Mom’s at All Souls Chapel the whole night, so I eat leftover casserole in my bedroom.
The freaks, they leave around nine. Heads hung low, kicking at the lawn.
I settle in on my bed and replay the day’s events.
So far, so brilliant.
There’s a mirror on the back of my bedroom door and I prop myself up in bed and stare hard at myself. I see my mom. Only my hair isn’t thinning out. If anything it’s gotten bushier. But the perfect triangle nose is the same. The thin arched eyebrows. The full bottom lip. With Vauxhall’s sudden appearance, I’m tripped up a little thinking about how I must look, all battered and broken.
I don’t normally fix my hair or worry over zits, but I find myself looking in the mirror more and more often these days. Looking more and more closely at the scars. At the bruises. In mom’s makeup mirror, I find myself trying to find the sunken spots from the dents. Tracing the scar tissue. The healed-over gashes and fractures. My nose, it’s been busted more times than I can remember, and yet it’s still straight. Went right a year ago but then busted left a few months later. All the damage works itself out in the end.
My face comes back together no matter how I break it.
Looking through myself, back at myself on the bed, my mind drifts to my ex-girlfriend, Belle. This is probably because I’m tired and the last time Belle and I talked, really really talked, we were sitting on my bed looking into this same mirror and saying ridiculous things to each other. She was drunk or high. With her it’s always one or the other. I fall asleep hanging on that memory but I’m only under seconds before the phone rings.
“Hello, Ade.”
It’s a voice I don’t recognize. A voice filled with phlegm. A voice like a third-generation dupe of a badly recorded rock show. I yell to Mom that I’ve got the phone.
“Who is this?” I ask.
The voice rattles. “You’re in trouble.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m calling to help you.”
I snicker. Loudly. Push my ear down on the receiver hard. “Who the fuck is this?”
Just ratty breathing.
“Okay. I’m going to hang up now, freak.”
The voice on the other end, it laughs. The sound is nauseating. The voice ignores me, says, “So I had this woman come in to see me this afternoon. An old friend, but she’s never had much in terms of work. Trifles usually. Or truffles, as the case may be. Stuff like that, pedestrian courses, I maybe can give her a week at the most. But today she comes in with a big surprise: thousand-year eggs.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Getting angry, I say, “Is there a point to this phone call? You that creep across the street that the cops have been bugging-”
The voice interrupts, “Actually, they’re only a hundred days old. The eggs. They’re preserved in ash and salt and have a gray yolk. Very bitter, salty, but exquisite nonetheless. But only one hundred days.”
“This is really educational and all, but I think-”
The gargled voice, it gets louder. “Why I’m calling you, Ade, is because eating those eggs I had an superb vision. My client got what she wanted, and we’re talking months in advance, but I also saw you.”
“Me?” I laugh uncomfortably and know immediately that I shouldn’t. This freak on the phone could be sitting outside in a car. He could be watching me from a rooftop right now. He wants this. He wants me spooked.
“Odd, isn’t it.”
“That’s enough, I’m gone.”
But I don’t hang up. I can’t.
Ten seconds pass. They’re as long as visits with my brain-dead dad. And then the voice comes back in, swimming in through the static. “Here’s the deal: You’re at a reservoir. Maybe Cherry Creek. A few weeks from now. And something just terrible goes down. This is at night. This is really dangerous. You look frantic. Seriously, I’m worried-”
“Worried about what?”
“Just I wouldn’t plan on going to the park anytime soon.”
“Who is this? Tell me. Is this a joke?”
The sewer voice says, “This thing I saw, it’s just the setup for an adventure, Ade. What I saw today? Well, that’s the third act. Like a play, my friend. You know, first act introduces our hero, his or her situation, the usual background stuff. Second act is the longest, usually it’s like second act part one and part two where all the action happens, where our hero is put in a weird situation, or has a conflict to resolve. And third act is where the shit hits the proverbial fan.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re the lone cowboy, Ade. I like that you’re a fighter. You’re scrappy.”
I say nothing. Just breathe back slowly. Every heartbeat is cautious.
“I’ll be seeing you,” the voice says. And the line goes dead.
SIX
My mom is the reason that these nuts call me.
Why they appear on the porch.
What’s interesting is that this one, this old guy, seems a bit more confident. The way he talked it’s almost like he had abilities like mine. What makes me say almost is the fact that he’s surely a nut. I’m convinced of this because of his voice. His phlegmy rattle pretty much insures that he’s a freak.
I’m guessing he’s a freak from The Fairlight Hospital.
It’s this place my mom used to volunteer and they had a burn unit where she’d crouch down low with the third-degree guys, most of them bums who fell asleep downtown while drenched in alcohol and smoking and pretty much combusted themselves. These burned-up guys had the very same voice as the guy on the phone. My mom, sometimes she’d drag me along on her Fairlight Rounds (that’s what she called it), had me hold the hand of some still sizzling hobo while she told him about the joys of Christ and the promise of eternal life. The way those crispy guys said “Amen” sounded exactly the same as the way the dude who just called said my name.
I have no idea what he’s on about now, what this phone call meant, but I don’t really want to worry over it. My time for worrying about the here and now is over. Long gone. If it doesn’t have anything to do with Vauxhall and our future, than it’s just chatter in the wind.
Me, I’m over the nut jobs.
Me, I’m done with the bozos.
What I need is to seriously kiss Vauxhall and then knock myself out.
CHAPTER THREE
ONE
