Inside Straight

  “And what do you think about that?”

  “That maybe we can never be special enough to be happy,” she said.

  Ooh, deep, Jonathan thought. But Fortune was nodding and smiling.

  “Can I tell you something? You have to promise not to pass it on,” Fortune said.

  Curveball raised her eyebrows.

  “I tried to get my power back. After… after what happened. I thought maybe I could get it back and control it. Since my dad … since Fortunato fixed me.”

  Curveball shook her head. Someone at the bar shrieked with laughter that sounded as fake as the ambiance. Curveball’s hands were on the table now. There were probably six or eight inches between Fortune’s hands and hers—flirting distance, maybe. Or maybe not. Jonathan was having a hard time getting a good read off the interaction.

  “I tried everything,” Fortune said. “Meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture. Rolfing.”

  “You’re kidding,” Curveball said with a laugh that managed to be warm and sympathetic.

  “Seems kind of stupid now,” Fortune said into his drink. Jonathan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the guy was blushing.

  “Maybe,” Curveball said. “I get it, though.”

  “I don’t care if John fucking Fortune gets his powers back!”

  On the couch at Losers Central, Jonathan felt a wave of vertigo, suddenly uncertain of where he was. Someone was talking about Fortune. And she sounded pissed off.

  He stood up, tucking the hand with the missing thumb into his pocket.

  “No!” the voice said again. A woman’s voice. “No, I’m not. They voted me off the show, Mom. I’m off. I’m stuck with all the other losers.”

  Jonathan walked to his doorway. Across the hall, Simoon’s door was ajar. He could just make out her sand-colored skin and black hair as she paced.

  “Yes, he’s here sometimes. But it’s not like…”

  A faint treble yammer, a voice on the other end of a telephone connection, buzzed like a mosquito. Jonathan came closer to the door.

  “I’m American, Mama. I was born in America. I’ve never been to Egypt. Egypt isn’t my problem. John Fortune isn’t my problem. I got kicked off the show, and now I’m rooming with the most annoying guy in the world, a Mexican wrestler with a fake accent, a guy who turns into bugs, and a girl who thinks roller derby never went out of style. My career is over. Peregrine already thinks I suck, I’m not going to try to get her son to—”

  The mosquito whined again. Simoon paused in the narrow strip. One hand held her cell phone to her ear. Her head bowed, and she sighed.

  “I’ll try, okay? If the occasion comes up, I’ll try—and don’t push me, Mother. Honest to God, if you give me any more shit about this, I won’t even talk to him.”

  The mosquito was much quieter.

  “You too,” Simoon said. “Give my love to Uncle Osiris.”

  The cell phone closed with a click, and Jonathan rapped gently on the door, swinging it open an inch in the process. Simoon looked up, her eyes round and surprised. Jonathan waved, hoping the gesture was appropriately friendly and not particularly stalkerlike.

  “Oh my God,” Simoon said, her brows furrowing with concern. “What happened to your thumb?”

  “Oh,” Jonathan said, sticking his hand back in his pocket. “It’s nothing. It just does that sometimes. Little bits of me kind of wander off. They’ll be back.”

  “Oh,” Simoon said, and Jonathan mentally removed her from the list of women who would ever, under any circumstances, consider sleeping with him.

  “I was just… I couldn’t help overhearing you, ah, shouting at your mother there.”

  Simoon sighed and sat on the edge of her bed. She looked smaller than he’d thought. “Sorry about that,” she said. “It’s this whole long thing.”

  “The camera guys are still watching Joe Twitch and Spasm fight it out,” Jonathan said. “You want to talk about it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Simoon said.

  “Egypt. John Fortune. Something that wasn’t your fucking problem?” Jonathan said.

  Simoon shook her head, paused, looked up at him.

  “Okay,” she said. “But just between us, okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Jonathan lied.

  “My mom’s a god. The wild card hit Egypt way back when, and a bunch of the people who got it wound up looking like the ancient gods. You know. Crocodile heads or lion bodies, that kind of thing. They called themselves the Living Gods. My mom’s Isis, or, you know, an Isis. There are several.”

