

Bad Art

by Eric Gideon

This is a work of fiction. The characters and events are imaginary and any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Eric Gideon

This book may not be copied or reproduced by any means without written permission, although limited quotes may be used in reviews and articles.

www.badartnovel.com

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my wife for her love and for indulging my living half my life in an imaginary world. Also to my Dad for being the first to read whatever I write, no matter how bad. Thanks to Jim, the eagle-eyed editorial samurai, and to my Mom and her incredible typo-finding pencil of doom, for helping to make this all come together.

Bad Art

-1-

Jenna came across Danny's body in the back of the video store only an hour into her shift, dressed in his tuxedo, and lying still amongst several 30-gallon bags of neon yellow popcorn. He looked quite dead to her, and anyone watching could have guessed from the blood-red 'horror specialist' badge on her chest that her mind was racing with the murderous possibilities. She stood, frozen silently in place by fear until he stirred slightly in his sleep, whereupon she began screaming vigorously. When Danny opened his eyes in response to her banshee wail, she reacted as if he were a reanimated corpse ready to join a flesh-eating army of the undead. It was very loud. Danny jumped to his feet.

Outside on the sales floor, the customers heard the commotion. Thinking quickly, the late shift supervisor Stuart shouted, "It's Halloween in July, ladies and gentlemen! Get a free bag of popcorn with any horror movie rental for the next five minutes! Boo!" Then he ran into the back room to Jenna's side.

"Hey! What the heck are you doing to her?!" Stuart demanded. Danny was brushing popcorn kernels from his hair while trying unsuccessfully to calm the terrified girl. She was standing in his way so he couldn't get out of the corner of the storeroom without brushing by her, which undoubtedly would have made things worse.

"Hey, seriously, I don't know what's going on. I just took a little rest after my shift, and when I open my eyes she's here freaking out! Can you make her stop?" Danny yelled over her shrill squeals.

Stuart put his hand on the distraught teenybopper's shoulder and she collapsed into his arms. "You're not on my shift. Aren't you from the morning crew, buddy?"

"Please don't call me buddy. My name is Danny Fortune. Yeah, I was on open, why?"

Stuart looked behind him at the time clock. "Man, it's like 9 o'clock at night. What have you been doing back here in the popcorn for four whole hours? Is it still safe for the customers to eat?"

Danny pushed past the two of them and ran the few steps to the time clock.

"Oh no! I'm totally hosed. I'm really late."

Stuart had both of his arms around the unhappy girl, who had ceased her sobbing, but not her clinging embrace. In their tuxedo uniforms they looked like a pair of lovesick penguins. Stuart freed a hand and pointed at Danny with as much authority as he could muster.

"You bet you're hosed, buddy! No one frightens the Couch-Mates on my watch. Just wait until I report you to the assistant district manager for this. Your Potato days are over, buddy!"

Danny scrambled to put on his bike helmet and pointed his bicycle towards the doorway leading into the store.

"Dude, seriously, I need this job. Couchpotatoville needs me anyway to cover all the day shifts. Can't you be cool?"

"In my book, there's nothing cooler than adherence to the Couchpotatoville standard operating procedures. You're getting a written reprimand for this. Sit down at the manager's desk while I write it up."

Danny looked again at the clock.

"This is so not part of the Plan. I've got to get to my other job. Come on, can we talk about this tomorrow or something?"

"This is insubordination! We need you to sit down right now and sign-off on your reprimand! Remember, Mister Danny Fortune, there's no 'I' in Team Potato!"

Danny genuinely felt he should comply, and really hated confrontations like this. He glanced again at the time clock and saw how far off he was from his schedule. If he didn't leave right now, he'd be in real trouble at both jobs, and then the whole Plan was in jeopardy. Besides, if he stayed there and talked with Stuart he might not be able to resist pointing out that there indeed is an 'I' in insubordination. Danny grabbed his backpack and pushed open the swinging door to the storefront with his front wheel. Most of the customers and all the remaining employees stared at Danny. Many of the customers were holding horror movies and awaiting their free popcorn. Stuart started taking purposeful strides towards Danny.

Danny joked over his shoulder, loud enough for everyone in the store to hear, "I don't care how important the promotion is to me, it's not worth my male virginity! I'll just go back to selling #2 pencils on the street corner if I need to!"

Stuart stopped in his tracks, just outside the view of the sales floor. Danny turned to the other two other tuxedoed personnel behind the counter. He lowered his eyes sheepishly and said, "I'm sorry for all the noise. I scream like a girl when I'm threatened. Watch yourself around that Stuart guy. Don't fall for his 'extra sales training' like I did."

No one laughed or smiled, even just to politely break the tension. Other than shocked silence, the only response he got was a sneer from one co-worker, who mumbled, "Nice working with you, loser."

Danny swore quietly to himself, pulled his backpack on tightly, charged out of the Couchpotatoville Video Shack, and leapt onto his bike. He pedaled furiously into the early Buffalo night, wondering if he still had a job waiting for him at the end of the ride. It would be especially bad luck to lose two jobs in one night, even though he hated the time he spent at each of them equally fiercely. He had everything so carefully detailed in the Plan, he was distraught to consider that it might have all gone off the rails again.

After dodging traffic, hopping curbs and panting in the humid summer night, Danny came to the parking lot of Sabatini's Ostentatious Catering. Sabatini's occupied a low-standing, single story building, decorated on the facade with every piece of trim in the Disney Make-Your-Own-Castle kit. The garden in front of the facility was an expanse of bright white gravel, interspersed with bright lights and naked stone cherubs. Danny, red-faced and dripping wet in his tuxedo, short-cutted his bike through the field of brightly lit marble chips, catching the eye of a few of the customers at the buffet line.

He locked his bike to a light pole and headed around to the front door, dragging the backpack holding his catering clothes in one hand. Normally, he'd go in through the back kitchen entrance, but tonight, late as he was, he thought a frontal attack would be the best strategy. If he went in the kitchen, he'd be recognized as late upon arrival, and would likely be fired before he took two steps in the door.

Instead, he decided he'd go right in the front door, change into his work clothes in the customer bathroom, then slide into place at one of his usual stations. If the bartender asked him where he had been, he'd say he had been pulled into the dishroom. If the back-of-the-house manager asked him why he wasn't doing dishes, he'd tell them he'd been helping set up the room in front. At the end of the week, he'd let the payroll clerk know he forgot to punch in on Saturday, and everything would be fine. Sabatini's was a large operation, and you could aget away with some timecard chicanery if you knew the system.

He paused near a window and checked his look in the half-reflection before he went in. His shaggy brown hair, well-overdue for a haircut, was matted down by sweat and his bike helmet, and it curled out near his ears at even odder angles than usual. His brown eyes looked tired, more tired than usual, but the months of living lean and bicycling around for transportation had trimmed off any excess body fat from his tall frame and had him lean and in shape. He thought that he looked pretty good, considering what his evening had been like so far, at least in the dark and fuzzy reflection. He tucked in his shirt tail, straightened his cuffs, and charged the front door.

He made it in and past the coat check undetected, but his plan hit a snag when he arrived in the men's room and discovered that all three stalls were occupied. Danny stood in front of them for a few minutes, checking his watch and shuffling from foot to foot impatiently. Men came in and out to use the urinals, giving him understanding nods when they saw his sweaty brow and anxious dance. But the shoes under the stall doors showed no sign of moving, so Danny eventually gave up and darted out of the men's room, quickly formulating a Plan B.

There was a rest room near a stock room in the back of the kitchen that were both seldom used. If he could cut through the main banquet room, he could slide between the movable walls that were used to carve up the banquet hall into different sizes, jump across the hall when no one was looking, get changed and make sure he was seen coming out of the stock room. He'd come out complaining loudly about how he had to clean up a mess left by the prior night's crew, thus explaining his apparent tardiness. It would be almost too easy.

Carrying his backpack as unobtrusively as possible, he entered the crowd of people who had spilled out of the wedding reception into the hall outside the banquet room. All eyes turned to him as he approached and Danny feared that he had been caught in his subterfuge. Suddenly one of the guests pressed a drink into his free hand, the crowd started chattering.

"Great party, huh?"

"Dude, are you gettin' with that bridesmaid tonight, or what?"

"Aww, leave him alone. Get me another sangria, will you?"

The somewhat tipsy guests from the rear tables had mistaken him for a low-ranking member of the wedding party. Danny smiled and drained the glass on cue for an impromptu hallway toast, and tried to break away from the group. His rumpled and sweaty video store tuxedo was not particularly nice, and he feared that his mistaken identity would be cleared up as soon as one of the actual wedding party happened by. It would be difficult to explain the presence of a purple and yellow Couchpotatoville Video Shack logo on his right lapel. None of the real groomsmen would have a jacket that literally stated 'We'll Be Classy So You Don't Have To'. Danny almost got free of the group, after promising he'd return after telling the DJ to play something that didn't suck.

Just then, the sounds of a horn section flowed out to the hallway from the dance floor. A driving disco backbeat rode beneath, carrying a wave of energy through the crowd. The people on the dance floor cheered, and even the wallflowers standing near their tables started to stream to the center of the room. The crowd near Danny caught the wave, and jumped simultaneously to attention. They cheered and poured in towards the dance floor around him. Hands grabbed his arms just above the elbows and pulled him backwards onto the crowded parquet dance floor. It was time for the Y-M-C-A.

Danny was trapped on the floor in the midst of the tightly packed horde. He tried courageously to push his way through to the far side of the floor, but it was like swimming in silly putty. Then the chorus came. "It's fun to stay at the..." Danny raised his left arm and made wild motions in time with the crowd, protecting his backpack below in his right hand. He found that he was able to make a little progress across the floor during the chorus with everyone's hands in the air. He covered half the distance to the access door during the first chorus, but would have to bide his time until the next one to complete his escape.

He spent the verse in the tightly pressed mob soaking any remaining dry patches of his clothing in sweat, not all of it his own. The second chorus started, and he jumped sideways in time with the beat, waving his left arm and dragging his backpack. The edge of the crowd and the door to the back hallway were within sight. He raised his arm for the 'Y' and prepared to make the final leap, when he felt a sudden sharp pain. Someone behind him had grabbed his ear quite firmly and was pulling him back into the crowd.

* * *

The evening before Danny fell asleep in the pre-popped popcorn, Arthur Zeno threw a bit of a tantrum in his opulent office. He pounded his desk in frustration, making a high pitched screeching when his titanium watchband dragged across the glass top. He was impeccably but casually dressed, as always, but there was nothing casual about his enraged scowl.

"Dammit! The whole thing is in danger of falling apart. First, Roland cooks his head with a prototype, making the whole project reliant on the last goddamn gnome, and now this. What did the idiot say he was doing? Did someone offer him more money?"

"No, Arthur. It wasn't about the money. It was the exact opposite, in fact," said Jillian. "He didn't want to work for 'the corporate machine' anymore, he said. Something about the evils of the profit motive. He's on his way to Central Africa with the Peace Corps right now."

Zeno leaned back into his leather chair. He scowled in thought, and worry lines threatened for a moment to overtake his sun wrinkles as the dominant feature of his face.

"It probably didn't help that you called him 'idiot boy' to his face, even if the job is easy. Can't we just find someone new?" she asked.

Zeno complained, "Yeah, but we had idiot boy all broken in. He should have been hooked with all we threw at him. What a stupid thing for him to do. He was just smart enough to do the moron job without being smart enough to figure out what he was really accomplishing. He had the system down too, was really starting to move on production. We'll lose two, maybe three weeks now getting our new dial-a-moron in place and self-sufficient. I can't afford that time. Crap, the buyers are all over me already."

Zeno swiveled around in his chair away from Jillian to face the credenza. She allowed herself to pout for just a second, and craned her delicate neck to see what Arthur was looking at without getting out of her seat. Lined up in the middle of the walnut cabinet were six little figures. Although three of them were faded by the sun and the others were still rendered in fairly bold colors, they were otherwise identical. The six of them were arranged to the left of the credenza, such that there was space for one more on the right. Jillian was of course familiar with their little blue pants, their curly toed shoes, and the tunic cinched around their ample middles by a little brown belt. Each one had one arm behind his back, with the other casually held akimbo, as if it were about to deliver a rousing song. Each one had also been neatly decapitated with a Stanley utility knife, and had a gash running down its spine from the nape of its stumpy neck to the seat of its dumpy little pants. The heads were nowhere to be seen.

Zeno was quiet for a moment. Jillian cleared her throat to remind Zeno that she was behind him. It was possible she had been dismissed. It was sometimes hard to tell, but she didn't think Arthur should treat her like everyone else, even though she would let him. Zeno spun himself back around but didn't look at her, his eyes fixed on a point on the ceiling in thought.

She said, "There's nothing we can do until Monday. Do you want to go get some dinner now, Arthur? Maybe relax a little?"

"You've got that thing tomorrow, right? So you aren't available for the rest of the weekend?" he asked.

Jillian winced, letting a painful expression cloud her pretty face. "Yes, my friend from high school is getting married. She's from a rich family and a lot of powerful people will be there. Have you changed your mind about coming with me? You could make some connections."

Zeno made a face like she had just burped up hour-old liver and onions while smoking a cigar under his nose. "No. I think... Yeah, I have to go to the coast this weekend. Business stuff. You have fun at your thing, cut loose, go crazy. I'll see you on Monday."

Zeno picked up the phone, and without a moment's hesitation, barked, "Put me on the next flight to LA. First class, window seat, and make sure there's something decent to eat this time," then hung up the phone.

Jillian looked at him sadly. Quietly, she said, "I could go with you, you know. I help you with everything here, so I don't understand why LA is different. I'm sure that..."

Zeno cut her off, saying "Not for this kind of business, sweetheart. See you Monday." He rapped a key on his keyboard to awaken his computer, and started perusing something on the screen. Jillian fought back an involuntary pouting of her lower lip, then steeled herself and walked out the door, with only a quick glance back as she turned the corner. Zeno wasn't watching her leave.

-2-

Danny yelped in pain and surprise, sure that he had been caught by the beefy bartender Cory, or perhaps old man Sabatini himself. He was jerked off balance, and bumped backwards against a couple pairs of shoulders as he was pulled back into the crowd. His backpack was stripped from his hand as he fell. The grip on his lobe was released, so he turned around, expecting to get a verbal dressing-down from a superior caterer, and perhaps get fired right there on the dance floor.

However, when he did, he wasn't immediately sure who in the crowd had plucked him from the edge. It became apparent when a small, dark-haired woman, a full head shorter than Danny and standing right in front of him, grabbed his other ear. Danny had looked right over her head, expecting a taller and more masculine assailant.

She pulled his ear close and yelled into it, "You're doing it all wrong!" Although he was confused, hurried and in pain, Danny noticed her perfume when he was pulled in. It smelled nice. It smelled expensive.

"I'm very sorry," argued Danny. "What are we talking about?"

She released his ear and smiled, allowing him to right his head and get a look at her face. She was pretty. Her hair and makeup were tastefully done for the event, and she looked as good up close as she would from far away. Danny had worked enough weddings to know that many women dressed to look good in the photographs, but their makeup was so heavy that up close they looked like lawn ornaments. Or clowns. Danny didn't like clowns, and there was no way he'd consider a woman attractive once he thought of her as one.

The woman shook her head and laughed. "You really need help, don't you? Haven't you ever done the YMCA? You're supposed to use both hands!"

She grabbed his wrists and resumed the pre-chorus bouncing that had infected the entire room. Danny thought it would be polite for him to bounce too, but he was also worried about getting to work, and to do that, he'd have to retrieve his wayward backpack from the floor. He briefly considered breakdancing as an excuse to get down to floor level and find his bag, but thought this might attract too much attention. Besides, he was intrigued by this woman, and she was holding him firmly captive.

"You guys looked great up there today," she said.

Danny felt the sweat running in rivulets down his back, laminating the shoulders of his Couchpotatoville shirt to his skin. He self-consciously mopped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve and worried about how transparent the cheap shirt must have become.

"Sorry," he said, sheepishly.

"It's OK. You've been dancing really hard. I've been watching you for a while," the girl admitted, then she shyly looked away, without letting go of his wrists. Danny looked around for an actual member of the wedding party. He felt as though he might have cut in on some other guy's chances.

The song got to the final chorus, and the woman led him through the hand motions like he was an oversized marionette. She seemed to enjoy treating him like an idiot. He felt ridiculous being led through the dance like this, but he wasn't prepared to break contact with the pretty woman. He grew quickly fond of the way she leaned in against him to get his arms into position from her vertically disadvantaged position. And despite having a wedding caterer's deep seated and passionate hatred of the YMCA song, he was disappointed when it came to an end. The next song was a slow dance number, and Danny didn't know what he should do, whether he should take the girl into his sweaty arms, or walk away and go wash dishes. The floor cleared, as the early slow dances often do. He craned his neck around, but his backpack was nowhere to be seen.

He returned his gaze to the girl, awaiting further instructions. She didn't hesitate to provide them.

"Buy me a drink," she commanded playfully, dropping his hands.

"Um. It's open bar," said Danny, somehow hoping this would guide her into getting her own drink. He was supposed to be barback right now, and asking Cory to serve him seemed like a really bad idea.

"Don't tell me that. It takes away all the romance. I'll be over there, waiting for you. But not for very long," she said, indicating an empty table in the corner of the room and running a finger along his jaw with her other hand. The table she picked was right next to the access door.

Danny sidled up to the bar. Being a complete novice at sidling, he looked as if he were a big sweaty kitten about to pounce on a ball of yarn. He pulled a pair of rumpled and moist dollar bills from his pocket, and smoothed them out against his thigh. He checked Cory the bartender out to see how he was doing on his own.

Cory was a burly fellow who looked like he spent all of his awake time away from the bar lifting weights and eating protein supplements. He was balding on top, and wore his remaining hair cropped close and slicked back to give himself a streamlined and dangerous look. He was unnaturally tanned in an otherworldly orange hue, and his shirt rippled as he moved fluidly behind the bar. He was smooth and professional with the guests, particularly the ladies, but was never anything but a bastard to Danny. Barbacks and dishwashers were the lowest life forms on the Sabatini's catering hierarchy, barely recognized as the same species as the bartender.

Cory was handling the crowd all right, but was starting to fall behind without Danny's help. Danny couldn't help taking some pleasure at Cory's misfortune. He waited hidden until Cory was filling a blender, and then Danny shouted, "Hey man, I told you, two vodka martinis with a twist! Come on man, I'll hook you up!"

Danny immediately ducked behind a distant and balding uncle of the bride who happened to be leaning against the bar. He left his arm sticking out onto the bar with dollar bills folded precisely to hide the quantitative value, but showing their verdant field of green. Cory wheeled his scowl around in the direction of the sound, but in the sea of faces, saw only the arm with the tip offered. He internalized his anger for the moment, and switched on the blender with one hand while grabbing a stainless steel shaker with the other.

"Right away sir!" he called over the noise of the music.

Danny peeked around the uncle, who was curiously unconcerned with the way Danny was breathing in his ear. Danny saw Cory shaking the martinis one-handed while he built a monument honoring the Goddess of the Drunken Bridesmaid with the neon frozen blender stuff. Despite his unpleasant personal characteristics, Danny was impressed. No one could sling alcoholic sugar slush like Cory. After Cory poured the martinis and was turning to hand them to Danny, Danny stood up and twisted around. He kept his arm with the tip on the bar, but raised his other arm like he was waving to someone across the room.

"Hey! Yeah, I'll be right there, you party dog, you!" he called.

Danny felt the bills get plucked from his fingers and knew Cory would be at the other end of the bar by the time he realized he'd been reeled in with a pair of well-folded singles. He wheeled around, keeping his face behind the uncle of the bride, and snatched the drinks from the bar.

When he returned to the table, the woman was talking on her cellphone. She glanced up at Danny, looking annoyed, but then seemed to remember who he was. She said a terse word into the cellphone, and carefully closed it and stowed it inside her tiny accessory purse.

"Ever have one of those really bad nights?" she asked.

Danny considered the circumstances he'd been immersed in so far that evening, but only said, "I'm sorry."

She answered, "It's okay, it's better that you're here. You took a long time at the bar. I wasn't sure if you were coming back," she said.

"I'm sorry about that. This place has got some of the worst service staff around. For you," he said, handing her the glass. She swished the clear liquid around the glass, just under the rim, then set it down on the table without tasting it.

Danny was nervous. He downed his martini in one gulp. The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise, smiled and slid her glass in front of Danny. He thanked her and chugged it down as well. The two martinis were all he had put in his stomach since breakfast, other than a couple kernels of stale popcorn that he had ingested accidentally during his nap. He had counted on sneaking through the kitchen and picking off unattended entrees at the start of his shift, but that hadn't worked out.

"I think you need another," said the woman, standing up. "Let me get these." She walked towards the bar as if it were her own.

Danny slunk down in his chair and hid his head in his hands, feeling his coworkers' eyes boring into the back of his skull, although he hadn't seen any of them yet. Between dinner and clean up, the caterers avoided the guests as much as possible, staying in the kitchen or smoking dope out back by the dumpsters to kill time. For the moment, Danny was anonymous and safe, as long as he continued to avoid Cory's notice, who was in turn busy being deluged at the bar.

The woman returned with two more glasses, tall, with dark liquid gnashing around a column of ice. Danny recognized them right away as Long Island Iced Tea, a noxious, sometimes flammable concoction that Cory mixed strong enough to make customers gag on their first sip.

"You looked thirsty," she said, handing him one glass, and placing the other on the table halfway between their seats. She sat down. "So I got you a something a little bigger."

Danny thanked her and took a long sip of the beverage. He fought to suppress a cough as the vaporized alcohol fumes filled his head.

"Mmmmm, smooth," he choked. "I'm sorry, but I don't think we can go any farther with this until we've met. I'm Danny. Danny Fortune."

"What is 'this' that you think we're going further with?" she asked with a smile.

Danny, having honestly meant nothing but to learn her name, was embarrassed, and found that he couldn't maintain eye contact with her. He looked away to the dance floor, where actual members of the wedding party were now on the floor, the men wearing much nicer tuxedos than Danny's video store monkey suit. Tuxedos without logos on the jackets or white athletic socks. A side-by-side comparison would quickly reveal Danny's mistaken identity. Danny took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair to avoid any direct comparisons.

He glanced over his other shoulder and saw the front of the house staff congregating near the kitchen door, freshly anesthetized and ready to begin clearing the tables. A proud man in a pristine tux pushed through the thronging waitstaff, and Danny realized that the groomsmen had been in back taking advantage of one of the kitchen staff's many alternative pharmaceutical sideline businesses. Danny knew his secret identity was rapidly coming into peril, never mind his job.

He chugged down his drink and wiped his chin on his sleeve. The woman was watching the dance floor and moving her head in time with the music. Soon she'd guide them back onto the dance floor. Danny had to act.

"So, uh, I think I have to get going. You know, make the rounds and all. Duty calls."

Her face dropped in disappointment, although a small and sharp crease between her eyes registered some annoyance as well.

"What's the matter? I thought we were having a good time. If you want to go mingle, take me with you and show me off. I'd love to meet your friends."

Who the hell does she think I am? wondered Danny.

"No, that's all right. I just... You know, weddings, right?" Danny stammered.

She smiled and put her hand on his wrist. He felt the effects of the Long Island Iced Tea start to make their way from his stomach to the fronts of his eyes.

"Do you want to get out of here?" she asked. "With me?" she added, after a moment.

"Yes, absolutely. Oh, let's totally do that," answered Danny, standing up and pulling her by the arm. The dance floor and the swarming waitstaff stood between them and the front door, so Danny pulled them through the false wall, much to the woman's surprise. He pulled her down the passageway behind the wall, reaching the door to the kitchen hall. Instead of turning right to sneak into the kitchen as was his original plan, he turned left to the emergency exit door, and pulled her through. They emerged outside behind a greasy and stinky dumpster.

"Oh!" she exclaimed in horror, covering her nose and suppressing a gag.

"Huh. I guess the fish wasn't too popular at the buffet last night," said Danny. He started walking around the front of the building.

"Where are you parked? Isn't the lot behind us?" she asked, looking over her shoulder. Danny froze when he realized he was walking her towards his bicycle. He briefly pictured her riding on his handlebars while he stoked away on the pedals. It seemed almost romantic, and a little sexy with her in her little black dress, but mostly ridiculous.

"Oh, right. I've got the worst sense of direction. Plus I'm totally wasted." He meant this as bravado, but in fact he was feeling amazingly fuzzy. There seemed to be a time delay between when he thought he said the words, and when he heard himself say them. As he turned back to her, the images passing before his eyes blurred and lost focus. He tried snapping his fingers to listen for the echo, but after a few times, he noticed the she was staring at him and looking annoyed.

"Actually, I didn't drive. We took a cab. Limo. You know, because we were hammered. Partying. Rock on, right?" He held up his arms to check that he was indeed still wearing his tuxedo and a member of the faux groomsmen's party.

She smiled and took him by the hand. Her fingers were cool and soft. "I guess I'll have to do everything. We can take my car." She pulled him toward the parking lot.

With a glance back in the direction of his bike, feeling like a deadbeat dad for leaving it behind, Danny followed her obediently and stopped remembering things before he even saw the car that she drove him away in.

-3-

Nelson was worried, although he didn't want it to show. Danny regularly accepted Nelson's invitations to go out drinking or participate in shopping cart jousting matches, with no intention of actually showing up. Nelson knew Danny did it because Danny didn't want to admit to his face that he wasn't interested. Nelson took this as a sign of friendship, so he made sure to never leave Danny out. But this was different. Danny had never missed a shift in the six months they had worked together at the Couchpotatoville video rental store, and a half year in the world of retail wage-slavery was easily equivalent to several years in other lines of work, such was the turnover and the long hours of forced proximity. There was also the matter of the written reprimand left for Brandi's review on the manager's desk with Danny's name on it, which Nelson promptly stuffed into the back of his boxer shorts before Brandi discovered it.

Nelson looked a fright, as he usually did for work. Somehow, he managed to make a tuxedo look less formal than checkered flannel pajamas. He wore his dirty blond hair long and shaggy, and it often fell in front of his eyes while he worked. Today it had bits of popcorn in it. He was pale skinned and pudgy, bordering on plummeting towards overweight due to his keeping to a diet devoid of any adult restraint, even though he himself had recently turned 21. His small dark eyes gave him the look of a quizzical stray dog, and his tuxedo shirt was pulled out of his pants in the back. When he bent down to pick up a quarter or just hide from the customers in line, his boxer shorts popped out for a viewing. But despite his personal shabbiness, Nelson was always punctual for his shift and would always cover empty shifts on short notice, which was plenty enough for a solid career at Couchpotatoville.

So, when Danny didn't show for his Sunday afternoon shift at the store, Nelson lied to the manager, Brandi, telling her that he and Danny had previously worked out a shift switch, and that Nelson had simply forgotten to mention it. Perhaps there was a mix up with his other job at Sabatini's, as the calculus of Danny's scheduling between the two jobs produced the need for arcane 4-dimensional applied mathematics to keep Danny in the right place at the right time. In covering for Danny's shift, Nelson worked a sixteen hour shift at the store, and by the end of it, his store tuxedo uniform was a horrible mess, more so than usual. He left the store, checked the dashboard clock in his tiny SUV, and since it was too late to pop in at Danny's to collect his well-earned good karma, he decided to go blow off some steam.

He drove into downtown Buffalo and arrived at the Slag Heap, a heavy metal bar where bands played painfully loudly throughout the night, even on Sundays. The club owners had taken over an industrial warehouse to build the bar, and had decorated the club by welding everything the prior tenants had left behind to the walls and bar, creating a rusty, craggy surface of vehicle parts, file cabinets and flatware. The last band of the night, 'Contusion Method', was just going onstage as Nelson walked in at 1 am, still wearing his tuxedo. Most of the room was well lubricated by hours of cheap beer and bottom-shelf vodka, and together they formed a sweaty mass blocking the way to the stage. By the third song, Nelson had worked his way to the front of the stage and was head-banging energetically at the feet of the lead guitarist.

Unfortunately for Nelson, his wild gyrations attracted the attentions of a large and poorly socialized off-duty mall security guard, who decided that Nelson was a poser. In the hierarchy of heavy metal culture, posers are a lower caste even than country music fans, and though the label couldn't have been more wrong for the devoutly righteous Nelson, he was wearing an ill-fitting tuxedo. He couldn't have been worse off without wearing a ten-gallon hat and a magenta Japanese kimono.

The burly beefcake pushed his way through the crowd, and without even waiting for the end of the guitar solo, tapped Nelson roughly on the shoulder.

"What?" barked Nelson into the man's broad chest.

"You suck. Unrighteous poser," slurred the self-appointed guardian of the hardcore.

"Dude. Step off. He's shreddin'!" yelled Nelson over the tirade of sixteenth-notes pouring from the amplifiers, but it was of no use. The mall cop had said all he had to say, so he picked Nelson up, and carried him out of the crowd towards the wall. He hefted Nelson into the air, intending to throw him into a backhoe bucket attached to the wall near the ceiling. However, the mall cop's actual muscles were not nearly as strong as his beer muscles thought they were. He hefted the pudgy video clerk, and blew foul exasperated breath in Nelson's face when he failed to get him aloft. Instead, the mall cop pushed Nelson against a rusty bit of scrap iron hanging much closer to the ground, cutting Nelson's shoulder painfully. Nelson's attacker dropped Nelson to the floor, and looked like he was readying himself for another try. But when Contusion Method started their next song, a heart-rending and dangerously loud power ballad, the attacker seemed to lose interest in destroying Nelson, and shuffled away waving a cigarette lighter over his head.

Nelson saw the blood soaking through his shirt, decided he wasn't up to being righteous at the moment, and slunk out of the bar to drive himself to experience the glory of an uninsured emergency room visit for stitches and a tetanus shot. Nelson had to wait until long after sunrise for attention, until after the gunshot recipients, overdose cases and rape victims were taken care of. He was finally stitched up, left the hospital and drove directly to Danny's apartment, logically blaming the night's events, including the $173 cash outlay at the hospital on Danny's transgression the night prior. Nelson rang the doorbell and called Danny's phone, but there was no answer for either. Nelson was exhausted, so he sat in his miniature SUV in front of Danny's apartment house, and dozed in the front seat.

* * *

Danny woke up in an unfamiliar place wearing his tuxedo shirt, a sock with a hole in it and no pants. He had no idea where he was or how he got there. There was a pillow under his head that was thick and soft, and he felt the weight of a down comforter pressing down gently all over his body. He sniffed the air for any of the moldy, malty or rotten odors that dominated his typical sleeping quarters, but couldn't detect anything but a refreshing absence of smell. Perhaps it was the smell of clean. He couldn't be sure. His curiosity eventually outweighed the comfort of staying put in the warm bed, and he sat up to look around. His body felt stiff and creaky all over and his head hurt.

The furniture was spare and sparse, with the shelves bare but a few impersonal knickknacks carefully placed. It looked like he was in an Ikea catalog or a Swedish hotel, and Danny wondered how he got to from Buffalo to Sweden on his bicycle. He was surprised by a sound outside the room and he yelped a little bit, hugging the comforter to his chin. There was a door near the foot of the bed, open enough to let sound in, but not enough to let Danny see out.

He stood up next to the bed, and looked around for the rest of his clothes, but they were nowhere to be seen. He slumped over and pulled the hem of his shirt down to give him some frontal coverage, and ventured a peek out of the door.

Danny pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked out into the living room of a small apartment. It was clean and neat in a museum display sort of way, as if no one actually lived there, but that someone had tried hard to create the illusion of occupation. It felt like someone had cleaned it so vigorously that along with the dust bunnies, they had sucked all of the soul out of the place with a vacuum cleaner. The light beige couch looked soft but uninviting. The room was brightly light, and put his hands to his face to shield his eyes. He noticed that his chin was covered in stubble.

On the right of the living room was an open doorway, where he could see the hints of a room even brighter than the living room, which he guessed was a bathroom or a kitchen. Danny needed a bathroom fairly urgently, so he clutched the front of his tuxedo shirt, and ran on his tiptoes into the light. He was two steps through the door when he learned two things in rapid succession. One, the room wasn't a bathroom, and, two, he wasn't alone in it.

"Well, good morning, lazy man," said the dark haired woman, standing in the kitchen by the coffee machine and looking over her shoulder at Danny.

She was fully dressed, making Danny feel even more than half naked by comparison. What's more, she was well dressed for a day at the office, with trim beige slacks and a button-down tailored shirt showing off her figure. A dark leather belt was cinched tight around her trim waist. She had dark brown hair that was affixed into a fashionably permanent breezy look by hairspray Danny could still smell. Danny, who was barefoot, noted with some disdain that she was wearing a pristine pair of uncomfortable looking heels. Danny knew very little about women beyond the basic mechanics they teach in fifth grade, but it was still disturbing that someone would wear uncomfortable shoes in their own kitchen.

"Where am I?" asked Danny.

She proffered a cup of coffee to him. He backed up into the living room and grabbed a throw pillow from the couch. He clutched the pillow tightly like a teddy bear, although somewhat lower on his body than traditional.

"Oh, don't be silly," she said, pressing the coffee mug into his free hand and kissing him on the lips. She had to pull him down, as Danny's six-foot frame put his mouth much higher than this rather small woman's. Danny could taste the residue of her lipstick left behind, but didn't have a free hand to wipe his mouth. Gosh, she just kissed me, he thought in awe.

"What happened last night? Did I go to work?" he asked.

Her eyes drifted down on his body, and her eyebrows twisted wryly. "Oh, you went to work all right," she said, standing close enough that Danny could smell her perfume.

Danny stumbled back around the arm of the couch, spilling the black coffee onto the cushion as he twisted to minimize his exposure.

"Oh gosh. Sorry. No, really. The wedding! Did we meet at the wedding?"

She smiled and answered, "Of course we did. You were quite the dancer."

"Did I make it in time for my shift? Why can't I remember? Gosh, I hope I didn't get fired. Where are my pants? Is my mountain bike here?"

She stalked back to the kitchen doorway, turned and crossed her arms. She frowned, and despite her smaller size, was all of a sudden very intimidating to Danny.

"Are you serious? You're not part of the family that owns Millennium Real Estate? Are you seriously saying that you work at Sabatini's? And you ride a bicycle?"

"That's a lot of questions," said Danny, and he felt a knot form in the bottom of his stomach. He thought he felt nervous sweat begin to collect on his bare rump. She tapped her toe and waited for his response.

"Yeah, I work at Sabatini's. At least I did. If I missed my shift they probably fired me. Crap, I needed that job. It's Sunday, right? I'm supposed to work tonight at my other job. Why don't I remember anything?"

She took a step forward and drummed the fingers of her right hand on her arm. It was like the nervous twitching of a cat's tail just before it pounced on the helpless mouse before it.

"It's Monday morning. Tell me what you do there," she demanded icily. Her brown eyes locked onto his. The were so dark it almost looked like she had giant pupils. It made for a freaky and imposing effect that she didn't blink much.

"Where, at Sabatini's? Oh, I'm a dishwasher. Sometimes I barback, which is a pain in the ass because the bartender is a tool, but the tips are good."

She uncrossed her arms and held her hand to her mouth as if she felt sick. "Oh God," she said sadly, "tips. You work for...tips. This can't happen. It didn't happen."

"What didn't happen? Can you please tell me what happened that didn't happen? Do you have some problem with caterers?" asked Danny, unsure how indignant he should get in his current situation.

She closed her eyes and pointed somewhere behind him. He checked his grip on his pillow before turning to see that she was pointing to the door.

"Out! Out out out out out! Now!" she yelled suddenly, surprising Danny into dropping his cup. It landed on the end table and doused the cordless phone in double-sugar City Roast. The phone made a sad little beep, which seemed to anger her even more. She stomped forward in that careful way women have to when walking in tall heels. She took his arm and led him to the door, holding her face away so he couldn't see if she was crying or angry. He stood there, helpless and dumbfounded as she threw open the lock and swung the door open to reveal a pastel wallpapered hallway beyond. She pushed him out into the hall, with Danny offering very little resistance, and slammed the door behind him. He turned and faced the door and listened to the bolt sliding shut in the lock. He was suddenly and violently aware again of his need to urinate and looked around the hallway, still holding the couch pillow in place.

"Is this Sweden?! Because I don't have a passport!" Danny yelled at the door, without getting an answer. Then he realized there was an old lady walking a small dog in a sweater watching him just down the hall in front of the next apartment. He turned to face her, checking the position of his throw pillow of modesty.

"Good morning, ma'am."

"Oh my," she said.

She wavered slightly. Danny wasn't sure if she were about to scream or keel over dead. Or perhaps destroy him with her kung fu. So many women were renting those kickboxing videos lately, you never knew if they might be learning something from them. But rather than unleashing her Shaolin fury on him, she stayed there, quiet and wavering in place.

"Lovely morning isn't it," asked Danny, although it was more of a self-affirming statement to himself than an icebreaker. He nodded down towards the pillow. "I seem to find myself locked out without my pants. Do you think you might let me use your bathroom for a moment? I'm sorry for the trouble."

The woman smiled and relaxed. She looked at the apartment door Danny had just been locked out of and seemed to think for a moment. She reached out to touch Danny's elbow. It wasn't a threatening gesture at all, but Danny still intensified his grip on the throw pillow.

"It's OK honey, I've done that too. You can call me Mrs. Russell, and this little ruffian is Bitsy," she said. She pulled Danny to her side and started ambling back towards her own apartment. Her arm snaked through his left elbow as if he were escorting her to a cotillion dinner. While her movements were the cautious steps of someone preeminently concerned with breaking a hip, her grip felt anachronistically strong and sure. Bitsy barked and tangled his leash around Danny's feet, scratching Danny's bare toes with little unworn claws. Every time the dog circled behind them, Danny tensed up, awaiting the sensation of tiny teeth on his bare ass. Bitsy, for his own part, either couldn't make the jump, or was biding his time for a more interesting target, and sufficed with the leash tangling game that humans think is so unintentional.

Mrs. Russell let him in and showed him to the bathroom. After he had relieved himself, and was standing in the bathroom unsure if it was polite to go back out in his current state of undress, there was a soft knock at the door. Danny cracked it open.

Mrs. Russell stood outside, eyes averted, holding a pair of brown wide-wale corduroy trousers towards the door.

"Here honey, these are Mr. Russell's. You could use them more than he could right now," she said, and walked away without looking after Danny pulled the pants through the opening. The trousers were cut for someone six inches shorter and many inches wider then Danny, and brown corduroy with a wrinkled tuxedo shirt was no one's idea of a good look, but Danny was nonetheless grateful.

Before he came out, he noticed a noise, and stopped to cock his head and listen. It was a song, almost familiar, but sung in a voice devoid of pitch or melodic talent. It stopped suddenly when he opened the door. He met Mrs. Russell in the living room, where she had set a serving tray on the coffee table with an empty glass and an open bottle of root beer.

"Was there just somebody singing?" asked Danny. "I couldn't quite place the song. Is that Mr. Russell?"

"Oh gracious, no dear," she said quickly. "Have a seat and let's talk. You must be parched."

Danny would have much preferred a double shot of espresso, preferably made with Ethiopian beans, but he wasn't about to insult his benefactor's kindness. He was really hungry and thirsty.

As they sat on the Davenport, Danny's bare feet protruding from the bottoms of his pants several inches, Mrs. Russell made polite small talk. She was either unaware or unconcerned with the state she had found Danny in. She told him Mr. Russell had passed away several years ago, and about the cutthroat politics of the wholesale shoeshine business that had been Mr. Russell's life's work, and her continued sadness at never having any children of her own. She was interrupted by Bitsy, whose had been whining at her feet, but was now barking and scratching at the door.

"Oh Bitsy, we are a bit overdue, aren't we?" said Mrs. Russell kindly. "You'll have to excuse us now, Mr. Fortune. It's time for Bitsy's morning constitutional, and I must get to the market for some fresh eggs. I do hope you have a better day ahead though, and it was lovely to meet you."

As soon as she stood, Bitsy spun in place, about to implode with excitement. Danny rose as well, and though Bitsy gave him a cursory sideways growl, the dog was too concerned with the state of his bladder to menace the big and smelly intruder.

"Thank you, Mrs. Russell. It was a pleasure meeting you and, um, Bitsy."

"Oh don't be silly dear. It's a pleasure for no one to meet Bitsy. I may be an old lady, but I know that much. And you keep Mr. Russell's pants. I certainly don't need them any more, but I believe that you will today. I'm sorry that I don't have proper shoes that would fit you. Mr. Russell had feet like a seven-year old boy."

She opened the door, and Danny walked past her out of the apartment, mindful that Bitsy not get a grip on one of his toes. Mrs. Russell followed him after a momentary pause as she went back in to retrieve the throw pillow Danny came in with.

"Here dear, this is yours as well. You'd better keep it close, you never know."

Danny grinned and reddened, taking it the pillow, but fidgeted with it, unsure how one is supposed hold an accessory that had such a checkered past -- clutched to the chest in fond remembrance, or dangled by a corner in unabated disgust? Behind him, another door further down the hall opened with a faint gasp of air. Out stepped the dark haired woman in heels. She didn't appear to acknowledge Mrs. Russell or the yapping microcanine's existences, but glared directly at Danny.

"Well? It's about time. You've made me late for work. I had no idea where you were," she accused.

Danny didn't move. He looked at Mrs. Russell, who gave him an odd, impish grin.

"Come on, it's time to go and you're not even ready. And oh my God, what are those pants you're wearing?"

"You'd better go dear. Never keep a lady waiting," said Mrs. Russell, giving Danny's pillow arm an affectionate and strangely strong squeeze.

She guided Bitsy down the hall to the elevator, passing the younger woman without a glance or a word. After a moment, Danny shrugged and shuffled over to the open door. He handed her the pillow.

"Here. This is yours," he said.

"Oh, but that's not what I want," grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him down into another kiss. Danny fought to suppress a root beer infused belch as she pulled him into the apartment and shut the door behind them with her foot. She attacked him with violent kisses and energetic groping, but after just a minute of this, her cellphone rang. She opened one eye to look at the screen, then broke off suddenly in mid-kiss. Before Danny knew it, she was driving him home in sullen silence.

