#very surprised dahlia got the dude from the notebook | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shinyoliver · 6 years ago

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Verse 7: Squid

Keeping up with Squid had been a full time task when she had been a little younger. She still had her moods.

After Doris dropped Reg and Squid off, and they had waved the boring SUV on its way, Squid took off. Reg almost had to run to keep up with her. She had mastered “striding” at ten.

“Slow down, Squid,” Reg said. She went a little faster, crunching through the snow, the sun flashing off her hair, every inch of her a blossoming Viking. “Squid, I had a weird night, and I want to understand it better. Could you slow down?”

She said something, but Reg didn’t catch it, what with the muttering and how she wouldn’t slow down.

“Dahlia May Hauer,” Reg said, using her full given name because that meant business. The words made her shoulders stiffen, but she didn’t slow down. “My life went weird last night,” Reg went on, following his voice since he didn’t feel certain what he wished to say. “I hurt for some…I don’t know, antecedent or something. You know how you’re always telling me to embrace my instincts? Remember that?”

“I remember,” Squid said.

“I feel like you know what happened to me last night,” Reg said.

“I don’t…” Squid said, then paused, then took a different approach. “I don’t know what you did last night.” Then she looked over her shoulder. “You met someone called Poppy,” Squid said, half asking, half stating it.

“Yes,” Reg said. “How surprised should I be that you know that name?” Reg said. “Know what, forget about that. Maybe we can discuss that one later, right?”

“Sure,” Squid said.

“Better question…is she a criminal?”

Squid threw a shocked frown at Reg.

“Doesn’t compute, dude,” Squid said.

“Okay, shelve that one for now,” Reg said.

“Good.”

“Fine.” Reg said. He frowned. “You know something about it. Don’t you?”

Squid nodded, on stiff time.

“Talk to me, Squid.”

“I didn’t know anything would happen,” she said. She had slowed down enough so that Reg could catch up with her. He looked at her profile. She looked worried. “I just thought it would be a good way to talk you up. You’re good at speaking, you know. That’s more important than people think, I think. It’s like, people are all like, ‘Hey, I can talk. You’re good at talking? What does that even mean? I can talk. That’s good enough. I won’t even care that you’re good at talking.’ It’s stupid. Know what I mean?”

“I…think…so…” Reg said, but didn’t.

“There’s this message board,” Squid said. “Sort of hard to get approved to get onto it. You have to know somebody who knows the admins. Sort of a big deal. Gavin did—thus Gavin—thus done with Gavin. Anyway, there was this thread on it. It just said, ‘Show me something enchanting.’ Someone called Poppy started it.” Squid looked grim. Reg swallowed. He couldn’t see what was so serious about this. It startled him to see Squid so grim.

She looked at him. “I didn’t mean to get you caught up in anything. I’m sorry. I messed up.”

“What happened?” Reg asked.

“I uploaded that video I have of that thing you said.” Squid sped up again. She didn’t want to look at him.

“You’ll have to be more—” Reg said. Squid interrupted.

“From your dad’s wake,” Squid said. “Or, you know, the after party, where you told everyone to thrive.”

Reg stopped, feeling the bottom fall out of his heart. Squid stopped too. She stood under a tree, turning to face him, but she didn’t look at him. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ground.

Things jostled to come out of Reg’s mouth. Stereotypical things, like that she had no right, or that it was a private moment. Pointless words like that. He knew she knew all of them, though. She looked shame-faced enough.

“You said magical words,” Squid said. “I guess I didn’t know how magical.”

Then she looked at him. Her icy eyes slashed at him.

“Is there magic?” she asked.

“Yes,” Reg said, startled to saying it.

Squid shook her head. “That’s what these message boards talked about. Magic. The community and its news. I didn’t believe most of it. Not the weirder stuff. A lot of it was just nerdy conversation about nerdy stuff. Doctor Who and Tolkien lore and the Convention scene. That kind of stuff. But there were some threads that had a different attitude. Where they talked about…other things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I don’t know,” Squid said, in her this is bullshit, but don’t test me voice. She looked at him again. “It might be a kind of…gang war.”

“A kind of one?” Reg asked.

Squid shrugged.

“Why did you do that?” Reg said around his frown.

“Because you’re killing yourself,” Squid said. She reddened, then glared at him, daring him to ask her for more. Then she said more anyway. “You live a small live and it’s killing you. I hate seeing it.”

They walked a few tense steps. Squid sensed Reg’s depth of tense wretchedness.

“I’m sorry,” she grunted like it hurt to say.

Reg sighed. “Look, it’s okay,” he said, wondering if it was.

“Is it?” Squid asked.

“I don’t know,” Reg said. “I don’t know. But I’m not going to get lost, okay? I’m not upset with you.”

“You might be later,” Squid said. “When it turns out that the magical godfather sends you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Will that happen?”

Squid shrugged again.

“Okay. I guess I’ll figure that one out later.”

Squid nodded.

“I should probably look at those message boards at some point,” Reg said.

“I’ll show them to you.”

