Bad Idea

by Damon Suede

  Silas frowned. “Right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re telling me that Cliff sleazed over you and whispered cyanide in your ears and that has nothing to do with you scurrying back into your cage with your tail tucked?”

  “We got a serious offer. Hollywood.”

  Silas turned. “Actually, Cliff said as much last night when he stuck his hand down my pants.” Trip flinched. That can’t be true. “And what a coincidence that he told you ten minutes before you announced this book that leaves him out in the cold.”

  Chilly doubt froze Trip’s bowels. Would Cliff lie? Had he? If Trip could just slow everything down and get a grip. “Silas, I don’t want him.”

  Silas blinked at him.

  “I used to, when I was an idiot and lonely, but I know what he’s about. I’m not that naïve.” Anymore. Trip wiped his nose. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

  “So act like it.”

  Trip hugged himself. Embarrassed by the jealousy but unable to throttle it. He rubbed his sweaty arms. The hall was baking hot. Was there no A/C in this barn? “If you can be jealous, so can I.”

  “Okay. And I’m allowed to tell the truth.” The frown on Silas’s face seemed patronizing. “You don’t even know if you have a deal. But that asshole said ‘boo,’ so you got scared.”

  “I didn’t get scared. I am scared. I’m—” Trip gulped. “I’m just holding off on doing anything with Scratch until I know the facts.”

  “Trip. I didn’t do all this just to score some book. I don’t even work in comics. I helped you because I love you.” No pity.

  Trip flicked his gaze to see who might be eavesdropping on their spat.

  Silas noticed. “Never mind. My mistake. You’re too afraid to let anyone love you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  A roar of laughter from inside the LGBT panel. Pray God, they weren’t talking about the lover’s tiff happening out here in the hallway or sharing pics of Scratch arguing with his creator on Instagram.

  Silas stared, making Trip even more self-conscious.

  “Before I got all made up, I bought you something today. Promethea action figure: mint-on-card.” Silas waited for some kind of response.

  Involuntarily, a smile dug at the edges of Trip’s mouth. Good present. But then he looked at Silas stripped to his skin in a hallway and the smile died.

  “You know why fans pay more for mint-on-card? Certainty. You know what you’re getting. Thing is, you don’t want to share. And then you assume everything is gonna be dipsy-doodle, but it isn’t. Right? Life turns out complicated and compromising.”

  Trip breathed fast. He felt like a lunatic fighting with Scratch. Then again, maybe Scratch felt pissed too. Maybe that was why Trip felt so shitty. He’d fucked over his boyfriend and his creation.

  Silas didn’t waver. “Children love toys because they get to play at destroying the world and making it do whatever they wish it would. They want miniature animals and people and cars and houses so they can pull out the eyes and crush them to rubble. Hell, video games let little monsters dominate and devastate entire countries and galaxies and ecosystems because that is the natural impulse of all humans. We are a race of powerless control freaks. That’s how mythology happens.”

  Silas bared his fake fangs. “Who buys comics? Who lines up for ten hours to get into Comic-Con and spends a fortune dressing up as a pop-culture delusion? Who makes superhero blockbusters happen? All those little lost megalomaniacs wishing they could go back to believing the world could fit under the dining room table. Cliff manipulates your fear and lust so he gets what he wants.”

  “He got me a movie deal. You know what that means!” Lightheaded.

  “Where’s the deal?”

  “A movie is a movie. Maybe this is my break.”

  “There’s no such thing, babe. You know there’s not. Breaks are a bullshit headline the tabloids make up to sell papers.”

  Trip glanced around as fans passed in the hallway. No one met his eye.

  Except Silas. “I have never lied to you, Trip Spector. And Staplegun lies to you all the time, but you take his word out of habit, like I’m invisible.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No. You’re not.” Silas backed away. He studied the walls and the floor. “You’re not.” His composure broke. “This is who you are. Maybe this is who you wanna be. Oh my God, what have I done?” Beneath the Scratch makeup, Silas cried.

  “Put my whole career in danger.”

