The sky above Freya Drive was a gray flap of corduroy. Droplets of water fell from the sky or were suspended in the air based on some strange casino logic. Despite the dismal weather, there were still people going about their day. The street was busy. The shops and cafes and strange buildings were all full of people.
Martin itched in his new suit. Otto Cherry had insisted on a change of clothes now that Martin was his employee. The suit was a sort of no-color grayish color. Like the drab sky. Slacks and shoes and vest and shirt and coat and hat. Already, all of these new articles of clothing had taken on a rumpled appearance. The shirt was untucked and flapped beneath the vest. The shoes didn't shine like they did when he first put them on. And the fedora hat, that he felt a little silly wearing, perched on his head like a squat bird. But he didn't take the hat off though, in a way, it was sort of the perfect addition to his rumpled appearance. It's like my X-men power, Martin thought, making clothes look rumpled and old.
Martin had ditched the grayish coat in the taxi that had tried to bring him to Freya Drive. After the fifth pass, where the confused cabbie cursed at him in Nigerian, saying that there was no such street, Martin directed him to where he'd parked his boxy little car the night before. Having no money to tip the cabbie, he decided to leave him new coat. The green trench coat is heavy enough, he thought.
There was a neon green envelope on the windshield of his car. A parking ticket. Martin stuffed it into one of the trenchcoat's many pockets. He felt his hand brush the plastic surface of the Tic-Tac box.Nothing seemed dire yet, so his left the Tic-Tac box where it was, along side the ticket and made his way to Freya Drive.
Now that he could see the street on a busy Saturday, he found himself picking out certain people making their way along the street. A couple holding hands. A man jogging. A woman pushing a stroller, making funny faces at her baby. Martin couldn't be sure how he knew but he knew that these people were tourists. Ask them tomorrow, he thought, and they'll either not remember where they walked or they won't remember how to get back here. Maybe young love, a runner's high, and the distraction of a newborn were three keys into the lock? But how can I tell they don't belong, Martin thought as he made his way to the alleyway and The Shining Wire. He wasn't sure that he liked the fact that he could tell.
As Martin came to The Shining Wire's entrance, he was confronted by the same doorman. Dark glasses. Asian. Ageless.
"Sorry, the princess is in another castle."
"Sorry, Mister Hollys, but that was the previous pass phrase. It's no longer any good. "
"What? It's stale?"
"Afraid so."
"Well, I need to speak with Miss Fiver about a few things."
"Afraid that's not possible at this time."
"It will only take a moment of her time."
"Afraid her time is too valuble to disturb."
Martin felt his itchy new clothes. He felt his feet in the steel toed shoes Otto Cherry had picked for him. He let himself feel how much his toes were pinched and he let himself think about how comfortable his Converse sneakers were. And he felt the green trenchcoat. How heavy it was. He let himself pretend he could feel the invisble symbols tethered to the coat. He raised his left hand and formed a pistol with it. His bandaged index and middle fingers made the barrel of that pistol seem both thick and slightly crooked.
"Afraid I must insist."
Martin couldn't tell what the doorman's eyes were doing behind his smoked glasses but his mouth smirked. Martin was sick of seeing smirks on people's mouths.
"Sorry, but I doubt very much if that will even work. Maybe you say, 'Bang' and just blow off your two fingers."
"Maybe. But then I'd be maimed enough to come work here and maybe that would make me your boss one day."
The smirk started to edge back towards a smile. But Martin noticed a bead of sweat peer out from the doorman's hairline.
"Perhaps, Mister Hollys."
"Now unless behind those sunglasses you're missing an eye or two, I don't see your deformity. But I'm guessing that if I were aiming at your crotch instead of your head, you'd be less worried than you are right now. So, yeah, this might not work, and I'm down two fingers and I ask for an application...or it does work and it puts a magic bullet between your eyes. I'm willing to risk that. How about you?"
The smirk was gone and the smile left with it and Martin was pleased to see the little bead of sweat creep out of the doorman's hairline and glide down the side of his face. The doorman reached behind him and, without taking his eyes off Martin, opened the door to The Shining Wire. As Martin passed him, the doorman touched his arm.
"The next time you point that at someone, don't wait so long to say, 'Bang', in the time it took you to threaten me, somebody else might have killed you ten times over."
"I'll take that under advisement. Thank you."
"Welcome to The Shining Wire, Mister Hollys."
The wall of television screens were all black. There were a few people at the bar, prepping for the night ot come. A few people sitting at booths, still enjoying the previous evening. At a small table near the stage sat Cassandra Fiver, surrounded by her goons. Her back was to him, she was facing the stage.
When Marwan happened to look up and see Martin, his face went a dangerous white that matched his dead eye. He tapped both Red Sturges and Cairo on the shoulders. They made their way towards Martin, a filmy eyed, baby armed, hairlipped wall. Before they could converge on Martin a voice called from the other side of that wall. Cassandra's voice.
"Let the factotum through, even if he is a gatecrasher this time. It's not every day that I get to chat with someone who has escaped not only the clutches of Butch Pierce but also Otto Cherry."
Marwan and the others parted. Martin felt a childish thrill as he made sure to heavily bump shoulders with Marwan as he passed. Cassandra had changed into a pearly white dress that revealed her shoulders. As Martin walked around the table to face her, he couldn't help watching the shadows play across her shoulderblades, they were very winged. He could also count her vertebrae, several prominent points along the marble of her skin. Her chocolate colored hair was held up in a gauzy net of pearls and lace and bright garnets. Martin sat down across from her. She was smoking a cigarette. in a long cigarette holder. Of course, Martin thought.
On the small table was a deck of Tarot cards. They were spread out in patterns and groupings that meant nothing to Martin. There was also an empty martini glass. Cassandra looked up from the confusing mess of the cards and fixed her strange purple-black eyes on Martin.
"Claude Rains. My boys just love it that I'm all shook up for you."
"That's nice to hear."
"Who's your tailor?"
"Otto Cherry's private collection. Except for a coat I left with a cabbie."
"No doubt that cabbie will wreck his taxi by the end of the day."
"I hope that's not true but maybe it will be true."
"How wonderfully diplomatic of you, Claude."
"I need to ask you a favor."
Cassandra smiled a pouty smile and Martin had a very clear image in his head of biting her lower lip and hanging off of it for days. She shifted forward, bringing her face closer to Martin's. Swirls of smoke made blue gray halos around her.
"I hope this favor has something to do with retiring up to my private office."
"In fact, it does."
"Aren't you the bold little scamp."
"Fortune favors the bold."
"You should write fortune cookies."
"I hate the taste of fortune cookies."
"Aha! See, even that would be a funny fortune for a fortune cookie."
"Well, if you go into the business of making fortune cookies, you can have it for free, so can we go up to your office now?"
"Not so quick, Claude, what are we gonna do up there? You don't have to be too vulgar but a little vulgar is kinda nice."
"I need to speak with that couple up there. The ones in the gas masks."
Cassandra pulled back over to her side of the table. The cigarette holder was held in the corner of her mouth and she chewed on it for a second. Her eyes narrowed. If she'd had a tail, it would have been flicking back and forth.
"Why?"
"Because Butch Pierce wanted to take them. Because they might be able to tell me where Cherry's daughter is."
"So it's 'Claude Rains And The Case Of The Missing Daughter' now? I thougth you were more interested in the Lolas' little femme factotum. You are even more fickle than I am."
"To help one I've gotta find the other. And Pierce wanted those two up in your office. I don't want to take them, just talk to them."
"Okay. You get your interview if I get something from you."
Martin felt his face go flush and his tongue suddenly seemed too thick for his mouth. Cassandra laughed. That made Martin feel even sillier.
"Oh, no, not that, Detective Rains, but close...you do go the most interesting shade of pink. Do you sing?"
"No."
"Not even in the shower?"
"No."
"Well, then, perfect, I would like for you to sing something for me. Anything you like. Up there, on the stage. For my staff and the few remaining patrons. I would like a little of your embarrassment, please. Then you can go and chat with Gail's little art project upstairs."
"What...what should I sing?"
"Detective's choice."
Martin got up from the table and made his way over to the steps that led up to the little stage. It was clustered with instruments and cables and equipment. He made his way to the microphone in the center of the stage. The lights in his eyes made him feel off balance and weak in the knees. He could see Marwan and the other goons out in the little crowd. In fact, more and more people seemed to be appearing out of nowhere. They seemed to be crawling out from under tables and carpets and cracks in the walls. Suddenly, the club looked as busy and loud as it had been the night before. Colored light danced in his face and the smell of smoke burned his throat. The wall of televisions clicked on and he saw himself repeated dozens of times from different angles.
"My...umm...my Mom use to sing this while she cleaned"
And in an off key voice, Martin began to sing. His stomach was cramped and he felt like he could hear every smirking voice in the crowd. He closed his eyes and thought of his Mom, singing in her own off key voice. A voice that was drowned out by the vacuum cleaner she was dancing with. Martin tried to think of the Spanish sounding trumpets that should go along with the song.
"In a little cafe just the other side of the border
She was just sitting there givin' me looks that made my mouth water
So I started walking her way
She belonged to Bad Man Jose
And I knew, yes I knew I should leave
When I heard her say, yeah
Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long
So we started to dance
In my arms, she felt so inviting
That I just couldn't resist
Just one little kiss so exciting
Then I heard the guitar player say
"Vamoose, Jose's on his way"
Then I knew, yes I knew I should run
But then I heard her say, yeah
Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long
Then the music stopped
When I looked the cafe was empty
Then I heard Jose say
"Man you know you're in trouble plenty"
So I dropped my drink from my hand
And through the window I ran
And as I rode away
I could hear her say to Jose, yeah
Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long
La la-la-la la-la
La la-la-la la-la"
Martin waited a minute. Two. Three, before he opened his eyes. The club was sparse again, a few patrons. Some watching him, others going about their own conversations. The bartender and waitresses were clapping politely. Red Sturges and Cairo were whistling. Marwan was clapping in a slow, sarcastic manner. Martin looked to the foot of the stage at Cassandra. She was looking at him win a calculating way, as if columns of numbers were being tallied and subtracted and multiplied above his head. She gestured with her cigarette holder for him to join her at her table.
As Martin sat down, Cassandra collected all of the Tarot cards on the table. Her martini glass was now full of a rosy colored liquid, she drank it in one shot. Then she ran a finger around inside the glass to pick up any stray moisture and sucked the liquid from her finger. She passed the Tarot deck to Martin.
"Shuffle"
Martin shuffled and passed the deck back to her. She let her fingers graze along the back of the topmost card, then she gave the deck a quick shuffle and passed it back to Martin.
"Cut the deck."
Martin cut the deck and slid the cards back over to Cassandra.
"This deck is missing a single card...I gave it to a friend as gift of sorts, as a reminder."
A memory sparked in Martin's mind. A lone Tarot card at Wants & Getz.
"Lola Wants."
Cassandra paused a moment in the five card pattern she was placing on the table and nodded. The five cards were arranged in their pentagram shape. She flipped over the first one. A figure in a green motley costume walked along, an odd squid-like creature trailing along at his feet.
"The Fool. He better learn quick how things work."
She flipped the next card. A dark cityscape was illuminated by a fat, heavy moon.
"The Night. A difficult place to walk, full of tricks and backstabbers and shots-in-the-dark."
She flipped the next card. From where Martin sat the card looked right side up but from Cassandra's perspective it was upside down. On it was a tall Ferris Wheel, riding up one side was a happy smiling man, on the other side was a man falling from the carriage, his face a silent scream.
"The Wheel Of Fortune Inverted. Things coming to an end, the absence of good luck."
She flipped the fourth card. A strange woman looked out from the card's depths. She had dark skin and a shock of white-blonde hair, her hands were smeared with many colors of paint, in the background of the card were unfinished statues and wet paint brushes.
"The Empress. A creator, a womb. Demeter to give or hold back the seasons."
Cassandra's hand hovered over the last card. When she finally picked it up, instead of turning it over, she neatly folded in half, and stuck it in one of Martin's pockets. At Martin's look, she smiled her pouty smile.
" You'll want to look at that one later. When everything is said and done. Let's go get you that interview, Claude."
They went up the spiral staircase into her triangular office. The Mae West's Lips couch still occupied its spot at the apex of the triangle. But the couple lay sprawled across the floor, the man's mask pulled up enough to let Martin see the white foam that choked him. The girl was in worse shape, a huge knife pierced her chest. There was a scrawl of bloody paint that read: JUST LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET BY GAIL ALICE. Martin stooped down at their side, looking for the strange little brand. Yes, there on the man's forearm and on the girl's calf. A spidery tree with one leaf. Just like Lucifer Beard's little gang. These two were either members of the gang who earned the brand, or enemies who'd been marked by it. Lucifer Beard and his cronies might know where Cherry's daughter is, Martin thought.
"After Butch Pierce carted you off, Gail gate crashed her way up here and 'updated' her work. They wouldn't have been must good to you anyway, you were too busy waving your toy pistol around to hear but I told Butch that Gail glammed these two within an inch of their lives."
Martin sighed and shrugged and started to stand but he stumbled a bit. Hope that looked real, he thought. It must have because Cassandra's hand shot out to steady him and Martin held her arm with his right hand. He gripped her wrist. Hard.
"That's fine because I didn't really come up here to talk to them. I came up here because you are going to give me the vial with Otto Cherry's Unused Thought."
Again, Martin felt a molten warmth spread from his stomach and travel down his arm to Cassandra. She arched her back and shuddered but Martin held her against the shockwave the rippled through her. When she looked back up at him, he could see a thousand little raptures in her purple-black eyes as the Lolas' gift ripped through her defenses. His hand itched more than his new suit. Another petal gone.
"And why should I do that?"
You'll do it because you don't have a choice, Martin thought. But he wasn't that cruel. Time to roll the dice.
"Because Wonderly wouldn't buy it and there's nobody else to sell it to."
"So, what, I just give it to you and you give it back to Cherry, wrapped up with his daughter, no doubt."
The defiance in her voice was feigned. She was just stalling. Martin had to cut through all these games within games.
"No, you give it to me and I going to use it against Cherry. To kill him, if I can."
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What's this, gentle readers? Who is this new and improved knight-errant, Martin Hollys....bold, sly, and maybe with a few plans of his own???
Find out what some of them are in our next installment:
Chapter Eleven: The Royal Army Of Oz
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Chapter Nine: You're Finally Here And I'm A Mess.
Her head was held at a question mark angle. One eye was blackened shut, the other was unfocused. Glassy? Drugged? The red dye of her hair had bled out a little, revealing sweaty, mouse-brown coloring underneath. Channels of the fire engine color snaked out of her hairline and met up with and merged into the patchwork pattern of bruises and cuts. Her nose was a jagged lightning bolt shape, one nostril plugged with a brownish gel of old blood. One cheekbone looked almost crushed to powder and her jawline was taut as an inner tube. Thin black cords of rope dug into her chest and upper arms, holding her into the chair. Her clothes were rumbled and wet and torn. Her hands were bound with yellow plastic handcuffs. Her hand rested in her lap. Several of the fingers on each hand looked swollen or torqued. The nail of one pinky was missing. So were her shoes.
Martin looked at her. Made himself memorize and catalogue every scrape, every raw bit of flesh. He felt like his chest was full of something molten and heavy. His jaw and his hands clenched. His bandaged fingers didn't even protest. He wanted to scream something like, 'Let her go now!', but he knew that such an impotent command coming from him would be laughed at and ignored. Martin looked at her. At Maddy MacGuffin. His Maddy. She was the most beautiful, trampled thing he had ever seen in his life. He quietly made her a vow: These people will pay for this. He unclenched his jaw but kept his fists. He could feel his heartbeat through his broken, bandaged fingers.
Otto Cherry was looking at Maddy, shaking his head sadly, making tsk-tsk-tsk sounds. It was the sound and look of seeing a horrible scratch in the paint job of a car that doesn't belong to you. And as quickly as he made it he stopped and turned to look at Martin with his Paul Newman eyes.
"But enough of lies, liars, and Wonderlands...this..."
A wave of his long fingered hand took in Martin, Maddy, Butch Pierce, The Folding Room, and himself.
"....is a little more personal than all of that. wouldn't you say?"
Martin pulled his plain brown eyes off of Maddy's broken form and met Otto Cherry's bright blue eyes. He nodded.
"I have a job for you. A task."
"I have a job. I'm a file clerk."
"Ha-ha. So you are, Mister Hollys. But this particular job would utilize you as a courier of Wants & Getz."
"I don't work for them."
A ripple of annoyance swam under the surface of Otto Cherry's face like some prehistoric fish.
"You do though. You may never get a W2 from them but you do work for them. They sent you here. To me. As a peace offering. So I wouldn't crush them down to paste."
"I don't work for them."
The prehistoric fish leaped forward and Otto Cherry made a hissing noise.
"Lights!"
The Folding Room went black. Endless deep. Empty black. Martin could still hear the stony breath of Butch Pierce, the quiet wheeze of Maddy MacGuffin, and what sounded like Otto Cherry clearing his throat. Or reciting the names of every creature from the Cthulhu Mythos. Suddenly, strange marking began to appear on Martin's trenchcoat. They glowed in greens and purples and blues, with little accents in reds and roadrunner yellows. The symbols were as meaningless to Martin as high level mathematics. Spirals. Loops. Whorls. They pulsed on and off, making the faces around Martin seem like they were at a music-free rave.
"Here is your contract. A letter to me. An apology from the Lolas for their former courier's treachery and their Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy. And finally, an peace offering of sorts...you. My personal courier. Gratis. Lights."
The lights seemed to crawl back into existence like they were tired.
"Former courier's treachery?"
"Yes. The former owner of your coat there. Miles Regan. He kidnapped my daughter...or, I suppose, one could argue that they ran away together."
"Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy?"
"Well, from what Butch has gathered from her, she's very much in love with Mister Regan. And Regan convinced her to steal an item from me and bring it to Cassandra Fiver.
"The package I delivered to The Shining Wire."
"Yes, yes, that's the vial that Cassandra Fiver had her little double agent here steal from me. One of my Unused Thoughts, as much good as it will do her...she won't be able to understand it...and she won't be able to sell it to Wonderly because he'd be too afraid to use it against me...but I don't care about that. I care about finding my daughter."
"You want me to find your daughter?"
"Abigail Cherry."
Martin felt his heavy molten chest, his fists, his broken fingers. The trenchcoat felt like it was made of sheets of metal, like all the symbols floating and glowing on it had atomic weight. She's lovesick, I'm lovesick, he thought, and we're both broken by it.
