he had to find his mom, tell her he had a job and she was a great mom and not to stay in hypertime because everything was okay.
“Do you happen to know where the shelter is?” Heck asked.
The man’s expression changed. Heck wasn’t sure if he was mad or sad. “No idea,” he said.
Heck would find the shelter—tomorrow. It was a bit late, and he was tired. He was hungry, too, but even more tired than hungry.
He dreamed big dreams as he headed back to the ’58 Thunderbird. He had a job now, but it had to be even better than that if he was going to take his mom all the way topworld. He couldn’t stop thinking about the high school art competition. Maybe he would establish himself as a great artist, a child prodigy. He would win a full scholarship to art college. He would … well, first he would make a painting that would be a Good Deed, yes, a painting that would banish tooth decay and cause landlords and best friends to come begging on bended knee.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 4
All night long, sleeping in the old car, Heck dreamed he was running from flesh-covered cyborgs. He avoided lightning-flash punches and steel-toed kicks and flesh-burning lasers that melted mortal skin like butter. All night long he leapt from roof to roof until he couldn’t run anymore. Then his mom was there, and he threw his arms around her, but it wasn’t her. It was a hard-light hologram with her face.
When he woke up he was cramped and cold and sore. His teeth were itchy. Deep down in those black holes and down into the pulpy nerves and down past the nerve into the secret bone of his jaw it was itching. Not a nice tickly itch, but a buzzing bee-sting type of itch.
He sat up. Mr. Hill was peering at him through the window. He said something.
Heck rolled the window down. “Hey, Mr. Hill. Sorry about your car. I—I was just guarding it for you.”
“You got any girlies in there with you?”
“No, sir. No girls.”
Mr. Hill hit his cane on the ground. “Aren’t you the boy who lives upstairs?”
Heck smiled cordially. “Yes, sir. Used to. We’ve moved.”
“Well, I don’t like this. No sir. As for me and my car, we will serve the Lord, so you and your girl can just clean outta that car.”
“Sir, I don’t have a girl. See?” Heck lifted his feet and pushed up his sleeves. “I was just making sure no vagrants come and sleep in here at night.”
“No girlies, eh? I was a boy once. I know how you think, what you’re up to. But I’ve repented, and so’s this car. Had it cleaned by professionals, had it blessed. Gonna be buried in it.”
Heck got out of the car. It was another thing altogether to be sleeping in someone’s coffin. “Sorry, sir, it won’t happen again,” Heck said.
“Better not. The world is coming to an end, son, and you can’t hide your sins under a car top. Purify yourself, boy, prepare to meet the Lord. Stay your hand from the temptations of the flesh.”
Heck’s mom had taught him to be respectful of the elderly. “I didn’t know you were a preacher, sir,” he said, backing away.
“Wasn’t. Broke every one of the Ten Commandments and a few the Lord forgot to mention. That’s the beauty of getting old. Gives you cripple time to get yourself holy. But just in case you don’t get old, take it from me, boy—”
“I won’t,” Heck said. “Anymore.”
“Won’t what?” He was having to raise his voice since Heck had gotten a distance away.
“Everything. Won’t everything. I gotta go, sir.” He did have to go to the bathroom. The old man started reciting something as Heck walked quickly away. Once he looked back, nodded, and waved.
Heck remembered his plan. Today he’d find the shelter. First, though, he’d walk to his job at the Art Store. He would work for canvas and paints, and make the painting that would establish him as a great painter. No. No, first he would make a portfolio to hand in so he wouldn’t flunk Art. Also, he had to use
the toilet.
The boy was watching him from a short distance away.
It was the boy he’d saved from an ignominious life in prison, the boy who’d shoved money into his pocket when he woke up yesterday. The boy was holding one side of his pea jacket open, as if he were going to reach into an inside pocket and pull something out. He was standing still like that, like half a flasher.
As he came closer Heck realized the boy was talking to the inside of his jacket.
“Fifty-five, fifty-five,” the boy said to the inside of his jacket. He was tall and he had enormous feet. His face had a sweet, bland look to it. Heck could imagine a pacifier in his mouth.