  Silas closed his eyes and huffed a deep breath before opening them. “Life can never be mint-on-card… everything dry and clean and perfect. Boxed forever. No dings, no dents.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you want to keep me under wraps. That isn’t a relationship! That’s a psychological problem. You wanna live like a ghost, haunting the shit you care about.”

  “Then why do you want me at all?”

  “Because I know you. The real you. Only that bullshit superstud editor has you wrapped around his meat so he can pay you starvation wages and keep you—”

  Trip spoke over him, feeling an irrational need to defend Cliff. “Cliff doesn’t keep”—he was shouting—“me….” His voice trailed away.

  “Yeah. I was just gonna say ‘on a leash.’” Silas closed and opened his mouth, as if more words wanted to slip out.

  A slice of afternoon sun cut the air between them and gilded Silas’s forearms but left the rest of him in shadow.

  “Maybe you’ve decided I’m a made-up character.” Silas shrugged. “Like I didn’t exist till I found you in Central Park and ate your brain. But I did. I do. I’m not a fucking action figure, mint-on-card.” He scowled.

  “And I’m not a meal ticket.”

  Kerblam. If Trip had swung an atomic sledgehammer, it would have done less damage.

  Silas turned with horrible slowness to regard him with distaste. “And who the fuck said you were?” He spoke so low that his lips hardly moved, and he gathered his hands into fists. “When have I ever asked you for anything?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Trip backpedaled. He’d used Cliff’s insult for effect without thinking. Their words lay scattered around them like shrapnel, little poisonous piles that should never have seen daylight.

  Silas took a step closer, his voice raw with anguish. “You used my face and my body to build an entire comic, and I thanked you. My whole life and career is on hold because I believe in you. Here I am. I have done nothing but support you and help you and protect you.” A thick vein thumped in his forehead.

  Now Trip cried, too, hard enough to blur his vision. He couldn’t look away, and Silas kept pushing and pushing. All of this is my fault. “You’re right.”

  “Well, you’re fucking wrong, Trip.” Silas poked at him, gave him no space, no room to turn. “If you knew me, why would you waste two seconds worrying about Kurt? Why would you take Cliff’s word over mine? Hey, if it’s just you alone, you can grease up and I dunno… disasturbate for the rest of your life. Panicking about shit that’s never gonna happen and getting off on risks you’ll never take. But you aren’t alone. Cliff’s there helping you do it so he can use you.”

  “Like you used me so you could do this.” Trip waved a hand at the Scratch before him. “Show up at my panel like an anatomically correct doll that anyone can play with so long as they hose you down after.”

  Undo!

  His eyes widened because he wished the words back.

  Some things can’t be unsaid. Silas’s mouth clamped into a grim fence with no horizon.

  Trip had gone too far, but he couldn’t stop his stupid mouth from spitting out whatever paranoid delusions his brain had cooked up at midnight: when the phone rang and rang, when Silas hadn’t returned from the bar. You have been judged.

  The wide eyes darkened. Silas looked grayer and more ripped open than he had as a walking corpse. “Fuck you.” He opened and closed his fingers spasmodically. “I thought—�
� He glowered. “I thought you knew me better than they did.”

  “I thought a lot of things.” Trip gritted his teeth. “I was wrong.”

  “No, Trip.”

  “I was. And you were too. And this… all this is exactly why Scratch is over.”

  Silas stopped moving. All the fight seemed to whoosh out of him as if he’d pulled a cork that left him limp and boneless.

  A stocky man covered with Brillo Pad hair approached them carefully, his arms held away from his torso as if hauling buckets of paint across a slippery floor. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”

  “No, sir. None at all.” At first Trip thought Silas had spoken, but then he realized his mouth had moved and that the sounds had come out of his throat.

  The guard grunted but didn’t leave.

  After one shaky breath and another, Silas seemed to stop waiting for whatever. He peered down at his talons as if they belonged to someone else, as if Trip had drawn him in pencil and threatened him with an eraser. “Okay.”

  Trip stared back, semiaware that people walked past them, volunteers unstacked chairs, and fans shuffled into the room, but he only saw Silas staring out of Scratch’s eyes.

