Victory!

I made it.  Over a total of twenty-three days, at an average words-per-day of 2,181,  I caught up to the National Novel Writing Month schedule, passed it, and came out a winner!

I could say that I'm a little excited.  Ammie's congenial competitiveness was a huge help in getting there, not to mention the few others of you who have been waiting for the next section.  Now I can take a week or two off.

Sorry.  That was rude of me to even joke about that.  Don't worry: I'll continue shooting for at least 1,600 words-per-day until we get to the end of this story.  We're getting close, but I have to find out if I'm as good at sorting out Fat Tony's life as I've been so far at messing it up.  I'm really enjoying the process, and thank you for all your comments.

Also, tell your friends!  The more people who care about Fat Tony, the more chance we'll have of someday seeing the book in print.  Follow the blog and share the wealth!

Intermission

"What do you think of the book so far?" I asked.

"Not bad," said The Dog. "It reminds me of War and Peace."

"How is that?"

"Because we're nearly one-hundred-fifty pages into the book and nothing has happened."

"What do you mean, Dog?"

"The hero is Fat Tony, right? What has he done so far? He made a bunny look like another bunny. How is that exciting?"

I held up my hands. "He did go on a date. Doesn't that count as exciting?"

The Dog rolled his eyes. "Okay, that was decent. But by this point in our book, we had stopped thirteen wizards, stolen a piano, also gone on a date, and kept Morgan from kicking you in the shins. I call that exciting."

"Dog, are you...jealous?"

"Of what?"

"Well, because Andrew's not writing the next book about us."

"Maybe," said The Dog, "but seriously! Our next book has a monkey! Are there any monkeys in Fat Tony?"

"There's a Jane Goodall reference. That's got to count for something."

"A monkey, Pete. A real, genuine monkey."

"Is this a moment where we agree to disagree?"

"Fine," said The Dog, "but you're wrong."

Go back and reread the end of Sixteen.

If you read section sixteen before 12:10 MST, go back and reread the end before you move on to section seventeen.  Otherwise you might miss some important stuff.

More coming on Saturday (Today)

The story caught me off guard.  Suddenly, another woman shows up (Yeah!  I know!) and I'm left reeling.  So, rather than try to rush that section (which also has some importance to the rest of the plot, including a better understanding of exactly what happened five years ago with the Nogales Crisis), I decided to keep writing but not try to rush the section.

Of course, that meant that I didn't post a Friday section.  I apologize.  Also, introducing another possible love interest for Fat Tony also doesn't seem fair.  I'd apologize for that, but I don't feel like that one was entirely my fault.  I blame my sister-in-law, Ammie.  She's the one who's writing so many words that it's putting pressure on me!  I can't concentrate!  Plots change!  Women throw themselves at Fat Tony!

The world is so upside down.

Fat Tony -- Section Thirteen

    By the time Douglas dropped him a block from his home—no sense getting yourself observed by the FBI if there were no good reason, said Doug—Fat Tony was tired.  Bone tired.  What was deeper than bone?  Marrow tired.  Appendix tired, because the appendix doesn’t actually do anything, so for his appendix to be tired, Tony figured he must be really and truly exhausted.  He carried the forgotten geranium in his left hand and used his right to wave at the car he thought was most likely to hold his new FBI escort.  If he had an escort.  He wasn’t sure he cared at that particular moment. 
    True to their word, Roger and Grandma had left Fat Tony’s car parked in his space.  An earlier text from Grandma led him to the keys in the mailbox, and the fog in Fat Tony’s head led him into a daydream of the hours it must have taken her to learn to text.  Why does it keep finishing my words for me?  Do they think I’m so stupid that I don’t know what I want to say?  Or do they assume that I’m lazy?  Soon they’ll do the whole message for us, then before we know it, Samsung is ruling the world and we’re all speaking South Korean.  Is that different from North Korean?
    Fat Tony shut down the daydream with an effort of pure will and forced himself up the steps to his apartment.  Between his meeting with Mr. Robinson, worrying about Grandma, going on a date, and juicing up a stuffed bunny, it had been a full day.  Then, add to that the conversation with Sarah, if you could call it a conversation, not that he was thinking about it, because that was clearly beyond repair and thinking about it would make him even more tired, so he certainly wasn’t going to be doing any of aforementioned thinking about that conversation that rated as number one on his ‘Worst Romantic Discussions Ever’ list and in the top five of ‘Worst Discussions on Any Topic,’ but if you added that conversation to the day, it was more than full.  Not that he was adding it in.  Because he wasn’t thinking about it.
    He got his keys into the lock and leaned his head against the door.  Stupid, he thought to himself.  I am the king of stupid.  He banged his forehead against the door a time or three for emphasis.
    “Who is it?” called a voice from inside.
    Fat Tony rocked back and checked the number on the door.  No, he hadn’t found the wrong apartment, and his mind processed the sound of the voice.
    “Impossible,” he said.  “There’s no way he’s sitting in my apartment.  Not today.”
    He reached out and turned the knob.  The door was unlocked and swung open.
    “Fat Tony!” said Flap Jack.  “We wondered when you’d make it back, and honestly, I’m surprised, because I thought you’d have to get one of those apartments with extra-wide doors, like for people in wheelchairs and things like that.  Are there apartments with big doors?  I guess I’ve never seen one, but I assumed there would be one like that, and you’d be in it, but hey!  We all make mistakes, don’t we?  How have you been, big guy?”
    Fat Tony stared.  There, on his couch, was Flap Jack, holding one of Tony’s bottles of water, sharing the space with a twenty-something man so emaciated Fat Tony had to stop himself from rushing out to get the kid an I.V. drip in a (probably futile) attempt to keep him alive.  The skinny guy was stuffing down a meatball sub with speed that both impressed Fat Tony and inspired a very rational fear for the safety of his couch.  The thickness of the glasses on the man threatened to tip him over and made him look like a goldfish.
    “Flap Jack,” said Tony.  “I’m exhausted, and somehow I have an anorexic goldfish in my apartment.  Can you explain?”
    “Hah!  ‘Explain?’  You always kill me, Fat Tony.  This is Patrick, he’s a buddy of mine, and today he comes to me saying, ‘Flap Jack, you are the one man in this world I can count on.’  So I said to him, ‘Reliability is my middle name,’ which was funny, because I don’t have a middle name, though I don’t think that was really fair of my parents to do that to me.  Do you have a middle name, Tony?  Of course you do.  Without a middle one, you wouldn’t have enough name to cover you, and your parents wouldn’t do that, because I’m sure they’re like you: can’t leave a person in distress.  Which is why we’re here.  Patrick says to me, ‘I’ve got some bad people after me, and it has to do with magic,’ and I said, ‘I’ve heard rumors that one of my best pals’—do people still say ‘pal?’; I should change it to ‘homey’—‘one of my best homeys knows something of the mystical arts of illusion and prestidigitation, and I’d be glad to hook you up with him.’  So here we are.  I hope you don’t mind that I raided your fridge, though you are seriously lacking in the beverage department—wait, you don’t drink, that’s right.  Don’t have to tell me ten times.  Patrick had to bring his own food, though, because the way he eats, I think he is the great unknown cause of world hunger.  So you mind if we hang out here?”
    Fat Tony looked at Flap Jack, then looked at Patrick, who had stopped shoving the sandwich down his throat whole and had reconnected his jaw bone long enough to smile hopefully at the only person in the apartment who actually belonged in the apartment, who had a bed in the apartment, and who wanted to further develop the long and personal relationship with that bed that he had begun two years ago when he found it at steep discount in a going-out-of-business sale.
    Fat Tony closed the door behind him and put the flower pot on the island that divided the kitchen from the rest of the apartment.
    “Hey!  A flower!  Did you buy that for Sarah?  I bet she liked it.  She seemed like the kind of girl who likes flowers, and since you bought her a flower, I bet it went over really well.  Did you get all cuddly with her?  Run your fingers through her hair?  That could take all day, right there.  Get it?  Take all day to run your fingers through her hair because, let’s be honest, she has plenty of hair.  She’s like the Warren Buffet of hair.  I would have said ‘the Donald Trump of hair,’ but I think Donald Trump is already the Donald Trump of hair.  So how did it go?  Was that a sigh?  A good sigh or a bad sigh?  You gotta help me out here, F.T., because sometimes I don’t pick up on all the clues that people give in social situations.  I think that’s why I have so many friends.  You want to shake hands?  Oh, you’re pulling me up.  Thanks, big guy.  I was a little tired of sitting.  You thought of getting a new couch?  Oh, I get it.  You’re opening the door because you want me to go.  See, I do get some clues.  Like once, I was hanging out at a friend’s house, and for almost an hour he’d been telling me how tired he was, and finally it clicked, and I said, ‘Dude, if you wanted some of my coffee, you just had to say so.’  I’ll catch you later, Patrick!  Don’t be any stranger than you are.”
    Fat Tony closed the door behind Flap Jack and locked it.  He went to the fridge and stared into it.  What he really wanted was the coconut curry he hadn’t had time to finish, but that was a ship that had sailed, carrying the coconuts with it.  Instead he settled on an organic protein shake that he poured into a glass with plenty of ice.  He was shoving things around the cupboard looking for rice cakes—the plain ones; he’d once branched out to ‘white cheddar’ and regretted the aftertaste for hours—when Patrick spoke up.
    “Sorry for barging in like this,” said the goldfish.
    Fat Tony found the rice cakes, pulled them out and sat down at his small table.  His apartment wasn’t furnished for entertaining.  He never invited people over, and he hadn’t thought to buy furniture on the off chance that someone would break into his place in the middle of the night and want a place to have a snack.  He bit into a cake.  It was mild and gently crunchy, and he liked it.  The chocolate of the shake gave him all the flavor he wanted at the moment.
    “I know it’s an imposition,” said Patrick, “but I didn’t know where to go, and Flap Jack said you knew something about magic, and, well, one look at you and it’s pretty clear you do.”
    Fat Tony ate in silence, looking at the table in front of him.
    Patrick tried again.  “I’m not a bad guy, you know.  I didn’t kill anybody, or anything like that.  I work with animals.  I’m kind of an animal breeder.  I used to work with the government trying to magic up some mice.  It was an anti-terrorism thing, you know?  I mean, I probably shouldn’t even tell you that much, but I just want you to know that I don’t work for the bad guys.  At least, I try not to.”
    “The government fired you?” asked Tony.
    “Maybe.  Kind of.  A little bit.”
    “And then you got a job doing some breeding for someone who wasn’t as concerned about nit-picky details like whether what you were doing was ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.’
    “They’re not bad people!  It was a couple of old guys, old enough to have grownup grandkids, and they weren’t breeding killer dogs or toxic roaches, or anything like that.”
    “Thank you for bringing up roaches while I’m eating.”
    “Sorry,” said Patrick.  “All they wanted was to get pets for people.  That’s not a bad thing, right?”
    “Pets,” said Fat Tony.
    “Sure.  Cute ones.  Really cute.  You’d probably want to buy one.”
    “Cute pets,” said Fat Tony.
    “Absolutely.  We were going to strike it rich.  Almost had all the kinks worked out, too.”
    “This isn’t real,” said Tony, putting down his rice cake and looking at Patrick.  “You were breeding Livingstone’s Cottontails.”
    “How did you know?”
    “You worked for my grandfather.”
    “Oh,” said Patrick, and he swallowed, a very remarkable motion in his skinny neck.
    “And by ‘almost had the kinks worked out,’ you mean that you hadn’t figured out how to keep them from causing destruction wherever they land.”
    “We were making progress!” said Patrick.  “We’d reduced magical emissions by sixty-three percent, while at the same time increasing the breeding rate of those little guys from forty-years to four months!  There hasn’t been a breakthrough like this in magical animal breeding for decades.”
    “You ruined my date,” said Fat Tony.
    “Excuse me?” said Patrick, his eyes very wide through the lenses of his glasses.
    “Never mind,” said Tony, looking down at the remains of his rice cake.  He started breaking it off, grain by grain.  “So who’s after you?”
    “It was that Mr. Robinson’s guys.  We’d kept our breeding facility a secret for lots of reasons, but somehow they tracked it down.  This afternoon they show up knocking on the door looking serious, and two minutes on the intercom was all it took to convince me that I didn’t want to go with them.  So I slipped out the back way and went looking for help.”
    “It’s a truck, isn’t it?” asked Fat Tony.
    “How did you know?”
    “You’ve been parking it different places, all around the city, to minimize the leakage in any one place and to keep from being found.”
    “Did your Grandma tell you?”
    “Nope.  Someone noticed.  Did the FBI show up before Mr. Robinson’s employees?”
    “How did you know that?”
    Fat Tony stared at him, and Patrick swallowed again.
    “Sure, they came, but they didn’t have a warrant, and I didn’t have the Cottontails with me anymore, so I didn’t worry about it.”
    “Last question before I decide if I help you, and I’m warning you, I had better get a straight answer, because if I double-check this later, and I find you were trying to cover your own behind on this, I’ll take that behind and hand it over to Mr. Robinson myself with a bow tied around it that will look so pretty it will put Martha Stewart to shame.  She’ll probably quit her show and move to India, that’s how nice that bow will be.  Are we clear?”
    “Very clear,” said Patrick.
    “Did you tell my grandmother and Roger that you had the magical emissions fixed?”
    Patrick swallowed again, then nodded.  “I said I had it worked out.  I didn’t think it would cause any problems, and it would all be better within three generations anyway.  We were out of funding, and we needed a sale, and they didn’t have any idea that we weren’t quite there yet.  So we sold Buttons to Mr. Robinson, and used most of the money to—”
    “You did what?!”  Fat Tony was surprised at the volume of his own voice, and the fact that he was half standing.  He sat back down, reminding himself that he was deeply, truly tired, and lowered his voice.  “Mr. Robinson bought Buttons?”
    “We only realized how quickly the magic built up after the sale, so we told Mr. Robinson we needed Buttons for a checkup and whisked him away with the others.”
    “You did give him the money back, right?”
    “We didn’t have it!  I’d already spent lots of it on a new machine, but we were going to make it right.  We told him we’d pay him back, but he didn’t take it well.  That little man really has a thing for Buttons.  He’s practically obsessed.  Where are you going?”
    “Bed.  You can sleep on the couch.  ‘Night.”
    “But what are we going to do about Mr. Robinson?”
    “Tonight?  Nothing.  If they manage to find you and get into my apartment to get at you, they’re welcome to you.  You’re not in my ‘Top Ten’ at the moment, but after I’ve had some sleep I may elevate you from ‘the idiot who got my grandmother involved with gangsters’ to ‘subhuman that I’m willing to help even though he’s an idiot who got my grandmother involved with gangsters.”
    “But,” Patrick objected, “I didn’t get her involved.”
    “Excuse me?” said Fat Tony.  “Did I somehow give you the impression that I was rational at this moment?  Did I do anything that would indicate to you that I cared about the truth?  Tomorrow morning I may be able to look at you without longing to shove you into a cactus, but right at this moment I’m willing to blame you for everything, from global warming to the Kennedy assassination.  So do you want to continue this conversation tonight, or do you want to let me get to my bed?”
    “Sleep well,” said Patrick.  “The couch will be perfect.”
    “You’re smarter than you look,” said Tony.

