by Paul Dini
Plus, they were going to kill her mommy. She had to help Mommy. Harleen pulled the door open a tiny crack and put her eye to it.
“I’m gonna cripple that little brat,” she heard Spike yell over the music and crazy laughing. “And whoever’s in here helping her!”
In spite of everything, Harleen couldn’t help grinning.
* * *
Crouched behind one of the funny mirrors, Harleen listened for the men’s voices over the silly music and recorded laughter, trying to figure out where they were. If she held very still and strained her ears, sometimes she could catch Spike cursing and saying he was going to blow her head off.
“Just make sure you don’t accidentally blow my head off,” Tony told him. Harleen was pretty sure if that happened, it wouldn’t be an accident. Tony probably wasn’t any safer from his hothead partner than she was.
Not that Tony was any better than Spike. Spike hated her personally, but she wasn’t even a person to Tony, just a thing to hang onto until his boss came back with his pervo friend. Harleen had heard pervos did things to kids but no one had ever told her what, which probably meant it was a sex thing. She knew sex was how babies were made although she didn’t know the details, and with three baby brothers, she didn’t want to. But it seemed obvious that if sex was how grown-ups had kids, they weren’t supposed to feel sexy about kids.
Which meant she had to escape before Delvecchio came back with his—ew—friend.
Harleen peered around the side of the mirror again, then ran to the vertical rollers. Just as she reached them, she heard Tony holler, “I got her! Over here!”
Reaching into one of the belt pockets, she grabbed a handful of glitter and turned around to find Tony was frighteningly close. He lunged at her and she blew gold glitter into his face.
Tony yelped, stumbled, tripped over his own feet and fell to his knees, spitting and rubbing his eyes. Harleen laughed as she let the rollers pull her through backward, splashing them with glue as she went, even though the chemical smell almost knocked her over. The label on the bottle said it was strong and quick-drying. She hoped it didn’t dry before Tony and Spike could test how strong it was.
Harleen turned to hop across the moving floor. She and Daddy had figured out how to cross it without falling down. She spread more glue on the shifting sections, giggling. This really was funny. Once Tony and Spike got through the rollers to the floor, it was going to be hilarious—like watching two of The Three Stooges.
“Take off your jacket!” Spike yelled.
“But it’s new—” Tony whined.
“Just leave it!” Spike roared. He sounded like an animal.
“Gimme a little help here,” said Tony, still whining. “I can’t get my arm out.”
Harleen heard the sound of thick cloth ripping. The padding on the rollers was nice and soft but the rollers were really strong. Tony’s head appeared—he still had gold glitter in his hair and all over his face.
“Hey, I see her!” Tony yelled. “She’s right there. You, kid, what’s-your-name—stay there!”
Was he really that stupid, Harleen wondered, shaking her head and laughing.
“I mean it, kid! Stay right where you are!” Tony struggled mightily for a few seconds and finally came through without his suit coat and with his hairy man-boobs showing because he’d lost half the buttons on his shirt.
Spike was right behind him and he’d lost his suit coat, too, along with his tie. His shoulder holster was all twisted around and his weaselly face was red with fury. “I’m gonna kill you, you little brat,” he promised her.
“Ya gotta catch me foist, big boy,” she said in her tough-cookie voice.
They were so mad, they didn’t even notice the floor was moving, Harleen marveled; they just came at her and down they went on top of each other. She burst into loud, hearty giggles as they tried to extricate themselves from the floor and each other. Could they really be that stupid, she wondered, that they wouldn’t stop to think after what she’d done with the rollers?
No, she realized—they thought she was stupid. Which made them twice as stupid, and a riot to watch. While they went on trying to pull themselves off the constantly moving floorboards, she leaned forward and spray-painted their faces a bright blue.
Both of them started howling and cursing and trying to rub their eyes except their hands were stuck to the floor or to each other. Tony suddenly let out a cry that was very close to a scream; he’d finally pulled his hand free but left a lot of skin on the floor. That was gonna hurt for weeks.
