by Ned Vizzini
Another hequet lies shot outside a tavern, his head in the gutter. Once again there’s a hole through the skull, clean, with a pool of blood and no bullet. I say one of my lame prayers.
“Some people fought back,” Mortin says. “The town was attacked. The people who played along lived. The ones who fought back got shot. Otherwise there’d be a lot more bodies.”
“Do you think your brother was here when it happened?”
Mortin shakes his head and starts toward a wooden storefront with a hand-painted sign.
“‘Boggolove?’”
“The Boggolove. I’ve won some serious card games here.”
He pushes open a pair of swinging saloon doors. I follow him into the dark. Ada grabs my hand as we move forward and squeezes it tight.
77
“LEIDAN?”
The Boggolove is a step up from the Monard, less of a dive and more of a Wild West brothel: the large circular tables match the chairs; the hardwood floor gleams; there are shining fancy bottles behind the polished bar. But a lot is wrong. The bottles are empty, the floor has scattered impact craters of broken glass, and a chandelier tilts crazily above us, one of its support chains severed. Mortin leads us behind the bar.
“Leidan? You here? It’s me!” He crouches and pulls a lever by a barrel. A trapdoor swings open. Below, a chorus of voices croak and gibber.
“Riggit!”
“Up with the Appointees!”
“Who’re you?”
“Riggity buggle!”
“Down with Ophisa!”
“Can we come up now?”
Mortin says, “Identify yourselves! Is Leidan Enaw there?”
“Mortin! You made it!”
Mortin backs away as his brother climbs out the trapdoor. His long hair is tied over his neck and his smile reaches from ear to ear. “You’re not dead! I’m not dead! Uh!” He flings his arms around Mortin and swings him around the room.
“Put me down! I’m serious!”
“Aren’t you happy?”
“Down!”
Leidan drops him. “Hello, Ada; hello, little traveler. We’ve had a hell of a time waiting for you—”
“What were you doing down there?”
“Hiding with us,” a throaty voice says. A woman climbs out of the trapdoor. She’s a hequet with vivid eye makeup wearing a white see-through gown. Her hunter-green head is puffy and grotesque, but her body is straight out of a glossy magazine. “Criminals!” she says, surveying the room. “They took my booze!”
“Iyatra!” Mortin bows and lightly kisses her hand. “Thank you, as always, for having me at the Boggolove. And thank you for taking care of my brother!”
“‘Celebrate good times, come on!’” Leidan sings. “You got any drinks, Mortin? Iyatra says I can’t deplete her emergency stores.”
“No.” I know that’s a lie. Mortin still has the mind-melting Jiringian wine in his bag.
“Oh, that’s convenient. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of pebbles, though.”
“No, actually. I’m not smoking anymore.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s true.”
“You’re just saying that to have one over on me.”
“I made a personal decision, Leidan. I’m sticking to it.”
“Who’s your friend?” the frog-woman asks.
“Perry—I mean Peregrine— meet Iyatra, proprietor of the Boggolove.”
I offer my hand. She doesn’t shake it. Instead she puts out her own hand, palm down, and I kiss it. She smiles. Behind her wide teeth I see a strong, curling tongue.
“And you know Ada,” Mortin continues. Ada curtsies but she looks pissed.
“Girls! It’s safe! C’mon out!” A parade of frog-headed women stream up through the trapdoor, each dressed in the same sort of scantily enticing outfit as Iyatra. They aren’t beautiful, on account of the heads, but I find it difficult not to stare. Their bodies are outrageous. They look around the bar and sigh and sob and hug one another and commiserate over how horrible everything is.
“It happened yesterday,” Iyatra says. “I had a room full of customers, Mortin; you know how much I love that. Leidan came in and asked for me, said it was urgent. He explained that you all had to flee Subbenia on account of a legal snafu and were going to meet here. I told him it’s no problem and asked if he wanted to tend a little bar, and of course he said yes, so he was behind the bar and my normal bartender had taken off when the cops stormed in! They demanded we hand over traitors loyal to Ophisa.”
“They followed you,” Mortin says to Leidan. “I thought I told you to avoid detection. You can’t follow simple instructions?”
“I tried! You don’t think I tried?”
“Were you drinking?”
“Don’t fight, you two. Riggit! The cops interrupted a big burlesque number my girls were doing. Batracians and celates, armed with spears and swords. They started pushing around all my customers. ‘Name all the Appointees.’ ‘Do you respect and love our princess?’ ‘Does anyone in your family have pro-Ophisa sympathies?’ I wasn’t going to take it. I told them to get out. Then one of them pulled a gun.”
“Oh no.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen a gun before, only heard about them. You know it’s not good to think about such things. Riggit!” She notices me staring at her. “You got a curious one there, huh? What are you going to do with him?”
“Send him back to Earth.”
I don’t protest because I’m trying to solve the mystery. “Who had the gun? Was it a celate? An octopus-man? With a bad mustache like from a seventies cop movie?”
“Seventies? No, no, he looked forty.”
“Wait.” I pull out the mustache comb I found. “Did he have a mustache he would use this on?”