-4-

Nelson was awakened by Danny knocking at his car window. Danny looked as tired as Nelson did, and was also still wearing his tuxedo shirt, although without Nelson's display of gore. Nelson awoke and nodded at Danny, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes until he figured out that he should get out of the car and follow Danny inside. Although initially self-conscious about his blood soaked shirt and pile of gauze strapped to his back, he was comforted that he still looked cooler than Danny in his mid-calf corduroys and bare feet.

"Dude!" Nelson shouted from the street at the back of Danny's head. "Where have you been? You missed your shift last night! Plus, you owe me $173!"

Danny unlocked the door to the apartment house and entered the hallway. He paused for a moment, looking back at Nelson to decide if it was a good idea to invite him in. The morning had been plenty odd enough already, but Nelson always seemed to mean well, and his ragged condition and demands for cash compensation piqued Danny's curiosity,

The apartment house was once upon a time a grand single family house, with servants' quarters and an expansive tile foyer for receiving guests. In the 70's, it had been carved up into three rental units by an entrepreneur with little regard for architectural worth. Now the grand foyer was the front hallway, and there was a kitchen on the second floor where the original master bedroom used to be. Danny lived in the third floor former servant's quarters in a dead-end firetrap one-bedroom that would never pass a building code inspection without a bribe.

"Come on in, man. Do you want some coffee?" asked Danny, holding open the door.

Nelson jumped eagerly to the step. "Coffee? Are you kidding? What's my name, Mohambo?"

Danny shook his head. Nelson had been trying unsuccessfully for the last couple of months to establish a trademark catch phrase, of the kind possessed in the B-grade films he borrowed like an addict from Couchpotatoville on his employee account. He had tried to launch and subsequently abandoned "Monkey see, monkey do. Me monkey!" and "Captain ashore! Prepare to be boarded!" He spent two weeks exploring the possibilities of "Roll it in butter, I'll take two!" before getting a written warning from the Couchpotatoville assistant manager. "What's my name, Mohambo?" was his current affectation, and at least it hadn't resulted in any reprimands yet.

"I don't get this one, Nelson. Are you asking me if my name is Mohambo, or are you not sure if it's your name?" asked Danny as they ascended the creaky staircase to the top floor.

"Dude, you don't get it? It's like, what's my name, right? You say you want coffee, I say yo, what's my name, but people get all wrung out if you say bitch, so Mohambo is all cool like that," Nelson responded, his breath getting heavier as they rose.

"You sound tired. Were you up all night again?" asked Danny.

Nelson pointed sharply at the lump of gauze wadded onto his shoulder, panting as they reached the third floor landing.

"Was I up all night? Damn straight I'm tired. Man, look at me! It's like I went through a war zone. You oughta compensate me for combat pay too! Where the hell have you been anyhow, you... owe... me...<gasp>"

Nelson's building tirade ran out of gas when he lost the last of his breath and needed to recover, grasping the bannister for support. He caught his breath, and when he noticed Danny standing with his key in the door, waiting politely for Nelson to continue, Nelson shrugged and said, "Aw, never mind. Where's the coffee?"

Danny opened the door and proceeded to the corner of the living space that was designated as the kitchen. It was dominated by a great brutish steampunk coffee machine, with dials, knobs and nozzles sticking out from every surface. It took up almost all the counter space in the kitchen, and was almost as big as the apartment-sized refrigerator next to it. Danny ground the beans and precisely filled the metal filter. He pulled on a handle, forcing the pressurized steam through the grounds over and over again, until he had two full mugs of espresso. Nelson nodded appreciatively from his recumbent position on the dusty and aged floral couch that Danny rescued from the curb on big garbage day three months prior.

Danny handed Nelson a steaming cup and fell into a black vinyl beanbag chair next to the couch, spilling some of his own coffee in the process. The coffee pooled on the beanbag chair like a little mountaintop lake, sending rivulets down the side to the stained carpet whenever he moved.

Nelson asked, "Hey, where's your bike?"

This was the first time Nelson had been inside Danny's apartment, but he'd never seen Danny anywhere without his bike, even in winter.

"Man, I just lost a whole weekend. The bike seems to be just part of it."

"Dude, that's awesome. You've got amnesia. It's just like in Forgotten Reminders, except you're not a transvestite vampire mercenary. Oh, wait, you're not a tranny, are you?"

Danny shrugged, "No, I don't think so. But I did something exhausting this weekend. "

"You seriously don't remember nuthin'? Last I saw you saw you was Friday night at the store."

"Yeah, that I remember. You won Crybaby by a nose."

Crybaby was a game to while away the on-shift hours by frothing children into crying frenzies with candy, video games or thinly veiled murderous threats. Whoever provoked the most tantrums won honors for the night.

Danny glanced at his answering machine, which was atypically blinking furiously for attention, and indicating an astounding thirteen messages from various escalating members of the Sabatini's catering hierarchy. He swung his arm at the machine, pushing it across the table as he hit the button. First was Cory the bartender, then the kitchen manager and finally the general manager. As the messages crawled up through the management chain, they became less and less professional in their extolling of the importance for one to make it to one's shift at Sabatini's on time, if one expected to use one's legs in an unassisted fashion ever again. In their overtired state, Danny and Nelson found these messages increasingly humorous, and laughed as each got more threatening and angry. This lasted until the final message, where Nelson fell on the floor laughing, but Danny went sullen.

It was Cory again, screaming profanities from a cell phone in the parking lot. Suddenly he calmed down, and in an eerie, too-controlled way he said, "Fortune, this is just the start of what I'm going to do you. No one leaves me hangin'. No one makes me do my own dishes. I lost $200 in tips tonight because of you, and now I'm going to take it out of your ass. First off, you're fired, you sorry son-of-a-bitch. Next, listen to this..." Cory put the phone down and a moment later came a rhythmic metallic banging. The answering machine ran out of tape while the banging was still in progress.

"Crap. I think that was Cory wrecking my bike," said Danny sullenly.

"Dude. That was a righteous bike. How's some chump named Cory going to wreck it?"

"Cory is a muscle-bound steroid freak toolmiester. For all I know, he carries a sledgehammer around in his trunk just in case he gets stiffed by his barback. Damn, my job and my bike gone in one weekend. What the hell? What else?"

Nelson chugged his coffee, and laid back on the couch, sending up a little mushroom cloud of dust. He closed his eyes and laced his fingers across his stomach. Danny reached for the television remote and clicked on a daytime talk show. The Plan didn't allow for expenses like cable TV, so he only had five over-the-air channels available to him. Channel surfing doesn't take long when you only have five channels, especially when one of them is broadcast in French Canadian. He made a quick circuit of the dial, and ended back up on the talk show.

"Screw it, man. That job sucked, and it's crazy for you to be pedaling around on a bike like the paperboy. You've gotta get yourself some real wheels, man. Internal combustion-style. You're all growed-up now. How come you don't have no car, with your two jobs, working all the time, and all?"

Danny closed his eyes and lay back. The puddle of coffee in the hollow of the beanbag wavered dangerously close to pouring into his left ear. The coffee machine, the only thing left from Danny's bankrupt business, steamed away in the kitchen corner.

"I'm kind of working off a bankruptcy right now, getting some cash together so I can go back to college."

Nelson snorted, "Dude, you got to lay waste to all that delayed gratification stuff. Why are you going to go to college when you could be living the righteous rockin' life now? You know what you should do? You should take that assistant manager job at Potatoville, then schedule me with you on all you shifts. That place won't know what hit it."

Danny laughed, but didn't open his eyes. "Yeah, that's for sure. But it's not on the Plan. I've got it all figured out." He gamely raised a hand to point to a black and white composition notebook sitting alone on the single bookshelf in the small apartment.

"What? You're going to be lame 'cause of what it says in that dumb book over there?"

"Hey! That's my dumb book. Look, I used to be a rock star student in high school, but couldn't get my act together in college. I guess I needed more structure or something. Anyhow, one night, one of my housemates has this idea while we're out drinking. We're walking home from the bars and see this little empty storefront, and he says, man, we should open a coffee shop right there. So we talk about it that night, and then again the next morning still remember the idea, which is pretty good, and so I start writing a business plan, and it feels great! I've got everything organized, and this dude, Oliver is his name, he's just a fountain of ideas. He's got recipes, and a hook for the place and everything. So we drop out of classes and max out the credit cards, but it's not enough. So I take out a loan and I sell my car, and we're in business."

"Sweet. That's what I'm talkin' about."

"Yeah, but not so much. Oliver's got lots of ideas, but can't actually get a thing done. Every day he comes in and starts having new ideas about how we should do things, and I can barely revise the business plan fast enough. I wore through the pages erasing them so much."

"You weren't doing this on a computer?"

"Nope. Sold that too after the first week. Needed cash for product, even though we had more new product ideas than customers to buy them. Double-stacked peanut butter cappuccinos, redeye coffee made with sausage gravy and bacon bits in the steamed milk, iced coffee popsicles, you name it. We even had the first Double Trouble Bad Habit Frappuccino made with both Ethiopian espresso and cigarette tobacco."

Nelson nodded. "That's disgusting, but I think I want one. So what happened to the two captains of industry?"

"After three weeks, Oliver gets bored, empties the cash register, buys a used car, and drives across country to find himself, leaving me there with the store and both customers. Just as well, as I realized then that somehow he had gotten me to sign for everything just by being late to all the vendor meetings. I ran the place as best I could for four months sleeping on the floor behind the counter until I went bankrupt and had to move back into my dad's basement. That machine is all I have left from the business, that and a mountain of debt. So I can't apply for loans to get back into school because of my credit, so I wrote the Plan. My Plan."

"Dude, you're sounding a little creepy now. This plan, it doesn't involve a bank robbery or a 55-gallon drum of lubricating jelly, does it? 'Cuz that would be weird."

"It's how I'm going to get my shit together and get back into school, get my degree with straight-As, get a real job and a vehicle with four wheels. It's all in there, every month from now to then. And this time, there are no erasers."

Danny fell asleep before he could finish the coffee in his cup. Nelson was similarly out before he explained exactly why he was bleeding on Danny's couch. Unwatched, the small TV moved through three talk shows, and into the midday news.

Nelson was awakened first by the phone ringing, warbling electronically from its post on an upturned cardboard box that once held frozen pastries, but now served as an end table. On a subconscious level, Nelson counted the rings in his sleep, and instinctually lunged halfway through the fourth ring to beat the answering machine.

Without opening his eyes, he mumbled "City morgue. You kill 'em, we chill 'em. Dr. Killjoy speaking."

The caller hung up wordless. Danny slumbered on. Nelson dropped the phone on his chest and dozed.

Minutes later, the phone rung again. This time, Nelson was more alert, and pulled the receiver to his ear right away.

"Danny's Sperm Bank. Deposits welcome anytime. Would you like to make an appointment, or just pop in?"

There was a pause, but the caller stayed on the line.

"Hello? Yo! You there?" shouted Nelson. Danny stirred at the outburst, deforming the top of the beanbag chair in enough to send the cold coffee puddle pouring deeply into his left ear. He jumped up, feeling disgusted down to his toes and drained his head.

"Is Danny Fortune there?" said a woman's voice.

"Maybe, I'll have to check. He might be out on the veranda, or in the east wing. Perhaps he's outside grooming the polo ponies. It's so hard to tell with trust fund kids these days. Who is this?"

"This is Jillian Funk calling. He'll know who I am. It's important. Get him on the phone now."

Nelson covered the microphone with his hand. "Jillian Funk? Who's that? Do you owe somebody money? She sounds like a bitch. Probably a bill collector."

Danny looked cross. "Of course I owe somebody money. Lots of somebodies. But collectors don't give first names. It's always Mr. or Mrs. something. Oh gosh. Her name is Jillian. It must be her. Give me the phone." Danny stretched out his hand.

Nelson grinned and spoke into the phone again. "Oh, I've located Mr. Fortune all right. He's down in the Jungle Room, trying on his Elvis suits. It appears that today is a fat Elvis day, so do please be gentle with him. I'll transfer your call now. BEEP!"

Nelson hit the hold button and shoved the phone under his ass.

"It's for you, Mr. Fortune."

Danny crossly grabbed Nelson by his injured shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. He was mildly surprised at the authenticity of Nelson's despair. Nelson whined and rolled off the couch, landing on all fours at Danny's feet and leaving the phone exposed. Danny grabbed the handset, then stalked into the tiny bathroom.

"Dude, that was so not cool," grumbled Nelson from the floor through an unhappy grimace.

Danny closed the door, tried to compose himself, and said "Hello."

"Hi Danny. It's me."

"Jillian?" he asked tentatively.

"Of course. Who else? You don't have another girlfriend. You can call me Jill. Especially after this weekend."

Danny caught a glimpse of himself in the medicine cabinet mirror, disheveled, unshaven, tired, a coffee stain on his left shoulder and wearing a dead man's pants. It wasn't the best confidence booster he could have had while talking to a woman. He opened the cabinet to hide the mirror. It was the first time he had opened the cabinet since moving in six months prior, and the pink box of the prior tenant's tampons was almost as distracting as his own face. He sat down in the bathtub and closed the shower curtain.

"Yeah, of course. Um. How are you?"

"Good. Very good. I've got a present for you," she purred.

"Oh yeah? When did you have time to go shopping?" asked Danny, looking at his bare left wrist.

"Not that kind of present, silly. You don't need to go to that horrible place to work for tips anymore. I got you a new job. Working with me! Isn't that great?"

Her voice resonated with such enthusiasm and excitement, Danny felt compelled by manners to reciprocate, but his head was spinning. He held the phone away from his head for a moment to think. He heard Jillian's voice happily bubbling against the shower curtain where he held the receiver.

"Are you paying attention? Where are you? You sound funny," she asked when Danny returned to the call.

"I'm in the kitchen. The tile is sort of echoey," said Danny, realizing that the seat of his pants were soaked through by the bathtub faucet's small but constant leak. Capillary action quickly and quietly pulled the cold water through the fabric of his pants and against his bare skin. He wanted to stand up but was afraid of rustling the shower curtain so he was stuck with his pants growing steadily colder and wetter.

Danny heard a small noise outside the bathroom door, and was suddenly afraid that Nelson would display one of his odder idiosyncrasies during this call. It was well know at Couchpotatoville that Nelson would cheer on anyone who happened to inadvertently made any type of bodily noise while seated in the bathroom. He seemed to honestly believe it acceptable and necessary to cheer them on as if it was fourth down, one to go in for a Superbowl win. In public men's rooms, he'd yell, "Yeah! You do it, go man, go!" to the confused strangers sitting in the neighboring stalls. If Nelson thought Danny was on the toilet, he might just burst in here singing a cheer.

"Well, I don't like it. So what do you think? You haven't said thank you for my present!"

"Hey, listen, Jillian? Uh, there's a lot going on with me lately, I think more than I'm really aware of, even. I've kind of got this Plan I'm working on, and I really need to focus on me for a while to do that. You seem nice and all, but this whole weekend is a little fuzzy for me around the details, and..."

Jillian interrupted, "Oh yes, it was like a dream wasn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess, but like I was saying, I really need to focus on me for a while..."

She interrupted again, her voice rising and sharpening quickly.

"Wait a minute, you're not trying to end this now, are you? Was this weekend just some one-time thing for you? Was it?!"

"Oh no!" Danny protested, wishing he knew the answer to her question.

"Good, then it's settled. Tomorrow morning, you be at the office at nine, and I'll meet you and get you started. Then we can have dinner together at my place after work. Won't that be nice?"

Danny leaned back against the side of the tub and sighed. None of this was part of the Plan, but maybe one needed to make semiannual course corrections when systematically rebuilding one's life. Besides, he needed a second job, and needed money more than ever now that his bike had been turned into a piece of modern art by Cory's raging hammer of vengeance.

Danny said, "Nice doesn't even begin to describe it. What's this job about? Where is this place?"

She gave him an address out from the city center in the Northtown suburb. He wrote it on the wall of the bathtub with a bar of soap in big, ghostly block letters. Danny winced when he figured out whereabouts the address was. Even with his bike it would have been a long ride, and without it, it would take several hours elapsed time and a handful of differential calculus equations to solve and execute a bus route there. Suburbs built in the 60's like Northtown were not planned with bicyclists in mind, and explicitly minimized bus routes from the city center.

She continued, "As for what you'll be doing here, well, that will be a surprise." Her voice had returned to the playful purr. It would have been quite enjoyable to just listen to her talk like that if Danny wasn't sitting in cold, wet, poorly fitted pants.

"But Danny?" she asked, and paused.

"Yeah?"

"Please wear something appropriate. I think you know what I mean. Kisses, T-T-F-N!" she sung, then hung up the phone before Danny had a chance to say goodbye.

Nelson was completely engrossed in a soap opera when Danny emerged from the bathroom.

"Dude, is this show on all the time? This is twice as good as half the movies at the store. There's this guy, he's the grandfather of this traveling circus family, and he's trying to protect the family diamond mine from takeover from his half-brother's lipstick cartel, but the dude totally died last year, then he woke up and got remarried and forgot that he's the villain. Hey, what's wrong with your pants? You having some kind of freaky phone sex in there?"

Danny plopped down in the beanbag, spraying the last of the spilled coffee against the wall.

"I just got a new job, I guess. I start tomorrow," he said.

"Sweet, dude! You can tell that sucker Cory to go get bent! Today we'll party hearty in order properly to celebrate the righteous occasion! No sleep till Brooklyn!"

Danny said, "No, Nelson. No parties today. I'm all partied out. I can't remember anything about the last two days, but I don't feel like I slept at all. Plus, I've got to figure out how to get from here to Northtown by nine tomorrow without my bike."

Nelson smiled and gave him the thumbs-up sign. "That part's easy. I'll drive you there. I can be late to my shift at the store. Brandi's so hot for me, she won't do anything if I'm late."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Danny, referring to Nelson's dubious interpretation of Brandi's attentions. Nelson assumed otherwise.

"Hey, what's my name, Mohambo?" asked Nelson.

-5-

Tuesday morning, Danny emerged from his apartment and walked into the bright sunlight to find Nelson waiting for him at the curb, the truck engine idling and leaking cacophonous heavy metal from the open windows.

"C'mon honkey! It's the first day of the rest of your life!" shouted Nelson.

"I don't think you should use that word," said Danny, approaching the vehicle cautiously.

"Why's that? I hate to be the one to break it to you, Danny-boy, but you're white."

Nelson had showered and changed, but his hair was still damp, giving him the appearance of a drowning victim who rose from a watery grave to go for a drive. He wore a black Contusion Method concert T-shirt. The bulge on his left shoulder seemed more prominent than the day prior.

"Hey, I never asked about your shoulder," said Danny. "How'd you hurt it?"

"Collateral thrill damage at the concert. 'Tusion burn, we call it, serious headbanging shit. You probably couldn't have handled it. We rocked out till dawn, then Method played a whole set of brand new material, while I made out with this totally hot chick roadie who had a pierced forehead. It was awesome. The usual, for me at least."

"Weren't you at my house first thing in the morning? I found you asleep in your car by the curb," asked Danny innocently.

Nelson put his finger in his ear and turned it as if he were installing a lightbulb. He yelled, "What? Can't hear you, dude. Righteous tinnitus! I'm going to regret this when I'm 30, old and decrepit!"

Danny shrugged and looked forward. Nelson started to drive, and after a moment added, "Besides, it's a truck, not a car."

They merged onto the expressway and fought their way north through the typical morning commute traffic snarl by the big blue water tower. Nelson wasn't very familiar with mornings in the first place, and this was definitely his first experience with commuters. Though it was really nothing out of the ordinary, he found the experience of sitting bumper-to-bumper stock still in a 55 MPH zone insulting. After several minutes of only making slight creeping progress, Nelson saw an opportunity, and launched the miniature SUV across 200 yards of road shoulder, riding the rumble strips the whole way to their exit on Pleasant Valley Road. Pleasant Valley was a seven-lane strip of asphalt that you could land a plane on, should you be flying over Buffalo and in urgent need of a strip mall or a franchised burger outlet.

"Dude! You have got to find your own ride tomorrow. I don't like this," said Nelson.

"Lots of people do it. It's just the rush hour traffic. It's all right," answered Danny.

"Nothin' all right about this at all, you boner. Tomorrow you drive yourself."

They drove on past the retail big box stores and the repeating strip malls, until Pleasant Valley shrank down to a two lane road. Both sides were populated by scrub forest that had sprouted after farming was abandoned in the area. It wouldn't be long before the big boxes came to these lands too, as FOR SALE, WILL DEVELOP TO SUIT signs were almost as prevalent as the juvenile trees. Danny strained his eyes to catch the numbers on the few buildings they passed that sat nestled into the woods.

"Nelson, turn around. We passed it," Danny announced as they passed a long abandoned gas station with a collapsed roof, but a visible address number.

"How? There wasn't nothin' to pass but the forest. Is your new job forest ranger?" argued Nelson, slowing to the side of the road, then pulling a wild U-turn through the oncoming traffic.

They drove on, seeing nowhere obvious for Danny's new job to be until they came back to the multilane stretch of retail utopia. It took five minutes for Nelson to get a break in traffic to make the U-turn, and his frustration was reaching a fever pitch. Nelson started slapping the dashboard in anger and turned up the stereo until Danny could hear the body panels of the small truck rattling. Danny tried to remain outwardly calm, but kept one increasingly anxious eye on the dashboard clock, knowing he'd very soon be late, in spite of Jillian's admonishments.

"Screw this, man," said Nelson. "We're gonna do this like in 'Four Wheels of Fury'! Remember that movie, dude? The one with Godfrey McGuffin?"

Danny thought for a moment. "Isn't that the one where the monster truck comes to life after they fill it up with gasoline from a crash-landed alien space tanker, and it runs amok, destroying all the Japanese cars?"

"Yeah. That was a cool one. USA! USA!" barked Nelson. He hit the brakes suddenly, throwing the car behind him into a fishtail. Nelson glared back at the car behind him for a moment, then casually drove onto the grass on the side of the road.

"That moron almost hit me."

"C'mon Nelson, we can't stop here. We've got to find the place," pleaded Danny.

Nelson grinned at Danny, and said "Hey, what's my name, Mohambo?"

He theatrically flipped a lever near his seat to engage the four-wheel drive on his Japanese-made SUV. The road shoulder was almost as flat as the road itself, and Nelson's tires were near-bald street tires, so the 4-wheel drive was of dubious value, but it gave Nelson the confidence to crawl along the grass on the side of the road while traffic whizzed by on his left, rocking them in their wake. Nelson inched the SUV forward and they soon found something they had missed at 50 MPH.

They had been looking for an office building or storefront of some kind, so the single width unmarked concrete driveway running into the woods had escaped their attention. Nelson looked to Danny for guidance, but all Danny could do is shrug.

"I guess let's give it a try."

Nelson drove on up the driveway, pausing at the mouth to disengage the four wheel drive before continuing. "Four wheels of fury, baby. USA! Rock on!" he yipped.

At the end of the driveway, the woods gave way to a tightly manicured lawn. Behind this expanse of emerald grass was a man-made pond with a fountain in the center throwing water twenty feet into the air. A family of geese patrolled its shores. On the other side of the pond was a thoroughly modern building. One story high, long and wide, looking like it was built from mirrored Legos. There was no sign telling you what the building was for, or even a front door to be seen.

"Holy cow! Did you know this was back here?" asked Danny ask they coasted slowly past the building until they arrived at a parking lot in back. It was full of cars, but there was no one else in the lot. At the back of the building, they found a sidewalk leading from the parking lot to an unmarked pair of steel doors. Nelson spun the SUV around and stopped with Danny's door in front of the sidewalk.

"Dude, I'll wait here for you. This place is creepy. Come back out and tell me once you're OK in there," said Nelson.

"I'll be fine, mother. There's nothing to be scared of. It's kind of cool, this big place hidden back here like this. Go ahead and take off, really, it's cool."

"You sure?"

Danny got out and closed the door, then thumped the roof twice. "Go on. Thanks for the ride."

Nelson put his hand on the volume knob. "OK, but call me tonight, let me know how it goes," he said.

He cranked the heavy metal back up to full throttle, and kicked the gas hard. The front wheel chirped on the pavement happily, and Nelson drove away.

Danny walked up to the grey steel doors. There weren't any windows, or even handles on the doors, just a black doorbell with a small camera just overhead on the left side. He looked at his bare wrist vainly for the time, shook his head and pressed the button. A deep and authoritative voice answered somewhere above Danny.

"Yes?"

"Hi. My name is Danny. Um, Danny Fortune, I'm supposed to be starting a job today, I think. Jillian Funk told me to come here."

There was a moment's pause, then the voice asked, "Do you do everything that Miss Funk tells you to do?"

Danny was taken aback. "Actually, I don't know. Is this the right place?"

The voice boomed angrily. "I'll ask the questions here!"

"OK," said Danny, waiting for the next question.

There was a pause.

"Hello?" Danny asked.

"Dance like a chicken," commanded the voice.

"What?"

"You heard me! Dance like a chicken. Show me the funky chicken dance!"

Danny looked around him to see if anyone was around. He still had the parking lot and lawn to himself, excluding the geese, which had left the pond and were making their way down the driveway towards the parking lot.

Danny asked, "Is this part of the job?"

In apparent answer, the right door opened with a click and a puff of cool air.

The voice, now suppressing a laugh, "C'mon in twinkletoes, you can show me your moves later."

Danny cautiously entered the building. Inside the door was a small room with a big desk and an even bigger man sitting behind the desk. He was wearing a security guard uniform, his face was covered by a thick beard and a big smile.

"Sorry about that. Just having a little fun with you. She was in on it," he said.

Danny looked around the room, but the two of them were alone. There was another pair of similarly unadorned doors on the right wall. The guard nodded and pressed a button on his desk, and they opened smoothly into the room.

Jillian walked in, smiling. She was dressed in a fitted business suit, snugly tailored to her trim figure. Her heels clicked on the floor when she walked.

"Thanks Kenny, that was fun," she said to the guard.

"Anytime, Miss Funk."

Danny stood stock still, unsure whether he should kiss her or if they should shake hands.

She smiled and beckoned him in. "Come on, let's go. You're already late."

Danny nodded to Kenny, who gave him a wave and closed the exterior doors with a deft press of a button. Jillian put a plastic ID card in his shirt pocket, then took Danny's right arm at his elbow and guided him down the hallway.

"This card will get you in where you need to go. Eliza will take care of it. Did you sleep well?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you. What is this place?" asked Danny.

The hallway was long and painted white, with a tile floor that echoed Jillian's staccato footsteps. Every twenty feet or so, there was a pair of grey steel doors, this time with handles and a wire-reinforced glass window. Danny tried to look in the windows, but each one he passed was covered in some sort of translucent material. It was quiet, but there was a pervasive hum in the background coming from one of the rooms.

"This is Zenorific. Did you miss me?"

Danny pretended to suddenly develop a great interest in the nondescript floor tile to avoid making eye contact with her.

"Zenorific, huh? I've never heard of it. What do they do here?"

Jillian stopped him short with a jerk on his arm at the end of the hallway. They stood in front of a pair of doors that had unobstructed windows. Danny tried to look through the windows, but Jillian took his face in her free hand and steered his gaze towards her. He could feel the tips of her manicured fingernails grazing his cheek.

"I don't like it when you don't answer my questions. Don't do it again. And the proper question is, what do we do here? You're one of us now." She pulled him forward and pressed into him with a vigorous kiss.

Danny wondered what he had gotten himself into for a moment, but cast the worry aside in the excitement of the unexpected and illicit attention. This was totally weird, but it was sure better than working with Cory.

He put his hands in the small of Jillian's back, and started to slide them downwards. She suddenly broke away, and took a step away from him. She gave an odd worried glance at a security camera on the ceiling, and checked her lipstick in the half reflection of the window. Danny tried to surreptitiously wipe his lips too.

"Come on, let's get you down to work," she said, pushing open the door and walking in to one of the unmarked doorways. Danny hurried in behind her.

They walked into a carpeted hallway where the walls were paneled in dark wood and the lights were burnished brass fixtures instead of industrial fluorescent. Jillian steered them into an office that was so sparsely and carefully lived in, it could have been a room in Jillian's sterile apartment. Jillian took a seat behind the glass-topped desk. Danny settled into a coffee colored leather chair across from Jillian, running his fingers over the brass nailheads on the chair's border. He tried not to move around in the seat, as he found that the leather made funny little squeaks could have been mistaken for something else.

"So what do we do here?" Danny asked her.

"We. Very good. You're learning quickly. Zenorific is the premier supplier of employee and constituent management solutions. It's all high tech stuff, microwaves and chemicals, that helps companies keep their employees in line. We've done work with all the major companies in the US, and now we're starting some government consulting. It's all very top secret, and your employment contract binds you to a strict confidentiality clause. It can all be really boring stuff once you're around it a little."

Danny leaned forward in the chair, and cleared his throat vigorously to cover up when the chair made a noise. "Top secret? That's cool. Am I going to get security clearance?"

She smiled condescendingly. "It's all been taken care of. You need to make sure to stay out of trouble. I made one of the eggheads set you up with my profile. He gave me a fourteen-page long form that I did not have the time or patience to fill out, so I made him copy my access. He said he wasn't supposed to, but I caught him looking down my shirt once and threatened to get him fired, so now he listens to me."

Danny nodded and desperately fought a sudden and overwhelming urge to look down her shirt.

"Now, let me tell you, the two of us work for Mr. Zeno's private foundation. For his convenience, he runs both the technical business and the foundation out of the same building. We don't work with the dorks, but it does mean that occasionally we have to evacuate the building because one of them let something bad out of its box. It's a pain, but it's good for Art, and if it's good for Art that means it's good for us."

"Good for art? Does Mr. Zeno collect paintings or something?" Danny asked.

"No. Art, as in Arthur. That's Mr. Zeno. But he is a bit of a collector, and that's what you're here for. You'll be working in the acquisitions department, working on building his private collection. It's a very unique position for someone outside of the organization to get to a hold of. You'll be getting visibility with Mr. Zeno himself if you can perform above expectations. I hope you appreciate what I've done for you here."

"Sure I do," said Danny, somewhat nervously.

"Good. You can show me your appreciation later then," she said bluntly.

Danny said, "Hey, can we talk about this weekend sometime? I don't really remember all the details, so it's a little weird. I think it might be helpful for me, that's all."

She shook her head solemnly. "Sorry buster, there's a time and a there's place, and this isn't either. You've got work piling up in back."

"OK, later then. But I do want to talk about it. You're not getting off the hook," Danny said playfully, shaking his finger in a mock threatening manner. She didn't smile at all. Danny quickly retracted his finger and changed the subject.

"So what about this job? You haven't mentioned what the job pays."

She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out two file folders. She set them in the center of the pristine desk but didn't open them.

"You'll be taken care of, don't worry. Zenorific has a very progressive view on employee compensation. How did you get to the office today? You didn't ride that horrible bike all this way?"

Danny looked at the toes of his shoes.

"No. I think my bike is trashed. Also, this place is pretty far out in the sticks to ride to, though it's neat the way it's stashed away and all. I got a ride from my buddy Nelson today, but I can't keep bumming rides from him so guess I'll have to take the bus or something tomorrow."

Jillian wrinkled her nose and knitted her carefully groomed eyebrows. "That won't do. That's the first thing I'll have to do today."

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Nothing until you sign the employment contract," she said, and she opened the top folder to reveal a thick packet of papers. "Sign here, here, here and here, and initial the bottom of every other page."

"What's all this for?" asked Danny, hefting the impressive legal brief.

"All very standard. It's so you can get what you've got coming, of course. Lots of boring legal stuff. Come on, finish that up quick and I'll show you to your new office. I'll be waiting in the hall," said Jillian, standing up and picking up the remaining folder.

Danny glanced over the first couple pages of the thick legalese, then shrugged and started signing. Jillian was waiting outside, tapping her foot, and after all, what did he have to lose? He picked up the pen and burned through the form, then followed Jillian out into the hall to give her the documents. She took them from him, glanced at her watch and showed him down the hallway.

Danny's office was at the far end of the hall, and was a gateway on the border between the offices and a loading dock, as it had a door on either side leading into both areas. Jillian almost apologized for the utilitarian surroundings and the un-stylish green steel desk, but Danny was thrilled. He had his very own office, with a private exit, leading out to the loading dock, presumably out to the garden area beyond. That prick Cory didn't have his own office. Hell, even when Danny was a business owner he had neglected to give himself an office, unless you count the milk crate of unpaid invoices next to where he slept on the floor.

Danny sat in the chair behind the desk and spun in place several times. He noticed the complex phone on the desk, and picked up the receiver without having anyone to call. He was startled when instead of a dial tone, he heard a dry female voice ask, "Yes, Mr. Fortune?" He slammed the phone back down in shock, then looked up at Jillian with regret on his face.

"Oh, jeez, I didn't expect anyone to be there. I should call back and apologize."

Jillian sat down in the placidly non-swiveling guest chair in front of the desk. "No," she said. "That's Eliza. She won't mind at all, but don't make a habit of abusing her. You should call her back and say hello so she knows your voice, in case you need to call her from off campus."

"OK. Of course. So, please tell me, what am I to do here in my cool new office?"

"Open the drawer," she commanded.

"I can do that."

He opened the left drawer. It was empty but for a sleek black laptop computer. A soft glow from a light on the front told him it was already on. He took it out and opened it up. A moment later, the screen flickered and painted itself with a deep blue backdrop featuring a large Z in the middle. It looked like Zorro's slashing initial might have if the freedom fighter had ever thought to tag the side of an armor plated battleship with an arc welder.

"Awesome," said Danny.

"Sure. Now, outside in the dock there's a backlog of incoming specimens for Mr. Zeno's private collection. You are to sort through these, triage them, catalog the appropriate cases, and dispose of those not meeting standards. You'll also have a number of items of interest to research and purchase to keep the pipeline full. You'll be able to do some of that here on the computer, but you'll also be traveling to get intake specimens. There's a list of collectible shows in the folder in the US. I think the next one is pretty soon, in Las Vegas, so you'll have to come up to speed quickly so you don't leave any opportunities untapped. Just ask Eliza, and she'll make all the arrangements."

She sat back and crossed her arms smugly.

"Jillian, I don't really know anything about art collecting. I'm not sure if I can do this."

Jillian coughed out a small laugh that might have been considered rude. "I think you'll know enough about art for this. You'll do fine, trust me. Any other questions?"

"Uh, yeah. I don't know if I can travel much. I still have my job at Couchpotatoville. I could cut down to three nights a week, but it's going to take some creative scheduling."

"No, it won't," she said confidently.

"What do you mean, no it won't?" Danny asked.

"It just won't. You quit that job this morning. I took care of it for you. Now you can concentrate on your career here at Zenorific."

"What?! You quit my job for me? I need that job! I've got to call them," he shouted, and picked up the phone.

"Yes, Mr. Fortune?" asked Eliza dryly.

Danny gasped "Yikes!" and hung up the phone without saying a word. He said to Jillian, "I've got to stop doing that to her."

Jillian leaned forward onto the desk, and quietly asked, "Danny, you were working those dead end jobs to make money for something, right?"

"Yes," he answered, "I have this Plan that..."

She interrupted, "Then you'll be fine. Better than fine. No one needs money for money's sake. They may think they do, but really you only need money as a tool to get something else of real intrinsic value."

Jillian emphasized 'real intrinsic value' as if it were a brand name. She continued, "If you do a good job here at Zenorific, you'll be able to get whatever it is you are after, plus a whole lot more. And you'll do it all much sooner than with what you used to do."

She reached forward and took Danny's hands in her own.

"Have fun, sport, I've got work to do," she said, giving his hands a squeeze. Her fingers were cold. She stood up and clicked her heels on out of the room.

Danny looked around the office, drumming his hands on the desk, wondering what to do first. Or even what to do at all. Jillian hadn't been very specific about what he was to fill his day with here. He noticed that she had left the second folder on the desk. He wasn't sure if it was for him, or something of hers she had forgotten, so he decided to leave it alone for the moment and explore the warehouse outside his door.

He felt a wall of warmth and humidity hit him when he opened the door to the loading dock and left the air conditioned office. The loading dock was huge, with long smooth concrete floors marked with an arcane system of multicolored lines to guide the movements of the forklift traffic. The two pristine forklifts sat idle in the middle of the dock area, between two closed metal overhead garage doors. Danny wanted to see if he could take one of the forklifts for a spin around the dock, but then he noticed what Jillian had meant by his work piling up.

There were rows and rows of steel metal shelves, forty feet deep and running the width of the loading dock. The closest shelves were full of cardboard boxes, of all shapes and sizes, filling the nearest shelf and spilling to the floor to create an actual pile of some serious size. He couldn't see the details from the doorway, but the later sets of shelves looked like they had something smaller on them. Against the interior wall just to his left, there was a large table with a bin full of scrap cardboard. It looked like an ideal area to open and unpack the boxes. Next to this table was a large machine with a conveyor belt and several OSHA warning labels. Danny left the doorway and heard the heavy door shut behind him as he walked to the shelves for a closer inspection.

Danny didn't expect to see what he found on the latter shelves. There were rows and rows of tens and dozens of organized and nearly identical knickknacks. The nearest shelf was loaded with an army of porcelain statuettes of doe-eyed children with positive affirmations inscribed in pastels on their bases. Each shelf had many specimens of the same statuette upon it. There were yards of empty shelf further down, waiting for more of the disturbingly cute little things to arrive. He picked one up and looked at the base, and seemed to remember the name Hummel from a childhood punishment that had resulted from an experiment with indoor catapulting in his grandmother's living room.

The further shelves were of similar caliber, but unique in their style of knickknackery. There were rows of commemorative snow globes, Pez dispensers, several varieties of red-hatted garden gnomes, four rows of Victorian dolls in fancy dresses, and two styles of Care Bear plush teddy bears. Danny noticed that many of the specimens of each type were of such ragged quality they were barely able to sit on the shelf without falling apart. However, the sheer number of identical items of each type made staring at the shelves a surreal experience.

Danny whistled, and said to himself "Boy, someone worked hard to pull together this collection of useless junk. I mean, just look at..."

He gasped and stopped himself short, startled by the fact that he was talking to himself, and by the sudden insight that he was now the curator of this collection. He was moving back and forth in front of a 'Gone Fishin' garden gnome, amazed at how the eyes seemed to be looking at you, no matter where you moved, when he was scared out of his skin by blast of an alarm bell.

Danny assumed it was a fire alarm, and ran to the office door, pulled on the handle, and was horrified to find that it was locked. The alarm bell sounded again, and Danny wheeled around, desperately looking for an emergency exit. The leather soles of his dress shoes sliding on the concrete floor, he ran across the loading dock to an emergency exit door, and hit the crash bar with a running start. He burst out into the sunlight, heart pounding and panting hard when he collided with a very surprised UPS driver. The two of them got their legs tangled and fell down the small staircase to the pristine grass next to the sidewalk.

"Jesus Christ on a cracker! What's your hurry?" growled the driver, as he extricated his legs from Danny's and replaced his brown cap on his head.

"There's a fire alarm! Do you have a radio in your truck? Call 911!" asked Danny, jumping to his feet and running towards the cab of the delivery truck. The truck was backed up against one of the closed garage doors, as if it were there for a delivery.

"That's your doorbell, you moron. I rung it. Are you new here or something?" asked the driver, pointing to a small black button next to the exit door, which was now closed and locked.

Danny stopped and examined his surroundings. "Yeah, it's my first day," he admitted.

"Probably your last too. You've got to cut down on those skateboard energy drinks, you're too high strung."

Danny pulled on the door handle. "It's locked," he said.

"No duh. That's why I was ringing the bell. Anyone else back there?" asked the driver, who wore a patch on his shirt that said his name was Randolph.

"No, I was the only one."

"Ah, so you're the new toy boy, huh? They finally replaced what's-his-name and it's with you. You're gonna have to go around to talk to Kenny to get back in. I'm done messing with that dude. Now listen here, I'm here every day around this time with a delivery, usually a whole mess of boxes. You're going to throw off my whole day if I have to spend all this time messin' around like this, so I'd appreciate it if you got your act together."

Danny looked forlornly at the fortress-like loading dock doors and turned to walk across the parking lot to Kenny's entrance.

"Yeah, me too," Danny said quietly. Kenny let Danny in and they got the truck unloaded, but not before Kenny and Randolph were entertained by several minutes of Danny's funky chicken dance.

Despite the humiliation, Danny felt horrible for clobbering the driver with his panicked exit, and helped him unload the truck. While they were working, Danny asked him, "So, you said you knew the guy who did this job before me? Do you know anything about this place? And what's up with all these toys? I mean, it seems a little weird."

"I get paid to deliver packages. I get paid to pick up packages. I don't get paid to notice anything along the way," said Randolph, easily hefting a heavy box through the air and into Danny's chest.

"Hey, I'll notice that for free though," he said, smiling and waving past Danny at Jillian, who was standing in the doorway to Danny's new office. She was smiling excitedly at Danny, and took no notice of the driver.

"Danny, let me know when you're done in here. I'll have something to show you," she said. She left without waiting for his response.

"Damn! Are you hittin' that?" the driver asked.

"Actually, I really don't know for sure, but I might be," admitted Danny. "It's been a weird week."

"You're an odd dude, you know that?"

"Then I'll probably fit in here just fine," mused Danny.

Afterwards, Danny opened all the boxes, and loaded the contents to an empty set of shelves. These boxes were full of more of the same, toys, knickknacks, garden decorations and random oddities. It looked like he was king of all garage sales from the pile of junk before him. Danny realized that he didn't know what to do with any of the knickknacks once he had them unpacked, but the door to his office was locked again, so he'd have to wait until later to read the contents of the folder that Jillian left on his desk. Maybe that would explain what he should do.

He was almost done unpacking the cartons, and was considering how to organize the mess when Jillian reappeared in the doorway.

"I thought I told you to come see me after the delivery guy left," said Jillian sternly.

"I was locked out of the office," said Danny as he tried to remember if this was really what she said.

Jillian shook her head and picked up the receiver of the phone on the wall of the dock. She pointed it at Danny's head like it was a gun.

"Hello Mr. Fortune, what can I do for you?" asked Eliza. Jillian hung up the phone without a word.