“Okay. Do you want pancakes? I’m starving.”

Squid nodded. They walked a while in quiet.

“What are you going to do?” Squid asked.

“The same thing I do every night, Pinky,” Reg said, making only a half-assed impression of Brain from Pinky and the Brain.

“Mess around until you get fed?” Squid said.

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that plan?”

“You instill endless confidence.”

Nobody asked if he would come. Everyone assumed he would not.

And yet, nobody said anything else either.

Bruce had brought two four packs of the bright blue Jones soda. Somehow, Poppy had managed to make most of her mouth dark blue from it when no one else had.

Bonzer played a rom of the first Final Fantasy on his Nintendo DS.

Reiki sat like a windswept spider in one of the rickety chairs. Her phone vibrated with a new text message every few seconds. She responded to each text message with a one word reply.

Bruce sat on the old couch, sipping his soda.

Poppy stood at the head of the table. Her arms crossed over her chest. A bottle of soda dangled from one hand. Under her heavily made-up eyelids, her eyes flicked around, looking at the models and sketches on the big map on the table in front of her.

The air ticked with no noise.

Every heartbeat waited to break the quiet. The members of the crew took it in turns to very nearly speak. Still no one did.

Then, a marvel: somewhere a door opened. Though it crashed into the quiet like thunder, the most any of the crew reacted to it was to throw a slow glance towards it.

With a sound like stumbling, someone came down the stairs. The stumbling sound persisted after the stairs must have ended. He crashed the already open second door from the storage room into the basement lair of the crew. Then he managed to stumble across the floor to an empty chair at the table. His canvas bag flurried with the sound of a flag when he set it down and harrumphed with the sound of a sail when he fished in it for a notebook. The notebook clacked onto the table, and all the sound of an autumn full of cottonwood leaves accompanied his attempt to find an empty page in it.

Like a period on the end of a paragraph, if the period were made by a revolver shot from across the room and left a smoking hole in the page, Reg clicked his pen.

He looked around at them all.

They all looked back.

The air had the feeling of a collected cocked eyebrow.

“What?” he said.

Poppy sighed, and rolled her eyes.

“Right,” she leaned on the table. “Shall we begin?”

Crank didn’t like the way that Mr. Ketch moved around without an entourage. He couldn’t tell if it was a bluff or a double-bluff, and that gave him the willies.

Mr. Ketch wore dark glasses with small lenses, barely bigger than his beady eyes. It made him look like he had no eyes above his thuggish smile. He leaned on the balcony, happy as anything with the sunshine falling on him.

“Are we happy, Mr. Phan?” Mr. Ketch said. Crank tried not to flinch. He didn’t like it either that Mr. Ketch knew his name. Mr. Ketch always knew too much.

Crank blew a silver smoke ring. He put his cigarette back into his mouth. “Seems fair,” Crank said.

“Now, now, Mr. Phan, if you doubt the importance of this to me tell me now.”

Crank scratched the edge of his sharp frown.

“The thought you might be less than entirely committed does make me a little bit twitchy,” Mr. Ketch said. He said it earnestly. Nothing on his face communicated anything threatening.

Yet Crank couldn’t shake the itchy shiver off his spine.

“Seems small time,” Crank said, flicking the ash off his cigarette onto the brief for the job.

Mr. Ketch looked like he wouldn’t respond. Then a slow smile tugged at the stony edges of his wide mouth. It never got wide, and it never eased the itchy shivers plucking at Crank’s spine.

“Now, see, this is why I like to maintain open communication in my organization,” Mr. Ketch said. His low, warm voice got lower and smoother. “Even with my contractors.”

The small silence that followed felt like a cue, inviting some kind of comment to rise up into it. Crank didn’t like it. It felt like a trap.

At the cusp of the moment when the moment grew long enough to begin making Crank look like an idiot, he decided to talk.

“There’s something else going on,” Crank said.

Mr. Ketch’s blank face turned on Crank. Crank sucked on his cigarette to hide his face.

“Other guys might come in here and try to make like you’re stupid, Mr. Phan,” Mr. Ketch said. “I won’t do that to you. You aren’t stupid.” (It didn’t sound like a compliment. Crank’s next smoke ring wasn’t too round.) “Eventually, you may live long enough to deal with the problem that you do have.” Mr. Ketch mused on what he had said, looking sideways to think about it. “Eventually,” he said.

Mr. Ketch looked back at Crank. He seemed to notice for the first time that Crank was smoking. He rose to his feet. Crank flinched, even though Mr. Ketch moved so slow. Mr. Ketch walked the long ten feet across the room. He took Crank’s pack of American Spirits, drew himself one, put it between his lips, and made it clear he wanted a light from Crank.

Crank flicked his lighter on and held it to Mr. Ketch’s cigarette. He had white knuckles, but his hand didn’t shake.

Without looking different, Mr. Ketch looked satisfied.

“We can do business, Mr. Phan,” Mr. Ketch said.

Crank nodded. “We can do business.”

Mr. Ketch saw himself out. His smooth hum and burnt sugar smell followed him out.

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