Ed: Billy, you bonehead, why'd you come busting in like that? I was doing fine. Billy: If you like drool runnin' down your chin. Seems to me I was just in time, eh, Ryan? Ryan: I'd have to agree, lass. Ed: What are you two, anyway? Billy: Your best friends, baby. Why else would we be bailin' your sorry carcass out every time we turn around? Ed: Get off my side, then. Now I need to find somewhere to go and I've run out of hiding places. Ryan: Easy, Darlin'. We can help. We owe you that. Ed: Why does this frighten me? Billy: Cause you're a wussy. Hey, midget, bring the phone. #3 obediently headed for the table where the phone sat. Ed: Phone records, fool!! Billy: One for you. That's all you get. Billy reached into his pocket, removed his cellphone, dialled a long series of numbers. Billy: Yeah, baby, Bill Strannix. I'll hold...How are the both of ya?... need you to do me a help, man...one of my girls needs a place to crash for a few days...Gaerity knows her, she's a stand-up lady...I owe you both one ...thanks, my man...I'll fly her in... Ed: The fledglings... Billy: Say what? Ryan: The youngsters, William. Don't be worryin', Darlin'. We'll be takin' them to Doctor Jake while you're gone. Ed: Don't worry? You're taking them to a psychiatric hospital and you tell me not to worry? Billy: Damn miracle they ain't in one now. Look at their mother. Ed: Why don't you blow that out your... Ryan: Now, now, Darlin', don't you be lettin' William upset you so. They'll be in good hands. Doctor Jake will take them, especially if I ask him to. We go way back, do the good doctor and I. You can relax. Now go get some things together. Go on. Ed: The animals... I was weakening. Ryan had that effect on me. It was the lilting voice. Ryan: They'll be well cared for, little Darlin'. You have my word on it. Go, now. Ed: One last question. Where am I going? Billy: Shyster friend of mine. Name of Harvey Dent. Get your ass in gear. Ed: Harvey Dent...isn't he the guy with the cut-rate plastic surgery? Billy: Harvey Dent. Answers to Two-face. Yeah. So what? Got me off on the Missouri rap. What else do you need? Careful, you might get it. Ed: What'd he use, the insanity plea? Billy lunged at me, apparently fed up with my sarcasm. The message wasn't a hard one to get. I was met at the airport by two thugs in cheap suits. They had been sent by Two-face. Their vehicle of choice was a red and black Ford Expidition with a curious interior and a perfectly hideous paintjob. Outside the big truck was half red and half black. Inside the interior was the same combination of colors, while the upholstery was half leather and half cloth. All in all it wasn't a good sign. Ed: Where am I going now? Thug1: Mr. Dent's personal residence. Thug2: Yeah. Two-face's joint. Ed: Don't tell me...half of his employees are very articulate and the other half are related to Billy Strannix. Am I right? Thug1: That would be a fair assumption. Thug2: Uh, somethin' like that. Ed: This is bad and getting worse. You guys mind telling me why you're not more immediately identifiable as underpaid, mindless henchmen? You know, matching turtlenecks and cloth caps, big old felt letters on your chests, like that? What's with the bargain basement gangster crap? Thug1: Mr. Dent expects a certain sartorial standard be maintained. We are not stereotypes, despite what you may have seen elsewhere. Thug2: Yeah, we ain't cartoons. Two-face says we gotta dress good. Ed: I need to get seriously hammered. Our destination was a large downtown building of fairly unremarkable appearance. I was shown to a private elevator. Half of the car was trimmed in fine woods and sand colored padded leather. The door was warmly polished brass. The other half was a bare metal cage. The half and half business was going to get old in a hurry. The elevator door opened directly into a penthouse apartment. Two-face: We welcome you to our humble home. Ed: What's this 'we' stuff? You got a mouse in your pocket? Half of the apartment was tastefully decorated in muted tones and natural woods. The other looked like a five year old's vision of what Dracula's cave might be like if the kid had a belly ache. Ed: What the hell kind of a schizophrenic joint is this?? Two-face: Our abode was decorated at great expense. We