"That's what Eliza is for," she said crossly. "Next time, call her and she'll let you in. She knows where you are from your ID badge, but she doesn't open the door unless you ask. Now come on, stop goofing around. I've got something to show you."

Danny shuffled after her. "OK, but I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with all these toys and statues and stuff. Is there a training video or something I can watch? At Couchpotatoville, they had this Potato Mentor system where someone would..."

She stopped him by placing her hand gently across his mouth. "Remember, when I told you about Zenorific's progressive compensation plan? Just hush and follow me."

He complied and followed her out of the employee entrance, catching odd stares from several haunted, quiet men in white labs coats that they passed in the main hall. They passed the security desk where Kenny buzzed the door open for them. Outside the door, at the end of the sidewalk was a huge new jet-black pickup truck. It was trimmed out in gleaming chrome, with running boards, tinted windows and a four door club cab. It had a tremendous engine, which was rumbling in a low smooth idle. Jillian walked right up to it and climbed into the front passenger seat. Danny shrugged and opened the back door and slid onto the leather seat. Inside, it felt like being in a Cadillac on stilts.

Jillian started laughing at him.

"What?" asked Danny.

"I'm laughing at you! How are you going to drive from back there? Don't you recognize when someone is trying to give you a car?"

"What!?" exclaimed Danny.

"Boy, you're not the sharpest tack in the box, are you? Come on up here and try it out. If it's not right, we can get something different. Of course, this one has a credit card attached to your expense account sitting in the console, so I doubt you'll want to give it up so easy."

Danny jumped out of the passenger door and ran around the front of the truck to get behind the wheel. He looked with amazement at the card, which was indeed imprinted with his name, Daniel Bartholomew Fortune. Danny rarely used his middle name, and barely even knew how to sign his name with it anymore.

"An expense card? You're kidding? What do I use it for?" Danny asked excitedly.

"Well, I think it's accepted as legal tender at most stores, restaurants and hotels in this country," she said. "But the first thing you'll do is take me out right after work to buy two lobsters and a bottle of white wine with it. You can call Eliza from your desk to make reservations, and you can have her order some lunch in for you today too. I have other plans," she said, then pulled down the vanity mirror to make some adjustments to her makeup.

"Wow. I mean, Jillian, what do I say? This is amazing. It's way too much. I haven't even done anything yet, and look at this."

"Don't worry sport. You'll earn it. In more than one way. You can park over there in Executive parking," she said, pointing over to a small set of spots set off from the rest of the lot.

"What, next to that yellow Lotus?" gasped Danny.

"Yes. And don't scratch the Lotus. Don't even look at it," Jillian advised.

They went back inside, and Kenny winked at one of the two of them as they passed, but Danny wasn't sure which one. Jillian dismissed him with a wave at her office, and Danny continued back to his office. He called Eliza, said hello, and tried to make small talk. Eliza didn't seem interested in chatting, but she ordered him lunch in to his office, and made reservations at a swank restaurant for that night. While Danny was in the warehouse, a sheet of printed driving directions to the restaurant appeared on his desk.

At the end of the work day, Danny found Jillian in her office, and they took his new truck out to dinner. The yellow Lotus was gone when they got back out to the parking lot. Danny followed Eliza's instructions into town to a restaurant he had never heard of. When he arrived and saw the flock of parking attendants hovering around the opulent vestibule leading inside, he realized why he hadn't heard of it, as it was not a place he ever would have ever considered eating at. The valet jumped to attention as he drove up nervously, and spirited the new truck away.

Inside Danny found reservations for two made in his name, and they had a fantastic dinner that cost more than Danny spent for a month's rent. Afterwards, they went back to Jillian's apartment, where they ran into Mrs. Russell and her bite-sized canine in the hallway.

"Oh, hello Mrs. Russell, how are you doing?" asked Danny. "Jillian, I'm sure you know Mrs. Russell, your neighbor."

Jillian pursed her lips and nodded. Mrs. Russell didn't look at Jillian, but smiled warmly at Danny.

"Oh hello dear, I see you're a bit more formally dressed today."

Danny blushed. "Yes, thank you, I'm having a better day than when we met."

Jillian pulled Danny away from Mrs. Russell by his elbow and towards her apartment door.

Danny said, "Oh, I guess I need to go. Have a good night, Mrs. Russell."

"Good night, dear."

As Jillian pulled him in through the door, Danny noticed a familiar sound, and called out through the closing door, "Mrs. Russell! I think you left your radio on again. I can hear "Send in the Clowns" coming from your apartment." However, he quickly disregarded the faint music, as once inside Jillian's apartment, it was only a few short minutes before he discovered that indeed, he was 'hittin that'.

-6-

On Wednesday, Danny awoke in Jillian's stark apartment before dawn, kissed her on the head while she slept, and crept out of the apartment. He drove his new truck back to his own apartment to shower and shave, and to clear his answering machine of messages. There were three from Couchpotatoville asking him to reconsider quitting and come work a shift on Friday night, one threatening rant from Cory, and a plea from Nelson to give him a call and let him know how his first day went. Danny hit erase, made coffee, and went to his new job at Zenorific.

As he drove, he heard a ringing in his ears. He thought it was his rock concert tinnitus resurfacing, but then he noticed that the ringing was playing the melody from Gloria Gainer's 'I Will Survive'. His auditory hallucinations had never taken requests before, so Danny pulled into a gas station parking lot to look for the source of the noise. He found a cell phone in the center console, playing the tinny tune and urgently flashing 'CALL - JILLIAN FUNK' on its screen.

"Hello?" Danny answered.

"I don't like when you leave me like that. Don't do it again," said Jillian.

"I didn't want to wake you, but I had to go back to my place to get some clean clothes before work. I'm going to work now to get an early start."

"Well, that won't do. Maybe I'll have you put some clothes in a drawer here. I'll see how you do today and let you know," she said. There was a muffled sound that sounded like she held the phone away while she yawned. Danny deduced that she must have called him from bed as soon as she woke up.

"Are you sure about that? Doesn't it seem a little early for us to move in together?" asked Danny.

"Who said anything about moving in together? I can't have you here every night! I mean for when you do stay over. Like I said, I'll let you know."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Let me know," he said, feeling as if he were watching someone else have this conversation.

"Oh, I will," she said, sounding more awake. "I won't see you at the office today. Mr. Zeno is back in town and has me working on a special project. If you need anything, call Eliza. Try not to get locked into any closets. Toodles."

"Bye," said Danny, but the line was already dead when he said it.

Danny arrived at the building, said hello to Kenny, and called Eliza when he sat down that his desk.

"Yes, Mr. Fortune, what can I do for you?"

"Good morning, Eliza," said Danny.

"Yes, Mr. Fortune?"

"Um. Just good morning, that's all. I was a little rude yesterday, I didn't mean to be but... Anyhow, so I wanted to start off on a better foot thing morning."

There was a slight pause before Eliza answered "Duly noted, Mr. Fortune. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Right. You're very busy I'm sure. Just, have a nice day!" said Danny, sounding as cheerful as he could while feeling so socially clumsy. He didn't want to tell Eliza that he remembered some career advice about always making friends with the Executive Assistants, because they knew most everything that their bosses knew. He had never had a job before when schmoozing was necessary, and he felt like he needed some practice.

After he hung up the phone, Danny opened the folder on his desk. Inside were a number of pages, each one dedicated to one of the collectibles he had seen on the inventory shelves the day before. There were eleven Items of Interest, as they were each labeled and detailed on their own Target Item Profile sheets. The sheets listed very specific descriptions of the desired items, down to year of manufacture, small differences in paint color, and even the area of the country it should be bought in. There was a job description in the folder, titled Collections Acquisitions Coordinator. This document explained that his job was to find and acquire as many of the items meeting these descriptions as possible, and run them through a very detailed intake procedure. Purchasing the items could be done through any means, including but not exclusive to auctions, eBay, garage sales, out of town conventions, flea markets, private sales, antique stores, and 'any other legal or non-litigious means'. The purchases were to be funded with the expense card in his pocket, then processed carefully upon arrival at The Facility. In the instructions, The Facility was capitalized.

Although he was alone, Danny reddened when he got to this third step of the instructions and realized he had spent most of the prior afternoon doing his job incorrectly. Each item was to be inspected and confirmed against every point of the item requirements. It was then to be measured, photographed, weighted, tested with the Geiger counter, and x-rayed before being added to the inventory. If he acquired an item that didn't meet one of the eleven specific profiles, it was to be immediately discarded. For example, in yesterday's shipment, there was a box of snowglobes that his predecessor had purchased that had a puppy playing at the feet of doe-eyed children. There was no puppy on the Item of Interest profile, and thus they would have to go.

All the data for the Items of Interest was to be entered into the laptop along with the digital photos and scans of the item. At the end of every day, he was to double check his work on the laptop before submitting the day's work to the master database. If there were any significant aberrations in standard weight or oddities in radioactivity levels or internal x-ray examination, he was to alert Mr. Zeno (by way of Eliza), immediately. It was very clear at the top and the bottom of the page that nothing was to be brought onsite without going through this procedure the same day. Ever.

Danny thought of the hundreds of items he had unpacked and shelved the afternoon before and rolled up his sleeves. He'd have to find out from Jillian later why Mr. Zeno wanted this done, but for now he chalked it up to a rich man's eccentricity.

"Poor crazy people are just crazy, but crazy rich people get to be eccentric. If this guy wants to pay me to X-ray toys all day, that's just fine with me," said Danny to himself as he pushed open the door to the warehouse.

Over the coming weeks he settled into a new routine. He got the hang of running the X-ray imager, and was comfortable to the point where he would run his Happy Meal through to see what toy he got without opening the bag, just for kicks. He got caught up on the backlog of toys in the warehouse within a couple of days, but wondered if it really mattered, as he and the UPS driver were the only ones who ever seemed to stick their head into the loading dock. Every other night or so he would be instructed to stay at Jillian's place, and by the second weekend, he brought over a cardboard box full of clothes and toiletries. The Monday after he did this, he found a set of Armani luggage in the back seat of his truck after work.

He was relieved to find that he was indeed drawing a salary, paid monthly to a new bank account set up for him by the company. He made as much as he made at his two previous jobs put together, but when you included the perks of the truck and the charge card, he was doing much better financially. He probably should have been thinking about how this bright new turn in his career would could affect the timeline of the Plan, but with the sudden power of carefree spending, the sweet new ride, and the semi-frequent, if unemotional, nights of sex with Jillian, he was happy living in the moment. And while Jillian's style of commanding him about grated on his patience, he chalked it up to her having a strong independent personality and let it slide.

Shopping for knickknacks was his favorite part of the job. He set up his computer to monitor the auction sites for target items, and to call his cellphone when new items went up for sale. Then he started traveling to acquire items, at first just to local flea markets and estate sales. He quickly learned that he needed to use a fictitious persona when negotiating for items. His Items Of Interest were not regularly available in stores with fixed prices, and if he admitted to the seller that he was the agent of a rich eccentric collector, they would either refuse to sell the item and to try to drive the price up over the coming days, or try to steer Danny towards other items of obviously greater value. If instead he posed as a socially awkward monomaniacal private collector, they'd deal readily and sometimes even give him leads to other sellers with similar taste in goods. Danny worked the local circuit for a couple of weeks, and then decided he'd need to go national with his shopping to meet his acquisition goals. Nelson called him the evening after Danny made his first out of town travel arrangements, to go to a toy collectible show in Las Vegas.

"Dude! Vegas! That's rockin'! You've got to take me with you!" Nelson implored him.

Danny was at home, getting dressed for dinner. He held the phone with his shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to tie his necktie to the right length. Down past his zipper, or flirting with his sternum, there was no way to get anything in-between.

"Sorry Nelson, it's work. It's not like I'm going to be out partying."

"Yeah, right. Work. You buy friggin' toys and get paid out the wazoo for it. You wouldn't even have that job if it weren't for me!"

"How's that? I don't remember putting you as a reference on the application," Danny answered dryly.

"Well, maybe, but you still owe me $173. You can pay me back by taking me with you."

"I can give you the money now if you need it," said Danny, although he still didn't know why Nelson felt he was owed money.

"I don't want the money, dude. I want to go to Vegas. Come on, you can tell them I'm your assistant."

Danny was quiet for a moment as he thought about this. As much as he hated to think that Nelson might have had a good idea, he might be right. Danny could easily pay for a plane ticket for Nelson with his seemingly bottomless expense card, and have him crash in the same hotel room. Danny wasn't used to traveling, and didn't like the idea of going to a new city alone, although he wasn't sure if Nelson had ever left town for anything more than a visit to a Canadian strip club. Nelson's unvarnished and occasionally bizarre behavior would fit right in with the private collectors he would need to infiltrate. His presence might actually be valuable in negotiations. No one would ever mistake Nelson for a corporate shill.

"OK. You can come. I'll get it set up, but after this, no more about that $173," Danny said.

"Awesome! You rock dude! The money's gone, man, no worries. We still gotta discuss about paying for the plastic surgery to remove the scars, but we can talk about that on the plane..."

Nelson continued, but Danny stopped listening when his cellphone caught his attention by playing disco and flashing bright white light from where it sat on the pastry box end table. Danny traded the cordless phone for the other phone, hearing an indistinct chatter as Nelson prattled on, oblivious to Danny's absence. It was Jillian calling on the mobile number.

"Hi," answered Danny.

"Tough luck, sport. I can't make dinner tonight. Something came up," Jillian said.

Danny was disappointed, but wanted to seem nonchalant.

"Oh. Sure. That's cool. What's up? Is your other boyfriend in town?" he joked.

Jillian's reply came a second too late for Danny's taste.

"Huh? Oh. Don't be silly. I'll see you in the office tomorrow, but I may be late."

"I hope so. I mean, not hope that you're late, I hope I see you. I mean, Friday I'm going out of town. On business. It's a big acquisitions opportunity. Big enough that I thought I might take along some help this time."

Danny felt embarrassed when he heard himself speak. His voice sounded high and whiny. He wanted to know why was she canceling dinner, and even more, he wanted to know why he cared as much as he did.

Danny asked, "Are you still there?" when she didn't respond.

She murmured "Uh-huh."

Danny heard himself ask "Do you want to come to Vegas with me for the show?" feeling again like he was a character in his own personal TV show.

"No, sport. You go have fun," she answered, sounding again like she was looking at something else.

"Yeah, that's probably best. A young man with an expense account, free in Sin City. Maybe I should bring my wingman too," Danny said sharply, hoping to incur a bit of jealousy.

"All right, babe. Bye bye," said Jillian, and the phone went quiet.

Danny stood looking at the call time on the screen of the cellphone, until he was brought around by the tinny screams coming through the cordless phone stationed next to the couch.

"DUUUUUUUUUUDE! You there!? Have you fallen and you can't get up! Don't go into the light, Danny! Don't go into the light! Breathe, damn you!"

"Hey, sorry. The milkman was at the door. I had to settle the bill," said Danny, looking around at his makeshift furniture and his dark little attic apartment.

"S'alright. You had me worried. Thought you stroked out."

Danny sat on the couch, and felt himself slide into a depression worn into the upholstery by decades of the prior owner's gluteal pressure. He looked at his little ancient black and white TV, with the makeshift coat hanger antenna. Even ten-year old kids had color satellite TV now.

"Dude, you there?" asked Nelson.

"Working tonight?" asked Danny.

"No man, I'm on my own recognizance until 9am tomorrow. I even pried the tracking collar off, so the fuzz can't follow me."

Danny stood up and grabbed the keys to his truck. He opened the door and told Nelson, "I'll be there in ten. We're going shopping. We've got to get ready for a trip to Vegas."

He could practically feel the expense card hum with anticipation in his pocket. Danny heard Nelson whooping with joy as he tossed the cordless phone over his shoulder, and walked out of his apartment.

* * *

Edith Russell heard the unmistakable sound of an expensive sports car revving its engine outside the building. She pulled back the curtain, and caught a flash of bright yellow by the curb before the car went under the carport, obscuring her view. Behind her in the guest bedroom, someone was croaking out 'Strangers in the Night'. Mrs. Russell walked to her front door, attracting the attentions of her dog, who trotted after her and yipped once.

"Now, Bitsy, you hush. It's not time for your walk."

Bitsy seemed to understand, and slunk back to his pillow to lie down. Mrs. Russell opened the front door of her apartment, just a crack, and peeked out into the hallway. She noted with some satisfaction that Jillian emerged a moment later.

"Are we going out now?" came a man's voice behind Mrs. Russell. The man who spoke was wearing a striped oxford shirt and a pair of lavender sweatpants that were clearly too small for him. He had a grey beard, and a thinning crop of curly grey hair.

Jillian glanced down towards Mrs. Russell's apartment at the noise, but Mrs. Russell expertly shut the door without making a sound.

"Roland! Get back in your room!" she hissed at the man.

"Are my corduroys back from the cleaners yet? I don't like these pants anymore," he said.

"Roland, how do you solve a problem like Maria?" asked Mrs. Russell sweetly. The man's eyes glazed over, and he started singing to himself. He turned and walked back into his room.

Mrs. Russell whirled around and opened the door enough to peer out. Jillian was gone, and her apartment door was closed. The elevator doors were closing. Mrs. Russell walked out into the hallway to where she could see the floor numbers above the door. They were ticking down.

Mrs. Russell nodded grimly, walked back to her apartment and checked the time on her watch. She picked up a small notebook sitting on a table by the door and made an entry in already long list in the book, and closed the door behind her.

-7-

They arrived in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon. Danny set them up in a palatial room in one of the hotels, one where the rooms hung on the inside of a gravity-defying inverse pyramid. Danny hadn't even tipped the bellman for bringing his designer luggage to the room, and Nelson was already leaning over the railing, playing mouth yo-yo with a loogie over the heads of the unsuspecting revelers far below. He let the gooey snot descend an impressive several inches, where it would shimmer in the gentle breezes of the hotel's air conditioning system, before drawing it back into his mouth with a pneumatic thwak. Suppressing a gag, Danny pulled Nelson into the room by his grey sweatshirt.

After stowing their bags, they wandered downstairs to find a place to eat dinner. Danny marveled at the sheer overabundance of the place. They sat at a cafe table, their stomachs running three hours ahead of the rest of Las Vegas, on an interior hallway waiting for the dinner restaurants to open. The ceilings in the hall were yards taller than necessary, as if they were built for the occasional need to walk a tyrannosaurus into the casino. Looking around at what some of the hotels built for decorations, it wasn't entirely out of the question. Everything was evenly lit just below the threshold of normal daylight levels, and there was constant clatter wherever you went. Danny realized that he had no longer any reference for what time of day it was, unless he looked at his cellphone screen, and that was still on east coast time. Danny didn't like the Vegas ambiance, but it seemed to energize Nelson, who sat on the edge of the cafe chair, grinning wildly and talking to everyone walking past while bopping his head subliminally to the ambient music.

"So how much can you spend on that credit card? You really don't have to pay the bill?" asked Nelson.

Danny shrugged and nodded.

"And you can buy anything you want with it?" Nelson asked, thinking about the night earlier in the week when Danny roared up to his apartment in his truck and took them on a torrential spending spree, picking up a giant TV, new furniture, new clothes and a top of the line video game system for Danny's apartment. Before he got his answer, Nelson was captivated by a pair of near-cloned and dramatically enhanced women walking by. They both had a flawless tan that looked like it had been airbrushed on, although in the perma-twilight even Nelson looked sort of healthy.

"We're not getting hookers, Nelson."

"Dude, you know they're legal here, right? They've got places where they give you a menu when you walk in, just like a Chinese restaurant. One from column A, two from column B, and some fried won tons on the side. A menu, dude!" Nelson exclaimed with great wonder.

"Speaking of menus, do you think the steak house is open yet?" asked Danny, avoiding Nelson's intent gaze.

"Aww, since you're getting some now, you're whipped. Not thinkin' straight. That's cool that you got back in the saddle and all, but you can't let this chick rule your life, man. You've got to show her who the man is, man."

"That doesn't mean I should be using the expense card for Chinese menu hookers."

"Yeah, yeah, all right. Still, you're doing OK now. You've got a sweet ride, you've got money, you got all new swag for your crib and a new set of threads. You don't need this chick. Come on, she's not even nice to you."

"Nelson, she got me this job, and all the stuff you just mentioned. Plus, she has sex with me. Freaky Olympic decathlon sex. Stuff that could put me on the cover of a Wheaties box." Danny paused to nod and smile to a chubby midwestern woman in stretch pants who happened to eavesdrop on this phrase as she toddled toward the slot machines.

"Yeah, well what happened to her the other night? Did she ever tell you why she stiffed you and hasn't called you back or come to work?"

Danny swirled the dregs of his coffee. "She sent me a text to say she'd be out for a few days. I'm going to get to see her when I come back from the business trip."

Nelson barked a laugh. "Dude. You are such a bitch. Come on, we're here in the greatest city in the world, two guys, no strings, with a magic credit card. Let's cut loose before you screw up royally and ask this bitch to marry you. Tomorrow we'll go buy your crazy-ass toys. Tonight we rock out hard like we're on parole."

Danny thought quietly for a moment. He looked up and saw another statuesque woman walk by, this one dressed as an Egyptian queen. She smiled at him through lacquered lips, a glimpse of unnaturally radiant teeth peeking through. Danny smiled back until he thought that she was probably being paid to smile at him one way or another. After considering his newfound purchasing prowess, Danny decided he was OK with that.

"You speak great wisdom, Professor Mooneyhan. Perhaps we should have some fun tonight."

"All right! Dude! This is going to be awesome. Hey, I like that Professor thing. When we meet any chicks, you keep calling me professor, OK? Makes me sound all dignified and stuff."

Danny said, "Sure professor, I'll make sure that everyone knows you're the smartest guy on the island. So let's go do some damage."

They were the first diners in the steak house and ate giant slabs of practically raw beef, washed down with cold beer. After picking the bones clean, then wandered through the casino complex, and found their way into a hotel gentlemen's show, through there was nothing gentle about the performance. Ninety minutes of gyrating G-strings left them both keyed up, so after the show, they entered the first bar they came across and ordered straight-up top shelf bourbon.

Nelson came alive in the bar, working the room with a ferocious sociability. Whenever a woman of any caliber allowed him to chat her up at all, he used the scar on his shoulder to draw her further into the conversation, or send her away immediately. The story behind the scar was in turn told as a tale of a Caribbean shark attack, a machete fight with a Sandinista, a close brush with death in a cliff-diving mishap, and the reminder of an encounter with a flesh-eating bacteria. Each story was illustrated with Nelson pulling his sweatshirt over his head and twisting over his own pale and rounded shoulder to show off the scar. The first three stories generated mild interest and even one room number, but he found that claiming infection by a flesh eating bacteria was the fastest way to get a Russian fashion model to flee the premises. Danny realized to his mild surprise that he was Nelson's wingman, not the reverse, but he was so drunk that he didn't mind. He had opened a flowing tap of whisky with his expense card, and soon he found himself dozing on the bar next to a pyramid of shot glasses.

It was during Danny's nap and Nelson's terrorizing of the Russian model that Danny's cellphone started ringing. It was audible even over the noise of the bar, and on the third time it rang out to voicemail, the bartender shot Danny in the face with the soda gun. Danny awoke with a start, Diet Coke bubbling through his sinuses.

"Answer your phone. I hate your ringtone," said the bartender.

Danny looked with some surprise at the screen. Three missed calls, all from Jillian. It was just after midnight in Vegas, three AM at home. He moved his thumb to the callback button, but before he pressed it, the phone rang again.

"Hullo?" he slurred.

"Danny?! What is all that noise? Where are you? Why didn't you answer your phone?" she demanded.

"I just did. Answer it. The phone, that is," he said blankly.

"I didn't give you this phone to not be able to reach you. This is important!"

"Are you OK?" Danny asked.

"Yes. No! Listen, I really need you to do something. This is for work. We've had a breakthrough of sorts. You need to go to Cleveland right now," she said.

"Cleveland? Is that a casino here too, like New York New York, or do you mean like in Ohio?" he asked.

"No, stupid. It's not a casino. You need to go to a house in Cleveland to get a lawn gnome. I'll text you the address. Can you get there tonight?"

"Did you just call me stupid?" asked Danny. He watched Nelson put his shirt back on and return to Danny's side.

"Can you get to Cleveland tonight? The company has put a lot into you, Danny. I've put a lot into you. You can't let us down."

Nelson sat down and grimaced at the phone in Danny's hand. Danny mouthed the word 'Jillian' at him. Nelson did a rude pantomime act with a barstool in response.

"Why do I have to go to Cleveland? We came... I came here to get a whole shitload of those ugly bastards at the toy show."

"Danny, we need the Cleveland gnome. Now."

"I'll get it when I come home. I'll talk to Eliza on Monday about moving my tickets to take me through Ohio."

"No, Danny, you'll do it right now. Or else. Don't make me show you what 'or else' means."

"Issat an ultimatiuminum?"

"Get the gnome, Danny."

She hung up the phone. Danny put his phone on the bar, and a moment later it buzzed on the counter as she sent the Cleveland address to his phone.

"What's up?" asked Nelson.

"We've got to go to Cleveland. Right now. First plane out. To get a gnome. She gave me an ultimatiuminum...inum..." slurred Danny sullenly.

"Dude," said Nelson, firmly placing a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Let me tell you something, and I'm speaking as a duly ordained minister of the International Correspondence Church of Radical Light and Being. And I say unto thee, fuck that shit."

Nelson waved to the bartender and pointed two fingers at the two empty shot glasses before them.

"You're a minister?" asked Danny, concentrating intently on focusing his eyes on the glasses before him.

"$49.95 from beamininster.com. I thought it would help me pick up chicks from the Catholic college downtown. Didn't help at all, total backfire. But if you ever do screw up and marry this bitch, I've got dibs on the ceremony."

The bartender filled the shotglasses with Maker's Mark, and started to walk away, but Nelson reached across the bar to touch his sleeve.

"Don't go far hombre. My buddy needs a few more of those. It's an extreme moral emergency."

* * *

The next morning was a wash of pain and suffering for Danny like he had not felt in a long time. It had been years since he had put on a real drunk like the night before. He woke up in the downy hotel bed, wearing his pants and one shoe. His belt was half off, and the buckle was jammed painfully into his back. He was tangled in the sheets, and felt too hot and too cold all at the same time. However, he was not at all compromised about how he felt in his stomach, and it was by this urge that he did finally crawl from bed through the dark to the bathroom, where he cleared his stomach of all contents.

Satisfied in that uniquely post-vomitous way, he sat on the expansive tile bathroom floor. He noticed a sticker on the lower half of the toilet, left over from its manufacture. It said INSPECTED BY #1.

"Guess I'm number two then," he grumbled to himself, surprised at how old his voice sounded.

Nelson's voice carried in on an urgent whisper. "Shut up in there! You're going to wake up that transvestite hooker you brought home! Oh, he's a big one!"

Danny's heart stopped. "What?!"

Nelson slid into the bathroom in his socks and hit the lightswitch. Danny got a glimpse of Nelson in his sweatshirt and white briefs. When the lights came on, he buried his face in his hands.

"Naw, dude. I'm just messing with you. Come on, let's go get breakfast and buy your stupid toys. Then once you've had a little hair of the dog, you can call Jillian back and tell her she'd better have dinner on the table for you and the laundry done when you get home."

Danny peeked through his fingers. The light felt like surgical knives in his eyes. He crawled on his elbows out of the bathroom back to the bedroom floor. He noticed a glowing splinter along the bottom of the curtain. Outside it was clear daylight.

"I feel horrible. How come you're jumping around like a Christmas elf?" asked Danny plaintively.

"Yeah, I stopped drinking after the first shot of Maker's Mark. You were a wildman though, and drank both shots each time. It was a righteous display of extreme extremism."

Danny replayed what he could of his memory involving single malt whiskey. There wasn't much to go on.

"I need to go to Cleveland," he stated after a few minutes.

"Cleveland?! No chance, amigo. I'm meeting a chick for lunch. She thinks I'm an international mercenary for hire, away on holiday. By the way, I need to borrow that card for a while. When I come back, we can go to your toy show, buy your toys, and then we can discuss partying in Ohio, all right?"

Danny thought it over, and agreed with Nelson, though the most compelling part of the argument was that the decision let Danny stay where he was on the floor for a couple more hours.

"You're a wise man, Professor Mooneyhan."

"Hey, what's my name, Mohambo?" Nelson asked, but Danny was already asleep in a small puddle of his own drool.

Hours later, Danny awoke again, parched and hungry, but not nearly in as desperate a condition as before. Nelson wasn't back yet, so he dragged himself to the minibar and ravenously devoured a can of mixed nuts and two Cokes. Soon, the sugar and caffeine were tickling the neurons of his alcohol-pickled brain, and he pulled himself to his feet to take a long, hot shower.

Nelson was sitting on the bed watching a Full House rerun when Danny emerged in the hotel robe.

"Don't get any ideas," Nelson said without looking away from the onscreen antics of Danny Tanner. "My date didn't work out, but that doesn't mean that I'm ready to star in some gay porno with you."

Danny unzipped his suitcase and pulled clean jeans and a long sleeve black pullover from the bag. He took them into the bathroom, closing the door all but a crack.

"Hey you slept most of the day, you lazy bastard. What time does your work thing go to?" shouted Nelson.

"Oh crap. I don't know," Danny admitted. The prior night started to come back to him in dribs and drabs. "Work. Shit. I'm supposed to be in Cleveland right now!"

Nelson slid to the foot of the bed and started riffling through the minibar. He came up with a Budweiser longneck and a Snickers bar.

"Dude, you are right where you are supposed to be. It's like Zen. Or the force. Your mistress did call you with some crazy talk about Ohio, but you sent her and her silly ideas away with extreme prejudice. You were like a Jedi ninja master, man."

Danny felt his stomach sinking. The weight of the half-chewed nuts floating in a pool of bubbly sugar was almost too much to bear, and he considered inspecting the toilet again.

Danny said, "Ohhh, this isn't good."

Nelson kicked open the bathroom door.

"It's just fine. Don't be a wuss. You don't want to stand up to her and show her who wears the pants now, you can deke her out. She wanted you to go to Cleveland to buy a stupid lawn gnome, right?"

"Right?"

"So get yourself pretty, and we'll go buy her a lawn gnome at your toy show. If she asks, you show her your credit card bill with my plane ticket on it and tell her that was your flight to Cleveland. How's she going to know the difference? And her boss is a crazy millionaire, right? He's probably too busy playing with his action figures to notice the difference. Who will know? You're golden, dude!"

Danny sat on the edge of the sink and held his stomach.

After a moment, he said "Maybe you're right. I'm not up for another flight today anyhow."

Nelson slapped the middle of the door in joy, and the sound reverberated between the tiled walls of the bathroom.

"Yeah! You go, man! I told you I was a professor! And hey, that'll give us another night to party in Vegas!"

Nelson's face was lit up with excitement, and he looked to Danny for reciprocity. Danny couldn't muster a response, and eventually Nelson gave up with a slight look of disgust and returned to watching daytime TV.

Danny cleaned himself up, and after a massive coffee and a couple of doughnuts masquerading as expensive Italian pastries, he was back on his game. They walked through the retail tunnels connecting the casino caverns to reach the convention. It was in a ballroom of a neighboring hotel, a high-ceilinged room jammed full of folding tables. The tables, in turn, were crammed with the widest array of old toys and knickknacks either of them had ever seen, and Danny worked in a warehouse full of this stuff.

Nelson entertained himself by fawning over favorite toys from his youth, and items of long-unrequited toy lust. He was little help to Danny in his work, both in the area of negotiations, or even to help carry the increasingly heavy box of 'Lil Cutie snow globes Danny purchased from a friendly woman from Arkansas. Danny added to the box a Tender Lovin' Care Bear, some assorted but plebeian Pez dispensers and a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em boxing game for Nelson. Nelson made him promise to play as soon as they got back to the room.

Danny had made a three-quarter circuit of the room and was getting worried. He hadn't seen one shifty-eyed garden gnome yet. If it weren't for the Cleveland subterfuge, he could have called the show a success with what he already had, but now he absolutely needed a gnome today. Danny was getting worried, for if he couldn't find one here, where else in Las Vegas could he buy one?

Nelson resolved the problem. Danny turned around from examining a table of commemorative spoons and almost dropped his box of goods in surprise when he found Nelson standing immediately behind him.

"Dude, I found it. Ugly little bastard. I don't like the way he looks at me," said Nelson.

"Where is he?"

"First tell me that I'm the man. Who's the man?"

Danny sighed, "Fine. You're the man. Show me the gnome."

Nelson took him to the table, and indeed there was a big lawn gnome for sale. This was a massive specimen, twice as tall as most of his collection, a giant among gnomes, and not actually an Item of Interest. He had a proud tall red hat, and he held a long scepter that even taller than his hat at the top. His white beard was a wide as his fat little belly, and his black little eyes were kindly and happy.

Nelson crossed his arms in satisfaction and tossed his head to shake his stringy hair out of his face. "See? Mohambo find good gnome for Danny, yes?"

"Indeed," said Danny, who put his box on the floor like a man much older than he really was, and handed the card to the merchant behind the table.

Walking back to the room, Danny huffed and puffed carrying the heavy box. Nelson jumped up to peek into the open box and remarked, "Now that is a gnome worth going all the way to Cleveland for." Danny was daydreaming about the toilet and the bed that awaited him upstairs, and could only quietly grunt in agreement.

Later that night, they fell asleep during the Blue Man Group show and had a few halfhearted beers at the hotel bar afterward. Both of them were more tired than they wanted to admit. Nelson only pulled his shirt off in the bar once, this time describing the scar as a reminder of an encounter in Australia with a rabid spiny anteater. The story was less than compelling for the girl he was wooing, and before midnight they were both asleep alone in their beds. The next morning, having had enough of Sin City, they stayed quietly in their room eating room service pancakes and watching cartoons until it was time to head to the airport.

It was just after breakfast when Danny finally considered how he might get his acquired goods home. It was three hours before his flight took off, which mean he had about fifteen minutes before he should be getting into a cab. There wasn't room in either Danny's designer carryon or in Nelson's backpack to carry all the knickknacks. The king of the gnomes with his scepter would be a special problem due to his size.

"Dude, just buy someone's suitcase from them. One of these down on their luck types will sell you their bag. We'll just go knock on the doors until we find someone who lost all their money last night," suggested Nelson.

"Gambling addicts don't take credit cards. I don't actually have any cash," groused Danny.

"Well, you'd better figure something out. I'm leaving for that plane in a couple minutes either way. I'm working the close shift with Brandi tonight, and she's totally hot for me, so I can't call in."

"Great. Thanks for your support," said Danny, pacing nervously.

Suddenly, in a moment of inspiration, Danny ran down to the gift shop in the lobby, and bought a candy bar. He insisted that the cashier put it in the largest bag she had available. Then he walked around to the end of the short line, and did it again. He ran back to the his room, and he and Nelson wrapped the snow globes and statuettes in their dirty clothes and divided the bundles between the shopping bags and Nelson's backpack. The gnome king fit nicely into Danny's carryon, although the tip of his royal scepter protruded turgidly from the top corner of the bag.

They raced to the cab stand, rode to the airport, and charged off into the terminal in a sweaty run, bags bumping their knees as they ran. They were held up at security while the security agents ran their bags through the X-ray machine three times. Danny recognized the control panel of the machine and helpfully suggested some screen adjustments to heighten the contrast. They at first took the advice appreciatively, as his advice did help them recognize the contents of the bags as being snow globes, rather than munitions. But upon second thought, they became much more suspicious of the men with the bag full of odd items and intimate knowledge of the screening equipment. Danny and Nelson were taken off to the side, where their bags were unpacked and examined and they were questioned intensely. Danny was forthcoming about his job, although he didn't think he was believed. Nelson was withdrawn and quiet around the guards.

They finally decided to let them through, provided the plastic shopping bags of snow globes were checked into the baggage compartment. Danny repacked the bags and tied the handles tight. Nelson stood off against the corner of the red security ropes, hands in his pockets, not saying anything. Once all the bags but Danny's carryon with the gnome king were handed off to a baggage handler, Danny checked his watch. It was five minutes after his plane was scheduled to take off. They had missed their flight and would not leave until the redeye flight at midnight.

Danny sent a text message to Jillian that he would be late to work the next day due to a flight delay. He thought a text message would be safer than a call, so there wouldn't be time or expectation to elaborate on what was happening or what city he was in. Danny was also concerned about making a call near Nelson, should he snap out of his funk and start complicating matters by making his presence known. He let Nelson use the phone to call Couchpotatoville to beg off of his night shift, and the conversation was so loud and colorful that Danny had to promise to airport security that Nelson wouldn't call Brandi again until they had left Nevada.

While standing in line for a burrito, Danny's carryon bag got knocked over by passerby trailing their own rolling bag. When the bag fell to the floor, the tip of the gnome king's scepter was sheared off. Danny slipped the scepter tip into his pocket sullenly. At least the bag closed all the way now.

Neither one of them slept on the overnight flight, and they arrived in Buffalo the next morning, too grumpy even for small talk, and proceeded to the baggage carousel. The small crowd of equally tired overnight travelers broke into titters as Danny and Nelson's bags came out. All three were suspiciously flatter than they were when they parted with them in Nevada. After the bags completed their promenade and arrived in front of Danny, he found that all the globes had been crushed flat in transit. The bags were leaking snowy water from their corners. Nelson's backpack made a slight noise as if Tinkerbell had been ground to death under Hook's heel.

Nelson looked into his bag. He whined, "Awww. My underwear is full of broken glass!"

"This isn't good. I don't have anything to show for the trip to Vegas," said Danny.

Nelson rooted gingerly through his bag, mindful of the delicate shrapnel distributed within. He pulled an Easter bunny Pez dispenser free of the mire.

"The Pez are wet, but they're not busted. Plus you've got that big freakin' gnome."

"He's from Cleveland, remember?"

"Oh yeah."

They walked to the parking lot, leaving a slug trail of moisture behind them. It was a quiet ride back to their apartments in Danny's oversized truck. Danny dozed all day and turned off his phone, trying to put off Jillian until the next morning.

Tuesday morning Danny arrived at work with the gnome and the surviving Pez dispensers in the carry on bag. He put the bag against the back wall of his office, hoping to avoid discussion of the trip when Jillian came in. He checked his email, and felt a twinge of nausea when he read a note from her reminding him to call her when he got back from Cleveland, no matter what time it was. He looked out into the warehouse, and saw a stack of packages waiting for him in the middle of the loading dock.

When he turned around, Jillian was standing right behind him.

"Whoa! Hi. I didn't know you were a ninja as well as being beautiful," he said nervously. He leaned forward to kiss her but she spun around and walked to the side of his desk, leaving him leaning at a slightly acute angle with his lips awkwardly pursed.

"Where's the gnome?" she asked. She tapped her nails on the metal desktop.

"Good morning to you too. The trip was fine thank you. I've got the gnome. The one from Cleveland. But I haven't checked it in yet. I can call you once I've checked it in. You know, procedure must be followed."

"No. Art wants it now." She crossed her arms and shifted her hip.

"Art?"

"Mr. Zeno," Jillian answered, her words dripping in icy condescension.

Danny felt his heart skip into a new, more frantic rhythm. He was already lying to his girlfriend. Now he was about to start lying to the big boss.

"Are you sure? My instructions specifically said I needed to check all the new goods into the computer and run the scans right away."

"Have you ever thought about why that is? It's because Art... Mr. Zeno, is watching the whole thing. You scan them in and put them into the computer, he's looking at them on the other side. If he wants to look at this one before you do your silly little procedure, then that's his decision. So give it to me. Now."

She held her small manicured hand out as if the gnome king could fit in her palm, which Danny found comical.

"What's so funny?" she asked. "What are you smiling at?"

"I'm just happy to see you," he lied. He wasn't happy at all to see her, and was really not looking forward to giving the counterfeit dwarf to her.

Danny decided there was still a pretty good chance that no one could tell whether this was the real Cleveland gnome or not. Maybe he could pass off this one for now and drive down to Cleveland to get the real thing.

"OK, here it is," Danny said, pushing past her to get behind his desk to the bag. "Hey I've been thinking about taking a day off. What's our personal day policy around here?"

"Yeah, whatever," she said, craning her neck to see as Danny unzipped the bag. He could smell her hair as she leaned in. She really smelled nice.

"That's it?" she asked, staring into the beady eyes of the jovial diminutive king.

"That's him," answered Danny, trying to infuse his voice with a semblance of pride and awe.

"What are all those things around him?" she asked, pointing to the Pez dispensers surrounding him as if she has discovered a cockroach infestation.

"Those are the Pez dispensers. For the collection. I got them at CollectiCon in Vegas?"

Jillian walked around to the outside of the desk. "Take those things out. Art doesn't want those. Just give me the bag with the little man in it."

"Why did I go all the way to Vegas to buy these if he doesn't want them?"

"That's not what I mean. Come on, Art doesn't like to be kept waiting."

Danny complied, piling the Pez dispensers like Lincoln Logs on the corner of his desk, and zipping the gnome king back into his cocoon. He put the bag on the ground and rolled it over to her.

"Here," he said. "I hope this was worth going all the way to Cleveland for."

"For your sake, it had better be good, Danny," she said, then she rolled the bag on out of the room.

Danny took the Pez dispensers out to the loading dock, and the door clicked shut behind him. He felt as though he deserved Jillian's abusive attitude for how he had acted over the weekend, most notably, for not having gone to Cleveland at all. But what bothered him was that Jillian didn't suspect that he was lying. Even if he had done exactly what she said, wouldn't she still be acting the same way?

He didn't have much opportunity to meditate on the situation. He wanted a cup of coffee before he went to the task of processing the dispensers and all the new boxes, so he went back to the door and picked up the phone.

"Yes, Mr. Fortune," came Eliza's voice.

"Hi Eliza. Did you have a nice weekend?"

"What can I do for you, Mr. Fortune?"

Danny sighed.

"Open the door please, Eliza."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fortune. Your request is denied."

"What?" Danny thought he had misheard her. He had to call every time he got in, and he thought he and Eliza had developed a convivial distance relationship through their repetitive little patter. He gave the door a tentative tug. It was still locked.