  “I loved you.” Silas shrugged and wiped his cheeks, smearing the paint. “My bad.”

  “Wait—”

  But Silas had vanished. Long gone. Retcon. Trip covered his eyes and sagged against the wall.

  “Jeez. That was a fucking spectacle.”

  Cliff.

  One big lacrosse hand patted him and squeezed. Trip stepped away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “’S’allright. You’re good.”

  Trip scowled. No, he wasn’t. Why did everyone keep telling him how he felt? “Piss off.”

  Cliff took him by the arm and steered him into the john. Nine steps up the hall and to the left. Cliff ignored the lines and pushed Trip into the handicap stall. “You’re fine, Tripwire. Pull it together. This is your job.”

  It is? Then I need a raise. But he nodded back, as if Cliff’s words made sense. He couldn’t catch his breath, it wheezed and whistled through his ribs as if he were a skeleton.

  “C’mon. Get yourself cleaned up. I want you to meet some people.”

  Suits, he meant. The beige tiles vibrated under Trip’s blurry eyes. The bathroom wasn’t empty. He grimaced and braced his hands on his legs. “Gonna barf.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a pro.” Cliff opened the stall door and stepped out.

  Costumed passers-by rubbernecked unsubtly as they headed for the urinals. Was he still crying? Trip wiped at his face with numb hands. They came away wet.

  “I shouldn’t have said that stuff to him.”

  “Whatever.” Cliff’s caramel eyes flashed. “You got your monster, didn’t you? Once we hit the multiplexes, you got hot cock on tap.” He winked. “Splash some water on your face. You look like a used tampon.”

  Like a zombie, Trip cupped his hands to sip water and splash his raw face. He swished the water around his teeth and spat it out. He didn’t bother to dry, and the water ran down his throat into his collar. Who cared? He’d zigged when he should have zagged, and time refused to roll backward.

  Where oh where were the retcon fairies when he needed them?

  At the door, Cliff clapped his hands to hurry him. “Chop-chop, man.”

  Trip’s stomach churned, and he examined the fluorescents as if the undo button might appear overhead. If only he could retcon this whole horrible day, unwreck Silas and unfuck himself. But where would he go back to? This morning before he’d crapped all over Silas? Or the day he’d started drawing Scratch? Maybe the zombie run in the park?

  Chop-chop.

  If only God would lean over the page with His big eraser.

  “We’ve got an entire feature film division waiting on us in the bar.”

  The hall filled with happy con-victs. The fans scuttled to the urinals to piss before the next panel.

  What the hell had he done? Trip swallowed and tried not to choke.

  Cliff squeezed his shoulder. “You’re not gonna regret this.”

  He already did.

  20

  FOR best results, never give a makeover when you look and smell like a goat’s nutsack.

  At least Silas had showered and brushed his teeth before his apartment buzzer went. He ran a hand over his face. “Saturday. It’s Saturday.” Good to know.

  For the sixteen days since he’d flown home from Chicago, he’d expected Trip: a call, a visit, an e-mail. Anything, really, that would rebuild the bridge burned between them. Silas had passed through angry and sad into queasy anxiety. He’d gotten so jumpy, he heard the phones ring in his neighbors’ apartments, even lying in bed. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours since the end of April.

  His cramped living room scarcely had space for his futon and the makeup chair, but at least he felt at home.

  When Rina called night before last and asked for a favor, he’d spent the entire two-minute conversation thinking she was speaking in code, that she had a message for him, that Trip was listening in to check on him. He’d said yes out of desperation.

  Ka-bing. His stupid doorbell sputtered and tinkled because the landlord kept forgetting to replace it. He squared his shoulders before he opened the door, and the hallway’s stifling air smacked him in the face like a giant waffle.

  “Silas! Thank you so much.” Rina appeared nervous and washed out before she hugged him hello in his hallway. As he’d asked, she had washed her face and pushed her hair back with a bandeau. “Hot as balls out there. You’re sure this is okay.”

  He shook his head in confusion. I’m not okay. Not even a little. Then he realized she meant getting made up.

