The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  “Hey, hey, hey,” says the agent, waving him down. “Come on, man? It’s too much. Just skip to the end, okay?”

  “Yes, yes, fine,” says Yourmajesty, leaning again to speak in hushed tones with the weirdo-twin-in-black. “But just one more thing, okay?” He faces us. “Alas, great though you were in your day, Zarathustra, it stands to reason that when it came time for cashing in your chips, this old…diseased…maniac would handle all your banking needs.”

  “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  “I said: You were great in your day, Zarathustra—”

  “Did you just quote Superman at me?”

  “No.”

  “You did! Mary. He just—he just quoted Superman at me!”

  “I did not!”

  Mary sighs. “Edger.” Her eyes widen as her head nods to indicate the rising water level.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” The agent snaps his fingers at Mary. “You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart. You killed my brothers. Prepare to die.”

  Mary frowns. “Princess Bride?”

  “Princess Bride,” I reply, nodding.

  “No. I mean that. Prepare to—ah screw it.” The Nostradamus agent tugs the Green Bay Packer’s jersey. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Yourmajesty nods, and they turn to go, but then the defensive tackle pauses to address us from over his shoulder.

  “It was Lex Luthor, by the way. Not Superman.”

  “I don’t care,” replies the Nostradamus agent from behind him, stabbing a hypodermic needle into the football player’s neck. Yourmajesty’s eyes roll up into the back of his head. He collapses, and a cable on the catwalk snaps. The agent seizes the rails on each side. Spotlights swing wildly. The agent loses his grip. Another cable snaps. His elbow collides with the railing. The catwalk sways back and forth, slowing, and the agent straightens. He signals to someone out of my range at the far end of the catwalk, then turns to us.

  “Hey, kid,” he says, half paying attention to me, and half paying attention to the cables that haven’t snapped. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me where the ring is?”

  My forehead tenses. Yourmajesty is out cold. The agent, still wearing those stupid sunglasses, is staring at me with a needle in his hand like, hey-hey, just another day at the office.

  “What’d you do to him?” I ask.

  The agent shrugs. “Double-crossed him. What’s it look like? Tell you what. I already got your blood while you were knocked out, so I don’t really need you anymore, do I? And now I got him, and by extension, the AI, so how ’bout this: You tell me where the ring is, and I let you and Blondie go. You get your life back. We agree to forget about Blondie’s little mishap with her rifle back there at the Q, everybody goes home for tea and crumpets. How’s that sound?”

  Mary’s eyes meet mine. Her earnest blue eyes are like crystal. She’s shivering and vulnerable. We could die here. Or…

  I could just let it all go, and it’d be like it was before. Back when Mary and I were standing outside Mikey’s office and I wasn’t going to do any of this, because Mikey’s problems belonged to Mikey, and Mary’s spying on me was only an unconfirmed theory, and Gran, Shep, and I still lived together in a home that hadn’t literally blown up.

  “Come on, kid,” says the agent. “This isn’t hard. None of this crap is your problem. Just tell me where the ring is. It’s not like civilization comes crashing down because you’re gonna do what any normal human being would friggin’ do.”

  I shake my head. “You’re wrong. I mean, with all that’s happened to me, I don’t think I can go back. It changes you, you know?”

  “No,” says the agent, glancing at his watch. “No, I don’t know. And if you’ve got something to say, let’s skip to that part. ’Kay? That okay with you? Because it’s been a long effin’ two days, what with flippers and that infernal dart gun, and then Moo Town and the A-Team, and the Cluck-n-Pray nutzoids, the sharpshooter babe, you, and now Mr. Ball Buster here. I mean—what a fucking clusterfuck. Now where is the goddamn ring?!”

  I look at Mary. She bites her bottom lip as she gazes through me, willing me to do the right thing.

  “There’s only the one human race,” I say, and her eyes relax. She takes a breath, releases it, smiles.

  “What the crap?” asks the agent. “Yuck. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Shrimp tacos.” He presses his fist to his sternum and clears his throat. “Whoa-kay—enjoy the bomb I strapped to the bottom of that thing. I’ll bring the marshmallows by later.”

