Get in trouble stories, p.11
Get in Trouble: Stories, page 11
Billie has nothing to say to this.
“You know what the difference is between a superhero and a supervillain?” Conrad Linthor asks her.
Billie waits.
“The superhero has a really good agent,” Conrad Linthor says. “Someone like my dad. You have no idea the kind of stuff they get away with. A sixteen-year-old girl is nothing.”
“What about Lightswitch?” Billie says.
“Who? Her? She’s no big deal,” Conrad Linthor says. “Old school.”
“I’m going to go to bed now,” Billie says.
“No,” Conrad Linthor says. “Wait. You have to come with me and see what Ernesto did. It’s just so cool. Everything’s carved out of butter.”
“If I go see, will you let me go to bed?”
“Sure,” Conrad Linthor says.
“Will you be nice to Aliss? If she’s still up at the party when you get back?”
“I’ll try,” Conrad Linthor says.
“Okay,” Billie says. “I’ll go look at Ernesto’s butter. Is he around?”
Conrad Linthor levers himself off the wall. Pats it. “Ernesto? I don’t know where he is. How should I know?”
They go into the forbidden maze. Back to the kitchen, and through it, now empty and dark and somehow like a morgue. A mausoleum.
“Ernesto’s been doing the work in a freezer,” Conrad Linthor says. “You have to keep these guys cold. Wait. Let me get it unlocked. Cool tool, right? Borrowed it from The Empty Jar. He’s one of dad’s clients. They’re making a movie about him. I saw the script. It’s crap.”
The lock comes off. The lights go on. Before I tell you what was inside the freezer, Paul Zell, first let me tell you something about how big the freezer is. It will help you visualize. The freezer is plenty big. Bigger than most New York apartments, Billie thinks, although this is just hearsay. She’s never been in a New York apartment.
What’s inside the supersized freezer? Supervillains. Warm Gun, The Nin-jew, Cat Lady, Hellalujah, Shibboleth, The Shambler, Mandroid, Manplant, The Manticle, Patty Cakes. Lots of others. Name a famous supervillain and he or she or zhe is in the freezer. They’re life-sized. They’re not real, although Billie’s heart slams. She thinks: Who caught them all? How are they so perfectly still? Maybe Conrad Linthor is a superhero, after all.
Conrad Linthor touches Hellalujah’s red, bunchy bicep. Presses just a little. The color smears. Lardy, yellow-white underneath.
The supervillains are made out of butter. “Hand tinted,” Conrad says.
“Ernesto made these?” Billie says. She wants to touch one, too. She walks up to Patty Cakes. Breathes on the cold, outstretched palms. You can see Patty Cakes’s lifeline. Her love line. Billie realizes something else. The butter statues are all decorated to look like chess pieces. Their signature outfits have been changed to black and red. Cat Lady is wearing a butter crown.
Conrad Linthor puts his hand on Hellalujah’s shoulder. Puts his arm around Hellalujah. Then he squeezes, hard. His arm goes through Hellalujah’s neck. Like an arm going through butter. The head pops off.
“Careful!” Billie says.
“I can’t believe it’s butter,” Conrad says. He giggles. “Come on. Can you believe this? He made a whole chess set out of butter. And why? For some banquet for some guy who used to fight crime? That’s just crap. This is better. Us here having some fun. This is spontaneous. Haven’t you always wanted to fight the bad guy and win? Now’s your chance.”
“But Ernesto made these!” Billie’s fists are clenched.
“You heard him,” Conrad says. “It’s no big deal. It’s not art. There’s no statement here. It’s just butter.”
He has Hellalujah’s sad head in his arms. “Heavy,” he says. “Catch. Food fight.” He throws the head at Billie. It hits her in the chest and knocks her over.
She lies on the cold floor, looking at Hellalujah’s head. One side is flat. Half of Hellalujah’s broad nose is stuck like a slug to Billie’s chest. Her right arm is slimy with colored butter.
Billie sits up. She cradles Hellalujah’s head, hurls it back at Conrad. She misses. Hellalujah’s head smacks into Mandroid’s shiny stomach. Hangs there, half embedded.
“Funny,” Conrad Linthor says.
Billie shrieks. She leaps at him, her hands killing claws. They both go down on top of The Shambler. Billie brings her knee up between Conrad Linthor’s legs, drives it up into butter. She grabs Conrad Linthor by the hair, bangs his head on The Shambler’s head. “Ow,” Conrad Linthor says. “Ow, ow, ow.”
He wriggles under her. Gets hold of her hands, pulls at them even as she tightens her grip on his hair. His hair is slick with butter and she can’t hold on. She lets go. His head flops down. “Get off,” he says. “Get off.”
Billie drives her elbow into his stomach. Her feet skid a little as she stands up. She grabs hold of Warm Gun’s gun for balance and it breaks off. “Sorry,” she says, apologizing to butter. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Conrad Linthor is trying to sit up. There’s spit at the corner of his mouth, or maybe it’s butter.
Billie runs for the door. Gets there just as Conrad Linthor realizes what she’s doing. “Wait!” he says. “Don’t you dare! You bitch!”