  “She’s in Egypt?”

  “No. Vegas. A bunch of them emigrated and got jobs at the Luxor. My mom hooked up with Elvis when she got here, and here I am. Daughter of a god and the King, and still kicked off the show. But anyway, I have a lot of family back in Cairo. Cousins and stuff.”

  Jonathan moved slowly into the room and sat on the couch there. The bed would have seemed a little too familiar. “So how does John Fortune figure in?”

  “My uncle Osiris has this thing where he sees the future. Bits of it. They don’t even let him into the casino part of the hotel. Anyway, ever since the Twisted Fists killed the Caliph there’s been a lot of antijoker sentiment in the old neighborhoods. And Osiris told Mom that there’s some kind of amulet they gave Peregrine back in the ’80s, and that it’s time she got John Fortune to wear it.”

  “Ah,” Jonathan said. And then, “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s supposed to give him the powers of Ra, whatever that means. And that’s supposed to help things back in Egypt. I don’t know all the details, and Uncle Osiris really likes to play how he’s all mystical and wise and shit, so getting a straight story out of him is, like, good luck. It’s all destiny this and fate that. But Mom decided that I should tell John Fortune about the amulet. And now she’s giving me all kinds of shit about how I haven’t done it yet.” Simoon shrugged like it was obviously the worst idea in the world.

  “And you don’t want to because…?”

  “I came on the show to help my career. Get some exposure,” Simoon said. “If I go talking crazy shit like this to Peregrine’s kid, what kind of reputation do I get? And anyway, after what happened to him before, he probably doesn’t even want powers, you know?”

  “Have you ever tried Rolfing?” Jonathan asked.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Just gimme your phone for a minute.”

  “Why?” Simoon asked, suddenly suspicious. Late in the game for that, Jonathan thought.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  He dialed with his remaining thumb. The connection rang twice, then a click.

  “Hello?” Curveball said.

  “Hey,” Jonathan said. “Give him the phone.”

  There was a pause.

  “What are you talking about, Hive?”

  “I don’t know his phone number. I know yours from when we were all buddies and gosh-darn-it friends for life, so I’m calling you. Now slide the phone across the table, okay? I need to talk to him.”

  Simoon, jaw slack with horror and surprise, made a waving motion with both hands. Don’t do this. Jonathan gave her history’s least-successful thumbs-up.

  “Jonathan?” Fortune said at the other end of the line.

  “Hey,” Jonathan said. “I’m over at Losers Central with Simoon, and you need to get over here.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s a story you’ve seriously got to hear. And funny thing is, it’s all about you and how you get ace powers back.”

  There was a pause.

  “Is this a joke?” Fortune asked.

  “That’s the funny thing,” Jonathan said. “It really isn’t. Get over here as soon as you can.”

  He hung up before Fortune could say anything else, and tossed the cell back to Simoon. She didn’t look pleased.

  “Hey!” Blrr said from the doorway. “We’re going to make some popcorn and watch some TV. You guys want to come?”

  Simoo
n hesitated, her gaze shifting from Jonathan to Blrr and back.

  “Nah,” Simoon said. “Next time. Bugsy and I are in the middle of something.”

  Blrr looked mildly surprised.

  “Nothing like that,” Jonathan said.

  “Yeah, didn’t figure,” Blrr said, and vanished.

  “You shouldn’t have called him,” Simoon said. “That was supposed to be just between you and me.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Jonathan said with a grin. “You’ll thank me for this later.”

  Looking for Jetboy

  Michael Cassutt

  IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE a game. Reality TV, the teams segregated into separate headquarters, each location infested with cameras, with competition limited to challenges. Dramatic, yes. Tears and threats, sure. But it’s all staged.…

  Yet two hands appear on the railing of the deck of the Clubs Lair. Then two more, and two more after that, and Jamal Norwood knows that Drummer Boy is here, all seven and a half feet of tattooed attitude. Why?

  “It’s all part of the game, Stuntman.”

  “It’s against the rules.”

  “The only rule is, there are no rules.”