“Yes! Yes he did!”
“Officer Tendrile.”
“That’s right!” Iyatra widens her eyes and clicks her big tongue. “He announced himself a few times, now that I remember. Very pompous. Officer Tendrile, on the warpath. But he didn’t know how to handle the gun. As soon as he pulled it out, it went off, right into the air—see what he did to my chandelier? It was the loudest thing I ever heard. Everyone panicked. My customers jumped out of their chairs; they left their drinks on the tables, but we’ll get to that. This squid-bottom Tendrile picks up the bullet, puts it in his pocket, and starts ordering people cuffed double-quick. Luckily we all know what to do. We have drills. I grab Leidan and my girls, and we stay in the safe pit as the cops take people out to the street. Then I hear bangs. We held one another; we were so scared. Then these brutes came back in and took every last drop of my liquor. Look at this. Not just from the bottles, from every glass on the table! Can you believe it? Rilligig!”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I’ve got to get back to business. The Boggolove can’t stay closed for long.”
“Take a look outside,” Mortin says. “Your whole town’s gone.”
78
WE SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY CLEANING up the Boggolove, which is a “dance hall and leisure house” according to Iyatra. First we wash the sulfurous mud off our bodies. Mortin borrows some makeup from the hequets to reconceal his black eye. I tend to my injuries. Iyatra takes an hour to herself to weep over the loss of her town, but then she says she never left her room without cleaning it since she was a little girl, and she doesn’t want to leave her place of business in disarray now.
We put the chairs back. We get out a ladder to fix the chandelier. We sweep up the glass. Leidan is helpful and charming, although he and Mortin argue. I get a chance to enter some of the private rooms upstairs, which have sumptuous beds next to tables with fat, worn-down candles. I’m assigned to help one hequet and then another; they pass me around with great interest. They are dancers and “professional companions” to the male other normals who travel through Upekki. As long as I block out the frog-head part, they’re the most attractive women I’ve ever seen. Besides Ada.
“It’s … ah … it’s more boring.”
“But you have all these things. Televisions. Pants.”
“It’s all abstract. Symbols on top of symbols. You don’t get adrenaline rushes like you do here.”
“So you’ve never been in a fight?”
“Not before a few days ago. Now”—I look at myself—“I’ve been in a few. First in summer camp, then—”
“What’s summer camp?”
“It’s a place where especially cool human teenagers are sent to interact without parental supervision.”
“Uh-huh,” Ada says from the doorway. “Is that what summer camp is, Perry?” She walks in.
“I thought your name was Peregrine,” the hequet says.
“What’s up, Ada?”
“I’m just checking to make sure you’re having a good time.” She turns on her heel and leaves.
“Excuse me one second.” I catch up with her in the hallway. “What’s the matter?”
“Should I not have held your hand?”
“What?”
“When we came in here, I held your hand. Should I not have done that?”
“What—no—why?”
“Maybe you’re one of those boys who needs to be treated badly in order to like somebody. I’ve studied a lot about humans, don’t forget. I know that there are some guys who don’t know what to do when a girl likes them, because deep down they think they’re inadequate, and the only girls who could like them would have to have something wrong with them.”
“Can we even do anything together?” I ask quietly. “I mean, we’re different species, right?”
“Do anything? I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about respect. Species boundaries don’t seem to be stopping you now anyway. Why don’t you go back and see if you can make your new friend’s tongue curl up?”
“It’s not like that,” I say, but Ada’s already stalking away, and it is like that. My Honor score is deteriorating. Maybe it’s 30 now.
I return to the room to finish making the bed. I have a sudden flash of making the bottom bunk at Mom’s, back when my biggest worry about mystical beings was whether I could roll the dice to defeat them in battle.
“Are you okay?” the hequet asks.
“Yeah, just … confused.”
“That’s the number one thing I hear about humans. You have all these choices, so you’re confused all the time, and you think so much that you’re never happy.”
“Do you think a lot?”
“Only when I have to. The one you were just talking to? She thinks a lot too. When people think too much, they let out a little bit of sweat, and it has a sour smell.”
“Do I have the smell?”
The hequet nods. “Worse than anybody.”
79
WE COOK DINNER WITH FOOD FROM Iyatra’s emergency stores. She doesn’t serve any alcohol; she says she’s saving it. Considering my experience with the wine the other night, I’m okay with that. We all sit in the main room under the now-fixed chandelier. I’m given a wild brown hunk of meat that makes me long for a side of mac & cheese. Ada isn’t talking to me. I sort of expect that, but Mortin isn’t talking to me either, and that makes me nervous. He bounces his leg under the table, like I often do.
“Stop,” Leidan says, elbowing Mortin.
“What?”
“You’re moving the whole table when you do that.”
“We’re not kids. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“You’re making it so I can’t enjoy my meal.”
“You have food in your hair, you realize that?”
Leidan picks some meat out of his locks.
