“Who?”
“The nemesis I’m seeing right now. He’s got a great sense of humor. Sent me a piano crate full of albino kittens last week. Some project he’s working on. They pissed everywhere. Had to find homes for them all. Of course, first we checked to make sure that they weren’t little bombs or possessed by demons or programmed to hypnotize small children with their swirly red kitten eyes. Give them bad dreams. That would have been a real PR nightmare.”
“So what’s up with this one? Why does he want to destroy the world?”
“He won’t say. I don’t think his heart’s really in it. He keeps doing all these crazy stunts, like with the kittens. There was a thing with a machine to turn everything into tomato juice. But somebody who used to hang out with him says he doesn’t even like tomato juice. If he ever tries to kidnap you, Bunnatine, whatever you do, don’t say yes if he offers you a game of chess. Try to stay off the subject of chess. He’s one of those guys who think all master criminals ought to be chess players, but he’s terrible. He gets sulky.”
“I’ll try to remember. Are you comfortable? Put your head here. Are you cold? That outfit doesn’t look very warm. Do you want my jacket?”
“Stop fussing, Bunnatine. Am I too heavy?”
“Go to sleep, Biscuit.”
His head was so heavy she couldn’t figure out how he carried it around on his neck all day. He wasn’t asleep. She could hear him thinking.
He said, “You know, someday I’m going to fuck up. Someday I’ll fuck up and the world won’t get saved.”
“Yeah. I know. A big flood. That’s okay. You just take care of yourself, okay? And I’ll take care of myself and the world will take care of itself, too.”
Her leg felt wet. Gross. He was drooling on her leg. He said, “I dream about you, Bunnatine. I dream that you’re drowning, too. And I can’t do anything about it. I can’t save you.”
She said, “You don’t have to save me, baby. Remember? I float. Let everything turn into water. Just turn into water. Let it turn into beer. Tomato juice. Let the Land of Oz sink. Ozlantis. Little happy mutant Dorothy mermaids. Let all those mountain houses and ski condos go down, all the way down and the deer and the bricks and the high school girls and the people who never tip. It isn’t all that great a world anyway, you know? Biscuit? Maybe it doesn’t want to be saved. So stop worrying so much. I’ll float. I’m Ivory soap. Won’t even get my toes wet until you come and find me.”
“Oh, good, Bunnatine,” he said, drooling, “that’s a weight off my mind”—and fell asleep. She sat beneath his heavy head and listened to the air rushing around up there in the invisible leaves. It sounded like water moving fast. Waterfalls and lakes of water rushing up the side of the mountain. But that was some other universe. Here it was only night and wind and trees and the stars were coming out. Hey, Dad, you fuckhead.
Her legs fell asleep and she needed to pee again, but she didn’t want to wake up Biscuit. She bent over and kissed him on the top of his head. He didn’t wake up. He just mumbled, Quit it, Bunnatine. Love me alone. Or something like that.
She remembers being a kid. Nine or ten. Sneaking back into the house at four in the morning. Her best friend, Biscuit, has gone home, too, to lie in his bed and not sleep. She had to beg him to let her go home. They have school tomorrow. She’s tired and she’s so hungry. Fighting crime is hard work. Her mother is in the kitchen, making pancakes. There’s something about the way she looks that tells Bunnatine she’s been out all night, too. Maybe she’s been out fighting crime, too. Bunnatine knows her mother is a superhero. She isn’t just a waitress. That’s just her cover story.
She stands in the door of the kitchen and watches her mother. She practices her hovering. She practices all the time.
Her mother says, “Want some pancakes, Bunnatine?”
She waited as long as she could, and then she heaved his head up and put it down on the ground. She covered his shoulders with her jacket. Like setting a table with a handkerchief. Look at the big guy, lying there so peacefully. Maybe he’ll sleep for a hundred years. But more likely the mutants will wake him, eventually, with their barbaric yawps. They’re into kazoos right now and heavy-metal hooting. She can hear them warming up. Biscuit hung out with some of the mutants at school, years and years ago. They’ll get a kick out of his new outfit. There’s a ten-year high school reunion coming up, and Biscuit will come home for that. He gets all sentimental about things like that. Mutants, on the other hand, don’t do things like parades or reunions. They’re good at keeping secrets, though. They made great babysitters when her mom couldn’t take care of the kid.
She keeps her headlights off, all the way down the mountain. Turns the engine off, too. Just sails down the mountain like a black wing.
When she gets home, she’s mostly sober and of course the kid is still asleep. Her mom doesn’t say anything, although Bunnatine knows she doesn’t approve. She thinks Bunnatine ought to tell Biscuit about the kid. But it’s a little late for that, and who knows? Maybe she isn’t his kid anyway.
The kid has fudge smeared all over her face and her pillow. Leftover fudge from the parade, probably. Bunnatine’s mom has a real sweet tooth. Kid probably sat up eating it in the dark, after Bunnatine’s mom put her to bed. Bunnatine kisses the kid on the forehead. Goes and gets a washcloth, comes back and wipes off some of the fudge. Kid still doesn’t wake up. She’s going to be real disappointed about the autograph. Maybe Bunnatine will just forge Biscuit’s handwriting. Write something real nice. It’s not like Biscuit will care. Bunnatine would like to crawl into the kid’s bed, just curl up around the kid and get warm again, but she’s already missed two shifts this week. So she takes a hot shower and goes to sit with her mom in the kitchen until she has to leave for work. Neither of them has much to say to the other, which is normal, but her mom makes Bunnatine some eggs and toast. If Biscuit were here, she’d make him breakfast, too, and Bunnatine imagines that, eating breakfast with Biscuit and her mom, waiting for the sun to come up so that the day can start all over again. Then the kid comes in the kitchen, crying and holding out her arms for Bunnatine. “Mommy,” she says. “Mommy, I had a really bad dream.”
Bunnatine picks her up. Such a heavy little kid. Her nose is running and she still smells like fudge. No wonder she had a bad dream. Bunnatine says, “Shhh. It’s okay, baby. It was just a bad dream. Just a dream. Tell me about the dream.”
The Lesson
The fight starts two days before Thanh and Harper are due to fly out to the wedding. The wedding is on a small private island somewhere off the coast of South Carolina. Or Alabama. The bride is an old friend. The fight is about all sorts of things. Thanh’s long-standing resentment of Harper’s atrocious work schedule, the discovery by Harper that Thanh, in a fit of industriousness, has thrown away all of Harper’s bits and ends of cheese while cleaning out the refrigerator.
The fight is about money. Harper works too much. Thanh is an assistant principal in the Brookline school system. He hasn’t had a raise in three years. The fight is about Thanh’s relationship with the woman who is, precariously, six months pregnant with Harper and Thanh’s longed-for child. Thanh tries once again to explain to Harper. He doesn’t even really like Naomi that much. Although he is of course grateful to her. Why be grateful to her? Harper says. We’re paying her. She’s doing this because we’re paying her money. Not because she wants to be friends with us. With you. The thing Thanh doesn’t say is that he might actually like Naomi under other circumstances. Let’s say, if they were stuck next to each other on a long flight. If they never had to see each other again. If she weren’t carrying Harper and Thanh’s baby. If she were doing a better job of carrying the baby. They have chosen not to know the gender of the baby.