  The ball slowly rotates. The agent gives us one last smile and wave, and then we’re staring at a brick wall.

  “I’m proud of you.” Mary smiles at me, then struggles against the ropes binding her hands behind her back. “And don’t listen to that guy. He’s a total amateur. Let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

  The ball lurches. That catwalk is going up. No—we’re being lowered. The music swells—and the pounding in my head becomes clear. It’s Blondie. Eighties music. Our spinning picks up speed. Water sloshes into my open, gaping mouth and down into my lungs. Hack, spit. Mary turns away as, too late, I cough water into her face.

  “Ooh, sorry,” I say.

  “What the actual hell?” she says. But she’s not looking at me at all. She’s looking out the still-transparent wall. Beneath us, the dance floor is turning. Everyone is swaying slowly back and forth, their arms in the air, rapt expressions on their faces.

  “We’re inside a disco ball?”

  “Well, this takes the cake,” says Mary. “Death by disco-ball water torture.”

  “To the stylings of Blondie,” I add.

  “Blondie? Who’s Blondie?”

  “A band. Blondie’s the band.”

  “This is ‘Rapture,’ by Debbie Harry.”

  “Because knowing the name of the song but not the band makes it better?”

  “Well,” she says, shrugging defensively. “It’s a good song.”

  “No song is good enough to drown to.”

  “Edger. I don’t want you to worry. We’re not going to die. Okay?”

  “I’m worried anyway. No offense.”

  I brace my shoes on the wall on either side of her head, twist and turn, wrenching my shoulders in their sockets as I try to loosen the straitjacket.

  “Look,” says Mary, turning her head so she’s not staring straight into my crotch. “The important thing in this situation is not to panic.”

  “This situation?” I stop thrashing for a moment to get a read on her. Her face is blank.

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “This specific situation?” I ask. “Trapped inside a disco ball Chinese water torture chamber, with a bomb strapped to the bottom, in Underwearld, in a straitjacket, and drowning to the tune of ‘Rapture.’ Is that the situation you’re talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, okay then. Don’t panic. Check.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  The water is filling.

  We’re spinning.

  My stomach is souring.

  Blondie is rapturing.

  The air is clammy. Dancers streak past like a sparkling dream against a backdrop of phosphorescent wallpaper of Caleb’s butt in his Calvin Kleins—Underwearld.

  “Hey Edger—it’s Caleb!” says Mary, banging her shoulder against the side of the disco ball and sloshing water. “Caleb! Caleb!”

  “You know Caleb?” I ask. “Of course you know Caleb. Because the universe just couldn’t let me die without letting me know Mary knows Caleb.”

  “Of course I know Caleb. He’s HARDON.”

  “Hard-on for you, hard-on for Kate—”

  “Oh my God, Edger. Not now, okay? High-Risk Agency for Regulating the Defense Of the NFL.”

  “Wait-wait-wait. That’s an acronym inside an acronym! It should be HARDONFL. You know, that really pisses me off. My tax dollars paid someone to capitalize that letter O. Think about that.”

  “Really? Really, Edger? You want to do th
is now?”

  “That’s what they always say too: ‘You wanna do this now?’ But notice they never balance the budget. All I’m saying is, you gotta talk about it sometime.”

  “Dammit, Edger!”

  I’m panting. She’s panting. Beneath us and on the opposite side of the club, Caleb is scanning the room from his tiptoes in front of a larger-than-life phosphorescent photograph of his crotch. Because, apparently, all paths in life lead there.

  “Caleb!” Mary yells.

  Not having any better ideas, I yell, “Caleb!”

  We yell our butts off. We bang our shoulders into the wall. Water sloshes over our faces, and the water level reaches our chins.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  “Edger. I don’t want you to worry. I read once about how much air we need to—”

  “Stop using air!”

  I tip my head back and get one last gulp of air before the end.

  There’s a pelagic quality to total submersion inside a disco ball. Chaotic bubbling pockets of air all bump up against my face. Tiny ones leave my nose. It’s like being trapped inside a can of Sprite.