“Well,” Iyatra says, like she’s trying to make conversation, “I’m sure glad I expanded into floating entertainment. I learned some time ago that the Appointees were considering a ‘morals’ tax, you know, so I got myself a Boggolove cruise raft. If I’m in the water, I’m not on taxable land, am I? But I never expected it to be used for a quest.” As she talks, Mortin shakes his head at her—Shut up!— but she doesn’t notice.
“What quest?” I ask.
Nobody answers. Mortin shakes his leg harder.
“What quest?”
“We’re going to the Badlands on the Boggolove cruise raft,” Mortin says quickly.
“What? That’s great! That’s awesome! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re not coming, Perry.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re headed back to camp like we discussed.”
“No I’m not.” I put down my spork. Everybody uses sporks in the World of the Other Normals. “I’m in this now. You can’t just ditch me and save the princess yourself.”
“Maybe we’re not saving the princess. Maybe there’s no princess to save. You ever think about that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Listen.” Mortin addresses the whole table, which is actually two circular tables pressed together. The hequet dancing girls watch him. “Ever since we were born, we’ve heard about the princess and how she’s honorable and virtuous and the pride of our world. But ever since she’s been kidnapped, that world has gone to shit—pardon my English. Now everyone here is liable to get shot in the street at any time for being suspected in the princess’s disappearance. Who gains?”
“The Appointees,” Ada says.
“That’s right. They keep giving themselves more and more power. To fight Ophisa, to save the princess … first they allowed the police to arrest and detain. Then they allowed them to kill. Now they’ve given them guns. We’re turning into Earth!”
“That’s why we’ve got to save her! So it’ll all go back to normal.”
“How do you know the princess even exists, Perry? Have you seen her?”
“I’ve seen the mini! Ada, where’s that figure?”
Ada puts it on the table. I hold it up. The princess still looks beautiful and pure. Pure silver and pure something else.
“That’s just a doll,” Mortin says.
“This ‘doll’ winked at me, okay? She needs my help.”
“You’re seeing things,” Ada says.
“It doesn’t matter. Perry, if you want to save the princess so badly, stick to the original plan and kiss Anna at your camp. I did the analysis on that one. They correspond. But I’m starting to think this whole thing is a setup and the princess was never kidnapped. And I’m going to the Badlands to find out.”
“And Ada’s going with you.”
“Yes.”
“And your brother’s going with you.”
“I’m gonna try and dry out,” Leidan says, staring at the water in front of him. He looks despondent, but then he claps Mortin on the back and perks up. “Maybe spending some time with my bro will do me good.”
“They’re quite serious; they’ve even refused professional companionship!” Iyatra says. “I said I could send one of my girls to keep the Enaws company, and they said they’d rather stay focused. Can you believe it? Mortin and Leidan, electing to keep their getmas on?”
“Mortin?” I say. “Fuck you.”
I slam my chair back from the table and storm upstairs.
80
I LIE IN THE BED I MADE WITH THE HEQUET. I can’t believe they want to send me back. Everyone else gets to do something important, and I get to go back to yurts and counselors and Ryu? What a joke. I should fight Mortin. I should get out my war hammer and bash his brains in and take over this quest myself. But I can’t—I’m not strong enough. After everything, I’m still not.
“Perry?” Mortin pounds on the door. “Let me in!”
“Go away! It’s locked!”
“You have to go back! You can’t stay here!”
“I’d rather die!”
I hear whispers.
“Who’s out there? Leidan? Ada? I hate all of you!” I know it sounds a little childish, but it’s true. Even Ada, right now.
“Okay, Perry,” Mortin says. “We understand you’re upset. Get some rest. Can we talk about this in the morning?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Good night.”
Their footsteps recede down the hall. Huh. Better than nothing. I sit up in bed. I guess this is one of those moments where I would read or play video games or mess around on the internet on Earth. It’s funny how you don’t miss that stuff. I think about all the arguments I can make in favor of me joining their quest: I picked Ada’s handcuffs in prison; I stood up to Officer Tendrile; I never gave up against the cynos. I’m really not bad. I’m not. Someone knocks again.
“Who is it?”
“Come see.”
It’s a woman’s voice, not Ada. The door has no peephole, so I have to open it to check. It’s the hequet with the plunging V who got me in trouble before.
“What do you want?”
“Iyatra sent me to comfort you.”
“Oh. That’s not necessary.”
“It looks necessary. May I come in?”
What the hell, I let her in. We sit on the bed. I watch her rounded bottom distort the sheets. My body reacts to hers and, even though I don’t want to, even though I shouldn’t for a lot of reasons, I flare up down below. I turn to the side to hide myself.
“Don’t be ashamed. I saw you look at me before.” She leans in. Her frog head is scary, but her breasts look so good!
“Wait! Stop! Is this like … are you trying to do this for di-?”
She shakes her head. She opens her mouth. I see her long tongue. I don’t want to brag, but if I go through with this and I go back to camp, I’ll have something unique to talk about. I can be like, “Hey, not only am I not a virgin, I lost my virginity to a frog-headed exotic dancer.” Will that be something to brag about or something to be ashamed of? It’s funny; that was always clear to me before.