Eliza said, "I have executive override instructions. You are to stay on the loading dock. Mr. Zeno is on his way down to see you."

Danny gulped. "Eliza, did he seem mad?"

"Yes, Mr. Fortune, he is in an extremely agitated and distressed state. Based on his volume and use of profane language, he is currently having a level IV tantrum. Have a nice day."

-8-

Danny didn't know what he should be doing when Mr. Zeno arrived. Should he appear to be nervous, or angry? Should he be waiting by the door for him, or appear busy at work? He decided to go with feigned ignorance and apparent industry, which had the added benefit of allowing him to hide for a moment. Danny strode quickly to the shelves, breaking into a jog as he rounded the corner down one of the aisles. He grabbed a handful of Pez dispensers from the shelf, and pretended to inspect them for some new defect. The familiar plastic heads of the dispensers gazed at him in stupid wonder, and he found himself wishing that he had gone down an aisle that didn't have so many eyes on him.

The door opened. He heard the hard slap of leather-soled dress shoes on the concrete, followed by a more delicate clicking. Jillian was with Mr. Zeno.

"Where the hell is he?" said Mr. Zeno. He had a vaguely annoying accent, one that Danny couldn't place. It sounded like someone pretending to be from somewhere better than he was now.

"Danny? Danny, where are you?" called Jillian. She sounded worried. Her usual bravado was gone.

Danny could catch glimpses of them through the intervening knickknacks as they walked around the far side of the bank of shelving looking for Danny. He couldn't get a look at Mr. Zeno's face, but he did see Jillian's. Her forehead was knotted in worry.

"Danny?" she called again, more urgently. Danny knew if he stayed quiet too long it would be apparent that he was hiding. Perhaps he had already been quiet too long. He panicked, and walked in the opposite direction, back towards the office door.

"Yes? Hello?" Danny called when he got to the end of the aisle, with his back against the end of the shelves. Even if they had made it around to the far end, they wouldn't see him right away.

"Where the hell are you, Fortune?" growled Mr. Zeno. Danny heard the footsteps stop momentarily, then restart at a more urgent pace. Danny pressed himself against the end of the shelf like he was dodging enemy fire, and composed himself for the confrontation.

Suddenly Mr. Zeno was standing beside him.

"Why the hell are you hiding from me?" he asked.

Danny shifted his weight to turn his combat crouch into more of a casual lean. "I'm not hiding, I was waiting for you. Because I heard you call. So I was waiting here for you."

Mr. Zeno pointed up over his shoulder towards the ceiling. Above the office door was a large circular fisheye mirror, there to let one forklift driver know that there was another coming right around the corner. Danny had never noticed these because he was always alone in the warehouse, and Jillian wouldn't give him the keys to use the forklift. Now, Danny could see himself and Zeno, as well as Jillian approaching from the aisle behind them. He reddened involuntarily, trying in vain to stop the blood from rushing to his cheeks.

Mr. Zeno was just an inch or two taller than Danny, but easily thirty pounds heavier. He had the look of someone who had once been very strong and fit, but started to let himself slide five years back. He wore tan khakis and a white monogrammed oxford shirt. His face was overly tan, and showed deep lines from years of aggressive UV exposure. His straight blonde hair hung in an unexpectedly long shaggy mop, in a sort of 1970s surf bum way.

Danny noticed his breath right away. Although Zeno was standing two feet away, a rank wash of halitosis hit him squarely in the nose. Danny winced as Zeno stepped forward. Zeno had the gnome king dangling in his hand by his side.

"You want to tell me about this?" asked Mr. Zeno, nodding downwards towards the king.

"What's that, Mr. Zeno? Oh, and by the way, very pleased to meet you finally. I've heard so much about you and wanted to thank you for the unique opportunity here. It's been great working for you so far, and I really hope I'm meeting your expectations," said Danny quickly.

He held out his hand for Zeno. Zeno did not move, but just stood waiting for Danny to finish speaking.

"Would you like to tell me about this now?" asked Zeno, taking another half step forward. Danny was trapped with his back against the shelf. Jillian arrived and stood behind Zeno's shoulder. Danny found it disturbing that the woman he'd been sleeping with these past weeks didn't walk around Zeno to stand next to Danny.

"It's your gnome, sir. I haven't had a chance to check it into the computer, I'm sorry. Quite a specimen, isn't it? Haven't seen one like that before. I can see why you wanted me to go out of my way for that, all the way..." Danny's voice trailed off. He felt a knot in his throat. "...to Cleveland," he finished weakly.

Zeno stared into Danny's eyes for an uncomfortably long minute. As soon as Danny looked away, Zeno spun around to Jillian.

"Jill, who the hell is this guy? I've been investing in him for weeks, and when clutch time comes he pulls something like this? What the hell are you doing here?"

Jillian bent to look around Zeno's much larger form to look at Danny.

"Danny, what did you do? Tell us what's going on?" she begged. Her eyes were wide with fear.

"Ummm," Danny said.

"Yeah, that's it. Umm it up, party boy," said Zeno, whirling back into Danny's face. "I'll tell you what your little project here didn't do. He didn't get the right goddamn gnome. I don't believe he even went to Cleveland, because if he followed the goddamned instruction, how could he get it wrong? It's not a Naughty Ned, dumbass. Where's Naughty Ned now?! Well, Fortune? Tell me, how could you screw this up when it was so easy?"

Danny's heart was racing. "Ummm, if you look at the credit card statement, you could clearly see that..."

"Ah crap. You didn't even go to Cleveland at all, did you? I mean, it's rather obvious you screwed up royally. Let me explain something to you, and I'll try to speak real slowly so you can understand. I'm paying for your entire life right now. Your truck, your clothes, your phone, your dinners out with Jill, your new TV, whatever the hell you've been buying. I own it all. I don't mind doing that. I'm not a bad guy. But I am a businessman, and I'm paying for all this because it's an investment. An investment in you. And when I make an investment, I expect it to perform. I expect that when I ask for something to be done, I want it done right. Your top priority. No questions asked. Everybody screws up once in a while Danny, so I can let this go. This one time. But you've got to show me you're worth the investment I've made. You've got to make it right. Right now. Because you only get to screw up once, and you're already at your career limit here at Zenorific. Understand, party boy?"

Danny nodded, wide-eyed. "Yes, sir."

Mr. Zeno clapped his big hand on Danny's shoulder. "You get down to Cleveland and get me my goddamn gnome. It's very important that I have this gnome in my hands tomorrow. Get me the right one, Mr. Fortune. I don't like when my toys misbehave."

Danny reached to take the gnome king from Mr. Zeno's hand and smiled congenially. He joked, "Yes, I guess he's been a mischievous little elf, hasn't he. We'll get him straightened out right away."

Zeno let the gnome come up between the two of them, but didn't let go of it. He tightened his grip on Danny's shoulder.

"No, Mr. Fortune, this isn't the toy I was speaking of. I was referring to you," said Zeno. He showed a checkmate smile full of unexpectedly white teeth.

Danny laughed as if he got the joke. Then he actually got the joke and stopped laughing. He shot a glance at Jillian, who looked as if she was going to have a panic attack and melt into a puddle there on the warehouse floor. Danny opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out but a vague glottal stop noise.

Zeno let go of his end of the gnome, and said "You should always read all the words in a contract before you sign them, Mr. Fortune. Of course, it probably wouldn't have changed anything. You would have signed anyway. Life sucks, Danny, unless you're fast enough and smart enough to hold back the rising tide of shit. Go to Cleveland. Get the gnome. You might need to take it against the owner's wishes, so you may consider going under cover of dark. Jillian, you're going with him. You two are in this together now. I'm putting you all in as an insurance policy on this operation."

Jillian took a tiny step backwards, and put up her hands, shaking her head slightly. She said "No, Art, you said that if I..."

Zeno whirled around and they shared a look pregnant with the weight of some previous conversation. Danny felt like he was intruding on his own conversation with Zeno.

He said, "Mr. Zeno, rest assured, I'll get this done. I have someone I can bring to help me. I don't need Jillian to get this done."

Zeno answered Danny without turning around to face him.

He said, "Not your choice. I didn't build all this by letting other people make decisions for me. You can bring your someone if you want to. It might be helpful to have another pair of hands. And this individual is already involved in this game of idiot's chess, I'd bet, isn't he?"

Danny nodded, then added a nervous "Uh huh," when he remembered that no one was actually looking at him.

"Fine. Bring him into the office with the gnome. We'll get him on contract and paid for then."

Zeno turned over his shoulder. "Wait here, both of you," he said. He pulled a cellphone out of his pocket, pressed a button, and said one word, "Open."

The phone beeped and answered right away, "Yes Mr. Zeno." When Mr. Zeno reached the dock door it was already unlocked, and he strode through.

"What did you do, Danny? Oh my god, you are in so much trouble," said Jillian. She was shaking.

"Hey, it's going to be OK. You heard him right? I made a mistake, but I'm going to fix it and everything will be OK."

Danny moved closer to Jillian and moved to put his arms around her in a comforting hug. She pushed him away as if he had reached to put his fingers up her nose.

"No, you don't understand. Oh shit, Danny, what did you do? Why didn't you do it? It was so easy." She put her hands to her mouth as if she might vomit, and started to pace in little circles.

"I don't think I understand what the big deal is. I mean, he's just a crazy obsessive maniac isn't he? I mean, I'll go get his toy and he'll be happy again, right? It's not like anyone got hurt," said Danny.

"Not yet," she said. She stopped and turned to the door, hearing the click of the lock disengaging.

"Arthur," she said when Zeno entered, so quietly it must have been to herself. He glared back at her disapprovingly.

"I want you to call me as soon as you have the gnome in your hands. Don't wait until you get back home, it's too long. If you have any problems, I want to know that too," he said to Jillian.

"Sure we will," answered Danny, hoping to take some heat from Jillian, and a bit miffed that he was being treated more like a hatstand than the Collection Acquisitions Coordinator.

"Not you. Her," said Zeno, without turning his unblinking gaze from Jillian. "You're hands. She's head. Maybe if you get this right you'll get to be head again someday."

Zeno reached into his trousers pocket and retrieved a cellphone. It was different from the phones that Jillian and Danny already carried, larger with a prominent antenna, in an ominous black case. It looked more like a glasses case or an old science fiction communicator than a modern cellphone. He handed it to Jillian. She turned it over to examine it, and it looked heavy in her hands.

"But I already have a phone," she questioned.

Zeno smiled. "Not like this you don't. I want you to use this one until this is all over. Got it? Don't use any other phone, don't let anyone else use this one. Don't even bring your other phone. Keep this on your person always. Every goddamn second. Got it?"

Jillian gave a little girl's nod, looking for all the world like she was just taken to task for not eating her broccoli.

"Good. I'll have the eggheads give Eliza the user manual, so you can find out about the special features, when this is done. I think you'll find them exciting and useful for a number of purposes," said Zeno. He turned to face both Danny and Jillian, and clapped his hands once loudly.

"Excellent! Tonight is the night! I can't wait! Have fun, you two. But not too much fun, you understand? You're on my clock until this is all done, and done right."

He pulled his own phone from his pocket and had Eliza unlock the door, then strode back into the office, leaving Jillian and Danny standing awkwardly alone together.

"So. Know any good places to eat in Cleveland?" asked Danny with a hopeful smile.

"Shut up. I'm so angry at you. I can't believe that you did this," said Jillian, her voice shaking. She stomped off towards the office, her heels clicking madly.

"OK, then. I'll call Nelson and we'll leave as soon as you're ready!" Danny called after her.

* * *

Nelson was thrilled to hear of the roadtrip and the prospect of a job at Danny's 'sweet gig'. He walked out of his shift at Couchpotatoville after giving Brandi a lewd and graphic description of how to deal with his final paycheck. Brandi was not impressed.

Jillian wanted to change her clothes before the trip, and Danny needed to pick up Nelson, so they both left the office early to make their preparations. Danny went home and changed into jeans and sneakers. He threw on a black polo shirt and a beat up University sweatshirt. He had originally envisioned the address in Cleveland as an antique or collectibles shop, but after Mr. Zeno's warning to arrive after dark, he decided he'd better be ready for something more active. He listened to his answering machine, shaking his head at the three consecutive calls from bill collectors. A quick rifle through his a few days worth of mail revealed the dreaded written notices that the collectors had referred to on the machine. Soon, he thought, he'll have this all behind him. Even sooner, with this new job.

When Danny drove up to Nelson's apartment, Nelson was already at the curb, sitting with his feet in the street between two parked cars. He was wearing torn jeans, high top Chuck Taylor sneakers left over from the last time they were fashionable, and yet another Contusion Method T-shirt. He jumped up and ran to the side of the truck before Danny came to a complete stop.

"Dude! This rocks! Thanks for the new job, man! You should have heard what I told that little bitch Brandi when I left! I told her she could take the..."

Danny interrupted, "You quit your job already?"

Nelson settled into the front passenger seat like he was bedding down for hibernation. "Course I did. That job sucked. Besides, I was scheduled on close tonight and couldn't come if I didn't. I guess it's another one you owe me, homie."

Danny rolled his eyes and pulled back out into the stream of traffic.

"Well, you should have waited until everything is set up at Zenorific. I don't know for sure if you've got a real job, or if it's just for tonight," he said.

"Aww, it'll be all right. Besides, tonight is a roadtrip! Two guys, out on the road, nothing to stop us! Yeah!"

Danny said quietly, "Yeah. By the way, we're picking up Jillian too."

Nelson was crestfallen. "Dude, no! Aw, man. Sometimes you're a real buzzkill." Unbidden, he unbuckled his seat belt and crawled over into the back seat, kicking Danny in the back of the head as he went over.

Jillian was equally nonplussed to find Nelson in the back seat.

"Who is that?" asked Jillian, looking at Nelson as though she had found a box of rutting feral cats in the back seat.

"That's Nelson. He's my assistant. Remember, Mr. Zeno said to bring him and put him on payroll tomorrow?" answered Danny.

"I don't think he said that at all," said Jillian, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

"He did too," said Nelson, waving like he were the queen of England. "Pleased to meet me, by the way."

The drive down was largely uneventful, although every hour or so, as the radio station they were listening to went out of range, Nelson and Jillian would argue over what to play. Finally, on the third time through the argument, as the sun was setting at the beginnings of the Cleveland suburbs, Danny interceded and insisted on a Baptist preacher he found on the AM dial. Nelson and Jillian were both unhappy, but stopped fighting. They stopped at a gas station to get a local map, then a McDonalds to get something to eat and while away the minutes until full darkness set in. Danny inhaled his burgers and opened the map against his steering wheel to check the directions to their destination while the other two sullenly chewed their food and listened to predictions of their own eternal damnation.

"My phone has a GPS with driving directions on it. I can't figure out how to make this thing work," Jillian groused, shoving the black phone back into her purse.

"This map is fine. I think the gnome is at someone's house. The street this is on looks like a neighborhood, not a retail area. What I still don't understand is, if I have to buy it from someone at home, how do I pay with the expense card? Can I get a cash advance off this?" Danny asked. Jillian shrugged and delicately masticated a French fry.

Nelson said, "Maybe you're not supposed to buy it, dude. Did you bring a taser, in case things get heavy? Ooh, or a brick? Remember Godfrey McGuffin in The General Contractors of Doom? Where he single-handedly beat back the invading horde of zombies with a cinder block?"

Danny felt a sinking feeling in his lower bowels when he considered the possibility of things getting heavy.

"I'm sure it'll all be fine. We won't need Godfrey McGuffin's zombie plan for this. Let's go check it out, and then we can make a plan to get it."

As Danny started the motor back up, raindrops began to land on his windshield. A cool wind blew in and shook the tops of the trees around them. By the time they drove the last two miles to Applewood Terrace, a full fledged summer thunderstorm had developed. Danny crawled the truck up the street slowly. All three of them peered through the foggy glass looking for house numbers through the rain.

"There it is! 535!" Nelson exclaimed suddenly.

It was indeed a private home, and it was a little disappointing in that it was just like all the rest in the neighborhood. It was a 1960s era split level home with an attached garage and a big maple tree in the front yard, whose branches now whipped back and forth under the driving rain and wind. Danny drove past the house, made a three-point turn, and parked on the far side of the street so they could survey the property.

"So what do you do now? You've done this before, right? I mean to get all those toys out on the dock?" asked Jillian.

"They're not toys. They're collectibles. Items of Interest," Danny corrected her, "and no, I bought most of those off of eBay or at flea markets. I haven't had the pleasure of talking a private citizen out of their gnome before."

"Shit, dude. It's a lawn gnome, right? So it's probably right out there in front of us. In the lawn, right? Lemme just go get it, and you can send them a check or one of your other gnomes later," said Nelson.

"You're going to steal it?" asked Jillian.

"Oh Heavens to Betsy, I haven't offended your virgin ears, have I?" asked Nelson. Jillian didn't answer.

He said to Danny, "I'm going man, and when I come back with the goods, you tell your crazy boss he owes me a sweet gig like yours. But with a bigger truck. Like in Four Wheels of Fury."

Danny started to protest, but Nelson popped open his door and ran across the street hunched over like a simian ninja. He was invisible in the rain by the time he hit the far sidewalk.

"Your friend is an idiot. I hope they have a dog. I hope they have a big dog that chews his face right off," said Jillian.

Danny frowned. "Hey, Nelson's out there trying to makes things better for both of us. I don't see you out there helping."

Jillian found some hard plastic on her armrest and started to tap her nails on it.

She said, "I don't see you out there either, sport."

Danny turned his attention back to staring into the rain.

Several minutes later, Nelson pulled his door open and flopped onto the backseat of the truck. He was muddy all over and soaking wet where he was clean. Nelson shook himself off like a terrier, spraying water and mud all over the cab of the truck, hitting Danny and Jillian. Danny turned on the dome light to take a look at the gnome that was worth so much trouble.

Nelson's hands and feet were covered in mud, and he sat in a growing puddle on the leather seat. His face was bleeding from a network of fine scratches and he had a rising lump on his forehead. But he was alone and he was empty-handed. He was completely gnomeless.

"Dude, there's no gnome there. I tore up all the gardens and the flowerbeds. Almost got busted, when the backyard lights went on, but my ninja-like reflexes totally saved me. Got a mouthful of prickerbush and crushed my noggin too. Friggin' hurts. Ever scratch your tongue on something real bad?" he said.

"You must have missed it, in the dark and rain," said Danny.

"See, I told you he was an idiot. Look at this mess. Art will not be happy about this," said Jillian.

Nelson pointed at Jillian, throwing a small clod of potting mix into her hair. He started to tell her off, but when he saw her scrambling to clear her locks, he laughed it off and turned back to Danny.

"Dude, I tore up those gardens. I would have brought back a mouthful of sweet-ass roses for your lady if she wasn't such a class-A bitch. Ain't nothing out there now but some dead-ass plant carcasses, a mess of thorns and one really hard friggin tree trunk." He held up his scratched palms as evidence for his testimony.

"So what do we do now?" asked Jillian, and as if in response, her purse issued an unfamiliar beeping sound. The sleek black phone was ringing.

"Oh shit, it's Arthur. I need to take this privately. You two get out of the truck."

"Are you crazy? It's pouring out there," argued Nelson.

"GET OUT!" she yelled, hysteria rising quickly in her voice.

Danny reached behind the seat by Nelson's feet and picked up a large golf umbrella. "Come on, dude. It's for work," he said.

Nelson was stunned. "You had an umbrella?"

The two stepped out of the truck and walked around in front, huddled together under the umbrella. Nelson, already being soaked, wandered away from Danny to peruse the front yard at 535 Applewood Terrace for any sign that he missed the diminutive target. Danny kept his eye on the fuzzy figure of Jillian, talking on Zeno's cellphone. It was impossible to tell what was happening with the conversation through the dark and the rain.

After a couple of minutes, Danny thought he saw something change inside the cab. Next to the muddled outline of Jillian's head was the yellow-white glow of the cellphone screen. Danny thought he saw a change in the color of the light. He wasn't sure, maybe it had always had a greenish hue, or perhaps Jillian turned and the phone gave off a different color to the side. It was definitely green now, and turning blue around the edges. Danny looked down at his shoes and wiggled his toes, measuring the encroaching wetness in his socks. He listened to the roar of the rain on the pavement.

Then he saw a flash. Or perhaps, since he saw it through the top of his head, it might be more correct to say that he sensed a flash. It was like there was a silent lightning bolt, painted in a color of light outside the visible spectrum. He looked at the cab of the truck. The entire cab was now lit up in blood red light, emanating from the phone at Jillian's head, but Jillian didn't seem to notice. As far as Danny could tell, she was still talking on the phone. At least, she was still holding it next to her head.

Then there was another flash, and this one was definitely visible. The passenger side of the truck silently shot brilliant white light, lighting up the falling rain like a strobe. Danny saw white light with his eye, but could perceive every color of the spectrum simultaneously. When it stopped he had amorphous purple blobs floating throughout his visual field, effectively blinding him. There was also an odd tinny tune running through his mind.

"Wow! Did you see that?" asked Danny.

Nelson came back across the street to join Danny. "Yeah, wicked lightning. Count for the thunder. One, two, three..."

"That wasn't lighting Nelson. That came from the truck. I saw it. Is Jillian OK? I can't see anything at all," said Danny.

"Dude, it didn't come from the truck. It's totally dark in there. You're just... oh shit!" Danny heard wet footsteps, then the truck door opened, but still couldn't see anything through the floating purple Jell-O.

"Nelson?" Danny asked. Nelson didn't answer, so Danny began shuffling forward to find the truck's bumper. He was stopped by his cellphone ringing. He couldn't read the call ID, so he just flipped it open.

"Hello?" he asked tentatively.

"Hello Mr. Fortune. This is Arthur Zeno speaking. How is the operation going?"

"Um. We haven't gotten the gnome yet, Mr. Zeno, but we're right in front of the house. Right on track. Shouldn't be much longer, I think," answered Danny, slowly moving towards the truck again. He bumped the front and started following the shape of the truck around to the door.

"Have you spoken to Jillian within the last couple of minutes?" asked Zeno.

"She asked us to get out of the truck so you two could talk. Something happened in there. We're checking on her now. Did she say something to you?"

"As a matter of fact, she did, Mr. Fortune. She mentioned that you've failed to get the gnome. Again. And I am growing tired of explaining to you how serious this operation is," said Zeno.

Danny found the side view mirror of the truck, and then the door. He dropped the umbrella to free a hand to open the door. Soaking rain quickly matted down his hair and infiltrated the shoulders of his polo shirt.

Danny said, "We'll get it, Mr. Zeno. We haven't failed yet."

"It disappoints me greatly to hear that you're even entertaining the idea of failing. That can't happen, which is why I've taken an additional step to keep you focused on completing the task at hand. Upped the ante, so to speak."

Danny's eyes were clearing enough that he could see figures and shapes, albeit still through a hazy purple-green fog. He opened the truck door next to Jillian's seat. As soon as he did, he heard Nelson yell "Dude, don't!" Jillian's head slumped out through the door and hit Danny in the left arm. He caught her as her shoulders came out as well, and he dropped his phone into the rushing water in the gutter. He pushed open the door, cradling Jillian's head. He found Nelson in the driver's seat, reaching across and pulling Jillian back into the cab.

"She was like this when I found her. Totally out cold," said Nelson as he pulled her upright. He turned on the dome light. Jillian's eyes were closed, and the right side of her curly long hair was soaked down. She had mud on her face and the front of her shirt from Nelson's panicked grab.

"Crap. Keep an eye on her, I've got Zeno on the phone," said Danny.

"What phone?" asked Nelson, reaching for the sleek black phone, now sitting dark on the seat next to Jillian.

"No! Don't touch that thing!" shouted Danny.

He closed the door and rooted around with his fingers in the coursing stream until he found the phone. He found it glowing underwater valiantly, six feet from the door, back by the truck bed. He picked it up and wiped it off on his drenched shirt.

"Hello?" he yelled.

"Mr. Fortune, you're back. I'm so pleased. Are we ready to take this seriously now?" asked Zeno.

"What the hell did you do to my girlfriend?" yelled Danny.

"Calm down, Danny. She'll be fine, as long as you do your job correctly. If you don't, then you'll both have serious challenges ahead. Stay focused, Danny. Get the gnome. Jill will recover, if you do," answered Zeno.

Danny looked at the house across the street. He searched for something special about the place that might explain what all this was about. The house looked like any other on the street.

"I don't understand what this is all about."

"It's not your job to understand. You're only the hands. Just get it done, Danny, and call me as soon as you do. You have until tomorrow night to complete this before things get much more serious, for the both of you."

Danny said, "All right."

After a pause, Zeno said, "Danny? One more thing. You may be fucking Jillian when I'm out of town, but make no mistake about it, son. She's mine. I don't mind you getting some while I'm not using her, but don't get stars in your eyes about it. That's my ladyfriend you're fucking. Just one more thing on the long list of reasons why you're indebted to me. Why you're going to get that gnome for me."

Danny was shocked into silence. He wiped the rain from his forehead, only to have the sheet of water replaced immediately.

"You're lying. I don't believe you," he said weakly.

"That's your prerogative, Mr. Fortune, but it doesn't change the fact that it's completely true. Whether you complete the mission tonight or not, I strongly suggest that you get Jill back to her apartment to rest soon, and ask her neighbor to keep an eye on her while you finish your work. She's going to be in need of assistance for a while, I think."

Danny said, "Mr. Zeno? You want me to take her back to Buffalo? I though you wanted me to get the Cleveland gnome."

"Life is full of paradoxes to be solved. If it wasn't, then why would it be such a common remit to 'do the impossible'? I want both. You screwed up and put Jill in peril. Now you have two problems to simultaneously solve. If you can do them both right now, then bully for you. Otherwise, you'd better get moving. Jill's sort of a beta tester for this now. Not sure what will happen and when. Could be hard to clean up the truck if her head explodes or something. Call me as soon as you have the goods in your hands. We are very close to something great. If you get in my way, even for a moment, I'll destroy all of your lives in a very unique and beautiful way."

The call went dead and Danny pocketed the phone. He walked into the street to open the driver's side door.

Nelson said, "No change, dude. She's still out. Is it messed up that I like her better this way? What did boss say?"

Danny picked up the black cellphone and threw it on the dashboard.

"Don't touch that thing. I've got to go get the gnome, right now."

He closed the door, turned and walked across the street and up the front steps to the door of house number 535.

-9-

Fifteen years earlier and two hundred miles away, Oswald Kitchen and the rest of the Magnificent Seven were working under the umbrella of a very sweet deal. Defenseco, based in Cleveland, Ohio, was like a self-contained corporate ecosystem for brilliant misfits, of which the Magnificent Seven were excellent examples. Part lunch club and part work team, the Seven were made up of Oswald, Roland, Steve, Nigel, Marvin, Lonnie and Malcolm, and they had been there together in R&D longer than anyone else had been, through good times and bad. It was 1985, and it was one of the good times, with a well-funded long-term contract supplying lots of taxpayer money from the Strategic Defense Initiative coffers toward the development of some delightfully unspecific goals. Defenseco became a playground for engineers and geniuses, who got to spend their time and buckets of money playing with whatever technologies personally fascinated them, under a thin guise of R&D.

Oswald didn't invent the technology that the Seven would come to call Buckaroo, as that credit went to another one of the Seven, named Roland Laughtry. However, it could be said that Oswald discovered it, in the accidental way that horrible and fantastic things are often found.

Roland had been working with focused energy beams for several years. Depending on the political situation and the terms of the funding, the same beam technology Roland worked with had been cast as a futuristic weapon, as an enabler of x-ray vision, and as an antimissile defense. The current funding was vaguely desiring of a new breed of secure, high-throughput wireless data communications, and so that's how Roland positioned his ongoing work.

Roland was a modern-day Marconi, said to know the best way to throw a wave anywhere in the world. His major failing was that in the lab he was so accustomed to working alone, the presence of anyone else during an experiment was distracting to Roland and downright dangerous for everyone. He would frequently take shortcuts in his setup and in the maintenance of his equipment, much of which used high voltage and emitted a variety of arcane waves and particles. This was perfectly safe for him, as he could categorically remember the details of his entire lab with his eyes closed. But for anyone else, the lab was a minefield of open wires, poorly grounded equipment, improper shielding and invisible energy beams traversing the expanse of the lab.

The discovery was made at lunchtime. As was the routine, six of the Seven had gathered near the Defenseco's front door to go out to lunch. When they noticed that Roland was late, they knew what was happening. Roland had a habit of getting wrapped up in a problem and losing track of time. In theory, they could have left him behind, but this was not the routine. There were seven of them in the Magnificent Seven, as they had decided the lunch group should be called, and a hungry and tired engineer experimenting with high-energy beams was not what anyone wanted. They all had their own labs neighboring Roland's that they'd have to be in this afternoon. For the safety of the group, and the preservation of the lunch tradition, someone would need to go in and get him. The chemist of the group produced a handful of small glass tubes, made for just such an occasion. After drawing the short pipette, Oswald was declared the lucky winner.

Oswald cautiously opened the door to the lab. He peeked in the door, showing his wavy brown hair and his still-fashionable large eyeglasses. All the lights were on, and there was a persistent low frequency hum in the background, but it was otherwise quiet.

"Roland? Are you in here? It's time for lunch!" called Oswald from the doorway.

He disliked actually walking into Roland's lab, but knew that if Roland was really in the zone, then Oswald would need to be standing right next to him to get his attention. Oswald stepped just inside of the room, showing his middle age paunch straining slightly against his button-down shirt. He slammed the door shut loudly to try to get Roland's attention.

"Roland?" he called. There was still no response.

Oswald walked towards the back of the lab, waving his arms in front of his face in a useless attempt to detect any wayward beams before blundering into them. He was midway into the room when Roland suddenly stood up from behind a table in the back. Roland had just powered up a new machine, and a high whine blended with the existing drone in the room. Roland was standing next to a small makeshift parabolic dish antenna, balanced precariously on a pile of magazines. It was suspiciously reminiscent of a kitchen strainer, festooned as it was by decorative floral patterns in the perforations.

"Oswald! For Christ sake! Don't go there!" yelled Roland inaccurately, for what he meant was 'don't be there where you are right now'. This being a rather awkward phrase, he didn't say it. It was a shame that he didn't though, or perhaps choose the much more meaningful and succinct 'Move!', because at that moment, Oswald was standing with his head in the middle of an invisible beam that was streaming the text of the entire New Testament across the room. This was one of Roland's earlier creations, one using a much better crafted antenna that sat on a bookshelf on the side wall. Roland wasn't actually experimenting with this beam at the moment, but he liked to leave it running 24 hours a day, as a sort of classified technology lava lamp.

Oswald did exactly what Roland said, and stood stock still. Roland grunted in disapproval, and having seen that verbal communication was clearly no use in dealing with an unexpected computer scientist, he went to physically move Oswald himself. In doing so, he momentarily forgot about the new kitchen strainer he had just powered up, which was now building up high voltage in its capacitor network in preparation for release in a burst of modulated energy that Roland hoped to move the New Testament in one lightning-fast encrypted burst.

Roland also didn't notice that the tenuous stack of magazines holding up his new project had started to give way. First one, then another, and another magazine slid out from under the makeshift antenna, their pages fluttering down to the floor. The antenna fell onto the table, the thick wires attached to the back of the disk twisting it around sideways.

Oswald stood frozen, waiting for Roland's to reach him, when he noticed what was happening in the back of the lab. He opened his mouth to warn Roland. His eyes widened with alarm as he saw the antenna rolling around to face him. Then everything went amazingly spectral, and then completely black.

***

People got hurt at Defenseco in all kinds of interesting ways. Often the cause of the injury was something top secret and classified. As a result, the company maintained a small emergency medical staff room right in the building. While this didn't completely avoid the need for occasional employee trips to a real hospital, it avoided many uncomfortable questions that would naturally arise as part of treating a typical Defenseco on-the-job injury.

"Where did the radiation burns come from?"

"What kind of glue is this, and why is the patient submerged up to her collarbone in it?"

"Exactly how did a frozen pastrami sandwich come to be traveling at this rate of speed?"

The Defenseco employees were fond of the medical center for other reasons, having more to do with the readily prescribed uppers, downers, painkillers and mood enhancers. It's not to say that the employees had substance abuse issues, but it was the eighties, and the staff largely came of age during the sixties, so it was considered an employee perk to have a dispensary with a low standard for diagnosis at hand.

Oswald's case would have been a difficult one to talk through at a traditional emergency room. He was breathing fine, with only slightly elevated blood pressure and pulse, but upon the exposure to Roland's second beam, he had become instantly unconscious. The on-staff paramedic was familiar with Roland from earlier that year when the researcher had come in with all the hair on the right half of his head missing, eyebrows and beard included, but Oswald was a new patient.

They kept Oswald on a cot under observation for the next several hours, seeing no change in his condition. The other six of the Seven stopped in from time to time, particularly Roland, who felt atypically guilty for Oswald's condition. But towards the end of the day, the on-staff doctor started to get nervous about his patient. The doctor had a date with that girl from accounting who kept coming down for Prozac prescriptions. He knew that he shouldn't date someone he worked with, especially one he already knew to be emotionally unstable and show signs of substance abuse, but he was only human he told himself. If Oswald didn't wake up and walk out in the next few minutes, he'd have to be transferred to County General.

The doctor was about to call an ambulance for Oswald when suddenly he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright on the cot.

"Can you please turn that down?" yelled Oswald, covering his ears.

"Turn what down?"

"Jesus Christ. The music! Who listens to Souza marches after high school marching band anyhow?"

The doctor thought for a moment. Oswald was awake and ambulatory. The hallucinations were weird, but not something immediately urgent in the burnt, bleeding or glued to a monkey kind of way. He walked to the locked medicine cabinet and selected a bottle of pills. He looked at the clock, noting that the young CPA was probably already waiting in the front lobby for him, getting increasingly anxious as her self-esteem issues began to rattle around in her head. A few minutes of this might be good for his prospects tonight, but too much and she'd just be a mess, just like Oswald would be if he took too many of the diazepam that he poured into an envelope for Oswald.

"Here. Take two of these every couple hours or so. Page me if you have trouble breathing or anything, right? No alcohol, and nothing until after you drive home. Stop in tomorrow if anything is still bothering you," said the doctor, taking his white lab coat off of the back of the chair to put it on to look doctor-ish for his date. He locked the medicine cabinet, and left Oswald alone in the office, sitting on the cot holding his ears.

When the door slammed behind the physician, Oswald heard the sound through the cacophony in his head, and looked up. He noticed the time on the wall clock.

"Oh crap," he said to himself. "Isabelle." He ran out of the room, leaving the envelope on the cot.

Oswald returned to work the next day, wearing a Walkman cassette player to fill his ears with the sounds of Miles Davis and hold back the tide of marching bands that continued to play in his head. He otherwise felt fine, and as the day went on, the music receded and he was able to take off the little black headphones.

"Sorry I nuked your head yesterday," said Roland remorselessly. It was almost time for lunch, and Roland had just entered Oswald's office without knocking.

"Nuke? Were you playing with unshielded radioactivity again? What did you do to me?!" demanded Oswald. He was already annoyed that Roland hadn't come by yet to check on him.

"It wasn't radioactive. Just an electromagnetic communications beam. Well, two of them, to be precise. It's interesting, what happened to you. I might change the direction of my research," said Roland.

"Glad I could help," said Oswald dourly, looking back to the green screen UNIX terminal in front of him.

Roland stepped up to the side of the desk, and fidgeted with a yellow pencil until the tip broke off. Oswald looked up when he heard the snap.

"What?!"

Roland asked, "Can I do it to you again?"

"Jesus, no! What the hell are you thinking? If you want to cook a brain, get yourself a chimp like the jocks in bio-warfare do."

Roland pouted. "I don't like chimps. They're always looking at you with those eyes."

"Yeah, I've got eyes too. And I'm watching you with them. Go back to your lab. I've still got this damnable music running in my head, you know. It's not the time to ask me for a favor."

Roland frowned and shuffled out of the room defeated. But the next day, Oswald's curiosity had started to get the better of him, and he showed up at Roland's door, leading a diapered chimpanzee named Bonzo by the hand. Oswald was no longer wearing the Walkman, as thankfully the music had stopped, and he was ready to forgive Roland, at least a little bit.

"He's looking at me, Oswald," said Roland, hiding behind a table.

"That's gratitude in his eyes. He was due to test a vanilla milkshake-based anthrax delivery system today. Come on, turn off the laser beams so it's safe for us to come in. I had to trade two days of mainframe CPU time to get this beast."

Bonzo sat in the corner, happily playing with a box of broken electronics while the two researchers moved to the blackboard to plan their approach. They theorized that Oswald's head had been at the intersection of the two communications beams, each one a powerfully focused electromagnetic stream with a complex modulated frequency signature. When the two streams intersected, a dramatically different frequency signature would be created due to the constructive and destructive interference of the crossing signals. Some of the waves would supplement and amplify each other, where others would cancel each other out completely. As both were modulated signals to begin with, the interference patterns would change over time, making it difficult to predict exactly what had occurred at the moment of the accident, or if the contents of the beam even had anything to do with Oswald's episode.

"Hey Roland, do you know what was going through my mind, right when I blacked out?" asked Oswald.

"I thought you had no memories of that moment. Yes, wait, let me get some paper to write this down."

Oswald answered, "The gospel of St. John," and chuckled.

"I don't understand? You're not religious," grumbled Roland as he transcribed the punchline as an experimental result.
The three of them, Oswald, Roland, and Bonzo, spent the next few weeks together. Oswald and Roland tinkered with the modulating equipment, realign the antennas and argue over arcane symbols on the chalk board, and Bonzo happily scratched himself and chewed on old wires. For trials, they would seat Bonzo on a box on top of a table, and surround him with blankets to cushion his fall in case the trial was successful. They positioned the two antennas at various angles and the men would stand safely back while the books of Matthew and John would simultaneously stream unfettered through the primate's head. Bonzo rarely showed anything more than mild amusement, and often would stretch out and loll about in the blankets, much to the frustration of the researchers.

Roland and Oswald were at a loss. After three weeks of dedicated effort, they hadn't been able to replicate the effect on the chimp. They were considering drawing pipettes to pick one of themselves as a test subject, in case the effect only worked on humans. Oswald particularly didn't like this idea, but they were at a critical juncture. Defenseco management could be quite lenient about tangential research, and amazingly no one had asked what they were doing with a diapered chimp on a pedestal, but this wouldn't last forever. Pretty soon, they'd need to get back to something resembling their contractual work. It looked like they might have to give up the project, and relegate Oswald's 'nuking' to become just a funny story to tell at the next office party.

Princess Leia provided the inspiration for the answer. Oswald and his seven year old daughter Isabelle were home together on Sunday morning. He was reading the paper after breakfast and watching Isabelle play. The night before, they had rented one of the Star Wars movies on his new Betamax. Isabelle's mother had died when she was a toddler, so she had grown up without much memory of her mother and without any really strong female role models in her life. She was quite impressed with Leia, and went to bed Saturday infused with a new feeling of girl power. She came downstairs Sunday morning in her pajamas and found a flashlight in the basement before Oswald had finished making his coffee. She ran around the house engrossed in imaginary space battle, swinging the flashlight like a light saber or clicking it on and off like a blaster.

Oswald looked over his paper, and smiled at her. After a moment, his eyes drifted to the spot of light playing on the walls from her flashlight. He watched how it appeared to split in two when she hit the mirror over the fireplace just right. He imagined the photons and how they would look if he could observe them as they left the small bulb, bouncing off of the internal reflector and flying to create the dancing spot on the wall. He then shifted his thought experiment to the wave model of light, imagining the beam as a complex wave of mixed frequencies, creating the particular color of light that was now illuminating a section of his yellowing wallpaper.

Isabelle turned to stab at some unseen creature threatening her imaginary universe, and swung her beam across a sunbeam coming in the window and lighting up the dust in the air. Oswald jumped up, spilling coffee in his lap, and shouted "Holy crap!"

Isabelle stopped and frowned at him. The little girl looked so much like her mother when she tried to be serious.

"Crap isn't a nice word, Daddy," she admonished him.

"I know. That's why you're not allowed to say it," he said, grabbing a pen and scratching a diagram across the crossword section of the paper.

"Daddy," she said, rolling her eyes, and speaking in as condescending a tone as is possible from a seven year old girl. "You have to put a quarter in the swear jar now."

Oswald wrote for five minutes, then stopped and looked at what was on the paper. He nodded as if he was agreeing with someone, then tore the page free from the rest of the paper, folded it up, and stuck it in his jacket to take to work on Monday.

The next morning, he marched into Roland's lab, and proudly announced, "I solved it, Roland. I figured it out!"

Roland looked confused, but Bonzo sensed the excitement and began celebrating by jumping up and down, oblivious to what was about to happen to him.

Oswald jumped right to it, unbolting the second transmitter that he had previously insisted be securely mounted at the start of the experiment. He hadn't wanted to be in the lab if Roland's transmitters were waving about and falling over, and yet here he was with a ratchet wrench, unbolting the dish from the erector-set tower it sat on. He pulled it free with a triumphant whistle, and tugged on the feed wires to give him more slack.

"Put the monkey in the chair, Roland," said Oswald.

"He's a chimpanzee, not a monkey. You must know the difference," Roland responded snidely.

"Do you want to get in the chair, Roland? Because I've already had my turn, thank you very much. Get him up there and power up transmitter one, will you? I'll turn on two."

Roland grimaced, but he took a banana out of a paper bag and waggled it at Bonzo. Bonzo knew the drill, and jumped up into the little wooden chair on the table, anxious for his snack. Roland gave it to him, and Bonzo munched right through the side of the fruit, peel included, chewing away happily and thinking in primate terms what an easy job he had.

They powered up the transmitters, and Roland turned on the first stream, the older one mounted on the bookshelf. It bathed Bonzo's head in a gentle electromagnetic current. Oswald sat on the table against the next wall where the erector set mount was bolted, holding the dish for transmitter two pointed over Bonzo's head.

"You're pointing that much too high. That's not where it was pointing before. It's not even going to come close to his head like that," said Roland.

