Bug rolled his eyes.
“Come on, no hard feelings?”
“You kidnapped my friend,” said Bug flatly. “You’re putting me in a cage.”
“It’s not a cage,” said Sweetcheeks. “It’s just a very tall room.”
“With bars.”
“It’s just for a little while, Sylvester. For your own good.” Sweetcheeks sighed. “I admire your determination, but you need to learn a little self-discipline. You’ve got to start being realistic. You can’t run around freeing all my prisoners. It’s not right.”
“You’re not right.”
“Negative, negative. You’re always so negative. That’s why we don’t get along.”
“Yeah,” said Bug. “That’s why.”
“Be that way,” said Sweetcheeks, turning to leave. Then stopped and turned back, blue eyes twinkling as if he’d just heard the funniest joke. “Here’s something you can do to kill some time. Look. Way up there. See that tiny light? That’s a window, oh, seven storeys up. Your girlfriend says you can fly. Why don’t you give it a shot?”
Bug punched the bars, and Sweetcheeks shook his head in wonder. “Sylvester, you’re my son. Whether you want to be or not. It’s time you accepted that.”
Bug said nothing.
“A Flying Grabowski,” Sweetcheeks said, chuckling. “Sounds like a circus act. You have to admit that it is funny.”
“Hilarious,” Bug said, rubbing his knuckles.
In exasperation, Sweetcheeks blew a lock of golden hair from his brow. “There’s no talking to you. Come on, John. Let’s find The Richest Man in the Universe. He owes me.” He wagged a finger at Bug. “I’ll see you later. I hope you can work out your priorities before I get back.” Then he and Odd John left Bug in his seven-storey jail all alone.
When his father was out of earshot, Bug punched the bars and then the walls a couple of times. He looked up at the tiny window, just a faint smudge of light at the top of the world, like a distant star. He had to get up there, he had to. There was no other way out.
He moved to the centre of the room, crouched and sprang. But he knew even as he went through the motions that he couldn’t do it. His head was a wrecking ball, his body a slab of stone and his feet rooted tree stumps. Wham! He hammered at the walls in frustration. Wham! Wham! Wham! It wasn’t fair. Why did he get a taste of the thing he wanted most in the world if he could never do it again, if he couldn’t do it when he needed to? He’d even tried to fly once in the bathroom of the Palace Hotel and couldn’t get his toes off the tiles.
You are my son whether you want to be or not.
Bug slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Who did he think he was? Some kind of hero? Even the name he called himself, Bug! Roach, bug, same thing. He never got away from his father, even when a monkey made him forget who he was.
Bug put his head in his hands. Gurl had reminded him that he did fly at least one time. But how in the world did he do that? He couldn’t figure it out. Was it the zoo, the dancing pretzel vendors, Noodle or even Gurl?
Or maybe, he thought, it was all of it. How that stuff crowded his head until he forgot that he was an orphan, forgot that he had a life before he was an orphan, forgot that he forgot.
Forgot that he forgot.
He sat up straighter. Could he do that all by himself? Forget his father, forget that he couldn’t fly, and then forget about forgetting?
Sure, genius. That’ll work.
He tugged at his fringe until it hurt. This was so stupid, like that dumb fairy tale with the girl trapped in the tower. Rapunzel. Yeah, that was it. Ole Rapunzel waiting for her prince. Except it wasn’t like that at all. He wasn’t good at waiting, he was good at doing. He could punch things and unlock things and find things and escape things, but he couldn’t sit here waiting for some lame prince in tights to come and rescue him (even if there had been a lame prince wandering around Chinatown looking for some bug boy to save).
Plink!
Startled, Bug got to his feet. “Uh…Dad?” he said, the word “dad” sour on his tongue. He walked over to the barred door. “Who’s there? Hello?”
“Hell. Oh,” said the rat man. His mouth, full of filed teeth, looked like a shark’s and he had something hidden underneath his trench coat.
Momentarily, Bug was overjoyed that he was behind bars, but he backed up a step, just in case Mr Ratface wanted to plunge an arm between them. “How did you get in here?”
“Heeeeeere.”