  Jamal, aka Stuntman, can take Drummer Boy—more precisely, can take whatever Drummer dishes—if he had any desire to endure bounceback so soon after the last American Hero challenge. Instead he tries to rise from the deck chair to retreat. But he is paralyzed, as if he has just slammed into concrete from a great height.

  Drummer Boy passes by, his footsteps heavy on the cedar deck.

  Then Jamal hears the buzzing, sees the greenish cloud in his peripheral vision. Hive is attacking, too. This must be some joke attack, some mystery challenge, Hearts against Clubs, with the Discards thrown in for good measure. Jamal tries to turn, to see the cameras, but is still frozen.

  Hive’s voice speaks from the cloud. “We’re not after you, Stuntman. We want him.” Weird; Jamal didn’t know Hive could talk in this mode.

  Jamal can already feel the fluttering at his back—Brave Hawk swooping overhead from behind, like a bird of prey.

  Or, rather, prey itself. Hive’s cloud envelopes him, forcing the winged Apache to flutter to a stop… long enough for Drummer to grab him with his upper arms, hold him fast with the middle pair, and start jabbing him with the lower. Brave Hawk struggles, but no one can stand up to a Drummer Boy solo, especially with Hive swarming and stinging. Jamal hears the crunch and crack of broken bones, the agonized groans. Why is this happening? Where are the goddamn producers?

  Miraculously, even though he is blinded by his own blood, his ribs visibly broken, Brave Hawk frees himself, unleashing a kick that staggers even the giant Drummer Boy. The winged Apache climbs up the railing of the deck, about to launch himself across the arroyo when he staggers and falls forward.

  A bloodied baseball rolls to Jamal’s chair. “Got him!” Curveball, the snot-nosed kid whose only talent is throwing things, smirks at the edge of the deck. “Hey, Stuntman, you used to play ball—catch this!” Curveball raises her arm, about to fire again. But Jamal can’t move! Curveball’s arm whips forward and the deadly ball fills his vision.

  “You’re going down, Stuntman.”

  Jamal blinks. There is no ball. No invasion by rogue members of Hearts. Just Brave Hawk standing to his left, his fake wings obscuring the sun rising over the Santa Monica Mountains.

  A stupid bounceback dream.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Jamal doesn’t like Brave Hawk. He would have enjoyed seeing him beaten up by Drummer Boy and Hive, his head crushed by a superhot Curveball missile.

  “Look at yourself. How long have you been out here?”

  “Since last night.”

  “When there’s a perfectly good bed inside. Bad sign, my friend.”

  Jamal could easily explain bounceback, the need for his body to thrash itself back into shape after being crushed by a safe that had become the object of an underwater tug-of-war between two aces. Not only would he have torn up the bed, he would have literally been bouncing off the walls. Tough on the room, even tougher on the rest of the Clubs who were trying to recover from their lackluster performance.

  No, it was better for Jamal Norwood to bounceback in the open, even if it meant chills, bug bites, and hallucinatory dreams.

  “What’s this?” Brave Hawk bends to pick up a paperback dropped next to Jamal’s chair. “Helter Skelter?” Clearly the Apache has never heard the title. “You’re sulking out here, killing time reading. Going. Down.”

  Jamal stands for the first time in hours. Stretches. It feels so good it’s almost orgasmic. “So let me go. Why do you care?”

  “A, I’m your teammate. So I need you.” One of the many things Jamal finds annoying about Brave Hawk is his tendency to state the obvious—and to break it into handy categories, as if his listeners were terminally stupid. “B, I have a proposal.”

  “A,” Jamal says, knowing Brave Hawk will miss the sarcasm, “our team is one bad challenge from being broken into spare parts. We are not competitive, so get used to it. And B, I can’t imagine what kind of proposal would interest me.” To make sure Brave Hawk notes his indifference, Jamal searches for the large drinking glass he left under the chair. Bounce-back always leaves him thirsty.

  “We need to team up.”

  There’s the glass. Empty.

  Now Jamal sees that the ever-present camera crew of three, led by crazy Art the producer, with silent Diaz the operator, has followed Brave Hawk onto the deck. All of them are yawning, resentful of the early call. “You guys need a beverage?”