  For a moment, Silas held his front door open and wished he hadn’t taken the call, wished he didn’t like her, wished he could undo a whole buncha shit that couldn’t be helped. Retcon.

  “I like the beard.” Rina rubbed her own jaw and batted her lashes. “Very dashing.”

  Again, Silas almost had to translate what she said and then remembered that after coming back from the con, he’d stopped shaving. He hadn’t gone to the gym, either, or gone out. Out at Silvercup, Tiffany had pouted and forced him to sit in the chair while she trimmed his fuzz and shaved his neck just so he didn’t look like an undead hobo.

  He still held the door. “Come in.” He kept forgetting where he was.

  Awkward.

  Rina gave a minnow-quick smile. “Blonder than I expected. Your beard. You really are a rubio.”

  He closed the door and plunged his hands into his pockets. “You want something to drink?”

  She shook her head and let out a breath. Relieved? So maybe this drop-in really was innocent. She just needed some event makeup.

  She walked back toward his living room carrying a small satchel while a thin vinyl garment bag swung on one raised hand. The rattling window unit made the space feel smaller.

  He flapped a hand at his digs. “Please pardon my wreckage, Miss Apostara.”

  Rina eyed the fanboy clutter a little skeptically: a Nightwing mask on a Swamp Thing head, action figures peppering shelves higgledy-piggle with paperbacks and hardcover comic archives, a framed Spider-Man 3 poster signed by Toby and Topher because he’d worked on the second unit right out of school. No embarrassing porn, but only because he’d always slept around too much to need it.

  She fidgeted for a moment before she hugged him. “He”—Trip, she must’ve meant, whose name must not be spoken—“woulda died if I told him, but I figured you’d understand.”

  Or not innocent. Maybe she was doing a little fact-finding with her face. Fine by me. That tiny treasonous part of his heart that held out hope suddenly went on alert.

  She dissected him head to toe. “Querido, you doing okay?”

  Truth? Lie?

  “No! Yeah. Great. I’ve Tick-binging.” Silas faked a broad smile and shrugged.

  “Tick?”

  “Superhero sitcom. Patric
k Warburton?” Silas dialed his voice down to manly-man and bent his smile into a smirk. “I sure would like a slice of your righteous combat pie….”

  “Wonder Woman—” She held up two hands and closed her eyes as if guilty. “—is my crazy campy crack. Lynda Carter? I swear. Half-Mexican, that dame, and 100 percent perfection. I love SVU, Walking Dead, but Wonder Woman has gotten me through apocalyptic shit.” A girlish side shrug.

  The conversation teetered, right on the verge of embarrassing talk-show confessional. If Silas had breathed the word “Trip” aloud, he’d have lost his shit and all kinds of horrible truth would have spilled out, lubricated by tears and chocolate. Rina watched him, obviously waiting for the yea-or-nay signal.

  Silas throttled the impulse and clubbed it back into its bony cage.

  Rina looked away and put her purse down. “Well, this morning, I got a paranormal book signing out at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, and at least two news crews will be there because we got bestsellers who are flying in for the dog-’n’-pony. I aim to piggyback like there’s no mañana.”

  He could do this, just pretend she was just a funny client, not Trip’s friend. “Wardrobe?”

  She held up three hangers inside a vinyl garment bag and hooked them sideways on the coatrack to unzip. “Raw silk. Vintage. Sort of a purple-black.”

  “Aubergine,” he declared and cracked the opening wider.

  “I love a man who can make colors sound dirty.” She grinned.

  “Cross-dyed.” He wondered if Trip had helped pick this out, if he’d seen her model it and convinced her to splurge. “Great suit.”

  “I gotta stand next to J.R. Ward. Feel me?” She fluttered her short nails at him. “Baby, I went and bought a pair of Givenchy boots I cannot even afford because the Warden is gonna be there in full effect, and you know what that means!”

  He didn’t really, but he got the gist. “So you want nighttime for daytime.”

  “Extra vampy, hold the trampy. Like, more Lust for Dracula than Breaking Dawn.” Rina squeezed her shoulders together to amp her cleavage. “If I’m hauling the girls out, no way can I do sparkly anorexia.”