  Edger.

  Bruce Lee?

  Yes. I couldn’t help notice that you’re about to die.

  Hey, yeah, funny you should mention that. Look, I don’t mean to come off as all take-take-take, me-me-me, but do you think you could, I don’t know, Jeet Kune Do-chop a hole in the wall or something?

  No, says Bruce Lee. That won’t work. Physics.

  A tiny little ray of hope snuffs out in my chest.

  Okay. Well. Um. Do you have any ideas?

  Now that you mention it, yes. As it turns out, escaping from a straitjacket inside a Chinese water torture chamber is Harry Houdini’s specialty.

  Historical Courtesy Concealment of a Selfish Magician’s Trick, as Chronicled by Herodotus (c. 484—c. 425 BCE)

  It is a common-sense fact, though one most are not given to reflect much on, that deliberately dislocating your shoulder and then putting it back in hurts. It hurts rather a lot. It takes serious leverage to move the bone. It isn’t as easy as one might think. Especially if one is underwater inside a spinning disco ball listening to “Rapture.” It is inadvisable to try this at home.

  Even less well known than these facts is that Harry Houdini is a dick.

  I heard that.

  Yes, we know.

  (But it’s true. Houdini hates sharing his tricks—even with someone who is dying—which, I’m sure you will agree, is rather selfish under the circumstances. Nevertheless, after extensive high-speed negotiations, and a litany of promises made in legal language, Houdini seems innately to grasp the fact that Edger and Mary are close to the point of no return, oxygen-wise, and that, if he doesn’t help, Edger and Mary and everyone else in Underwearld are going to get blown up. And so in the end, while a good magician may never reveal his secrets, it takes a real dick to keep said secrets from the only guy on the planet who can use us dead folks’ wisdom, knowledge, and expertise to heretofore save the day.)

  I can hear you in parentheses too, you know.

  Yes, we know.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  My left shoulder is throbbing and swollen as I shimmy out of the straitjacket. I angle my knees to the right to make enough room to pull the jacket off the rest of the way with my feet. Mary, meanwhile, is fiddling beneath the back of her dress. She begins to turn, revolving one hundred eighty degrees—when I catch a glimpse of her bare butt, her panties tucked beneath immaculately sculpted cheeks, and the ring clasped in her right hand—then her turn completes. Her legs spread so her feet can brace on the walls on either side of my head and stop her spinning momentum. Our eyes meet. Her scowl could melt faces.

  She lowers her shoulder to reach between her legs from behind her back. Her dress flips up. Her underwear is now fixed. In her fingers is the Z ring. My hands are shaking from the pain of having just popped my shoulder out and then pushed back in. The ring drops. For a split second, it’s floating in the space between her open legs. She catches me looking and goes wide-eyed. She nods frantically at the sinking ring. But I’m frozen in indecision. Here I am, about to die, and all I can think is: Where did she hide that ring?

  She jerks her pelvis in an apparent attempt at using her hoo-hah as a pointer, or else to keep the ring afloat. Abruptly, she stops her erotic conniptions and reads my face. She rolls her eyes, then makes one last pointed jerk of her head: Take this ring or I will sniper you to death.

  I reach an unsteady hand for the ring—praying the ball doesn’t lurch and I grab something I’m not supposed to. I catch it on my first try. The ball lurches. I crash face-first into her cleavage. Her legs wrap around me and steady us. I dig my shoulder into her ribs, push off. She releases me, and I slip the ring on my finger and brace myself.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  I grit my teeth. The bubbling in my ears is hyperactive. An invisible squeegee is raking my skin as the suit issues from the ring, up my finger, my arm, body, legs, head. It moves over my recently dislocated shoulder—and the pain flares, races down my spine, fans out in my middle, and finishes in my toes. I cry out, releasing more precious air. By the time the heads-up display springs to life, I’m not sure I can do anything; I’m in total agony. The pain in my shoulder has metastasized. Claustrophobia is crashing in. I’m dying one tiny air bubble at a time.