Who is visiting this blog?

We've had hits from unusual places.  One from the Philippines was looking for something about sleep deprivation, and that Google search brought them here.  I've also had a solicitation for an ad from a dog website--which, I think, was actually a phishing scam.

But the funniest hit yet was a Google search in Korea.  The search term?  "Brugles bagel."

That's right.  If you run a search on Google for "brugles bagel," this blog is the number one result!  It's a small kind of fame, but it's ours, and we couldn't have done it without your help.  Thanks for reading, and look forward to more Fat Tony later today.

Fat Tony -- Section Twelve

[Quick Update -- The Spring Child tied for first at the TusCon short story contest, and I've got a Barnes & Noble gift card to prove it!  Very nice people at the convention and the other stories sounded very interesting, too.  If they are posted online, I'll put a link to them.  Until then, enjoy more of Fat Tony.]

    Fat Tony found a bench and sat.  He sat for a while, and while he sat, two thought ran through his head.  The first was, I did it for Grandma, and the second was, Why did I do it for Grandma?  Why was she involved with the stupid rabbits anyway?  For money?  Possible, but Grandpa hadn’t left any debts that Fat Tony knew about, and Grandma owned the house free and clear.  For Roger?  That was believable, he supposed.  People do stupid things for love—like growing beards that make them look like refugees, or selling their collections of classic horror stories to pay for ‘friendship’ rings, or helping their grandmothers escape from the FBI—to pick a few examples at random.  So it was believable, but it didn’t seem likely.  Tony hadn’t noticed any romantic overtones, harmonies, or lilting melodies around Grandma and Roger.  Though, come to think of it, he didn’t know what new romance would look like in someone over sixty-five.  Maybe that was passionate love.
    Was there any way to fix things with Sarah?  This side of turning in his own grandmother, that is.  Probably not.  Flowers don’t fix everything.  Actually, in his experience, flowers had never fixed anything.  He did suspect that, the few times he’d thought to start using flowers, he’d started too late.  The little Dutch boy had so much success in keeping the dike from collapsing because he got his finger in the hole early.  When the dike is already in pieces, holding up your finger just means your finger is the first part to get wet.
    Unexpectedly, Mr. Robinson’s ape sat down next to Fat Tony.  If Tony hadn’t already been feeling on the dark side of bleak he might have been surprised.  As it was he simply nodded while, between the two of them, they dwarfed the bench.
    “Dude, I’m sorry,” said the bodyguard.
    “You saw that?”
    “It was rough.  My girlfriend broke up with me last week, so I know what you’re going through.  She was convinced I was seeing another woman.”
    “Were you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That might have been why she was convinced.”
    “You have a point.”
    “I see to the heart of things, it’s true.”
    “So why did the other woman dump me, too?”
    “Both of them?”
    “Within twenty-four hours.”
    “Maybe you do know what I’m going through.”
    “That’s why I have—what’s the word?—empathy.  I have empathy for your situation.”
    “For me,” said Fat Tony.
    “What?”
    “You have empathy for people, not for situations.  Situations don’t have feelings.”
    “Are you making fun of me?”
    “Absolutely not,” said Fat Tony.  “I’m far too tired to make fun of anyone.  I’m just pedantic sometimes.”  When the bodyguard’s face darkened, Tony hurried to add, “It means I pay too much attention to dumb details.  I really wasn’t trying to mock.”
    “Good.  I asked, because I’m trying to be nice here, even though I figured out that ‘Dr. Goodall’ joke you threw at me.”
    “Ah.  Sorry about that.  I was feeling nervous, going to Mr. Robinson’s home.  He’s an impressive man.”
    “Don’t sweat it,” said the ape.  “You’re under a lot of pressure.”
    “More than I signed up for,” said Tony.
    “I’m Douglas, by the way.”
    “Fat Tony.”
    They shook hands.
    “Do you need another minute?” asked Douglas.
    “Another minute before what?”
    “Before you talk with Mr. Robinson.”
    “He’s here?”  Fat Tony sat up and looked around.
    “Nah, we’re going to call him on my phone, but we can wait until you’re ready.  You’ve been through a lot tonight, I can tell, and Mr. Robinson isn’t in a rush.  You can take some time to pull your thoughts together.”
    “How did you find me here?”
    “Besides following you everywhere you went?”
    “I suppose that works,” said Fat Tony.
    “Usually,” said Douglas.  “You decided yet?”
    “Decided what?”
    “If you need another minute.”
    “I think I already took one.  Give him a call.”
    Douglas nodded and used quick-dial.  A short exchange over the phone and then Fat Tony was holding it.
    “Mr. Robinson?”
    “Fat Tony!  I heard there was some difficulty for you tonight.  Something involving the FBI.”
    “It worked out all right.”
    “Of course it did, Tony!  Of course it did.  You’re all smart people, so I’m sure all the products are still safe and your grandmother is in the clear.  Am I right?”
    “Grandma’s fine.  So is Buttons.”
    Fat Tony thought he heard tension in Mr. Robinson’s voice.  “She had Buttons with her?”
    “I couldn’t tell you the difference between Buttons and Bootsy and Betty Boop, but she said she had Buttons and I don’t think she was in a lying mood.  Except to the FBI.”
    “I’d like to see Buttons again,” said Mr. Robinson, and Fat Tony realized the tension was longing.  Mr. Robinson had feelings for the Cottontail!
    “You liked Buttons?” he asked.
    “That Cottontail was…special,” said Mr. Robinson.  “Which, however, is beside the point entirely.”
    No, thought Fat Tony, that’s so much on top of the point, there’s no way you’re sitting comfortably.  All that talk about rich people needing something to love—you didn’t make that up out of thin air, did you, Mr. Robinson?
    “The real point,” continued Mr. Robinson, “is that your grandmother is having difficulties with law enforcement.  This is an area where I might be able to help.”
    “How exactly could you help?” asked Tony.
    “We don’t need to go into details.  Let’s just say that I have ways to move things along.  You know the highway construction between Prince and…well, the downtown area.  You know it?”
    Fat Tony was stumped.  He was willing to admit, even to others, that he was a man of tangents.  He used them in conversations, he relished them in literature.  They were the seasoning that turned the boring gravy of life into something zesty that you shared with your friends and put on your toasted sandwiches.  But Mr. Robinson—just at this moment, mind you—Mr. Robinson had him beat.
    “Yes,” he said, finally.  “I know the construction.”
    “When you’re building a road, Fat Tony, there’s so much that goes into it all: the proper foundation, quality materials, and the heat of the blacktop.  Almost a refiner’s fire, if you will.”
    “I’m with you,” said Tony, “but I’m not with you.”
    “The point is, after all this, there is still one critical element: the roller.  The massive juggernaut of steel that crushes all obstacles and leaves behind it a smooth road.  Shall I explain my analogy?  Your grandmother and her partner have laid an excellent foundation, the product is, without a doubt, of the highest quality, but on the road to a successful business and a contented future filled with wealth enough to give avarice a stomach ache—on that road, we’re finding some irregularities.  ‘Bumps’ might be a cliché word to use here, but a good one.  We’re finding ‘bumps’ along the way, and I’m the roller that can smooth them away.  Let me help you, Tony.  Let me flatten down the bumps.”
    “I’m…flattered at the attention, Mr. Robinson.”  Fat Tony hoped his complete lack of sincerity didn’t travel well across phone lines.  “I’m trying to talk with Grandma, but to be honest, I’m still having to figure out things for myself, here.  Once I have a better grasp of what’s going on, I’ll be sure to get in touch.”
    “Please hurry, Fat Tony.  This deal is important to me—very important—and I don’t want to have to take any drastic action.  It’s not every day that a businessman of my make and model has an opportunity to hold a dream in his hands.  I have held that dream, and, to be beyond frank with you, that dream is hard to let go.”  Mr. Robinson’s voice trailed away, and Fat Tony could almost imagine the little man shaking himself.  “This is a financial opportunity that comes once in a lifetime.  It’s time for you and your grandmother to take off the training wheels and step up to the plate.”
    Fat Tony wasn’t even going to touch that mixed metaphor.
    “I’ll do my best,” he said, and with a pair of goodbyes, they hung up.
    “Thanks,” said Tony, handing the phone back to Douglas.
    “Not a problem.  You know, my boss isn’t such a bad guy.”
    “Really?”
    “He acts like he’s tough, but inside he’s one of those marshmallow birds.”
    “Peeps?”
    “Exactly.  Those things.  Soft, pink, and kind of sparkly.”
    “Actually, I thought he acted more like a salesman.”
    “Right,” said Douglas.  “He acts like a salesman who’s really a tough guy, but he’s not actually a tough guy.”
    “So he’s a softy who’s pretending to be a tough guy who pretends to be a salesman?”
    “I think that’s what I meant to say.”
    “I gotcha,” said Tony.  “That’s a good description.”
    “I’m pretty good at description.  I write.”
    “Really?”
    “Poetry, actually.  People don’t expect it from me, but inspiration hits me and I have to put it out there for people to see.  My friends say it’s great, but you can’t trust friends.”
    “I’d love to hear one some time.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Seriously.  I’ve never had a gift for poetry.  I tried some personal essay, but I felt like I was lying the whole time.”
    “Actually,” Douglas looked embarrassed—an embarrassed anvil, “I’ve got one that I was working on while you were inside here with the FBI.  It’s fresh and I should rework it, but I think it’s not bad.”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Now?”
    “Why not?  I have no reason to hurry home.  I don’t have a car, and the FBI will be watching my apartment anyway, so the thought of taking a bus back just to stare at the ceiling thinking about how badly I screwed up with Sarah—let’s just say, I’d rather hear your poem.”
    Douglas reached into the side of his suit jacket that wasn’t armed and pulled out a notebook and pen.
    “This is fresh, right?  So don’t be too rough with it, okay?”
    “Douglas, don’t worry.  Just read it.”
    He nodded, taking a deep breath.  “Right.  I call this Reunion.  ‘You walk towards me, arm in arm with him, smiling like you’ve remembered every Christmas and melted them into soap, put that soap in a little orange bottle, and dipped a bubble blower in it.  You blew on that blower, and a bubble like a rainbow lifted out into the air, and it follows you while you’re walking with him.  But you left me, so I pop that bubble and break his jaw.’”  Douglas closed his notebook.  “What do you think?”
    “I’m speechless,” said Fat Tony.
    “Is that good?”
    “Yes.  Absolutely a good kind of speechless.”
    “Thanks,” said Douglas.  “I really go for the delicate images, like soap bubbles and glass and things you can break.  It seems more real to me.”
    Fat Tony was looking at the size of Douglas’s fists and rubbed a hand on his jaw.  “Very real.  I’m thinking I’ve delayed enough.  Time to catch a bus.”
    “Oh, don’t do that.  Let me give you a ride.  It didn’t seem like you had enough time to really eat your dinner, and there’s nothing worse than riding a bus hungry.”
    “Dinner,” said Fat Tony, and then he remembered.  “The flowers!  I left the geraniums at the restaurant!”
    Douglas stood up.  “We’ll swing by on the way.  Might not be too late.”
    “This is nice of you, Doug.  Can I call you ‘Doug?’”
    “I’ve read you one of my poems.  I think you have to.”
    Fat Tony stood and they started walking.
    “Tell me, Doug.  Is the girl you were dating seeing anyone else?”
    “Which one?”
    “Either of them.”
    “Not anymore,” said Doug.

Fat Tony -- Section Eleven

[Confession: This section made me cry.  Poor Tony.]

