Untitled (19 page)

    And just as I'm getting around to casting the flm, I notice that Scarecrow seems preturnaturally fxated. I ask him what's up, and he tells me, "Shhhhh." I try to follow his gaze, but it's hard, cuz it's painted.

    He seems to be staring at the empty chair.

    "Hmmm," I say, looking back at him.

    "Shhhhh," he repeats, unwavering.

At that moment, it's like some kind of psychic curtain descends. The night seems darker; the air grows chill, and negatively charged. I look at Dorothy, look at Scarecrow, cast a gaze quickly around the room. Everybody seems to feel it.

    It doesn't feel good.

    This would seem to indicate that the entertainment portion of tonight's event is over. "Oh, my," Scarecrow mutters, and I'm inclined to agree.

    Dorothy asks if I'd like her to come with me. I tell her to wait here, and watch my back. Then I gird myself, call upon God quick (for strength), and walk over to their table.

    Hwort is the frst to address me. "Magnifcent meal!" he says.

    "Unparalleled," adds Waverly.

    "Well, good," I say. "I'm glad you enjoyed it." Then, "So. Mr. Rokoko. Did it meet your specs?"

    "I am," he says, serruptitiously stifing a belch, "almost appallingly impressed."

    "I'm glad."

    "We'd heard marvelous things, of course. But, frankly, I had no idea..."

    "That's great. And the choice of meats?"

    He leans into the table now, creepily intimate. I see that the others join in. "Uncanny. May I ask you…what were your sources?"

    "First, let me check in with Mr. Scottie." I turn to the meatboy. "Are we U.S.D.A?"

    "Let me just say," he smoothly intones, "that we are defnitely interested."

    "I told you!" says Rumpus.

    I look at the empty chair.

    There is something there. I can't see it, but I know it. Suddenly, Scarecrow's stare makes a horrible kind of sense.

    For the frst time, I take notice of the vacant place setting. The plate has been used. The plate has been cleaned. There are a few random crumbs that still cling to its surface.

    I watch three of them airlift, and foat toward the chair.

    "Do you mind," I say, hoping my voice doesn't give me away, "if I sit down?"

    The response is instantaneous. I can't even calibrate how many voices say, "NO!," but I hear them as background music, like the Pink Panther theme suddenly swelling from the speakers. I hear them, but it just doesn't matter.

    What matters is a blackness that scratches my soul, leaving fngernail tracks that burn hotter than coal. It hurts: digging in somewhere deeper than muscle, deeper than nerves. I let out a yowl, and I reach for my sword.

    All at once, Dorothy is beside me. I don't see her. I feel her. And she feels pissed.

    As I draw my sword, she says, "I brought something for you."

    I look at her. She looks at the chair, brings her right hand to her lips...

    
…and suddenly the air is a-futter with green: pixie dust, par
ticulate matter, blowing out from her palm as she fercely exhales. It
congeals around the vacant chair: a trillion glittering emerald dust
motes, coalescing with a vengeance…

    
…and, just as suddenly, he is there.

    
I see the form within the furry. I blink. It doesn't change a fuck
ing thing. There he is: now looking like some Downe's Syndrome
child, now looking like a demon from Hell. He morphs like a '90's
car commercial, utterly transforming before I can get a bead
.

    "Oh, Bhjennigh," says Dorothy. "Why did you come?"

    O'Mon and Rokoko are up now, shouting. The others slide desperately back in their chairs. Dimly, I'm aware of Lion's roar, and a wall of screams.

    The loudest is Bhjennigh's.

    It cuts through the other sound, all other sound: gobbling up frequencies as it shreds through the air, two octaves above middle C and climbing. I stare at the monkeyman toadstool king, the glowing green blackness like fickerstones in tar that clings to his constantlyshifting surface. I see a glimpse of a human face.

    And then the black lightning descends.

    It slices through the ceiling, cleaving neon sombreros on its way to the Party of Seven. It's a food of crackling black energy: the opposite of light, but somehow just as blinding. I get a seering retinal imprint of Waverly's face melting, morphing as well as it

vanishes in static.

Then the lightning is gone.

And so are they.

    Which is precisely the point that Lion bursts through the doorway, with Mikio and Gene and his friend right in behind.

And now I'm home, and Ralph is snoring, and Gene is manically pecking away at his magick word machine. The sun will be up soon, and I'm going down.

    In a couple of hours, we'll get up, and talk.

    And then, Lord help us, we prepare for war.

Okay. Postscript.

    The next hour was spent cleaning up the mess in Aurora's restaurant, and getting Ralph back to her apartment to crash.

    Which brings us to now, with me falling asleep on my keyboard, trying to tap in the "end of the story so far." I can't tell you much about what happened before we walked in the door, that's better left to Aurora to tell.

    She's sitting at her desk right now, with her creepy wiggly quill pen in her hand, struggling to recount her part of the tale we've both fallen into writing.