personally approved the smallest details. Remember that before you offer too much more ignorant criticism or you may find us kicking your ass. Ed: Somebody. Please. Kill me. Do it now. Strannix, so help me I'm gonna figure out a way to pound you. Two-face: Come over here to us. We'd like a look at you. Ed: Where are you? Two-face: Follow our voices. Ed: Might just as well. Nothing else makes sense. At the extreme end of the room I found them...him, dammit. He was sitting on a loveseat - half ivory shot silk, half nylon jacquard pile that was full of pops and snags. Two endtables flanked the loveseat. One was a modernistic number of varnished natural oak, with a Tensor lamp on its polished surface. The other was a haphazard affair of bricks and boards, with a shadeless desklamp leaning dangerously. Both lamps were off and it was hard to see them...him. Ed: Christ on a bicycle... They were...ooh!...he was as confusing to look at as he was to talk to. The half of his body topped by the unscarred side of his ruggedly handsome face was clad in a lovely bit of Italian tailoring. The other half wore what looked like a clown suit from Hades. Even his tie had been mercilessly slashed in half and patched together. Two-face: Do we frighten you? Ed: You don't crack me up, if that's what you mean. Two-face: We appreciate your honesty. Our friend Bill has asked us to shelter you and so you're welcome here. Piss us off, you could find yourself out in the street. Do we make ourselves clear? Ed: I don't know about you two, but I'm about as clear as mud...dammit, now you've got me doing it! Two-face: We understand. Poeple often have a hard time getting used to us. Maybe you'd like to rest. Too much time with Bill can be exhausting, as we found out ourselves. Robert, Bobby, show our guest to her room. Ed: Robert? Bobby? They have the same name? Two-face: Makes things less confusing for us. Ed: I'm tripping. That's it. Somebody slipped something in the Sprite on that stupid bargain basement airline. Strannix stuck something in my McFish. It has to be that. I'm baked. Two-face: You're not on anything, but we can arrange it. Ed: Could you at least put me in a room that's decided what it wants to look like? Two-face: We'll ignore that. Ed: Okay, all right. Can I use the phone? Two-face: Certainly, be our guest. Who did you plan to call? Ed: My sons, so I can be sure they're all right. Two-face: How touching. We admire a devoted mother. Ed: And that ratbag Strannix, so I can give him a piece of my mind!! Two-face: Make it a small piece. We get the feeling you don't have much to spare. Boys, come back when she's settled. We have some things for you to do. I as taken down a short hallway to a small, nicely appointed bedroom. Thankfully for my equilibrium, Two-face's mania didn't extend to this room. Presumably he never entered it. That or there was another room on the other side of the penthouse that served as its evil twin. There was a comfortable chair near the window and on a table next to it, a telephone. I found a scrap of paper covered with telephone numbers in Billy's impossible chicken-scratchings. I called the first number on the list, and after a minute or two heard the sort of voice that was soothing just to hear. JB: Jacob Beerlander. Ed: Dr. Beerlander...it's so nice to talk to someone who isn't nuts. JB: Who is this? Ed: Oh, of course...sorry. This is Deb, you know, the fruitcup with the webpage you've been helping out? Billy Strannix and Ryan Gaerity brought you my boys? JB: What's wrong with me? Deb, how are you? Sorry I didn't recognize your voice right away. Bill said you'd probably be calling. He said 'bugging the shit out of you', but you know Bill. Ed: Unfortunately, sometimes. How are the boys? JB: Doing very well. I didn't think this was the most appropriate place for them, so I took them to my place. The Curlies seem very content. Ed: The Curlies. Better I don't know where you got that. JB: You sound stressed. Ed: That's the understatement of the last decade of the millennium. JB: Care to talk about it? You used the term 'nuts' earlier. That's pretty strong. Ed: You'd use it, too, if you were in my shoes. Right now I'm staying with someone who gives a whole new meaning to the words 'multiple