    A quick consultation with a mall directory and Fat Tony found a toy store up one floor and a little way down.  He interrupted at the register long enough for a busy store clerk to point him back to a shelf of stuffed animals.  Fat Tony wasn’t sure why he felt a need to do this with a stuffed rabbit, but what he was about to try was hard enough that he didn’t want to give himself any more hurdles to jump over than he had to, subconscious or real.
    He found a brown thing, vaguely a rabbit, and grabbed it.  The clerk was still busy, so Tony left the price tag and ten dollars on the counter.  He walked back to a bench close to the escalator down to Dillard’s and sat down.  A quick visual check showed nobody he recognized as FBI—it was a quick check because he now knew only two on sight—so he dropped into a trance and did a second check.  Of course, it was even harder inside to tell who was looking around than it had been outside, since a mall is a hotbed of the vaguely magical, but Fat Tony gave it his best shot.  He felt like he was trying to win one of those dolls by throwing rings around a bottle.  Blindfolded.
    After thirty seconds he gave up.  What he was about to do would be noticed—heck, that was the point—but he’d just have to hope that it didn’t get noticed too soon.  He looked down at his rabbit-like toy and dropped further into concentration.
    Since the essence of most magic is to make something do more of what it already did, making a fake bunny seem like a real Livingstone’s Cottontail was a stretch.  Stuffed rabbits didn’t do anything.  He supposed he could make the inanimate object even less animate without much trouble, but that wasn’t what he needed.  Why did his brain even bring it up?  Silly brain.  What he needed was a vaguely blue, swirly aura like an extra cute natural disaster with horns.  Piece of cake.  Really, really dense and chewy cake that’s harder to eat than it’s worth.  It was probably even yellow cake, which Fat Tony couldn’t stand.  Last time he’d checked, ‘yellow’ wasn’t even a flavor.
    Blocking out distractions, Fat Tony got started.  The magic for this was going to have to come straight out of his reserves.  He tapped into stores and started pumping it into the brown artificial fur.  It was like trying to shove Jell-O through a strainer.  Bits made their way through and stuck in the rabbit, but more slopped off and fizzled into the air like vivid blue soap bubbles.  Fat Tony was sweating, certain that he was about to be discovered, but he kept at it.  An agonizing eternity later—probably a full twenty seconds—he decided he’d squeezed enough in and gave it a spin.  No, too fast.  He pulled it back a little, gave all the magic a slight pulse like a heartbeat.  There.  Not close enough to handle serious inspection, but anyone holding this little thing would, he suspected, already have a pretty good idea that it wasn’t actually a Livingstone’s Cottontail.
    Fat Tony wiped off his forehead with his sleeve and took a look around.  No one was paying attention to the sweaty fat man on a bench.  So far so good.  What did that phrase mean, anyway?  Did that mean it was only as much good as he was far along in the process?  If that was the case, then he didn’t think it counted as very good at all.  He resolved not to think the phrase again until Grandma and Roger were in his car and on their way.
    Now what to do with the stuffed animal.  He looked around for an accomplice, willing or no.  There, a woman talking on her phone, too many bags to handle so some were sitting on a bench.  Fat Tony walked over, trying to borrow some of Roger’s casualness.  The woman looked away, he popped the rabbit in a bag, and he was off.  He didn’t look back until he was two stores down.  The woman had assembled her bags and was making her way, still on the phone, to the escalator.  Fat Tony kept an eye on her from the balcony.  If she went into the Dillard’s—no, she was headed the opposite direction.  He kept pace from up top.  She was perfect, walking like she had somewhere to go, but staying right in the middle of the hall.  Fat Tony quietly resolved to hire her for all his future mall-distraction needs.
    He had time now to admire his handiwork.  The bunny disguise was holding up remarkably well, and from a distance it looked a lot like the real thing, magically speaking.  A bit stronger, true, but that was all right with Tony.  This little stuffed-fluff was a lure, a fertile flower waiting to be pollinated by wandering FBI worker bees.
    There.  She was being followed.  One, now two people, both on phones.  Fat Tony’s own phone buzzed in his pocket.
    “Grandma?”
    “Our man just went by.  Roger is going ahead and I’ll be following if he waves from the entrance.  There it is.  I’m off.”
    “Perfect,” said Fat Tony.  Down below a man in a suit had stopped Tony’s helper, three more around her, all being very polite.  Fat Tony could imagine their conversation.  Could we have a look in your bag?  It’s a present for my husband.  Your husband likes animals?  No, he likes cologne.  You mind if we see this cologne?  Of course, but I don’t know how this can help the FBI.
    “Looks like we’re in the clear,” said Grandma, “though I don’t know how Buttons is enjoying the trunk.”
    “Much more than you’d enjoy jail,” said Tony.  “I’ll be in touch later.  Until then, find a way to hide those things.”
    “Find a way to hide what things?” asked Sarah.
    Fat Tony spun around so quickly he lost his grip on his phone.  He fumbled for it, batting it up into the air once, twice, then it was out of his reach.  Sarah grabbed it with one hand and held it out to him.
    “Thanks,” said Tony, taking it from her.
    Grandma’s voice was coming from the phone.  “Anthony?  Are you there?  What’s going on?”
    “Lost control of my phone, Grandma.  That, and I just met my date.”
    Fat Tony was watching Sarah who was watching Tony.  Her mouth was a line, her eyebrows up.  The sparkle from the Sly Thai Shack had gone flat.  Very flat.
    “Your FBI date?  He met his FBI date.  What’s that, Roger?  Roger says we’ll leave your car at your apartment.  We’ll take a cab and be in touch on the green phones.  Does that all sound good?”
    “Sounds great, Grandma.  I need to go.  Lots of love.”
    “Break a leg,” said Grandma.
    Fat Tony hung up.
    “Well,” he said.
    “Well,” said Sarah, her eyebrows still up.
    Fat Tony glanced down to where the FBI was now holding his stuffed rabbit next to a very confused woman.
    “Did you have anything to do with that?” asked Sarah.
    “With which?” said Tony, a little too quickly.
    “You’re sweating,” said Sarah.
    “Yeah, it feels warm here.”
    “Did you follow me?”
    “Here?  No.  A friend gave me a call.”
    “And by ‘friend’ you mean ‘Grandma?’  Do you actually have a Grandma?”
    “Oh yes,” said Fat Tony, “I definitely have a Grandma.”
    They stood in silence.  William Tell rang in Sarah’s hand and she answered it.
    “Yes, I know it was a fake.  I’m up on the balcony.  No, no need to keep looking.  I think they’ve slipped away.  Yes, I might have a lead.  No.  No.  I’ll tell you tomorrow if it pans out.  Get some sleep, and tell everyone thank you from me.  Sure, I’ll try.”
    She hung up and looked at Tony again.
    “Walk with me?” she asked.
    “Okay,” he said.  Here it was, the conversation he’d been so anxious to avoid.  He’d wanted to go on a walk with Sarah, but that walk had involved a lot more handholding, star-admiring and casual laughter, heads back, hearts light.  He could even do some prancing.  He tried to convince his feet to put some spring into it, just to see if he could.  Halfway into one bounce and he gave it up.
    “It seems like a real stretch,” said Sarah, “but did you set all this up?”
    “If I said ‘set what up,’ would you ever talk to me again?”
    “It’s very doubtful.”
    “Then I won’t say that.”
    “I knew you were smart, Tony.”
    Fat Tony rubbed his hand through his hair.
    “Have you ever walked through a mine field, Sarah?”
    “Tell me this is relevant to why you followed me to the mall.”
    “Um.  No.  Not really.”
    They walked in silence, turning where the mall concourse turned.
    “Fine,” said Sarah.  “No, I haven’t walked through a mine field.  Have you?”
    “Yes.  Once.  It wasn’t bad, actually.  I could see where every mine was, no problem.  This conversation, though.”  Fat Tony stopped.
    “You want me to tell you where the mines are?”
    “Please.”
    “All right.  Here are the places where I blow up in your face like a Claymore.  That’s a kind of mine, isn’t it?”
    “I think so.  Antipersonnel.”
    “Good.  Consider me a Claymore, and here’s how to set me off.  One, you lie to me and I catch you.  Two, you lie to me and I catch you.  And three, you lie to me and I don’t catch you at first but I figure it out later because, honestly, with the way you blush, I don’t think you’re going to be hiding anything from me for very long.”
    “I’m…not great at lying,” he admitted.
    “That’s what I figured.  So now that you know where the mines are, do you want to tell  me what’s going on?”
    “I wasn’t setting anything up,” said Tony.
    Sarah’s face went stiff.  “I’ll take that as a no, and I’m leaving.  If I get enough to charge you, you’ll find out just how fast I can put your oversized behind in a very narrow jail cell.”
    Fat Tony had to do a double-take to make sure Sarah hadn’t punched him in the stomach.  It felt like it.  Jokes about his weight—even insults from random people on the street—sure, they happened, but from Sarah?  He felt like a kicked puppy, and kicked puppies are not happy animals.
    She was really walking away.  Fat Tony pulled the pieces of his brain back together and ran after her.  He didn’t know what he was going to say, but it was going to be something.  Something disastrous, probably, but a man didn’t go more than five years without a date, suddenly find the perfect woman, and then let her walk away.  Well, it was more he was beating her away with a huge bat with the words ‘I’m a big, fat liar’ on the side, and the least he could do was try to put the bat away.  Maybe offer an explanation for the beating.
    “Wait!  Sarah, please, give me thirty seconds.”
    She spun to face him and her hair spun with her.  “I have a job to do here, Tony, and I should be dragging you down to the Federal Building and sitting you in one of those rooms with the one-way mirror.  I should be beating your brow so hard you tell me your entire life story, whether I want to hear it or not.  Do you know why I don’t have you in handcuffs?”
    “My wrists are too fat?”
    Sarah stared at him, shocked.  Then she laughed.  “Damn you for being funny.  You have no right to be funny, because if you make a crack in all my wonderful anger, I’m going to be left staring at all the hurt I feel that this clever, kind man I’ve just met is using me while he tries to make millions from selling dangerous and illegal pets.  That’s why I’m not arresting you right now, because I’m too mad and too hurt and—damn you.  I’m even swearing, and I never swear, that’s how mad I am, and I am not, not, not going to start crying in the middle of a mall.  Do you understand me, Tony?  I am going to kill my memories of you and bury them in unmarked graves, because I am not going to be hurt like this again.”
    “You’ve been hurt before?” asked Tony.
    “Shut up.  Don’t ask, don’t talk, don’t do a single thing that isn’t telling me you didn’t set this up, that our date was everything it seemed like it was.  You tell me that, and I will consider—consider—not invoking anti-terrorism laws and dropping you in Guantanamo.  Those are the only words I want to hear from you.”
    She stared at Fat Tony’s eyes, fierce and hot, her jaw clenched.  Tony swallowed, drops in the corners of his eyes.  Where did those come from?  Why did his jaw ache like he was fighting back tears?  He couldn’t figure it out.  He rubbed the tears from his right eye with the base of his palm.
    “The date was real,” he said.  “It was real, and I will always remember it.”
    “Shut up,” she said, and walked away.

Fat Tony -- Section Ten

[I apologize for the slight cliff-hanger at the end of this section.  I'm not tormenting my readers on purpose, but I figured it was better to post something than make you wait another day to see what's going on at the mall.  Believe me, I want to see exactly how this turns out as much as you do.  Possibly more.]