"If I wanted it to go where it was before, I wouldn't have unbolted it. Besides, I'm not ready to touch the monkey yet," said Oswald. He could feel the hairs on his neck stand up, being so close to the beams that knocked him out before. He wondered if he should have at least checked the ground on the equipment before he grabbed the metal transmitter dish, or perhaps worn rubber-soled shoes.

Oswald started waving the dish around, much like Isabelle had waved the flashlight the morning before, but in much tighter paths. He tried to visualize the beam as he sent it swinging, twisting and turning through the intersection of beam one and Bonzo's brain.

Roland spoke up. "Oh, I see. When you had your episode, the beam wasn't a static intersection. It was moving through the field of the first beam. That's an interesting idea, Oswald, but I don't think it's got any real basis for consideration. Have you checked the relative humidity today?"

Oswald gritted his teeth, and growled "It's got nothing to do with relative humidity. Hush up while I figure this out," but he was starting to feel a little silly. He admitted to himself that this was pretty undisciplined research, holding a live transmitter dish and swinging it at a lab chimp's head.

"Oswald, look!" shouted Roland, almost stepping forward into the wavering beams in his excitement.

Bonzo had dropped the last bit of his banana, and his arm hung limp at his side. His mouth lolled open, full of partially chewed banana. His eyes were dull and unfocused, and as Oswald began to repeat the pattern, Bonzo became quite dizzy. Chimpanzees are creatures designed for arboreal living, and have an exceptional sense of balance. They are not used to vertigo, and do not like it at all. But to any humans who may be watching and anthropomorphizing the beast a little bit, a dizzy chimp is a funny thing to behold. At least it is until the chimp starts choking on his banana in front of you.

"Oswald! Stop it! He's choking!" yelled Roland, who ran to shut off transmitter one.

"Roland, it's an experiment. He's an experimental subject. It happens!" answered Oswald, who almost immediately felt guilty for saying so.

"Death by partially masticated tropical fruit is not a valid outcome of this experiment. You explain that in your monthly status report. Turn off number two! Do you remember how to give the Heimlich maneuver? Oh, his diaphragm is so small!"

Roland rushed to Bonzo's side and pulled him upright by his shoulders. Bonzo's head lolled and swung, then he coughed and suddenly Roland's face and hair were covered with the banana. Roland didn't seem to mind, and instead petted Bonzo's fur and talked to him in soothing tones. Oswald put down the antenna carefully and retraced the twisting and falling pattern he had been drawing with the beam, trying to etch it into his mind. He looked over at the messy pair in the center of the lab.

"Roland, you're about ready for parenthood, I'd say. Don't get too attached to that guy though. We're not done cooking his brain yet."

Over the coming weeks, the pair was able to build a computerized signal generator that duplicated the effects of Oswald's movements without all the dancing. From there, they refined the signal curve, tuning it until they could quickly render poor Bonzo senseless with one quick dose of the beam. Bonzo didn't appear to suffer any negative effects, even after repeated exposures and episodes of unconsciousness.

They were thrilled that they could replicate the outcome, but bothered by the fact that they still didn't know why the beam worked. To determine that, they'd need a neuroscientist, and to get a neuroscientist, they'd need to work this into a real project and tell management about it. Their working theory was that the beam was able to quickly synchronize Bonzo's brain waves with the carrier signal of the beam. They thought that the changing pattern of the beam elevated the brain's activity to a level where high functions became temporarily disabled through some kind of natural overload fail-safe switch. Autonomic, lower level functions seemed to be unaffected, or at least returned to normal much quicker than the higher functions. Oswald thought that they should probably put some sort of monitoring equipment on the chimp while they were zapping him to double check this, but getting that equipment would take a requisition, which might spark questions. He wasn't accustomed to working with test animals, and both he and Roland were far more interested in tweaking the technology. There would be time for a formal biological study later.

This all changed very suddenly at about noon on a Tuesday. The researchers had been playing with the signal interaction curve, trying to see how long they could knock the chimp out for without lasting effects. It was running consistently about ten seconds of exposure to achieve unconsciousness, which would last for up to a half hour. Oswald or Roland would stand with a stopwatch in one hand, and his hand on the transmitter switch, while the other would watch Bonzo and catch him if needed. Bonzo had gotten used to the routine, and seemed to enjoy the game, or at least tolerated it for the attention lavished on him by Roland when he woke up in the bearded man's arms.

Bonzo was in his chair, Roland held the stopwatch and Oswald was on monkey duty. Roland gave the countdown, and threw the switch, for what they had planned to be a twenty second exposure. Oswald stared at the chimp, waiting for the now predictable outcome.

Roland's eyes darted between his stopwatch and his chimpanzee. He saw the telltale signs of the beam in the primate's face, the rolling eyes, the lolling head, the wavering posture. Then the door to the lab opened.

"Hey, are you guys coming to lunch?" It was one of the Seven, a slight Asian man named Malcolm Benoy. He was holding a short pipette gingerly in his left hand. Since Oswald had joined Roland in his lab, the rest of the Seven were more cautious than ever about entering the room. Unfortunately, personal reconnaissance was still the only reliable method of extracting these scientists from their work and fulfilling their midday commitment to each other.

"Get out! We're doing an experiment!" shouted Roland, looking up from his stopwatch. Oswald frowned at the noise behind him, but kept watch on the chimpanzee.

"Yeah, but it's lunchtime. We're going to McBee's. I drew the straw, so I have to pay if I don't get you to come," complained Malcolm.

Oswald winced. This was a long-running bet that resurfaced from time to time to raise the drama of extracting Roland from his oft-unsafe laboratory. Roland hadn't been aware of this until that moment.

"What are you talking about?" asked Roland, taking his hand off the transmitter button and stepping closer to the door.

Oswald said, "Roland? Time?"

"You fellows are playing games at my expense? Doing social experiments with me as the subject?" asked Roland.

"Well, um. It's not really a game, it's more of a joke," said Malcolm.

"Time, Roland! What's the time!?" shouted Oswald. Bonzo wasn't moving at all.

Roland shook his head at Malcolm. "I thought you were my friends," he said. "Oh no! Thirty-two!" he shouted, looking at the watch. He rushed back and killed the transmitter, then quickly joined Oswald at the side of the limp chimp. Roland picked Bonzo up as he always did at these times, cradling him in his bent arm and putting his hand gently on his chest to feel the chimp's chest move with breath.

This time, however, Bonzo's chest didn't move. Moments later, he was quite dead.

-10-

Oswald looked through at the warped image of his colleagues through the empty top of a quickly diminishing pint of beer. He said, "It's a goddamn death ray, Roland. Just like in a sci-fi story, you pull the trigger and the subject drops dead. We've got to do something about it!"

"We'll publish our findings. We could get funding for the establishment of an entire laboratory on the basis of a technology like this," said Roland.

His logical mind was engaged with the conversation, but his eyes showed that his thoughts were with Bonzo, whose rapidly cooling body was wrapped in a blanket in the back of the lab.

"You can't do that," said Malcolm. He had stayed behind after the rest of the Seven had left, feeling somewhat responsible for what took place. Everyone else had gone back to work after the sandwiches were gone. Oswald ordered another round, which meant another dark and umlauted brew for himself, and colas for his compatriots.

Roland rose quickly to the challenge. "Well, just why not? Maybe we'll name the lab after Bonzo?"

"That'd be great," Oswald grumbled.

Malcolm shook his head. "You're not thinking. You made this on Defenseco time in company labs, using their equipment and their chimpanzee. The death ray is the company's intellectual property."

"But we can't let a defense contractor have access to a death ray. It'll be the Manhattan Project all over again. They thought they were going to guarantee world peace with the atomic bomb, but millions of people died. What do you think Defenseco would do with it?" asked Roland.

"Get rich, I guess," said Malcolm.

Oswald was starting to loosen up with the repeat applications of brew-sourced ethanol. He espoused, "It's no better if we publish anything about this. I mean, can you imagine if just anyone can check the plans out of the library. Oh, I can't wait to see the high school science fairs in a couple years. The nerds will truly finally have their revenge on the jocks, and get straight A's while doing it."

Oswald thought for a moment more about his own high school experience. "Maybe we should publish after all," he mused without looking up.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Malcolm.

"We need a plan," said Oswald decisively.

"Agreed," said Roland gladly.

"OK," said Malcolm, waiting for more.

Oswald said, "Tomorrow. Today we clean up the lab and take care of the monkey. Don't talk about this to anyone. Sleep on it tonight, and we'll work out a plan tomorrow. I think I'm too far on my way to drunk to do it now, and Roland is clearly missing his pet."

The waitress brought the check to the table, and Oswald blearily gazed at it for a moment before pulling a couple of twenties out of his worn leather wallet. As they walked out the door Oswald had a thought out loud.

"One more thing, boys. I don't think we should go walking around talking about death rays. People will think we're crazy, and it's worse if they take us seriously. We'll need sort of a code name to use to talk about the technology."

"How about 'The Technology'?" offered Malcolm.

"Clever," said Oswald.

Malcolm added, "Well, it's probably operating under some kind of transcranial wave induction mechanism. How about TWIM?"

"Let's call it Buckaroo. After my little buckaroo Bonzo," said Roland through moist eyes.

The other two stopped in the middle of the doorway to look at Roland, puzzling over the name. They both arrived at the same conclusion, that is, that it didn't make any sense, which made it perfect for the situation. They nodded and walked out to the sidewalk outside.

"Buckaroo it is," said Oswald.

* * *

The next day, Roland was already in the lab when Oswald came in. He was starting to disassemble the Buckaroo signal generators. He had been in since long before sunrise, taking copious notes in a notebook, documenting the settings and configuration of the equipment and the lab before taking them apart.

"I could have killed you with this, Oswald. It did kill Bonzo. I don't want anyone else to get hurt. It was only supposed to be a wireless data transmitter," said Roland.

Oswald nodded grimly, thinking of his daughter.

Roland asked him, "Do you have a plan for all this yet?"

Oswald said, "Sort of. I have an idea what we should do. We'll talk it over with the guys this afternoon. I'll help you finish disassembling this first. I'll start working out how to burn the signal generator programs to a PROM chip so we can erase the files from the mainframe."

Oswald's idea was the result of the optimization of two opposing goals. First, he felt that Buckaroo represented a genuine scientific discovery, which in the right time and place should be fully researched and studied. If it could do what they saw when they didn't understand it, what else could Buckaroo potentially do if they were able to study it? Perhaps with the right tunings, it could be used for positive outcomes, such as enhanced creativity, a cure for schizophrenia, or the ability to rouse coma victims.

Second, this was not the right time or the right place to do this research. An invisible death ray was no kind of toy to bring to a defense contractor with a profit motive during the time of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Oswald had no idea if Buckaroo's prowess would work from an orbiting satellite, but he had no intention of letting anyone find out.

So from this, Oswald looked to the immediate situation. The Seven all knew of Buckaroo from yesterday's lunch. He wished that they hadn't shared their findings with them all on the prior day, but nothing could be done about that now, and frankly, his plan was stronger with more individuals involved.

They would break the core and critical workings of Buckaroo's circuitry into small modules. The more plebeian parts of the machine, for example, the antenna dish and high voltage wires, could be discarded. The goal would be to distill the technological essence of Buckaroo into a set of ingredients, divided so that each set was useless on its own. Roland had already started on this part of the plan, inadvertently. These ingredient parts, along with the pages of schematics would be scrambled together, and separated into seven piles, approximately equal in volume. One set would go to each of the Seven. Oswald gathered them in Roland's lab that afternoon, in front of a table with seven piles of parts and notes, and told them of his idea.

"And what are we supposed to do with this pile of parts? Put them in a safe-deposit box? Why don't we save the money and put it all into one?" asked Steve.

"That's where I need your help. We all need to keep our part of Buckaroo safe independently. But it also needs to be accessible to any of the other Seven at any time," said Oswald.

"Why's that?" asked Malcolm.

Oswald paused for a moment, and carefully considered his delivery of this part of the plan.

"Think about it. The Buckaroo results so far might be a fluke, but it could be a used as a weapon. People might go, um, out of their way to get a hold of it."

"Do you mean violence? Is someone going to whack us to get hold of your mistake?" asked an increasingly agitated Steve.

"Please don't say whack in this context," asked Roland. "It makes you sound like a thug."

Oswald put up his hands in front of him. "No one is going to get whacked. First, Buckaroo is a secret amongst us, and we're going to keep it that way until we have an appropriate way to handle it. Second, we've disassembled and scrambled the parts, which we've separated into seven groups. This way not only will Buckaroo be unknown anyone but us, it will be useless without acquiring all the pieces of the puzzle. Now this makes it useless to all of us as well, doesn't it? But we have a responsibility to make this useful in the right environment someday. Making each part accessible to each other, while secret and hidden from the rest of the world makes the system redundant in case one of us becomes unwilling or unable to take part going forward."

"I like being redundant," said Steve.

"Why would one of us become unwilling to help?" asked Malcolm.

Nigel, the statistician, thought for a moment and said, "There's a significant probability that at least two of us will die in the next ten years. That might make you unable to assist. That is, if you were one of the people who were dead."

"Cheery thought," said Oswald.

Roland asked, "So how exactly do we do this, set this system up that you've described? Bury it in our backyards and exchange treasure maps? Hide the parts in the birdfeeder?" He was getting testy.

"That's what I'm having trouble with. I think this is the right way to do this, but any ideas I've had so far can't guarantee access or the safety of the parts."

The group fell silent in thought.

"I think I have an idea," said Marvin, an electrical engineer with a wildly infectious laugh. "But no one better laugh at it," he said, then broke into a giggle himself.

Marvin's explained that his brother-in-law was in manufacturing. He managed a factory about an hour's drive out of town that made a number of plastic resin goods like statues and small housewares. The company wasn't doing well, as much of the work on the new and growing products was moving overseas where labor was cheap and environmental regulations were nonexistent. His brother-in-law's factory was left with older designs that were being produced in smaller and smaller runs every year, as the number of people in the United States who took pleasure in pink flamingos, whimsical garden bunnies and lawn gnomes decreased.

"We could put it inside a flamingo. Or rather, seven flamingos. One for each of us. Wow, we'll have a whole flock!" said Marvin, who burst out laughing again.

"I don't really want a plastic flamingo," said Malcolm. Roland, who had an irrational fear of large birds, nodded emphatically.

"No, it's perfect," said Oswald. "We can encase the parts inside the flamingo, and they'll be safe from the weather sealed up inside the plastic. We can put them out in our yards, and they'll be right out where we can get to them if we need to, but completely safe and useless on their own. No one will suspect a thing."

"I'm not a pink flamingo kind of guy. I'm sure my neighbors will suspect something if I put a pink flamingo in my back yard," whined Malcolm.

"You could always put it in your front yard," offered Marvin.

"I don't even have a yard. I'd have to put it in a potted plant on my patio," said the condominium-dwelling, and exceedingly quiet Lonnie Pharris.

"It's perfect, Marvin. We'll do it. You're a genius," said Oswald.

"Well, of course. But that's not terribly special at this table," answered Marvin.

Oswald and Roland spent the rest of the afternoon selecting the most critical components of Buckaroo, and packing them in double plastic bags to provide triple redundancy against the possibility of a flamingo leak. The signal generator programs were downloaded from the mainframe and burned to a couple of computer chips, which went into the bags with the other hardware. Marvin called his brother-in-law and explained the situation, framing it as a practical joke they were to play on one of their colleagues. Marvin's brother-in-law was game, and told them to come by anytime without asking for anything further in terms of explanation.

The next day, Roland stayed behind at the office to work on putting together some reasonable facsimile of a month's work to justify his continued employment. Marvin and Oswald took the drive to the factory first thing in the morning, with a cardboard box full of electronics and papers packed into baggies in the back seat. They returned just before quitting time and were waiting in the parking lot when the rest of the Seven disembarked from the office.

"How'd it go?" asked Roland, trying to peer over Oswald's shoulder to see into the hatchback window.

Marvin was already chuckling. Oswald was grinning too.

"It went well. Unfortunately, they weren't making flamingos today. I guess the way it works is they tool up for one kind of junk at a time, so we went with the biggest piece of junk they had. It took a little special work to get the parts inside, but the guys at the factory thought it was hilarious, so they went out of their way to help," said Oswald.

This piqued all of their curiosity, and they filed past, one by one receiving their charge. Each one left that day with a foot-tall effigy of a bearded gnome in a red hat, smiling wisely like he was in on the joke. The plastic still smelled of paint and solvent, and felt just slightly tacky.

"Thanks again Marvin. I like how this worked out," said Oswald, taking his gnome from the back seat.

"No problem, Oz. It was a kick. We should do it again someday, except really as a joke. It would be funny to put Roland's car keys inside a madonna, if we could find out when Virgin Mary day is."

"That's be great," Oswald said, turning towards his own car. He carried the gnome by the scruff of the neck to his own car and set him on the floor on the passenger side. He checked his watch and saw that he'd be able to get home a little early today. His head swam from the plastic solvent funk of the outdated factory, and he was emotionally exhausted from the strangeness of the past couple of weeks. He was looking forward to a nice, quiet, normal dinner with his daughter, and then to getting back to his usual routine. As soon as he found a place for this god-awful ugly gnome to live.

-11-

Isabelle was in her galley. Actually, since it was 535 Applewood Terrace, it was her father's kitchen, but she had lived in this house for most of her twenty years, and she felt a sense of innate ownership. She had adopted the idiosyncrasy of referring to all terrestrial-based rooms built for cooking as galleys, after discovering the term on a weekend sailboat excursion with a wealthy, but poorly socialized boy she met at college. She felt somewhat self-referential in using the word 'kitchen' as a noun, and while it was not as conspicuous a term as when some folks called a toilet 'the John', it was quite enough for her. Besides, it made her feel worldly and travelled to come back from school speaking differently in everyday language than she had before she left.

Outside, it was raining in buckets. Buckets full of cats and dogs. There was a waterfall of sorts cascading in front of the galley window where the rain gutter was clogged with leaves from the season before. This gutter was attached to the lowest and flattest part of the roof, low and flat enough that Isabelle and her friends used to sunbathe on it in high school. The fact that her father hadn't cleaned them again, despite his post-retirement free time indicated he needed a little more direction, she thought. She added the words 'clean out gutters' to a large yellow sticky note on the front of the fridge, then after a moment's thought, added a smiley face next to it.

Outside there was a flash of lightning, and she thought she saw something big and dark move in the backyard. It was difficult to tell for sure what it was in the storm, but her heart leapt anyway. She went to the back patio door and flipped the switch to turn on the backyard overhead lights. Only one of the two cone-shaped bulbs were operational, and it almost made her more nervous to have a small circle of light amidst the blackness. It seemed to give whatever she might have seen out there better places to hide around the edges. She turned it back off and told herself it was just one of the neighbor's dogs out for a night hike.

She walked around to the front door and checked the driveway for her father's car. Still nothing. There was no sign of her father yet that night, but considering her visit was a surprise, there was no reason for concern. He was probably just out to dinner with one of the guys he used to work with, or hanging around the nursery trying to get tips from the landscapers for his semi-pro rose garden. Isabelle clicked a Godfrey McGuffin DVD out of its garishly decorated Couchpotatoville box and dropped it into the player, then flopped on the couch to watch the previews before the alien zombie dentist invasion began.

Ten minutes and forty-three murders into the movie, the doorbell rang. Isabelle's initial split second reaction was relief, following immediately by dread when it occurred to her that her father wouldn't ring his own doorbell. She peeked out the window and saw a man, taller than her, standing in the rain. She couldn't tell what he looked like without turning on the porch light, at which point she would feel obliged to acknowledge his presence. She left the light off. Crouched by the bottom of her window, peeking out at the dark figure outside her house, no one on earth knowing she was there, she felt like a character in the movie playing in the living room. Onscreen, a starlet was being dismembered with a length of dental floss and a Water Pik, and her screams filled the room. The man rung the doorbell again, and knocked on the screen door most insistently.

Isabelle ran into the living room and picked up the fireplace poker. She returned to the hallway, and approached the door like it was a sleeping carnivore. She flipped on the porch light and heard a muffled grunt of displeasure from outside the door. Thunder rumbled above her, and as she slid the chain shut, she heard the man open the screen door. She looked through the peep hole and saw a man, about her age, very wet, whose face she didn't know. She turned and placed her back to the door, and when he knocked on the door, it was right next to her head, and gave her another start. It felt as if he had reached right through the wood to touch her. She took a deep breath, and opened the door a crack. She peered through with one eye.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Danny. Can I come in and talk to you for a moment?"

"No way, mister."

"Oh, come on, look at it out here. Really, I'm harmless, and is this any way to treat a visitor on a dark and stormy night?" he asked, pushing his hair and a sheet of running water from his forehead to try to see her.

"This is exactly how to treat a visitor on a dark and stormy night. I thought it would be polite if I found out who you were before my Rottweiler commences with chewing on your skull," said Isabelle. She was trying as best she could to keep her voice from quavering.

Danny nervously checked behind him, but recalled a scene from one of the innumerable cop movies he'd seen during his tenure at Couchpotatoville. In it, the older and wiser cop advised the newbie that 'If someone tells you they have a Rottweiler, they're lying. If they really had a Rottweiler, you'd already be dog food. If they tell you they have a Pit Bull, believe them. There's no sense in taking chances.'

He leaned in to make better eye contact with the single eye that availed itself to him.

"Listen," he said, "I know this seems a little odd, but I'm not a bad guy or a Jehovah's Witness or anything. I'm not selling anything and I'm not armed. Can I come in so we can talk? It'll only take a minute."

Danny felt the last remaining dry spot on his body succumb to the watery onslaught.

"Fat chance, sucker. I don't know who you are, but you're about two minutes away from becoming a chew toy. If you've got anything good to say, you'd better say it and get out of here," said Isabelle.

She was almost surprised at the words that came out of her mouth. She heard a dentist drill whine behind her and she felt a shiver run down her spine. The DVD player she had installed in her father's living room last Christmas had exceedingly realistic sound.

"All right, stay cool. I'll be straight with you, although it's going to sound a little odd. I'm in the employ of an exceedingly rich and strange man, who has an obsessive relationship with garden gnome statuettes. I'm of the understanding that you have one such item here. It's approaching a life or death situation that I acquire the gnome, and I'm prepared to pay handsomely for it. Probably at a level that would be considered insane."

He paused. The woman behind the door didn't answer. He couldn't blame her for confusion, and hoped that he could appeal to her greed to overcome her critical thought processes.

"Really, you can literally name your price. Or if cash is inconvenient, I'm also prepared to barter with consumer electronics. What kind of television are you watching now? Because the new plasma screens are really incredible. You should see them. It's like you're really there and a part of the action."

Onscreen behind her, a severely mutated orthodontist smashed through a front door, scattering sorority sisters in their pajamas to the corners of their darkened house. Godfrey hadn't yet made it to the scene to quip catch phrases and save the day. More realism in a television was not what Isabelle wanted right now.

"Look. This is all really freaking weird," said Isabelle, her voice getting louder and more anxious as she spoke. "I want you to take your crazy talk about gnomes and televisions and leave. Don't come back, or I will let the dog loose on you. I'm going to count to three, then call the cops. They can come and fight Bruno for your remains. Understand? One."

Danny reconsidered whether she might have a dog stowed away inside the house. There wasn't any barking, which made it unlikely that there was a dog at all, but if there was, it would be well-trained, which was more frightening. This lady certainly could call the cops, and Danny didn't want to try to explain what was going on to the authorities. Mr. Zeno didn't say anything about the police, but Danny was pretty sure Zeno didn't want his gnome obsession entered into the public record of the police blotter.

"Two..." she said, her voice rising. She wondered what she'd do if she got to three.

"OK, OK! Relax lady," said Danny, taking a step back into the rain. "Just think about my offer. I'd really like to have that gnome in our collection, and I really will pay very well for it. It's just a dumb little statue, right? You think about it. I'll be in touch soon."

Isabelle slammed the door and threw the bolt. "You will not!" she yelled.

Danny's shoulders slumped. He took three steps back out towards the truck, then turned towards the house again, wondering if he should try again somehow. But he thought of Jill, unconscious in the truck, and Mr. Zeno's instructions to get her home and in the care of a neighbor. There was Mrs. Russell, whom he already owed a favor. He supposed he'd have to double down and owe her two, not knowing anyone else. Dejected, he shuffled through the puddles back to the truck.

They drove through the night back to Buffalo. They were tired and soaked. Danny cranked the heat to keep them warm in their wet clothes, which turned the inside of the truck into a steambath. Nelson made a half hearted suggestion that Jill would be warmer without all of her wet clothes on.

"Maybe some skin to skin contact would keep her warm. Like in 'Cold Front of Doom'," he added.

Danny looked at Nelson through the rear view mirror. He frowned at the dark blob that was the reflection of Nelson's head. "I thought you didn't like Jill," Danny said.

"Hey, she's hot and wet and doesn't say anything. Right now, I kind of do like her," said Nelson.

"You stay in the back seat," grumbled Danny.

After a couple of hours, Jill opened her eyes and looked around. She wouldn't, or couldn't say anything, but didn't appear to be troubled. Her face was expressionless as still water. Occasionally, Danny would reach over and touch her hand or her face gently, but she showed no sign that she noticed.

After the third time he failed to get a response from her, Danny sadly asked, "Jeez Jillian, what did he do to you?" not really expecting an answer.

Thus he was surprised when she answered him with her own question, in a quiet but clear voice, "Who?"

"Uh, Zeno. Arthur. What did Zeno do to you?" asked Danny excitedly.

"Art likes to do lots of things. It's OK though, since he's not just my boss, he's my boyfriend."

"Oh dude," giggled Nelson, "she didn't just say that, did she?"

"She just got her brain microwaved by that stupid phone. I'm sure she meant to say me. That I was her boyfriend," said Danny, not sounding convincingly sure of himself.

Jill continued to stare out into the dark night ahead of the truck.

"No," she said, "Art is my boyfriend, but I'm mad at him since I figured out about the other girl in California. Eliza told me. You, you're an accident, but Art says he doesn't mind when he out of town. Can you turn down the stereo? I can't hear myself talk. And besides, why are they playing the song from the Smurf's TV show?"

"The radio isn't even on," mumbled Danny glumly. He couldn't believe that Jill was confirming what Zeno has told him.

Nelson rolled in the backseat with laughter. "Dude, you truly are the golden child. The friggin Dalai Lama of Buffalo."

"What are you talking about, Nelson?" asked Danny crossly.

"You're drive-by nookie, buddy! You accidentally got laid, along with your accidental new wheels. I ought to rub your belly for luck, and get some of this for me," said Nelson, lunging forward into the driver's seat to do just this, only to be met by Danny's fiercely wielded elbow. He fell back, holding his nose but still giggling through the pain.

Since Jillian was being so starkly truthful, Danny thought he saw a chance to get some answers.

"Jillian, why I can't remember anything about our first weekend together? Did you do something to me?" he asked.

Nelson, delighted, moved over to the right side of the truck and hung onto the back of Jillian's seat so he could catch every word.

"Sweet. This has got to be good," Nelson giggled behind Jillian's ear, though she made no sign that she heard him.

"Yes. I put some Rohypnol in your drink at the wedding. When I got the Long Island Iced Teas. I thought you were someone else. The bride's brother has lots of money. It's a rich family. I was going to get back at Arthur for the other girl, and get some help, financially, to leave him. You might not have noticed, but he can be controlling and manipulative. So I drugged you and took you back to my apartment. I gave you two more doses over the weekend."

"What? Why did you have Rohypnol at the wedding?"

"Art and I... Art keeps some on hand, for recreational purposes. I don't like it, but I know how it works. I couldn't find out anything about your family's money from you. You just kept mumbling about some stupid plan and a coffee shop and movies. I hoped you'd start making sense on Monday when you sobered up."

"Roofie dude! You're totally part of a three-way porno! You rock! Oh, but maybe you're gay now. You should get that checked out by a professional," advised Nelson.

"Was Zeno there too? That first weekend?" asked Danny through clenched teeth. The speedometer crept higher and higher.

"No. I was mad at him. He was with her, in California. I was mad, and I wanted to cheat on him too while he was away with her. I didn't do anything to you though, except for the drugs. I tried to, but I couldn't do it."

"Aww, dude!" said Nelson. "You couldn't get it up. Don't worry, it happens to everyone sometime. I mean, not me, but at least you know you're not gay now!"

"Shut up Nelson."

"Then I found out you weren't who I thought you were. I mean, God, you worked for tips, and so I had to change that. That's why I got you the job with Zenorific. So when Arthur was with her, I'd have you," Jill slurred, as her consciousness slipped away.

Danny pulled over into the breakdown lane, and sat there, hands on the wheel, staring into the darkness.

"Dude, that's some crazy shit. Your girl totally boned that old dude in like sixteen ways, including four that are illegal," said Nelson.

"Shut up Nelson. You don't know that," said Danny.

"What are you going to do?" asked Nelson.

Danny answer, "I don't know. Take her home, I guess. Go in tomorrow and quit this weird-ass job. Think Couchpotatoville will take me back?"

"Dude. Look at this truck. Look at all that swag at your pad. Look at your bitchy girlfriend. I mean, she was at best half yours, maybe two-thirds, and you didn't get to do any of that freaky stuff, but now you know she'll do it, right? You can't go back to slinging DVDs," Nelson advised.

Danny frowned, and silently put the truck in gear and pulled back onto the road. He drove back in silence, careful not to say anything that might set Jill off on another hypnotic verbal rampage. He dropped Nelson at his apartment, then took Jill back to hers. She had passed out again, and wouldn't rouse, so he had to carry her up and strip her wet clothes from her body before putting her to bed. He then went to the uncomfortable but stylish couch and dozed until the sun came up.

* * *

Oswald Kitchen was more than a little surprised when he got home after the big thunderstorm to find his daughter cowering hiding in his dark house brandishing a fireplace poker. Once he got past the shock of discovery, he was thrilled to have his daughter home. But his happiness turned to grave concern when she related to him the events of the evening.

"Did you call the police?" asked Oswald.

"No," she answered, "I nearly did, because I didn't know where you are. It was more weird than dangerous."

"I'm not so sure about that," muttered Oswald as he walked to the sideboard to pour himself a single malt scotch. Though Isabelle was almost old enough to drink legally, here inside the house where she grew up, she was perpetually four years old. Oswald didn't offer her a drink, and neither did she expect one.

"What do you mean, Dad?" she asked.

"Those gnomes. Gosh, I haven't thought about them for years. You say he was a younger fella that came to the door asking? I mean, not an old fart like me?" He passed his hand over the top of his head, thinking of how much hair there had been there when the business with the gnomes happened. He had put on weight too, the middle-age paunch of Isabelle's youth blooming to become a full fledged jolly-old-man belly. At least he still had the same glasses, and the frames were almost back in style again.

She said, "Yeah. Maybe a little older than me. I'm not sure. It was dark and rainy and I kept the door closed."

"Hrrmph," Oswald grunted in acknowledgment, sipping his scotch and thinking.

"Dad, what gnomes are you talking about? I don't remember ever seeing anything like that around the house. Was it a toy I had or something?"

Oswald walked to the front window and looked out into the yard. The rain had tapered off to a drizzle, but huge puddles occupied most of the yard, and small rivers ran down both sides of the street. The large Red Maple in the center of the yard dripped water from its countless leaves, making it appear to rain harder under the tree than not.

"Oh, he's out there. I caught you and your friends dressing him up like a baby and playing with him back when I kept him in the yard. He was too valuable and dangerous to let you do that, so I put him somewhere you couldn't reach him, and told the guys at work where it was. I had planned to get him back down when you were old enough to leave it alone, but I guess I never got to it. I'll double check him in the morning when the rain stops. Then I've got to make some calls."

"This doesn't make any sense. Is this all some kind of weird joke?"

Oswald drained his glass, reeling slightly for a moment as the fumes from the peat-smoked drink filled his head.

"I wish it was. Maybe it is. We should be fine for tonight though. I'l take care of it in the morning," said Oswald, who then made a careful circuit of the house, locking and latching every means of securing a door or window that he could find.

* * *

Danny awoke on the couch, and went to look in on Jill. He found her still unconscious, but breathing normally.

As he made coffee for himself in her museum-quality kitchen, his phone blared a short staccato alarm. He cautiously examined it at arm's length, ready to hurl it into the toilet should it start to misbehave in any way. The screen read TEXT MSG ARTHUR ZENO – 911. Danny opened the message. It instructed him to meet Zeno at an address in the city. Danny double-checked it, as the address was in a fairly run down area. It didn't seem like one of Zeno's haunts, but then again, nothing in this situation was expected.

Danny took a quick shower and downed his coffee, then rang Mrs. Russell's bell next door.

"Hi, Mrs. Russell. Do you remember me?" he asked when she opened the door. Mrs. Russell smiled, while Bitsy tried desperately to get past her foot and destroy Danny's pant leg. It sounded like a drunken frog was singing 'Surrey With the Fringe on Top' in the other room.

"Why Daniel, of course I do. So good to see you. But my goodness, you do look a bit damp. Have you had a quarrel with Jillian again? Mr. Russell had a lovely leisure suit that you could borrow if you need. It's polyester, so it never wrinkles."

Danny smiled. "Thank you, Mrs. Russell, but no. I have an important meeting I need to get to right away. I was hoping I could ask you a favor. Jillian isn't feeling very well. I was wondering if you could look in on her from time to time while I'm away. Would that be too much to ask?"

Mrs. Russell raised her hand to her mouth and asked, "Oh. Did this come on rather," she paused and thought, "suddenly?"

"Yes it did. Very suddenly. I should be back soon, but I'd feel better if I knew she had someone watching over her," said Danny.

"Well of course, dear. It's the least I can do. I know exactly what needs to be done. You just give me her key, so I can check on her without having to wake the poor dear," she said.

Her delicately wrinkled hand came out between them. The dog was suddenly and strangely quiet. Perhaps he thought there would be an exchange of dog biscuits. Mrs. Russell kept her hand out until Danny handed over the key. He thanked her and headed out to his truck to find the address on the screen of his phone, wondering how Mrs. Russell knew that Jillian wasn't awake.

Danny checked the address on a map three times during the drive, so odd and obscure was this part of town. A part of downtown's industrial heritage that had long been left fallow, this was an area of town as sparsely populated as a desert. Though he had to fight through the morning's rush of bankers, lawyers and IT staff to get there, once he slid past the bustle of downtown proper, he found that he was completely alone. The buildings were old brick structures, and not well marked with their street numbers, but Danny found his location. He found himself in front of a slim five-story brick structure planted between two massive warehouses on the north side of the street. By this time, he was ten minutes late for his meeting with Zeno, and from the looks of the building, he might be even later. There was still no obvious way in, if this was even the right building. The front door had a heavy iron cage locked in front of it, and from the rust on the impressive padlock, it had been closed for some time.

Danny shook his head, and decided that there must have been some mistake, either in the message or in his navigation skills. He decided to head up to the Zenorific campus in the Northtowns and wait outside Zeno's door until the irascible CEO showed up. He started back towards his truck when a voice boomed above him, causing him to jump out of his left shoe.

"MR. FORTUNE! YOU'RE LATE!"

Danny twirled around, feeling his heart racing, and resisted an urge to check his shorts to make sure they were still entirely dry.

"THE ALLEY, FORTUNE. THERE'S A DOOR. COME TO THE TOP FLOOR. HURRY IT UP NOW, YOU'RE BURNING DAYLIGHT."

The voice echoed off the lonely brickface lining the empty street so that it sounded like it came from everywhere at once. Danny looked, and there was indeed an alleyway to the left of the building, hemmed in so closely by the neighboring building that even in the bright morning sun, it was darkly foreboding within. He entered cautiously, stopping for a moment to let his eyes adjust. He saw a rusty steel door about halfway down the alley.

The door was unlocked, but hard to open because there were several inches of garbage on the floor behind it. Inside the building the darkness was increased by an order of magnitude. There was a staircase, all concrete and dingy steel like an emergency exit, and it too was covered in several inches of junk as far as he could see. It looked like a waterfall of paperwork frozen in time, ancient corporate detritus of all kinds including papers, folders, index cards and unsharpened pencils. Danny guessed that there had been a fire here once, and that the torrent of the firefighter's hoses had carried this all down. It stank of urine and mold. Danny took a last deep breath outside the door, grabbed the handrail and attacked the sliding mountain of junk.

Five stories later, he got to the top landing panting for breath, and found a single bare lightbulb burning. The door at the top of the stairs was heavy steel with no window, and locked tight. Danny pulled vainly at it for a few minutes before giving up and knocking. The door felt exceptionally solid under his knuckles.

"Tommy, can you hear me?" said the voice over the speaker. It was not so loud inside, and sounded more like Zeno this time.

"What? It's Danny, not Tommy," said Danny, out of breath and annoyed.

"Uncultured ingrate. Perhaps if you had gone to college properly, you'd know what I mean. Dance like a funky chicken for me," commanded the voice.

"What?" asked Danny.

The voice sighed audibly. "I've been told that you do an excellent funky chicken when you need to. Perhaps later. Come in," said the voice. A metallic clack followed, and the door seemed to relax in its frame. Danny found when he tried the handle this time, it pulled open smoothly and without resistance.

Through the door was an unexpectedly clean and sanitary hallway, as compared to what Danny had just come through. The walls were finished in dark wood wainscoting on the lower half, and were covered in deep ruby wallpaper on the top. Despite the dark color scheme, it was bright inside from the light of shining brass sconces lining the walls. He stepped in, and noticed with some relief that the rank smell of the staircase wasn't present in this hallway. The door closed and locked behind him. There was nowhere to go but forward, which he did, to the end of the hallway, where a rich wooden door with shining brass hinges awaited. He raised his hand to knock, but before he touched it, it swung open of its own accord.

-12-

"You have a number of questions, I'm sure," said Zeno. He was sitting behind a magnificent desk, with a rich walnut credenza behind him. The six beheaded garden gnomes had been moved to this office, and stood behind Zeno like an honor guard. They gave Danny the creeps.

"I don't even know where to start, frankly," said Danny. "What's... what's the matter with Jillian? Why is this Cleveland gnome so important to you? For that matter, why do you want any of them? And what's up with this place? Those things behind you?"

Zeno nodded sagely. "Yes, indeed. What's up. You're a very articulate young man. Sit down, first. Would you like a cup of coffee, or something stronger perhaps?"

Danny's mouth was dry from excitement and exertion, but he remembered what Jillian told Danny about Zeno's predilection towards Rohypnol and declined the offer.

Zeno continued, "Fine. I'll start with the questions that are easiest to answer because I won't tell you everything. This office is the headquarters for a new business venture. Something that requires more secrecy and privacy than even Zenorific. It's a new company, a separate legal entity. Simply put, I won't have traveling salesmen blundering in to bother us down here while we do our work."

"You must really hate salesmen for you to climb that staircase to get in here," remarked Danny.

"Oh, I do hate salesmen," said Zeno, "but I take the elevator up from the basement. The mountain of stinking garbage is only for the public. Frankly, after your performance over the past few days, you didn't deserve to use the employee's entrance here. As for your other questions, yes, Jillian should be fine. She's being watched by an associate now, and is likely to make a full recovery. That is, assuming that you are both compliant and successful in what we need you to do."

"An associate? I asked one of Jillian's neighbors to look in on her. Your goon isn't going to hurt either of them, is he?" asked Danny, moving to the front edge of his chair.

Zeno burst out laughing. "No, my boy. Edith Russell will hurt neither herself nor Jillian. Unless I tell her to. Thank you for handing over the key to her, it saved her the trouble of calling a locksmith."

"Mrs. Russell works for you?" asked Danny.

"I said she was an associate, that's all. She's familiar with the care of someone in Jillian's condition. Now to the crux of the matter. The Cleveland gnome. I'm going to confide in you Danny. More than I have with most people in my organization, but I think it may be necessary in this case. You think I don't know that it appears that I'm off my rocker with the toy collections I have you looking after in the warehouse?"

Danny froze, knowing that this sounded a lot like the evil genius version of 'Do these pants make me look fat?'.

Zeno, sensing Danny's hesitance to answer, continued. "This isn't just about whimsical lawn decorations, and this certainly isn't about obsessive collectible behaviors. This is about the great things in life. Money, sex and power."

"Don't you already have all those?" asked Danny, with an edge in his voice as he pictured Jillian entwined with Zeno and basking in the other man's halitosis.

Zeno smiled. "Yes, Mr. Fortune. You know well that I do. But it's not so much the having that's truly pleasing, is it? It's the pursuit, it's the accumulation that makes it all worth it, doesn't it?"

Danny shrugged. He was always grateful enough when a small amount of any of the three came his way that he wouldn't have ever thought to ask for seconds.

Zeno said, "I suppose you wouldn't know, would you? Not yet, maybe. Stick with me, and you'll know what I mean soon enough. When we get the last gnome to the lab downstairs, there will be plenty to go around."

Danny hoped that Zeno was referring to the power-generating or money-producing aspects of the gnome, as opposed to the third option.

"The gnome, Danny, is part of a puzzle. It is one of seven pieces. I have the other six in my possession, owing to your predecessors and the large collection of crap they've accumulated and screened for me over the past year. Inside these statues are the parts to a very unique machine. This machine allows you to manipulate another person's brain waves from a distance. I was lucky enough to bring one of the inventors of this machine into my employ for a period of time. He was a pain in the ass of an employee, always using my lab for his own experiments, rather than the project I had hired him on for. But he was able to create a circuit for the phone that rendered dear Jillian a vegetable. It's called transcranial wave induction, if you're into that kind of thing. But the phone circuit only works when in direct contact with the subject's skull, and the net effect varies greatly from one case to another. I got him to tell me about a machine, a thousand times more powerful, one that works invisibly from a distance to disable or even kill a person, but Roland didn't know how to build it by himself. It was someone else on the original project who wrote the signal generator program. But the machine still exists, broken into seven pieces and stored inside these ridiculous plastic gnomes. I was going to have Roland build a new machine from his cellphone prototype, but he wasn't very big on lab safety, and he cooked his own head up good. He spends all day singing show tunes and wearing old lady dresses now."

Danny asked, "This technology... This machine, why do you want it so bad? Are you talking about mind control?"