Too late. She’s got the door shut. She leans against it, smearing it with butter.
Conrad Linthor pounds on the other side. “Billie!” It’s a faint yell. Barely audible. “Let me out, okay? It was just fun. I was just having fun. It was fun, wasn’t it?”
Here’s the thing, Paul Zell. It was fun. That moment when I threw Hellalujah’s head at him? That felt good. It felt so good I’d pay a million bucks to do it again. I can admit that now. But I don’t like that it felt good. I don’t like that it felt like fun. But I guess now I understand why supervillains do what they do. Why they run around and destroy things. Because it feels fantastic. Someday I’m going to buy a lot of butter and build something out of it, just so I can tear it all to pieces again.
Billie could leave Conrad Linthor in the freezer. Walk away. Somebody would probably find him. Right?
But then she thinks about what he’ll do in there. He’ll kick apart all of the other buttervillains. Stomp them into greasy pieces. She knows he’ll do it because she can imagine doing the same thing.
So in a little while she lets him out.
“Not funny,” Conrad Linthor says. He looks very funny.
Picture him, all decked out in red and black butter. His lips are purplish-bluish. He’s shivering with cold. So is Billie. “Not funny at all,” Billie agrees. “What the hell was that? Ernesto’s your friend. How could you do that to him?”
“He’s not really a friend,” Conrad Linthor says. “Not like you and me. He’s just some guy I hang out with sometimes. Friends are boring. I get bored.”
“We’re not friends,” Billie says.
“Sure,” Conrad Linthor says. “I know that. But I thought if I said we were, you might fall for it. You have no idea how stupid some people are. Besides I was doing it for you. No, really. I was. Sometimes when a superhero is in a really bad situation, that’s when they finally discover their ability. What they can do. With some people it’s an amulet, or a ring, but mostly it’s just environmental. Your adrenaline kicks in. My father is always trying stuff on me just in case I’ve got something that we haven’t figured out yet.”
Maybe some of this is true and maybe all of it is true and maybe Conrad Linthor is just testing Billie again. Is she that stupid? He’s watching her right now, to see if she’s falling for any of this.
“I’m out of here,” Billie says. She checks her pocket just to make sure Paul Zell’s ring is still there. She’s been doing that all day.
“Wait,” Conrad Linthor says. “You don’t know how to get back. You need help.”
“I made a trail,” Billie says. All the way through the corridors this time, she pressed the diamond along the wall. Left a thin little mark. Nothing anyone else would even know to look for.
“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
Once, 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.
What is it with rich girls and pyramids, anyway?
In hieroglyphs, you put the names of the important people, kings and queens and gods, in a cartouche. Like this.
“Were you really going to do it?” wants to know. This is before the snake, before I know what she’s up to.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Why?”
“Why not?” I say. “Lots of reasons. ‘Why’ is kind of a dumb question, isn’t it? I mean, why did God make me so pretty? Why size four jeans?”
There’s a walk-in closet in the burial chamber. I went through it looking for something useful. Anything useful. Silk shawls, crushed velvet dresses, black jeans in the wrong size. A stereo system loaded with the kind of music rich goth girls listen to. Extra pillows. Sterling silver. Perfumes, makeup. A mummified cat. . I remember when died. We were eight. They were already laying the foundations of ’s pyramid. The Olds called in the embalmers.
We helped with the natron. I had nightmares for a week.
says, “They’re for the afterlife, okay?”
“You’re not going to be fat in the afterlife?” At this point, I still don’t know ’s plan, but I’m starting to worry. has a taste for the epic. I suppose it runs in the family.
“My Ba is skinny,” says. “Unlike yours, . You may be skinny on the outside, but you have a fat-ass heart. Anubis will judge you. Ammit will devour you.”
She sounds so serious. I should laugh. You try laughing when you’re down in the dark, in your sister’s secret burial chamber—not the decoy one where everybody hangs out and drinks, where once—oh, God, how sweet is that memory still—you and your sister’s Face did it on the memorial stone—under three hundred thousand limestone blocks, down at the bottom of a shaft behind a door in an antechamber that maybe somebody, in a couple of hundred years, will stumble into.
What kind of afterlife do you get to have as a mummy? If you’re , I guess you believe your Ba and Ka will reunite in the afterlife. thinks she’s going to be an Akh, an immortal. She and the rest of them go around stockpiling everything they think they need to have an excellent afterlife. The Olds indulge them. The girls plan for the afterlife. The boys play sports, collect race cars or twentieth-century space shuttles, scheme to get laid. I specialize in the latter.
The girls have ushabti made of themselves, give them to each other at the pyramid dedication ceremonies, the sweet sixteen parties. They collect shabti of their favorite singers, actors, whatever. They read The Book of the Dead. In the meantime, their pyramids are where we go to have a good time. When I commissioned the artist who makes my ushabti, I had her make two different kinds. One is for people I don’t know well. The other shabti is for the girls I’ve slept with. I modeled for that one in the nude. If I’m going to hang out with these girls in the afterlife, I want to have all my working parts.