    Fat Tony heard the Sergeant’s voice on the other end of the line.
    “This is Jo.”
    “Jo, Fat Tony.  I need to call in a favor.”
    “Sure, big guy, but hang on.  Are you driving?  I can hear the car noise.  You know that’s not safe.  Might as well be driving drunk.”
    “I’m using a headset, I know it’s not safe, and would you shut up?  This is a short notice favor.  Information.”
    “Anything up to classified and even a few things beyond, you know it’s yours.  Everyone at the Museum owes you too much.”
    “Don’t start falling on your sword for me just yet.  This is a simple one.  How much information did ART give to the FBI?”
    “On the pattern thing you saw?  Sheez, Tony, you know what it’s like trying to talk to those people.  We spent a half hour just convincing them to put someone on the phone who could understand what we were talking about, then another hour convincing that person that we weren’t crazy.  I swear, it’s like trying to suck peas through one of those miniature hot-chocolate straws.”
    “Nobody was paying attention?”  Fat Tony could see a glimmer of hope, a lighthouse on the horizon, guiding him towards the Tucson Mall and a Grandma in the clear.
    “Not a single person, until this Agent Fisk got on the phone.  That, Fat Tony, is a sharp lady.”
    Agent Fisk.  That was Sarah.  The rock under the lighthouse gave way and the entire edifice toppled silently into the sea.
    “What did Agent Fisk ask for?”
    “Everything.  She practically reached through the phone and dragged me out the other end.  She wanted locations, patterns, wanted us to email the sample you pulled out.  By the time we were done, she knew more about the magical signatures than I did.  You wanna know the funny thing?”
    “There’s something funny?”
    “Yeah, there’s something funny!  We’re all worried about city infrastructure being wiped out, but guess what department she’s in.”
    “Not in a guessing mood, Jo.”
    “Come on, Fat Tony.  This one is good.”
    “I’m driving here!”
    “Guess.”
    “Umm, okay, she’s in white-collar crime.”
    There was silence.
    “Sorry,” said Tony.  “Was I supposed to guess wrong?  Terrorism.  Organized crime.”
    “Why do I even bother?” asked Jo.  “Why?  The Major keeps telling me to give up, but I’ve got this masochistic streak wider than Broadway and I keep walking down the same road, over, and over, and over.”
    “I’ll leave you to walk down that lonesome road all by yourself,” said Tony.  “Thanks for the info.”
    “No problem,” said Jo.  “And we probably didn’t even break many laws doing it.  What’s this for, anyway?”
    Fat Tony said goodbye and hung up.  He found himself on the slim side of hopeful.  He supposed it was possible that the magical patterns he had found at ART had nothing to do with the Livingstone’s Cottontails, and Sarah—Agent Fisk—was off chasing an art thief or a radish salesman or had actually lied to get out of having to watch Tony eat mango with sticky rice.  Unfortunately for helping Grandma, that one kiss on the head convinced him otherwise, at least about the sticky rice.  He supposed the art thief was still a possibility.  Unlikely, but possible.
    A red light left him trying to fit the one piece back in that he couldn’t make fit with the others.  Why were those signatures showing up all over the city?  And why did they come and go, like twinkle-lights on the slow setting?  The green light dropped his foot onto the gas, Fat Tony lost a little weight using magic to push his car’s limits, and he pulled a left turn in front of oncoming traffic before said traffic had a chance to get going.  There were a few honks, but he knew he had limited time.  ART may be known for its analysts, but the FBI picked up the best of the sniffers, magical agents who were like human versions of bloodhounds, if you believed the rumors.  Fat Tony knew the limits on that sort of thing—magical trails can die out quickly, moving targets are hard to find, and really good identification needs line of sight—but if they got a good look at a running Grandma with a Cottontail under her sweater, chances were good they couldn’t joke their way out of it.
    Finding parking by the Dillard’s was a strange game of Hide and Seek and Hide.  Trying to keep his distance from any police or mall security or people who might possibly be FBI, while looking for a close space, while particularly trying not to run into Sarah.  Fat Tony couldn’t even imagine the conversation they’d be having if they ended up in the same place.  Well, he could imagine it a little, but it was the sort of conversation that curled his toes in his shoes and included words like ‘set-up’ and ‘betrayal’ and ‘never talking to you again,’ not to mention ‘arrest’ and ‘jail.’  Put mildly, it was a conversation he really, truly, desperately wanted to avoid.  The date was short, but so much fun.
    Of course, not fun enough to let Grandma end up in jail so he could have another, but still fun.  Fun like Gilmore Girls in the first three seasons.  That kind of off the wall, can’t wait for next week kind of fun.  There!  A parking space, empty cars on all sides, close to the mall-way that led to Dillard’s.  He slammed into it, cutting off two teenagers in something sporty, but necessity was the mother of aggressive driving.  Fat Tony took a few calming breaths, both to slow himself down—no use attracting attention by running—and to open himself up to magical flows.  He kept it passive for the moment, but the slight risk of being noticed was outweighed by his need to know exactly what was happening around him.
    His walk to the doors was enough to send a quick text—I’m here.  Stay put.—and he was in the mall.  A hunch made him stop long enough to buy four prepaid phones from a teenager with an oil-slick for hair.
    “You want them activated now?”
    “Yes.”
    “And how will you be paying?”
    “Crap.”
    “I’m not sure we take that.”
    “You think you’re funny, kid?”
    “Sometimes.”
    Fat Tony took another deep breath.  “Okay, it was funny.  Ish.  Credit card.”
    If he managed to attract any attention tonight, the FBI would know he bought these, but his stop at the ATM hadn’t included any plans for cell phones.  Also, buying four prepaid phones wasn’t illegal.  Highly suspicious, but not illegal.  Just a bit like walking around with safe-cracking equipment.
    Fat Tony dumped the boxes in two different garbage cans and programmed numbers into the speed dial while he walked.  So far there was no sign of Sarah or of any people carrying signs saying ‘FBI’ on them, but there were plenty of people talking on cell phones, which, Tony figured, might be about the only clue he would have before they jumped on him and arrested him for aiding and abetting the illegal breeding and sale of really cute rabbits.  He’d never had to do any covert stuff back at ART, so all he was going by was based on TV.  He hoped the FBI watched the same shows he did, because then he might actually get Grandma out of the mall without being noticed.
    He dialed up Grandma on his regular phone.
    “Where are you?”
    “Just outside the store.  Which dressing room?”
    “The ladies.”
    “Roger, too?”
    “He’s sitting outside looking casual.”
    “How do you know he’s looking casual?”
    “He usually looks casual.”
    “Fine. I’m headed your way.  I’m assuming you have one of your friends with you?”
    “In a Dillard’s bag with holes in it.”
    “No chance I could convince you to leave the thing and walk out the door with me?  You’ve still got nineteen others, right?”
    “You haven’t ever seen one of these, have you, Anthony.”
    “Only heard the stories.”
    “That’s why you could ask that.  I’m not leaving Buttons in the mall.”
    “Buttons?  You named it?”
    “I named all twenty.”
    “Buttons—Buttons?  Really?—Buttons would be just fine, Grandma.  They’d find her and she’d be taken care of.  Also, on the positive side, they wouldn’t find you.”
    “Two problems,” said Grandma.  “First, Buttons is a boy.”
    “A boy?  You named a boy ‘Buttons?’  Do you hate him?  He’s so dead when he hits cute rabbit middle school.”
    “Second, security cameras.”
    “They have security cameras in the dressing rooms?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Oh,” said Fat Tony, but then his brain caught up.  “But they do have them outside the dressing rooms, and if they find your little package inside, it might not be too long before they’re knocking on your door.”
    “With just our description, Roger said there’s not enough for a warrant.  With our description and Buttons, they’d be knocking with gusto.  And we don’t want them knocking on my door, especially not with gusto.  Too much left over from when we had all twenty there.”
    “Even after I cleaned up those droppings?”
    “Even after.  Thanks for doing that, by the way.  Usually they didn’t glow, but Pumpkin and Rosalie had been acting sick, and we didn’t know what that would do to their droppings, so you were the closest thing to an expert that we could bring in safely.”
    “I’m a magical analyst, Grandma, not an arcanovet.  Also, I’m here.”
    Fat Tony hung up and walked over to the white-haired man he assumed must be Roger.  There was some standing and shaking hands and name exchanging, and then Grandma joined them.  Roger looked okay to Fat Tony—casual, yes, Grandma had been right—though a little too casual for Tony’s taste.  He was sure he was biased, given that this was likely the man who had involved Tony’s grandmother in something cute but illegal, but still.  Too casual for being chased by the FBI.
    “You know, Alberta,” said Roger, “he looks an awful lot like Bob did.”
    “You knew Grandpa?”
    “Business partners.”
    “Business?  Or business?”
    “We’ll get together for dinner, Anthony,” interrupted Grandma.  “But for now, we need to get out of here.”
    “Right,” said Fat Tony.  “Especially with that glowy little package you’re carrying.  No, keep it closed.  I do not want to see Buttons.  One of us may need to be able to make hard decisions without being addled by big brown eyes and cute horns.
    “Blue eyes,” said Grandma.
    “My point exactly.”
    “Does the package glow that much?” asked Roger.  “It seems muted to me.”
    “I’m extra sensitive, and you can bet that at least some of the people looking for you are pretty sensitive, too.  Here, Grandma, take these.”
    “Phones?”
    “I have a matching pair.  Your green is programmed to call my green, and the same with the yellows.  They’re prepaid, so they’re not connected to us.  We won’t use them tonight, though.  We’ll only switch to these if things go badly and we think they might be keeping track of our phones.  If that happens, leave your cell somewhere and switch to these.”
    “Clever,” said Roger.  “Like your grandfather.”
    “I’ll pass the compliment on to primetime television,” said Tony.  “You stay here for now and I’ll head over to the entrance, see if we can’t just walk right out.”
    “Wouldn’t that be a dream,” said Grandma.  “But what are we doing after?”
    “Almost forgot,” said Tony.  “Here.  My keys.  My sedan is in the first spot on the other side of the handicapped parking, right out those doors.  I sometimes have to carry magical tools in my trunk for work, so it’s pretty well shielded.  Drop Buttons in the trunk and you ought not to be noticed.  Get her—him to your place, and we’re good to go.”
    “We can’t,” said Grandma.  “Mr. Negi has a pacemaker.”
    “I’m confused,” said Fat Tony.
    “The reason we took them all out of my house was because the clocks in Mrs. Negi’s house started running too fast.”
    “And,” finished Tony, “A fast pacemaker is slightly worse than a fast wall clock.”
    “We couldn’t take the risk.  We split them up and started putting them in different places around the city, and we’ve been moving them regularly.  Buttons was at that pet shop in the strip mall next door.”
    Roger spoke up.  “We were on our way out when a man with a very prominent nose made his way in.  He was paying more attention to the bag than we liked and his car followed us to the mall.”
    “So he has your license plate.”
    “My plate, yes, not your grandmother’s.  We’ll have to abandon my car, I know, at least for now.  Why do you think I finally let your grandmother call you?”
    “He kept saying he didn’t want you involved, Anthony.  I told him you could handle yourself.”
    “How did you lose the nose?”
    “We found parking, he didn’t, and we went through the food court.”
    Fat Tony nodded in respect.  Lots of little magic going on in there.
    “So they have your description, but that’s about it.”
    “We have some breathing room there, too,” said Roger.  “I bought a new T-shirt and threw out my hat, and Alberta left her sweater in the changing room here.  Why are you looking at me like that?”
    Fat  Tony shook his head.  “Now I really want to know what business you were in with Grandpa.  But later.  For now I’ll go pretend I’m interested in women’s shoes and find out if the entrance is clear.  If it is, I’ll call you, and you come separately, since they’re looking for an older couple together.  Is that redundant?  A couple together?”
    “Go, Anthony,” said Grandma.  “I’m taking Buttons back into the dressing room.”
    Fat Tony turned to go, but then stopped.
    “Roger, if they catch you….”
    “Don’t worry, Tony.  I wanted to share the good parts of this deal with your grandmother, not the bad parts.  If we’re caught, we’re caught.  I won’t let things get messy.  I’m not much of a fighter, anyway.”
    “Thanks.”
    Fat Tony made his way past unmentionables, dresses, and a few faceless, impossibly slender mannequins, then settled in to pretend he was looking at stiletto heels.  A saleswoman made chirpy, ‘can I help you’ noises at him, but he waved her off with something about looking for inspiration for a birthday present.  Wife?  No, girlfriend, maybe, if he was lucky.  She wished him luck and fluttered away, and Fat Tony got down to his real business in women’s shoes.
    The biggest worry was magical observers.  They had a fighting chance at fooling eyes, but they weren’t getting Buttons past trained and magical FBI spotters, and with rumors of twenty Livingstone’s Cottontails around—cute packages of chaos waiting to build up and explode—they would have out every trained spotter they could grab.
    Tony took a deep breath and dropped himself even further into observation mode.  The wisps and trails of magic that filtered through the store leapt to vivid life around him.  Even the faintest traces stood out like neon, and what had been a faint glow from over by the dressing rooms made him want to shade his eyes.  He wasn’t sure how the owners of every department store a) knew about magic and b) found the right people to enhance their mirrors, but it was the one constant Fat Tony had seen between every store from WalMart to Macy’s.
    Other than that, the store was almost empty of magic.  There was one man between the suit racks who was either having a hard time making up his mind or he was—nope, he was having a hard time making up his mind.  He had picked out a gray suit and was moving to the dressing rooms, and there wasn’t anything magical about the man except, perhaps, the dark brown of his hair, but Fat Tony was betting that had more to do with hair dye than with anything arcane.  He looked around for another thirty seconds, giving time to the salespeople as well, but most of those were slightly less magical than broccoli.
    Fat Tony put down the shoe, pulled out his phone, and walked to the exit.
    “Hello?” said Grandma.
    “I think we’re good.  I’m taking a quick look outside, but I think you can go ahead and—wait right where you are.”
    “You spotted someone?”
    Fat Tony had stepped out the door and immediately picked up a faint hum from a man standing by one of those midget-pillars with an ashtray on top.  Immediately, Fat Tony dropped his meditation.  It wasn’t easy to pick up on someone who was just looking for magic and not actually using it—Tony had only ever met two others who could do it, one with a back so hairy it practically needed mowing, and the other as large as Tony—but he wasn’t taking any chances.  The man by the ash tray was on a cell phone, just listening, and looking for magic.  Also, his nose was unusually large.
    “I’ll call Tanya and have her come pick you up,” said Tony.  “I need to finish picking out something for Grandma at Dillard’s.”  He heard Grandma telling Roger that the entrance was being watched.  “I have to go back in now.  I’ll talk to you later.”
    Fat Tony hung up and stepped back into the store, walking quickly once he was out of sight of the man with the nose.
    “Someone’s there?” asked Roger.
    “Your friend with the large probos—probis—”
    “Proboscis,” said Roger.
    “That’s it.  Big nose.  We’re not getting past him, and if they can afford to have him sitting in one place and just watching, that probably means they have enough people to cover all the entrances and a few more to walk the mall.”
    “Do we try running?” asked Grandma.
    “We try a distraction,” said Tony.