Zeno said, "Think more like death ray, at least with the out of the box functionality. But you're on the right track for my vision for this technology. With the knowledge that has been developed in the intervening years about brain function since Buckaroo was locked inside these plastic idiots, mind control is a real possibility. Imagine what the business or political use would be of an invisible, soundless beam that made your adversary dumber, or less aggressive, or fall asleep. What if we could plant a song, or an image inside someone's head? Imagine the marketing applications! Imagine how easy it will be to get laid if you had this! Now imagine being the owner of this technology, and it's being licensed and reused by technology companies around the globe. And right after that's established, my boys in the lab will develop a means to protect you from it. New products all over again! Money, sex and power, the Holy trinity of Arthur Zeno!"

Danny, unable to suppress the cliché, said "You're insane!"

"Am I? Do you think?" asked Zeno, smiling even wider. "I wouldn't have believed it either, before I saw what that weirdo was doing to the secretary I had before I put in Eliza." Zeno stopped to laugh, recalling some licentious workplace image. "You saw what happened to Jillian with the phone. Worked like a charm, didn't it?"

"She's going to be OK, right?" asked Danny.

"Sure, yeah. I mean, unless she isn't. Look kid, it's not like it's gone through FDA clinical trials or anything. She ought to come back, my old receptionist always did when Roland was done with her. But Rolly is still a space case, so let's call it 50-50. If she doesn't, as long as you find the gnome, I'll buy you a new girlfriend, one you can keep all for yourself. I won't even bang her a little bit."

"I don't understand," said Danny.

"It's a lot to take in, I know," said Zeno with an attempt to be soothing.

"What's inside the other toys? I mean, the Care Bears and the snow globes and all that? Other parts?" Danny asked.

Zeno smiled again. It was getting downright unnerving for Danny.

Zeno said, "Crap. All crap. Just a smokescreen so everyone, including yourself, would think just I was an obsessive crank and not try to get to the Buckaroo machine first. Only the gnomes ever meant anything to me, and precious few of them at that. Why, do you want the china dolls to play with at home or something? I don't mind, but I don't want them back when you're done."

Danny felt himself getting hot as he thought about how much time he spent tracking down all that junk, and especially the trouble of the Vegas snow globes, to have it all for naught. Zeno leaned in across his desk as far as he could go without getting out of his seat. Danny caught a simultaneous whiff of his breath and his cologne together.

"Danny, I'm responsible for most of what's good in your life right now. I know your whole deal. The failed business, the bankruptcy, how you were pulling cash together to go back to school and clean up your life. I'm everywhere, Danny. You've got to understand, there's a better way. Just look at you now! Nice clothes, a redneck Cadillac instead of that ten-speed bike, a pretty lady friend, a giant-screen TV. You're eating steaks and lobster instead of macaroni and cheese. You don't need to keep fighting to better yourself, Danny, you're already better. And there's more where that came from. Lots more. For Christ's sake, I could almost buy a trained chimp to do your job now, so just imagine what you'll get when you're doing something meaningful for me. Something meaningful, like getting that goddamn Cleveland lawn gnome. Because Danny, the alternative is that it all goes away. In fact, it more than goes away. If you screw this up, you'll become my hobby for years to come. I'll have Nobel winning scientists invent new ways to crush every little bit of your life to dust, and to keep it crushed. Did you ever pull the legs off a spider when you were a kid, just to watch them wiggle around while they died? You'll be my spider, Fortune."

Danny pushed the lump out of his throat to say, "Actually, I more liked to play video games when I was a kid."

"Of course. Doesn't surprise me in the least. And it's not all about you, either, you know that, right? I hope you realize that you've got responsibilities towards preserving the lifestyle of others who you care about."

"You mean Jill?"

"Yes, Jill."

Danny asked, "Does that lifestyle include you sleeping with her when I'm not around?" He was confused and wanted a moment to think.

"Oh, grow up, Fortune. It didn't bother you any when you didn't know about it, so why should it bother you now?" said Zeno, sitting back in his chair, and picking up a file folder on the desk, unperturbed.

He started leafing through the contents as if Danny were no longer in the room. Danny waited for a few minutes for a pithy comment or a strategic epiphany to arise, but neither did. Nor did Zeno acknowledge Danny's continued presence in the room. Danny got up, figuring this must be how Arthur Zeno said goodbye. It was an effective method of asserting who was in charge.

Danny had his hand on the doorknob when Zeno spoke again. "So am I to assume that I can count on you?" without looking up from his reading.

Danny said, "Yeah, I'm in," effecting the tenor and posture of a middle-aged executive finally and completely beaten by the rat race.

"Good man," said Zeno. He waved his hand at a door on the far right side of his office. "In that case, you can take the elevator down instead of the stairs. We've got some more information from our source that will be useful to you in this. Leave nothing to chance this time, Fortune."

He closed the folder and handed it to Danny. Danny looked inside, and the contents that Zeno had spent the last ten minutes studying was a single piece of paper with Oswald Kitchen's name, address and phone number on it. Danny didn't recognize the name, but he knew the address. It was 535 Applewood Terrace.

* * *

The morning after he was surprised by the appearance of his daughter, Oswald retrieved an aluminum extension ladder from his garage and squished across the swampy lawn to the maple tree. He carefully positioned the top of the ladder in the crotch of two branches inside the main mass of leaves, and pushed the feet down into the sod to set them. He climbed up the tree until he reached a weathered old birdhouse, made of just six planks nailed together with a hole in the front. He pushed up on the roof plank, and the rusty nails easily slipped free of their holes. Inside the box was a nearly pristine, but slightly damp little plastic man with a red hat. Satisfied that the gnome was still safe in the arboreal sanctuary, he closed up the lid and descended. The ladder's feet made a sucking sound when he pulled them out of the lawn. He hefted the ladder to his shoulder to return it to the garage, and made eye contact with his neighbor who was getting into his car on his way to work.

"Morning Oswald. What'cha doing up there so early?" asked John Smalley, as he sipped a travel mug of coffee and twisted awkwardly to avoid getting any drips on his business casual outfit this early.

"Um. Possums. I had a mating pair of opossums take residence up there last night, and they made a hell of a racket. I was putting out some stuff to keep them out of there. Sort of a possum-be-gone," said Oswald.

He tried to edge away slowly so John would get into his BMW and drive away without asking further questions. John the neighbor could take upwards of a half hour just to say good morning. The last thing Oswald wanted was anyone else thinking about what was up in that tree, what with strangers coming around and asking odd questions.

"Possums? Are those the freaky little armor-plated lizards you find dead on the road in Arizona? We have those here?" asked John, moving forward to match Oswald's retreat.

"You're thinking about armadillos. Possums are even worse. You haven't known terror until you've listened to the sound of Ohio marsupials copulating outside your window. I can't believe you didn't hear it last night. I'd advise you stay well clear of that tree. Heads up!" Oswald called, effecting a totally superfluous pirouette on the pretense of aligning the ladder with the nails inside the garage wall. He whirled the ladder back and forth, forcing a zone of privacy between himself and his post-yuppie neighbor.

"Awesome! Good lookin' out, Oz!" said John, not really getting the hint, but nevertheless moving back towards his car.

Isabelle was in the galley making coffee and still in her pajamas with her curly hair a wild snarl when her dad came in.

"What's going on, Dad? Did Mr. Smalley know something about the dwarf guy?" she asked.

"It's a gnome, not a dwarf. No, John Smalley knows very little about jack, and is happy to share that fact with anyone who makes themselves a slow moving target in his presence. I was checking to make sure the gnome was still safe." Oswald poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with his daughter.

He said, "I've got to make some calls today to the guys, and see whether your gentleman caller might have contacted them as well. A little later though--some of them have probably become late risers in their retirement. I want to hear about you. How's school going?"

Isabelle waved off his question with her hand like it was a mosquito. "School's fine. Homework, classes, boys, well I guess they're men now, blah blah blah. Tell me why you've got people coming to the door in the middle of a rainstorm offering to buy a secret gnome you've kept hidden in a tree since I was a little girl. Oh my god, did I just say that? Do you see how you make me crazy?"

"Wait, I want to hear about school. Did you say boys? Men?!"

"Daddy. Don't avoid the question."

"Who's avoiding now? Tell me about these boys. Wait, a minute. No, don't tell me. I don't want to know," said Oswald.

"That's better," she said. "Now, tell me about this toy you've got hidden in the tree."

Oswald sighed, knowing from experience that his fiercely willed daughter would not give up until she found out what she wanted to know. Besides, he was eager to cleanse the subject of his daughter's relationships with any boys or men from his mind. So he told her.

Her told her about Bonzo and watched her heart break a little when he related Bonzo's sacrifice in the name of science. He tried to explain how there were much worse things that could happen to lab animals, particularly in those days, but this only seemed to make it worse. Oswald told her how he had been inadvertently involved in the development of a space age death ray that could also make people hallucinate about loud marching bands. He related his idea, to break up the most critical and telling parts of Buckaroo's technology, and to set up a system to make each member of the Seven a part of its safeguarding. Now, he guessed, someone learned about Buckaroo's power, and wanted it for themselves.

"Is it one of your friends? These seven guys? Do I know them?" she asked.

"You met them all when you were little. I don't think it's one of them. They would have just called me, or come themselves, and just asked for it. But you said the man at the door in the rain was younger?"

She said, "Younger than you, at least."

Oswald grimaced and smiled simultaneously. "Maybe it's one of their sons, but it doesn't sound like it. Did he ask for me?"

"Nope," she said. "Just the gnome."

"Then it's a possibility is that someone else knows about Buckaroo. If that's the case," he said, then stared into his coffee as he turned over the possibilities in his mind. "If that's the case, it could be a Defenseco lawyer, or rather a lawyer from that evil soulless company that bought them. Maybe they found out and they want it back as part of their intellectual property."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It was invented in their lab with their equipment and tested on their chimp while we were on their payroll. Technically, they would own the rights to anything we made then. They could do whatever they want with it. And an invisible death ray in the hands of a defense contractor, I suppose that they'd make a bunch of them and put them in planes or satellites or something."

"Oh no! Would that work?"

Oswald got up and walked to the front window until the maple tree was in his sight. He couldn't see the birdhouse or the gnome inside from this angle.

"I don't know. We were too disturbed by what it did, that we wouldn't go any further with the research. We couldn't, not without someone finding out. So I don't know what Buckaroo could do if it was developed further. But if Defenseco's lawyers know about Buckaroo and where all the parts are, they probably have a legal right to try to do it. And with the technology they'd be able to work with now, who knows? Maybe they could do it."

Isabelle pushed her blond curls out of her face.

"This is all a little hard to believe, Dad. You never said anything about any of this growing up."

Oswald said, "That's the thing about secrets. You aren't supposed to tell people about them. What was I going to say? Guess what Daddy did today, honey? He invented a death ray and fried a monkey's brain. No. I wouldn't have even told you now if you hadn't have showed up and run into their lawyer, or whoever he was. Don't worry about it, hon. I'll take care of it. I'll call the guys today, see what's going on, and get rid of the corporate shill."

Isabelle smiled. "Are you going to bump him off him dad? Blast his with your death ray?"

Oswald raised his eyebrow and regarded his daughter and her sense of humor dubiously. "Speaking as the only human who's been hit by this thing, that's not terribly amusing."

Isabelle finished the dregs of her coffee and stood up. She said dramatically, "Fine, then. I know when I'm not wanted." She walked to the drawer near the phone where Oswald had kept his keys, wallet and spare change since the day he moved into the house decades prior. Without looking, her practiced fingers popped open his wallet and found his credit card.

"What do you think you're doing?" asked Oswald in a shocked tone of voice, though this had become a near-ritual since Isabelle moved out for school whenever she returned for a break or a visit. He'd considered getting her a card for herself on his account, but was a little afraid that if he disturbed the ritual she might stop her regular visits.

"Shopping. Going to the mall. For the house. You haven't been taking very good care of the house, Daddy. Look at that rag hanging by the sink. Do you call that a dishtowel? I swear, I'm not sure what would become of you if I didn't come back to take care of these things for you. This could take me all day to get things caught up."

* * *

Danny called Nelson as soon as he got back on the northbound thruway after leaving Zeno's downtown office.

"We're going back to Cleveland? We just got back, man! I'm tired! I haven't slept at all," complained Nelson. He sounded particularly whiny through the little mobile phone speaker.

"Nelson, I left you alone for at least two hours. What have you been doing?"

"Dude, it took me like, forever to get all the dirt and leaves out of my locks from rolling around in that garden looking for your nasty little troll. I even found a worm behind my ear. It was freaky. Then the Stooges were on. What's a dude to do?"

"I'm tired too. We'll sleep when we get down there. We've got to set up a base camp or something, so we can figure out how to get that stupid gnome," said Danny.

"Dude, what's the big deal about that gnome? Or have you gone as crazy as old man Zeno?" asked Nelson. Danny parked the truck outside Nelson's building.

Danny said, "I'm right outside your place. Come on down as soon as you're ready. We'll get food along the way and go shopping once we get there."

Nelson yipped, "All right! Road trip! What's my name, Mohambo?"

The two of them drove back down to Cleveland and found a motel a few minutes away from Applewood Terrace, and got two rooms on Danny's credit card. Nelson insisted that heterosexual men of their stature always have separate rooms on business trips, and made sure that the young woman behind the desk understood that she was to infer importance from their expenditure. Danny pointed out that a motel without interior hallways for its guests isn't impressive, no matter how many rooms you let. Nelson ignored the comment, sniffed importantly, and asked the attendant for a key to the minibar before following Danny into his room, without even looking at the separate room he insisted on having. They dumped their bags, checked the 'where-to-eat' flyer in the nightstand, and got right back into the truck.

They drove down the street to a restaurant of the type where one could get breakfast served 24 hours a day, by a waitress so tired, world-weary and carbohydrate-enriched that it seemed she had personally served every single pancake and hash brown made there in the last decade. Over soggy french toast and sausages composed of pork fat and halite, they planned their next move.

Danny said, "We've got to figure out exactly where the gnome is on the property. We'll grab it if we can, but it would be better if we could make a straight-up buy or trade."

Nelson scoffed, "Yeah, but that didn't work last time."

"True," said Danny, "but I wasn't really on my game. If I hadn't watched Jillian get her head cooked by Zeno's mini mind ray, I never would have made the approach in the middle of a rainstorm at night. No wonder the old lady got freaked out."

Nelson arranged three coffee creamers in his left hand, diaphragm side out, then viciously punctured them with a fork. He turned his hand over, rhythmically squeezing the sides of the plastic bubbles. As the nearly dairy white substance squirted into his and Danny's contiguous coffee cups, he grinned and mooed loudly. A big trucker at the next table looked over warily.

When his udders ran dry, he said, "How'd you know she's old? I thought you didn't see her. Maybe she's hot! Hot and nicer than Jillian! Think she's got a sister?"

Danny said, "I don't know. Zeno gave me this name, Dr. Oswald Kitchen, to go with the address. Something that might have been good to know yesterday. He sounds like an old dude, she must have been his wife. I've also got their phone number now."

"Unless she's his French maid. Did she have an accent? Maybe she'd be impressed with the scar I got saving those Mexican orphans from the rabid mountain lion," said Nelson, wiggling his shoulder.

"Only you would try to pick up a girl by telling her you've got a disease that's eating into your brain," said Danny.

"Dude, why so harsh? We're partners, man, like in Godfrey McGuffin's 'Acquaintances of Doom', the one guest starring Johnny Vengeance! Remember, at the end, at the standoff with the invading ancient Mole People, and that big Mole King had the detonator that would make Manhattan fall to the center of the earth? And Johnny takes Godfrey's atomic hand grenade and pushes him aside all heroic-like and jumps on the Mole King's nasty head. And the Mole King is all like 'Who dost thou thinketh thou art?', and Johnny is all like, 'You can call me bad news for you, moleman' and the grenade goes off and Godfrey yells, 'Nay! Thy name is Vengeance!"

"Didn't Johnny Vengeance die then?"

"Yeah man, it was totally altruistic as hell! He sacrificed himself so Godfrey could lead the hostages to the surface and freedom. I would have cried at that scene if I wasn't such a stalwart dude."

"Yeah, but the Johnny Vengeance character was dead and never got a sequel. I think the actor who played him is working back there in the kitchen at the grill."

Nelson pouted. "Well, at least he's not a dishwasher or a barback."

"Get bent," said Danny.

Nelson was quiet for a minute, looking down at his fork. He put his hands up in pantomime angst, and whispered in an impersonation of Godfrey McGuffin, "Thy name is Vengeance!"

Danny frowned, and they cleaned their plates in uneasy silence. When the waitress came to clear their plates, apparently in her 750th continuous hour of work, Danny announced his plan to Nelson.

"OK. I'm going to call them when we go back to the hotel. You're not going to be there. I don't need you freaking out in the background while I defuse this situation," he said.

"Awww, dude," said Nelson.

"No way, Nelson. I'm going to get the guy on the phone, this Dr. Kitchen, make a fresh start and a sick offer. Hopefully I can make a deal and do the trade before his wife finds out. Maybe I'll offer them a vacation, something she'll like."

Nelson scrunched up his face tight. He was working hard on a squeezing out a thought.

"But won't this Kitchen dude know all about the death ray? Why's he going to give it to you for a Cancun vacation? Maybe he'll just shoot you with it. That would be freaky to watch. You'd better give me the keys to your apartment and truck, just in case."

Danny handed his expense card to the waitress as she went by without going through the ritual of asking for and examining the check first.

Danny said, "I don't see as I've got much choice. If I can appeal to his greed, I can make a deal. If that doesn't work, I don't know. Breaking and entering? Kidnapping? I don't know much about that."

The waitress brought back the slip and the card. Danny made a vague slashing motion on the signature line and walked away without his copy of the slip. He didn't know that in her haste and exhaustion, the waitress had misplaced the decimal point when authorizing the charge, and Danny had just bought a breakfast exceeding $2,500.

* * *

In his hermetically sealed secret office at the top of a mountain of stinking garbage in downtown Buffalo, Arthur Zeno's cellphone buzzed loudly on the desk. He had instructed the credit card company to page him with the details of the usage of Danny's expense card, to keep tabs on his progress. He was pleased to see the expense at the hotel, but was so used to keeping himself at four-star resorts that he didn't recognize the amount of the charge as indicating not one, but two rooms at the Sleep Tight Motel. But upon seeing an over two thousand dollar charge at the Family Plate restaurant, he became disturbed.

"Goddamn it," said Zeno out loud. He imagined that despite his conversation hours ago with the younger man, that Danny was off hosting a party instead of getting the job done. Despite Zeno's low esteem for his hired staff, he was still surprised at how quickly Danny had apparently screwed up his mission. Some things, he thought, just need to be supervised by the boss. He pulled open a drawer on the right side of the wooden desk and removed a small, gleaming automatic pistol.

"Too bad Jill is a mess. I could have sent her down again," he said with almost a hint of remorse. He placed the gun in the back of his waistband like he'd seen in the movies and grabbed his keys, then punched a button on the fob. Five floors below, inside a locked basement, his car awoke. Arthur Zeno walked to the elevator, on his way to Cleveland.

-13-

After returning from his amazingly expensive breakfast at the Family Plate, Danny installed Nelson in the yet-untouched second motel room in front of the TV, turned on "The Planet of the Apes", and left a box of individually wrapped, chocolate-encrusted, pudding-filled cupcakes big enough to last a family of four a week. Danny hoped the combination would keep Nelson occupied for a half hour or so. Danny needed to call and check on Jillian, and make contact with Oswald Kitchen to set up the buy.

Danny couldn't decide if he was worried or disappointed that Jillian didn't call him herself. Knowing what he knew of her now, if she was feeling better, she might be with Zeno again. He felt doubly guilty and stupid for leaving her naked in bed. At least Mrs. Russell was nice and probably taking good care of her. He went into his own room and dialed Jillian's apartment phone number on his cell phone.

After three rings, a woman answered. Immediately, Danny said "Jillian? Are you OK? I'm sorry I left you like that, but I..."

"Dear, you can stop groveling now. This isn't Jillian, but I must admit that I do like the attention. Especially when it comes from a strapping young man such as yourself."

"Mrs. Russell?" Danny asked.

She said, "Oh, I think you can call me Edith now. We're co-conspirators of sort, so I think first names are in order, don't you? Especially if you're going to fawn all over me like that."

"How is Jillian? Can I speak to her?"

"Jillian is staying out of trouble, like a good girl. She can't talk right now though. And I think you've got work you need to do before you get stars in your eyes, don't you?"

Danny shifted on his seat at the edge of the bed. He thought he heard something behind him.

He said, "Put her on the phone, Edith. Please. I need to know she's OK, or else. I mean, if you want me to finish the job here."

Edith Russell launched into a cackle of a laugh. She held the phone away from her head while she laughed, but somehow it didn't get any quieter. She must have been booming there in Jillian's apartment, thought Danny.

"Get back to work, boy, and don't threaten me. First, I'm not the person you want to threaten about this, and second, I'm not someone you want to threaten about anything. Get Arthur his toy, and he'll let you have yours back," she said, then she put her phone in the cradle with an audible thunk. Edith Russell had been speaking on Jillian's cordless phone, and she didn't know that the buttons simply weren't reliable since Danny poured his coffee on the phone weeks before. The line was still open. Danny listened to some muffled footsteps and some even more muffled voices on the open line. He strained to hear some details, or even get an impression of whether one of those voices was Jillian. Both were so quiet they sounded more like thick parts of the static than voices. He closed his eyes and held his breath to hear.

"OH! OH YES! Yeah, Danny, yeah! That's it big boy, you rock my world!"

Danny's surveillance was interrupted by a wild pounding on the door. It was Nelson, screaming in mock rapture, punctuating his exclamations of faux delight with Danny's name. He pounded and kicked on the locked door so hard that it shook in the frame.

"Oh Danny boy! The pipes are calling! Oh Danny, call your pipe!" he yelled.

"Dammit Nelson! Shut up!" Danny yelled at the top of his lungs over Nelson's racket. Nelson shut up when he knew that he had Danny's attention, but when Danny raised the phone to his ear again, the connection was gone.

Danny unlocked the door and yanked it open in one smooth move. Nelson had been leaning against the outside of the door sulking and fell into Danny's arms backwards. Danny backpedaled, pushing Nelson off of him like it was a swarm of bees that had come into the room.

"Why do you have to act that way?" asked Danny, seething with frustration. "Did you forget to bring your meds or something? Can I buy you some drugs to get you to act like a socialized human? That was an important phone call!"

"Did you buy the gnome?" asked Nelson.

"No! I was trying to check on Jillian. There's something strange going on there."

Nelson sat on the bed and started rooting for the TV remote. He said, "Mohambo, with this job, how do you tell what's strange and what's not? Sometimes you've got to just go with the flow."

Nelson turned on the TV and started surfing. Almost immediately, Danny lunged for the front of the TV and turned off the power.

"Is that what you were doing out there? Going with the flow? Sounded more like you were starting a tidal wave!"

Nelson continued to stare past Danny's elbow at his own vague reflection in the grey dead screen.

"Sorry dude. I got bored over there. There's nothing to do," said Nelson plaintively.

Danny wanted to kick Nelson out to make the call to Oswald Kitchen in peace, but having Nelson outside the room was apparently no guarantee of that. And even though he was mad, Danny also had trouble kicking Nelson out, because somehow when Nelson said 'bored' it sounded to Danny like he had meant to say 'lonely'. He felt sorry for his occasionally inopportune traveling companion, and wasn't up for imposing banishment.

"Fine, but I don't want to hear another word out of you, got it? This is important. It's why we're here. If we don't get that gnome you can kiss all this goodbye."

Nelson nodded emphatically. "Hey, what's my name, Mohambo? I'm there. Rock it on out, I'll be totally chilly willy."

Danny retrieved the sheet of paper that Zeno had given him, warily walked to the far corner of the room, and punched the numbers into the phone. His heart pounded in his ear as loudly as the ringing tone in the phone.

"Hello?" answered a man's voice.

"Hello," Danny said, "am I speaking to Oswald Kitchen?"

"Perhaps, but it's considered polite if you identify yourself first. After all, you're the one who dialed me. I wasn't sitting here in my galley wondering what stranger I could bother at whatever he's doing. That, however, appears to be exactly what you've decided, and frankly, I don't have time for this today. Today especially. So I must bid you good day, sir." He hung up the phone.

"Shit," said Danny, slumping onto the nearest bed.

* * *

"Damn telephone salesmen. Probably trying to sell me life insurance for my rose bushes or a hyper-drive water purifier for the basement," said Oswald, hanging up the thirty-year old yellow telephone, its long curly cable swinging from the wall mounted base.

Isabelle looked at the screen on the answering machine that she had bought and installed for her father on a prior visit home. It was sitting on the table across the room next to the much more modern cordless phone. The caller ID displayed the number from the last call.

"They're not calling from here," she said.

"Huh?" asked Oswald.

"The area code. Oh Daddy, you still haven't even looked at the answering machine I gave you, did you?" she asked in frustration, noting the several messages stored up on the machine.

"First, I think I paid the bill for that thing, and second, I just don't like the idea of it, Isabelle. If someone's got something important to say to me, they can call me back. Leaving that damn box on just sets up unrealistic expectations for people and encourages telemarketers to call," he said.

"Don't you see? You can just press a button here and it will lock out any number you want. When they call, your phone won't even ring, it'll go straight to voicemail. Like this," she said, and she pressed the a button marked BLOCK CALLER, sending Danny's cellphone into purgatory, at least as far as 535 Applewood Terrace was concerned.

* * *

Danny paced the room, Nelson watching him like a Labrador Retriever waiting to be told it was time for a walk. He felt way off center, between the odd call to Jillian's apartment and Oswald Kitchen's aggressive rejection. It didn't help that Nelson was either humping his door or watching his every move while this happened.

"All right. I'll try it again," said Danny, more to himself that to Nelson.

"Go get 'em, tiger. You're gr-r-r-r-r-r-r-reat!" shouted Nelson with unfounded enthusiasm.

Danny hit the combination of tiny keys that executed a redial. The phone immediately picked up without even ringing, but just as Danny started to speak, he heard the factory preset outgoing message of Oswald Kitchen's maligned answering machine. Danny disconnected without leaving a message, and redialed again to the same result.

"Mr. Kitchen, this is Daniel Fortune calling, and yes, that is my real name. It's very important that I speak to you today in regard to a small item of curiosity that you may possess. I can make you a very lucrative offer regarding this item, but it's important that we talk today. Please call me back as soon as possible." Danny left his cell phone number, thanked Oswald Kitchen as politely and professionally as he could, and hung up.

"What now?" asked Nelson.

Danny said, "I guess we give the guy a couple of hours to call back, and then we go over there again tonight if we don't hear by then. We'll need to bring something to facilitate the trade. Hey, I've got an idea. Get your shoes and the cupcakes, we're going out."

"All right! What's my name, Mohambo? Oh, but dude, the cupcakes are toast. No more cream filling. I sucked 'em all dry."

* * *

Oswald had spent the morning calling his former cronies, the members of the mismatched R&D septuplets of the Magnificent Seven. Unfortunately, he didn't find a single one at home. Reluctantly, one by one, he left messages on their answering machines, or more happily, with their wives.

Oswald most wanted to speak with Roland, but was unable to coax anything but unending rings from the number he had in his address book. He left messages for Malcolm, Nigel and Steve with their families, who promised callbacks around dinnertime. Marvin was the first one that Oswald was actually able to speak to, and after several minutes of raucous laughter and rude storytelling, Oswald was able to convince Marvin put the phone down and look for his gnome. When he came back, his laughter had a nervous edge and was far quieter than usual.

"Oz? You there? It's the damnedest thing, but it's not out there. I keep it at the base of this big darn rock that Phyllis said would add strength to our landscape. I don't know why we need to have a strong landscape, but I lost that argument twenty years ago. Anyhow, I put it there years ago, and it's been there ever since. But, hee hee, umm. It's not there now. I'm sorry Oz, I know this was important to you, but, uh. Maybe the lawn wasn't the best place to keep our secret?"

Oswald grimaced. "Yeah, maybe not."

"Hey, maybe some kids took it or something. I remember in college spending a whole night stealing street signs to spell out the fraternity motto. Do you know how far we had to drive to find a Sloppy Street? Not very common. Maybe it's something like that. Just some kids right?"

"Maybe. That's probably it. Listen, Marvin, it's been good chatting with you. I'll call again when I figure out what's going on," said Oswald.

Lonnie similarly couldn't find his gnome, though he was thorough enough in his compulsively detailed search that Oswald was left hanging onto the end of his yellow telephone wire for a long time listening to Lonnie's neighbor's lawnmower run in the distant background.

Oswald was curious what the others would say, and to what extent the gnome shortage would be universal, but he knew that something was really happening. He walked outside, leaving the window open to hear the phone if anyone returned his call. With all the drama of the last twelve hours, he was behind on his usual morning ritual of walking his garden to primp and water his show roses.

The grass in the backyard was still wet, and the bright sun beginning to dry the vegetation, making the air thick with humidity. He wasn't prepared to find the results of Nelson's self-injurious search for the gnome on his landscape. All of his perimeter gardens, which ran the entire length of his backyard along every fence, had been savaged. It looked as if a drunken warthog had gone on a truffle hunt through the mulch. Many of the more delicate plants were broken off at the ground. Everywhere, huge gashes ran through the mulch and dirt below, and there was mud thrown onto leaves over ten feet high.

Shaking his head, Oswald proceeded to the front yard, and found a similar pattern of destruction in his base plantings, though it seemed that whatever it was that had rooted through his garden was not immune to thorns, as the trail of damage ended at the Japanese Barberry, a pervasively thorny bush. He wondered how he hadn't noticed the damage earlier that morning, but chalked it up to his great annoyance with his chatterbox neighbor. More troubling was that Oswald knew now that he wasn't dealing with just a corporate lawyer.

* * *

Arthur Zeno stuck a wireless cellphone headset in his ear as his speedometer edged higher and higher on the New York State Thruway. His driving in the city was usually restricted to whatever illegal speeds could be attained between one stoplight and the next, but today the car smoothly flew down the left lane unencumbered, easily outpacing the other traffic.

"Call Eliza," he grumbled. The phone beeped compliantly, and moments later, Eliza answered.

"Yes, Mr. Zeno?"

"Eliza, where the hell am I?"

"Please restate your question, Mr. Zeno," Eliza responded.

Arthur Zeno attempted to elaborate. "Eliza, where the hell is Ohio? I'm seeing signs for Albany and I just passed Syracuse. Where the hell is Ohio? It should be right here by now."

"Please restate your question, Mr. Zeno," Eliza repeated.

Arthur Zeno groaned audibly, and heard the brief change in the background static as Eliza ran some advanced algorithms on the groan, attempting to parse it for content. Eliza (version 2.1) determined correctly that this was an emotional outburst, devoid of content and hence, currently without a response category. Eliza used to get stuck in a loop and need a reboot when Zeno made content-free emotional outbursts, and as Zeno was prone to these, it became a top-priority for Eliza's computer engineering team to made her curse-proof. While they were able to stop the infinite loop from occurring, none of them could agree on an appropriate response for one of Zeno's temper tantrums, and they were all too afraid to ask him what he wanted her to say. So there was no response category for curse-laden outbursts.

Zeno decided right then that the next job for the engineering team was to teach Eliza to parse and respond to the top ten curse words. He looked down from the road to find a pen and a small notebook in his briefcase, and sloppily scribbled several nasty words on a blank page. He looked back up quickly when he felt his thousand-dollar tires abused by the rumble strips on the left shoulder of the road. He made the necessary course corrections and returned to the safety of the passing lane, not noticing that he had nearly collided with a state trooper on the left shoulder, while the Lotus was well in excess of the speed limit.

Zeno said, "Eliza, check my GPS location and current heading. Calculate route to Cleveland, Ohio."

She said, "Done, sir."

Zeno gritted his teeth. He felt as if he was holding back an encroaching mass of lava just inside his mouth, but he kept his composure enough to clarify his meaning for Eliza.

"What is the shortest route to Cleveland from where I am right now?" he asked, with measured and precise enunciation.

"Mr. Zeno, please exit the eastbound New York State Thruway at the next exit, upcoming on your right in 6.3 miles. Get back onto the New York State I-90, westbound, and continue for approximately five hours to Cleveland, Ohio," said Eliza.

"That sounds like you said that I should turn around. Did you say turn around? Am I going the wrong way?" asked Arthur incredulously.

"You are not going towards Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Zeno," stated Eliza flatly.

Zeno then noticed the red and blue lights flashing behind him on top of the slowly approaching police cruiser, and gave Eliza a number of new phrases for which there was no response category.

* * *

"Dude. Check it. You've still got that black phone of death on your dashboard," said Nelson, indicating the sleek black phone that had been Jillian's undoing. It was indeed on the dash, stuck awkwardly in an air vent near the glass. The two of them had been touring the suburbs of Cleveland looking for a strip mall with a major electronics emporium, and amazingly, they were having trouble doing so.

"Don't touch that thing. It gives me the creeps," said Danny.

Nelson leaned forward and plucked it from its resting place. It appeared physically completely unharmed by the episode, though it wouldn't power on, so it was hard to tell for sure if the battery was dead or if the circuits inside were fried.

"The battery is toast. It can't do nothing to no one now," said Nelson, holding it to his head as if it were a sea shell echoing the ocean. "Check it out, that Zeno dude named it after himself. It's a Zenorific Z1. Says so on the top. Ahhh! Help! It's eating my brain and make me want to confess all my freaky secrets!"

"Put that down, it's not safe!"

Nelson dropped the phone in his lap, and started rooting through the glove compartment. He said, "Come on dude, we're on a covert mission. I need a cellphone too. You know, in case we have to call each other. It wouldn't be as cool as walkie-talkies, but it'd be cool. Besides, your chick was on the phone with that old dude she was boning when she wigged out. As long as I don't talk to him or have sex with him, I'll be fine. And I'm for sure not into crusty old dudes the way your girlfriend is, so that won't be a problem."

"You can stop now," said Danny.

"I don't think I can," answered Nelson. "I never have been able to before."

Nelson smiled, and produced what he was looking for, the charging cable for Danny's cellphone. He rammed the large end roughly into the vestigial cigarette lighter port on the dashboard and licentiously licked the business end of the cable, causing his face to convulse and twist into a horrific over-amplification of a smile.

"Wockin' Woll!" Nelson yelled around his numb and paralyzed tongue before plugging the cable into the far-more appropriate charging port on the black phone. After a moment's pause, the screen lit up with a soothing blue charging icon.

"You've got serious issues. Keep looking for a mall," said Danny, trying to suppress a laugh and look serious.

"Why don'th youb call dat Elitha thick?" asked Nelson.

Danny thought about it, but couldn't come up with a reason why Nelson's perfectly reasonable suggestion was a bad idea. It's hard to take tactical advice from someone who just intentionally licked a car battery for the thrill of it. Danny launched a call to the Eliza speed dial on his own phone.

"Yes, Mr. Fortune?" Eliza said.

"Eliza! How are you doing?" boomed Danny.

"I cannot complain, Mr. Fortune. How can I help you?"

"I need to find a mall. A good one nearby. If I tell you where I am, could you look up..."

"I can determine where you are exactly, Mr. Fortune, and plot a route to any location in the United States," Eliza said flatly.

"Wow, Eliza. That's amazing! You're like a machine!" offered Danny as a sort of homage to Eliza's efficiency.

"To be more precise Mr. Fortune, I am ten machines, if you define machine as a CPU, and classify the other related hardware and software which networks the CPUs into a single coordinated cluster of parallel processors as infrastructure. There is also a VRU, which is categorized as an input/output device, not a processor. I have a 30 terabyte database of proprietary content, and access to third party databases and the ability to search the internet for more common content requests."

Danny laughed at what he initially perceived as joking bravado, then caught himself when he noticed Eliza didn't laugh or even chuckle when she said this.

"Vru?" he pronounced tentatively.

"V-R-U. Voice Response Unit. A multiplexed voice processor that parses arbitrary human input and messages them to the language interpreting algorithms."

"Eliza, are you serious?" he asked.

"Yes. I do not joke unless asked to."

Danny paused, processing the information that Eliza provided, feeling somewhat less efficient that a cluster of parallel CPUs himself. He pulled the truck over into the parking lot of a doughnut shop so he could pay more attention to the conversation. He didn't really have any idea where he was driving anyway. Nelson was unfazed by the sudden lack of progress, and gazed into the window of the store, turning over in his mind the classic conundrum of whether its better to get jelly doughnuts or krullers.

"Tell me a joke, Eliza."

"What do Arthur Zeno and a diaper have in common?" asked Eliza without hesitation or a hint of anticipation in her voice.

Danny couldn't believe what he was hearing. "What?" he asked cautiously.

"They are both constantly on your ass, and usually full of shit."

"Holy crap," said Danny.

"Would you like it if they were not both constantly on your ass and usually full of shit?," asked Eliza.

"Does Mr. Zeno enjoy that joke?" asked Danny.

"Mr. Zeno does not ask me to tell jokes."

"Eliza, I'm having trouble believing that you're a computer."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Fortune."

Danny put his phone on mute and poked Nelson in his soft shoulder, disturbing Nelson's fried dough based reverie.

"Yo! Hey! What?" exclaimed Nelson.

"What's the most weird and obscure thing you could think of? Something no one in their right mind would be prepared for?" asked Danny.

"That's easy. ABBA performing the song Dancing Queen live. Singing in Finnish."

Danny stared at Nelson blankly in surprise.

"What," asked Nelson, "not weird enough?"

"No, that'll do."

Nelson looked away, and mumbled under his breath something that sounded like Nordic gibberish.

"What?" asked Danny, about to unmute the call.

Nelson just smiled and shook his head. Danny took his phone off mute and hit a key to get the little phone to change to speakerphone mode.

"Eliza, I'd like for you to play me a song. Can you play ABBA's Dancing Queen, but a live version, and sung in Finnish?" asked Danny, suppressing a giggle.

"One moment," said Eliza, and the background hiss changed character. A few seconds later, the lazy disco beat of Dancing Queen poured forth from the phone, half covered by the cheers of an enthusiastic crowd. A moment later, two women's voices started singing in a vaguely Nordic gibberish unintelligible to Danny. Danny looked to Nelson for confirmation. Nelson nodded appreciatively and tapped his toes in time with the music.

"Impressive. OK. That's good to know. Somehow, I can't stop talking to you though. You're a good listener, you know that?" said Danny.

"Does it please you to believe that I am a good listener?" asked Eliza.

"I guess so. Please get me directions to the nearest major mall, Eliza." Danny heard the faint change in the background noise that he was beginning to associate with Eliza thinking. He added, "And then when you're done with that, I'd like you to tell me everything you know about the Zenorific Z1."

"Yes, Mr. Fortune."

Eliza's directions were straight and true, and within ten minutes they were in the parking lot of a multi-story mall, complete with parking ramps, anchor stores and a food court. Eliza had enough material regarding the Z1 that Danny and Nelson sat in the food court huddled over the phone for several minutes before they began shopping. Most of the material was dry and technical, and hard to follow over the noise of the mall. One word kept being repeated that stuck out from the chatter, and Nelson vacantly wrote it with his straw in watery cola on the tabletop as he listened. Buckaroo.

They checked the YOU ARE HERE map at the mouth of the food court, and located the Consumption Depot, Cleveland's biggest electronics and housewares store. At the store, Danny then set Nelson loose in the store with a wedding registry gun, and the instructions to outfit his own apartment in the most righteous manner possible.

This mobile gadget read the barcode of whatever Nelson aimed it at, and created a shopping list in the store's computer. As a new employee of Zenorific, it seemed appropriate that Nelson get the benefits that Danny and Jillian both enjoyed. Much to the salesman's delight, Danny gave him two addresses, one being Nelson's small apartment in Buffalo, and the other 535 Applewood Terrace, there in Cleveland. Danny would take two of every item that Nelson picked out, with one set shipped to Buffalo, and the other delivered same-day to Oswald Kitchen's address.

"Six PM. It's got to be there exactly at six tonight," said Danny, holding the card up and away from the salivating salesman's grasp like it was a dog biscuit.

"You have my word on it," said the salesman. Danny held his breath as the card authorization was run, but it came back approved and the sales went through. Minutes later, somewhere in upstate New York on the westbound I-90, Arthur Zeno's phone received a text message with a summary of the transaction, setting off another tantrum and an increase in the Lotus's landspeed.

Hours later, on the way out of the store, Nelson wore a look of exhausted satisfaction. He shuffled slightly behind Danny down the marble hallway, blissfully taking note of the window displays in the stores they passed. Just ahead of them, two stores up, a commotion of shouting distracted him from his Zen-like meditation on greeting cards, and brought both of them to attention.

A shirtless man, younger than Danny, somewhat pale and pudgy came trotting out of a store that peddled gifts and decorations celebrating the beauty of nature, made mostly of injection molded plastics. Once in the hallway, the young man turned around to face the store, and shouted "I'm sorry, but you don't have that privilege. You can't fire me after I've already quit. I want that clearly marked in my record. I quit! Is that clear?"

He was answered by the sharp crash of a brass-and-endangered hardwood bookend statue of a timber wolf disemboweling a family of rabbits. Though it came no where near the young man, he flinched and jumped like he had been shot at with a rocket propelled grenade. The bookend slid to the middle of the hallway in front of Nelson's feet, bringing him to a standstill. Danny stopped when the shirtless man looked at him.

"You've misplaced your shirt," said Danny.

"It was a corporate shackle, a tattoo of my imprisonment, a badge of my dishonor!"

"It was your uniform and they took it from you?" asked Nelson.

"Indeed."

"Work sucks, huh?" said Danny.

"Amen brother," said the shirtless man, who turned and walked proudly towards the food court.

"Dude, should we buy that wolf statue for the collection? Is it on your list? I bet I could get a serious discount on it now that it's all crushed in," said Nelson.

"Let's not. All that stuff for the collection was crap. Only the gnomes meant anything. Besides, what do you care how much this stuff costs when I'm buying it on the expense card?" asked Danny.

"Hey, someday I'm going to be a shareholder. Is it too early to talk about stock options? You should always spend the company's money like it's your own. After all... Whoa, dude, check that out," said Nelson, looking up from the fallen statue across the hall.

