by Chris McCoy
I looked around the corner into the courtyard. It was packed shoulder to shoulder with flannel-wearing lumberjacks, mental patients in hospital scrubs, loonies huddled in dirty blankets. It seemed that everyone in the enclosure had gathered for the excitement. I couldn’t actually see Sophie, but I knew she was in danger from the kinds of things her pursuers were yelling: Reach up and grab her…. Kill her…. I want to go home….
The fountain in the center of the courtyard appeared to be the focus of their attention, but if Sophie was there, I couldn’t see her through the thicket of degenerates, some of whom—suddenly finding themselves pressed up against their rivals in such close quarters—were taking the opportunity to fight each other as gangs, violently acting out whatever intra-enclosure rivalries had been building among them. I saw eyes being gouged and limbs being broken and bits of hair with the scalp still attached flying through the air, in addition to the mists of spit and sprays of blood normally associated with a melee. If the Jyfos were getting this on camera, their ratings would be going through the roof.
I probably could have figured out a more strategic course of action than the one I took, but when I realized that Sophie was somewhere in that mass of kinetic flesh, I snapped. I pushed my way to the center of the horde, taking elbows in my chest and getting my clothing ripped as the members of the mob clawed at me with their fingertips, trying to position themselves closer to the fountain. They waved bats and field hockey sticks and meat pounders from Williams-Sonoma above their heads. As focused as they were on the fountain and on beating each other up, they didn’t appear to even notice that their other target was moving among them.
In the pandemonium of swinging arms and stabbing scissors and people stomping on each other with Foot Locker soccer cleats, I managed to see Sophie climb to the top of the fountain. The men and women clogging the basin of the structure were climbing toward the faux Venus de Milo statue at the top, reaching for Sophie’s legs as she kicked at them and trying to pull her down.
“Get away from me,” she said, stomping on the hands of a thick-armed, dirty-overalled hayseed, causing him to tumble backward into the sweating, shouting multitude, where he was stepped upon and beaten as the others tried to get closer to Sophie.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled, charging into the fountain and pulling her pursuers off the statue. If they had lost track of the fact that I was among them before, the sight of the two of us together ignited them into a frenzy: There he is…. They’re both mine…. Stop pushing and let me do this…. It’s time for me to go home….
“Bennett,” said Sophie.
Before I could reply, the mob was upon me, yanking my legs out from under my body, knocking me into the fountain basin, and forcing my head under the inch or so of water that hadn’t been splashed away. I flailed and thrashed to get them off, but they were all too large, there were too many of them, and they had the leverage.
They smashed my nose against the concrete foundation. I saw rivulets of my blood float through the water in front of me, and I heard Sophie screaming above as the mob finally managed to pull her down. More hooligans stepped on my back, pushing out the last of my breath. My vision distorted. I felt time slow down and my heart beginning to beat erratically.
But then…
BRRRANNNG!
A deafening guitar chord rang out over the courtyard. The men and women drowning me threw their hands up over their ears, allowing me to sit up and suck in the longest gasp of air I’d ever inhaled.
BRRRANNNG!
I looked at the sky, where, epically slowly, the Interstellar Libertine was lowering itself over the mall courtyard. Cad was standing on top of the bus with a new guitar hooked up to an amplifier, grinning proudly.
“Stay away from those teenagers,” he yelled. “Look at you fat asses. This is a sea of losers as far as the eye can see. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You know that this isn’t what Earth is like.”
BRRRANNNG!
Cad hit another chord, and everybody in the courtyard covered their ears again, giving me a split second to force my way to my feet and climb the fountain. Sophie grabbed my arm and pulled me up.
“What is that?” said Sophie.
“That,” I said, “is the Interstellar Libertine.”
“You were right, Bennett,” said Cad, looking over the side of the bus. “She is hot. I thought maybe it was just a trick of the television, but in person—even better.”
BRRRANNNG!
“You told that guy I was hot?”
“You talk about a lot of things when you’re trapped on a bus with a band.”
“You all right down there?” yelled Driver out the window.
“We won’t be unless you hurry,” I said.
BRRRANNNG!
The Interstellar Libertine hovered in front of the fountain, and Driver threw open the door.
“What took you so long?” I said.
“We found this secondhand music store that was having a massive sale and lets you shop on credit,” said Cad. “We weren’t going to stay long, but I got wrapped up playing around with this old Moog synthesizer—”
“Tell me about it later,” I said.
Driver grabbed Sophie and me and pulled us into the bus. The residents of the enclosure who had survived the melee were staring up at us, button eyes looking out of their doughy faces, covered in scratches and bits of gristle and streaks of snot from ripping each other apart. I could see fallen bodies in between the survivors, some of whom were waving their arms at the Interstellar Libertine, as if they thought that after everything we had been through, maybe we would still give them a ride. Others were starting to creep away, putting some distance between themselves and their rivals while they still had a chance, like animals slinking off to lick their wounds.
Cad gave his new guitar a final strum.
BRRRANNNG!
“You’ve been a terrible audience and I hope to never play for you again,” said Cad. “Do some sit-ups. Good night.”