A Plot Hole and the Nature of Magic in Fat Tony's World

This is Andrew talking.  Not any story.

NaNoWriMo is 50,000 words in one month.  Rewriting?  Please.  There isn't time.  One piece of advice I read was, if you change the story, keep writing from where you are as if the story is already fixed.

But since I have people reading this story as it comes, I thought I'd lay out a couple of the fixes so you aren't left in the dark.

First off, it's a little thing, but I don't think there was an alligator in Mrs. Negi's basement.  No.  What happened instead was all their clocks started running fast.  And by fast, I don't mean in a three-seconds-every-minute kind of way.  I mean the day was Tuesday but their clocks were already well into Thursday.  Heck, even their wall calendar was running fast.  (That last part was a joke.)

And that brings us to the nature of magic in Fat Tony's world.  No teleportation, no fairies, not the usual sort of fantastical associated with fantasy.  (Which means the comments about dragons and gryphons will need reworking.)  Magic takes things that are inclined to work in a particular way and slides it even further.  If there's a chart of 'how this item does its thing,' then magic can take the item and push it until you need a new chart that's much, much longer.

So, for example, clocks.  Clocks move their gears at a certain speed using a certain amount of electricity (or physical motion).  Now, take a random, undirected bubble of magic, and nudge those clocks, and suddenly Tuesday is Thursday, the center cannot hold, and the falcon has lost his falconer (who is probably off playing on his DS).

All that to help you understand what is to come.

Fat Tony -- Section Nine

[Sorry this took so long coming!  I didn't want to post half the date, then depression smacked me around yesterday.  Thanks to Kimberly Wilson for being upset I hadn't posted yet and to Becca Wilson for telling me.]