“What?” Heck asked.
“Fifty-five. Friend or foe?” the boy said. Then he smiled. “The pocket creatures say ‘friend.’” He must have gotten a dimple gene from both parents because he had dimples all over his face—one in each cheek, one up by his right eye, and a couple in his chin. “My name is Marion. Marion Ewald.”
“Marion? That’s a girl’s name,” Heck said.
“What’s your name?” Marion asked.
“Heck.”
“That’s a swear. Heck what?”
“Heck Superhero,” Heck said, hoping the boy would go away.
“I knew it,” Marion said.
“Knew what?”
“I knew you were a superhero.”
“Right.”
“I did!”
“You’ve been probed,” Heck said.
“Heck Superhero,” the boy said. “I knew it.” He sounded … awed.
Heck stopped and looked closely at the boy. “Okay, so what was the tip-off?”
“The sign you wrote: ‘Will Fight Evil for Food.’ And also how you saved me from the police.”
Heck looked at his feet. “Well, yeah, there is that.”
“What else can you do?” Marion asked.
Heck shrugged. “Good Deeds.”
Marion nodded solemnly and looked as if he were going to ask for Heck’s autograph. He opened his jacket a little wider. “Five oh five five.”
“Huh?”
“The pocket creatures say you’re the one.”
“The pocket creatures?”
“You’re the one they trust to help release them.”
“Did you say ‘the pocket creatures’?”
“Yes. They come from the fifth planet. They traveled through space as spores and nested in my jacket and grew there. They’re quite helpless. If I didn’t protect them, they would die.”
“I see,” Heck said. He kept walking. This kid had definitely been probed. “So what do they eat?”
“Stardust,” Marion said. “Or its earthly variation, pocket lint.”
The boy followed him until he got to the Art Store. At the door Heck turned to him and said, “Look, I’ve got a job, and, um, I think they care who I hang out with.”
Marion nodded. “I’ll wait for you,” he said.
Heck’s bladder was too cramped up for him to argue. He went into the store.
The man with the ponytail seemed surprised to see him.
“Hello, sir, reporting for duty,” Heck said, crossing his legs a little.
The man shuffled his papers as if he were looking for a work order, or a memo saying Heck had just passed the probationary period for 100% dental benefits.
“Should I start on the toilets?” Heck asked.
“Uh …”
“Yesterday I noticed some litter around the dumpster, and there’s a back alley window that needs repair.”
“I’m afraid … I don’t have any cleaning work for you today,” he said.
“Oh,” Heck said. The cramp in his bladder had spread to his diaphragm and throat. “Well, maybe later, then. I’ll drop by.”
“I won’t then, either. I’m sorry.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Didn’t I do a good job?”
“You did a great job, but it was just a one-time thing. Or maybe another time, but not every day, and not today.”
“Well, have you filled the position for gallery assistant?”
“No, but …” He sighed. “I need a grownup for that.” He shrugged and shook his head. “I like to help out people like you, but sometimes you make it hard.”
People like you. Heck couldn’t think of anything to say, and his throat cramp wouldn’t have let him speak anyway.
Marion of the pea-jacket pocket creatures was waiting for him when he burst out of the store.
“That didn’t take long. Did you do it at superspeed?”
“No. I got fired.”
“Big mistake to fire a superhero,” Marion said.
Heck frowned, but suddenly he felt better. He headed to the mall to find a toilet. Marion followed him. “So, Marion, are you on major big drugs?”
“No. I don’t do stuff like that. I don’t smoke, either.”
“I see.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“I know it,” Heck said.
“I’m not.”
“Your word against overwhelming evidence,” Heck said. It felt kind of good to have someone around to talk to, though, someone who believed in him, someone who …
What was he thinking? Had a pocket creature spore entered his brain through his nose? Was it sitting on his cerebral cortex at this very moment, living off earwax and bites of brain stem? Never mind. Soon his teeth would start screaming and drive away all alien parasites.