“You little shit,” Spike snarled at her as paint ran down his cheeks like electric-blue tears. “I’m gonna kill you, I swear to God.” He had only one hand stuck to the floor and he was trying to pry it off without skinning his palm. His legs were stuck across three boards moving in different directions at different speeds. Tony was actually crying with pain now.
“I need something to wrap around my hand,” Tony sniveled and started pulling at Spike’s shirt with his other hand. “Tear off your sleeve so I can use it as a bandage.”
“Get away from me!” Spike swatted his hand away but Tony kept tugging at him and somehow Spike’s gun fell out of his shoulder holster.
Tony reached for it but Spike grabbed it first. “Put that away,” Tony ordered him, sobbing now, “before you—”
The explosion knocked Harleen flat on her back and made her ears ring painfully. At first, she thought the Funhouse had blown up—she could smell something harsh and burnt, like a whole bunch of fireworks had gone off right in her face.
But it wasn’t fireworks, she saw, sitting up and clutching the belt with both hands. Spike’s gun had gone off in Tony’s face. Which didn’t exist anymore.
Even with the floor moving back and forth under him, Tony was still up on his knees, one hand clutching Spike’s sleeve at the shoulder as if he were about to rip it off Spike’s arm and wrap it around his hand. Without a face he had no expression, but Harleen half-expected to hear him whine, “See? I toldja this was gonna happen!”
And Spike was just staring at him, like this was one more of Tony’s stupid mistakes. After another second or two, Tony crumpled in a way that was absurdly graceful, like a ballet dancer doing the dying swan.
It was the last deranged straw in a night gone stark raving mad. Harleen burst out laughing.
She laughed so hard and so loud it drowned out the ringing in her ears. When she tried to get up, she collapsed holding her middle. The belt slipped off her shoulder, spilling glue bottles, spray cans, and glitter everywhere and she was laughing too much to do anything about it. Far from the shifting boards, she rolled on the floor kicking her legs and pounding her fists.
“You cold-blooded little shit!” Spike shouted at her. “You think that’s funny, you sick little freak?”
The sound of his angry voice made Harleen’s laughter cut off as she jumped up. Spike was still stuck to the floor; so was his gun. He tried to pull himself free and couldn’t.
“You want funny? I’ll show you funny.” Spike’s face was so twisted with rage, the blue paint looked scary, not silly. “When I get loose, I’ll make you laugh your head off, you little monster.”
Harleen looked around, spotted an exit sign, and ran for it.
* * *
Maybe this would have been a hilarious cartoon, Harleen thought; a grown man chasing a little kid around Coney Island after dark, yelling about how he was going to make her laugh.
Or maybe not. She didn’t know if Spike had managed to get his gun off the floor and didn’t want to find out. But the way he was running, she was afraid he might actually catch up with her.
A grown-up smoker shouldn’t have been able to run like this. Harleen should have left him panting and puking without the breath to curse at her. But he kept coming. She couldn’t get far enough ahead to lose him and when she looked over her shoulder, he seemed to be gaining on her.
Harleen tried to go faster as she ran through the park into the food ar
ea and finally beyond that to the stretch along the beach.
The games booths—maybe she could get into one of them—
Or she could jump into the water. Maybe Spike couldn’t swim.
No, all adults could swim. Well, most. But a lot of them didn’t swim very well and they never wanted to go in with all their clothes on.
But Spike didn’t have all his clothes on. Just his underpants, his shirt, and his shoes; the rest was stuck to the Funhouse floor. She was hoping he’d hesitate to jump into the water long enough for her to get away. He wouldn’t be able to hold his breath as long as she could, not after running for so long. She wasn’t nearly as out of breath—gymnastics had built up her stamina.
When she got to the pier, she made a sharp right turn. It was high tide, she saw with a surge of hope. She could launch herself off the end of the pier like a flying fish—
Abruptly, she was face down on the rough splintery wood with an enormous weight pressing down on her back, squashing her so she couldn’t breathe.
“How about this?” Spike panted. “How’s this for funny?”