personality disorder.' He insists that he's two completely independent, fully conscious people in one body, only one looks like a million bucks and the other like a circus landfill. He refers to himself in the first person plural, like he's the damn pope or something, all his employees wander around in pairs - one's William F. Buckley and the other's Jethro Clampett and they each have the same name only one uses the formal version and the other the diminutive and his apartment looks like a funhouse. JB: Whoa, Deb. Slow down, take it easy. Ed: I am taking it easy. Two of my closest associates - I'm not their unwilling associate, but I'm certainly uneasy - are on the lam. One's an exiled Irish terrorist and explosives expert while the other is an unbalanced former CIA operative with more axes to grind than there are axes. All of us are being pursued by an obsessive, retentive touchy U.S. Marshal who gets real ugly if he doesn't get his way. I'd agree with you that normal is awesome, except that right now I don't have the foggiest idea what normal is! JB: Normal is everyday activity. Normal is what you do, and how you do it. The fact that you do it is what makes it awesome. Ed: Not more psychobabble! I can't stand it! Dr. Beerlander, can I call you back? JB: I hope you do. And I'll try to have the boys here. Meantime, try to calm down. As I was hanging up, the bedroom door opened. Two-face peeked around it. I could only see the unscarred side of his face - perhaps it went with the room. Two-face: Would you like to join us for dinner? We're going out. Ed: That would be...interesting. Two-face: Wonderful! We have reservations for seven, and we're having an appropriate dress brought in. Ed: Appropriate dress? Two-face: We know what we like. Trust us. There was that word again...trust. I called to check my voice mail - there were several messages from Sam. He was clearly enraged but trying to remember the lesson he'd taught himself. Two-face would have understood him completely. Next I called Beth's house. Beth: Hello? Ed: Beth, are you alone? Beth: God, girl, where are you? Ed: Never mind me, are you okay? Beth: Except for doing my famous tennis ball imitation with Bill, just fine. Sam's been calling here constantly wanting to know where you are. Ed: If I tell you, you have to keep it a bigger secret than the basement. He wants my hide. Beth: I think I can manage. As long as he keeps his distance and wears loose sportshirts. Ed: Next shirt he wears around either one of us is going to be made of spraypaint. The man's not stupid. Beth: Where are you? Ed: Two words. Two-face. Beth: Not there. How are you holding up? Ed: I don't know. You ever met these guys...bloody hell!...this guy? Beth: Once. It's not an experience I'd care to repeat. Is that where they hid you? Ed: That's where Billy sent me, but I'm ready to head for the hills. The Doctor Hunk has the boys...maybe I'll head that way. Beth: I wouldn't advise it until you talk to Billy. Whatever else the big lug thinks he knows, he knows how to stay out of sight. If he sent you to Two-face, it's because Sam won't think to look for you there. He check in with Dr. Baumgardner. Ed: You do that on purpose, don't you? Beth: Because I love the way he corrects me. Ed: Almost makes you wish you were whacked-out. Beth: Oh, we're whacked out, all right. Look who our male companions are. There's nothing the Doctor Hunk could do for us, that's all. Ed: Where's Billy at? After he dumped me at the airport he and Ryan took off. Beth: I think they're cleaning out the basement. Maybe we can wait a day or so and then give it to Sam. Ed: Wouldn't he get suspicious, though, if we told him where it was after we went to such trouble to keep it from him? Beth: Sam? Probably. I don't know. I don't want to know. The less I know, the safer I am. I'd better let you go. He's probably got the phone tapped. Ed: Standard procedure for our boy. I'll let you know when I surface. I hung the phone up and tried to relax. I was stuck in this bizarre place with its bizarre owner and Beth was no doubt absolutely right: Billy had sent me here because Sam wouldn't think to track me. On the other hand, if Beth's phone were tapped... TO BE CONTINUED...
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