    He was cutting it close, squeezing a shower in between buying flowers and riding the top-side of the speed limit on his way to the Sly Thai Shack.  A bit of luck combined with a great deal of self discipline in not messing with the traffic lights put Fat Tony in the parking lot at three minutes before six.  The result was a brief opportunity to get seriously nervous.
    He looked down at the potted geranium sitting in the seat next to him.  The nice florist had said something alive would set him apart from the crowd, make him stand out as a suitor.  She was so enthusiastic about his date, Fat Tony didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t know if he was a ‘suitor’ or not, let alone his other worries: does an FBI agent have time to water a plant?  And assuming she did, wasn’t a geranium the most average of flowers?  It was the flower that you gave to someone you didn’t know as a house warming gift.  It was what you brought to your aunt that you hadn’t bothered to visit since you were five.  It was so unremarkable, it was almost the opposite of a flower.  It was a non-flower.  In fact, the potted geranium was the anti-flower, creating a black hole that sucked other flowers near it into a colorless, bleak world of ennui.
    Fat Tony had stared at the roses for far longer than he had time for, but the only ones that seemed to fit with Sarah’s voice were the deepest red, almost a purple, and he wasn’t taking red roses to the first date.  Roses were a flower that carried so many expectations along with them, they demanded some sort of explanation.  A person couldn’t just give roses on a first date.  It would have to be roses and a disclaimer.  Any romance implied by these flowers is further away than it appears.
    So Fat Tony brought the anti-flower and the good wishes of that nice florist, and he carried them both out of his car and towards dinner with the FBI, wrapped up in the person of Sarah.  Sarah with her Huge Hair.  How huge? he wondered.
    Oh.  That huge.
    The Hair was the first thing he noticed, and it deserved both the attention and the capital letter, just as Flap Jack had said.  Reddish-brown, it stood out around Sarah’s head—and this had to be Sarah—in a gorgon of curls, vibrant and alive.  She wasn’t much shorter than Fat Tony without the hair, but with that extra exuberance, her height stretched easily past six feet.  In a pick-up game of basketball, Fat Tony wanted her hair on his team.
    He pulled his eyes back down to her face for the first time.  She was watching him and smiling.  How embarrassing, though predictable, he supposed.  On one of those quizzes in the girls’ magazines, Sarah probably answered the question ‘What is the first thing people notice about you?’ the same way every time.  Though, Tony supposed, those quizzes had probably all migrated to Facebook by now.
    “Hello,” he said, holding out the bland geranium.  “You must be Sarah.”
    “And you’re Tony, give-or-take and extra word.  Thank you for the flowers.  They’re lovely.”
    “And they’ll have to be our centerpiece, unless you want to put them in your car.  Or back in my car.  I spent the time from the florist’s to here trying to decide when to give them to you.  Before the date, they have to sit on the table, or in your lap, or on the floor for our poor, over-worked server to trip over as he rushes by with vegetable curry.”
    Sarah was nodding.  “But, if you give them to me after dinner, it seems like you were holding out to see whether the date was any good before you pulled out the flowers.  I assume you kept the receipt?  What’s the return policy on flowers?”
    “I am proud to say,” said Tony, pulling himself up straight, “I did not ask.”
    “But you thought about it?”
    “Once or twice.”
    “And you did keep the receipt.”
    “I’d like a lawyer.”
    Sarah smiled, and Fat Tony smiled.
    “Ack,” said Tony.
    “Ack?”
    “It’s an awkward pause, and I don’t know you well enough to think ‘that’s okay, it’s just a pause.’  Right now, every pause is awkward and means I’m a terrible conversationalist.”
    “Oh, good,” said Sarah.  “That means I must be a brilliant conversationalist, and the pause was your fault.”
    “Of course.  Which is why I filled the silence.”
    “With the clever conversational gambit of saying ‘ack.’”
    “Did the pause continue?”
    “No, I admit, the pause is over and almost forgotten.  Remembered with a bit of nostalgia, maybe, but I’m sure my enjoyment of the pause has been inflated in my memory.”
    “They don’t make pauses like they used to,” said Fat Tony, ruefully.  “Shall we go in?”
    “What’s our plan with the geranium?” asked Sarah.
    “You know your flowers,” said Tony.
    “Oh, sure.  There are geraniums, roses, daisies, tulips, little white flowers, little pink flowers, and weeds.  Did I cover them all?”
    “Every kind of flower I know.”
    “So you can’t tell me how to keep this thing alive?”
    “I hear water is the usual method.”
    “A bit out of my comfort zone,” said Sarah, “but I’ll give it a try.  I think I’ll bring it with me.  Do you mind sharing our table with a condemned prisoner?”
    That particular combination of words intruded uncomfortably into Fat Tony’s imagination along with a vivid picture of Grandma wearing an orange jump-suit and lifting weights in the prison yard, but he pushed it aside with only a small flurry of blinking.
    “I’m always in favor of mercy towards the condemned.  By all means, bring the ill-fated pot along.”
    Fat Tony held the door and Sarah held the flower.  He used the chance to check out her dress, and decided he might want to spend more time examining the dress later.  It had nice…colors.
    They were met at the entrance by a smiling server who only had to ask twice if they had reservations before Fat Tony understood her.
    “Table for four under the name of Anthony.”
    “But just the two of you?”
    “I think we’re enough,” said Tony.
    “Are you as bad at hide-and-seek as I am?” asked Sarah.
    “Don’t even go there.”
    “This way,” said the server.
    They settled in at the table, Fat Tony’s bulk on one side, the hair on the other, ordering lemonade for one and something non-alcoholic and coconutty for the other.
    “That’s a thought,” said Fat Tony.
    “What is?”
    “Coconut lemonade.  I’m surprised I haven’t tried it yet.”
    “You’re a lemonade fan?”
    “Some people knit—well, I knit a little, but that’s beside the point—some people knit, some collect glass figurines, and some drink lemonade.  I mostly fall in the lemonade camp.”
    “There are worse hobbies.  For one summer, as a girl, I collected those frightening little trolls with the hair that looks like mine.”
    “That seems more common than a passion for lemonade.”
    Sarah bobbed her eyebrows, a motion not unattractive.  Fat Tony decided he’d like to see that again.  It went on the list along with the dress.
    “Sure, collecting trolls was the rage at the time.  But my motives were, putting it delicately, less than pure.”
    “Are you sure you want to share this on a first date?” asked Tony, smiling.
    “Revenge.  Three girls who were crazy for trolls had mocked my most distinctive feature.  The last week of school they had talked endlessly about buying the new lion trolls, or the cat trolls, or even a two-headed troll.  I devoted my summer to being the first to every unique and desirable troll in the city.”
    “Shocking.”
    “I was a girl with a mission.”
    “A successful mission?”
    “I ended the summer with pride.  And with a box of trolls I cared nothing about.  I think they’re still in my parents rafters somewhere.  Come to think of it,” Sarah looked vaguely puzzled, “I think that was the summer I decided to join the FBI.”
    “Wow,” said Tony.  “Tracking down trolls inspired you to take up the badge.”
    “The parallels are pretty obvious,” said Sarah.  “I can’t believe I never thought of that before.”
    “Now you have to think of something else: what you’re going to order.”
    “Something with cashews.  Do they have anything with cashews?”
    “B9 does, I think, though I’d recommend asking for it mild, unless you enjoy crying on a first date.”
    Sarah looked down her menu.  “Mild B9 looks good to me.  What will you be having?  Oh, and we are going Dutch, right?”
    “Of course not.  I just came into some money today.”
    “Congratulations.  Lottery ticket or a dead relative?”
    “Neither,” said Tony.  “I walked up to this screen in a wall and started punching buttons.  Next thing I knew, it was spitting money at me.”
    “Any distinctive markings around the screen?”
    “I believe a translation of the ancient text would read ‘ATM.’”
    “You have amazing luck.  In that case, your treat, and I’d also like desert.”
    “Mango with sticky rice,” said Tony, without hesitation.
    “That good, huh?”
    “Why do you think I invited you here?  Even if the date makes me wish for a hammer to bludgeon myself, I’ll still be able to look ahead towards the mango with sticky rice like an oasis in the desert.”
    “Goodness, Tony.  You know how to make a girl feel special.”
    Fat Tony blinked.  “I’m thinking that came out wrong.”
    Sarah was laughing.  “Very wrong.”
    “Is there any way for me to recover from this?”
    “I don’t think so,” she said, still laughing.
    “Server’s coming.  Oh, good.  Yes, we’re ready to order.”
    As Sarah asked the server about the B9, and how it differed from the B8, Fat Tony used the chance to look at her face.  It wasn’t a soft face—too many angles and planes for that—but her nose was slender and even, her eyes wide and blue.  Too strong to ever end up on a billboard, except as an add for the FBI, looking stern.  But it was an open face, and Tony liked the things she said.  He liked that she shared about collecting trolls.  He liked that she seemed to look straight at him, and not at all the weight he carried along.
    His turn to order came, he did, and they were alone again.
    “Huh,” said Tony.
    “Another conversational gambit along the lines of ‘ack?’”