He was kneeling on her with all his weight; he was going to squash her like a bug, and she couldn’t even get enough air into her lungs to scream.
Then suddenly he was dragging her upright by the back of her neck. “You know what’s even funnier than that?” He sounded vicious even though he was out of breath. “Delvecchio’s pal who pervs on kids. If you thought a guy with his face blown off was a hoot, that guy’ll have you trippin’!” Spike threw her down on the pier again and knelt over her. “Lemme give you an idea of what he’s got in store for you—”
“Get away from her, you son of a bitch!”
There was a loud crack! and a splash of blood as Spike’s head bent sideways so sharply his ear hit his shoulder. He keeled over and Harleen found herself staring up at a woman holding the great big strong-man hammer in her hands.
“Mommy!” Harleen threw herself into her mother’s arms and buried her face in her neck.
* * *
Mommy hugged her tight for a long time. Harleen almost broke down in tears but Mommy wasn’t crying, she was too brave and strong; she still had the mallet in one hand. If Mommy could be brave and strong, she could, too.
She did come very close to breaking down when she told Mommy what had happened, how the bad guys had beaten Daddy up and the cops hadn’t even cared. Mommy looked very serious as she listened but her eyes stayed dry, so Harleen forced her own tears back.
After a while, Mommy let go of her and looked at Spike lying on the pier. “Here, take this,” she said, holding out the hammer to Harleen. Wide-eyed, Harleen took it from her and hefted it. The hammer was heavy, but to her surprise, not as heavy as it looked—not so heavy that she couldn’t have used it herself if she’d had to. She looked it over from one end to the other. The handle was smooth from the thousands of hands that had swung it, trying to ring the bell. She hadn’t seen a single person who was strong enough to do that—even her daddy had only got it to the halfway mark.
Because it wasn’t all about the hammer, Harleen thought. It was heavy, but you really had to be strong if you were going to ring any bells with it. Not just strong enough but good enough. You had to be worthy.
The sound of a splash brought Harleen out of her reverie. Spike was gone; Mommy had rolled him off the pier.
“So, you ready to go home now?” her mother asked in a light voice, like this was the end of a day out, not the middle of the night.
Harleen nodded and held up the hammer. “Can we keep this?”
“Sure,” her mother said, “but I think we’d better wash it off first.”
“Oh, yeah,” Harleen said. “It’s kinda icky. I’ll do it!”
Daddy was waiting for them when they got home. The sun had come up by then. Mommy told her to go straight to bed; she’d wake her later. Harleen stayed awake just long enough to hear Daddy tell her that one of his friends bailed him out, but she fell asleep when Mommy started saying what she thought of his friends. It was all stuff Harleen had heard before anyway.
Harleen slept much more deeply than usual, the way she did when her gymnastics teacher worked her extra hard and made her stretch for an hour afterward. Only this was more intense. Her fatigue was emotional as well as physical. Like how she felt when Mommy and Daddy had an especially bad fight, the kind when Mommy would drag out suitcases and start throwing clothes into them, saying she’d had enough and so had the kids.
Harleen dreamed practically from the moment she shut her eyes, and though they weren’t horrible nightmares, they hadn’t been pleasant. They were filled with unhappy, angry people who didn’t know what to do about their problems except to blame someone else for them. She kept looking for Mommy and Daddy and although they were nearby—in the next room or across the street or upstairs—she couldn’t get to them. Sometimes they were too busy arguing with each other to see her; other times they did see her but they wouldn’t come to help.
When she woke all on her own at midday, her head felt like a balloon full of cotton balls and her eyes were so heavy it was hard to keep them open. She shuffled out to the kitchen and found her parents sitting across from each other at the table. They looked startled, like they’d forgotten she was home. Maybe they’d thought she’d sleep longer.
Mommy fixed Harleen a baloney and cheese sandwich and a big mug of tomato soup and set it up on a tray table in front of the TV. Things had to be pretty bad if Mommy was letting her eat in front of the TV, Harleen thought. Her baby brothers were either upstairs with Mrs. DiAngeli or down the hall with Paula, who’d gotten laid off again.