“Yes, you’re here. Don’t tell me that you’re my prince.”
“Prince?” the rat man said. “Hell. Oh.”
“Um, yeah. OK. What do you want?”
“Kitty!” the rat man said. He opened his trench coat to reveal Noodle, who yawned.
At least, thought Bug, it didn’t seem as if he wanted to hurt Noodle and it didn’t seem that Noodle was scared. “Yes, you’ve got the kitty. Good for you.”
“Kitty,” said the rat man, gently petting the cat. “Kittykittykitty.”
Noodle mewled and the rat man made a noise, somewhere between a growl and a moan. Then, reluctantly, he put the cat down on the ground. Noodle wound herself around the rat man’s legs before slipping through the bars in the door.
Bug reached down to pet the cat, who was now meowing in earnest. “What?” Bug said. “What is it?”
Noodle mewled and meowed and squeaked, plucking at Bug’s trouser leg with her claws until Bug sat down. The cat crawled up into his lap and began to purr.
“That’s it?” said Bug. “You wanted to take a nap?” He looked at the rat man, who was now observing them with the most sorrowful expression Bug had ever seen. “What’s going on?”
“Going,” said the rat man sadly.
“Okeydokey,” said Bug, scratching the dozing cat behind the ears. The cat kept purring and Bug kept scratching, and the more Bug scratched the more the cat purred. The purring got louder and louder until it drowned out all of Bug’s other thoughts, chased them out of his mind. Instead, odd questions without answers filled his head: If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around, does it make a sound?
“I don’t know,” murmured Bug. He closed his eyes, drawing the cat close. He began to feel sleepy himself, to feel like he was drifting off, drifting away, drifting up.
Up?
He opened his eyes and saw that he and Noodle were rising gently like a cloud on a warm breeze, and that the window in The Tower, the star at the top of the world, was getting closer. With the cat’s purr buzzing in his ears, Bug reached for the light.
Chapter 23
Supa Dupa Fly
MARDI GRAS, NEW YEAR’S EVE, Halloween, the Olympics. Put them all together and you still wouldn’t equal the sparkling city’s annual Flyfest.
Gurl had never been to the Flyfest before. Despite the fact that Sweetcheeks gripped her arm like a tourniquet, despite her anger over Bug and Noodle, despite the fact that she still wore a “modified” spaghetti strainer on her head (which she was positive looked ridiculous and she wasn’t wrong), she couldn’t help but be just a little bit excited. The avenues all around Central Park had been blocked off and costumed people—clowns, cows, cats, cuckoos—surged freely down the sidewalks, waiting for the opening parade. In the meantime, jugglers performed complicated tricks with flying squirrels, vendors sold parrot-sized crowns and pin-on propellers, and everyone drank hot cider and Kangaroo Kola (“Puts a little spring in your step!”™). The crisp autumn air pinkened cheeks, reddened noses, and made the crowd a warm and friendly place to be.
“Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me,” said Sweetcheeks, elbowing his way through the crowds. Though the festival itself had venues all around the park, the big event, the flying, would take place right in front of the art museum, on the steps to which the main stage had been set up for the judges. Rows of seats flanked both sides of the museum steps, and Sweetcheeks approached a group of college boys sitting nearest to them. “Are these seats taken?”
One of the
boys, a beefy lunk with piggy eyes said, “We’re sitting in them, aren’t we?”
“Not for long,” said Sweetcheeks, ever so sweetly. With that, Odd John stepped in front of the college boys, snipping his shiny scissors and grinning with his baby teeth. For good measure, he reached up and flicked the silver tab on his zipper head.
Mr Beefy went grey. “We were just leaving,” he said, shoving his friends out of the way.
“Oh, thank you!” said Sweetcheeks. He smiled as they scurried off. “That was awfully nice of them.”
“Awfully,” said Gurl.
Sweetcheeks sat, pulling Gurl down into the seat next to him. He had John stay close but waved the rest of his men off. He pulled some Twinkies from his pocket and offered them to Gurl. She didn’t want to take the snack cakes, but she was too hungry to resist. She ripped open the package and stuffed one into her mouth.