"Why should I help you?"
Almost before Martin finished the question, Otto Cherry picked up the stun gun from his desk and placed it against's Maddy's arm. There was a loud electric sound and the smell of ozone and fire. Maddy's chair flipped over backwards and she landed with a choking noise on her back.
Martin closed the distance between (betwixt?) him and Cherry and with his unbroken hand, he landed a punch to Cherry's mouth. Then, Butch Pierce had him in a choke hold. Cherry dabbed at his lips, the blood bright on his face and fingertips. And he laughed.
"That's precisely why you should help me, Mister Hollys. Because you are the only one who cares that I just took a cattle prod to this poor girl. Not her employers, they've written her off and just hope that I don't take any revenge on them for their dubious involvement. They may have been at this game longer than me. But I play it better. No, not them, they don't care. Not Cassandra Fiver, or Wonderly, or her former paramour, Mister Regan. Butch, let him go."
Butch Pierce did as he was told. Martin swallowed at the air, not like a prehistoric fish, not like some creature that reached its evolutionary peak millions of years ago. Martin breathed in more like a fish learning to walk on land. Learning to perform a magic trick. These people don't know me, he thought, I don't care how many files they have.
"None of them care about her. Only you. And I don't care about any of them, I just want my daughter returned to me. Because you care about her and I care about that...that's why you are going to find my daughter for me. You are...unpredictable, if foolish. My men are predictable and prudent. I think you will success where they have failed."
"I'd like a moment to speak with Miss MacGuffin."
Otto Cherry smiled and he retreated a few steps back and suddenly he wasn't there. Butch Pierce followed him.
Martin turned to Maddy, lifted her chair upright. Her one good eye still stared into some middle distance between her nose and Martin's face.
"I'm suppose to say to you, 'Wanna disco' and you're suppose to say, 'More crackers please'. So we'll know each other. So we'll trust each other."
"Miles? Is that you?"
Maddy's eye just floated upward and downward like a drugged balloon. Martin almost touched her cheek with his hand.
"But that's not what I want to say to you. I know it's a childish, Neanderthal impulse to want to save you. But, frankly, you look like you actually need saving. Like non-metaphorical saving. I know I don't know you. But I would like to. I don't really know that much about myself and all these people certainly don't know anything about me. But the little bit about myself that I know, I want to tell you."
Martin brushed aside some sweat and blood and make-up and tears and a strand of hair with his hand.
"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled, and loaded with sin."
Maddy's eye went still for a moment. The eyebrow above that eye scrunched down with confusion, then raised itself up into a surprised arch. She opened her mouth. It was full of saliva and blood and teeth. She tried to work her lips and tongue and teeth and cheeks into words.
"The...guy...from the...red pa...go...dah?"
Martin stood up and smiled a little half smile. He noticed that his blue flower tattoo was missing another petal. He rubbed at his palm with his bandaged fingers.
"The girl with the golden googles."
"Aha! Made any escape plans yet? Butch, take Miss MacGuffin back to her room"
Martin watched as Butch Pierce dragged Maddy away. His impulse was to follow them but Otto Cherry placed a strong hand on his shoulder and held him back. He nodded at Martin's hands.
"That is an interesting trick."
"Thank you."
Otto gestured to Martin's bandaged fingers.
"I could get you something to...fix...those fingers. But I find a little pain keeps me sharp."
Otto rubbed his busted lip with a little too much pleasure.
"Come on, Mister Hollys, let's get you cleaned up and on the case."
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Thank you for joining us all again in the wild weird world of Martin Hollys....coming up next:
The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Ten: Come A Little Bit Closer
Martin looked at her. Made himself memorize and catalogue every scrape, every raw bit of flesh. He felt like his chest was full of something molten and heavy. His jaw and his hands clenched. His bandaged fingers didn't even protest. He wanted to scream something like, 'Let her go now!', but he knew that such an impotent command coming from him would be laughed at and ignored. Martin looked at her. At Maddy MacGuffin. His Maddy. She was the most beautiful, trampled thing he had ever seen in his life. He quietly made her a vow: These people will pay for this. He unclenched his jaw but kept his fists. He could feel his heartbeat through his broken, bandaged fingers.
Otto Cherry was looking at Maddy, shaking his head sadly, making tsk-tsk-tsk sounds. It was the sound and look of seeing a horrible scratch in the paint job of a car that doesn't belong to you. And as quickly as he made it he stopped and turned to look at Martin with his Paul Newman eyes.
"But enough of lies, liars, and Wonderlands...this..."
A wave of his long fingered hand took in Martin, Maddy, Butch Pierce, The Folding Room, and himself.
"....is a little more personal than all of that. wouldn't you say?"
Martin pulled his plain brown eyes off of Maddy's broken form and met Otto Cherry's bright blue eyes. He nodded.
"I have a job for you. A task."
"I have a job. I'm a file clerk."
"Ha-ha. So you are, Mister Hollys. But this particular job would utilize you as a courier of Wants & Getz."
"I don't work for them."
A ripple of annoyance swam under the surface of Otto Cherry's face like some prehistoric fish.
"You do though. You may never get a W2 from them but you do work for them. They sent you here. To me. As a peace offering. So I wouldn't crush them down to paste."
"I don't work for them."
The prehistoric fish leaped forward and Otto Cherry made a hissing noise.
"Lights!"
The Folding Room went black. Endless deep. Empty black. Martin could still hear the stony breath of Butch Pierce, the quiet wheeze of Maddy MacGuffin, and what sounded like Otto Cherry clearing his throat. Or reciting the names of every creature from the Cthulhu Mythos. Suddenly, strange marking began to appear on Martin's trenchcoat. They glowed in greens and purples and blues, with little accents in reds and roadrunner yellows. The symbols were as meaningless to Martin as high level mathematics. Spirals. Loops. Whorls. They pulsed on and off, making the faces around Martin seem like they were at a music-free rave.
"Here is your contract. A letter to me. An apology from the Lolas for their former courier's treachery and their Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy. And finally, an peace offering of sorts...you. My personal courier. Gratis. Lights."
The lights seemed to crawl back into existence like they were tired.
"Former courier's treachery?"
"Yes. The former owner of your coat there. Miles Regan. He kidnapped my daughter...or, I suppose, one could argue that they ran away together."
"Miss MacGuffin's lovesick idiocy?"
"Well, from what Butch has gathered from her, she's very much in love with Mister Regan. And Regan convinced her to steal an item from me and bring it to Cassandra Fiver.
"The package I delivered to The Shining Wire."
"Yes, yes, that's the vial that Cassandra Fiver had her little double agent here steal from me. One of my Unused Thoughts, as much good as it will do her...she won't be able to understand it...and she won't be able to sell it to Wonderly because he'd be too afraid to use it against me...but I don't care about that. I care about finding my daughter."
"You want me to find your daughter?"
"Abigail Cherry."
Martin felt his heavy molten chest, his fists, his broken fingers. The trenchcoat felt like it was made of sheets of metal, like all the symbols floating and glowing on it had atomic weight. She's lovesick, I'm lovesick, he thought, and we're both broken by it.
"Why should I help you?"
Almost before Martin finished the question, Otto Cherry picked up the stun gun from his desk and placed it against's Maddy's arm. There was a loud electric sound and the smell of ozone and fire. Maddy's chair flipped over backwards and she landed with a choking noise on her back.
Martin closed the distance between (betwixt?) him and Cherry and with his unbroken hand, he landed a punch to Cherry's mouth. Then, Butch Pierce had him in a choke hold. Cherry dabbed at his lips, the blood bright on his face and fingertips. And he laughed.
"That's precisely why you should help me, Mister Hollys. Because you are the only one who cares that I just took a cattle prod to this poor girl. Not her employers, they've written her off and just hope that I don't take any revenge on them for their dubious involvement. They may have been at this game longer than me. But I play it better. No, not them, they don't care. Not Cassandra Fiver, or Wonderly, or her former paramour, Mister Regan. Butch, let him go."
Butch Pierce did as he was told. Martin swallowed at the air, not like a prehistoric fish, not like some creature that reached its evolutionary peak millions of years ago. Martin breathed in more like a fish learning to walk on land. Learning to perform a magic trick. These people don't know me, he thought, I don't care how many files they have.
"None of them care about her. Only you. And I don't care about any of them, I just want my daughter returned to me. Because you care about her and I care about that...that's why you are going to find my daughter for me. You are...unpredictable, if foolish. My men are predictable and prudent. I think you will success where they have failed."
"I'd like a moment to speak with Miss MacGuffin."
Otto Cherry smiled and he retreated a few steps back and suddenly he wasn't there. Butch Pierce followed him.
Martin turned to Maddy, lifted her chair upright. Her one good eye still stared into some middle distance between her nose and Martin's face.
"I'm suppose to say to you, 'Wanna disco' and you're suppose to say, 'More crackers please'. So we'll know each other. So we'll trust each other."
"Miles? Is that you?"
Maddy's eye just floated upward and downward like a drugged balloon. Martin almost touched her cheek with his hand.
"But that's not what I want to say to you. I know it's a childish, Neanderthal impulse to want to save you. But, frankly, you look like you actually need saving. Like non-metaphorical saving. I know I don't know you. But I would like to. I don't really know that much about myself and all these people certainly don't know anything about me. But the little bit about myself that I know, I want to tell you."
Martin brushed aside some sweat and blood and make-up and tears and a strand of hair with his hand.
"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled, and loaded with sin."
Maddy's eye went still for a moment. The eyebrow above that eye scrunched down with confusion, then raised itself up into a surprised arch. She opened her mouth. It was full of saliva and blood and teeth. She tried to work her lips and tongue and teeth and cheeks into words.
"The...guy...from the...red pa...go...dah?"
Martin stood up and smiled a little half smile. He noticed that his blue flower tattoo was missing another petal. He rubbed at his palm with his bandaged fingers.
"The girl with the golden googles."
"Aha! Made any escape plans yet? Butch, take Miss MacGuffin back to her room"
Martin watched as Butch Pierce dragged Maddy away. His impulse was to follow them but Otto Cherry placed a strong hand on his shoulder and held him back. He nodded at Martin's hands.
"That is an interesting trick."
"Thank you."
Otto gestured to Martin's bandaged fingers.
"I could get you something to...fix...those fingers. But I find a little pain keeps me sharp."
Otto rubbed his busted lip with a little too much pleasure.
"Come on, Mister Hollys, let's get you cleaned up and on the case."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for joining us all again in the wild weird world of Martin Hollys....coming up next:
The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Ten: Come A Little Bit Closer
Chapter Eight: The Emperor Of Ice Cream.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
Martin swam through a midnight sea. Underwater. Weightless. Slow motion. Stop motion. Boundless thick crushing water supported him and controlled him. He was buoyed in a serpentine current. His ears stuffed with the siren-like beat-beat-beat of blood through his head.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
In the distance, dancing like a harem girl, like a mirage, was a wane light. Pus yellow. Man-in-the-Moon white. Vague. The surface, Martin thought. He rotated his arms and scissored his legs towards the shake-y vision. The watery envelope surrounding him clung, placenta-like, against his skin. Swimming was difficult. Slow motion. Stop motion.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
Martin made his progress towards the shifting source of light. It seemed to move away from him, sly and tempting. Deeper and deeper. Wait, he thought, this is wrong. What if it wasn't the surface? What if it was a trick? Some bioluminescent fish? An angler fish, he thought, with sharp teeth. His lungs were burning. His eye hurt. His mouth. His fingers.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
What is that, Martin thought, loooking around. Nothing. Oily blacks, bruised purples. And the sickly light far off to his left. No, now it's over to the left, he saw it. I'll never make it, he thought. He felt tired of swimming, he let himself sink for a bit. Lower. The oily blackness pressed against his mouth, forced itself into his nostrils. His eyes hurt. I'll just rest them for a minute, he thought.
Suddenly, the water in front of him was disturbed by a moving shape. It moved with an odd, falling handkerchief, cuttlefish sort of way. It was also white, like the distant light. Unlike the distant light, it was bright and crisp. As it neared Martin's face it unfolded itself like a moth's wing.
It was a piece of paper.
As Martin watched it, drawings began to resolve and shape themselves on the once blank surface. Picture after picture appeared. Martin saw the red pagoda. He saw himself entering the red pagoda. The pagoda transformed into a rocket. Soviet red, with fins like an old car. The rocket landed in the break room of Wants & Getz. All green and purple. At the table Lola Wants sat, drawing endlessly. Little musical notes hung above her stick figure self. Her crayon eyes locked onto Martin. Her little three fingered stick figure hand lifted up one of the many pieces of paper before her.
It read: CHECK YOUR POCKETS FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
This message was quickly replaced by another.
It read: IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP, MISTER HOLLYS.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
"It's time to wake up, Mister Hollys."
Martin's eyes opened, gummy and unfocused. He was on the floor of a poorly lit room. The floor was icy. He coughed and watched a spray of red on the floor near his mouth. He allowed one small corner of his mind to think: That's probably really bad.
But that thought was soon replaced by complaints from all over his body. Loudest were the index and middle fingers of his left hand. They sent a constant stream of pain with fiber optic speed. Slower was the blunt throb from his forehead. His black eye and busted lips added an old chorus of annoyance. His spine and his lungs complained with sharp protests as he pulled himself into a sitting position.
Martin looked at his fingers. They were swollen. Red-purple. The tip of his index finger was black. It almost looked like frostbite. Holding his other hand to his face he could feel slightly crusty, slightly sticky blood drying there.
"Nap's over. Move your carcass. The boss is here."
The voice stabbed down at him from one of the hardboiled history professors. The one he hadn't shot with a magic bullet. Kafka? Clampett? Casper?
"Caspar The Friendly Ghost."
"Spelled different but close enough. Kaspar Mars. Now dig a worm."
Martin's head was still cotton candy and ground up glass. Kaspar Mars held a silver Zippo in his hands that he was opening and closing. Flick-click. Click-flick.
"Dig a worm?"
"Gotta be fast to dig up a worm. Let's go."
Kaspar Mars took Martin by his right arm and half guided, half dragged him out of the small room and down a long corridor. The carpet beneath Martin's feet was thick and had almost a trampoline bounce to it. It was covered in whorls and spirals and curlicue patterns. To either side of the hallway, thick tapestries hung, showing more loops of scrollwork. The walls were wooden and dark. Every few feet, on one side or another, there would be a door. Kaspar walked Martin passed all of them until they reached the end of the hallway and a huge set of doors.
Kaspar Mars knocked once, leaving his hand flat against the surface of the door for a second. Two seconds. Five seconds. There was a small electric snapping noise and Kaspar removed his hand quickly.
"You can go in."
"What if I don't want to?"
"Then I can rough you up a bit out here and then shove you through the doors."
Martin listened to the various protests and votes from the internal congress of his wounded body. The delagation that didn't want to walk through the doors were shouted down by the delagation that wasn't ready for another beating yet.
"I guess I'm going in then."
"I guess you are."
With that, Martin opening the door and stepped into the inner sanctum of Otto Cherry.
The room was brighter than the hallway but the light felt wrong. Limp. Sickly. Wane. Yellowish and corrupt. The source of the light came from floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the room. Each window was filled with the same bloated whiteness. Maggot-white. Fish belly. The room was empty. Martin walked toward the windows on the far side of the room. After twenty steps, he thought he should have been able to press his face against the glass. After forty steps he was no closer. Martin turned and looked back toward the double doors. They were far away in the distance.
"Who is your favorite author?"
Martin jumped and turned around. A man was standing in front of him. He was in his fifties. Tall, taller than Martin, skinny but powerfully built. His face was pleasant and narrow and pinkish. He had closely shorn white hair you could see his scalp through. He wore dress pants and a white dress shirt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows. He had a silvery tie with a tie pin. The tie pin was an enamel cherry. The man was barefoot and his feet looked like they were no strangers to pedicures. He had Paul Newman blue eyes.
"Pardon me for scaring you. The Folding Room can take some getting use to . I'm Otto Cherry."
"J.R.R. Tolkien. Or Frank Herbert. Or Raymond Chandler. It's hard to choose."
At that, Otto Cherry's face wrinkled itself into a pleasant smile.
"Isn't it though, Mister Hollys. It truly depends on mood and season and time of day. Yes"
"Spring days for Tolkien. Summer for Herbert. Rainy Falls for Chandler, I suppose."
"Exactly. Well put. I. myself, was always drawn to Burroughs. Edgar Rice, not William S., mind you. Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Impossible, improbable Africas and red planets. Barsoom. The Lost City of Opar. To think that I, myself, could find one of these places was my fondest wish."
"The NeverEnding Story. Oz. Wonderland. Whatever. A lot of people do that, sure."
"Yes. And now, here we --."
"Excuse me, but what do you want with me?"
A quick look of anger drifted across Cherry's features and was gone. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
"Yes, of course. Sorry, I just can't remember the last time I spoke with a fellow gatecrasher. A few tourists, sure, from time to time. But really there's nobody else but Wonderly and we don't speak much these days, of course. Anyway, follow me, stay close."
Cherry turned on his heels and walked off, Martin followed him. Over his shoulder, he called.
"No need to worry about Mister Geiger. Fixed him right up. Maybe he'll like vanilla instead of chocolate from now on or be scared of heights instead of snakes but at least he's walking, right?"
"Wha--? Who?"
"Geiger. George Geiger. The man you shot with your little Lola gun. He's going to live. Thought you'd be pleased you weren't a murderer, just a file clerk."
"How do you know I'm a file clerk?"
"Ah, here we are."
Cherry made an abrupt stop and as Martin joined him, he saw that they had come across a desk with a couple of harsh metal chairs. A huge monster of a desk. One moment it wasn't there, the next moment it was right in front of them. Like it was hidden behind an invisible wall, Martin thought. But couldn't you see something behind an invisible wall, he thought right on top of that. The double doors leading out of the room were off in the distance to the left. He hadn't seen this desk when he'd walked in. Of course, he hadn't seen Cherry either.
On the desk were a several objects. An ancient looking intercom. A flashlight. A file folder. An origami figure. A pair of gold spray painted goggles, one of the lens cracked. And a wicked looking piece of black plastic that Martin was pretty sure was a stun gun.
"How do I know you are a file clerk, Mister Hollys? It's in your file. Ha-ha."
Cherry opened the file folder and pulled out Martin's wallet and car keys, along with several typed pages.
