by M. E. Roufa
So maybe that was why she was rushing headlong (at 47 miles an hour) to meet a promising stranger. It was a rare and enticing opportunity to be a promising stranger herself. And it wasn’t every day (let alone every middle of the night) you get called to take part in what was clearly an adventure.
And then there was that other matter, currently conked out in her back seat. She could definitely use help with that.
She nearly called off the adventure when she reached the development and saw what was waiting for her on the other end. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but she was absolutely certain it hadn’t been Abraham Lincoln.
48
Norma kept her car doors locked as she slowed to a halt beside Abe, rolling the passenger side window down just enough for conversation. It was too weird. She’d thought Abe had looked familiar, she’d had had a feeling she had known him somewhere before—it just never occurred to her that the first time she had seen him had been in her elementary school history books. No wonder she’d thought he seemed honest.
“You’re that guy,” she said, realizing who he was an instant later. “I saw you on the internet.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to pretend otherwise,” Abe sighed, indicating his outfit. He wished he had taken off the long jacket back when he abandoned the car. He felt like a complete idiot.
“So you’ve gone full-on Lincoln now?” Norma asked.
“It wasn’t my idea. I promise you—it was the absolute opposite of my idea.”
Norma knew how he felt, having been thrust into the exact same situation only days before, thanks to Shosha. Speaking of which. “Okay. I’ll give you a ride. But I need you to do me a favor first.”
“Sure,” Abe promised, trying not to show how impatient he was to get into the car and get the heck out of there. He knew that showing impatience now would send her off towards the horizon forever.
It must have worked. She popped the automatic door locks to let him in.
Abe slid into the passenger seat and shut the door behind him with a thunk. “So where are you headed?” he asked.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Norma answered. She gestured with her head toward the back seat.
Sprawled across the seats was the most strangely dressed little man he had ever seen, snoring peacefully. “Your boyfriend?” he asked
“What?” Norma looked bewildered. Then the penny dropped. “No, it’s my boss. I need your help getting her home. She’s had a bit to drink.”
Abe snuck a second look. That the passed out passenger was female explained the outfit—all leather and metal and a pair of glossy boots tall enough to keep a pirate dry in a squall. But what role she was expecting him to play in whatever was going on here was beyond him. Was it some sort of kinky sex thing? After all he’d been through, he truly wasn’t up to some sort of kinky sex thing.
He really hoped it was some sort of kinky sex thing.
Abe rolled down the window and hoped Norma wouldn’t notice as he quickly threw his cellphone out the window. It bounced several times, then landed under someone’s plumeria bushes. Good enough. “Let’s go.”
When it turned out that all Norma wanted help with was helping her inebriated boss into her house, up the steps and into bed, he felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. But at least it was easy work. Though her outfit probably added fifteen pounds to her weight, she barely came up to Abe’s shoulders and it didn’t take the two of them long to get her lying down and comfortable, once they got past the huge and malodorous cat that was perched just at the turn of the stairs.
Norma seemed to already be familiar with the beast. “Watch your ankles,” she warned him, as they stepped carefully around the defiant tabby. “And your shoes.”
As he was laying Shosha down, her eyes opened briefly, taking in Abe with a look of bewildered fear that quickly turned to mirth. “I know you!” she said in a friendly voice. “You’re that guy! The one from the nickel!”
“Actually, that’s Thomas Jefferson,” Abe said gently, unable to just let it lie. “I’m the one from the penny.”
“What do you know,” Shosha mused, burying her head deeper into her pillow. “Thomas Jefferson.” She relapsed into senseless snoring.
He almost wished he could be there when she woke up, just so he could hear about what exactly she thought she had dreamed.
49
So where are you headed?” Norma asked as they got back into her car, still unclear whether continuing on with him in was a good idea. She had watched him carefully throughout their time in Shosha’s house, and he hadn’t tried anything remotely funny. Well, except for the Jefferson joke. Which was sort of a hoot.
Abe shrugged as he slid into the passenger street. “Anywhere. Just drive. I’m assuming we can’t go to your place?” he added hopefully.
Norma shot him a look.
“Right. Of course not. Anyplace, really. I’ll explain as we go.”
Norma was intrigued, but stayed quiet. She assumed that he would explain at some point. For now, she would sit back and enjoy the intrigue. While Abe’s outfit was definitely off-putting, he still didn’t strike her as being a creep. But where should they go? She headed out onto the highway, occasionally glancing at Abe’s face for clues. He didn’t seem to be sending any. She wasn’t going to take him home with her, for obvious reasons. But at one in the morning, where could they go?
“So, seriously. Where do you want me to drop you?” she asked at last, hoping that by using that final phrase he would make it clearer exactly what sort of evening he had in mind.
“I don’t know,” Abe answered, noticing her turn of phrase. So she was only agreeing to serve as his taxi service, then? In that case, how could he make it a long trip? “I know this sounds ridiculous, but I may be being followed. It would take forever to explain. I just need to find a place I can lie low for a few days while I work out a plan.”