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Art says, flapping his hands nervously. Jamal has already noted Art’s terror at any violation of the fourth wall—the entirely fictitious notion that these wild cards are really conspiring, flirting, or fighting together unobserved. “Just pretend we’re not here.”

  “Too late, Art,” Jamal says. But he turns back to Brave Hawk and tries to act. God knows he’s had practice. But now the brave Apache has everyone on hold while he talks on his cell phone.

  The Clubs Lair sits near the spine of Mulholland Drive, surrounded by dry pines and junipers that in this hot, dry season require nothing more than a discarded match and the kiss of the Santa Ana winds to explode into flame. It hasn’t happened here, yet some part of Los Angeles is on fire. Jamal can smell the smoke in the air. He coughs frequently. The pages of the paperback book blur as his eyes water.

  Bounceback complete, he could go back inside the house. But he would rather bear discomfort here on the hardwood deck than share space with the other Clubs at this moment—not to mention the camera crews.

  Besides, he is an L.A. native: the curves, drops, and hidden mansions of Mulholland are as familiar and comforting as well-worn sneakers. He knows, for example, that the A frame to the west belongs to a notorious Hollywood detective named after a dead musician. That the estate below him—its pool still shadowed by the hills—was where a former governor used to party with pool boys while publicly dating female rock stars.

  For all its rugged beauty, the setting is anything but peaceful: the smoke, the glare, the accumulation of irritants can make the most easygoing man turn violent.

  Brave Hawk finishes his call. “My girlfriend,” he announces, as if Jamal could possibly care. “She’s been reading everything and sees other alliances being formed. She says we need to team up, too.”

  “Wise up, Cochise. All this game strategy stuff is that asshole Berman doing some ’viral promotion.’” Michael Berman is the network executive for American Hero. Jamal has seen the Armani-clad dungeon master lurking at every audition, prep meeting, challenge announcement… seldom speaking, but clearly more in charge than the actual producers. “And what is ‘everything’? Is she seeing who’s going to win? What the next challenge is going to be? If your gal pal has that, let me know.”

  Brave Hawk is persistent. “You think because you work in Hollywood, you know everything, but you don’t, Stuntman. You
and I—” here Brave Hawk makes a completely fruity gesture of clasped hands “—we could be an awesome team!”

  Jamal sees a nugget of truth in this—at least in the concept of teaming up against the other Clubs. But with this creature who looks like a John Ford Indian with wings? “Why me? Did Holy Roller already turn you down?”

  This is all the encouragement Brave Hawk needs. He leaps up on the railing of the deck. “I never asked him! And it wouldn’t work—not as well as Stuntman and Brave Hawk. We’re two of a kind, man!”

  Whenever Jamal hears that kind of talk from Brave Hawk, the pleasant images of his evisceration reappear. “We’re both breathing. We both got talked into this project. I don’t see what else we have in common.”

  Voices behind him signal the emergence of Jade Blossom and Diver from the house, both indecently perky and girly at this hour—and dressed for a swim. Diver might as well not exist—Jamal only sees Jade, her eyes, the way she moves. Her mouth. He has become infatuated with her mouth, the way her lower lip slides forward whenever she is about to speak.

  Which she does, calling to Jamal, “What are you two doing over there? Scheming?” She and Diver start laughing, flirting with the camera team. It’s all a big joke. Nevertheless, Jamal wishes Jade would approach him. They would make a great team.

  “Think about it, Stuntman,” Brave Hawk says, insistently. “We’re both people of color…”

  Jamal almost laughs out loud. People of color? Jamal is dark enough and has always known he was tagged as “black,” but Brave Hawk? His wild card aside, Brave Hawk is no more ethnic in appearance than an Italian American. “And do what? Call ourselves The Red and the Black?” Jamal has read the novel; he knows without asking that Brave Hawk has never heard of Stendahl.

  In fact, Brave Hawk loves the phrase, jabbing his finger at Jamal like a fourth-grade teacher whose student just finished the multiplication tables. “That’s the idea. Make these producers and judges think twice before they vote us off.”