Get in Trouble: Stories (14 page)

“Fine,” Conrad Linthor says. “I’m going to stay down here and make some scrambled eggs. Sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m not hungry,” Billie says.

Even as she’s leaving, Conrad Linthor is explaining to her that they’ll meet again. This is their origin story. Maybe they’re each other’s nemesis or maybe they’re destined to team up and save the world and make lots of—

Eventually Billie can’t hear him anymore. She leaves a trail of butter all the way back to the lobby. Gets in an elevator before anyone has noticed the state she’s in, or maybe by this point in the weekend the hotel staff have dealt with stranger things.

She takes a shower and goes to bed still smelling of butter. She wakes up early.

The bubble of blood is down in the lobby again, floating over the fountain.

Billie thinks about going over to ask for an autograph. Pretending to be a fan. Could you pop that bubble with a ballpoint pen? This is the kind of thought Conrad Linthor goes around thinking, she’s pretty sure.

Billie catches her bus. And that’s the end of the story, Paul Zell. Dear Paul Zell.

Except for the ring. Here’s the thing about the ring. Billie wrapped it in tissue paper and sealed it up in a hotel envelope. She wrote “Ernesto in the kitchen” on the outside of the envelope. She wrote a note. The note said: “This ring belongs to Paul Zell. If he comes looking for it, maybe he’ll give you a reward. A couple hundred bucks seems fair. Tell him I’ll pay him back. But if he doesn’t get in touch, you should keep the ring. Or sell it. I’m sorry about Hellalujah and Mandroid and The Shambler. I didn’t know what Conrad Linthor was going to do.”

So Paul Zell. That’s the whole story. Except for the part where I got home and found the e-mail from you, the one where you explained what had happened to you. That you had an emergency appendectomy and never made it to New York at all, and what happened to me? Did I make it to the hotel? Did I wonder where you were? You say you can’t imagine how worried and/or angry I must have been. Etc.

I’ll be honest with you, Paul Zell. I read your e-mail and part of me thought, I’m saved. We’ll both pretend none of this ever happened. I’ll go on being Melinda and Melinda will go on being the Enchantress Magic EightBall and Paul Zell, whoever Paul Zell is, will go on being the Master Thief Boggle.

But that would be crazy. I would be a fifteen-year-old liar, and you would be some weird guy who’s so pathetic and lonely that he’s willing to settle for me. Not even for me. To settle for the person I was pretending to be. But you’re better than that, Paul Zell. You have to be better than that. So I wrote you this letter.

If you read this letter the whole way through, now you know what happened to your ring, and a lot of other things, too. I still have your conditioner. If you give Ernesto the reward, let me know and I’ll sell Constant Bliss and the Enchantress Magic EightBall. So I can pay you back. It’s not a big deal. I can go be someone else, right?

Or else, I guess, you could ignore this letter. We could pretend I never sent it. That I never came to New York to meet Paul Zell. That Paul Zell wasn’t going to give me a ring.

We could pretend that you never discovered my secret identity. We could meet up a couple times a week in FarAway and play chess. We could go on a quest. Save the world. We could chat. Flirt. I could tell you about Melinda’s week and we could pretend that maybe someday we’re going to be brave enough to meet face-to-face.

But here’s the deal, Paul Zell. I’ll be older one day. I may never discover my superpower. I don’t think I want to be a sidekick. Not even yours, Paul Zell. Although maybe that would have been simpler. If I’d been honest. And if you’re what or who I think you are. And: maybe I’m not even being honest now. Maybe I’d settle for sidekick. For being your sidekick. If that was all you offered.

Conrad Linthor is crazy and dangerous and a bad person, but I think he’s right about one thing. He’s right that sometimes people meet again. Even if we never really truly met each other, I want to believe you and I will meet again. I want you to know that there was a reason that I bought a bus ticket and came to New York. The reason was that I love you. That part was really true. I really did throw up on Santa Claus once. I can do twelve cartwheels in a row. May third is my birthday, not Melinda’s. I’m allergic to cats. I love you. I didn’t lie to you about everything.

When I’m eighteen, I’m going to take the bus back to New York City. I’m going to walk down to Bryant Park. And I’m going to bring my chess set. I’m going to do it on my birthday. I’ll be there all day long.

Your move, Paul Zell.

Valley of the Girls

 

O
nce, for about a month or two, I decided I was going to be a different kind of guy. Muscley. Not always thinking so much. My body was going to be a temple, not a dive bar. The kitchen made me smoothies, raw eggs blended with kale and wheat germ and bee pollen. That sort of thing. I stopped drinking, flushed all of Darius’s goodies down the toilet. I was civil to my Face. I went running. I read the books, did the homework my tutor assigned. I was a model son, a good brother. The Olds didn’t know what to think.

, of course, knew something was up.
always knew. Maybe she saw the way I watched her Face when there was an event and we all had to do the public thing.

Meanwhile I could see the way that
’s
Face looked at my Face. There was no way this was going to end well. So I gave up on raw eggs and virtue and love. Fell right back into the old life, the high life, the good, sweet, sour, rotten old life. Was it much of a life? It had its moments.

“Oh, shit,”
says. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. Help me,
. Help me, please?”

She drops the snake. I step hard on its head. Nobody here is having a good night.

“You have to give me the code,” I say. “Give me the code and I’ll go get help.”

She bends over and pukes stale champagne on my shoes. There are two drops of blood on her arm. “It hurts,” she says. “It hurts really bad!”

“Give me the code,
.”

She cries for a while, and then she stops. She won’t say anything. She just sits and rocks. I stroke her hair, and ask her for the code. When she doesn’t give it to me, I go over and start trying numbers. I try her birthday, then mine. I try a lot of numbers. None of them work.

I chased the same route every day for that month. Down through the woods at the back of the main guesthouse, into the Valley of the Girls just as the sun was coming up. That’s how you ought to see the pyramids, you know. With the sun coming up. I liked to take a piss at the foot of
’s
pyramid. Later on I told
I pissed on her pyramid. “Marking your territory,
?” she said. She ran her fingers through my hair.

I don’t love
. I don’t hate
. Her Face has this plush, red mouth. Once I put a finger up against her lips, just to see
how they felt. You’re not supposed to mess with people’s Faces, but everybody I know does it. What’s the Face going to do? Quit?

But
has better legs. Longer, rounder, the kind you want to die between. I wish she were here right now. The sun is up, but it isn’t going to shine on me for a long time. We’re down here in the cold, and
isn’t speaking to me.