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.