Anyway, some pictures of her at the convention got posted on the Internet, and they went somewhat viral since Amy is kind of a minor celebrity in some circles. She had quickly gotten snowed under with messages from creepers, and at least three of them had dug up her phone number. Half the messages were asking why she didn’t go for the more revealing version of the costume with the bare midriff; the other half were informing her that she was too ugly to wear such a thing in public. She was never in any actual danger, as far as she knew, but the sheer volume of it freaked her out and, well, brought back some bad memories. From that point on, she had this feeling like all eyes were on her the moment she stepped outside with the metal hand—she even had a panic attack, once.
So, she put it away. She never told David why.
The Mustang passed a flooded cornfield and Amy wondered if the road itself wouldn’t be underwater a week from now. Or a day. She wondered if that would be a valid excuse to miss work, or if they’d just fire everybody who didn’t own a canoe. At this rate, the office itself would be under before too long—she imagined everyone sitting at their desks, neck deep in flood water, taking calls while fish swam in front of their monitors.
She asked, “What happens to the rabbits when it’s like this?”
“What rabbits?”
“Don’t rabbits live in tunnels? And moles and mice and such? Do they drown, when it floods?”
Thinking quickly, Shawn said, “Rabbits are fast, they can outrun the water.”
“But what if they’ve got babies? How would they get them out of there?”
“Baby rabbits are good swimmers. They’re not like humans where they have to take classes, they can do it coming out of the womb. They’re fine.”
She wondered how long he would keep making stuff up if she kept asking. She had asked David that same question the day before and his answer had been, “It started raining weeks ago, those lazy bastards have had plenty of time to get to the high ground. What are they waiting for, FEMA?”
Most of the people Amy worked with were cool, which is one of the biggest factors in determining your quality of life, if you think about it. She had parlayed her five semesters of programming classes into a job that involved no coding at all—a call center for an alarm company, in which virtually all of the calls involved sensors getting tripped by dogs. Business had been booming for the home alarm sector in the area; everybody in Undisclosed wanted a system even though not one home in twenty had anything worth stealing. It was mostly scared people, hoping to fend off monsters. Whether or not the kind of creatures that turned up around town would even trip a sensor or show up on camera was a mystery to Amy, but of course she knew that what people were really buying was the ability to get a good night’s sleep (which was ironic, considering Amy had applied for the eleven-to-eight shift specifically because she couldn’t sleep herself). She liked it well enough, even at nine bucks an hour. She felt like a policeman, guarding people in their beds. Well, at least the ones who could afford a home security system.
Shawn said, “You guys have a plan if you get flooded out?”
“David says we can get a bunch of those inflatable sex dolls from the shop downstairs and strap them together as a raft.”
Shawn laughed, but in a way that made it clear he didn’t approve. David made constant jokes about how he thought Shawn was trying to “get into her pants,” which meant that David did in fact think Shawn was trying to get into her pants. Amy had long ago learned the secret to reading people’s minds, a mystical two-step process that involved 1) shutting her mouth and 2) listening to what they say. People will scream their secrets if you just give them a chance. Even the liars can’t resist letting the truth ooze through the gaps.
So, David would make his snarky little remarks about Shawn and Amy would tell him that the guy was married. David would then say something to the effect of, “You have a lot to learn about guys, Amy.” But he was wrong—she was pretty sure she understood the game better than he did. If she were to tell Shawn to pull over right now, then rip open her shirt and ask him to ravage her, he’d flee the car and stammer an apology, maybe politely ask her where her boobs had gone (“Oh, sorry, that was mostly bra”). He doesn’t want to cheat on his wife; he wants girls to laugh at his jokes and be in awe of his car. He wants to feel the way he did back when he was a cool dude in high school and not a twenty-six-year-old slaving away in an office with a kid at home, watching his prime tick away one can of Red Bull at a time. It was all harmless.
They arrived at the apartment the sex shop wore as a hat and Amy saw David’s car was gone. So, he was still out working his missing girl case—without her. She juggled her umbrella and headed around toward the side entrance, the pink VENUS FLYTRAP neon buzzing overhead. She passed the one-armed concrete snowman at the bottom of the stairs, headed up, shook off her umbrella, and pushed her way through the door to the apartment. She glimpsed the kitchenette …
And, just for a moment, thought she saw something strange.
It was David, standing there with a mixing bowl in one hand and a whisk in the other. Like he was in the middle of cooking something. But—and she wasn’t even sure she really saw this—in that moment, he wasn’t moving. Like, at all. He was standing perfectly frozen, facing the window to Amy’s left. He wasn’t mixing, he wasn’t blinking, he wasn’t breathing. He was just standing, for a solid two seconds. Then Amy came through the door and all at once he popped into action, like a video that had been unpaused.
Weird.
“Were you transfixed by something outside?”
David said, “What’s that?”
“You were staring out the window.”
“Was I? Just looking at the rain, I guess.”
“Did you solve the thing with the little girl?”
“We did, she’s back home safe and sound. Turned out there was nothing clown dick about it, it was just a local creep. We got the cops to track his phone and found his van. Whatever he was going to do, he never got a chance.”
“Thanks to you!”
“Thanks to us.”
“Holy crap, David. You guys are heroes! This is amazing!”
Amy thought she heard something unusual, but couldn’t put her finger on it. Then she suddenly realized it was what she wasn’t hearing. She poked her head into the bathroom and confirmed it: no plink-plink-plink of the roof leak.
“Hey! They fixed the leak! This is the best day ever.”
“Actually, I did. Got tired of waiting on the landlord. I went up and it was pretty easy to see, there was just a gap in the flashing around an exhaust vent up there, all I had to do was squirt a bunch of silicone caulk in the crack. Took five bucks and fifteen minutes, should have done it months ago.”
“Still, I’m impressed. Didn’t know you even knew how to do that sort of thing.”
“I didn’t, I looked it up. It’s not brain surgery. I’m making you waffles. You hungry?”
She wasn’t, but said, “Starving!” David, it appeared, was having one of his Good Days.
He said, “Then have a seat. With what I’ve got planned, you’ll need your energy.”
She put on a devilish look. “Oh, really?”
John
John had been awake for twenty-two hours already and there was no sleep on the horizon, not when a girl could be getting molested/tortured/eaten or god knows what at the hands of god knows who. So, John swung by his house and changed out of his court appearance clothes, downed a mug of coffee, ate two Hostess CupCakes, and finished it off by smoking some crystal meth. Soon he was back behind the wheel of the Ezekiel Jeep and heading toward the church, feeling good as new.