“Where’d Lily get the zapper?”
“Wouldn’t say. Even when I said I wanted to get one, she wouldn’t tell. What nerve, huh? Walk up to a stranger and stick ‘em with that. Something else too—I was looking at her face when she did it. Max, it was real cool. Not scared or nervous, like you’d expect. Tough. I would not make that woman pissed off if I were you.
“Time to go. Thanks a million for the drawing. I can’t wait to show Mabdean.”
I sat at the empty table finishing my meal and my drawing. I started by sketching a little boy and a giant dog standing side by side. Guess who? In the next frame, a baseball comes flying in from the side. Next frame, ball hits boy on the head. Next frame he goes down. The drawing became almost automatic. I wasn’t really sure what was up, so I let my hand continue. The kid lies motionless. His dog watches for a frame, then picks him up in its mouth and carries him to a house. It’s obviously not the boy’s home, because when the people open the door and see what’s there, both throw up their hands and scream. The dog is scared into dropping his bundle and running away. They pick up the still-unconscious boy and bring him inside. I stopped there and checked my watch. I’d been working almost two hours but something was definitely up—my brain hatching an idea in this, its vocabulary for the day. I went on. At first, Alberta and Sullivan kept coming round asking if I wanted anything, but after I said no, thanks enough times they left me alone. The restaurant filled with the lunch crowd and the women were busy enough with their customers.
The couple bring the boy into the bedroom and lay him down on their bed. Until now there’d been no dialogue in the story, no captions, no words. I decided to keep it that way. The man and woman look at each other and smile foxily. He runs out of the room and comes back in the next picture with a giant tool and paint boxes. Bending over the unconscious child, the two of them go to work on him. Sawing, painting, hammering, things fly up in the air—clothes, bones, a sneaker. Arms and legs, tools and flurries of wild work. The woman runs out of the room and returns with a bizarre, forbidding tool. Holding it in front of her, she literally dives back into the high dust cloud that’s risen above the bed. The two step out of it a moment for a rest, but magically the melee of flying objects and dust continues without them. They leap back in. The cloud disappears, but all we see are their two backs and many working arms over the bed/operating table.
In the next frame the boy is sitting up, but looks completely different. He is obviously still dazed from the smack on the head and the transforming operation. Holding up a mirror, he looks at his reflection with no recognition. Next, the three of them are at a table eating a big turkey dinner. The little guy’s plate is full and he’s smiling. There’s someone at the door. Close-up of a hand going BANG BANG BANG. Close-up of “parents” exchanging worried looks. Mom answers. Outside, two sad-faced adults stand next to the big dog who brought the kid here. There’s a discussion. Close-up of four mouths talking at each other simultaneously. But it’s plain the new parents lie to the reaclass="underline" Are you crazy? He’s our boy. Look at him, does he look like either of you? Not at all. Not one speck. The real parents and dog leave together, brokenhearted. The dog looks back over its shoulder as the three of them walk away into a sad sunset. In the meantime back at the dinner table, something else terrible is happening—the boy’s body and face are coming apart and beginning to melt.
“Cooool, Max. Definitely gross!” Lincoln dropped his school bag on the chair next to mine and, leaning on my shoulder, bent over for a better look. He was holding a sandwich they’d probably made for him in the kitchen. “Elvis, you gotta see this.”
Elvis Packard, Lincoln’s best friend, came over and condescended to look while devouring one of the restaurant’s fat eclairs. I felt like snatching it out of his hand. I disliked Elvis so much that anytime he came within radar range, my tongue turned dry in my throat and I could barely greet the little shit. The son of two movie agents, he had the manners of a hungry jackal and generally behaved like a spoiled brat gone nuclear. Worse, he was only ten but already capable of seriously nasty things. Even worse, Lincoln was fascinated by him and the two were inseparable.
“Hi, Linc. Elvis, how are you?” He chewed. He stared at me. He said nothing. “Are you speaking today, El-Void? How about ‘Hi, Max, nice to see you’?” Both Lincoln and I looked at him to see if there’d be a response. There wasn’t. “Elvis, granted we don’t like each other. But I don’t like you for good reasons—you’re rude and sneaky. You don’t like me because you don’t like anything, and because I’m probably the only person who ever talked to you like this. Therefore, let’s work out a deaclass="underline" we’re allowed to dislike each other, but we must remain civil. Know what that means? We say hello, goodbye, please, and thank you. That’s all. Those are the rules from now on. If you fail to follow them, I have the right to squeeze your eyeballs into your sockets until you become civil again.”
Lincoln was giggling but Elvis was not.
“Why are you always mean to me?”
“Because you threw a hamster against a wall. Because you hit my son on the head with a flashlight. Because you step on our dog’s tail whenever you don’t think anyone’s watching. Because of two hundred other reasons. However, Lincoln likes you, so I will endure you. But behave around me, sweetie pie. I’m bigger than you.”
We dueled with our eyes a moment until the little poltroon looked away. I’m sure he was planning some later outrage against me, but for the moment I’d won and victory was sweet.
“So, Lincoln, what’s up?”
“Nothin’. What are you drawing? Can I see the whole thing?”
Sliding the book closer to me, I slowly closed the cover. “Not yet. Maybe if it comes to something. You know how I am—I don’t like people looking till something’s finished.”
He turned and translated for his friend. “Max’s weird about his cartoons. He won’t show them till he thinks they’re ready. You should see some of the great stuff he threw out!”
“My father doesn’t think your cartoons are funny.”
“Tell him that’s a compliment, coming from the father of Elvis Packard.”
“Huh?”
“Hey, Max, you wanna do something?”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Elvis has to go home and I thought we could hang around. You know.”
“Okay. What do you want to do?”
“Where’s Mom?”
“At a meeting with Ibrahim and Gus.”
“You think we could go to the movies? Remember we wanted to see the robot one?”
“Right. Sure. Let’s do that.”
He threw a beaming look at Elvis that said, “Isn’t my dad great?” and made me feel bulletproof. He was such a nice fellow. Generally it was so easy to please him. Looking at the two boys, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with Elvis Packard. If he didn’t whine, he snuck. He lied outrageously, but when caught, he denied ever saying any such thing. I am making him out to be a dreadful human being but that’s only because he was. I’m sure most parents know an Elvis P. Usually these Children from Hell live next door (i.e., conveniently nearby for endlessly frequent visits) and for some inexplicable reason are the favorites of your own normally sane, well-balanced offspring. You ask yourself a hundred times what do they see in these weasels, these snide whippersnappers who enter your house every time like minor criminals casing the joint or snobs vastly amused by what they see.
Luckily Elvis took off after finishing his eclair. He said “See ya” to Lincoln but nothing to me till I put a thumb on my eye and demonstrated what I’d do if he wasn’t civil. The “Bye” he offered could only have been picked up with a hearing device.
“You hate him, huh, Max?”
“Well, there are other people I like more. Come on, let’s catch a flick.”
Both of us liked going to a four o’clock show. Theaters are empty then and the whole place is yours.