"Martin Hollys. Only son of Gary and Diann Hollys. Parents deceased when you were sixteen. Raised by your father's brother, Chris. Mediocre grades. C student. A little college. A series of dead end jobs. Security guard. Roofing. Laying carpet and cement with your Uncle until his death. Truck driver. Delivered plastic water bottles. And then refrigerated trucks full of flowers. Mailrooms, warehouses. Movie theaters and bookstores. Unformed, unattached. Currently shuffling files from cabinet to cabinet over at Bateman, Becker & Civitello. One room apartment. No furniture. Just a mattress and stacks of books, music, movies. No friends. No family."
Martin's damaged body quieted down and he felt his face go flush. To hear his little life reduced to those sentences made his chest feel heavy. He could remember his Dad stomping after him, holding a wooden sword, playing. He could remember his Mom reading to him, telling him stories. And later, when they were gone, his Uncle listening to music with him. Grieving and inducting Martin into a new world of sound at the same time. It that really all there is to me, he thought.
"Don't be upset, Mister Hollys. If I read my own history it would look as gray. But look at us now. Betwixt!!! That's what I call it, Betwixt. Few, few people can be drawn here in the flesh. I think maybe artists, writers, musicians bleed out into it somehow, sure. It would explain some things about the people who were here when I got here."
"What are you talking about?"
"This place. Wants & Getz. The Shining Wire. Freya Drive. All of it and many, many other places. They live side by side with ordinary places. It's every empty building, every forgotten phone number, every wonderful meal served at some out of the way spot you can't get back to. Occasionally, someone stumbles onto an awareness of it. Of The Betwixt. But they lose it. Can't retain it. I call them tourists. More rare are people like you and I. The people born here call us gatecrashers. And I suppose to them, we are a bit thuggish. But who are they? Aliens, faeries? Do they have magic or high technology or some combination of the two? Don't ask me? I can't tell you. It still doesn't quite make any sense to me And I've been here forever."
A wave of nausea hit Martin and he steadied himself on one of the metal chairs.
"You're lying."
This time it was a look of hurt that quickly passed along Otto Cherry's pleasant features. It was replaced by a feral, dangerous look. He leaned back against the desk. His hand reached out and plucked up the little origami figure. It was a little tinfoil man holding a sword.
"Mister Hollys. I have been called many things. Mad scientist, hopeless romantic, and even the emperor of ice cream. But no one, not even my enemies, call me a liar."
Cherry's other hand tapped a blocky button on the intercom.
"Bring her in, Pierce."
Cherry looked down at the little bit of tinfoil in his hand. He twisted the little origami figure for a second. Two. Three. Five. He put it down and stared at Martin.
"I do have enemies, Mister Hollys. People who wish to do harm to what is mine."
"And what is yours?"
"This place."
Way in the distance, it looked a hundred yards away, the double doors opened and the figured of Butch Pierce walked into the room, dragging something along beside him. For several minutes the only sound was the metallic sound of whatever was being dragged. As he got closer, Martin could see that it was a chair. With someone tied to it. Butch pierce closed the last few feet and turned the chair around.
In it was Maddy MacGuffin, beaten and bloody.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And that, gentle reader, constant reader, is where we will have to leave you for a bit. It seems Martin Hollys did more than just drive across town when he showed up in front of Wants & Getz. Stay tuned for the new wrinkle that Otto Cherry has in store for our bruised and battered hero in the next chapter....
The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Nine: You're Finally Here And I'm A Mess.
Chpt 10: Come A Little Bit Closer.
Chpt 11: The Royal Army Of Oz.
Chpt 12: Ferris Wheels And Cuckoo Clocks.
Chpt 13: Mister, We Deal In Lead.
Chpt 14: Choose Your Own Adventure
Martin swam through a midnight sea. Underwater. Weightless. Slow motion. Stop motion. Boundless thick crushing water supported him and controlled him. He was buoyed in a serpentine current. His ears stuffed with the siren-like beat-beat-beat of blood through his head.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
In the distance, dancing like a harem girl, like a mirage, was a wane light. Pus yellow. Man-in-the-Moon white. Vague. The surface, Martin thought. He rotated his arms and scissored his legs towards the shake-y vision. The watery envelope surrounding him clung, placenta-like, against his skin. Swimming was difficult. Slow motion. Stop motion.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
Martin made his progress towards the shifting source of light. It seemed to move away from him, sly and tempting. Deeper and deeper. Wait, he thought, this is wrong. What if it wasn't the surface? What if it was a trick? Some bioluminescent fish? An angler fish, he thought, with sharp teeth. His lungs were burning. His eye hurt. His mouth. His fingers.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
What is that, Martin thought, loooking around. Nothing. Oily blacks, bruised purples. And the sickly light far off to his left. No, now it's over to the left, he saw it. I'll never make it, he thought. He felt tired of swimming, he let himself sink for a bit. Lower. The oily blackness pressed against his mouth, forced itself into his nostrils. His eyes hurt. I'll just rest them for a minute, he thought.
Suddenly, the water in front of him was disturbed by a moving shape. It moved with an odd, falling handkerchief, cuttlefish sort of way. It was also white, like the distant light. Unlike the distant light, it was bright and crisp. As it neared Martin's face it unfolded itself like a moth's wing.
It was a piece of paper.
As Martin watched it, drawings began to resolve and shape themselves on the once blank surface. Picture after picture appeared. Martin saw the red pagoda. He saw himself entering the red pagoda. The pagoda transformed into a rocket. Soviet red, with fins like an old car. The rocket landed in the break room of Wants & Getz. All green and purple. At the table Lola Wants sat, drawing endlessly. Little musical notes hung above her stick figure self. Her crayon eyes locked onto Martin. Her little three fingered stick figure hand lifted up one of the many pieces of paper before her.
It read: CHECK YOUR POCKETS FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
This message was quickly replaced by another.
It read: IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP, MISTER HOLLYS.
Flick-click. Click-flick.
"It's time to wake up, Mister Hollys."
Martin's eyes opened, gummy and unfocused. He was on the floor of a poorly lit room. The floor was icy. He coughed and watched a spray of red on the floor near his mouth. He allowed one small corner of his mind to think: That's probably really bad.
But that thought was soon replaced by complaints from all over his body. Loudest were the index and middle fingers of his left hand. They sent a constant stream of pain with fiber optic speed. Slower was the blunt throb from his forehead. His black eye and busted lips added an old chorus of annoyance. His spine and his lungs complained with sharp protests as he pulled himself into a sitting position.
Martin looked at his fingers. They were swollen. Red-purple. The tip of his index finger was black. It almost looked like frostbite. Holding his other hand to his face he could feel slightly crusty, slightly sticky blood drying there.
"Nap's over. Move your carcass. The boss is here."
The voice stabbed down at him from one of the hardboiled history professors. The one he hadn't shot with a magic bullet. Kafka? Clampett? Casper?
"Caspar The Friendly Ghost."
"Spelled different but close enough. Kaspar Mars. Now dig a worm."
Martin's head was still cotton candy and ground up glass. Kaspar Mars held a silver Zippo in his hands that he was opening and closing. Flick-click. Click-flick.
"Dig a worm?"
"Gotta be fast to dig up a worm. Let's go."
Kaspar Mars took Martin by his right arm and half guided, half dragged him out of the small room and down a long corridor. The carpet beneath Martin's feet was thick and had almost a trampoline bounce to it. It was covered in whorls and spirals and curlicue patterns. To either side of the hallway, thick tapestries hung, showing more loops of scrollwork. The walls were wooden and dark. Every few feet, on one side or another, there would be a door. Kaspar walked Martin passed all of them until they reached the end of the hallway and a huge set of doors.
Kaspar Mars knocked once, leaving his hand flat against the surface of the door for a second. Two seconds. Five seconds. There was a small electric snapping noise and Kaspar removed his hand quickly.
"You can go in."
"What if I don't want to?"
"Then I can rough you up a bit out here and then shove you through the doors."
Martin listened to the various protests and votes from the internal congress of his wounded body. The delagation that didn't want to walk through the doors were shouted down by the delagation that wasn't ready for another beating yet.
"I guess I'm going in then."
"I guess you are."
With that, Martin opening the door and stepped into the inner sanctum of Otto Cherry.
The room was brighter than the hallway but the light felt wrong. Limp. Sickly. Wane. Yellowish and corrupt. The source of the light came from floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the room. Each window was filled with the same bloated whiteness. Maggot-white. Fish belly. The room was empty. Martin walked toward the windows on the far side of the room. After twenty steps, he thought he should have been able to press his face against the glass. After forty steps he was no closer. Martin turned and looked back toward the double doors. They were far away in the distance.
"Who is your favorite author?"
Martin jumped and turned around. A man was standing in front of him. He was in his fifties. Tall, taller than Martin, skinny but powerfully built. His face was pleasant and narrow and pinkish. He had closely shorn white hair you could see his scalp through. He wore dress pants and a white dress shirt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows. He had a silvery tie with a tie pin. The tie pin was an enamel cherry. The man was barefoot and his feet looked like they were no strangers to pedicures. He had Paul Newman blue eyes.
"Pardon me for scaring you. The Folding Room can take some getting use to . I'm Otto Cherry."
"J.R.R. Tolkien. Or Frank Herbert. Or Raymond Chandler. It's hard to choose."
At that, Otto Cherry's face wrinkled itself into a pleasant smile.
"Isn't it though, Mister Hollys. It truly depends on mood and season and time of day. Yes"
"Spring days for Tolkien. Summer for Herbert. Rainy Falls for Chandler, I suppose."
"Exactly. Well put. I. myself, was always drawn to Burroughs. Edgar Rice, not William S., mind you. Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Impossible, improbable Africas and red planets. Barsoom. The Lost City of Opar. To think that I, myself, could find one of these places was my fondest wish."
"The NeverEnding Story. Oz. Wonderland. Whatever. A lot of people do that, sure."
"Yes. And now, here we --."
"Excuse me, but what do you want with me?"
A quick look of anger drifted across Cherry's features and was gone. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
"Yes, of course. Sorry, I just can't remember the last time I spoke with a fellow gatecrasher. A few tourists, sure, from time to time. But really there's nobody else but Wonderly and we don't speak much these days, of course. Anyway, follow me, stay close."
Cherry turned on his heels and walked off, Martin followed him. Over his shoulder, he called.
"No need to worry about Mister Geiger. Fixed him right up. Maybe he'll like vanilla instead of chocolate from now on or be scared of heights instead of snakes but at least he's walking, right?"
"Wha--? Who?"
"Geiger. George Geiger. The man you shot with your little Lola gun. He's going to live. Thought you'd be pleased you weren't a murderer, just a file clerk."
"How do you know I'm a file clerk?"
"Ah, here we are."
Cherry made an abrupt stop and as Martin joined him, he saw that they had come across a desk with a couple of harsh metal chairs. A huge monster of a desk. One moment it wasn't there, the next moment it was right in front of them. Like it was hidden behind an invisible wall, Martin thought. But couldn't you see something behind an invisible wall, he thought right on top of that. The double doors leading out of the room were off in the distance to the left. He hadn't seen this desk when he'd walked in. Of course, he hadn't seen Cherry either.
On the desk were a several objects. An ancient looking intercom. A flashlight. A file folder. An origami figure. A pair of gold spray painted goggles, one of the lens cracked. And a wicked looking piece of black plastic that Martin was pretty sure was a stun gun.
"How do I know you are a file clerk, Mister Hollys? It's in your file. Ha-ha."
Cherry opened the file folder and pulled out Martin's wallet and car keys, along with several typed pages.
"Martin Hollys. Only son of Gary and Diann Hollys. Parents deceased when you were sixteen. Raised by your father's brother, Chris. Mediocre grades. C student. A little college. A series of dead end jobs. Security guard. Roofing. Laying carpet and cement with your Uncle until his death. Truck driver. Delivered plastic water bottles. And then refrigerated trucks full of flowers. Mailrooms, warehouses. Movie theaters and bookstores. Unformed, unattached. Currently shuffling files from cabinet to cabinet over at Bateman, Becker & Civitello. One room apartment. No furniture. Just a mattress and stacks of books, music, movies. No friends. No family."
Martin's damaged body quieted down and he felt his face go flush. To hear his little life reduced to those sentences made his chest feel heavy. He could remember his Dad stomping after him, holding a wooden sword, playing. He could remember his Mom reading to him, telling him stories. And later, when they were gone, his Uncle listening to music with him. Grieving and inducting Martin into a new world of sound at the same time. It that really all there is to me, he thought.
"Don't be upset, Mister Hollys. If I read my own history it would look as gray. But look at us now. Betwixt!!! That's what I call it, Betwixt. Few, few people can be drawn here in the flesh. I think maybe artists, writers, musicians bleed out into it somehow, sure. It would explain some things about the people who were here when I got here."
"What are you talking about?"
"This place. Wants & Getz. The Shining Wire. Freya Drive. All of it and many, many other places. They live side by side with ordinary places. It's every empty building, every forgotten phone number, every wonderful meal served at some out of the way spot you can't get back to. Occasionally, someone stumbles onto an awareness of it. Of The Betwixt. But they lose it. Can't retain it. I call them tourists. More rare are people like you and I. The people born here call us gatecrashers. And I suppose to them, we are a bit thuggish. But who are they? Aliens, faeries? Do they have magic or high technology or some combination of the two? Don't ask me? I can't tell you. It still doesn't quite make any sense to me And I've been here forever."
A wave of nausea hit Martin and he steadied himself on one of the metal chairs.
"You're lying."
This time it was a look of hurt that quickly passed along Otto Cherry's pleasant features. It was replaced by a feral, dangerous look. He leaned back against the desk. His hand reached out and plucked up the little origami figure. It was a little tinfoil man holding a sword.
"Mister Hollys. I have been called many things. Mad scientist, hopeless romantic, and even the emperor of ice cream. But no one, not even my enemies, call me a liar."
Cherry's other hand tapped a blocky button on the intercom.
"Bring her in, Pierce."
Cherry looked down at the little bit of tinfoil in his hand. He twisted the little origami figure for a second. Two. Three. Five. He put it down and stared at Martin.
"I do have enemies, Mister Hollys. People who wish to do harm to what is mine."
"And what is yours?"
"This place."
Way in the distance, it looked a hundred yards away, the double doors opened and the figured of Butch Pierce walked into the room, dragging something along beside him. For several minutes the only sound was the metallic sound of whatever was being dragged. As he got closer, Martin could see that it was a chair. With someone tied to it. Butch pierce closed the last few feet and turned the chair around.
In it was Maddy MacGuffin, beaten and bloody.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And that, gentle reader, constant reader, is where we will have to leave you for a bit. It seems Martin Hollys did more than just drive across town when he showed up in front of Wants & Getz. Stay tuned for the new wrinkle that Otto Cherry has in store for our bruised and battered hero in the next chapter....
The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Nine: You're Finally Here And I'm A Mess.
Chpt 10: Come A Little Bit Closer.
Chpt 11: The Royal Army Of Oz.
Chpt 12: Ferris Wheels And Cuckoo Clocks.
Chpt 13: Mister, We Deal In Lead.
Chpt 14: Choose Your Own Adventure
Chapter Seven: Snicker-Snack!
Marwan lifted his chin towards Martin.
"Miss Fiver, you want, you-know-me, me-to pop-pop-pop, and drag this one out the back, no questions?"
Martin was tired of sucker punches and threats and confusion. He was tired of these strange people talking over his head. He wasn't sure what Cassandra Fiver's answer would have been to Marwan's suggestion. But he knew what his answer was.
"And what should I do, practice falling down?"
Marwan turned on Martin and advanced, his dead eye flaring at Martin insolence. Martin let him get just close enough and then he kicked out with his foot and caught Marwan's shin. Martin let himself smile his lopsided smile as the bald man yelped and crumbled to the floor. Hairlipped Cairo made a move towards Martin but Cassandra Fiver held up a hand.
"Boys. Please, no violence. Marwan, dear, get up off the floor."
Marwan picked himself off the floor with more grace than Martin would have been capable of, if it had been his shin kicked. The bald man spared Martin an evil glance full of promises and then turned his attention to his boss.
"Your idea was sound. If premature. We could murder Claude Rains, here. Or we could spirit him away out the back. Some could argue that I owe that much at least to Lola Wants, my little sister under the mink."
Martin noticed that at the mention of Lola Wants' name the two men seemed to shrink in on themselves, grow pale. Cairo looked like he wanted to vomit. Marwan's sneer was replaced by something closer to panic. Cassandra Fiver made a dismissing gesture with her free hand.
"But I don't think I'm feeling that generous towards her or her current metal carpet. It's their choice of employees that's brought us to this current state of emergency. Kill or Hide, those options are closed because we are dealing with Otto Cherry's creature out there. Butch Pierce would just smell it out and wonder why we did what we did. And then we'd have more trouble."
Martin had to ask.
"Who is Otto Cherry?"
Cassandra Fiver laughed then. A deep throated, full bodied, belly laugh. Her eyes, which upon closer inspection weren't brown but a sort of dark purple-black color, were full of tears. She bit down on her thumb to stifle her laugh and re-examined Martin. Martin had seen that look before. On nature programs. On the faces of jungle cats. She smiled and Martin felt his face glowing rosy and jolly like a Cola-Cola Santa Claus.
"You are cute. To answer your adorable question, though...for our purposes...Otto Cherry is something less than a wizard and something more than a Mafia Don. Can we turn the page now, Claude?"
"Turn it, tear it out of the book, or burn it, sure."
"Thank you. No, we can't kill you and we can't hide you. So, we'll just have to show you off. Wants & Getz's new factotum. And what was he delivering, I wonder?"
She still held the vial of smoky green liquid. Was it liquid, Martin wondered. He still couldn't tell, even this close to it. And he couldn't make out the writing on the label but it reminding him of the Tic-Tac box Lola Getz had given him. Cassandra Fiver handed the vial over to Cairo.
"Take this down to The Warren, Cairo. Marwan, Claude, let's go greet our guests. Feel free to act as tough as you want to. Not that it's likely to impress Butch Pierce much."
Martin watched as Cairo took the vial and walked up to the Mae West's Lips couch. He reached out a hand and stroked the couch in a very delicate pattern. There was a wet, slurping sound as the Mae West's Lips couch open itself like a Venus flytrap. The room filled with a cloying smell. Chocolate. Orchids. Steaks. Sugar. Martin's stomach turned over as Cairo disappeared into the couch's opening. A sort of reverse birth. Now, how the hell does that work, he thought. The couch closed itself with a syrupy pop. Cassandra Fiver clapped her hands twice and broke the spell.