That was extra bad.
Mommy had turned the TV up a little louder than usual, enough to make it hard for Harleen to catch anything of what she and Daddy were saying in the kitchen. They were talking to each other in low, tense voices, and that was super-extra-bad. The longer they used their low, tense voices, the more super-extra-bad it got.
It was better when they shouted at each other; when they did that, Harleen knew everything was going to be all right eventually. She didn’t like it—they could say such mean things to each other—but it was like they both had built up a lot of pressure inside and when they shouted, a safety valve opened to let it out. Then they could find their way back to okay.
Harleen wished they had some other way to do that. They might feel better after one of their knock-down-drag-outs—that was what they called them, even though no one got knocked down or dragged out—but Harleen would cry into her pillow. How could people who loved each other—who loved her and her baby brothers—be so cruel to each other? Why didn’t Mommy and Daddy know how awful it made her feel? Sometimes they sounded so mean, she couldn’t believe there was any love in them even for her and her brothers.
She wanted to talk to her parents about all of this but she didn’t know how to explain her feelings without making it sound like she thought they were horrible people and she didn’t love them. Sometimes, though, they were horrible, and sometimes when they were at their most horrible, she felt like maybe she didn’t love them.
But that wasn’t a bit true. Harleen knew she loved her parents with all her heart and soul because the idea of being without them was too unbearable to think about. She felt the same way about her baby brothers; all she wanted to get rid of was their dirty diapers.
Hey, she thought, what if she toilet-trained them? Diapers cost money and if Mommy and Daddy didn’t have that expense to worry about, they would be happy—happy enough to stop fighting. Especially in those low, tense voices.
* * *
All day Harleen waited for her parents to blow up at each other but they didn’t. For a while, they shut up altogether. The atmosphere was awful; it was like being inside a house made of pain. Harleen tried to work up the nerve to ask if she could go to the playground around the corner but, after last night, she didn’t think Mommy and Daddy would let her go out by herself for a long time. She considered asking
if she could go help Mrs. DiAngeli or Paula take care of her brothers but then she remembered they both charged extra for her, no matter how helpful she was. Bringing her brothers back here was no-go—in this atmosphere, they’d never stop crying and she wouldn’t blame them.
Harleen curled up on the couch, hugging her knees and staring through whatever was on TV. Was it a DVD? She couldn’t remember if she’d put one on or not. Yesterday had been the best day ever, and it was like it had never even happened. Her heart had been full of joy; now she felt empty and alone. She wondered if this was how it felt to be in prison; when her parents were like this, it was even worse than being punished for doing something wrong. She felt as if she couldn’t take another moment, but somehow she did, one after another, after another, after another.
This was all the cops’ fault.
If they had treated her daddy the way they were supposed to, if they’d made a report about him getting punched out and then given them a ride home, everything would be okay now. It wouldn’t have been the perfect end to the day, but she’d have slept in her own bed last night and woke up in the morning instead of feeling like a zombie in a house of pain.
But the cops had acted like her daddy had done something wrong and while they were doing that, the real bad guys captured her and tried to trick Mommy into coming to get her so they could hurt her—kill her! And did they know about Delvecchio and his pervo pal? Did they even care?
* * *
The day lasted forever, like the hours were crawling by on hands and knees. No one went to get her brothers from the sitter and Harleen began to worry even more. The low, tense voices started again, stopped for a bit, then resumed. Harleen wanted to cry but she wouldn’t let herself. Her daddy always told her, when she got nervous or worried, she should try to imagine what she’d be doing next week, how this would all be in the past. But she couldn’t—it felt more like she’d be trapped in this horrible time forever.
Near the end of the afternoon, Mommy got out the suitcases. Harleen ran to her room, got into bed, and pulled the covers over her head. Sometime after that, Mommy brought her brothers in and told her to watch them. They all should have been cranky and restless but they just looked spooked. Even Ezzie, who was the youngest, didn’t fuss.