“Would you like a Kangaroo Kola to go with your Twinkies?” Sweetcheeks asked.
“No.”
“A pin-on propeller?”
“No.”
“How about some Weightless Water?”
“It doesn’t work on leadfeet,” said Gurl irritably.
“I know,” said Sweetcheeks. “But we can pretend.”
“I don’t want to pretend,” said Gurl. “Why are we here?”
Sweetcheeks rubbed his fingertips along his smooth jawline. “We’re waiting for someone. In the mean time, we are going to enjoy the parade. Oh, look! I can see the first float coming!”
The jugglers stopped juggling, the vendors stopped vending and the costumed crowd gasped. The first float was shaped like a wedding cake, except it was made entirely of the whitest doves whose feet had been affixed—painlessly and not permanently—to the surface of the float. The doves’ beating wings carried the float slowly down the street while people dressed in sequined tuxedos walked alongside the float and made sure the whole thing didn’t just fly off.
“Isn’t that amazing!” said Sweetcheeks.
“Yes,” said Gurl, forgetting for the moment why she was there and whom she was with. “What do you think will be next?”
Sweetcheeks’ eyes sparkled. “I have no idea! Maybe some invisible dancing girls?”
“I don’t like you,” said Gurl. “You’re a horrible person.”
“Yes. But I do work at it.”
After the dove wedding cake came an enormous bat balloon, followed by a balloon in the shape of a winged fairy. The bumblebee, the oldest balloon float in the parade, drifted by, his canvas hide covered with sad but somehow dignified patches.
The sounds of drums filled the air and someone shouted “The Mynahs! The Mynahs are coming!” The Mynah Bird Choir, lined up in shiny black rows on a float of red roses, started to sing. First came a solemn and eerily beautiful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. But as they passed the rows of seats, the music suddenly blared into a pounding rhythm you could feel in your feet. The crowd screamed and clapped as the Mynahs rapped to “Supa Dupa Fly”.
As The Mynahs’ music faded, the aerobats came into view. Their float was a long, simple platform with a spring from which they would launch themselves two storeys into the air, twirling and twisting in backbreaking positions before landing in the arms of one of their comrades. With each launch, the crowd oohed and ahhed in a weird sort of unison.
“Now,” said Sweetcheeks, “comes the really good part.”
Somewhere behind them, someone began to chant: “Wings, Wings, Wings, Wings, Wings!” Soon everyone in the stands and packing the sidewalks had joined in, clapping their hands and stomping their feet. Gurl herself felt swept away by it and found herself mouthing the word too.
“There they are!” breathed Sweetcheeks.
Flying in a straight line, in a standing position, one hundred of the city’s best Wings filed into the competition area. Each of them wore a flight suit, a fluorescent unitard with a hood, designed to cut down on wind resistance (and to make them look an awful lot like superheroes). They broke into two lines, stretching their bodies flat so that they were parallel to the ground. Still moving rather slowly, they arranged themselves into a V-formation, like a flock of brightly coloured birds.
“They’re not moving very fast,” said Gurl. “Bug could fly faster than that.”
“Bug? Oh! You mean Sylvester? Sylvester couldn’t fly if his life depended on it.”
Gurl tucked her hands inside her sweatshirt and felt for the little monkey that Bug had given her. She wondered if it was the only thing she had left of Bug, if she would ever see him or Noodle again.
The Wings changed formations again, from a V to a circle. They flew around and around and around, speeding up, until watching them was like watching the spin cycle on a washing machine.
“Whoa,” said Gurl.
“I told you that this was the best part,” Sweetcheeks said.
The Wings spiralled upwards in a cyclone, stirring a fierce wind that whipped everyone’s hair and stung their eyes. Up and up and up they went, two storeys, three storeys, four, five, ten! The crowd held a collective breath as the Wings soared higher and higher and then, suddenly, one of them, the lead, dived for the ground. This Wing hurled himself at the earth as if intent on pasting himself to the tarmac below.
“He’s going to crash!” cried Gurl.
“Watch,” Sweetcheeks told her.