"Everybody neat and pretty? Let's meet our guests."
She took the lead and led both Martin and Marwan back out of the office, down the spiral stairs and into the purple and green lights of the club. Baby armed Red Sturges joined them at the bottom of the stairs. The band was taking a break and music melted out of hidden speakers.
"A woman in the moon is singing to the earth
A woman in the moon is singing to the earth
La la la, la la la la la la."
The wall of television screens had adjusted its theme. Now it showed time lapsed videos of animals decomposing mixed in with clusters of predator attacking prey. Dogs, foxes, cats, and rabbits all collapsing in on themselves into a mass of worms. A crocodile snapped at a baby hippo. A tiger stalked in the grass. A wolfpack manipulated their kill into position. Martin felt like he was looking at mugshots of all the people he'd met today. Butch Pierce. The Lolas. Lionel and Lucifer Beard. Marwan The Cue Ball. Red Sturges. Cairo. And, of course, Cassandra Fiver.
At a booth near the far corner of the club, sat Butch Pierce like he was carved from a single piece of wood. An Indian totem. He looked calm and eternal. A Satanic Buddha. His skin looked like armor. A Bronze Minotaur. Martin remembered the burlap skin and the all-white eyes. The man looked impossible. A Neatherthal refugee. This man slapped a woman and carried her off over his shoulder today, Martin thought, and he's sitting here like it's just any other day.
He had two associates with him, one to either side. They were big men but next to Butch Pierce they looked like small men. Both of them were wearing herringbone suits. They looked like hardboiled history professors. Butch Pierce himself was wearing a suit of no particular. It looks more like it's growing on him, Martin thought.
Cassandra Fiver sat down across from Butch Pierce with a flourish. Marwan and Red Sturges positioned themselves to either side of her, to match up with their counterparts. Martin stood to the side of Marwan, unnoticed. Cassandra Fiver smiled her heart breaking smile even though Butch Pierce didn't portray one facial twitch of caring about a beautiful woman looking at him that. To her credit, she held the smile beautifully anyway.
"Butchie, dear-heart, I was begininng to think you had traded me in for breaking bones down at General Wonderly's."
Butch Pierce ignored that and launched into business.
"Mister Cherry has asked that the ornaments decorating your office be returned. He thinks it might help with the search for the girl."
"I couldn't even think of parting with it, Butchie-love. And it would be doing Mister Cherry a disservice. Those two were glammed within an inch of their lives They have oem coming out of their eyeballs. They'd be useless when it comes to tracking the girl down."
Martin remembered the couple up in Cassandra's office. Naked, wearing gasmasks. The placard underneath them that said: CALL ME OLD FASHIONED, A COUPLE. But who is the girl, Martin thought, not Maddy. Unless she somehow escaped. Was that possible?
"Regardless, Mister Cherry thinks different. He wants them back."
"They were gifts. They are mine. What's it to me if Mister Cherry finds the girl or not. She's making such beautiful things now that she's out from under his thumb."
Butch Pierce smiled then. His teeth looked like stone tablets, ancient laws could have been written on them. Taboos. Cave paintings.
"One day, Mister Cherry is going to tell me to burn this place down."
"But not today, Butchie."
"Tell your deformed flunkies to bring the ornaments to me or I will have Georgie and Kaspar thin out your clientele with a gross display of violence."
Cassandra Fiver pulled into herself like a little girl. Her head tilted down and she reached across the table and touched Butch Pierce's arm. Her voice was a honeyed whisper under the music.
"I had hoped to hide this from you, Butchie. Truly. I didn't want you and Mister Cherry to have to clean up my mess. But the Lolas' new factotum stabbed the ornaments just minutes ago. He came in here under the guise of a white flag from the Lolas and once he got up to my office...he produced a knife and quick-as-a-bunny, they were gone. I was going to have Marwan and Red Sturges take care of him but now I think you and Mister Cherry might have some questions for him."
Butch Pierce turned his head with glacial slowness. Martin could almost hear the tectonic shifting of his vertebrae. Those all-white eyes settled on him, just like they had this morning. Only this time, Martin felt Butch Pierce's recognition like a warm net wrap around him.
"The man from the red pagoda. The hero."
Martin started to back up but tripped over Marwan's outstretched foot. He fell in a clump of shoes elbows and trenchcoat and legs. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Georgie, grab the hero, and let's be on our way."
Georgie walked over to collect Martin from the floor but Martin thrust his left hand into Georgie's face, forcing him back, giving himself a moment to stand back up. He didn't do it very gracefully. The finger gun stayed trained at Georgie but it wobbled enough that Marwan and Red Sturges positioned themselves in front of Cassandra Fiver. Neither Butch Pierce or Kaspar moved at all.
"Where is Maddy MacGuffin?"
Butch Pierce studied Martin for a moment. His Old Testament smile graven on his caveman face.
"Georgie, there are people who pull triggers and people who don't. Little heroes think just because some witch gives them a vorpal sword that they'll be safe from all the big bad wolves out in the night. But what if the wolves don't know the fear of such weapons? What if the wolves only know the fear of failing someone worse than all the witches and bullets and brave little heroes? What then? Georgie, disarm the little hero, please."
Georgie took one step.
BANG!
A red circle the size a dime appeared in the center of Georgie's forehead. He took one jittery step forward and then crumbled to the floor. In the distance, Martin could sense people running for the exits. He could hear people yelling and screaming but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. Cassandra Fiver, Marwan, and Red Sturges were gone. Vanished. Martin looked at his left hand. The tip of his pointer finger was blackened. The Roman numeral on his palm was changed. V. I think I just shot a man with a magic bullet, Martin thought.
Suddenly, Butch Pierce was in front of him. One huge hand wrapped around Martin's index and middle fingers while the other held his wrist. Tight and strong. Cement. Super-glue. Steel. How did he move so quick, Martin thought. With a savage motion, Butch Pierce jerked Martin's fingers backwards.
SNAP!
Martin once again fell to the floor, holding his mangled hand to his chest. Some hysterical part of his mind screamed that it had lost track of the number of times he'd ended up on the ground today.
"Snicker-snack, little hero."
And then Butch Pierce's boot came down on his head and there was inky blackness and random images. The floor and the ceiling. Above him, a million miles away, the last thing he heard was Butch Pierce's voice, it sounded watery and wrong in his ears.
"Kaspar, gather up Georgie. Let's see what the hero has to say to the villain."
Then everything went black and purple and quiet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now we are in the thick of it....keep your breath bated for the next chapter in our saga....Chapter Eight: The Emperor Of Ice Cream.
"Miss Fiver, you want, you-know-me, me-to pop-pop-pop, and drag this one out the back, no questions?"
Martin was tired of sucker punches and threats and confusion. He was tired of these strange people talking over his head. He wasn't sure what Cassandra Fiver's answer would have been to Marwan's suggestion. But he knew what his answer was.
"And what should I do, practice falling down?"
Marwan turned on Martin and advanced, his dead eye flaring at Martin insolence. Martin let him get just close enough and then he kicked out with his foot and caught Marwan's shin. Martin let himself smile his lopsided smile as the bald man yelped and crumbled to the floor. Hairlipped Cairo made a move towards Martin but Cassandra Fiver held up a hand.
"Boys. Please, no violence. Marwan, dear, get up off the floor."
Marwan picked himself off the floor with more grace than Martin would have been capable of, if it had been his shin kicked. The bald man spared Martin an evil glance full of promises and then turned his attention to his boss.
"Your idea was sound. If premature. We could murder Claude Rains, here. Or we could spirit him away out the back. Some could argue that I owe that much at least to Lola Wants, my little sister under the mink."
Martin noticed that at the mention of Lola Wants' name the two men seemed to shrink in on themselves, grow pale. Cairo looked like he wanted to vomit. Marwan's sneer was replaced by something closer to panic. Cassandra Fiver made a dismissing gesture with her free hand.
"But I don't think I'm feeling that generous towards her or her current metal carpet. It's their choice of employees that's brought us to this current state of emergency. Kill or Hide, those options are closed because we are dealing with Otto Cherry's creature out there. Butch Pierce would just smell it out and wonder why we did what we did. And then we'd have more trouble."
Martin had to ask.
"Who is Otto Cherry?"
Cassandra Fiver laughed then. A deep throated, full bodied, belly laugh. Her eyes, which upon closer inspection weren't brown but a sort of dark purple-black color, were full of tears. She bit down on her thumb to stifle her laugh and re-examined Martin. Martin had seen that look before. On nature programs. On the faces of jungle cats. She smiled and Martin felt his face glowing rosy and jolly like a Cola-Cola Santa Claus.
"You are cute. To answer your adorable question, though...for our purposes...Otto Cherry is something less than a wizard and something more than a Mafia Don. Can we turn the page now, Claude?"
"Turn it, tear it out of the book, or burn it, sure."
"Thank you. No, we can't kill you and we can't hide you. So, we'll just have to show you off. Wants & Getz's new factotum. And what was he delivering, I wonder?"
She still held the vial of smoky green liquid. Was it liquid, Martin wondered. He still couldn't tell, even this close to it. And he couldn't make out the writing on the label but it reminding him of the Tic-Tac box Lola Getz had given him. Cassandra Fiver handed the vial over to Cairo.
"Take this down to The Warren, Cairo. Marwan, Claude, let's go greet our guests. Feel free to act as tough as you want to. Not that it's likely to impress Butch Pierce much."
Martin watched as Cairo took the vial and walked up to the Mae West's Lips couch. He reached out a hand and stroked the couch in a very delicate pattern. There was a wet, slurping sound as the Mae West's Lips couch open itself like a Venus flytrap. The room filled with a cloying smell. Chocolate. Orchids. Steaks. Sugar. Martin's stomach turned over as Cairo disappeared into the couch's opening. A sort of reverse birth. Now, how the hell does that work, he thought. The couch closed itself with a syrupy pop. Cassandra Fiver clapped her hands twice and broke the spell.
"Everybody neat and pretty? Let's meet our guests."
She took the lead and led both Martin and Marwan back out of the office, down the spiral stairs and into the purple and green lights of the club. Baby armed Red Sturges joined them at the bottom of the stairs. The band was taking a break and music melted out of hidden speakers.
"A woman in the moon is singing to the earth
A woman in the moon is singing to the earth
La la la, la la la la la la."
The wall of television screens had adjusted its theme. Now it showed time lapsed videos of animals decomposing mixed in with clusters of predator attacking prey. Dogs, foxes, cats, and rabbits all collapsing in on themselves into a mass of worms. A crocodile snapped at a baby hippo. A tiger stalked in the grass. A wolfpack manipulated their kill into position. Martin felt like he was looking at mugshots of all the people he'd met today. Butch Pierce. The Lolas. Lionel and Lucifer Beard. Marwan The Cue Ball. Red Sturges. Cairo. And, of course, Cassandra Fiver.
At a booth near the far corner of the club, sat Butch Pierce like he was carved from a single piece of wood. An Indian totem. He looked calm and eternal. A Satanic Buddha. His skin looked like armor. A Bronze Minotaur. Martin remembered the burlap skin and the all-white eyes. The man looked impossible. A Neatherthal refugee. This man slapped a woman and carried her off over his shoulder today, Martin thought, and he's sitting here like it's just any other day.
He had two associates with him, one to either side. They were big men but next to Butch Pierce they looked like small men. Both of them were wearing herringbone suits. They looked like hardboiled history professors. Butch Pierce himself was wearing a suit of no particular. It looks more like it's growing on him, Martin thought.
Cassandra Fiver sat down across from Butch Pierce with a flourish. Marwan and Red Sturges positioned themselves to either side of her, to match up with their counterparts. Martin stood to the side of Marwan, unnoticed. Cassandra Fiver smiled her heart breaking smile even though Butch Pierce didn't portray one facial twitch of caring about a beautiful woman looking at him that. To her credit, she held the smile beautifully anyway.
"Butchie, dear-heart, I was begininng to think you had traded me in for breaking bones down at General Wonderly's."
Butch Pierce ignored that and launched into business.
"Mister Cherry has asked that the ornaments decorating your office be returned. He thinks it might help with the search for the girl."
"I couldn't even think of parting with it, Butchie-love. And it would be doing Mister Cherry a disservice. Those two were glammed within an inch of their lives They have oem coming out of their eyeballs. They'd be useless when it comes to tracking the girl down."
Martin remembered the couple up in Cassandra's office. Naked, wearing gasmasks. The placard underneath them that said: CALL ME OLD FASHIONED, A COUPLE. But who is the girl, Martin thought, not Maddy. Unless she somehow escaped. Was that possible?
"Regardless, Mister Cherry thinks different. He wants them back."
"They were gifts. They are mine. What's it to me if Mister Cherry finds the girl or not. She's making such beautiful things now that she's out from under his thumb."
Butch Pierce smiled then. His teeth looked like stone tablets, ancient laws could have been written on them. Taboos. Cave paintings.
"One day, Mister Cherry is going to tell me to burn this place down."
"But not today, Butchie."
"Tell your deformed flunkies to bring the ornaments to me or I will have Georgie and Kaspar thin out your clientele with a gross display of violence."
Cassandra Fiver pulled into herself like a little girl. Her head tilted down and she reached across the table and touched Butch Pierce's arm. Her voice was a honeyed whisper under the music.
"I had hoped to hide this from you, Butchie. Truly. I didn't want you and Mister Cherry to have to clean up my mess. But the Lolas' new factotum stabbed the ornaments just minutes ago. He came in here under the guise of a white flag from the Lolas and once he got up to my office...he produced a knife and quick-as-a-bunny, they were gone. I was going to have Marwan and Red Sturges take care of him but now I think you and Mister Cherry might have some questions for him."
Butch Pierce turned his head with glacial slowness. Martin could almost hear the tectonic shifting of his vertebrae. Those all-white eyes settled on him, just like they had this morning. Only this time, Martin felt Butch Pierce's recognition like a warm net wrap around him.
"The man from the red pagoda. The hero."
Martin started to back up but tripped over Marwan's outstretched foot. He fell in a clump of shoes elbows and trenchcoat and legs. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Georgie, grab the hero, and let's be on our way."
Georgie walked over to collect Martin from the floor but Martin thrust his left hand into Georgie's face, forcing him back, giving himself a moment to stand back up. He didn't do it very gracefully. The finger gun stayed trained at Georgie but it wobbled enough that Marwan and Red Sturges positioned themselves in front of Cassandra Fiver. Neither Butch Pierce or Kaspar moved at all.
"Where is Maddy MacGuffin?"
Butch Pierce studied Martin for a moment. His Old Testament smile graven on his caveman face.
"Georgie, there are people who pull triggers and people who don't. Little heroes think just because some witch gives them a vorpal sword that they'll be safe from all the big bad wolves out in the night. But what if the wolves don't know the fear of such weapons? What if the wolves only know the fear of failing someone worse than all the witches and bullets and brave little heroes? What then? Georgie, disarm the little hero, please."
Georgie took one step.
BANG!
A red circle the size a dime appeared in the center of Georgie's forehead. He took one jittery step forward and then crumbled to the floor. In the distance, Martin could sense people running for the exits. He could hear people yelling and screaming but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. Cassandra Fiver, Marwan, and Red Sturges were gone. Vanished. Martin looked at his left hand. The tip of his pointer finger was blackened. The Roman numeral on his palm was changed. V. I think I just shot a man with a magic bullet, Martin thought.
Suddenly, Butch Pierce was in front of him. One huge hand wrapped around Martin's index and middle fingers while the other held his wrist. Tight and strong. Cement. Super-glue. Steel. How did he move so quick, Martin thought. With a savage motion, Butch Pierce jerked Martin's fingers backwards.
SNAP!
Martin once again fell to the floor, holding his mangled hand to his chest. Some hysterical part of his mind screamed that it had lost track of the number of times he'd ended up on the ground today.
"Snicker-snack, little hero."
And then Butch Pierce's boot came down on his head and there was inky blackness and random images. The floor and the ceiling. Above him, a million miles away, the last thing he heard was Butch Pierce's voice, it sounded watery and wrong in his ears.
"Kaspar, gather up Georgie. Let's see what the hero has to say to the villain."
Then everything went black and purple and quiet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now we are in the thick of it....keep your breath bated for the next chapter in our saga....Chapter Eight: The Emperor Of Ice Cream.
Chapter Six: You're Not Rick And I'm Not Ilsa.
These people love juxtapositions, Martin thought.
The light inside was all purples and greens and soft blues. It seemed both vast and cramped. The air was smoky with incense and tobacco and cloves. People were secluded into booths, chatting and drinking and wearing lots of vinyl clothing. The bar was a huge dark wooden monstrosity crammed with people who looked like futuristic pharoahs and modern analogues to fairy tales. Beyond the bar, a spiral staircase led up to a little Romeo and Juliet balcony.
To the left was a tiny stage crammed with bruised-colored velvet and musicians and instruments. A banner above the stage proclaimed: WE ARE HALLOWEEN in a spiky font. The band's name, Martin supposed, or the theme of the evening. Onstage, an Amelia Earhart, Samus Aran, Rich Uncle Pennybags and Alf were singing in beautiful voices:
"Dream
When you're feelin' blue
Dream
That's the thing to do"
Along one wall were hundreds of TV screens playing loops both black and white movies and cartoons. Seven Samurai bumped into Tom & Jerry. Ren & Stimpy melted into Un Chien Andalou. Tod Browning's Freaks hobbled next to Fantasia. It's like Weimar Germany's best vampire bar where people come to find out how to get a ship to take them out of The Matrix by way of Alderaan, Martin thought.
"Hey-hey, Looky-loo, whaddya doing here, hey, yeah?"
The owner of the voice was bald as a cue ball with a Bond villian's scar across one milky dead eye. He didn't seem to be wearing a costume, just a nice suit. He was backed a a hairlipped gentleman in a tux and ginger haired bruiser with one shriveled arm, also in a tux. Whether they were in costume or just really dressy, Martin couldn't tell.
"I'm here to give a package to Cassandra Fiver."
Cue Ball smiled, Hairlip hiccupped, Baby Arm chuckled.
"No-no-no, friend, you-do-not do this-thing, yeah. I take whatever Cherry-he-bring for Miss Fiver. You, you-lucky-I don't give you a slap before you go. Red Sturges, Cairo, you get this-package, yeah."
