Unexpected, Sadie thought. Clever. But not reason for the surge of credibility she sensed Ford felt toward Bucky.
“Exactly. Lets me keep track of the enemy without being seen.”
“Pizza vans are the enemy?”
Who do they battle? Sadie wondered. Vietnamese delivery? Pizzilla vs. Pho-Fighter? She knew that Ford was clutching the idea Bucky was mostly sane, but it seemed wise to preserve a healthy skepticism.
“Royal pizza vans.” Bucky’s eyes latched on to Ford, and he said, “When is a pizza not a pizza?”
“When it’s a Royal,” Ford answered, reciting what Sadie could tell must be a ubiquitous slogan for a well-known pizza chain, but one she’d never heard of in her neighborhood.
Bucky grinned happily. “Genius. Says it straight out, in plain sight.”
“Says what?”
“When is a pizza not a pizza,” Bucky repeated slowly. “You ever had a Royal Pizza delivered?”
Ford shook his head, and Sadie was caught off guard by a flame of anger. It was explained when he said, “Too expensive.”
“Ever seen anyone get a Royal Pizza delivered?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Start thinking about it.” Bucky shook the red beans in his hand. “Can’t tell if they’re circling or there’s just an action going on nearby.” He puffed up his cheeks, then exhaled. “Come on, let me show you around. I don’t get a lot of visitors.”
Ford followed Bucky into a corridor. “You think those pizza trucks are fakes?” A layer of gooeyness had begun to creep over Ford’s thoughts, and based on his tone Sadie decided it meant increasing doubt. Good for you!
“Of course they’re fakes,” Bucky declared.
Sadie sensed both Ford’s frustration and concern for Bucky intensifying. “Why would someone want fake pizza trucks?”
“Your tone right there, Citizen Winter. That ‘Come on, be real, man’ tone.” Bucky put his hands up and waggled his fingers like he was performing a Broadway dance routine. “That’s how they get away with it. A plan so convoluted and unlikely that anyone who believes in it must be insane.”
Because something seems too crazy to be true, it must be true, Sadie paraphrased. What would it be like to be in a mind like Bucky’s? What did conspiracy theories look like when they were taking shape?
Sadie noticed the lines of Bucky’s face thicken slightly in Ford’s vision and his features become more pronounced. Like a caricature, she thought, and wondered if it was because Ford could no longer take him seriously. “Who are they, Bucky?” he asked, following Bucky through a hidden door and up a set of stairs. Sadie sensed the air was cooler now, and she smelled a combination of mustiness and bushes. “Who controls the pizza trucks?”
“Take your pick. Eenie meenie minie moe,” Bucky recited as they stepped into a high-ceilinged space painted black. He kept going, and Ford realized they were on a stage.
Bucky moved to the center of it and waved Ford over. “Come see the view.” When Ford joined him Bucky draped an arm over his shoulder and said, “Nice to have company. It’s been a while.”
Sadie felt Ford stiffen, but she also heard a tiny chime inside of him that seemed to be the response to the call of Bucky’s loneliness. The two of them stood in the middle of the stage, gazing out in silence.
What had once been the theater was now rows of green velvet chairs overgrown with bushes. The roof was gone, and the tops of the walls were uneven, some sprouting green grass, giving the space the feeling of a pastoral dreamscape. For a moment Ford’s mind was wholly absorbed with its strange beauty, and Sadie was treated to the double magic of the space and Ford’s appreciation for it. A mass of green dots, hundreds of shades, blanketed the theater in his mind, clustering like fireflies around a bush at dusk, becoming a shimmering record of the theater. He was archiving the image, Sadie realized. She was watching him actively commit it to his memory.
Beautiful, she breathed.
“Beautiful,” Ford said. Her arms prickled, and she realized he was so moved he had goose bumps. That had never happened in shallow stasis. “Where are we?”
“My playhouse,” Bucky said. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize it. You, Ford Winter, who knows every building worth knowing in Detroit from the past hundred years?” He chuckled to himself.
Sadie heard a drumbeat in Ford’s mind like a summons into battle. He studied the seats, the stage, the few patches of plaster you could still see on the walls. “I give up,” he said.
Bucky said, “You’ll figure it out when you need to.” Then he let out a long exhale and put his face directly in Ford’s. His breath smelled like jelly beans. “Listen to me close, because this is important. ‘Get the tiger by the toe, when he hollers let him go.’ Going head to head with a tiger, you’re always going to get mauled.”
Sadie felt the gravelly sensation in Ford’s mind again now, like someone pan-sifting rocks for gold. Sadness. Ford blinked. “What are you talking about, Bucky?”
Bucky stepped away, his eyes looking everywhere except at Ford: the sky, the ceiling, the theater. He jammed his hands in his pockets and rattled the beans around while he talked. “Your damn brother who always had to be a damn knight slaying the damn monster, of course. Swashbuckling into the tiger’s den, stealing his treasures, planning to ambush him. No matter what I said, he didn’t listen.” He walked to the edge of the stage then back to the center, counting the steps under his breath as he spoke. “I put that file in your office so that you’d read it and be content—six, no, seven, damn, start over.” He was getting increasingly agitated, pacing faster, losing count. “Stop rattling cages. Stop asking questions. Stop—three, no, five, START OVER.” He paused in the middle of the stage and faced Ford. “That’s what your brother would have wanted. Tried to do at least that.” He shrugged. “Guess I owe you an apology.”
Ford was like someone who keeps coughing to clear his throat but can’t quite get it, groping for knowledge just out of reach. “For what?
“I was trying to trick you into giving up.” Bucky put up a hand. “The Serenity Services file is legit. Real deal. Case closed. Only it’s also wrong. James didn’t use drugs. James was murdered. And they’ll kill you too if you don’t stop asking questions. James did what he did, however idiotic, to save you. There’s no way he’d want you following in his footsteps, Citizen Ford.”
“James was murdered,” Ford repeated. James was murdered. His mind became still and flat, and for a moment that thought was the only thing inside of it.
Then Sadie watched as an avalanche of questions and furies and memories swept in chaotically. He didn’t know how to feel, she sensed, what to think, what to ask. He should be glad, he told himself, he hadn’t been wrong about his brother, everything he believed wasn’t a lie. Plum had said it too, but Plum could say anything. Bucky—who is at least 50 percent crazy, Sadie put in—seemed sure.
“Who did it?” Ford managed to stammer.
Bucky leaned back on the heels of his boots. “Short answer is, he killed himself by needing to play the action hero. Longer answer is, the Pharmacist did, because James more or less dared him to.” He put his hands on Ford’s shoulders and shook him, fading in and out from normal to caricature in Ford’s eyes. “Do you understand now?”
“Why did he dare the Pharmacist?”
“Going to set everyone free.” Bucky laughed, a strange high laugh. “I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried and tried. Now I’m warning you. If you don’t stop what you’re doing and start asking all the wrong questions, you’re going to end up with an overdose of lead like your brother. So cut it out.”