—
Sophie was ravenous after days of subsisting on French fries scavenged from the Dumpster, so Driver stopped at a Chinese food place we found sitting on a floating platform that was zipping past Jyfo. A reasonably priced restaurant that visited you instead of the other way around—what an idea. The entrance to its dome quickly opened as we approached and snapped shut behind us just as fast.
Instead of ordering takeout, we decided to have a sit-down meal and regroup. We left Skark on the bus, still passed out, crumpled in his sleeping pod.
At the table, Driver shoveled buckets of fried rice into his face, while Cad ripped at his spareribs. Sophie choked down a glass of Spine Wine so she could understand what Driver was saying, after which I watched her gobble a heap of chow mein and pot stickers.
“This food is pretty great,” said Sophie.
“It’s not bad, right?” I said.
“A little salty.”
“That’s the only issue.”
After the noodles, she finished a huge portion of Szechuan pork. Color came back to Sophie’s complexion, and her body started to relax.
“You should at least chew a couple of times before you swallow,” said Cad. “Nobody in the band knows the Heimlich maneuver.”
“I know the Heimlich maneuver,” I said. “I took first aid to earn extra credit in gym class.”
“I think you’ve saved me enough times for the day, Bennett,” said Sophie, smiling. “All I want is to go home and shower.”
Cad and Driver looked at each other. Sophie picked the last few grains of rice off her plate.
“When are we leaving to go back home?” she said, licking her fingers.
“Bennett?” said Cad. “Would you like to explain our itinerary to your girlfriend?”
“Wait—have you been telling them I’m your girlfriend?” said Sophie.
“I made it clear you were my prom date, not my girlfriend.”
“I’m pretty sure you said girlfriend,” said Cad. “Kinda strange you would lie a
bout that, if it wasn’t true.”
I stared at Cad.
“I didn’t lie about it, because I didn’t say it.”
“Huh,” said Cad. “I guess I remember things differently.”
Though I was new to the dating world, even I could recognize what he was doing. From the moment we’d saved Sophie, I’d seen Cad checking her out—looking at her legs, putting a comforting hand on her back as he showed her the bus, offering his personal toiletries so she could clean some of the dirt off her skin. Now he was trying to make her feel uncomfortable around me by suggesting that I’d been calling her my girlfriend when I hadn’t.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind—Cad was trying to move in on Sophie.
Which—if you’ll allow me to step back from the story and try to be objective about that moment and the journey as a whole—was within Cad’s rights, if not a little brazen and untimely. Yes, Sophie was my prom date, but it wasn’t like a date to a single dance was some sort of binding lifetime commitment that would warrant the type of sinister jealousy bubbling up in my gut as I watched Cad eyeing her from across the table, turning oh so slightly to the side each time he took a drink to make sure that she saw the ropy muscles in his arms. Just because you saved someone didn’t mean you just got that someone—if that was the case, every lifeguard in the world would have fifty spouses—and Sophie was her own girl, single and free as the wind, with the exception of those couple of hours on Friday when she was supposed to dance with me.
But sitting at that Chinese restaurant, having endured Skark’s bullheadedness and survived the Jyfos’ misguided environmentalism, I was finding it impossible to be objective about the extra attention Cad was paying Sophie. I could save her from the dangers of the universe, but keeping a handsome bassist away from her was another matter entirely.
“Go ahead, Bennett,” said Cad. “Tell her the news about the rest of the trip. We’ve got to get on the road.”
“Sophie,” I said. “I know this is annoying, but we’ve got one more stop. It’s a music festival.”
Sophie shook her head and gave me a look. “Are you kidding?”
“I’m not.”
“While I’d normally be up for partying, I think I’ve had enough fun in the last couple of days,” said Sophie. “Can you drop me off before you—”
The sentence wasn’t even out of her mouth when Skark burst in through the door of the restaurant. He was clutching a velour cape over his skeletal shoulders and scraping crusty makeup from his face. He looked like some hideous, cracked-out demon.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” he yelled, shuffling toward us.
Sophie yelped at the sight of him.
“Oh, shut up,” said Skark. “I almost had the same reaction, looking at your outfit.”
“I have been running for my life,” said Sophie.
“That’s all life is, rapid movement and trying to stay alive—get used to it,” said Skark. “God, what a headache I have. What did I take?”
A waiter scrambled out from behind the counter and began waving his hands in front of Skark, trying to get him to leave.
“Customers only,” said the waiter. “Leave now.”
“Customers only? Who do you think is paying for this meal, apparently straight from my personal savings?” Skark looked at his bandmates. “You don’t think I check my boots to make sure my nest egg is safe whenever I wake up? And now it’s gone.”
“We used the money for instruments,” said Driver.
“You spent all my money on instruments?”
“And a bribe,” said Cad.
“A bribe?” said Skark. “Were we detained at a border?”
“It was for Sophie,” said Cad.
Skark stood at the front of our table, staring at Sophie, too twitchy to sit down. His eyes were bloodshot and he was sweating, residue from the booze and pills exiting his body any way it could. “Would someone mind telling me who this is? With all the strays that come onto the bus, sometimes it feels like I’m the owner of an orphanage instead of a legendary front man.”