The man's patter was hard to follow, like Yoda talking in over the top stage-y Italian. But when the baby armed brute and the hairlip grabbed him it was easy enough to figure out. Three normal arms and one baby arm patted him down, searching for the package. Martin felt their hands as they kept just missing the package. Red Sturges, the baby armed fellow, looked up at Cue Ball.
"He's clean, Marwan. No package."
Marwan, the Cue Ball, sighed and spread his arms wide.
"You, errand-boy-you, you give-it-up, hand-it-over, to Cairo there, or, so-help-me, OR, me, I'll have Red Sturges cave-in your stubborn head he-will. Me, I'm not-going-to have any wind-up-toys of Cherry make me-and-my boys look stupid."
"Oh, it's too late for that, Marwan."
The new voice floated down from the balcony. The woman it belonged to would force anybody to reconsider their top ten most beautiful women. In the world. To Martin she looked like a calculation of curves in a Eve's apple red dress. Her hair was a 1940s styled root beer colored cascade. The eyes were dark and unreadable, from this distance or any distance. Her was mouth a bee stung pout with a smile playing at the corners. The green and purple lights didn't seemed to touch her, it was like she had her own gobos and gels just for herself.
"He's no gatecrasher. And he's certainly not one of Cherry's automatons. He's from the Lolas. Send him up and stop frisking him...maybe I'll get lucky and he'll be dangerous."
With that she turned and walked back the way she came. As soon as she was gone, Marwan let out a hiss and snapped his fingers at Cairo and Red Sturges. They let go of Martin. He walked up to Martin.
"This-is-it, huh, lucky-winner, huh? Let me tell you something, quick."
Before Martin could react, Marwan punched him. Once, twice, three times. In his already blackening eye, in the nose, and in the stomach. Martin doubled over and fell to the floor. Marwan was in his face, breath hot and close, his voice a snake's whisper.
"You threaten, I know. You glam, I know. You touch, I know. I make your-world nice place to die in just to get-away-from, yes-yes. Then, maybe I go up to that piss-hole rat trap, where your bosses spin-spin-spin little webs-to-gold. Maybe I put a knife in that black bitch's eye and take her little-Sapho-friend and show her good time. Ten-inch-good time, yes. You, yes-yes, you stand up, you."
Red Sturges and Cairo helped Martin to his feet. Marwan shooed them away and arranged Martin's clothes, fixed his hair. He led Martin to the foot of the stair and gave him a little pat on the back. Martin went up the stairs to the balcony. He took a moment to look out over the club, he felt like he was three miles in the air. The woman's perfume still floated in the air, trace molecules. Martin turned from the view of the club and walked down a short hallway to an office of sorts.
It wasn't what he expected. At this point, Martin expected some vampire queen's lair. The light was bright but soft. Warm. The room was a triangle shaped and he'd walked into the middle of the base. To his right, the whole wall was taken up with that famous picture of the sailor kissing the girl at the end of World War II. In the corner to his right was some sort of statue. It looked old, some Indian god with tons of arms. Shiva? Kali? Some wrecked thing pulled out of Angkor Wat?
In the corner to his left crouched a naked couple wearing gas masks and nothing else. One man, one woman. As Martin noticed them, they undulated into a new position. Spooky. Both of them had an odd little brand. The man's was on his forearm, the woman's was on her calf. Raised flesh in the shape of a spidery tree with one leaf. Same symbols as those kids out front, Martin thought. Lucifer Beard and his brother. There was a placard at the man and woman's feet, it read: CALL ME OLD FASHIONED, A COUPLE. By Gail Alice. Positioned in the middle of the left side wall was a large photograph of a gigantic black cloud rushing towards a small town in somewhere in the plains. The Dust Bowl? And at the apex of the triangle there was a couch shaped like Mae West's lips. On it sat Cassandra Fiver, poised like a pinup on a bomber jet. She looked Martin up and down.
"You're cute."
"I try to be. Your security guy helped a bit."
"You have something for me?"
"Yes."
"May I see it, or would you like me to frisk you this time?"
"That's okay. Here it is."
Martin took out the package with its brown paper and odd, shifting weight, and handed it to her. She made sure their fingers brushed a little as she took it from him. Her nails with glossy and shorter than they seemed like they should be. The package balanced on her knees for a moment, then she delicately tore the brown paper and open the box.
Inside was a stoppered vial. Some smoky green liquid was held inside. There was a little piece of white tape on the vial. There was something written on it but Martin couldn't make out what it said. Cassandra Five purred to herself.
"Troublesome. And perfect."
Martin couldn't help himself, he asked.
"What is it?"
"You ARE cute."
"That's fine, don't tell me."
Cassandra Fiver smiled.
"What should I tell you then?"
"There was a girl, the girl who, I think, was suppose to bring this to you. She was taken by a man, Butch Pierce, and --"
"Otto Cherry's Butch Pierce?"
"I don't know, I can't imagine there are a lot of huge walking mountains going by the name of Butch Pierce in the world."
"One of the Lola's factotums was taken by him...and he didn't take this package too?"
"Well, she hid the package on me and --"
"Butch Pierce would have looked for it. He would have found it. Why did he take her?"
"That's what I was hoping you could tell me."
"Take a look out there, darling. It's Casablanca on amphetamines outside. Information and deals and doublecrosses. There are any one of a dozen reasons. I could guess but I don't know."
"Could you help me find out?"
"You're cute. But I'm not Rick and you're not Ilsa. Sorry."
"Maybe I'm Claude Rains then?"
Again, Cassandra Fiver smiled. At that moment, Marwan and Cairo burst out of the hallway behind Martin. Marwan looked shaken and Cairo was bleeding from a cut on his head.
"Miss Fiver. Butch Pierce is here. He has asked to speak with you."
Cassandra Fiver looked at the state of her men and then looked over at Martin.
"Now you are dangerous."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And in our next volume of The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Seven: Snicker-Snack!, we find Martin Hollys caught between Cassandra Fiver and the dreaded Butch Pierce.
The light inside was all purples and greens and soft blues. It seemed both vast and cramped. The air was smoky with incense and tobacco and cloves. People were secluded into booths, chatting and drinking and wearing lots of vinyl clothing. The bar was a huge dark wooden monstrosity crammed with people who looked like futuristic pharoahs and modern analogues to fairy tales. Beyond the bar, a spiral staircase led up to a little Romeo and Juliet balcony.
To the left was a tiny stage crammed with bruised-colored velvet and musicians and instruments. A banner above the stage proclaimed: WE ARE HALLOWEEN in a spiky font. The band's name, Martin supposed, or the theme of the evening. Onstage, an Amelia Earhart, Samus Aran, Rich Uncle Pennybags and Alf were singing in beautiful voices:
"Dream
When you're feelin' blue
Dream
That's the thing to do"
Along one wall were hundreds of TV screens playing loops both black and white movies and cartoons. Seven Samurai bumped into Tom & Jerry. Ren & Stimpy melted into Un Chien Andalou. Tod Browning's Freaks hobbled next to Fantasia. It's like Weimar Germany's best vampire bar where people come to find out how to get a ship to take them out of The Matrix by way of Alderaan, Martin thought.
"Hey-hey, Looky-loo, whaddya doing here, hey, yeah?"
The owner of the voice was bald as a cue ball with a Bond villian's scar across one milky dead eye. He didn't seem to be wearing a costume, just a nice suit. He was backed a a hairlipped gentleman in a tux and ginger haired bruiser with one shriveled arm, also in a tux. Whether they were in costume or just really dressy, Martin couldn't tell.
"I'm here to give a package to Cassandra Fiver."
Cue Ball smiled, Hairlip hiccupped, Baby Arm chuckled.
"No-no-no, friend, you-do-not do this-thing, yeah. I take whatever Cherry-he-bring for Miss Fiver. You, you-lucky-I don't give you a slap before you go. Red Sturges, Cairo, you get this-package, yeah."
The man's patter was hard to follow, like Yoda talking in over the top stage-y Italian. But when the baby armed brute and the hairlip grabbed him it was easy enough to figure out. Three normal arms and one baby arm patted him down, searching for the package. Martin felt their hands as they kept just missing the package. Red Sturges, the baby armed fellow, looked up at Cue Ball.
"He's clean, Marwan. No package."
Marwan, the Cue Ball, sighed and spread his arms wide.
"You, errand-boy-you, you give-it-up, hand-it-over, to Cairo there, or, so-help-me, OR, me, I'll have Red Sturges cave-in your stubborn head he-will. Me, I'm not-going-to have any wind-up-toys of Cherry make me-and-my boys look stupid."
"Oh, it's too late for that, Marwan."
The new voice floated down from the balcony. The woman it belonged to would force anybody to reconsider their top ten most beautiful women. In the world. To Martin she looked like a calculation of curves in a Eve's apple red dress. Her hair was a 1940s styled root beer colored cascade. The eyes were dark and unreadable, from this distance or any distance. Her was mouth a bee stung pout with a smile playing at the corners. The green and purple lights didn't seemed to touch her, it was like she had her own gobos and gels just for herself.
"He's no gatecrasher. And he's certainly not one of Cherry's automatons. He's from the Lolas. Send him up and stop frisking him...maybe I'll get lucky and he'll be dangerous."
With that she turned and walked back the way she came. As soon as she was gone, Marwan let out a hiss and snapped his fingers at Cairo and Red Sturges. They let go of Martin. He walked up to Martin.
"This-is-it, huh, lucky-winner, huh? Let me tell you something, quick."
Before Martin could react, Marwan punched him. Once, twice, three times. In his already blackening eye, in the nose, and in the stomach. Martin doubled over and fell to the floor. Marwan was in his face, breath hot and close, his voice a snake's whisper.
"You threaten, I know. You glam, I know. You touch, I know. I make your-world nice place to die in just to get-away-from, yes-yes. Then, maybe I go up to that piss-hole rat trap, where your bosses spin-spin-spin little webs-to-gold. Maybe I put a knife in that black bitch's eye and take her little-Sapho-friend and show her good time. Ten-inch-good time, yes. You, yes-yes, you stand up, you."
Red Sturges and Cairo helped Martin to his feet. Marwan shooed them away and arranged Martin's clothes, fixed his hair. He led Martin to the foot of the stair and gave him a little pat on the back. Martin went up the stairs to the balcony. He took a moment to look out over the club, he felt like he was three miles in the air. The woman's perfume still floated in the air, trace molecules. Martin turned from the view of the club and walked down a short hallway to an office of sorts.
It wasn't what he expected. At this point, Martin expected some vampire queen's lair. The light was bright but soft. Warm. The room was a triangle shaped and he'd walked into the middle of the base. To his right, the whole wall was taken up with that famous picture of the sailor kissing the girl at the end of World War II. In the corner to his right was some sort of statue. It looked old, some Indian god with tons of arms. Shiva? Kali? Some wrecked thing pulled out of Angkor Wat?
In the corner to his left crouched a naked couple wearing gas masks and nothing else. One man, one woman. As Martin noticed them, they undulated into a new position. Spooky. Both of them had an odd little brand. The man's was on his forearm, the woman's was on her calf. Raised flesh in the shape of a spidery tree with one leaf. Same symbols as those kids out front, Martin thought. Lucifer Beard and his brother. There was a placard at the man and woman's feet, it read: CALL ME OLD FASHIONED, A COUPLE. By Gail Alice. Positioned in the middle of the left side wall was a large photograph of a gigantic black cloud rushing towards a small town in somewhere in the plains. The Dust Bowl? And at the apex of the triangle there was a couch shaped like Mae West's lips. On it sat Cassandra Fiver, poised like a pinup on a bomber jet. She looked Martin up and down.
"You're cute."
"I try to be. Your security guy helped a bit."
"You have something for me?"
"Yes."
"May I see it, or would you like me to frisk you this time?"
"That's okay. Here it is."
Martin took out the package with its brown paper and odd, shifting weight, and handed it to her. She made sure their fingers brushed a little as she took it from him. Her nails with glossy and shorter than they seemed like they should be. The package balanced on her knees for a moment, then she delicately tore the brown paper and open the box.
Inside was a stoppered vial. Some smoky green liquid was held inside. There was a little piece of white tape on the vial. There was something written on it but Martin couldn't make out what it said. Cassandra Five purred to herself.
"Troublesome. And perfect."
Martin couldn't help himself, he asked.
"What is it?"
"You ARE cute."
"That's fine, don't tell me."
Cassandra Fiver smiled.
"What should I tell you then?"
"There was a girl, the girl who, I think, was suppose to bring this to you. She was taken by a man, Butch Pierce, and --"
"Otto Cherry's Butch Pierce?"
"I don't know, I can't imagine there are a lot of huge walking mountains going by the name of Butch Pierce in the world."
"One of the Lola's factotums was taken by him...and he didn't take this package too?"
"Well, she hid the package on me and --"
"Butch Pierce would have looked for it. He would have found it. Why did he take her?"
"That's what I was hoping you could tell me."
"Take a look out there, darling. It's Casablanca on amphetamines outside. Information and deals and doublecrosses. There are any one of a dozen reasons. I could guess but I don't know."
"Could you help me find out?"
"You're cute. But I'm not Rick and you're not Ilsa. Sorry."
"Maybe I'm Claude Rains then?"
Again, Cassandra Fiver smiled. At that moment, Marwan and Cairo burst out of the hallway behind Martin. Marwan looked shaken and Cairo was bleeding from a cut on his head.
"Miss Fiver. Butch Pierce is here. He has asked to speak with you."
Cassandra Fiver looked at the state of her men and then looked over at Martin.
"Now you are dangerous."
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And in our next volume of The Hopeless Romantic. Chapter Seven: Snicker-Snack!, we find Martin Hollys caught between Cassandra Fiver and the dreaded Butch Pierce.
Chapter Five: Sorry, The Princess Is Is Another Castle.
Martin parked his boxy car on Idaho and walked up to Freya Drive. The green trenchcoat was too big for him. Martin rolled the sleeves up several times but he still felt like he looked like half a starved WWI doughboy, half Artful Dodger. The coat wasn't as heavy as he thought it would be, it seemed ooze and flow and float around him in its own atmosphere. There were patches on the jacket as well but they were the same dark green and didn't seem to contain any emblems, just extra bits of fabric.
Once he put it on he noticed that it was covered with twenty or so pockets, some clever and hidden, others stitched on in a haphazard Pied Piper fashion. All but two of the pockets were empty. Held in an inner pocket close to his chest was the package, safe and secure. In the left hip pocket was another gift from the Lolas. Martin took it out and looked at it again.
It was a little plastic Tic Tac box. The wrapper has been mostly scrapped off and there was a little piece of white tape with the letters D'VER written on it in a precise hand. Martin held the box up to his eye. Inside was a lone Tic Tac. It was orange. Martin shook the box so the Tic Tac made little tic tac noises. Martin had no idea what it was suppose to do except freshen his breath. Secret agent suicide pill? Ninja smoke capsule? MDMA in case a rave broke out?
Lola Getz had been less than helpful about what the little orange candy was for when she tossed it to him back at her shop.
"Dire need. Only."
"Dire like what? Like garlic bread?"
Lola Getz bombarded Martin with the minutiae of how he should behave while in their temporary employment as she hustled him out of the break room and back through the labyrinthine shelves of Wants & Getz. Over his shoulder he saw Lola Wants toss him an odd salute, not looking up from her crayons and paper. At the door, she stopped and quizzed him.
"The package is to be delivered to who?"
"Cassandra Fiver, owner of The Shining Wire. Easy to remember it almost rhymes. Her and no one else. No flunkies or...major mumbos?"
"Majordomos. And the call and respone should MacGuffin be at The Shining Wire?"
"Umm. I say to her, 'Wanna disco' and she says 'More crackers please'. Doesn't that seem a little cloak and dagger?"
"It is a lot cloak and dagger. MacGuffin must know that you come from us. She may be scared. You remember the pass phrase to get into The Shining Wire tonight?
"Yes, it's --"
"Don't say it here! Don't say it until you say it to the doorman. Don't even think it, these things grow stale. And the Tic-a-Tac?"
"Dire need. Only."
"Yes. Dire. Like you feel like you need...a moment."
Lola Getz nodded and turned Martin around and gently pushed him out of Wants & Getz. She didn't cross the threshold of the doorway. For a moment she was framed in the buttery light spilling out into the night. It made her look elongated and fuzzy.
"Luck as it falls, Mister Hollys."
With that she shut the door and Martin heard several locks click into place. It was already dark. How long was I in there, he thought. He stared at the nondescript building with its old sign for an accountant's office. It looked small, shrunken. He walked over to the light of a streetlamp and looked at the marks on his palms.
He rubbed them but they wouldn't smudge. They didn't looked drawn. They looked carved. Embedded. Blue flower. Black bullet. Like actual tattoos, he thought. Martin Hollys shrugged into the green trenchcoat and walked out of the light of the lamp. The Shining Wire was an afterhours club and it was after hours now. He made his way to his car.
- - - - - - -
Freya Drive was a little cobblestone lined with fancy boutiques and elite business offices and restaurants. Panopticon Graphics. Antebellum Books. Vexed And Glorious Salon. Akimbo Cafe. It was late and most of the places were closed. There was a group of people hanging out in front of the cafe talking loudly. A poetry slam or a rap battle or a discussion of politics, Martin couldn't tell.
Martin didn't see the sign for The Shining Wire anywhere. In his mind's eye, he could see it clear as day. Purple neon rabbit, on its side, red neon 'wire' around its neck. None of the buildings on the street had a sign like it. He decided to ask the people in front of the cafe.
They were a motley group, dressed as though they were about to put on a Beckett play. Godot-chic. All of them were painted smeared. Martin could see the same symbol sprayed on shirts and scratched into flesh: A tree with one leaf. Martin could see backpacks with Krylon spray paint cans. They were teenagers, most of them boys, draped across the cafe's chairs like laundry. They were watching two of their numbers, slightly older kids, in the middle of an animated discussion. One had on a Russian cap complete with hammer and sickle, the other had a pointy face and huge gage earrings. These two look like they've OD'd on too many opinions about art, Martin thought.
"Excuse me, do any of you know where The Shining Wire is?"
The two standing turned to look at Martin. Russian Cap looked pissed, as though Martin had interrupted him in the middle of a tangent and cost him a point in his argument with Pointy Face. Pointy Face spoke first.
"Piss off, old man. Lucifer Beard says away with you!"