A few days? This was worse than Norma thought. “I don’t…” she stared, “I can’t…” What was there to say? She was still driving vaguely east, still with no destination. “How low do you need to lie? Can’t you just go out into the boondocks somewhere and hide?”
“If the people looking for me are as powerful as I think they are, they’ll already be in the boondocks somehow. Besides, where am I going to hide?” Abe asked, thinking back to the interchange in her boss’s home. “My face is on money.”
He had a point, Norma thought. But still, where did he expect her to take him? “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story.”
And so he did.
They ended up pulling in to an all-night fast-food joint disguised to look like a fifties diner. Norma only looked slightly incongruous amidst the T-birds and mini-jukeboxes; even without the jacket, Abe looked like he had wandered onto the wrong movie set. Over stale coffee and a shared order of fries, Abe told Norma everything, from the first time he met Harold to the press conference, to the strange research facility and all the tests. He left out the part involving the rubber gloves. He had a pretty good idea of her limitations.
Norma was fascinated by his story, then horrified. She thought she had it bad as a Marilyn Monroe clone—it never occurred to her that being an anomaly that everyone knew existed could be other than a bad thing. Now it turned out there was something worse: being a unique clone who everyone wanted to know better.
Her own relative lack of private history suddenly seemed like a much more positive thing. No one cared all that much about the Marilyns. There were so many of them out there now, you could get away with being a private person. And the Norma Jeanes all had a certain degree of anonymity, at least with the majority of the population. But imagine if she had been the only one. And with Lincoln being known for wisdom and leadership and—well, and America itself—no wonder Abe was on the run. For all the times she had debated getting plastic surgery, it was never to look less like her forebear. She couldn’t imagine having to consider going under the knife just to look more generic.
Not that it would work for him if he tried it. He was well over 6 feet tall. It would take more than a nose job to disguise his origins. That he managed it for so many years was astounding to Norma.
For Abe, the amazing thing wasn’t the questions Norma asked, it was the ones she didn’t. She was the first ordinary person he had met since coming out as a cloned president, and he was naturally expecting an onrush of all the questions he had been dreading, the ones which had kept him in the closet his entire life. But she didn’t ask them, not any of them. It didn’t seem like she didn’t care, or wasn’t interested—it was almost as if she already understood. Or maybe she didn’t care and wasn’t interested, but was just very very good at pretending with men. It would certainly go with her looks—really beautiful women often had a way of seeming to be whatever it was you wanted them to be, until suddenly they weren’t. But he didn’t think it was that. Whatever the reason, it was an unexpected relief. He had been through enough questioning already—enough to last his entire lifetime. For almost a full hour Abe felt like he did before the whole incident had begun; like a person, rather than a persona. Interesting for himself and not his DNA. It was a welcome reprieve.
It didn’t last, of course. Abe had just finished recounting his role in the fire when the door of the diner opened and a couple of men in suits entered. There was nothing noticeable about them, except that it was Orlando, it was the middle of the night, and they were wearing suits. Maybe they were businessmen taking a late-night excursion from some convention, out on the hunt for non-room-service pie. But it was far more likely—and Abe was pleased to see that Norma seemed to share his apprehension—that they also didn’t work for the government.
Before the men had the chance to spot them, they left cash on the table and made a run for it, two fives gazing up after them with Lincoln’s honest visage as they made their escape out into the night.
Back in the car, Norma drove as fast as she could safely manage, away from the diner and back toward the highway. Had those two men been out looking for Abe? He seemed to think so as much as she did, but it was entirely possible they were mistaken—between the late hour and the cloak-and-dagger suspense of Abe’s story, it was easy to see bad guys lurking in every dark corner, menace in every set of headlights reflected in her rear-view mirror.
“Were those the guys?” she finally asked.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Abe admitted. “I guess I just panicked. But they could have been.”
“They could have been,” Norma agreed. “They looked suspicious to me.”
“Really?” Abe asked. “I only thought they were suspicious because they looked so normal.”
“I guess that’s what I mean,” Norma replied. “Normal doesn’t make sense this late at night. If they were trying to look inconspicuous, they would have been wearing souvenir t-shirts and fanny packs—that’s it!”
“Fanny packs?” Abe was confused. What was a fanny pack? It sounded vaguely unwholesome. He sort of hoped it was.
“No—I just had an idea. I know where we can go where you can lie low for a while. I just have to make a quick phone call.”
“Don’t tell them—”
“I won’t tell them anything about you. I just need to get them to let us in.”
Abe was thrilled by the word “us.” That sure sounded like she meant she was planning to spend a bit more time with him. But he didn’t want to force her to. “You can just drop me off if you’d like,” he said. “There’s no need for you to stick with me if you’d rather not. I’m already in your debt.”
“What I’d rather doesn’t really matter any more,” Norma replied, matter-of-factly. “If those guys were the people looking for you, they’re probably after me too by now.”
“What makes you think that?” Abe asked.
“Abe,” Norma sighed, “Mine was the only other car in the parking lot.”
Abe’s stomach knotted up, but his heart soared. She was stuck with him. No matter how much worse the morning might be, the night just kept getting better.