Just as it looked like he was surely going to hit the ground, the Wing stopped, his fingertips a mere foot from the pavement. The crowd erupted in a roar that could be heard around the city as the rest of the Wings fell, all of them stopping short just feet away from their own dooms, all of them holding themselves vertical like quills in inkwells. Then they flipped to their feet and bowed.
“Wasn’t that amazing!” the speakers boomed and the crowd looked up to the main stage, where the mayor, Igor “lggy” Fleishman, stood in front of the microphone. “Fabulous work!” He waited until the clapping and stomping and screaming died down and said. “Now, for those of you who don’t know me by sight, my name is Iggy Fleishman and I’m the mayor of this incredible city!”
The crowd erupted in waves of applause again, not for their mayor really, but because they were giddy from the show and overcaffeinated on Kangaroo Kola.
“While our Wings take a little rest,” the mayor continued, “I want to introduce the rest of our illustrious judges. Now you know our first judge as Major Wendell Wingburn in the hit movie epic Wingworld. Let’s give a hand to actor Peter Paul Allen.” A dark-haired man with a scraggly goatee and artfully dirty hair walked on to the stage, waving at the audience.
“What do you know? I always thought he’d be taller,” said Sweetcheeks.
“Thanks for coming, Peter Paul,” said Mayor Fleishman as the actor sat down. “Our next judge should be no surprise. A champion Wing, he won the Golden Eagle three times, in 1991, 1992 and 1993. He remains the world record holder for fastest Wing sprint. I’m thrilled to introduce Nathan Johnson!” Nathan, a slim man with close-cropped curls and deep brown skin, flew from a second-storey window of a nearby building to the stage, much to the delight of the crowd.
“Glad to have you here, glad to have you,” said the mayor, shaking his hand. Nathan grinned, his white teeth blinding (which was not surprising since Nathan Johnson was the official spokesman for Mega Blast® Tooth Gel).
“Our third judge is also no stranger to you all. She’s a singer, actress, model and entrepreneur. You probably hear her tunes on the radio every day, and maybe you dance to them wearing clothes from her brand-new clothing line: Poison! Let’s bring out pop sensation Rosy B.!” Girls in the audience screamed and wailed as Rosy B., wearing her own leopard-print, hoodless version of the flight suit, posed for the cameras, flipping her honey-coloured hair and looking off into the distance, as if she found all this attention rather boring.
“Last,” said the mayor, “but certainly not least, I’d like to bring out a couple whose support makes this yearly event possible. Please give a war
m round of applause for Sol and Bunny Bloomington, The Richest Couple in the Universe!”
Again the crowd whooped and hollered. A man, greyhaired and plain, guided a thin, exceedingly pale woman on to the stage. Both wore casual but expensive clothes and smiled at the audience, but Gurl thought that they looked distracted somehow, maybe even a little sad. She remembered what Bug had said the day they saw the rich man in his penthouse: “Rich people aren’t sad. They’re rich!” But that man had looked sad and this one looked sad too.
Gurl squinted. Actually, now that she thought about it, they looked an awful lot like the same man.
Sweetcheeks watched her reaction carefully. “So, do you recognise him?”
“No,” said Gurl. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? You should.”
“Why? Because he’s The Richest Man in the Universe?”
“No, silly,” said Sweetcheeks, patting her on her absurd spaghetti strainer helmet. “Because he’s your father.”
Chapter 24
The Big Fat Hairy Fib
FIRST GURL WAS SPEECHLESS. AND then she wasn’t.
“What?” she shrieked.
“It’s true,” said Sweetcheeks. “Sol and Bunny Bloomington are your parents.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Yes.”
“About this?”
“Yes.”
Sweetcheeks had the nerve to look indignant. “Well, this time I’m not lying. Just look at them up there. Look at Bunny Bloomington. Tell me that you don’t see yourself.”
Gurl looked at them up there. At the kind but worn face of Sol Bloomington, at the dishwater blonde hair and pale eyes of Bunny. She thought about how the man pounded at the window when he’d seen her and Bug hovering outside. Like he’d recognised her.
“It’s true?” she said. “Really true?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
“I don’t understand,” Gurl mumbled.