    “No, this was a genuinely puzzled ‘huh.’”
    “Puzzled about what?”
    “I can’t remember what I ordered.”
    “It was fifteen seconds ago.”  Sarah was laughing again.
    “I remember saying the words, but I can’t tell you what they were.”  He felt his face flushing.  It wasn’t really something to be embarrassed about, but the flush was there, nonetheless.
    “I guess you’ll be surprised, then.”
    “I suppose so.”
    He smiled back, laughing as well.  Tony felt warm.  This was the sort of date he had heard about but never been on.  A holy grail of dating where living waters bubbled out of a cleft in the rock and everything he said was witty, even the dumb things, and he felt comfortable.  Some corner of his brain warned him, Chicken Little style, that the sky was guaranteed to fall some time during the date, but at the moment he enjoyed smiling at Sarah and feeling her smile aimed at him.
    “Well, Tony,” she said, “do you bring it up, or should I?”
    “Seems that you’re already doing the bringing up.  What ‘up’ are you bringing?”
    “I have big hair.”
    “I might have said ‘enhanced.’”
    “You’re solidly in the ‘plus’ sizes for clothing.”
    “You’ve got that wrong,” said Tony.
    “I do?”
    “Women have ‘plus’ sizes.  Men have ‘large’ with several ‘extras’ in front of it.”
    “I hadn’t realized that,” said Sarah.
    “Any brothers?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Do you have any brothers?”
    “Two sisters.”
    “Then there was no reason for you to know.”
    “This date is fun and educational!  But I’m going back to the ‘it’ I was bringing up.  I think we’re both wondering if the word ‘magic’ is going to come up in this conversation.”
    “I had been,” said Tony.  “After I saw your hair, I really wondered.”
    “And you’re a bit sprightly for a man your size.”
    “Sprightly?”
    “Should I have said ‘bouncy?’”
    “Hmm, let’s move away from ‘bouncy.’”
    “Then I’ll stick with ‘sprightly.’”
    “But how do you mean ‘sprightly?’”
    “Hasn’t anyone ever told you?  You…” Sarah waved her hand in a rolling motion.  “You ‘prance’ when you walk.  You’re like a show-horse, but a Clydesdale version.”
    Fat Tony rubbed his hand over his mouth.  “I think I’m going to take all that as a compliment.”
    “You should.  It’s fun to watch.”
    When Fat Tony came back to himself, he realized they’d been talking for close to a minute and he didn’t know a single word he had said.  ‘Fun to watch.’  A woman had said he was ‘fun to watch.’  He’d heard ‘fun to talk to,’ ‘fun to be around,’ and ‘fun to have along for a drive,’ but ‘watching’ had never entered the picture.  In fact, it was so foreign to him, he had a sudden urge to rush to the bathroom and look in the mirror, just to be certain he was still wearing the same body.  No—not to ‘rush’ to the bathroom, but to ‘prance.’  I’m a Clydesdale, he thought.  It made him want to laugh.  It made him want to run out the door.  It made him want to call his mom.
    “Woah!” said Sarah.
    “Sorry?”
    “What just happened?”
    “How do you mean?” asked Tony, though he knew what she meant.
    “Your face just fell so far we’re going to have to break out shovels to dig it up.”
    Fat Tony shook his head and pulled a smile back onto his face.
    “It wasn’t you,” he said.  “Well, it was, but in a good way.  That was a good kind of sad.”
    “Quick question,” said Sarah.  “Do you want me to contradict you there, or pretend that I didn’t see grief like someone colored with blue marker all over your face?”
    Tony blinked, shrugged, and drank some lemonade.  “Honestly, it was a good kind of sad.  It just hit me that my mom would love to meet you.”
    “Oh,” said Sarah.  “She must be…?”
    He shrugged again.
    “I’m sorry.  How long ago?”
    “Five years.  Dad and she, both.  I feel like I’ve got it evened out, under control, smooth sailing, then a pirate jumps on the ship and hijacks the whole thing.  Honestly, it’s okay.  It was a compliment that you made me think of her.  My mom was pretty awesome.”
    “I know it can’t mean much for me to say it,” said Sarah, “but I am sorry.”
    “How about your parents?” asked Tony.
    Sarah let him change the conversation.  “Both alive and kicking.  Dad does real estate and ulcers, and Mom is busy right now learning how to use an iPhone.”
    “I’ve heard of those.  Aren’t they the new crack-cocaine?”
    “The DEA is evaluating them as we speak, trying to push regulations through the hearing process, but it can take forever.  Also, I’m not sure anyone actually says ‘crack-cocaine.’”
    “I’m really behind on my drug lingo, I confess.”
    “You, Tony, become more appealing every minute.”
    The dishes came, Fat Tony discovered he had ordered a coconut curry, and conversation slowed as the eating picked up pace.  So far, if he were the Russian judge, Tony would have given the date a solid 8.6.  Enjoyment was certainly higher than that, but the problem was the difficulty of the date.  It wasn’t hard.  No challenge to the routine, no major flips or contortions necessary.  Sarah made it easy to sit inside his own skin and enjoy himself.  The little voice in his head that had been screaming, ‘The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!’—well, that voice was now sitting in a lawn chair, sipping a fruity drink, and thinking that the sky had a pretty solid grip on things and probably wouldn’t be descending, in pieces or at once, for at least the next twenty-four hours.  Might as well enjoy the time while he had it.
    His phone buzzed in his pocket, just at the same time that Sarah’s phone started in on the William Tell Overture.
    “You might as well get that,” she said, looking at the incoming number.  “I have to take this.  I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
    Fat Tony just nodded in answer because she was already talking as she walked away.  He got his phone out and—Grandma!  He punched the button and had the phone at his ear fast enough that he probably didn’t need to shave that side of his cheek tomorrow.
    “Where have you been?” he asked, keeping his voice in control.  “I moved past the ‘sick’ kind of worried around one today.”
    “I’m sure it’s a fascinating story,” said Grandma, “but we need your help.”
    “I bet you do, you and your gentleman caller.”
    “My what?”
    “Mrs. Negi has been talking.  You have no secrets from me.”
    “I just might have secrets.”
    “No, you have none.”
    “Oh, I think I do.”
    “I know about the little friends you’ve had as house guests.  Do you seriously have twenty?”
    “Then perhaps I don’t have as many secrets as I thought I had, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need your help.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Tucson Mall.”
    “What are you doing there?”
    “Avoiding people.”
    “What sort of people?”
    “Some with badges, some without.”
    Fat Tony’s eyes snapped over towards Sarah who was talking animatedly, her hair a symphony of movement that matched her shaking head.
    “How long have you been avoiding the badges?”
    “Roger thinks they only found us in the last ten minutes or so.”
    “Wonderful,” said Tony.
    “I know why I would say ‘wonderful,’ Anthony, but why are you saying ‘wonderful?’”
    “I’m on a date.”
    “Tell her it’s a family emergency.  She’ll understa—wait!  You’re on a date?!”
    “With an FBI agent.”
    “With an—oh.”
    “Who is currently on the phone, checking her watch, and walking back here with determination.  Tell me where to find you and do it fast.”
    “We’re in one of those specialty shops for kids who only own black clothing.  Plenty of magical noise here.”
    “Yes,” said Tony, talking quietly, “and they’ll look there.  You need to hit the changing rooms of a department store.  The mirrors usually have magic going on, and if the agents following you are male, they won’t think to look there right away.  That will last until my date shows up—sure, Grandma.  I’ll introduce you some time.  I don’t think we can make it tonight though.”
    “She’s listening now, isn’t she?” asked Grandma.
    “I promise I’m not avoiding you, Grandma.  I just can’t come right now.  I promised Sarah the mango with sticky rice.”
    Your grandma? mouthed Sarah, and Tony nodded.
    “Fine,” said Grandma.  “Dillard’s changing rooms.  Get here fast.”
    “Yes, I’ll remember to feed the cat.  Lots of love.”
    “Feed the cat?  Your date will think I’m an idiot, or at least so old all I think about are my cats.”
    “Goodbye, Grandma.”
    Fat Tony hung up and looked at Sarah, who was pulling her keys from her purse.
    “That was work,” she said, “and I can’t put it off.  I really am sorry.  This has been surprisingly refreshing.  Can we do it again?”
    “Absolutely, but do you have time to wait for an order of the mango?  I bet they can put it together faster than you could walk to the car in heels—oops, sensible shoes.  You’ll outrun the sticky rice.”
    Sarah was smiling.  “You just wanted an excuse to look at my legs.”
    “I’d missed them earlier,” said Tony.
    “You’re blushing!” she said, and now she was laughing.
    “I’m really bad at flirting.”
    “I think you’re doing just fine.  No, don’t get up.  Finish eating, my Clydesdale Anthony.”  She leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head.  Tony felt it all the way down to his toes.  “That was for luck,” she said.
    “For me or for you?”
    “Do we have to pick?”
    And she left.  Fat Tony watched her all the way out the door.  It was a nice view.  In fact, the entire night was like a painting in his mind.  Something between the Mona Lisa and one of those pictures with the dogs in clothing, sitting around playing cards.  Humor, mystery, a hint of romance.  A definite hint.  He might even call it a broad hint, or an outright clue.  Almost a full-fledged explanation with endnotes, hints be darned.  He wondered if it would ever happen again.
    After a slow count of thirty, Fat Tony dropped forty dollars on the table, and ran.