  Focus your mind like this. Houdini takes control. Fear and pain wash out like a receding tide.

  Thank you, I reply, astonished.

  Welcome. Not such a dick now, am I?

  My hands become fists. I place them on the inner walls of our prison, and I summon the chain-breaking strength of Samson—the first strongman I can think of—and he’s here, with me.

  The suit will augment your strength, he says. But together, we can move mountains—

  Really, I cut in. Just breaking out of here is good.

  We’ll pose for all the romance novel covers, with my thick mane of—

  Okay, okay!

  —and my bulging—

  Just push, for the love of all that’s—

  His courage is now my courage. His spirit is now my spirit. We push, and his final moments between the pillars of Dagon flash before my eyes…

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Water and glass shower the dance floor. Needle scratches vinyl. Hattori Hanzo seizes control instinctively and I land with the grace of a ninja. Mary, who has no Hanzo, thuds with the grace of a turkey carcass dropped from the Level Two parapet of Westfield Horton Plaza.

  “Kill them!” someone yells.

  “Don’t kill them!” I yell back, figuring that’s got to be worth a try.

  Panic ensues. Screaming people run and duck for cover. Shots are fired. A bullet ricochets off a larger-than-life Caleb crotch. I seize control of my body, grab Mary, and drag her behind a nearby couch.

  More gunfire.

  I chance a peek. Real-life Caleb Montana is near the front door, exchanging shots with two Nostradamus agents behind a life-size statue of Caleb in his quarterback uniform, one arm cocked back, preparing to pass the football, and the other stretched out in front, pointing.

  I round on Mary, who flings her wet hair back like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Water sprays my visor.

  “Cut me loose.”

  “Right, right,” I say, feeling around on my utility belt. Jeez, I’ve never tried to locate anything without someone helping me from the Collective Unconscious. There are a lot of things here. I pull a tiny ball out—it grows into a switchblade-shaped object. Seems promising. I flick it on. Blue flame blows out from the end.

  “Holy crap!”

  “Come on, quit fooling around.”

  “Don’t rush me! Do you have any idea how stressful this is?”

  “Come on,” she says, her voice husky.

  “There’s like, fifty thousand things on this belt, and they all look the same.”

  “Just calm down.”

  “You never see B
atman having this problem,” I mutter.

  “Behind you.”

  “What?”

  “Duck!”

  I duck, and Mary kicks the spot where my head just was. Someone grunts. Dead weight falls on top of me. I push it off and discover that I have been waylaid by one of the weird Dr. Seuss twins.

  It’s a T-6 clone, says Killmaster. I looked it up, sir.

  What? I reply. The Nostradamus agents are clones?

  So that’s why their minds read like origami, says Bruce Lee.

  T-6 clones? I say, too weirded out to move on.

  Yeah, he replies. What’d you think they were?

  My eyebrows rise as I consider this. You know, what with all the weird crap going around, I guess I’d have gone with robots.

  Don’t be absurd, says Killmaster. We don’t have the technology.

  More gunshots. I stick my head over the couch for a quick peek. Caleb is pinned down.

  “Roll over,” I say, and Mary, eyeing the mini blowtorch, awkwardly complies, cheek on the floor, back arched, her butt in the air.

  “Be gentle,” she says.

  “Meep.”

  “Edger?”

  I flick on the blowtorch and concentrate on aiming the flame away from her while burning through the soaking-wet canvas straps binding her hands, which dry and then begin to fray.

  “Oo-ooh, it’s hot,” she says, jerking away. “Don’t you have protection?”

  The straps being weakened, I flick the torch off and begin tugging at the canvas, thinking to simply rip the damn thing.

  “Pull—no, push! Wait a minute. Maybe if you get your leg up, kind of—spread them out more—aw, jeez.”

  Caleb slides across the dance floor, guns blazing, and skids to a stop behind the couch next to us.

  “Porn much?”

  “Hi,” I say.

  Mary pulls her hands apart and the straps snap. Wonder Woman. She rolls over and sits up. Her cheeks are as red as mine feel.