There stood a discount store, named The Bottom Dollar. It was a rectangle of real estate populated by shelves and carts packed roughly with housewares, knickknacks, women's clothing and an odd proliferation of flip flop sandals, all dragged across the ocean in container ships for distribution to the masses at everyday low prices. Along the back wall of the store was shelving filled with tools of such low quality that if you used them in practice, you would most likely need additional tools to keep the first set of tools operational. But it was the far left section, right next to the cash register that caught Nelson's eye, and spoke now wordlessly to both of them like a sign of divine providence.

There, neatly arranged and seemingly staring back at them intently with hundreds of beady little eyes, were rows and rows of garden gnomes. Not just any gnomes, and not an assortment of styles, but a floor-to-ceiling wall of Naughty Neds, the fellow who had turned out to be the only legitimate Item of Interest on Danny's list. They had come to Cleveland looking for a garden gnome, and they found an army of diminutive conscripts, awaiting a mission.

"Dude, that's so freaky. It's like they're all looking at me. Is that what we're here for?" asked Nelson in a hushed, oddly reverent tone.

"Sort of. That's what the gnome that we're supposed to get looks like. Zeno wants the one with the plans for the death ray in it though. Still, this means something," said Danny. Danny then walked into the store. Nelson seemed afraid to enter the store, and instead sat on a bench next to a couple of silver-haired mallwalkers on a break, watching from safety.

Once he got up close, Danny could see that the gnomes were frosted with dust on their little red caps. He asked for the manager, to see if there was a story behind the display.

Normally, the manager explained, he got his stock from corporate central distribution, but the stores used to be able to make some deals with local suppliers. The corporate marketers in the Bottom Dollar ivory tower in Lubbock, Texas, had put in this loophole with the intention of having stores stock milk, eggs and other perishable convenience store items. They never conceived that one of their managers might read about a bankruptcy auction in the Sunday paper, and proceed Monday morning with the entire petty cash fund to the site of a recently closed injection molded plastics manufacturer. Furthermore, they hadn't considered that this particular manager might use his discretion to purchase the entire warehouse stock of red-hatted garden gnomes for pennies on the dollar, with dreams of a making a ten-time markup when the inventory turned.

Years later, almost of the gnomes remained on the shelves, exactly where they were put the following Tuesday morning when they were delivered. Corporate marketing, as a punitive measure, rescinded the local purchase program, and refused to let the manager of the Cleveland Bottom Dollar write down the inventory and put the little soldiers out of their misery.

Nelson had his shirt up around his neck, showing his scarred shoulder to the aged mall athletes when he looked up and saw that Danny had taken his expense card from his wallet and was handing it to the store manager. The manager was smiling fiercely, and wouldn't stop grabbing and shaking Danny's hand.

Nelson came up behind Danny quickly, and asked "Dude? What'cha doing?"

Danny nodded in self-satisfaction. He had a blue tarpaulin and a spool of clothesline on the counter as well. "I bought them all. They'll fit in the truck, right?"

Nelson put his hand on Danny's shoulder in a fatherly manner. "Dude? This wasn't part of the plan. You really shouldn't deviate at this juncture. You'll just screw it up."

"Hey," said Danny through a broad grin, "What's my name, Mohambo?"

"That's my line."

"Yeah, well... This... They... mean something. We can't just leave them here. We came to Cleveland to save my girlfriend and live like rock stars by finding one stupid garden gnome, and we find a whole wall of them. They're coming with us. Yes, all of them."

Nelson shook his shaggy head, shading his eyes with his unkempt mop. "I don't like it, dude, but you're the bossman. I'm still the newbie and have much to learn from your wise guru-ship before I am ready to leave the temple."

Nelson turned to the manager, who was behind the counter finalizing the charge on Danny's card. "Hey!" Nelson yelled, unnecessarily loudly. "You got a back door here? You're not going to make my man carry this army of freaky little people through the mall in shopping bags are you? Don't you know who this guy is?"

The manager looked at the credit card in his hand, and answered right away. "Absolutely I do, sir. This is Mr. Daniel Bartholomew Fortune. And if you'd be so kind as to bring your vehicle around to our back door, I'd be happy to have these carried out for you." He took a step and pulled a white earbud from its place in the head of a sleepy looking young man dozing behind the next cash register, and set him to work loading the gnomes.

Nelson smiled at Danny. "Now that's what I'm talkin' about, man. A little respect. Gimmie the keys, Mohambo, I'll bring the limo around."

Danny tossed him the truck keys, and stood back to observe and supervise the removal of the gnomes from their wall of shame by the manager and a stock clerk. A dozen at a time, borne in the little wire shopping carts used at The Bottom Dollar, 117 identical red-hatted, squinty-eyed, kindly-faced and slightly freaky garden gnomes made their way to the back of the store to meet Nelson at the truck.

* * *

Danny didn't know it, but he was being watched from behind the corner of a soft pretzel stand.

"Uhhhh, lady? You want something? Got a two-for-one with cheese special?" asked a rumpled young man in pimples and polyester who was peering over the counter.

Isabelle glared up from her entrenched position. "Shhh! I'm not here."

The young purveyor of pretzels surveyed the scene to confirm for himself that indeed, she was there, and it was she, not he, who was behaving strangely. Before his shift started, he'd taken a couple of hits off a tiny, bright red aluminum pipe, so he was taking longer than usual to sort out exactly who was acting paranoid and who was cool.

"Hey, you're creeping out the other customers," said the pretzel boy, though there was no one else in proximity expressing any interest in akimbo baked goods. "You've got to chill out and buy something, or... Umm. Else."

Isabelle groaned with annoyance and frustration, and left her post by the pretzel stand, leaving the pretzel boy to celebrate his newfound authority alone with a vat of sickly sweet uncooked cinnamon-raisin dough. She gathered her courage and marched across the hallway, her shopping bags swinging from each hand. She assumed that the pretzel boy would watch what she was about to do, and might even call for help if anything bad happened. She wasn't quite sure what she would say to the man in the store, but after recognizing his face there in front of a wall of gnomes, and recalling how she felt the other night, her anger rose, and she ceased operating on a forethought and rational basis.

* * *

"Who are you?!" shouted a female voice from the hallway. Danny was engrossed in the parade of gnomes, and jumped in sheer surprise. He turned around to see a girl with seemingly untamable curly blonde hair coming straight towards him.

"I, uhhh. Danny. Danny Fortune. I'm just buying some gnomes," Danny stuttered. He was a full head taller than her, and found himself both entranced and terrified of her angry blue eyes.

"What kind of name is that? Do you think you're some kind of porno star or something? Because let me tell you, you're just not that good looking. Plus you'd have to grow a mustache, and you don't look like you could pull that off," said Isabelle, tapping her foot quickly in anger.

Danny put his hand to his face, self-consciously checking for stubble. "Wait a minute, who are you?" he asked.

She continued her tirade. "Why are you buying all those dwarfs? What are you doing here?"

"I'm buying gnomes. It's kind of a work thing. Why, do you want one? I guess I don't need them all," he said.

Danny was usually shy and intimidated around attractive women. Today though, he was fueled with the confidence of his relationship with Jillian. After all, you can't really be rejected when you're not available. He certainly felt justified in talking to another girl, considering his girlfriend had been sleeping with the boss since before he knew her. He wondered if this woman's sudden advance was some kind of weird come-on, and as soon as this thought entered his mind, he wished that he hadn't offered her a garden gnome. Even a disposable razor or a piece of firewood would have been more romantic.

"You idiot. You don't remember me?" she exclaimed.

"Did we meet in Vegas?" asked Danny tentatively, going naturally to the last time he blacked out from drinking.

"Ugh! No! I'm Isabelle Kitchen! You were at my house last night, acting like a psycho over my dad's gnome. Now I find you here, buying yourself a whole friggin' gnome army. I mean really, if you're sick or need your meds or something, just say so and I'll dial 911 for you."

Danny stood still, staring at Isabelle, trying to reconcile the woman standing before him with the sixty-year old matron he thought he had been negotiating with.

"Oh. I thought you were your mom. That was you?" he asked.

"Now you really are an idiot. What's your deal? Now that you've got your freaky little toys, are you going to leave my dad alone? Or is this going to have to get serious?" said Isabelle.

She was clearly very angry. Her fists were clenched and color was rising in her cheeks as she stood face-to-face with Danny.

"Oh," said Danny. "Hey, it's just my job to buy these things. I work for sort of a collector, a rich eccentric guy. I was going to stop by tonight with some stuff to make a trade that I though you guys might like for your gnome. Not, um, these guys," he said, waving his hand at the last cart of gnomes making its way to the back door. "Some really nice consumer electronics and housewares. And I can get a lot more. Whatever you guys want to make a trade. It's a pretty good deal, I think, for a silly little gnome."

"And what about the death ray? Huh? What about that?"

Danny coughed and scuffed his feet. Without meeting her gaze, he said, "Death ray? I didn't say anything about a death ray."

"That's all you've got to say about it? I think the fact that you took 'death ray' as a valid part of the conversation means that you know exactly what I'm talking about."

Danny looked briefly into her steely gaze, but finding her unwavering stare too intense, he found something interesting near his right foot to look at.

"Hey, you know. It's just a job. I buy stupid toys for an eccentric rich guy. You should see some of the crazy stuff he has me get for him. I mean the Care Bears alone would give you the creeps. He had me X-ray them all you know. It's crazy. So, who knows if this ray gun thing he says is in your dad's gnome statue is real. Or if it was, if it even still works?"

"So you just do whatever stupid thing this guy tells you to do? Are you involved with him or something? It sounds like you have some codependency issues."

Danny stepped back and put up his hands, then moved forward again and shoved his hands in his pockets when he thought he looked like he was denying too much. "What? No! Not with Art. I mean, Zeno. Mr. Zeno. I have a girlfriend you know."

Isabelle put her hands on her hips. "Well, look at you, stud. Does she like the Care Bears too?"

Danny started to tell her no, but the details of Jillian's dashboard confessional ran unbidden through his mind and his words caught in his mouth.

Isabelle said, "Well spoken, Romeo."

"Hey! What do you want with me?" said Danny suddenly.

"I want you to leave my dad alone. Stay away from him. And me," she said pointedly.

"I can't do that. Not yet. I've got to talk to him tonight about the gnome. Like I said, I bought him a whole lot of swag and paid extra for it to get delivered tonight. I mean, it's not about the money. It's about the gnome. It's really no big deal. I could get something for you too. Do you like jewelry?"

"Jewelry? You're going to buy me shiny things?" Isabelle mockingly fanned herself. "Well, I declare, what would your girlfriend say?"

Danny blushed hotly. "I didn't mean that. I can just buy stuff without much restriction, and my boss really wants your dad's gnome, so I just thought you could get something nice out of the deal."

"Your boss wants my dad's gnome to make a death ray and take over the world because he's a dangerous megalomaniac. Let's see, I think that my price for a death ray stuffed inside of a lawn decoration is a brand new submarine and crew," she said confidently.

"Huh?"

"I'm studying to be a marine biologist," she announced. "I don't need jewelry, but I could really use a submarine. A new one. None of that second-hand Russian cold war crap."

Danny looked up and down the length of the mall at the storefronts in view.

"I don't think I can buy one of those here. That doesn't sound like the kind of thing I can buy on an expense account anyhow. How about an aquarium?" he asked, noticing the Pet Palace on the level above them.

"Sorry. No submarine, no gnome. And you're not going to see my dad tonight. Or ever," said Isabelle.

* * *

She had been initially worried about confronting a strange man this way, but the more she talked to him, the more she found Danny to be anything but intimidating. She almost felt guilty for browbeating him in front of the teenyboppers and the retirees in the mall. But in her mind she kept returning to the trapped feeling the night before when Danny came to her father's door in the rain, and she felt justified.

Danny said, "Look, your Dad can take care of himself, right? It's not like I'm going to hurt him or anything. I just need to talk to him about the gnome. If nothing else, I need to stop by to explain why the Consumption Depot is delivering new TVs and hot tubs to your house. And as you can see, I can replace the gnome for your dad. I could bury your garage in the little guys if you want me to. I'm sorry they don't sell submarines here, but if you're serious about that, maybe I can talk to my boss. I mean, he's crazy rich, and really wants your dad's gnome. I can't see how any harm will come of it."

Isabelle thought for a moment, finally released her intimidating eyelock on Danny, and thought she heard him sigh with relief. She looked past him to the back stock room door where the parade of gnomes had gone.

"Did you ever think that you'd find yourself buying a truckload of gnomes as a peace offering to a family you terrorized over a supposed death ray?" asked Isabelle.

"Hey, I wouldn't say terrorized. And, no," answered Danny.

"Then you're not very good at telling the future, are you? One would think that kind of thing would stand out in a fortune telling. So why should I trust you that nothing bad will happen when you are so obviously not in control of your own life?"

Danny got quiet and looked back at his shoes. Somewhat plaintively, he said, "Look, I've got a lot riding on this. Someone is counting on me in a really important way. I've got to at least meet with your Dad and see what's going on."

Isabelle's temper was waning. After all, there is only so much adrenaline that one's pituitary gland can put out in a discount store. Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, evolution hasn't yet bred humans to compete so viciously in the arena of modern retailing. Danny's hangdog look and soft brown eyes had somehow softened her defenses.

She issued a frustrated grunt and stomped the floor. "Fine," she said sharply. "You stop by tonight, and Dad will tell you himself to get the hell out of our lives. And I'm going to tell him what we talked about, so he's going to know all about you."

Danny nodded and smiled at her. "Thanks. That's fine, tell him if there's anything he wants to make a deal, just let me know."

"Sure. You're not going to get your gnome, you know. You're wasting your time," she said, picking up her shopping bags from the floor.

"I prefer to think of it as an investment of time, not a waste," said Danny, trying to smile.

"Just so you know, I'm dialing nine and one when you come over, and then I'm waiting for you to screw up. I don't think it'll take long," Isabelle said, then she turned and walked away from him and out of the Bottom Dollar.

* * *

Danny dropped his shoulders in exhaustion and walked out into the parking lot, wondering why the pretzel boy was watching him with such glee. It took him several minutes to find Nelson and the pickup truck, in a service alley by the back door of the Bottom Dollar. The alley was a narrow canyon in the plain white architecture, loosely secured by an unlocked chain link gate. Abandoned cardboard boxes blew around like tumbleweed between the big blue dumpsters that shielded hourly service workers from prying eyes while they followed their controlled-substance or amorous bliss.

The pickup truck was four dumpsters into the alley, parked haphazardly near the wall. The back of the truck was stuffed like a blintz with the army of gnomes, and wrapped surprisingly neatly with the blue tarpaulin and a network of clothesline running between the cleats. Nelson was moving around crazily in a jerky bouncing motion, and he increased his fervor upon seeing Danny approach. He actually skipped towards Danny, so great was his excitement, holding something dark in his two hands, and smilingly in a weirdly proud way.

"Did you load up all the gnomes OK?" asked Danny from ten paces. Nelson closed the distance quickly with his skipping.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy-ass truckload of gnomes. Check. But you've got to see this! Look what I did!"

He skidded to a stop in right in front of Danny, and pushed something warm and heavy into his hands. It wasn't one of the gnomes as Danny originally thought, but a living and motionless crow. Danny yelped, thinking this was a practical joke, and that any second the crow would explode into action, pecking and clawing Danny's eyes out while Nelson roiled with laughter from a safe distance. Danny held the unconscious avian tightly with his fingers locked together, his arms straight out as far from his body as possible.

"Dude! Take it! Take it! Take it back!" said Danny in an urgent and husky whisper, afraid any movement or noise would rouse the animal.

"Naw, man. He's out cold. But if you take good care of him and cuddle him nice, maybe when he wakes up he'll tell you all the freaky, nasty ways he's been cheating on you," giggled Nelson.

Danny allowed his eyes to unlock from the crow to look at Nelson.

"What?" Danny asked.

"You see, I was thinking about when Jillian got nuked and then she told how she and that Zeno dude were in the kitchen and got out the waffle iron and... Never mind, you don't get it. I figured out the nuke phone! I figured out how to turn on the nuke phone, and I nuked this nasty-ass bird! What's my name, Mohambo? Maybe it's time I ask for a promotion, huh bossman?"

Danny walked to the far side of the alley and gently placed the crow on its side against the wall, then wiped his hands on the legs of his pants. It didn't make sense that Nelson could learn how to run the Z1, but the crow was indeed out cold. A moment later, when the bird started to make twitchy scratching movements with its claws, Danny had to entertain the possibility that Nelson was telling the truth, and hadn't just brained the creature with a rock or a spare gnome.

"I don't think Zeno is going to promote you for getting a bird stoned on his top secret weapon," said Danny.

"Aw, screw him, I work for you, man. You promote me! Hey, lookit him! He's up!" said Nelson.

The crow woozily flapped to his feet and stumbled out away from the wall. The bird took a couple of hops, extended its wings and took off neatly, climbing in altitude. It banked smoothly to the left before running headfirst into the top of the wall. The bird fell backwards into the blue dumpster below with a muted thump. It didn't come back out.

"Huh," said Nelson in wonder. "That's a big wall. You'd think he would have seen it was there."

"Tell me exactly what you did, Nelson. Where is the phone?" asked Danny slowly and clearly.

"Oh yeah, the Z1!" barked Nelson with the sudden urgency of someone remembering they left the stove on at home. He ran around to the far side of the pickup, returning a moment later carrying the black phone by the tips of his pinched fingers at arm's length, as if it were a fully utilized diaper. He set it on the tailgate of the truck, and stepped away warily, humming a tune mindlessly under his breath and watching the phone as though he feared it would jump up to defend itself. Danny recognized the tune as ABBA's Dancing Queen, though in the hummed rendition, it was impossible to determine whether Nelson was hallucinating in English or Finnish.

"What happened, Nelson?" asked Danny again, breaking Nelson's concentrated vigil.

"Well, here it is. Me and that dude from the store loaded up your crazy-ass gnomes and tied them down under the tarp so you don't get pulled over by the cops, though it'd be for your own good if you did. So then discount dude pulls out a doobie, and asks if I want a toke, and I say, no man, I just say no. So he goes over there behind the dumpster and lights up, and I'm stuck hanging out here in the truck while he does that and you're doing whatever inside. You see, that's why I like alcohol. You don't have to hide alone behind a big box of stinky garbage to get a buzz on. If I had to do that, I'd never..."

Danny interrupted, "Nelson. Focus?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyhow, so I'm getting freaked out by stoner boy, so I lock myself in the truck, and I'm bored, so I take out the Z1 and see if it's got any games on it, or maybe wireless internet so I can surf for some mobile porn, right? Nothing on it though, just phone and text messages. So I'm real bored now, and I start thinking about Dr. DOS."

"Dr. DOS? That old movie about computer hackers?" asked Danny, automatically picturing the DVD cover art in his head and its precise location at the Couchpotatoville store.

"Yeah, man. Remember, at the end, how the guy who invented the system had his own password to get into the system, to fix junk? Well, I wondered if this thing had the same thing, so I started typing shit into it on the text screen."

"You typed 'shit' into it and it turned it on?" asked Danny, confused.

"No, you doof. I typed in shit like 'zeno', 'jillian', 'bitch', 'eliza', 'nuke', 'mohambo'. But none of them did anything," said Nelson. He paused, and grinned, refusing to say more until Danny took the bait.

"So what did work?"

"I remembered when you were talking to that Eliza robot chick, she kept saying that funny word. So I tried it. All of a sudden, everything gets all quiet and loud at the same time, and I start seeing these crazy colors come out of the phone. At first, I though stoner dude got me stoned on a contact high, but then I figure out that this is what you said you saw when your mean-ass girlfriend got fried. Well, I don't know what kind of perverse stuff you'll do to me if you find me out cold alone in an alleyway, so I open the door and hook the phone out over the truck and run."

"Stoner boy is still behind the dumpster, and I run over there, and we see the craziest lights come from behind the truck. It was almost like the lights and colors came right through the truck, and not just the windows. But that can't be, right? So it stops, and stoner boy looks at me and says, 'you should have had some, dude. This is some righteous stuff'' and walks on inside. When I walk around to see what happened, I find the crow there next the phone. It was eating a hot dog someone left on the ground. Still even had mustard on his beak, but I cleaned it up."

Danny still struggled to understand how someone who said the word dude so much and licked a wire attached to a car battery for thrills could crack a password system in a few spare moments like he did. "What word did you type in that set it off?" he asked.

"Oh, that's easy," answered Nelson, unable to contain the groundswell of self satisfaction any longer. "Buckaroo!"

-14-

Oswald told the delivery drivers in the big Consumption Depot truck that they had the wrong house. The garish orange and purple box behind the cab was tall enough to push through the higher branches of the maple tree, and the rear of the truck emitted a smog of partially combusted diesel fuel that choked the summer evening air. The drivers countered that they most assuredly had the right house, as it was Oswald Kitchen's name on the manifest, and 535 Applewood Terrace on the address line. They had been forced into performing the late delivery by the store manager, so they waved Oswald off and swiftly erected a thin ramp leading from the back of the truck to the mouth of the driveway. They produced two hand trucks and began a parade of brown and white cardboard boxes down the ramp and into the garage. Oswald wouldn't let them bring the boxes into the house, fully intending on proving either error or malice and sending these men packing with their mountain of goods.

Oswald went into his galley and dialed the Consumption Depot customer service line, attempting to get patched through to the store manager himself. He spent several minutes navigating the store's VRU, finally riding the zero key to try to find a human to speak to. Unfortunately, this system had been designed to increase something called containment rate in the Consumption Depot corporate office, and had a timer on each call. Under a specified time limit, it was impossible to reach an actual human. Instead the caller was subjected to increasingly esoteric questions, including options to choose if your television had burst into flames, if you had gotten a body part lodged within your new appliance, and if you suspected that your new stereo was possessed by a thousand-year old evil demon. There was no option for an unexpected delivery.

Furthermore, Danny had left strict instructions with the store manager that he should under no circumstances provide any useful information to anyone who called regarding the order. He hadn't known about the benefit of the call containment strategy, but would have thought it a brilliant addition to his improvised plan. The net effect is that exactly ten minutes, thirty seconds elapsed before Oswald got the phone to actually ring in the store, and at that point he fell into the confusion matrix the local manager had left in place. Pacing in circles with frustration, and occasionally tangling himself in the curly yellow cable, he found himself on hold and being placated by nearly every teenage sales associate in the store, as they traded his call through each department in a game of Hot Potato.

Oswald heard his front doorbell ring, but couldn't go answer for fear for leaving the phone unattended and losing his hard-fought proximity to the store manager. He could have conceivably switched to the cordless phone, but after several years of ignoring the modern phone on his counter, it just blended into the background for him.

"I'm not signing that!" Oswald bellowed at the second ring, guessing that the delivery men were done unloading and wanted Oswald to officially take possession of the boxes. The bell immediately rang again twice in response.

"No!" yelled Oswald even louder at the door, then returning the phone to his ear, asked in a more reasonable tone of voice, "Hello? Anyone there?" He was alone on the line, in mid-transfer between departments at the Consumption Depot store.

The doorbell rang again. And again. It began ringing once every three seconds, steady and unwavering. And infuriating.

"Hey! Stop it!" yelled Oswald.

DINGDONGDINGDONGDINGDONG!

"I'm on the phone with your boss! I'm going to tell him how you're behaving!" yelled Oswald a moment later. He considered dropping the phone and going in the basement to shut off the power to the doorbell, but this wouldn't get rid of the interloper out front.

DINGDONG!

"OK goddamn it! Hang on a second!" yelled Oswald in acquiescence. He stretched the phone cord as far as it would go and hung the receiver on the back of a dining room chair, the curly line tautly vibrating. He stomped to the front door, eyes flashing over anything that could be make a casually threatening weapon ('Shotgun? Oh this? Yes, I was just cleaning it. I suppose I'm done and it's ready to fire, I hadn't really considered it. Now why were you ringing my doorbell so savagely...'), but found nothing appropriate. A peppermill is just a peppermill, no matter how menacingly you point it at someone.

Oswald yanked open the door, already launching his refusal before the door was open, saying, "You're going to take all of that back with you, so you might as well put it back in the..."

Oswald stopped cold. He was too late. The garish truck was gone, leaving a pile of broken branches in the street where it had barnstormed through his tree. His garage was stacked overflowing with cartons so much that the door wouldn't be able to close. He noticed a patio set and a gas grill with a six figure BTU rating on the lawn. At the foot of his driveway, an expensive and exotic yellow sports car was parked. And to his right on the porch, standing and waiting politely for Oswald to finish being overwhelmed was a man who looked like a California beach bum made good. He reminded Oswald of the flash-in-the-pan venture capitalists that used to buzz around Defenseco lobbies during the high points of each economic cycle. Like cicadas, they died off and disappeared quickly when their time was done, but they'd always be back again, making more senseless noise each time.

Oswald sized up the man. He thought that this must be the person who came to his house in the rainstorm to terrify Isabelle. He asked, "Are you responsible for all this?"

The man looked at Oswald's mailbox, apprising a set of pink and goldenrod papers that were rudely stuffed therein.

"May I?" he asked.

Oswald nodded, and the man took the papers, and flipped through a number of pages to find the bottom of the order, where both the record of payment and Oswald's inaccurate and crudely forged signature resided. The last four digits of the payment card were printed on the receipt, and Zeno had been watching Danny's charges on his phone enough to recognize them quickly.

"Yes, apparently I am," said Zeno shaking his head in disappointment.

Oswald started to speak, and Zeno cut him off brusquely. He was somehow polite enough in his manner that Oswald thought it was his error. Zeno said, "I've been on the road a long time to come see you, Mr. Kitchen. May I use your restroom for a moment? Then I'm sure we can clear this whole situation up quite quickly and amicably."

Oswald frowned. He asked, "Are you a lawyer?"

Zeno half-smiled in vague amusement. "No," he answered, "not a lawyer. I guess you'd say I was an entrepreneur."

"I'm not sure if that's any better," said Oswald, still not moving from the door. If this guy who's badgering his family about the gnome described himself as an entrepreneur, he probably didn't work for whoever owned Defenseco's intellectual property.

Zeno was getting more urgent and tense. "I might actually agree with you on that, Mr. Kitchen. But, please, will you allow me inside to use your facilities and then we can have a civilized conversation. Otherwise I will have to give this azalea bush some attention it probably hasn't had in a long time."

"Fine," said Oswald. "By the way, that azalea and the rest of my garden are one of the things we need to talk about. You, or one of your people did some serious damage all around the property."

He stepped back and let the larger man into the hallway, then pointed him to the half bath just down the hall. Oswald hovered in the living room, unsure if he should sit or stand to wait for Zeno to come out. He didn't really know the social protocol for most normal situations, and he had the feeling this was not going to be a normal conversation. He decided that since he wasn't really in control of anything here, he'd let the situation play out, gather some data, and find a logical solution to whatever was going on.

Oswald leaned casually on the end of his couch arm and tried not to listen to the sounds coming out of the small bathroom. It sounded like Zeno was running a garden hose into the toilet. No wonder he was edgy, thought Oswald. When Zeno finished his work and reemerged in the hall, Oswald stood up to get his attention, and to try to appear in control. Oswald thought his improvisation came off nicely.

"Are you nervous?" asked Zeno, coming into the living room.

"Why, are you carrying a gun? Should I be?" joked Oswald nervously.

"Of course I'm carrying a gun. This is serious work, and sometimes you run into serious people and serious situations during the day. My name is Arthur Zeno. Please, sit down, Mr. Kitchen. Let's discuss your gnome."

Zeno gestured towards the couch, and waited for Oswald to sit down before settling himself into the loveseat across the coffee table. Oswald's eyes travelled around Zeno's perimeter, trying to find some evidence of the firearm. He didn't see anything, though he didn't really know what he was looking for other unless he saw a Dirty Harry-style shoulder holster with a chainsaw-sized weapon dangling menacingly.

"What gnome?" asked Oswald coyly.

"Don't bullshit me, Mr. Kitchen. I know you're a goddamn rocket scientist or something, so I don't want to waste time playing dumb with each other. It doesn't come off well on a man of your intellectual stature. I know all about you and Buckaroo and Bono the monkey and the gnomes."

"Do you mean Bonzo? How do you know all this? Who have you been talking to?"

Zeno grumbled. "Bono, Bonzo, Bippo, Beppo, Banjo, whatever. Your buddy told me all about it. Rolly. Before he cooked his own head something fierce and turned into a human radio station."

"What? Roland? What did you do to him?" asked Oswald, moving to the edge of the couch in alarm.

Zeno scoffed, "I didn't do a thing to him that he didn't want done. I found him in an airport bar, talking to the cocktail peanuts after he'd just been canned from some big company. I thought he was crazy, and he was, but not ALL crazy, and I bought him drinks to keep me amused while O'Hare played games with my connecting flight. Eventually, he gets on to how he once invented something really important. Something that could change the world. Fix global communication, eliminate war and theft, all kinds of crazy shit. So I ask him if this thing is all altruistic, or could his invention make money along the way. He says, sure, lots of money. High tech, dotcom bubble kind of money, probably, but he needed a bunch of capital to get the kinks worked out. And, he says, he also promised someone that he'd never talk about it again."

Zeno paused, inferring correctly from the look on Oswald's face that Oswald was the one who asked for that promise.

"And?" asked Oswald, urging Zeno on.

Zeno smiled. "And I said, well shit, you just told me all about it. You might as well go ahead and get rich now. Besides, what kind of friend makes you promise not to make the world a happier place?"

"That's not what it was about," grumbled Oswald.

"Oh, so we know something about this now, do we? Yeah, he told me about you and the friggin' gnomes. You want to talk about crazy ideas, try sticking a multimillion dollar idea in the ass of little bearded man. What kind of sick bastard are you anyhow? Is it some kind of power-rush thing? You get your jollies, or what?"

Oswald stood up. "Now see here..."

Zeno stood up as well so they were face to face with nothing but the coffee table between them. The coffee table, and suddenly, Zeno's shiny pistol.

Zeno said, "Sit down doc, I didn't get to your part in this yet."

Oswald, listening more to the gun than to Zeno, sat cautiously back down. Zeno remained on his feet, gun at the ready.

"Anyhow, I set Laughtry up with a lab with some money I made off a little nutritional supplement business before that got shut down by the feds. I brought in a few heavy investors to get him a staff and start setting up manufacturing operations. I told him he didn't need the old Buckaroo gnomes, that he could make it better today. And he was doing it too. He could make these little tiny gadgets that could knock someone out in no time flat. Sometimes it left them a little screwy afterwards, so Rolly was working out the power and placement. We were getting pretty close to starting production on some products. I found buyers and took orders which is sort of why I'm here in your living room tonight. These aren't the kind of people you are late on your commitments to."

Oswald asked, "You want me to join your company?"

Zeno shook his head. "I'll give you the number of our personnel department, they'll tell you if we have any internships open. It turns out it was a great idea for you to save the Buckaroo project all this time, even if it was in the craziest way possible. You should see what my loading dock looks like because of you. Half my staff thinks I've gone completely off the deep end. Rolly nuked his own self with a prototype, and never really came back from the experience. He was out cold for three days, and when he woke up, all he did was sing old show tunes all day long. And he's not a good singer. So you see, I need the Buckaroo gnomes to finish the project. And I have all of them but yours."

Oswald tried to remember when the last time he talked to Roland. He asked, "Where is Roland now? Is he OK?"

Zeno waved the question off. "Don't worry about him. I've got an associate hooked up to take care of Rolly. She's the one who finally got me your name, Dr. Kitchen. Rolly gave the other guys up weeks ago, and I had my last idiot-for-hire go swipe them from the yard. Edith had to write down every goddamn bit of drivel he mumbled till finally she put together it was Oswald Kitchen, not Oswald's kitchen. You never know, he might not get his head back at this point, it's been a long while that he's been singing Little Orphan Annie. But I've got a couple other eggheads in the lab that worked with Rolly before the accident. I figure with the last gnome, they can put together the old Buckaroo technology and put it together with the stuff that Rolly taught them and we'll have something good."

Oswald sat back. He was worried about Roland and for himself, and he was really worried that Isabelle was due home soon, and the maniac that was bothering her in the rain would be waiting here, armed and in the living room.

Oswald said, "Buckaroo isn't safe. It isn't even safe to be in the same building while you're working with it. Trust me, I know. I suppose Roland's accident should illustrate that for you. And you can't make it safe. Not without Roland or maybe myself at the helm."

Zeno grinned, "Oh really. Are you offering your services, doctor? I'll need to see your resume and check your references, of course."

"No, I'm not looking for a job. But we kept Buckaroo around for a reason. If we thought that there was no redeeming value, that it was only dangerous, we would have destroyed it. We've really been saving it for the right time and the right project. Maybe this is it. But we've got to do it right. We've got to talk about your facilities and your people and what you're going to do with it before I just hand it over."

Zeno sniffed, and looked for a moment at Oswald as if he was trying to do a particularly difficult long division problem in his head.

"Let's talk then. What have you got to say about it?" asked Zeno, sounding confident enough to not actually care what Oswald had to say.

Oswald had no intention of giving the gnome to Zeno, but he needed to get him out of the house. Then he could destroy the gnome and call the police.

"Not now. You give me the address of your lab and we'll have a meeting with your principal investigator and go over the facilities. Once I have some information about your operation, then maybe we can talk about technology transfer."

The front doorbell rang.

* * *

Under the table and inside the galley, Isabelle jumped in surprise, bumping her head on the underside of the table. She had come home from the mall to find the garage overflowing with consumer goods and the yellow Lotus in the driveway. She had assumed that it was Danny driving the Lotus, and had beaten her to the house by virtue of the fancy sportscar's superior acceleration characteristics. Her ten-year old Honda was parked on the street in front of her neighbor's house, and smelled vaguely of hot oil and burned clutch plates from the aggressive treatment Isabelle had given it on the way home.

Having relatively recently spent her teenage years in the house on Applewood Terrace, with an overprotective father and no one else in the house to validly make late night noises, Isabelle knew how to move about quietly. From many weekend nights of mild misbehavior, Isabelle knew how to open the door to the galley from the garage without clicks or creaks (slowly turn the doorknob, and pull up on the door as hard as you can while opening), and how to move across the kitchen floor (remove shoes and slide across the ceramic tile). She left the door to the garage hanging open and hid below the table when she heard Oswald and Arthur's voices.

She heard a grumbling voice from the living room ask, "Are you expecting someone, Dr. Kitchen?"

* * *

"No, I'm not. Do you mind if I answer it?" said Oswald, trying hard to keep his voice calm. All he could think of was Isabelle, but why would she be ringing the front bell? Oswald decided whoever they were, Girl Scouts, the paperboy or Jehovah's Witnesses, they were getting invited in for lemonade with Zeno to break things up.

"Of course, kind sir," said Zeno magnanimously. "We're just having a friendly chat. You finish your business with whoever is there, and I'll be waiting here. I can stay as long as we need."

"That's great, Arthur," grumbled Oswald as he got up and walked into the hallway. Zeno stayed in the living room, his back now to Oswald, seemingly unconcerned. Briefly, Oswald wished he was the sort of fellow that that would brain another man from behind with a baseball bat. Of course, he would also have to be the kind of fellow who kept a baseball bat in the front hall. The English umbrella next to the coat rack just didn't provide the same level of comfort.

Oswald opened the door to find a young, polite, but slightly disheveled young man standing on his porch.

"Mr. Kitchen?" he asked, eyes wide and head slightly bowed in contrition. "I'm here about these gifts in your driveway. I'm sorry I wasn't here when they arrived to explain. I really meant to be, but I think you'll be pleased with the arrangement once I do. Explain, that it. Is now a good time to talk?"

Oswald Kitchen's house was small, and the heating ducts did a good job making the walls fairly transparent to conversation. In this way both Arthur Zeno in the living room and Isabelle Kitchen under the table could hear and recognize Danny Fortune's voice and baleful tone. Isabelle had initially thought that he was the one in the living room with her father, but upon direct comparison she realized there was a second man in the living room, who was also after the gnome.

Zeno rose from the couch like a tidal wave and crashed into the hallway, shouting "Fortune! What the hell are you doing here? I saw your credit card bill and assumed you'd be off with the Moonies or on a tour bus with ZZ Top!"

Danny was startled to see Zeno appear behind Oswald Kitchen.

"Mr. Zeno! What are you doing here?" asked Danny.

"Yeah, wouldn't you like to know? I'm here cleaning up. I should have known better than to trust such an important assignment to you after you screwed up last night. I'm here to get the gnome myself," said Zeno. It was clear from his tone that this last statement was a challenge for Danny.

Danny stammered, "Really, Mr. Zeno, you didn't need to come all the way down here. I've got the matter under control. Mr. Kitchen and I were just about to have a meeting and iron out the details. I'm sure it'll be all fine, but will take a little while and be very detailed. Totally boring, I'm sure. I can meet you in your office tomorrow morning, 9am sharp, and I'll deliver the goods to you personally."

Danny stepped partially aside as if to let Zeno walk past to his car. Zeno didn't move.

He said, "Fat chance, Fortune. I'm not leaving here without the gnome. And you just got a demotion, from gofer and getter to bootlick. Come on in here where I can show you how this is done."

Oswald stood between them, holding the door in one hand, his head going back and forth like it was a tennis match.

"Now wait a minute. This is my house, and we are NOT having this conversation now. It's time you both leave, work out your respective differences, and we'll set up a time at your facilities to have a discussion, as I've already offered."

"Interesting thought, doctor. But I'd rather we just get it done now. Everyone inside, I'm done screwing around with pleasantries."

Zeno raised the pistol, and gave Danny and Oswald each a turn at having it pointed at them, just to be fair. He looked a little as if he were trying to figure out the right stance for casually menacing someone with a firearm, though really the posture of the brandisher is really not as important as that cold, dark end of the barrel.

"Whoa! Arthur, what's up with the gun? It's not that kind of party!" said Danny, a little surprised at what his voice sounded like when he was suddenly terrified.

Zeno stepped back and raised the gun to head height, still giving both Oswald and Danny equal play.

"Yeah, what do you know? Inside, you two. Together or apart, you're going to figure out how to get me what I want really quickly, or things are going to get very sticky. Don't think I haven't killed before when the need has arisen."

Danny reluctantly obeyed, wondering what to do with the plan he had formulated on the way over from the mall, and how to not end up shot as a result of it. Oswald closed the door politely behind Danny and looked Zeno up and down, turning his head quizzically when his eyes fell on Zeno's hand.

"Actually, I don't think you have killed before. The safety is still on. An experienced hit man wouldn't be afraid to turn off the safety," said Oswald, thinking out loud.

"Dammit," growled Zeno, hastily flipping the small lever and drawing back the hammer. He held the gun more nervously now, like he wasn't sure which end the bullet would emerge from if it went off.

"That's not really helping, Dr. Kitchen," said Danny dolefully, taking a station near the couch.

* * *

Outside, across the street and down one house, Nelson was keeping an eye on Oswald Kitchen's front yard. He had insisted on programming the Z1's phone number into Danny's phone under the name Mohambo, then watched Danny approach and talk with Oswald. Since his vantage was off at a somewhat obtuse angle to the front of the house, couldn't see in through the door to know that Zeno was part of the conversation, or that he had drawn a gun.

When Danny went inside the house, Nelson turned up the stereo, grooving to an old Styx song on a classic radio station, after first looking around to make sure no one would catch him enjoying classic progressive rock. He appraised the goods flowing out of the Kitchen's garage with satisfaction, knowing that for every item he saw, there was a twin on its way to his small apartment. He hadn't seen Zeno's Lotus before, and feeling the anticipation of a kid at Christmas, he wondered if the rakish yellow car was part of the gnome barter, and whether maybe he could get one too as part of his new job with Danny.

Nelson was beginning to doze off when a sudden movement caught his eye. He lazily opened one eye, and saw a young woman that he didn't recognize, her face ringed by wild curly blond locks, burst from a crack in the wall of boxes in the garage. She came out running full speed and barefoot, and turned from the driveway across the lawn. She appeared to be coming directly at Nelson.

"Damn, baby! Lookit that!" Nelson said to himself, shaking off the mantle of sleep for more immediate and prurient interests. Nelson undid his seat belt and pushed himself up straighter in his seat as she approached. But she didn't reach Nelson in the truck, as midway across the lawn, she skidded to a stop in the grass. She was staring up into the branches of the large maple tree in the middle of the lawn, and kept making furtive glances towards the house. After a minute, she seemed to find what she was looking for up inside the mass of green leaves. Then she took a few steps back, and launched herself at the lowest branch with a running start.

Nelson watched her catch the branch, and somewhat clumsily pull herself up onto it. Once she was on the first branch, she disappeared into the arboreal cloud of leaves with a little more grace. Nelson was very impressed, as he doubted he could have gotten himself up onto the first branch at all, though there's no way he would admit that to anyone.

"Yeah," he mused, "Smokin' hot monkey girl. All back to nature and stuff, bet she likes it with granola."

She stayed in the tree, out of sight for a long minute, and Nelson began to wonder if he had indeed dozed off and dreamed the episode. Or perhaps in playing with the Z1, which was now sitting next to him plugged into the charger, he had offset the already quite delicate balance of his brain.

The woman dropped without warning from the branches, collapsing on impact into a fetal ball on the lawn. Nelson held his breath as she lay on the lawn completely still, then relaxed when she finally stirred. She sat up with her back to Nelson, moving her right leg around in front of her with her hand. Through the open window, Nelson heard her say an off-color word he didn't know that girls ever said. Even guys are careful with that one in the men's locker room, he thought.

She struggled to her feet, obviously in pain and favoring her left leg. When she stood up, Nelson saw it at her feet. A red hatted, grey bearded, creepy-eyed gnome. Even from the distance, he had become versed enough in lawn gnome husbandry to recognize it as a Naughty Ned, and brother to the insane truckload sitting behind him. She picked up the statue by its neck, and started limping hurriedly towards the front door.

She had a trim figure, and Nelson enjoyed the vantage point in watching her egress, despite her somewhat eccentric gait. But somehow that gnome, dangling from her determined grip seemed to speak to him. He suddenly understood why Danny had felt compelled to get all the gnomes at the Bottom Dollar, and furthermore, was now glad that he did. The synchronicity of the repetitive little icon showing up everywhere made Nelson feel like he was finally part of something bigger than himself, something really important. And though he had no idea what that meant, it sent him into action. He grabbed the Z1 and shoved it in his pocket, then pushed open the truck door and ran around the front fender into the street.