“People tried to take my jacket away—the guidance counselor, the psychologist, even the one who says he’s my father. They act like sleeping with your coat on is a federal offense.” Marion lowered his voice and said, “They tried to give me pills, but the pills would have poisoned the pocket creatures.”
Heck shook his head and snorted.
Marion stood still. “I believed you,” he said.
“Did I ask you to? The superhero thing, it’s just this weird game I play.”
“A game is more fun if you believe,” Marion said.
Heck thought about that. Besides, as he often reminded himself, in a quantum weird world, who has the only reality there is? He was just a kid who wanted to play, didn’t want to hurt anyone, just wanted to help some helpless little space spores get back to their mommies. Good Deeds were seldom this easy. “Okay. Okay, I believe you,” he said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you why: quantum theory.” Heck crossed the street without waiting for a walk signal.
“Quantum … what?”
“See, it’s like this, Marion,” he said as he walked. “In a quantum multiverse, every time you don’t cross the street you create another microverse in which you do. There are other me’s and you’s wandering around in parallel microverses, all kinds of versions of Marion, and all possible variations of Heck. And maybe in one of those microverses little pocket aliens really exist. It’s just that you can see that microverse, whereas most of us can’t.”
Marion smiled. “Do you mean that?” He had perfect teeth, Heck noticed.
“Well, sure.”
Marion opened his jacket just a little and whispered to the inside pocket. Finally he said, “The pocket creatures say ‘fifteen,’ affirmative.”
Heck walked faster.
One block to go. He could make it. His bladder was so cramped up now that nothing would come out when he got to the mall anyway.
“There’s another reason why I know you’re a superhero,” Marion said.
“What’s that?”
“Because you’re not afraid of me.”
The fluid buildup in Heck’s body was making his gums swell, putting pressure on his teeth, which was turning the deep itch into hard, yellow-fingernail pinches. It was a wonder his teeth didn’t pour blood out of those holes.
“Will you do another five-dollar Good Deed for me?” Marion asked.
“No,” Heck said, “but if you’re buying b
reakfast, I’ll let you share with me.”
“I’m not hungry,” Marion said. He turned his headlight eyes on Heck. “I don’t think I can release the spores all on my own. What if the cyborgs come, the ones that killed the squirrel? I just need someone to be there with me.” He clamped his mouth shut on that.
“Maybe later,” Heck said. Maybe he wasn’t going to make it to the mall, to a toilet. Now he was walking so fast that he was leaving Marion behind.
“Fifth day? Fifth month?”
“Huh?”
“The fifth day of the fifth month,” Marion called. “Their kind will come for them. Shh. Secret.”
“Sure, Marion, sure.” Heck was way ahead of him now. “Good-bye now. All the best to you and … yours.”
He could see the mall now. He could also see that he wasn’t going to make it.
He turned into a driveway. He needed a corner. Just a corner.
He found a weedy corner in someone’s yard just in time.
He was a water balloon. When all the water was out of him he collapsed into himself. The front parts of him and the back parts were stuck together. He felt himself folding against the wall.
Someone was staring at him. A man someone. A briefcase-and-suit someone. Heck didn’t care. His stomach was still cramped up. The someone walked on and Heck stumbled away from the wall. He muttered, “Everything is …” No, it wasn’t exactly okay. He’d just peed outside. He didn’t have a job. He needed to wash his hands. He needed a hot bath. People like you …
He’d have to look for another job, that was all.
But what could a flat person do? You could hang him on two crossed sticks and tie on a string and he could be a kite. Or he could be a doormat, shoes licked for free.
If you were flat you could slide under locked doors at night and get stuff. Stuff you needed, like art supplies. When you were someone who urinated in public places it was the next logical step, wasn’t it? If you were a person who stole money from your best friends and did drugs and went to prison, wasn’t the next step to take stuff from people you didn’t even know? If you urinated in people’s driveways, that sealed it.
Heck’s teeth had rhythm: pain pain pain pain pain pain …
He punched his jaw.
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