50
You know, I’m really not allowed to do this,” Stuart said, swiping his key card through the slot at the wide double doors leading into an enclosed courtyard. They walked through the courtyard to a complex of identical concrete block buildings, staying tightly together as he led them to one disconcertingly topped with a fake thatched roof and several gables. It was like looking at a beautifully vanilla-frosted brick.
Stuart caught their perplexed glances. “In case anyone catches sight of it from the monorail. They can’t see the bottoms of the buildings, but they might see the roofs. Can’t ruin the overall mood by showing the staff bunkers… would kill the ‘magic.’” He rolled his eyes. “Come on. I can’t get caught with you. This is so against the rules it’s not even funny. If they find out I let you in here I will be so fired. Even if they don’t fire me they’ll fine me who knows how much… or worse, make me wear a head.”
Abe, unsure what to make of this as a form of punishment, started to ask a question, but Norma shut him up with a look. “I’ll explain later,” she whispered. They headed down a long corridor that Abe was surprised to see looked like—well, a high school. Scores of remarkably young people milled about, bulletin boards everywhere proclaimed tryouts and lost and found items, and down every hallway were mundane rooms with small chicken-wired windows that for all intents and purposes looked like classrooms, a cafeteria, possibly rehearsal studios. “What is this place?” He finally asked.
“Fantasy World Pre-Prep B,” Stuart said with a shrug. “It’s just a big break room. Come on, we don’t have time to stare at people—they might stare back.”
“But shouldn’t they all be in school?”
“They’re all in their twenties. Or older. They’re just short. Mouse’s orders. Cast members have to have an approachability factor—makes it easier for the kids to identify with them. That’s code for a height restriction. You must be at least this tall to hug.” He held his hand out at a low head height, posing like the cardboard characters at the front of ride lines. “They don’t actually say it, but you can tell. We also think it keeps the costumes cheaper. Saves thousands of dollars on fabric.” He looked up at Abe. “Guy like you would be instant gift shop. And even then, they’d probably make you stand in a trough or something.”
Abe shook his head, but looking around he started to notice that no one seemed as young as he originally thought. Only smaller, and preternaturally cheerful. He assumed that was another corporate mandate. The three of them arrived at a pair of doors marked “Men” and “Women,” each with a silhouette of an approximation of a mouse in simplistically gender-specific clothing. Stuart left them, heading into the men’s locker room.
“Stay there.” He explained. “I’ll be out as soon as I can. Try to look inconspicuous.” To Abe he added, “Slouch.”
Within minutes he had returned, looking like an entirely different person. Where before he was a small, disturbingly froglike, but otherwise completely forgettable man, now he was… well, now he was a small, remarkably froglike, but unmistakably noticeable star. Norma had to admit she was impressed with the transformation. His shoulders bulked up to three times their normal size with padding, resplendent in a light green doublet and emerald tights, a gold crown perched on his head, and yes, that big gleaming chromed plastic sword, Stuart was without any question the quintessential Frog Prince. The greenish pancake makeup helped, of course, though she was dismayed to realize how little of it he actually needed. But there he was. Every inch a prince. Every inch a frog, too, but nobody’s perfect.
Abe’s reaction was a bit less complimentary. “You dated this guy?” He whispered incredulously.
“Shut up.”
“Come on, come on!” Stuart hissed. “You guys are really lucky I had a spare costume in my locker. We’re not supposed to. We’re supposed to check them out individually and then check them back in at the end of the day. They keep track. Like librar
y books, bar codes and everything. But I snuck out an extra for just in case. So you’re really lucky. I couldn’t have brought you down to the costume warehouse as easily as I could here. Not without an ID. Okay. Follow me. We have to be really fast.”
The three of them took off at top speed. Well, two of them did. Abe and Norma were off, walking at a near sprint, and had cleared several yards before they realized that Stuart was no longer with them.
“Hey!” the prince half-barked, in as low a voice as he could without attracting attention from the other people still moving through the hallways. “My fast as possible, not your fast as possible… Frog, remember?”
He lifted a giant rubbery webbed foot and wiggled it at them exasperatingly, his eyes bugged out wide. Then he stomped after them and past them, as fast as his giant fake frog feet would carry him. The two of them followed close behind him, doing everything they could not to explode in laughter.
“Did he take you back to his pad?” Abe asked Norma as they headed through the next set of doors, just out of earshot.
“Shut up.”
“Did you listen to hip hop?”
“Shut up.”
“Did you touch his tadpole?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Before she had time to say anything else, the last set of gates closed behind them and all three of them were in the Park.
51
Norma was right—this was the perfect place to hide out. Hundreds of thousands of people coming through every week, dressed in all manner of souvenir clothing, plus all the staff workers in their own elaborate costumes. It didn’t matter how conspicuous Abe looked here, not when there were hundreds of people in every direction who looked even more so. There were at least a thousand cars already in the parking lot, and that lot miles away. So even if whoever was following them could trace Norma’s car, it would be a long time before that would lead them to her actual location.