    We've both always had this writing bug (I guess that's why we became such good friends to begin with) and both feel compelled now to set all of this down as it happens. We've stumbled right into this gristly, fuorescent chunk of history—witnessing it just seems to be the one right thing we can do right now.

    Hey little computer buddie—you in there?

    I'm going to sleep. Knock yourself out. Oh—and thanks for trying to help this afternoon. Anything you can add from now on would be helpful. I don't know what the hell you're saying most of the time, but you seem to have an inside line, somehow. Maybe I'm full of shit. Hey, well, Tetris is a fun game if you get bored in there. Goodnight.

That second morning, waking, I held my eyes shut; I was a blank. Has this ever happened to you? You wake, in a strange place or not, and can't remember anything for a second or two. Where you are, or who you are. It is terrifying and freeing all at once.

    It all came back to me, of course, and then I felt truly strange. I heard the sounds of that strange city coming awake: horses' hooves, and the clacking hooves of other animals with more legs and stranger gaits, steam hissing and sellers announcing their wares.

    The memory blip put me in mind of a computer looking for its operating system when it boots up. And that in turn made me wonder if I was much different from the little guy inhabiting my Superbook. I mean, it's some kind of soul, or spirit living inside of a machine, taking on its attributes, its identity. Was my little lapse waking some kind of glimpse of raw "me-ness"? Are we all just anonymous souls with identities defned by our locations in meat?

    These are the kinds of things I think about when I frst wake up. Which probably explains why I'm so high strung, and also why I can't get out of bed in the morning.

    But Aurora wasn't having any of that.

    "Okay, boys! Up 'n' at 'em!" she crowed. I stirred a little. I guess it wasn't enough.

    Next thing I knew, a metal pot and metal spoon were clanging together, a foot from my head. "AAAUGH!!!" I said, and looked up blearily. There she was, looking beautiful and crazy; her smile was wild, but her eyes meant business.

    "Gene, Ralph: get your asses out of bed,okay?" she said. "I'm not just whistlin' Dixie here. Ozma wants to see us, and time's a wastin'."

    "Fuck," mumbled Ralph, from his place on the couch. I glanced over at him. Ralph had seen better days. He looked like the offcial poster bum for the Pink Eye Foundation, only not quite as glamorous.

    "Fuck is right," said Aurora, walking over to him. "Mr. Ralph Fucking SuperSpy Dudley." She was wearing nothing but an extra large Bullwinkle t-shirt. Possibly panties. It was all the armor she needed. "Right now, I don't know whether to shake your hand or kick your stupid ass. But I'll tell you what: this would be a reall
y
good morning for you to be especially nice."

    Ralph nodded slightly. It looked like the gesture was painful. She put down the pot and spoon and picked up some weird aspirin. She had two water glasses on a table, and she offered one to him, along with some aspirin, which he silently accepted.

    Then she came back to me with her insta-headache cure, knelt before me, and handed them over. "How you doin', sweetie?" she asked. Her eyes were full of soul.

     "I don't know yet."

    "Fair enough." She took me gently by the temples, bent me forward, kissed the top of my head, and stood. I saw pubic hair, and averted my eyes. "I'll get breakfast together. You boys get your ducks in a row."

    A minute later, my hangover was gone. So, it seemed, was most of Ralph's. The morning was cool, and I was almost nekkid beneath, so I wore the blanket like a toga as I walked over and sat down beside him.

    "Good morning," I said.

    "Coulda fooled me." His eyes looked haunted, and they wouldn't come up to meet mine. "Where are we, anyway?"

    "Aurora's," I said.

    "Ah-hah. Okay." He chuckled grimly.

    I asked him if he remembered coming to the apartment the night before; he said no. I asked him if he remembered being at the Emerald Burrito, or the black lightning. He said no. Et cetera.

    "Do you remember telling me anything last night?"

    At this, he groaned, and rolled over on his side again. Evidently the previous night wasn't a complete blank.

    "Fuck," he said again.

    In the kitchen, Aurora had something going on, and I could tell

that it was going to be good. The smells hit my nostrils like seductive smoky tendrils in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. I left Ralph to his guilt and wandered kitchenward, hearing snake charmer music in my head.

    "Wow," I said. "What'cha got going there?"

    "Oh, nothing," she countered, blithely sweet. "Just more of that bland vegan crap."

    I started to laugh, and then I realized: I never told her that! "Hey!" I began, but she cut me off.

    "I'm sorry. I read your shit." She turned from her cooking, gave me a very direct look. "Not everything. Just since you got to Oz."

    "You suck!"

    She grinned, full of mischief, but I was too pissed-off to play coyball with her. "Aurora, that is so fucking uncool! You should have asked me frst!"

     "Hey," she said matter-of-factly. "Right now, I'm on a need-to
know basis, okay? Which means I coulda woke you up an hour and
a half ago, when I woke up, and drilled you over every speck of every goddam thing you know.

    "But you looked like you needed the sleep, and you left your computer running—your little friend left you a message, by the way; I think Mikio should see it—and to be real honest, you don't converse nearly as well as you write. So, fuck. I peeked."