“This is Sophie,” I said. “My prom date. Sophie, this is Skark Zelirium, lead singer of the Perfectly Reasonable.”
Skark thought about this for a moment. I could see him working out what it meant in his mind.
“Hold on,” he said. “You went to Jyfon while I was sleeping?”
“We went to Jyfon while you were passed out,” said Cad.
“We have Dondoozle to get to. How far off course are we?”
“I’m going to use a shortcut to make up time,” said Driver. “We’ll get to Dondoozle with time to spare.”
“What shortcut?”
“Through the Hyperbolic Back Roads. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Skark petulantly stomped on the ground, grabbed Cad’s chopsticks, and broke them in half.
“Being swung from the orbit of one world to the next as slowly as possible,” said Skark. “What a pleasant way to travel. You know I get motion sickness, especially when I’m feeling a bit hungover. I can’t take this. I’m getting rid of this girl.”
Skark took a fast step toward Sophie, but as I got to my feet to protect her, I felt Cad’s hands on my shoulders, forcing me to sit back down. Cad stepped around me and got in Skark’s face. He was stealing the moment.
“If you’re going to do anything to Sophie, you’d better be prepared to throw me out first,” said Cad.
“Fantastic,” said Skark. “I would relish the opportunity to be rid of you.”
“Make the first move, then,” said Cad.
Skark and Cad stared at each other until Skark’s body shook involuntarily, still trying to process the booze and drugs. He was weak. He pulled his cape tight around his shoulders.
“I’m feeling too ill for this,” said Skark. “Ridding the bus of these leeches will have to be delayed. New girl, Sophie, whatever your name is, know that one way or another, I’ll be through with you soon. Bennett, I’ve been told that deep space smells a bit like burning metal and barbecue. I look forward to you confirming this for me imminently. You can just give me a nod before you lose consciousness as I’m waving to you through the window.”
Skark hobbled back toward the parking lot, shuddering and looking into empty bottles to see if there was any alcohol left.
“Thank you, Cad,” said Sophie.
“Thank you, Cad?” I said. “I was trying to stand up to defend you, and Cad held me down—”
“Sophie, I just want you to know I’m taking a personal interest in keeping you safe,” said Cad, ignoring me.
“I’m the one who saved you from Jyfon,” I said. I knew that my protests might come across as touchy—after all, the most important thing was that Sophie was safe, not who got credit for her life—but now I understood the manner in which Cad was going to move in on my territory. He would present himself as Sophie’s protector, a bulwark.
“Technically, Bennett,” said Cad. “And I don’t mean to be a stickler here, but I’m the one who came to the rescue with the bus while you were being overrun. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that I’m the one who saved her.”
“You both saved me,” said Sophie. “Why is this some point of contention?”
“I followed you into space,” I said.
“I’m fully aware of that,” said Sophie. “I’m here in space right now too, remember?”
“Again, I don’t mean to be picky,” said Cad. “But it wouldn’t have been possible for you to go to space had I not invited you along as the guest of this band, would it? Which sounds to me like more evidence that I’m the one who rescued Sophie. But it’s déclassé to fight for credit.”
“Did you just use the word déclassé?” I said. “I’ve barely heard you use anything but single-syllable words up until now.”
“Maybe I was just waiting for someone who could handle a higher-end conversation,” said Cad, faking being smart. “Come on, Sophie, I’m sure you’ve got questions you’d
like answered.”
Cad and Sophie got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant side by side. Through the window, I watched Cad put his arm over Sophie’s shoulders and whisper something just before they disappeared into the Interstellar Libertine, and then I heard her laugh.
“HA…hehhhhhhh…”
Cold rage swelled through me. I rolled an egg roll around on my plate with a fork. I could feel Driver staring.
“Cad’s stealing your lady, man,” said Driver. “This is the same thing he did to Sheila and me after we got married. I mean, right after. As soon as we exchanged rings, he seduced her. She was still wearing her dress. They spent my honeymoon together.”
“And you forgave him?”
“Who said that I forgave him?” said Driver. “We’re in a band together. I don’t have to like him.”
“But you and Cad aren’t even the same species,” I said. “Why would he go after your girl?”
“Cad doesn’t care. That man will hit on anything. Unless you do something, Sophie is going to be on his arm, regardless of how far you traveled for her.”
I was in shock. One minute I had traveled billions of light-years to save the girl whom I wanted more than anything, and the next, she had been snatched from me by a sleaze I had thought was my friend.
Driver got up from the table and shook his head as he passed my chair, disappointed in me. I was alone. The same waiter who moments before had tried to shoo Skark away from the premises came over and began cleaning up, picking up the plates with one hand and wiping down the table with the other.
“That guy’s girlfriend is hot,” said the waiter.
“She’s not his girlfriend,” I said. “She’s with me.”
“I would not have thought you were together,” said the waiter. “I was looking at her the whole time.”
“It’s weird you were watching.”
“We don’t get many girls who look like that up here.”
“How did you even get up here?”
“My parents were born here,” said the waiter.
“Don’t you ever get the urge to go to Earth?”
“Everyone says it sucks.”
“Yeah, it can. They’re not entirely wrong.”