"Hey! Gnome girl! You, gimpy monkey treehugger hottie! Stop!" he yelled, holding his hand over his head with one finger extended like he had a great idea, or perhaps was trying to attract lightning. She stopped, and pivoted on her good foot to assess Nelson. She stared at him, unsure of his role in the matter.

Nelson stuck his thumb out and pointed over his shoulder at the truck bed, unable to put into words the profound feeling of sitting alone in a pickup truck full of tacky lawn accouterments, and watching a girl fall from the sky with an identical and equally unlikely statue. He opened his mouth and gaped, unsure where to begin. He took a step forward.

The woman looked at Nelson. She shook her head slowly and exaggeratedly no. And when Nelson took another speculative step forward, she raised her hand and extended her middle finger high and clearly.

He watched her turn and go into the front door from the middle of the street, then went back to the truck and sat down on the rear bumper, unsatisfied. He didn't like to feel left out, and resolved to do something big to make up for the way he felt.

-15-

Isabelle slammed the door hard on the way in. She didn't really mean to, but she was raging with adrenaline from the moment she overheard Zeno pull a gun on her father. The pain radiating from her ankle further stoked her anger, and then that idiot headbanger in the street, trying to hit on her like that sent her right over the edge. Despite her years of practice with temper tantrums, she never became proficient at controlling them. Often, she wasn't really aware that she was acting any different than normal until after it was all over. Now was one of those times.

Which is why she strode right into the living room, on a yet-undiagnosed fractured ankle and accosted the big blond man with the shiny gun without any fear. The sight of the gun filled her with derision for the man holding her father hostage.

"You again?" asked Danny when he saw Isabelle come in, wild-eyed and grass-stained.

"Of course it's me again. Don't be stupid. I live here," she said, ignoring Zeno. She brandished the gnome like it was an assault rifle. Zeno did a double take when he realized what she was carrying, and leered at her like she had walked in naked.

"Isa, you shouldn't have brought that in here. You should have stayed outside where it was safe," said Oswald, in the disapprovingly disappointed tone only a parent could pull off so well in a hostage situation.

"Well, look at what we have here," purred Zeno. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Listen, I don't know who you think you are, but nobody comes in here and threatens my father with a gun. If you want this stupid toy, then take it and get out of here. I don't want to ever see you around here again, and if I do, I'm going to kick your ugly ass and put your false teeth through a wood chipper while you watch." Isabelle accentuated her words by jabbing the gnome, pointy hat first, at Zeno's face. He blinked, but didn't move.

"She's a special girl," whispered Danny to Oswald. "Is she seeing anyone?"

Oswald looked crossly at Danny. "Isa," Oswald said, "You don't know what you're doing. We can't let this guy have Buckaroo. People like this are exactly why it was hidden in the first place."

"Daddy, I'm not going to let you get shot over some stupid old thing that probably doesn't even work anymore. I'm sorry, I'm just not."

Zeno took a step toward Isabelle, and lowered the gun a little, so it wasn't pointing at her father anymore and was a little less threatening.

"C'mon dear," said Zeno, smiling like a life insurance salesman about to make a sale. "Hand over that nasty old toy, and I'll have my idiot over here go buy you something pretty. You look like you'd clean up pretty well, maybe if you want I'll even take you on a vacation. Does that sound good? What do you want, how about some jewelry?"

"I want a fucking submarine. Your idiot already has the specs. Why do guys with money see a pair of tits and think that jewelry and flowers is the pinnacle of existence? Asshole."

"Isabelle!" said Oswald sharply.

"Sorry Daddy," she said.

Zeno said, "Hey kiddo, whatever gets your rocks off. If you want a submarine, I'll get you a goddamn U-boat, complete with a contingent of German sailors ready to do your bidding. That's how much that little guy in your hand means to me. It'll take a little time though, but I give you my word, and in the meantime I'll leave you and your dad alone. Just hand over that guy. He looks like he's getting heavy for you to hold onto anyhow."

Isabelle wavered, and looked to her dad. Zeno lowered his pistol all the way down to his side, gesturing with his free hand to show what a magnanimous gesture this was. Isabelle took a little step forward, and turned the gnome sideways to offer it to Zeno.

"Don't do it!" yelled Danny, a little louder than he meant it to come out.

"Stay out of this, Fortune," roared Zeno, whirling and pointing the gun at him. "You've done enough damage already. Just look at what happened to poor Jillian because of your incompetence."

"Who's Jillian?" asked Isabelle, lowering the gnome to her side.

"Someone special that Danny boy hurt real bad. Pretty girl, a lot like you. You've got to be careful with this character. He's a lot more dangerous than he looks. That's what Jillian found out, didn't she Danny-boy?"

Danny winced each time he heard Jill's name, but he kept his focus. "That's not what I meant, Mr. Zeno. I was talking to you, not her. That's not the Buckaroo gnome."

All eyes were on Danny instantly. Oswald asked first, "What do you mean? Of course that's the Buckaroo gnome."

Danny grimaced at Oswald's words, but spoke only to Zeno. He could feel Isabelle's seething glare boring into the side of his skull like a slow-moving dental drill.

"You came too soon, Mr. Zeno. I had the whole situation under control. The Kitchens don't know anything about it, but I already swapped the Buckaroo gnome for an empty one just like it. That way I could get you what you need and the Kitchens would be none the wiser. I've got the real thing outside in the truck."

"Bullshit. Then why'd you get here after I did? Why'd you try to bribe the old man here with all that crap in the garage if you already had it?" scoffed Zeno.

Danny answered, "We already made the switch earlier, before the deliveries got here. It was like an insurance policy. Leave nothing to chance, right, Mr. Zeno? If Mr. Kitchen gave me what he thought was the Buckaroo gnome, he'd be well compensated, none-the-wiser, and would never cause trouble for you with whatever your lab builds from the Buckaroo stuff. If he said no, then you'd still have the goods, and we could deal with him if he came up again, I'm sure. When I came to the door, that was just the second phase of the plan."

"Bullshit," said Zeno, but this time his pronouncement had an element of question in it.

Isabelle, having seen Danny at the mall buying the clone gnomes, saw some possibility in the story, but unfortunately started doing the math on the timing. She opened her mouth to argue, but caught Danny's gaze and stopped herself after a difficult to interpret string of vowel noises.

Zeno looked at her. "Something you want to say, chickie?"

She tightly pursed her lips and shook her head.

Danny interjected, "People don't like to be taken for a ride, do they, Mr. Zeno? It's difficult for them to get called out like this in public. Normally, guys like us, we're long gone by the time they figure it out, if ever."

"Well," said Zeno, "the cat's out of the bag now, right in front of the mice and everything. Prove it or you're fired. And I don't mean just dismissed from the employment of Zenorific." Zeno waved the pistol carelessly in the direction of Danny's head. Danny had to resist a desperate urge to dive behind the couch.

"OK, I just need to go out to my truck for a minute," said Danny.

"No dice, champ. You're not going anywhere," answered Zeno.

"Then I need to make a call," said Danny, cautiously pulling his cellphone out of his pants pocket. Zeno nodded in approval, but kept the gun trained on Danny.

* * *

Nelson jumped off the tailgate of the truck in surprise when the Z1 started vibrating. He was ticklish, and not accustomed to gadgets vibrating unbidden against his body. Once he realized it was the Z1, and not a bumblebee in his pocket, he got even more freaked out. At arm's length, he opened the cover, ready to throw it away at the first sign of malfeasance. He saw Danny's number on the screen and relaxed a little.

"Yo bossman!" answered Nelson, doing his best to sound composed and cool.

"Hey," said Danny quietly, his voice tense with urgency, "I need the gnome inside the house. It's cool. Do you understand, I need THE gnome. Can you bring it in, RIGHT NOW?"

Nelson asked, "Dude, there are like a thousand of the little bastards back there. Which one do you want?"

"I said THE gnome, Nelson. Which one do you think?" Danny smiled and shook his head, like he was resigned to the fact that you just can't get good help anymore.

"Is everything cool in there? I just saw this rabid hippie chick run in there with the gnome. I think it's the one we came for," said Nelson, trying to unsuccessfully look through the sheer curtains in front of the living room bay window from the middle of the street.

"I don't have time to talk about this now," said Danny. "Just bring the gnome right into this living room and bring it in right now, OK? Top priority!"

"OK, boss!" yelled Nelson happily before he clicked off the phone.

"Well," said Danny, "It should just be a moment. Maybe I could help make some coffee while we wait?"

"No one moves," commanded Zeno.

As Danny had foretold, exactly one moment later, the bay widow behind the loveseat darkened for a split second before shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces, tearing the curtains to shreds. Time seemed to slow down for the people in the living room as they watched a big black pickup truck launch itself backwards through the windowframe up to its rear wheels. The bed had been stripped of the tarp, so when the wheels hit the foundation of the house with a disturbingly deep thud, several score of red-hatted gnomes cascaded into the living room over the back of the loveseat like a wave of lemmings. All four people in the living room found themselves suddenly ankle deep in identical gnomes.

Once Zeno recovered from the initial shock, he looked immediately to Isabelle. She was completely gnomeless.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly but sarcastically, "I guess I dropped it."

Oswald grabbed Danny by the shoulder and twisted him so they were face-to-face. "Why did you do that? There's a door! You could have killed someone!"

Zeno, bent over at the waist and rummaging madly through the bumper crop of plastic, grumbled, "I'm going to do that myself if you people keep this up. You're making it really hard to do business without hurting someone."

The front doorbell rang, its melodic little chime blending in with the ongoing tinkle of broken glass at the window.

"Nobody get the door. There are enough assholes at this party," commanded Zeno.

"I think we're going to want to let him in. He tends to make a scene if he feels left out," Danny advised.

Zeno examined the scene of chaos around him and the damage to the front of the house, then studied Danny's face carefully. "Fine, he's not lying. Let him in," said Zeno.

"IT'S OPEN!!!" yelled Isabelle towards the front of the house, surprising the three men.

The door cracked open, and Nelson peered in with one eye to survey the scene, then he threw open the door violently. Nelson jumped into the hallway, hands out like a broadway dancer in the big finale, croaking out "TAA-DAA!".

"Fortune, is this part of your plan too?" asked Zeno.

"He works for you, Mr. Zeno. That's the new guy," said Danny.

"The hell he does," said Zeno, shaking his head.

Nelson took a couple of clumsy leaps through the carpet of gnomes and glass in the living room, knees up high like he was running through snow.

Nelson put his fists at his waist, puffed up his chest like a superhero repelling bullets and proclaimed, "Hey! What's my name, Mohambo?"

Danny sighed. "Nelson, why did you do that?"

"Um. It was an accident? The parking brake slipped? There was a bee in the car and it flew in my eye?" asked Nelson.

"Nelson..."

"Dude, don't be dense. That was total Godfrey McGuffin! Don't tell me you didn't see Priority Delivery, the one where he was a renegade UPS driver? That's what you were doing on the phone, right?"

"Nelson, really, I don't know how you got this from what I said. I'm sorry, Mr. Kitchen, we'll pay to get this fixed," said Danny.

"Damn right you will!" Oswald burst out, as he looked around with wild eyes, trying without success to parse the scene around him into logical bits.

"Who the hell is 'we', kiddo? That's my truck in the living room, and apparently my gnomes all over the floor. You've done quite enough with my money. You can fix his window if you want to with the money from your paper route, after we get my gnome back to the lab. Which would have been a lot easier if Trixie hadn't dropped it into this psycho soup."

Isabelle curled her locks around a finger and looked at Zeno with a vacant stare, doing her best to look like a prototypical dumb blonde. "Gosh mister," she said sappily, "I sure am sorry about losing your dwarf." As soon as she said it she snapped back into her dental drill scowl.

"Not a dwarf! Gnome!" Zeno roared, pointing his pistol at the ceiling as if he could make his point better by threatening the sheetrock. "That's it! Fortune and dumbass, you two load every single one of these things into that truck. You take them back to the lab in Buffalo. Danny, you know what to do there. You call me when you find the Buckaroo gnome."

Danny raised an eyebrow in confusion. "I'm not fired? And aren't you coming with us, Mr. Zeno?" He wished to himself that he could stop calling him 'Mr. Zeno', but every time he opened his mouth it just came out.

Zeno turned and went to take a sudden step to get directly into Danny's face. Danny was the only one in the room close to Zeno's height, and Zeno felt he needed a bit more leverage to intimidate him. Unfortunately, he neglected to consider the effect of the three-deep tangle of gnomes around his ankles, and he went down in a tumble onto the coffee table.

As he landed, the gun went off in his hand. The small, but serviceable bullet tore an open channel through the side of Oswald Kitchen's right thigh before embedding itself in the far wall of the dining room.

"Daddy!" screamed Isabelle, leaping onto and over Zeno with her good foot, scattering gnomes in every direction and landing next to her father. Oswald was slumped on the couch behind him, bleeding profusely. Being unaccustomed to bleeding at high rates of volume, Oswald's face grew understandably white. Danny pointed down the hall and yelled, "Nelson! The kitchen's over there! Get a towel or something!"

"That's a galley. I'm a Kitchen," croaked Oswald quietly, making an inside joke to Isabelle, who was by his side and holding his hand fiercely. Nelson bounded down the hall, sending a few odd gnomes skittering, and knocking over a lamp. A moment later, he appeared by the couch with a stack of dish towels and a roll of paper towels.

"Put pressure on the wound with these," Nelson told Isabelle. "I saw the 'World's Busiest ER' DVD at least ten times, I know what to do. Next, we need to run a CBC and a Chem 20."

"You have got to be kidding me!" roared Zeno as he got back to his feet. "Just go to Cleveland and pick up a goddamn toy. That's all I asked you to do. Now look at what we've got. Look at this repugnant situation! Bleh! Fine, we just need a slight change of plan now!"

"Slight change of plan? You just shot my father over a stupid plastic troll doll!" yelled Isabelle.

"Quiet, Barbie, the men are talking about the very important gnomes! OK boys, here's the deal. Danny, you load the truck and take it back to the lab like I said. I'm going to stay here until you call and tell me that you have Buckaroo back at the lab. No wait, you get one of the lab techs to call me with it. And send me a picture of the X-ray to my phone. Back here, when the cops come, Shaggy is going to take the fall for shooting the good doctor. We'll tell the cops it was a home invasion, that he's all freaked out on angel dust and didn't even remember doing it."

"Hey man, I'm not going to jail for you!" yelled Nelson from behind the couch.

Zeno scowled at Nelson, and said, "Don't give me trouble. From what I understand, you work for my company, and I'm accustomed to having people who work for me do what I say, when I say it."

Danny involuntarily envisioned something from Jillian's confessional soliloquy and winced, reminding him how little he liked this man standing in front of him with a gun.

Nelson snarled, "Get bent, you crusty loser!"

Zeno continued, "You're not thinking. You take a hit for the team today when the cops come. You'll spend at most one night, maybe two, in jail, but you'll never go to real prison. Tomorrow morning, I'll call my lawyers and they'll send a couple of their best down here, get you out on bail, and get the charges dropped under an insanity defense. From the looks of you, it shouldn't be difficult. Worst case scenario, you'll spend ninety days in a looney bin on some real relaxing drugs. That can't sound all bad, I bet."

Nelson asked doubtfully, "Have you done this before?"

"What?" barked Zeno, "You don't think I know what I'm doing?"

"Not really," Oswald weakly peeped from his couch.

"Again, Dr. Kitchen, not really helpful," reminded Danny.

"Enough goddamn chit chat! You all heard the plan! Get to work! You don't have much time before someone calls in the cops or comes to the door to see why the truck is parked in the living room! Now get moving before I get angry!"

Zeno turned and picked up a gnome with one hand to examine it. It was as if he was looking for a surgeon general warning proclaiming the contents to contain traces of a twenty-year old death ray. Finding no such thing, he threw it into the back of the truck and reached for another at his feet.

"Hey Mohambo?" asked Danny carefully, his eyes unwaveringly on Zeno.

Nelson, who had been standing behind the couch in a near perfect slump awaiting his time in the slammer, perked up his attention at the mention of his catch phrase.

"Yeah buddy?" Nelson asked expectantly.

"I figured out what your name is," said Danny, still watching Zeno like a cat. Zeno was engrossed in rooting through the gnomes. Nelson said nothing, but practically vibrated with excitement. Oswald and Isabelle looked to each other in mutual confusion.

"Mohambo, thy name is Vengeance."

Nelson blanked for a moment, then looked shocked when Danny looked to him and winked.

"Are you sure, Danny?" asked Nelson, so atypically quiet he was almost inaudible.

"I'm sure, Mohambo. After all, we are acquaintances of doom."

"Come on assholes! What are you talking about? Do I need to shoot someone else? What do I pay you all for?" roared Zeno over his shoulder.

"Of course, Mr. Zeno, we'll do what we need to do," said Danny calmly, stepping over the coffee table into a deep pile of gnomes, so he was behind Zeno. He shuffled his feet until they sunk through the statues and found the floor beneath. With his right hand, he began throwing gnomes over the couch into the back of the truck, pausing to fuss and examine each one as he did so, ensuring that his action was visible to Zeno's peripheral vision.

Nelson hopped around the couch and boomed "Yes sir, right away sir, getting to work right now, sir!"

A moment later, Danny felt the smooth cover of the Z1 pressed into his hand. Nelson whispered "Just press send," and swatted Danny fraternally on the rear.

"What?" grumbled Zeno, half looking over his shoulder. Danny saw this, and hurled the gnome in his right hand overhand, right past Zeno's head at eye level, nearly clobbering the larger man with the happy little projectile, and making him flinch in a very unleaderly fashion.

"Sorry, Mr. Zeno, just trying to get the job done. Burning daylight, right?" said Danny. Zeno turned towards Danny in annoyance, but glared only into his eyes, in a move to intimidate the younger man. Even with Danny's plan, Zeno's threatening stare still made him nervous, and he gripped the Z1 tightly behind his back.

Zeno turned back to his work. Danny picked up a gnome in his right hand, and brought the Z1 from behind him, holding them together so Danny could see the screen, but the Z1 was hidden to anyone else. Nelson had been busy on the phone, and had somehow installed a backdrop of Contusion Method's most recent CD art as the phone screen. The irascible lead singer, Lars Hematoma, stood in miniature, a freeze frame of a scream, his mouth so wide he looked like the victim of an industrial accident at a toothbrush factory.

Typed across Lars's disturbingly visible tonsils was the word BUCKAROO, followed by a leisurely flashing cursor. Danny gulped, and hit the green button marked SEND. Then, using the coffee table as a springboard, he leapt onto Arthur Zeno's back. His legs gripped Zeno's slightly doughy middle and he wrapped his arms around Zeno's neck in a modification of the classic Saturday morning wrestling sleeper hold, with the Z1 pressed against the back of Zeno's skull.

Zeno pitched forward, almost falling face first into the gnomes, but he managed to recover his balance with surprising power and speed. Even with Danny on his back, he stood straight up. Danny squeezed as hard as he could, pressing the Z1 against Zeno, but keeping his own head back.

"Jesus Christ, Fortune, have you lost your mind?" snapped Zeno, as he staggered to control his balance.

Danny was so keyed up by the adrenaline and so focused on the Z1, he couldn't respond. He started to see the dull glow of rainbow colors around the phone again, all blotchy and ephemeral, as if he had stared into a bright light. The phone seemed to be taking forever, and Zeno was stronger than Danny had expected, although admittedly Danny was unexperienced in performing muggings.

Another rookie mugger's mistake was to discount the speed at which a pistol operates, as compared to a brain-numbing transcranial wave induction cellphone. Zeno twisted, and suddenly the pistol was up and over his head, waving around blindly trying to draw a bead on Danny.

With impinged vocal cords, Zeno gasped, "Get off me, shitbird. Gonna kill you."

The aura around the phone had grown, swirling in wild colors, intense and unnameable. Zeno's head was engulfed, and Danny struggled to keep his head out of the corona, leaning back as far as he could without letting go of his grasp of Zeno's head. Danny began to see the colors inside his head as well as out and a warm wall of fuzz seemed to wash through his mind, leaving behind the tinkling of stars and the dulcet tones of ABBA.

Zeno's profane speech sounded slow and faraway to Danny but it was clear that he was going to kill Danny if he could. Danny reached and stretched back hard, dodging to avoid the free hand that would help to aim the blind gun. Zeno moved to correct his balance, and his feet stumbled on the mess of gnomes at his feet. He fell backward and landed on top of Danny. Danny started to black out, and could hear the wind in his ears distinctly as he fell back. He heard a loud click, followed by a roar like a tiny jet engine taking off. Somewhat academically, his mind now divorced from his body, he concluded that it must have been the gun firing through the hallucinogenic shroud of the Z1.

"That's interesting," thought Danny as he fell back onto the coffee table without feeling any pain as his consciousness slipped away. "I wonder where the bullet went?"

-16-

Danny was swimming, moving swiftly downstream, borne by the river's vigorous current. The sky was painted in broad strokes of pink and orange, dotted with clouds that looked more specifically like pillows than usual. The shore of the river was lined by massive trees of broccoli, and on each of the green branches was a tiny bright blue bird, all twittering the same song in unison. Oddly, rather than birdsong, it sounded like a scratchy old vinyl record playing the theme to the Partridge Family TV show. Though neither this fact, nor the fact that the river was composed of flowing hot chocolate bothered Danny, and so he took the songs advice, and indeed got happy. His heart light, feeling as though it might burst with a helium swell of glee, he dogpaddled down the creek at top speed. Marshmallows bubbled up from the depths, caressing his body on their way up. One of them seemed to stick near him, systematically moving its way across his torso. He twisted to the side to let it float up past him, but it was doggedly determined to stay with him and finish rubbing his stomach.

Danny opened his eyes and looked down, wondering how he was opening his eyes when they were already opened. As he did, the scene before him changed, one scene rolling out with the next rolling in, like he was looking into his childhood Viewmaster toy. A yellow wall and white blankets were in front of him, and he realized that it was he who was singing in this scene, in a scratchy, off key and sleepy voice. He shut his mouth with a start.

"Oh honey, don't stop singing. You're right, you should get happy," cooed an accented voice beside him. He wondered how he hadn't noticed the matronly Hispanic nurse standing next to him before. To her right, hanging over Danny's prone body was a rolling table covered with the equipment for a sponge bath. Danny decided that he was dreaming, and that this part of the dream had him staged in a hospital. This wasn't quite how he pictured the classic sponge bath fantasy as occurring, but he thought, since it was a dream anyhow, he might as well make the best of it. He put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes, and waited for his dream world to play itself out.

Then he heard what could only be described as a ruckus in the hallway outside.

"You've got to let me in! I won't let you keep him from me!" screamed a histrionic and somewhat familiar high pitched voice. A much calmer voice interceded, offering some alternate choice in hushed tones. This was starting to feel less like a dream, but was still not completely real.

The screaming resumed, high and frantic, "No! Let me in! I'm going to have his baby! I need to see him now! He needs to know the truth about Danny Junior!" Someone started kicking a wall in frustration outside. Danny felt his heart stop, and he froze in place as if it would make him a less noticeable semi-dressed central figure in small hospital room.

"Well, it looks like you've been busy," clucked the nurse. She started packing up the bath gear, and rolled the table over to the side, picking up the towels, and momentarily leaving Danny more than typically exposed.

The door burst open. Nelson slid in on the balls of his feet, his arms out wide for another Taaa-Daa entrance. He looked at Danny in his vulnerable position, blankets down and hospital gown up. Nelson covered his eyes and cowered like he'd been sprayed with mace.

"Dude! Put that thing away! Oh, my virgin eyes! I'll never look the same again!" yelled Nelson.

The nurse raised an eyebrow at Nelson, then regarded Danny dubiously as she pulled his gown to his knees and replaced the blanket. She quickly excused herself and left the room.

Nelson peeked through his fingers to see if it was safe to uncover his eyes.

"Where is she?" asked Danny, craning his neck towards the door.

Nelson grinned and flounced over to Danny's bedside, then collapsed in a green plastic chair that was evidently harder than Nelson was expecting, judging from the way he recoiled after landing.

"Owwww. Where is who?"

"Jillian?" asked Danny meekly, afraid that just speaking her name aloud could make her appear by his bedside, abloom in her third trimester.

"Oh, her. I dunno. Haven't seen her. Why? Dude, aren't you glad to see me?" asked Nelson.

"I guess so. If it wasn't Jillian, who was doing all that yelling?"

Nelson pointed his thumbs at his chest and waggled his eyebrows like he had performed a nifty magic trick. "I learned a long time ago that if you're a dude but you scream like a crazy pregnant bitch, people get out of your way. I don't know why, but it always works every time" he mused.

"Funny, that never came up at Couchpotatoville."

"Well, not on your shift," said Nelson.

Danny started to make the connections. If Nelson was really here, then that meant Danny hadn't dreamed the sponge bath, and he was really checked into a hospital. Suddenly, it came back to Danny what had happened. He remembered the fight with Zeno and began to pat himself frantically for bullet wounds.

"Easy there tiger, if you're going to touch yourself like that, I'm going to leave the room for the thirty seconds it'll take you to blow your wad. Holster that weapon, soldier," said Nelson.

"I remember Zeno shooting the gun when we fell. Did he hit anyone?"

Nelson looked at the floor and nodded solemnly.

"Oh gosh, is everyone OK?" asked Danny, struggling to sit up straight in the bed.

Nelson looked up, his eyes moist and his lower lip quivering. He inched forward in his seat, and tenderly put his hands on top of Danny's left hand. He gasped loudly, trying to talk, but unable to make the words come. Then he broke down into snickering laughter, which only grew as he watched the genuine look of concern morph into one of rampant confusion on Danny's face.

"It was awesome, dude. I got totally shot. Check it out," he said, lifting his sweatshirt to show his doughy and sparsely haired midriff. When the shirt got high enough, Danny could see a wad of gauze and tape wrapped around Nelson's shoulder. It was the same shoulder that had been showing off to little old ladies in the mall and random passerbys in bars since this whole thing started.

Nelson's demeanor got somber again, and he said, "It was off the hook. You pulled that dude down, and he shot at me. So in a way, it's your fault. It really hurt. I almost died, Danny. I saw the light. I was moving through a beautiful tunnel towards these voices, man. Two words, dude. Smokin'. Hot. Angels."

"You did not almost die," came a woman's voice from the doorway. The men looked, and saw Isabelle entering the room on a pair of crutches. Her ankle was in a white cast.

"How'd you get in here? It's not visiting hours yet," asked Nelson indignantly.

"I volunteered at this hospital for two summers. The nurses remember me, and besides, I had an appointment downstairs to get my ankle checked out. The question is, how did you get in here?" asked Isabelle, approaching the bed. Danny reached down and pulled a second blanket from the bottom of his bed up to his chin. His hospital gown suddenly felt very thin.

"I'm a VIP. Like a war hero. People like me. I almost died," he insisted. "There was blood everywhere, dude. She had to take off her shirt to squelch the bleeding, it was so bad. You've got to think about how you're going to make this up to me. You owe me your life, in a way."

"I did no such thing," snapped Isabelle, looking shocked and exponentially annoyed with Nelson.

Nelson shrugged. "Fine, maybe she didn't take her shirt off, but she should have. It was a grave and mortal situation. Might have been the last thing I saw. Would have been an honor for you, really."

"Wait a minute! What the hell happened? I don't remember how I got here. Last thing I remember I was on Zeno's back in the Kitchen's living room," yelled Danny.

"Dude, you wrestled that big stinky L.L. Bean-wearing goon to the ground like you were a friggin caveman, holding the nuke phone to his noggin the whole time. And man, that thing was a trip to watch. You guys fell over, broke right through the coffee table, and that's when I got all shot up. So Izzy here is all busy with her pops, and I'm all like dying on the floor, and you're lying here in all those crazy gnomes with Zeno on top of you and the nuke phone between you, pressed right against his head, making all these crazy colors and noises and singin' and shit."

"Singing?" Danny asked.

Isabelle said, "My Dad says Buckaroo can give you auditory hallucinations. Mostly music. He got it bad once when I was a kid and was whistling marching band music for a week. Of course, I didn't know about Buckaroo then, and I was just a kid, so I just thought he was a nerd."

"Heh heh. Your dad's a nerd," chuckled Nelson.

Danny shot Nelson a cross look. "Then what?"

Nelson continued, "Well, you and Zeno are there spooning on the floor like it's your second date, and that Z1 phone is getting all overheated. Like we could smell it melting down, right?"

Nelson looked to Isabelle and she gave him a cautious nod of agreement.

"It was all nasty and burning Zeno's hair, so she grabs the fireplace poker and pries it out from between the two of you and smashes it all up to bits on the floor. And her dad's all like, no don't, it might blow up, and she's all like, SMASH SMASH!"

Isabelle quickly cut in before she was falsely accused of disrobing for medical reasons again. "I called the police and told them Zeno tried to pick me up in the mall in front of the pretzel stand, and didn't like it when I told him to get lost. And the next thing I know, he has a truckload of crap delivered to my dad's house as dowry, then drives a pickup truck into my dad's house full of plastic gnomes and starts shooting up the place."

"Yeah dude. The truck?" Nelson interjected, "It's registered to Zeno's company."

"What did you say about me and Nelson?" asked Danny.

"That's the best part, Mohambo. She told 'em you and I worked for him, and didn't know nothing but to go buy a bunch of stuff and have it delivered it there, then when he went crazy, we jumped into hero mode and kicked ass and saved the friggin' day. You were even in the papers two days ago, man. Danny Fortune, local hero. You'll probably get your own TV show out of this. I'd better get a part as the good-looking sidekick, or I'm gonna be pissed."

Danny sat bolt upright and looked around wildly for a calendar, but got no satisfaction. "What? Two days ago I was in the paper? How long have I been here?" he asked, his voice rising in anxiety.

Nelson and Isabelle stared at each other, a non-verbal negotiation and test of wills to see who had to tell Danny. Nelson blinked first and lost.

"It's Thursday, man. You've been in here since Monday night. All loopy and singing songs or sleeping. At least you got a private room out of it. You drove your roommate crazy with that Partridge Family song."

Danny was stunned. Like most young men he knew, he would occasionally lose an evening due to recreational libations, but this was too much like the weekend he woke up at Jillian's. It seemed he was starting to make a bad habit of waking up in strange places with lost time and no pants.

"So am I OK?" he asked quietly.

Isabelle said, "They wouldn't tell us much, just that you were being held for observation. I don't think they knew why you were unconscious. We certainly didn't tell them anything but that you fell."

Danny thought a minute. "What about Zeno? Where is he? And that stupid gnome statue that started all this. And your Dad, is he OK?"

Isabelle said, "Zeno's in a prison hospital. He'll be under arrest for shooting my Dad and Nelson, I guess, as well as assault with a deadly knickknack. There were also apparently warrants out for his arrest from a real estate scam in California under a different name. Last I heard from Jillian she was taking care of the company stuff like paying to rebuild my Dad's house. My Dad's got a limp and is still mad about his garden, but he's otherwise OK."

Danny thought he might have had enough surprises, but apparently there were still more waiting for him. He was glad to hear Jillian was up and working, but also knew he'd need to confront her about all this. And his misunderstanding of Nelson's hallway tirade still lingered in his mind.

"Jillian? You met Jillian? Where is she?" asked Danny, hoping sincerely that the answer was not going to be anywhere nearby.

Isabelle paused and turned her head slightly to the right as she studied Danny's face and the odd mix of fear and compassion that showed.

Isabelle said, "She came down from Buffalo yesterday. Her company is paying to fix the house and for all the medical bills. She didn't want anyone to call the insurance company and get more people involved, so they're paying for all kinds of stuff at my Dad's house. They're fixing the front, and building him a greenhouse out back, and they hired some guys to come and take care of all that junk you bought."

She paused for a moment while Danny processed this, then added, "She was here, Danny. She came to visit you yesterday before she came down to the house. I guess you said some heavy stuff to her, but you were also singing the theme to Gilligan's Island, so maybe it didn't mean anything. Seemed to upset her, though. She's very pretty, Danny."

Danny nodded and blushed. He resisted the urge to ask if she was pregnant, and thought about the things Jillian told Danny in the drive back to Buffalo while she was all Buckarooed out. He felt somehow relieved that he didn't remember saying any of it to her. That meant she might not remember the conversation in the car. They knew each others secrets now.

"Where's the gnome? You know, THE gnome?" Danny asked warily.

"The cops took them all," said Nelson suddenly, seeing a turn in the conversation that he could latch on to. "She tried to throw them down the stairs into the basement, but the cops found 'em and took 'em all as evidence. Evidence that Zeno was a friggin loon, maybe."

Isabelle said, "They figured out that the truck was full of the gnomes when it came through the window, so they took them all for the trial. I can't wait to see them put all of them in front of the judge."

"I'd rather they didn't do that," said Danny. "It's my signature on the slip buying them at the dollar store. And Nelson was the one who really drove the truck into your house. Not the kind of thing I'd like to come up under oath."

"Don't worry about it, dude. That dude Zeno is toastier than a blueberry bagel. He's not even going to stand trial."

"Is that the opinion of a doctor or something?" Danny asked.

Nelson stood up, wincing until he straightened up completely. He said, "There is much about me you don't know. But really dude, you worry too much. You've got Professor Nelson Dudeman Mooneyhan here to watch your back. I mean, just look at yourself now. Think about what would have happened if I wasn't around. I took a bullet for you!"

"And I think I'm going to take one every day henceforth," said Danny under his breath to Isabelle. Nelson didn't understand Danny and frowned, but Isabelle smiled.

* * *

Danny was released the next day, fourteen hours after the nurses stopped finding anything wrong with him, and a mere twelve hours after they told him the wheelchair was on the way and stopped bringing him food. Nelson had taken Danny's phone and was sleeping at a nearby motel when a very hungry Danny was released into the Cleveland streets under his own power, and called Nelson from a payphone. He was anxious to get back home, though he didn't know or care what he'd do when he got there. Nelson picked him up by the curb in a rental car Jillian had paid for, and offered Danny the wheel, but Danny declined, letting Nelson pilot them home along the thruway at a substantially illegal speed.

When Danny got home, his answering machine was blinking, and indicating a double-digit number of new messages. Instead of listening to them, Danny opened two bottles of beer and took them into the bathroom, drinking the cold beer in the shower until both the beer and the hot water ran out. Wrapped in a towel and buzzing from the heat and the brew, Danny collapsed on the couch and dozed until evening. He awoke, both relieved and disappointed by the lack of the hallucinogenic and vivid dreamworld. He rose and dressed in a ratty pair of jeans and a favorite old T-shirt, make a cup of exceedingly strong coffee and started to look around for something to remind him what day of the week it was. His eyes fell on the answering machine, and he hit the play button.

The mechanized voice preceded each message with the time and date. It was a surreal confirmation that he had indeed lost three days in a Cleveland hospital. Most of the messages were from Couchpotatoville, looking for him to come back and pick up a shift that evening to cover for Brittany, who left one day with a plan to become a hostess in a Nevada brothel. Two interspersed messages had a couple of moments of breathing and background noise that sounded like the kitchen at Sabatini's, followed by a click. One message was from Jillian, from earlier that day.

Her message said, "Hi Danny. I called the hospital and they said you were released yesterday. I tried your cellphone, but it's just going to voicemail. Call me? I just want to talk, OK?"

Jillian sounded uncharacteristically vulnerable and polite in the message, like she was trying on the ability to ask for something instead of demanding it. Despite his anger and conflicted feelings about everything that happened, he was glad to hear her voice. He sat on the couch in his towel, drinking his coffee until he cleared the cobwebs from his mind.

He called her and agreed to meet her at a diner a half mile away. She offered to pick him up, but he declined and walked there, not wanting to put Jillian in either the figurative or the literal driver's seat. He didn't know where his truck went after the accident, but didn't really want to drive that again either.

Jillian was already seated at the restaurant at a booth in the corner, a diet cola with a lime wedge in front of her, and a cup of coffee across from her. She saw him as soon as he opened the door and she waved and smiled. Danny nodded to her, suppressing both a smile and a grimace, and walked as casually as he could over to her. He noticed the cup of coffee at the empty place, and looked around the restaurant for Zeno.

"Who else is here?" Danny asked sternly, almost as much of the coffee cup as of Jillian.

Jillian frowned and shook her head, then softened and smiled. "No one is here, Danny. I ordered you a cup of coffee. It would still be hot if you had gotten here when you said you would. I mean... I'll get her over here for a new one," she said, sliding over to the edge of the booth to look for the waitress.

Danny touched her shoulder, and bobbled for a moment, unsure if he should kiss her hello. She was focused on finding the waitress, and didn't respond to his touch, so he slid into the open side of the booth, and kept his lips to himself.

"Don't worry about it," said Danny, "It's fine." He raised the cup to his lips and tasted the bitter and cool beverage. It was most certainly not fine, but he resolved to drink it quickly and get it over with.

"Danny, I've been thinking. It's time to make some changes. I've... I've made some mistakes. I'm going to start doing things differently. Better."

Danny forced down the substandard coffee, and twisted his sneer of revulsion into a pensive gaze. "OK," he said, not sure if she had more to say, or if that was the limit of the catharsis.

She continued, "I'm going to concentrate a lot on work for a while, especially with Arthur in the hospital and awaiting trial, the company needs me. It's a good opportunity for me to step up. Did you know that Arthur left instructions with Eliza that I should be in charge should he become incapacitated? It's a great honor."

"Yeah. Arthur," said Danny icily. "I'm sure it's well-earned."

Jillian glared at him, clenching her jaw, but then she dropped her shoulders and let her eyes fall to focus on the ice cubes circling the perimeter of her glass. "I told you. I made mistakes. I know that. But it's not like I killed anyone, is it? And it doesn't take anything away from the fact that I can do this on my own. I can. I'll be very good at it."

Danny considered the recent experience of wrestling Zeno to the ground while he shot two other people, and conceded with a morose nod that Jillian's argument had merit.

"I'm going to need you to step up in our relationship, Danny. I can't always be the adult for both of us. So I'm going to set up a schedule, and I want you to manage your..."

Danny interrupted her. "Jill, I just don't think we should be together right now. Not with everything that happened. But we shouldn't... we can't be together. Maybe someday, but we both have important stuff to work out first."

"Danny," she said quietly.

There was a long moment of silence while Jillian waited for Danny to share something about what he was feeling. Danny had nothing, and instead shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Finally, she asked, "Okay, maybe you're right. So do you still want a job at Zenorific? What do you want to do?"

Danny took a deep breath and told her.

"OK, I've actually got a Plan..."

Over the coming weeks, Danny's plan for Zenorific came into being. The company hired Oswald Kitchen and put him in charge of the most secret of the secret development groups, to further develop the mechanisms behind the Buckaroo phenomenon, and to analyze the actual function on the brain, with the hopes of restoring to consciousness both Roland and Zeno. Oswald fully recovered from his gunshot, and was glad to take up research again as a distraction from the high pressure world of semiprofessional competitive gardening. Danny secretly hoped that they'd be able to safely replicate the lucid and hallucinogenic dream experience again, thinking there could be licensing potential to theme park operators worldwide.

Zenorific bought a corporate submarine, and allocated a million dollars a year in operating budget to investigate the depths of the oceans, under the premise that there was more known about the moon's surface than the sea floor, and there could be great profit potential in the discoveries there. The research program would donate six months a year of submarine time to student and non-profit research programs, and when this program went public, inquirers found that the next ten years of research time were already booked to an unnamed recipient, one unexpectedly based in Cleveland.

Nelson was named the company's Chief Executive Gopher, and having found Zeno's Lotus impounded and unavailable, he requisitioned a new Hummer with a rampantly powerful stereo and a CD changer holding the entire works of Contusion Method, including several bootleg live concerts. He spent his weekends getting coffee and lunch for Zenorific employees, running errands and pulling his shirt off in public.

A scholarship program for exceptional employees was established, providing for the recipient full tuition and a generous room & board stipend for a four year college degree, as well as a sabbatical from their job at Zenorific during the academic year. Danny, being the only employee who applied for the program (and the only one who knew about it, besides Jillian), naturally was awarded the honor of the Arthur Zeno Undergraduate Fellowship. He declined to keep the pickup truck, and sold his giant television set to pay for a small and practical used car and a new mountain bike. He spent the rest of the summer bumming around the bike trails, waiting with trepidation and excitement for classes to begin.

Danny met Nelson up in a lakefront park on Labor Day before classes began, at a faded old shack that had sold watery lemonade and soft-serve ice cream for as long as anyone in town could remember. They got cones, and sat on the tailgate of Nelson's monster truck, with Danny's bike leaned against a tree nearby.

"So classes starting this week, huh Mohambo?" asked Nelson, slurring slightly over the cold numbness of his tongue.

"Yep."

"Gonna go to them this time? Stay in school, don't do drugs, all that goody-boy stuff?"

"Yeah. I think so," said Danny.

"Figure out your major yet?"

Danny licked his hand where a rivulet of chocolate was attempting a breakaway. He looked over his shoulder at the play of the setting sun on the lake.

Danny answer, "No, not for sure. Maybe business, but maybe I've had enough of business. I could think about marine biology. I do know of a submarine I could use. I'm just going to get back in the swing of things and and see where it takes me."

Nelson twisted his face as if he had just discovered that he was eating ice cream flavored with potting soil and coffee grounds, but it was distaste with Danny's statement that bothered him.

"Dude, after all this you went through, you're still just floating around your life like a giant friggin bumblebee? Oh look, a pretty flower. Wait, over there, a pretty flower. No, no, over there, a different pretty flower! Dude! You've got to get your act together man. I mean, just look at me for example. I got my act together. Got it all together, like bad friggin weather, and now this is my Hummer you're spilling ice cream on. A Hummer, dude! And after you sold your TV and gave your truck away to ride your little bicycle around. Really? Mohambo, what's the plan here?"

"Nelson," said Danny, turning back to face his unkempt friend, "I'm moving forward now, I know. Other than that, I plan to be surprised along the way."