The Spring Child and the Short Story Contest

Word finally arrived:  The Spring Child is in the finals for the TusCon 2009 Science-Fiction/Fantasy Short Story Contest, co-sponsored by the Pima County Public Library.

We won't know for sure if I placed in the top three (or in the top one) until Friday night, but I feel a strangely deep relief knowing that my story didn't get lost somewhere between the reception desk and the person in charge of the contest.  (For some reason, that was my biggest fear: that no one would have a chance to see it.)

Last year I went to the contest with only an interest in writing and two short stories.  This year I have a complete book, another in progress, and a solid month of blogging under my belt.

It's time to do some advertising.

Fat Tony -- Section Eight

    Fat Tony sat on the white plastic chair outside his grandmother’s front door.  She wasn’t answering her phone, for the first time he could remember her doors were locked, and he wasn’t going to waste gas running the air conditioning in his car.  And it was hot.  Fat Tony knew his extra bulk was there for a good reason, but it did predispose him towards, rather than away from, large amounts of perspiration in the summer.  So he sat in the shade in front of Grandma’s front door and steamed, in more ways than one.
    If Mr. Robinson was right, Grandma somehow had access to more Livingstone’s Cottontails than had probably ever been in the United States at once.  That, and she was promising she could breed more on demand.  Fat Tony still hadn’t seen one of the little things, but he imagined an assembly line of tiny, glowing rabbits, having their cute knobly horns glued to their heads by machine.  Mr. Rogers could play the film on Picture Picture.
    Where could they have come from?  The obvious answer was something to do with Grandpa.  He didn’t assemble that basement of oddities by being a homebody, or by having principles that were anything but slightly flexible.  ‘Adaptable,’ Grandpa would have said.  Adjusting to the circumstances.
    Fat Tony smiled, remembering the fit his parents had thrown when Grandpa handed him the Kabalah Chisel for Tony’s twelfth birthday.
    “It’s for carving a golem,” said Grandpa, his face straight, the way it always was.  “Fabulously useful things.  Cleaning the yard, fighting wars.  There’s a slender blade in the handle—you pull out the back here—that you use to carve the True Name of God in the forehead.  From what I hear, without that part, it’s just a mess of clay and rock.”
    Fat Tony had asked if Grandpa knew the True Name.  Grandpa had only sniffed, twitching his cheek.  With a little bit of imagination, it could have been a wink. 
    Of course, Mom and Dad hadn’t let him keep the chisel.  Tony wondered if it were in a box, somewhere in that basement.  Since Grandpa had died last year, there had been an itch in Fat Tony’s hands to get down there and pull the boxes open, but the time hadn’t seemed right yet to ask, and Grandma hadn’t offered.  Strange how the two of them could joke about anything but could talk about nothing.
    “Anthony?” said a wobbly voice.  “Is that you?”
    “Sure is, Mrs. Negi.”  Fat Tony stood up to greet her.  “They haven’t put you in a museum yet?”
    Grandma’s neighbor shuffled her way up the walk, her back steeply bent.  “And what museum would have a relic like me?”
    “As I think about it, I can’t find a single safe answer to that question.  Can I perform a tactical withdrawal?”
    “You mean ‘run like a frightened puppy?’  Absolutely, Anthony.  I’ve always liked you, even though you seem to always be sucking on one foot or another.”
    “An occupational hazard.  I’m a professional at speaking before I think.”
    “Good for you,” said Mrs. Negi.  “A young man should find some way to contribute to society.  Is your grandmother home?”
    “I have to say I wouldn’t be out in this heat if she were.  Though these plastic chairs are surprisingly comfortable.”
    “And durable,” said the neighbor.  “My eyes aren’t as good as they were, but it seems you’ve put on even more weight since I last saw you.  Are you eating properly?”
    “My doctor has no complaints about my diet, I can tell you that.”
    “Then you need to get a new doctor.  One that didn’t get a degree on the internet.  Is it true you can get anything on the internet?”
    “Most things.”
    “I heard that someone’s selling real estate on the moon.  Can you believe that?  There’s a fool born every minute, and now they’re moving to the moon.  I suppose that’s as good a place to keep them as any.  Better than my backyard, I tell you.  Of course, we all say that for everything, from garbage to clowns to nuclear waste.  ‘Not in my backyard.’  Problem is, we have to keep it all somewhere, and that means someone’s back yard.”
    “Some people keep clowns in their front yards,” said Fat Tony.
    “No accounting for taste,” said Mrs. Negi.  “Is your grandmother in?  No, you said she isn’t.  She’s hard to get hold of these days.  Spending all her time with the gentleman caller, I suppose.”
    Fat Tony’s eyes blinked.  Several times.  “Pardon?”
    “Oh, he’s handsome enough, I grant you, though a little young for your grandmother.  He must be no more than sixty-five, even wearing old shoes.  But why not?  She’s an energetic woman.  We’re none of us in our prime, but ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ is my idea of a decent motto for living.  If I did needlepoint I’d have that over my sink to remind me to get someone else to wash the dishes.  Would you give your grandmother a message for me?”
    Fat Tony dragged his mind away from the combination of ‘gentleman caller’ and ‘Grandma’ that kept chasing around in his head.  In fact, he had a distinct image in his mind of Grandma and this mysterious caller chasing around a new couch—purchased with money from a cute, horned rabbit—laughing and frolicking.  It was a slow chase and restrained frolicking, but still, disturbing enough.
    “Yes, I can give her a message.  Absolutely.  What’s mine is yours.”
    “Then I’ll take just a tiny bit of your brain and leave the rest to you.  Tell your grandmother that the hot water is working again, and animal control came and took the alligator away.  She was so concerned, I wanted to let her know we’re fine right away, but I think she may have forgotten to take her cell phone.  You’ll give her the message?”
    “Sure,” said Fat Tony, swallowing.  “Alligator’s gone, hot water’s fixed.  Any police knocking on the door?”
    “Now why would they do that?” said Mrs. Negi, laughing.  “Take good care of yourself, Anthony.  Better care.  You look pale.”
    “I feel pale, Mrs. Negi, but I expect it’ll pass soon.  I’ll drink plenty of water.”
    “You do that,” she said.
    As she shuffled away, Fat Tony dropped back into the plastic chair.  It creaked at him but held.  The Cottontails and a gentleman caller.  He doubted the two were unrelated.
    Tony’s phone buzzed.  An email from Malcolm.  Client call on the east side, it said, giving the address.  Time to get it done and get back for your date.
    That’s right.  Six-ish at the Thai place on Speedway.  With an FBI agent who may or may not deal with magical crimes.  Like the illegal breeding and sale of Livingstone’s Cottontails.
    I still haven’t bought flowers, thought Tony.