Martin could feel a shift in the mood of the various laundry in front of him, they would be perfectly happy to see the leaders go from yelling at each other to turning that energy on a stranger. Pointy Face turned and got in Martin's face.
"Oi! Your hearing okay, you wanna test your berlins against Lucifer Beard?"
Martin had been subjected to a lot of strange accents today but none as annoying as this Lucifer Beard's fake Dickensian British patter. I hate it when people talk in the third person, Martin thought. Then, Lucifer Beard, moved to push Martin. Martin stepped aside and reached out with his right hand and caught the boy's wrist and twisted it. Lucifer Beard squirmed in Martin's grasp, making little wounded noises. The Laundry Gang just sat there, tense and ready.
"I asked a simple question. I just want to know --"
Russian Cap started to rush forward but Martin pointed at him other his other hand.
"Stop."
Russian Cap looked at the pistol Martin had made out of his hand. Martin looked at it himself, he only meant to point but had ended up making the thumb trigger as well. There was an sharp intake of breath from the Laundry Gang and a few of them scrabbled for cover behind cafe chairs. Russian Cap looked scared and stupid and defiant and eighteen. He had no accent when he spoke.
"Old man, you don't got the nerve to make a move against the 'Gon Daddies."
Martin thought about the weirdness of this whole day. He licked his busted lip and squinted his puffy black eye. He thought about the quick beating he took today from Butch Pierce, he thought about the obtuse eccentricities of Wants & Getz, he thought about the bizarre fact that he found himself in the middle of a fight with a group of teenagers. And he thought about this mission he was on, to delivery a package, and hopefully help a woman he barely knew. Martin Hollys smiled.
"Boy, I've got more nerve than I've got sense. Now tell me where The Shining Wire is."
Martin felt a warmth roll up from his groin to his stomach and chest. It bloomed there and cascaded down his arm to his hand that held Lucifer Beard's wrist. The boy jerk, once, twice, and tumbled backwards out of Martin's grasp. He did an off kilter back handspring and landed on his chest. Russian Cap ran over to him, Martin forgotten.
"Lou, you okay?"
"Fine, Lionel. You guys go ahead over to The Empress, I'm just gonna show this guy where the 'Wire is."
The only person who looked more shocked than Martin was Lionel. The Laundry Gang gathered themselves up and followed Lionel with his Russian cap and hammer and sickle. Lou Beard took Martin the opposite way down the street. As they walked, Martin rubbed his hand. It itched. That felt like a really strong static electricity pop, he thought. He looked at the blue flower on his palm. There were only five petals. Martin looked at his other hand. Black bullet. Roman numeral. VI. He tried to keep up with Lou Beard.
"So, it's Lou not Lucifer?"
"Yeah, my brother Lionel started calling me that."
"Hmmm. Lionel and Lou Beard. You ever seen anybody else wearing a coat like this? A woman?"
"What? A factotum coat? Sure. Guys, girls, yeah."
"What do you mean factotum coat?"
"Huh? You know, you're wearing it, right? Badge of office, innit?"
"That answer doesn't help and your fake British accent is coming back."
"Sorry. Well, here we are."
Lou Beard had led Martin to a skinny alleyway between a restaurant called Jabberwocky's and an ominous building with a razor blade thin sign that said AGENCY.
"In the alley."
"Yeah."
Martin looked at Lou Beard and rubbed his itchy hand.
"Why did you decide to help me?"
The kid looked confused like Martin had asked him to prove a math theorem. He pulled at one of his huge earrings like the answer would fall out of his ear. He shrugged.
"I don't know. it suddenly seemed like something I wanted to do."
"Okay. Thanks. Tell your brother I'm sorry about...about pointing at him."
"Okay. Hey, man, you better have the right password if you're going in there, those people don't play."
"Thanks, I got it."
With that, Lou Beard turned from the alley to join his friends in whatever the night held for them. And Martin turned to the alley. There was no neon sign. I'd make a piss poor bootlegger, can't even find the speakeasys around here, he thought. He entered the alley.
The ground was wet and covered with litter, fast food wrappers, plastic bags, and things Martin hoped weren't used condoms. The walls were close, they sweated. Everything seemed like it was made of bricks and mold and metal and fungus. The jagged sliver of sky he could see above him only made him feel like he was at the bottom of a trench. Deep beneath the ocean. No stars, just black space. Both pressure and vacuum at the same time. The alleyway felt like it twisted and curved and spiraled. Small rat noises scattered away from him as he moved forward. Martin walked up stairs, crossed miniture moats, ducked under arches. The alley shrank to a pin hole and then suddenly it opened to a courtyard.
Brick wall. Metal door. Bright neon sign high above Martin's head. Purple rabbit, red wire. The hum of neon. I should have been able to see that from the street, Martin thought.
A man in a suit stepped into his line of sight. Asian, dark glasses, ageless.
"You know the words?"
The man was reaching into his coat.
Martin held his hands up and said the pass phrase.
"Sorry, the princess is in another castle."
The Asian man smiled and reached for the door.
"Welcome to The Shining Wire, Mister Hollys."
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Up next, Chapter Six: I'm No Rick And You're No Ilsa...and who knows, dear readers maybe one of these days we well see more of Lucifer Beard and The Laundry Gang (although that's not what they call themselves....The Estra-Gone Daddies). Perhaps Martin Hollys will received more reluctant help from them. Who knows?
Once he put it on he noticed that it was covered with twenty or so pockets, some clever and hidden, others stitched on in a haphazard Pied Piper fashion. All but two of the pockets were empty. Held in an inner pocket close to his chest was the package, safe and secure. In the left hip pocket was another gift from the Lolas. Martin took it out and looked at it again.
It was a little plastic Tic Tac box. The wrapper has been mostly scrapped off and there was a little piece of white tape with the letters D'VER written on it in a precise hand. Martin held the box up to his eye. Inside was a lone Tic Tac. It was orange. Martin shook the box so the Tic Tac made little tic tac noises. Martin had no idea what it was suppose to do except freshen his breath. Secret agent suicide pill? Ninja smoke capsule? MDMA in case a rave broke out?
Lola Getz had been less than helpful about what the little orange candy was for when she tossed it to him back at her shop.
"Dire need. Only."
"Dire like what? Like garlic bread?"
Lola Getz bombarded Martin with the minutiae of how he should behave while in their temporary employment as she hustled him out of the break room and back through the labyrinthine shelves of Wants & Getz. Over his shoulder he saw Lola Wants toss him an odd salute, not looking up from her crayons and paper. At the door, she stopped and quizzed him.
"The package is to be delivered to who?"
"Cassandra Fiver, owner of The Shining Wire. Easy to remember it almost rhymes. Her and no one else. No flunkies or...major mumbos?"
"Majordomos. And the call and respone should MacGuffin be at The Shining Wire?"
"Umm. I say to her, 'Wanna disco' and she says 'More crackers please'. Doesn't that seem a little cloak and dagger?"
"It is a lot cloak and dagger. MacGuffin must know that you come from us. She may be scared. You remember the pass phrase to get into The Shining Wire tonight?
"Yes, it's --"
"Don't say it here! Don't say it until you say it to the doorman. Don't even think it, these things grow stale. And the Tic-a-Tac?"
"Dire need. Only."
"Yes. Dire. Like you feel like you need...a moment."
Lola Getz nodded and turned Martin around and gently pushed him out of Wants & Getz. She didn't cross the threshold of the doorway. For a moment she was framed in the buttery light spilling out into the night. It made her look elongated and fuzzy.
"Luck as it falls, Mister Hollys."
With that she shut the door and Martin heard several locks click into place. It was already dark. How long was I in there, he thought. He stared at the nondescript building with its old sign for an accountant's office. It looked small, shrunken. He walked over to the light of a streetlamp and looked at the marks on his palms.
He rubbed them but they wouldn't smudge. They didn't looked drawn. They looked carved. Embedded. Blue flower. Black bullet. Like actual tattoos, he thought. Martin Hollys shrugged into the green trenchcoat and walked out of the light of the lamp. The Shining Wire was an afterhours club and it was after hours now. He made his way to his car.
- - - - - - -
Freya Drive was a little cobblestone lined with fancy boutiques and elite business offices and restaurants. Panopticon Graphics. Antebellum Books. Vexed And Glorious Salon. Akimbo Cafe. It was late and most of the places were closed. There was a group of people hanging out in front of the cafe talking loudly. A poetry slam or a rap battle or a discussion of politics, Martin couldn't tell.
Martin didn't see the sign for The Shining Wire anywhere. In his mind's eye, he could see it clear as day. Purple neon rabbit, on its side, red neon 'wire' around its neck. None of the buildings on the street had a sign like it. He decided to ask the people in front of the cafe.
They were a motley group, dressed as though they were about to put on a Beckett play. Godot-chic. All of them were painted smeared. Martin could see the same symbol sprayed on shirts and scratched into flesh: A tree with one leaf. Martin could see backpacks with Krylon spray paint cans. They were teenagers, most of them boys, draped across the cafe's chairs like laundry. They were watching two of their numbers, slightly older kids, in the middle of an animated discussion. One had on a Russian cap complete with hammer and sickle, the other had a pointy face and huge gage earrings. These two look like they've OD'd on too many opinions about art, Martin thought.
"Excuse me, do any of you know where The Shining Wire is?"
The two standing turned to look at Martin. Russian Cap looked pissed, as though Martin had interrupted him in the middle of a tangent and cost him a point in his argument with Pointy Face. Pointy Face spoke first.
"Piss off, old man. Lucifer Beard says away with you!"
Martin could feel a shift in the mood of the various laundry in front of him, they would be perfectly happy to see the leaders go from yelling at each other to turning that energy on a stranger. Pointy Face turned and got in Martin's face.
"Oi! Your hearing okay, you wanna test your berlins against Lucifer Beard?"
Martin had been subjected to a lot of strange accents today but none as annoying as this Lucifer Beard's fake Dickensian British patter. I hate it when people talk in the third person, Martin thought. Then, Lucifer Beard, moved to push Martin. Martin stepped aside and reached out with his right hand and caught the boy's wrist and twisted it. Lucifer Beard squirmed in Martin's grasp, making little wounded noises. The Laundry Gang just sat there, tense and ready.
"I asked a simple question. I just want to know --"
Russian Cap started to rush forward but Martin pointed at him other his other hand.
"Stop."
Russian Cap looked at the pistol Martin had made out of his hand. Martin looked at it himself, he only meant to point but had ended up making the thumb trigger as well. There was an sharp intake of breath from the Laundry Gang and a few of them scrabbled for cover behind cafe chairs. Russian Cap looked scared and stupid and defiant and eighteen. He had no accent when he spoke.
"Old man, you don't got the nerve to make a move against the 'Gon Daddies."
Martin thought about the weirdness of this whole day. He licked his busted lip and squinted his puffy black eye. He thought about the quick beating he took today from Butch Pierce, he thought about the obtuse eccentricities of Wants & Getz, he thought about the bizarre fact that he found himself in the middle of a fight with a group of teenagers. And he thought about this mission he was on, to delivery a package, and hopefully help a woman he barely knew. Martin Hollys smiled.
"Boy, I've got more nerve than I've got sense. Now tell me where The Shining Wire is."
Martin felt a warmth roll up from his groin to his stomach and chest. It bloomed there and cascaded down his arm to his hand that held Lucifer Beard's wrist. The boy jerk, once, twice, and tumbled backwards out of Martin's grasp. He did an off kilter back handspring and landed on his chest. Russian Cap ran over to him, Martin forgotten.
"Lou, you okay?"
"Fine, Lionel. You guys go ahead over to The Empress, I'm just gonna show this guy where the 'Wire is."
The only person who looked more shocked than Martin was Lionel. The Laundry Gang gathered themselves up and followed Lionel with his Russian cap and hammer and sickle. Lou Beard took Martin the opposite way down the street. As they walked, Martin rubbed his hand. It itched. That felt like a really strong static electricity pop, he thought. He looked at the blue flower on his palm. There were only five petals. Martin looked at his other hand. Black bullet. Roman numeral. VI. He tried to keep up with Lou Beard.
"So, it's Lou not Lucifer?"
"Yeah, my brother Lionel started calling me that."
"Hmmm. Lionel and Lou Beard. You ever seen anybody else wearing a coat like this? A woman?"
"What? A factotum coat? Sure. Guys, girls, yeah."
"What do you mean factotum coat?"
"Huh? You know, you're wearing it, right? Badge of office, innit?"
"That answer doesn't help and your fake British accent is coming back."
"Sorry. Well, here we are."
Lou Beard had led Martin to a skinny alleyway between a restaurant called Jabberwocky's and an ominous building with a razor blade thin sign that said AGENCY.
"In the alley."
"Yeah."
Martin looked at Lou Beard and rubbed his itchy hand.
"Why did you decide to help me?"
The kid looked confused like Martin had asked him to prove a math theorem. He pulled at one of his huge earrings like the answer would fall out of his ear. He shrugged.
"I don't know. it suddenly seemed like something I wanted to do."
"Okay. Thanks. Tell your brother I'm sorry about...about pointing at him."
"Okay. Hey, man, you better have the right password if you're going in there, those people don't play."
"Thanks, I got it."
With that, Lou Beard turned from the alley to join his friends in whatever the night held for them. And Martin turned to the alley. There was no neon sign. I'd make a piss poor bootlegger, can't even find the speakeasys around here, he thought. He entered the alley.
The ground was wet and covered with litter, fast food wrappers, plastic bags, and things Martin hoped weren't used condoms. The walls were close, they sweated. Everything seemed like it was made of bricks and mold and metal and fungus. The jagged sliver of sky he could see above him only made him feel like he was at the bottom of a trench. Deep beneath the ocean. No stars, just black space. Both pressure and vacuum at the same time. The alleyway felt like it twisted and curved and spiraled. Small rat noises scattered away from him as he moved forward. Martin walked up stairs, crossed miniture moats, ducked under arches. The alley shrank to a pin hole and then suddenly it opened to a courtyard.
Brick wall. Metal door. Bright neon sign high above Martin's head. Purple rabbit, red wire. The hum of neon. I should have been able to see that from the street, Martin thought.
A man in a suit stepped into his line of sight. Asian, dark glasses, ageless.
"You know the words?"
The man was reaching into his coat.
Martin held his hands up and said the pass phrase.
"Sorry, the princess is in another castle."
The Asian man smiled and reached for the door.
"Welcome to The Shining Wire, Mister Hollys."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Up next, Chapter Six: I'm No Rick And You're No Ilsa...and who knows, dear readers maybe one of these days we well see more of Lucifer Beard and The Laundry Gang (although that's not what they call themselves....The Estra-Gone Daddies). Perhaps Martin Hollys will received more reluctant help from them. Who knows?
Chapter Four: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang!!
"Butch Pierce."
The name didn't just hang in the air, it fell through it like a block of marble. It punched at the air like a boxer. Kicked out like a Brazilian martial artist. Chewed the air like a pitbull. Claimed the neighboring armrest in the movie theater. Bullied its way through the air. The name took up physical space in the little breakroom.
Martin could see the owner of the name. The rough, burlap skin. The brutal shelf of a face. The all white eyes like holes punched into his skull. Like a blank piece of white paper. Like somebody had forgotten to draw in the pupils. A titan. A troll. A throwback. Names are important, Martin thought.
"We have to go to the police."
Even as he said it, he felt foolish for saying it. But it was the kind of thing that somebody had to say. If for no other reason than so an actual plan could be put forth. But as he watched yet another of those quick looks pass between the Lolas, he knew that nobody was going to call the police. Not them and, he realized, not him. Lola Getz spoke.
"We would prefer to handle this...ourselves. We have an immigrant's mistrust of law enforcement."
Before Martin could ask where they were immigrants from, Lola Getz reached across the table and grabbed the package. Even though he had offered it to her earlier, Martin instinctively placed his hand over it, to keep her from picking it up. He smiled a lopsided smile and removed his hand, letting her pick up the package.
Lola Getz got up and paced the floor. It was the first time Martin noticed her shoes, Beatle boots with Cuban heels. They clicked and clacked down on the green formica. That's why she's taller than me, Martin thought.
"Mister Hollys...we were wondering...I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?"
"Okay. Ask."
"Would you be interested in some freelance work?"
"I thought you said I couldn't organize your shop out there."
"No...this would be...courier work."
"Shouldn't we try and find this Butch Pierce...find out what he's done with...your employee?"
"These tasks may be one and the same. This package should have been picked up. it will look very bad that it wasn't. And that might make it harder for us to find MacGuffin."
"MacGuffin?"
"Maddy MacGuffin, our factotum, our jill-of-all-trades, our employee...your girl with the golden goggles."
Maddy MacGuffin. Martin rolled the name around inside his mouth, his skull. He stitched it to the image of the little pixie girl with the red hair and the huge green trenchcoat. It sounded both familiar as his own name and as exotic as any of the strange language of the Lolas.
Maddy Macguffin. It was like Lois Lane and Lauren Bacall and Columbine all rolled into one. Martin's face felt flush as he thought of the number of times (after the stupid remark about her goggles) that he had snuck looks over at her, over the top of whatever book he was rereading. Watership Down. There she was making another of her origami animals. Dune. Talking with a manly drag queen in a Dorothy Gale costume. The Gunslinger. Accepting an envelope from one of a set of twin boys, while their mother screamed into a cell phone in French-accented English.
He thought about those moments and then he thought about the moment when she quoted his favorite line from one of his favorite books. Like she pulled it out of my head, he thought. He knew he would take the package and deliver it, if it would help this girl. This Maddy MacGuffin. My Maddy, he thought.
"Where does the package need to go?"
"A private club. An after hours club, The Shining Wire, on the corner of Nyx Avenue and Freya Drive. You know it?"
Martin thought about it for a second. The names didn't sound at all like any streets he'd heard of. He'd lived in town for ten years and knew it pretty well. He was about to say as much to Lola Getz when he noticed the other Lola's new drawing. A rudimentary stick figure, mostly a huge circle with an afterthought body attached. Inside the circle he saw the words: 'Freyja', 'Shining Wire', and 'Nyx'. they were written in a blocky hand, they almost looked carved into the paper. He was about to ask her about it when it occurred to him that he did know where Freya Drive was and he turned back to Lola Getz.
"Freya Drive just off of Idaho Street, right? I think I know the place, purple neon sign of a rabbit or something, yeah?"
Lola Getz smiled her Cheshire Grinch smile.
"Yes, you got it."
Martin Hollys returned his own lopsided grin.
"I've got brains, yes I have."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
Lola exited out of the breakroom, calling back over her shoulder.
"You will need some identification...to show you are doing some...freelance work...for us."
She returned carrying a large, greenish trenchcoat. She tossed it to him and then sat back down in her chair. It had a musky smell, old books, old leather, dust. There were patches on the shoulders but they were the same murky color as the coat, so Martin couldn't make out what they were suppose to mean. It was just like the one Maddy MacGuffin wore. Lola Getz had left her scary smile in the other room.
"Now, Mister Hollys...what hand do you write with?"
"What?"
Lola Wants spoke up again in her giggling, little girl voice.
"Southpaw."
Lola Getz grabbed his left hand and brought it closer to Lola Wants. Lola Wants replaced her crayons with a wicked, syringe shaped pen. It was like something Edgar Allen Poe would write with. Or the Marque de Sade. Martin tried to move his hand but Lola Getz held it fast, he realized couldn't move his hand at all. When Lola Wants lowered the evil looking pen to his palm, he expected a stabbing pain. Instead it tickled. Lola Wants busied herself with drawing.
"Now, Mister Hollys, what hand do you masturbate with? Mostly? Right or left?"
"Excuse me? What?"
Martin found himself giggling, just like Lola Wants. The tickling sensation spread up his left arm to the elbow. Pins and needles. Or pens and needles. He didn't want to answer but it was okay, Lola Wants answered for him. Correctly.
"Righty-tighty."
Lola Getz let her smile return a little.
"Good. It's difficult when they are one and the same."
Lola Wants finished her drawing on his left palm and stretched herself across the table to draw on his right palm. The way she did made Martin hope that she was twenty-six and not sixteen. Lola Getz moved to hold Martin's right arm down but this time he didn't struggle. The air in the room had taken on a narcotic quality. Martin just stared at Lola Wants as she balanced catlike on the table and drew on his right palm. Her body blocked him from seeing what she had drawn on his left palm but he could already make out that she was drawing a daisy-like flower on his right. It had six petals.
When she was done, she sat back in her chair and Martin could see the other drawing too. He looked at Lola Getz with a raised eyebrow.
"They will help, I'm sure, Mister Hollys."
On his right hand, in bright blue ink, a flower with six petals. On his left hand, a bullet, somehow in black ink. Under the bullet, Roman numerals. VI. Lola Wants spoke in her giggling, sing-song voice. She had returned to her crayons and pictures.
"Kiss kiss. Bang bang."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stay tuned for Chapter Five: Sorry, The Princess Is In Another Castle, where we finally leave the comfort of Wants & Getz and head out into the world, to find The Shining Wire.
The name didn't just hang in the air, it fell through it like a block of marble. It punched at the air like a boxer. Kicked out like a Brazilian martial artist. Chewed the air like a pitbull. Claimed the neighboring armrest in the movie theater. Bullied its way through the air. The name took up physical space in the little breakroom.
Martin could see the owner of the name. The rough, burlap skin. The brutal shelf of a face. The all white eyes like holes punched into his skull. Like a blank piece of white paper. Like somebody had forgotten to draw in the pupils. A titan. A troll. A throwback. Names are important, Martin thought.
"We have to go to the police."
Even as he said it, he felt foolish for saying it. But it was the kind of thing that somebody had to say. If for no other reason than so an actual plan could be put forth. But as he watched yet another of those quick looks pass between the Lolas, he knew that nobody was going to call the police. Not them and, he realized, not him. Lola Getz spoke.
"We would prefer to handle this...ourselves. We have an immigrant's mistrust of law enforcement."
Before Martin could ask where they were immigrants from, Lola Getz reached across the table and grabbed the package. Even though he had offered it to her earlier, Martin instinctively placed his hand over it, to keep her from picking it up. He smiled a lopsided smile and removed his hand, letting her pick up the package.
Lola Getz got up and paced the floor. It was the first time Martin noticed her shoes, Beatle boots with Cuban heels. They clicked and clacked down on the green formica. That's why she's taller than me, Martin thought.
"Mister Hollys...we were wondering...I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?"
"Okay. Ask."
"Would you be interested in some freelance work?"
"I thought you said I couldn't organize your shop out there."
"No...this would be...courier work."
"Shouldn't we try and find this Butch Pierce...find out what he's done with...your employee?"
"These tasks may be one and the same. This package should have been picked up. it will look very bad that it wasn't. And that might make it harder for us to find MacGuffin."
"MacGuffin?"
"Maddy MacGuffin, our factotum, our jill-of-all-trades, our employee...your girl with the golden goggles."
Maddy MacGuffin. Martin rolled the name around inside his mouth, his skull. He stitched it to the image of the little pixie girl with the red hair and the huge green trenchcoat. It sounded both familiar as his own name and as exotic as any of the strange language of the Lolas.
Maddy Macguffin. It was like Lois Lane and Lauren Bacall and Columbine all rolled into one. Martin's face felt flush as he thought of the number of times (after the stupid remark about her goggles) that he had snuck looks over at her, over the top of whatever book he was rereading. Watership Down. There she was making another of her origami animals. Dune. Talking with a manly drag queen in a Dorothy Gale costume. The Gunslinger. Accepting an envelope from one of a set of twin boys, while their mother screamed into a cell phone in French-accented English.
He thought about those moments and then he thought about the moment when she quoted his favorite line from one of his favorite books. Like she pulled it out of my head, he thought. He knew he would take the package and deliver it, if it would help this girl. This Maddy MacGuffin. My Maddy, he thought.
"Where does the package need to go?"
"A private club. An after hours club, The Shining Wire, on the corner of Nyx Avenue and Freya Drive. You know it?"
Martin thought about it for a second. The names didn't sound at all like any streets he'd heard of. He'd lived in town for ten years and knew it pretty well. He was about to say as much to Lola Getz when he noticed the other Lola's new drawing. A rudimentary stick figure, mostly a huge circle with an afterthought body attached. Inside the circle he saw the words: 'Freyja', 'Shining Wire', and 'Nyx'. they were written in a blocky hand, they almost looked carved into the paper. He was about to ask her about it when it occurred to him that he did know where Freya Drive was and he turned back to Lola Getz.
"Freya Drive just off of Idaho Street, right? I think I know the place, purple neon sign of a rabbit or something, yeah?"
Lola Getz smiled her Cheshire Grinch smile.
"Yes, you got it."
Martin Hollys returned his own lopsided grin.
"I've got brains, yes I have."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
Lola exited out of the breakroom, calling back over her shoulder.
"You will need some identification...to show you are doing some...freelance work...for us."
She returned carrying a large, greenish trenchcoat. She tossed it to him and then sat back down in her chair. It had a musky smell, old books, old leather, dust. There were patches on the shoulders but they were the same murky color as the coat, so Martin couldn't make out what they were suppose to mean. It was just like the one Maddy MacGuffin wore. Lola Getz had left her scary smile in the other room.
"Now, Mister Hollys...what hand do you write with?"
"What?"
Lola Wants spoke up again in her giggling, little girl voice.
"Southpaw."
Lola Getz grabbed his left hand and brought it closer to Lola Wants. Lola Wants replaced her crayons with a wicked, syringe shaped pen. It was like something Edgar Allen Poe would write with. Or the Marque de Sade. Martin tried to move his hand but Lola Getz held it fast, he realized couldn't move his hand at all. When Lola Wants lowered the evil looking pen to his palm, he expected a stabbing pain. Instead it tickled. Lola Wants busied herself with drawing.
"Now, Mister Hollys, what hand do you masturbate with? Mostly? Right or left?"
"Excuse me? What?"
Martin found himself giggling, just like Lola Wants. The tickling sensation spread up his left arm to the elbow. Pins and needles. Or pens and needles. He didn't want to answer but it was okay, Lola Wants answered for him. Correctly.
"Righty-tighty."
Lola Getz let her smile return a little.
"Good. It's difficult when they are one and the same."
Lola Wants finished her drawing on his left palm and stretched herself across the table to draw on his right palm. The way she did made Martin hope that she was twenty-six and not sixteen. Lola Getz moved to hold Martin's right arm down but this time he didn't struggle. The air in the room had taken on a narcotic quality. Martin just stared at Lola Wants as she balanced catlike on the table and drew on his right palm. Her body blocked him from seeing what she had drawn on his left palm but he could already make out that she was drawing a daisy-like flower on his right. It had six petals.
When she was done, she sat back in her chair and Martin could see the other drawing too. He looked at Lola Getz with a raised eyebrow.
"They will help, I'm sure, Mister Hollys."
On his right hand, in bright blue ink, a flower with six petals. On his left hand, a bullet, somehow in black ink. Under the bullet, Roman numerals. VI. Lola Wants spoke in her giggling, sing-song voice. She had returned to her crayons and pictures.
"Kiss kiss. Bang bang."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stay tuned for Chapter Five: Sorry, The Princess Is In Another Castle, where we finally leave the comfort of Wants & Getz and head out into the world, to find The Shining Wire.
Chapter Three: Hyperion Park Black And Blues.
The Hopeless Romantic. Part Three: Hyperion Park Black And BluesShare
Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 6:52pm | Edit Note | Delete
"I work at a law firm downtown. I'm a file clerk. Pulling files, organizing them, sending them to storage. Whatever, all very boring stuff. Just me up in my little Rapunzel's tower all day. But I'm good at it. I could probably help you organize all your inventory here."
Lola Wants just stared at him with her old lady eyes. Martin wasn't sure if she even spoke or understood any language besides the alien tongue she spoke with Getz. Lola Getz made a snorting noise and a spinning motion with her hand.
"I doubt that, Mister Hollys. Continue."
"Anyway, the firm is located near Hyperion Park and I usually go over there for lunch. You know, sit in the park and eat. Usually, by the big red pagoda. There's some shade. I eat and read."
"Read what?"
"Excuse me?"
Again, the spinning motion of her hand. And her accent sounded thicker. Vowels and consonants shifted and slipped out of her mouth, tired of conforming to plain English. Lola Getz spoke slowly.
"What. Do. You. Read."
"Umm. Fantasy novels. Detective stories. Science Fiction. Comic books. You know, escapism stuff."
At that, Lola Getz smiled a Chershire Cat smile. A Grinch Who Stole Christmas smile. Her cheeks receded back like a tide revealing tooth-colored teeth. She made the spinning gesture again and then steepled her hands into a little church.
"Yes-yes-yes. Barbarians and Blackguards. Gumshoes and Gunsels. Rockets and Robots. Superheroes and Supervillains. Yes-yes-yes. Continue."
Martin found himself half disturbed by her smile and half charmed by her choice of words regarding his reading habits.
"I first saw...your employee...about a month ago. She came and sat down in the pagoda where I usually sat. Red hair. Green trenchcoat. And those painted goggles. She would sit and wait. She would make little origami figures from these colorful pieces of paper. Little roses or knights or ducks or birds. She would set them on the bench beside her. The third time she came and sat down there I worked up the courage to say, 'Nice goggles' to her. She just looked at me for a moment and went on making a little origami frog. I felt stupid but I was...well, I was..."
"Smitten."
Both Martin and Lola Getz looked over. It was Lola Wants who spoke. The word was said so that each syllable had its own moment in the spotlight. She blinked her eyes once. Maybe that's her version of that spinning-hand-get-on-with-it gesture, Martin thought.
"Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, that was that, I would eat lunch, read, somedays she would show up, somedays she wouldn't. And somedays when she would show up the weirdest people would meet with her. Sometimes people who looked homeless, sometimes people who looked like 1950s G-men, sometimes yuppie housewives pushing expensive strollers. She would have these short conversations that didn't make much sense. Sometimes the people would give her envelopes, sometimes not. Sometimes she would hand them things, sometimes not. I thought she might be a spy."
Martin meant it as a joke but he noticed a quick look pass between the Lolas. Four gray eyes met and transferred a message and then returned their gaze to him. He shifted in his uncomfortable chair and continued.
"Okay, so two weeks ago, she shows up and I'm reading The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. That's his last book. Anyway, she sits across from me, kinda throws herself down onto the bench and says, 'I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin. The Long Goodbye is good but I like Farewell, My Lovely better, don't you?' I said that I did. I told her that was my favorite quote, the line about smooth, shiny girls, from that book. She smiled and made a little origami mouse. Then this woman who was dressed up sort of like Oscar Wilde walked up and she walked off with her."
Martin stopped. He was getting down to it. Today. Lunch. The busted lip. The black eye. The package. the dingy card. Four gray eyes watched him. A little church made of hands sat on the table.
"Today, she walked up and sat beside me. She slipped this package out of her trench and put it between us. She gave me...this look...I don't know...and I put the package in my coat pocket. Then she got up and sat across from me and made an origami fish. And then this...guy...walked up...this huge guy...he looked like something out of a Tool video...his skin was like burlap...his eyes...they were, all white...like Tintin all-white...but he wasn't blind...he walked right up and slapped her across the face...knocked her out, picked her up...like over his shoulder...he must have been seven feet tall...I jumped up...jumped up to try and help...he looked over at me...with this big head like a potato and those white eyes...he looked surprised, like he didn't notice that I was there....and he backhanded me...it was like being hit with a brick...and I watched him walk off with her."
Another look passed between the Lolas. Then Lola Getz said something again in that foreign tongue. It sounded like a curse word. Lola Wants nodded her head and went back to coloring.
"Do you know who that was? Who took her?"
Lola Wants put her crayons down and spoke again.
"Butch Pierce."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Look for Chapter Four: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, where the name of Martin Hollys mystery girl will be revealed.*
And Chapter Five: Sorry, The Princess Is In Another Castle, where Martin Hollys makes a delivery and sings a song.*
And Chapter Six: Snicker-Snack!!!, where Martin Hollys has a pugilist rematch with the unsettling Butch Pierce.*
*Chapter names and their contents subject to change.
Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 6:52pm | Edit Note | Delete
"I work at a law firm downtown. I'm a file clerk. Pulling files, organizing them, sending them to storage. Whatever, all very boring stuff. Just me up in my little Rapunzel's tower all day. But I'm good at it. I could probably help you organize all your inventory here."
Lola Wants just stared at him with her old lady eyes. Martin wasn't sure if she even spoke or understood any language besides the alien tongue she spoke with Getz. Lola Getz made a snorting noise and a spinning motion with her hand.
"I doubt that, Mister Hollys. Continue."
"Anyway, the firm is located near Hyperion Park and I usually go over there for lunch. You know, sit in the park and eat. Usually, by the big red pagoda. There's some shade. I eat and read."
"Read what?"
"Excuse me?"
Again, the spinning motion of her hand. And her accent sounded thicker. Vowels and consonants shifted and slipped out of her mouth, tired of conforming to plain English. Lola Getz spoke slowly.
"What. Do. You. Read."
"Umm. Fantasy novels. Detective stories. Science Fiction. Comic books. You know, escapism stuff."
At that, Lola Getz smiled a Chershire Cat smile. A Grinch Who Stole Christmas smile. Her cheeks receded back like a tide revealing tooth-colored teeth. She made the spinning gesture again and then steepled her hands into a little church.
"Yes-yes-yes. Barbarians and Blackguards. Gumshoes and Gunsels. Rockets and Robots. Superheroes and Supervillains. Yes-yes-yes. Continue."
Martin found himself half disturbed by her smile and half charmed by her choice of words regarding his reading habits.
"I first saw...your employee...about a month ago. She came and sat down in the pagoda where I usually sat. Red hair. Green trenchcoat. And those painted goggles. She would sit and wait. She would make little origami figures from these colorful pieces of paper. Little roses or knights or ducks or birds. She would set them on the bench beside her. The third time she came and sat down there I worked up the courage to say, 'Nice goggles' to her. She just looked at me for a moment and went on making a little origami frog. I felt stupid but I was...well, I was..."
"Smitten."
Both Martin and Lola Getz looked over. It was Lola Wants who spoke. The word was said so that each syllable had its own moment in the spotlight. She blinked her eyes once. Maybe that's her version of that spinning-hand-get-on-with-it gesture, Martin thought.
"Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, that was that, I would eat lunch, read, somedays she would show up, somedays she wouldn't. And somedays when she would show up the weirdest people would meet with her. Sometimes people who looked homeless, sometimes people who looked like 1950s G-men, sometimes yuppie housewives pushing expensive strollers. She would have these short conversations that didn't make much sense. Sometimes the people would give her envelopes, sometimes not. Sometimes she would hand them things, sometimes not. I thought she might be a spy."
Martin meant it as a joke but he noticed a quick look pass between the Lolas. Four gray eyes met and transferred a message and then returned their gaze to him. He shifted in his uncomfortable chair and continued.
"Okay, so two weeks ago, she shows up and I'm reading The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. That's his last book. Anyway, she sits across from me, kinda throws herself down onto the bench and says, 'I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin. The Long Goodbye is good but I like Farewell, My Lovely better, don't you?' I said that I did. I told her that was my favorite quote, the line about smooth, shiny girls, from that book. She smiled and made a little origami mouse. Then this woman who was dressed up sort of like Oscar Wilde walked up and she walked off with her."
Martin stopped. He was getting down to it. Today. Lunch. The busted lip. The black eye. The package. the dingy card. Four gray eyes watched him. A little church made of hands sat on the table.
"Today, she walked up and sat beside me. She slipped this package out of her trench and put it between us. She gave me...this look...I don't know...and I put the package in my coat pocket. Then she got up and sat across from me and made an origami fish. And then this...guy...walked up...this huge guy...he looked like something out of a Tool video...his skin was like burlap...his eyes...they were, all white...like Tintin all-white...but he wasn't blind...he walked right up and slapped her across the face...knocked her out, picked her up...like over his shoulder...he must have been seven feet tall...I jumped up...jumped up to try and help...he looked over at me...with this big head like a potato and those white eyes...he looked surprised, like he didn't notice that I was there....and he backhanded me...it was like being hit with a brick...and I watched him walk off with her."
Another look passed between the Lolas. Then Lola Getz said something again in that foreign tongue. It sounded like a curse word. Lola Wants nodded her head and went back to coloring.
"Do you know who that was? Who took her?"
Lola Wants put her crayons down and spoke again.
"Butch Pierce."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Look for Chapter Four: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, where the name of Martin Hollys mystery girl will be revealed.*
And Chapter Five: Sorry, The Princess Is In Another Castle, where Martin Hollys makes a delivery and sings a song.*
And Chapter Six: Snicker-Snack!!!, where Martin Hollys has a pugilist rematch with the unsettling Butch Pierce.*
*Chapter names and their contents subject to change.
Chapter Two: The Girl With The Golden Googles.
"Well, we are waiting."
Again, Lola Getz cocked her head to the side, giving her that insectile look. If dinosaurs could become birds maybe bugs could become people, Martin thought. Anything seemed possible after what happened today at lunch and what was happening now. This wasn't the world, he thought, it was the world behind the world. Some Lovecraftian Oz. Some David Lynch Wonderland.
Martin shifted the package in his hands. Something in the package seemed to shift and roll around inside, hitting each side as he tilted it this way and that. It felt both light and heavy. A cigar box with a roll of pennies inside? A single masher marble? A bottle of pills? A mahjong tile? A glass eye?
Martin had the impulse to hold it up to his ear and shake it like a Christmas present but he could feel Lola's eyes on him. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He wasn't a storyteller, he didn't know how to explain things.
"Once upon a time might help...or at least start with your name. Names are...important."
At that there was a little giggle from the other Lola. Lola Wants. She stopped coloring and looked up at Martin. She smiled. Her teeth were small and perfect and somewhat cruel. The smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. She had gray eyes too. The whites were also yellowed. Hag eyes in a little girl's face. Martin couldn't tell how old she was. Sixteen? Twenty-six? Sixty-six? Any option seem viable. She didn't seem like a bug, she seemed like a very pretty amoeba. Something that would reach out with a pseudopod and pull you in for closer inspection. Or consumption.
Then she picked up an orange crayon and returned to drawing. She drew a figure eight. Or an infinity symbol? It didn't matter, she colored over it with black X's and little blue stars and spirals.
"Martin. Martin Hollys."
"Hollys. Plural."
"Yes. Plural."
"Well, Mister Hollys Plural, where did you get that package?"
"I met a girl. In the park near my work. I think, no, I know she's in trouble."
"This...girl...she gave you this package?"
"No, not exactly...she...I think she's been kidnapped. Taken."
"And this package was left where?"
"On a park bench. With YOUR card. There was a note on the other side of the card."
Martin fished the dingy card out of his pocket and held it out to Lola Getz. She looked down at it but didn't move to take it from his hand. Martin felt a desire to flick the card at her, throw the package on the floor of the break room, and leave. It bloomed hot and sour in his stomach and chest, it made the air feel thick. He didn't flick the card at her. Instead he turned it over and read the little note.
"Cherry/Hyperion Park/1pm/pagoda/CF/TSW/maybe/more likely one of the harem."
Lola Getz stopped looking like an insect. She sort of shrank into herself, collapsed into herself. She sat down in one of the odd Victorian chairs and gestured for Martin to sit in the remaining one. He did. It wasn't very comfortable. The fabric of the chair felt sharp, the angles forced his body into a strange posture. Upright and curved.
He placed the package and the card on the table, on top of a drawing of a unicorn. The unicorn had a weird looking little gremlin riding on its back, kissing or biting the unicorn's neck with its red mouth. Many of the drawings on the table shared a theme of monsters and cruelty. Minotaurs being castrated. Imps whipping little girls. Old women cooking horned oni in huge black pots. Cobras being defanged. Sharks being rammed by orcas. Dragons having their wings amputated by surgeons.
Lola Getz leaned over to Lola Wants and said something in another language. Hindi? Latin? Japanese? Martin half expected them to start clicking some aboriginal tongue? Lola Wants said something back but kept coloring. Lola Getz slammed her hand down on the table. Drawings of murder and rape and mythology whipped off the table and floated to the floor.
Lola Wants stopped her current drawing - a narwhal being pulled into a black hole pattern of X's and stars - and grabbed a blank sheet of paper. With a few quick strokes, she drew a picture of a young woman sitting inside a red pagoda. The woman looked pixie-small, drowning inside a greenish trenchcoat. A Tinkerbell with short cropped hair dyed fire engine red. On her head, amongst her red hair, Lola Wants drew two golden circles and colored them in. Martin reacted immediately.
"Yes! That's her! She wore these goggles on her head that were spray painted gold, even the lenses. That was the first thing I ever said to her, 'Nice goggles', so, so, you do know her then?"
Lola Getz exchanged a look with Lola Wants, who just shrugged and nodded.
"Yes. She is an employee of ours. An employee of sorts. A courier."
"What's her name?"
"First tell me what happened? Who took her?"
So Martin did.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And stay tuned for Part Three of our story: Hyperion Park Black And Blues
Again, Lola Getz cocked her head to the side, giving her that insectile look. If dinosaurs could become birds maybe bugs could become people, Martin thought. Anything seemed possible after what happened today at lunch and what was happening now. This wasn't the world, he thought, it was the world behind the world. Some Lovecraftian Oz. Some David Lynch Wonderland.
Martin shifted the package in his hands. Something in the package seemed to shift and roll around inside, hitting each side as he tilted it this way and that. It felt both light and heavy. A cigar box with a roll of pennies inside? A single masher marble? A bottle of pills? A mahjong tile? A glass eye?
Martin had the impulse to hold it up to his ear and shake it like a Christmas present but he could feel Lola's eyes on him. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He wasn't a storyteller, he didn't know how to explain things.
"Once upon a time might help...or at least start with your name. Names are...important."
At that there was a little giggle from the other Lola. Lola Wants. She stopped coloring and looked up at Martin. She smiled. Her teeth were small and perfect and somewhat cruel. The smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. She had gray eyes too. The whites were also yellowed. Hag eyes in a little girl's face. Martin couldn't tell how old she was. Sixteen? Twenty-six? Sixty-six? Any option seem viable. She didn't seem like a bug, she seemed like a very pretty amoeba. Something that would reach out with a pseudopod and pull you in for closer inspection. Or consumption.
Then she picked up an orange crayon and returned to drawing. She drew a figure eight. Or an infinity symbol? It didn't matter, she colored over it with black X's and little blue stars and spirals.
"Martin. Martin Hollys."
"Hollys. Plural."
"Yes. Plural."
"Well, Mister Hollys Plural, where did you get that package?"
"I met a girl. In the park near my work. I think, no, I know she's in trouble."
"This...girl...she gave you this package?"
"No, not exactly...she...I think she's been kidnapped. Taken."
"And this package was left where?"
"On a park bench. With YOUR card. There was a note on the other side of the card."
Martin fished the dingy card out of his pocket and held it out to Lola Getz. She looked down at it but didn't move to take it from his hand. Martin felt a desire to flick the card at her, throw the package on the floor of the break room, and leave. It bloomed hot and sour in his stomach and chest, it made the air feel thick. He didn't flick the card at her. Instead he turned it over and read the little note.
"Cherry/Hyperion Park/1pm/pagoda/CF/TSW/maybe/more likely one of the harem."
Lola Getz stopped looking like an insect. She sort of shrank into herself, collapsed into herself. She sat down in one of the odd Victorian chairs and gestured for Martin to sit in the remaining one. He did. It wasn't very comfortable. The fabric of the chair felt sharp, the angles forced his body into a strange posture. Upright and curved.
He placed the package and the card on the table, on top of a drawing of a unicorn. The unicorn had a weird looking little gremlin riding on its back, kissing or biting the unicorn's neck with its red mouth. Many of the drawings on the table shared a theme of monsters and cruelty. Minotaurs being castrated. Imps whipping little girls. Old women cooking horned oni in huge black pots. Cobras being defanged. Sharks being rammed by orcas. Dragons having their wings amputated by surgeons.
Lola Getz leaned over to Lola Wants and said something in another language. Hindi? Latin? Japanese? Martin half expected them to start clicking some aboriginal tongue? Lola Wants said something back but kept coloring. Lola Getz slammed her hand down on the table. Drawings of murder and rape and mythology whipped off the table and floated to the floor.
Lola Wants stopped her current drawing - a narwhal being pulled into a black hole pattern of X's and stars - and grabbed a blank sheet of paper. With a few quick strokes, she drew a picture of a young woman sitting inside a red pagoda. The woman looked pixie-small, drowning inside a greenish trenchcoat. A Tinkerbell with short cropped hair dyed fire engine red. On her head, amongst her red hair, Lola Wants drew two golden circles and colored them in. Martin reacted immediately.
"Yes! That's her! She wore these goggles on her head that were spray painted gold, even the lenses. That was the first thing I ever said to her, 'Nice goggles', so, so, you do know her then?"
Lola Getz exchanged a look with Lola Wants, who just shrugged and nodded.
"Yes. She is an employee of ours. An employee of sorts. A courier."
"What's her name?"
"First tell me what happened? Who took her?"
So Martin did.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And stay tuned for Part Three of our story: Hyperion Park Black And Blues
Chapter One: Wants & Getz
Martin Hollys looked at the sign above the door and then looked at the card in his hand. He did this several times. The address was correct. But the sign above the door promised only an accountant's office. The card read:
WANTS & GETZ
Mementos and Aquisitions
Couriers services provided
27 Mercury Ave.
The card was dingy, off-white. The lettering was the color of fool's gold. Martin Hollys flipped the card over and reread the message written on the back. That made him bring his free hand up to his fresh black eye and swollen lip. After that, his hand seemed to search out the paperback book sized package that he had found with the note. It was in his coat pocket and it was plain, he didn't need to look at it again. He let his fingers tap-tap-tap the side of the package. Just brown paper, it could have been a bomb. Or a box of candy. With a final look up and down the street, he opened the door and went inside.
There was a twinkle of bells and then the smell of old books and muffled sound of music. It wasn't an accountant's office. The space looked like some weird nexus point between the gingerbread house, the bookstore from The Neverending Story, Buffalo Bill's dungeon from Silence Of The Lambs, and a UPS Store. Shelves lined the walls, covered with various paraphernalia and detritus. Martin followed the music.
Sock monkeys slumped next to Matchbox cars. A hug pickle jar filled with a mummified snake held down the pages of an old Sear and Roebuck catalogue. Martin picked up a plastic encased Amazing Fantasy #15, staring at Spider-man on its cover, then he put it back where he found it, next to a huge grimoire that could have easily been The Necronomicon.
And there were more mysterious things, tiny wooden boxes stamped with various words or symbols or combinations of letters and numbers. Plastic bags with the spidery Sharpie marker scrawls. FANCY. MOUNTAINTOP. OTWT#3. QUELL. FV5E. Ankhs, elements of the periodic table, binary code, gibberish.
Martin made his way to the center of all the shelves and boxes and leaning towers and found a counter where a record played a scratchy song in a foreign language. German? Russian? Some eastern Europrean country that no longer existed? There were also several of the dingy business cards, various sticky notes, and a random Tarot card. Five Of Swords.
"May I help you?"
Martin turned around stared at the source of the voice as scratchy as the record. A tiny woman with gray dreadlocks and brown skin looked down at him. She was standing on a ladder, putting more of the strange boxes on an upper shelf. She held one in her hand. HRTS DSR #7. She was wearing some sort of military jacket. Gray as her dreadlocks. To Martin, it looked almost like a Nazi uniform. An SS officer.
"I'm Lola Getz. This is my place."
She was beautiful, Martin decided. In a rawboned, masculine way. Like a black, dreadlocked David Bowie. When she climbed down from the ladder she was slightly taller than Martin, which was off putting. Her eyes were gray and fey. The whites of her eyes were yellowed.
"That's a helluva shiner."
There was an accent. Something about the way the words tumbled out of her mouth, reminded Martin of a Cuban guy he use to play chess with. Anytime Martin made a tricky move or feint, the old Cuban would mutter, 'clever guy clever guy clever guy' to himself. But the pattern of it always sounded to Martin like there was a world of meaning hidden in each syllable.
Martin took the plain package out of his coat pocket. He started to speak but she cut him off.
"Where did you get that?"
Her scratchy foreign voice held a teaspoon of panic in it, like a drop of poison in a cold glass of water. Again, Martin started to speak but she raised a hand and silenced him. She cocked her head to the side, listening. Martin thought about how when most people cocked their heads to the side they look like birds. Lola Getz didn't. She looked like a praying mantis.
"Wait. Not here. Follow me."
She turned on her heels and vanished into one of the rows of shelves. Martin hesitated, looked down at the package, then followed. The row she chose seemed more deranged than the others he passed through. It was like a ticker tape parade and a ransom note had an unwanted child and that child was raised by a mathematician who enjoyed chaos theory and quantum mechanics. If there was a system, it was beyond Martin to tell what it was.
Dreamcatchers, windchimes, and fierce looking kites hung from the ceiling, forcing him to slump forward. He passed shelves full of ivory tusks, Hummel figures, and packs of chewing gum. An Atari 2600 sat next to a shrunken head. Samurai swords, golf clubs, and tiki torches were bound together with bungee cord. Stone idols, false teeth, Rubix Cubes, monkey paws. It all blurred into a colorful nothing. Left, right, right, left. Martin wondered how big the building was.
And then just as suddenly as he thought it, he made one more right and ended up in a sort of break room. There was a fridge and a table and three chairs. Everything was purple velvet and green formica, lit by a naked lightbulb. It was bright and odd. The place looked like a grandmother's house had exploded. Everything looked moldering and Victorian and frilly. Lola Getz leaned against the table watching Martin as he emerged. The tablecloth was all flowers and hearts and jumping ponies. Another woman sat in one of the strange plush chairs.
She was tiny and young and had dark hair. She was coloring with crayons and even though she seemed young she seemed too old for that. She hummed to herself and busied herself with coloring. The table was covered with her drawings. She didn't look up. Martin had a feeling that many a scary cut scene in a video game could play out in this break room. Lola Getz cleared her throat.
"This is my...partner...Lola Wants. Now tell me where you found that package."
WANTS & GETZ
Mementos and Aquisitions
Couriers services provided
27 Mercury Ave.
The card was dingy, off-white. The lettering was the color of fool's gold. Martin Hollys flipped the card over and reread the message written on the back. That made him bring his free hand up to his fresh black eye and swollen lip. After that, his hand seemed to search out the paperback book sized package that he had found with the note. It was in his coat pocket and it was plain, he didn't need to look at it again. He let his fingers tap-tap-tap the side of the package. Just brown paper, it could have been a bomb. Or a box of candy. With a final look up and down the street, he opened the door and went inside.
There was a twinkle of bells and then the smell of old books and muffled sound of music. It wasn't an accountant's office. The space looked like some weird nexus point between the gingerbread house, the bookstore from The Neverending Story, Buffalo Bill's dungeon from Silence Of The Lambs, and a UPS Store. Shelves lined the walls, covered with various paraphernalia and detritus. Martin followed the music.
Sock monkeys slumped next to Matchbox cars. A hug pickle jar filled with a mummified snake held down the pages of an old Sear and Roebuck catalogue. Martin picked up a plastic encased Amazing Fantasy #15, staring at Spider-man on its cover, then he put it back where he found it, next to a huge grimoire that could have easily been The Necronomicon.
And there were more mysterious things, tiny wooden boxes stamped with various words or symbols or combinations of letters and numbers. Plastic bags with the spidery Sharpie marker scrawls. FANCY. MOUNTAINTOP. OTWT#3. QUELL. FV5E. Ankhs, elements of the periodic table, binary code, gibberish.
Martin made his way to the center of all the shelves and boxes and leaning towers and found a counter where a record played a scratchy song in a foreign language. German? Russian? Some eastern Europrean country that no longer existed? There were also several of the dingy business cards, various sticky notes, and a random Tarot card. Five Of Swords.
"May I help you?"
Martin turned around stared at the source of the voice as scratchy as the record. A tiny woman with gray dreadlocks and brown skin looked down at him. She was standing on a ladder, putting more of the strange boxes on an upper shelf. She held one in her hand. HRTS DSR #7. She was wearing some sort of military jacket. Gray as her dreadlocks. To Martin, it looked almost like a Nazi uniform. An SS officer.
"I'm Lola Getz. This is my place."
She was beautiful, Martin decided. In a rawboned, masculine way. Like a black, dreadlocked David Bowie. When she climbed down from the ladder she was slightly taller than Martin, which was off putting. Her eyes were gray and fey. The whites of her eyes were yellowed.
"That's a helluva shiner."
There was an accent. Something about the way the words tumbled out of her mouth, reminded Martin of a Cuban guy he use to play chess with. Anytime Martin made a tricky move or feint, the old Cuban would mutter, 'clever guy clever guy clever guy' to himself. But the pattern of it always sounded to Martin like there was a world of meaning hidden in each syllable.
Martin took the plain package out of his coat pocket. He started to speak but she cut him off.
"Where did you get that?"
Her scratchy foreign voice held a teaspoon of panic in it, like a drop of poison in a cold glass of water. Again, Martin started to speak but she raised a hand and silenced him. She cocked her head to the side, listening. Martin thought about how when most people cocked their heads to the side they look like birds. Lola Getz didn't. She looked like a praying mantis.
"Wait. Not here. Follow me."
She turned on her heels and vanished into one of the rows of shelves. Martin hesitated, looked down at the package, then followed. The row she chose seemed more deranged than the others he passed through. It was like a ticker tape parade and a ransom note had an unwanted child and that child was raised by a mathematician who enjoyed chaos theory and quantum mechanics. If there was a system, it was beyond Martin to tell what it was.
Dreamcatchers, windchimes, and fierce looking kites hung from the ceiling, forcing him to slump forward. He passed shelves full of ivory tusks, Hummel figures, and packs of chewing gum. An Atari 2600 sat next to a shrunken head. Samurai swords, golf clubs, and tiki torches were bound together with bungee cord. Stone idols, false teeth, Rubix Cubes, monkey paws. It all blurred into a colorful nothing. Left, right, right, left. Martin wondered how big the building was.
And then just as suddenly as he thought it, he made one more right and ended up in a sort of break room. There was a fridge and a table and three chairs. Everything was purple velvet and green formica, lit by a naked lightbulb. It was bright and odd. The place looked like a grandmother's house had exploded. Everything looked moldering and Victorian and frilly. Lola Getz leaned against the table watching Martin as he emerged. The tablecloth was all flowers and hearts and jumping ponies. Another woman sat in one of the strange plush chairs.
She was tiny and young and had dark hair. She was coloring with crayons and even though she seemed young she seemed too old for that. She hummed to herself and busied herself with coloring. The table was covered with her drawings. She didn't look up. Martin had a feeling that many a scary cut scene in a video game could play out in this break room. Lola Getz cleared her throat.
"This is my...partner...Lola Wants. Now tell me where you found that package."
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Maddy Macguffin
"I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin."