Don't want to wake up with no one beside me
Don't want to take up with nobody new
Don't want nobody coming by without calling first
Don't want nothing to do with you...
--Warren Zevon, Splendid Isolation
"And now, our best customer," Kwesi says, runs up to the door, pounds on it.
The guy yells through the closed door. "Yeah?"
"Mr. Hamoto," Kwesi calls. "Buddhist Delight, white rice."
"Thanks."
"I gotta new guy here, I'm showin' him the ropes. Say hi, John."
"Hi."
"Nice ta meet you, John. Kwesi'll show ya the drill."
Kwesi lifts up the mat, takes the money, ruffles the bills to show John the size of the tip.
"Thanks, Mr. Hamoto."
"Have a good one, Kwesi."
"Now we leave," Kwesi tells John.
"You mean--"
"This is how it works. Leave the food on the mat and leave. One guy tried to wait him
out and waited half an hour. Got canned the next day, too. He tips well, he's a nice guy,
he orders a lot, we leave him alone."
After they head down the stairs, Don opens the door, takes the food inside. He goes into
the kitchen, grabs the chopsticks out of the dish drainer, sits down on the floor next to the
computer. The phone rings.
"Don?"
"Angela, howya doin'?"
"Good..."
"Watcha want?"
"Can you pick me up at the gallery tomorrow?"
Boring, pretentious, and crowded, Don thinks. Wonderful. "Sure, honey.
I'd love to."
"You gotta meet Chloe." Since they met this spring, Chloe's been her number one best
friend, excepting Raven Jones. Don's heard all about her.
"All right, honey, what time should I get there?"
"Ah..."
"Why don't you put your dad on the phone and I can ask him?"
"Okay."
"I'll see you tomorrow. Love ya."
"Love you." Don can hear her calling to Mike in the background. He grabs a water
chestnut with the chopsticks, munches on it while he waits.
"Hey."
Don opens up the rice. "What time should I pick her up?"
"When you get outa work, same as always. Look, I'm sorry about the gallery thing, I was
telling her no, but her ma..."
"No big deal, Mike." No worse than...oh, sticking my hand in a blender...
"We're just suckers for cute girls--"
"Speak for yourself," Don laughs. "There's an opening, right?"
"Yeah," Mike says. "That's why Maureen has to stay..."
"I can hardly contain my excitement," Don says, and Mike grins. "You guys have a good
time tomorrow, huh? When and if you get to see that wife a yours?"
"Yeah, we will. You too."
"'Night."
"Love ya, Don." Click. Mike waits. After a minute, the phone rings. He picks it
up.
Don growls, "Where the hell is that friggin' gallery, anyway?"
Maureen's keeping watch; God only knows what kind of crappy mood Don'll be in if
he has to search the two of them out.
"So he takes her every Halloween?"
"Yep." No sign of a turtle yet.
"Good uncle," Maddie says. Maddie thought she'd dress as a harem girl this year, just to
be politically incorrect.
Maureen figures the sultans liked 'em younger and more attractive, but she could be
wrong, and she's not about to tell Maddie that. She usually sticks to her cat costume.
"He takes her more often than that, actually. It's just kind of a tradition that we do it on
Halloween; it's the night Mike and I met, so it's kind of nice to have it to ourselves."
"He spoil her rotten?"
"Oh, yeah. Angela loves him...she gets this big thrill outa taking her sleeping bag over..."
There's a gigantic Erector set in the middle of the floor; the artist, Byron Hughes, had
insisted it be installed. As a West Coast artist, he figured every visitor would want to get
on the floor and play with it; so far Angela and Chloe have been the only takers. Every
so often Byron will lean over and give them a little advice or encouragement. He's made
his career making tiny, super-detailed mechanical sculptures, and it looks like Angela
and Chloe are trying to do the same thing with the Erector set. Good luck,
Maureen thinks, and smiles to herself.
"Not every day you can say a world-famous artist helped your daughter, eh?" Maddie
says.
World-famous is pushing it, but he is the biggest name the Tradewinds Gallery's
had since the eighties, and Maddie's trying to pump it for all it's worth. The turnout's
been good, anyway, especially by Tradewinds standards.
Maddie grabs her arm suddenly. "Mo-mo."
The worst part of the job, it occurs to Maureen for the hundredth time, is having to
answer to Mo-mo.
"The guys from the Times are here. Go get 'em."
The Times? Damn, maybe her press kit had worked after all...she gives up on the
Donatello watch and heads for the reporters.
"Looks good, Angela," Don says, "but you're gonna make it top-heavy if you're not
careful."
"The screwdriver's right there--" Byron says.
They both reach for it at the same time; the back of Byron's hand brushes Don's.
They both turn to each other; just a second, turn back, Byron points out the problem to
the girls, hands them the screwdriver.
As he stands back up, he moves just a bit closer to Don. "So whaddya think?"
"Be a little more efficient without--"
"Yeah, but it won't look the same. You don't get that curve--"
"So you're one of those artistic types..."
He smiles, slow, catlike. "You could say that. Did she call you her uncle?"
"Yeah. I'm supposed to be pickin' her up, but she seems pretty happy here..."
"You two havin' a night out?"
"Yeah."
"That's kinda nice...just the two of you?"
Don nods.
"So you're single?"
Don turns, looks at him. He's serious. "Yeah...yeah, I am."
"Busy tomorrow night?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah, you know, the day after today?"
Half an hour at least since Maddie noticed the guy from the Times: Don taps
Maureen on the shoulder, points at Angela, smiles at her, and disappears.
Great, she thinks. Wonder how long he's been waiting around.
The next morning, she's sitting at her desk with the Times when Byron walks in,
drops into the chair across from her desk. She starts to stand, and he waves her back
down.
"I'm not royalty," he says. "Sit."
"Mr. Hughes--"
"Just call me Byron. Didn't I tell you that last night?"
"I think maybe. Did you see, you're on the front page of Arts and Leisure--"
"What do you like? Maureen? You can't like Mo-mo."
You can say that again. "Maureen, call me Maureen, please."
"All right, Maureen." He shifts his weight to the edge of the chair, rests his elbows on
her desk. "Tell me all about your brother-in-law. The one who doesn't like artists but has
a helluva weakness for Erector sets."
Christmas gets weirder every year, April thinks. A Buddhist, two Jews, and
Mike, who's too flaky to commit to any one religion, all getting together to exchange
presents with Casey, April, Shadow and Raven. Then April takes the girls to Midnight
Mass, and Casey insists on taking them to the Unitarian church in the morning. It's a
wonder they're not growing up schitzophrenic...
This year Don gives Angela a bo-- the craftsmanship's amazing, April guesses he did it
himself-- and Raven and Shadow immediately wonder, loudly, why they don't get one.
Casey tries to explain the difference between street fighters like himself and ninjas like
Mike and Don and gets nowhere. I bet normal families don't get into
discussions like this, April thinks. The phone rings. April, sensing rescue,
picks it up. "Hello?"
"Hey, is Don there?"
"Yeah...is this Byron?"
"Yeah."
April hands the phone to Don, trying to hide her grin. Don says, "Hello?"
"Hey, whatcha up to?"
"Christmas. Gifts. Comfort and joy..."
"It's the night before."
"Yeah, but April and Casey usually end up spending most of the day with Casey's family,
and by the time they get back the kids are so wiped out--"
"Ah."
Don's eyes are darting back and forth; he's looking for an escape.
"Wanna take that in the bedroom?" April asks innocently, and he's gone. She listens for
him and hangs up.
Don had half-expected-- with a mixture of hope and dread he's never felt before-- that
Byron would find somebody back out in California, decide he didn't want a relationship
with a half-crazy eccentric like Don, and stop calling.
Byron's called every day since he left. Every day.
He gets back on the thirty-first, and he's already found some big costume party to drag
Don to. And that'll be the beginning of the end, no more supense, no more biting April's
head off, no more running to the phone, no more sucking down cigarettes like they're
going out of style because he's so damn edgy--
"So do you do the gift thing?"
"Yeah," Don says. "I figure I might as well."
"You get me anything?"
"Maybe..." Don's mind flashes on the book he'd found online, about the mechanical sculptures of Maxfield Parrish.
"Good. 'Cause I got you something."
"Yeah?"
"'Course, you're my boyfriend, aren't ya?"
"Yeah," Don says, trying to ignore the raging argument his instincts and his intellect are waging. It would be easier if they didn't keep switching sides...
April asks Maureen, "is he really that cute?"
"Oh, yeah," Maureen answers her, and Mike turns down the New Year's extravaganza on the TV. "Think he's about half black and half Japanese. Deep brown eyes, cafe-au-lait skin, incredible butt--"
Casey groans, "I did not need to know that," but no one's listening.
"So he's just back from California?"
"Yeah, that's where he got his start..."
"But he hasn't been in art that long," Mike says, "only a couple years. I tried to find some more background on him on the Net the other day, and I didn't have any luck."
April teases, "Checkin' up on the boyfriend, huh?"
"Well, ya know, I worry...you wouldn't wanna look, would ya?"
"Maybe someday I'll get lucky and I can see your apartment."
"Not much to see," Don says honestly. The computer, a couple chairs, kitchen cupboards with no food but a month's worth of coffee and ten cartons of smokes...
"So are you gonna open your present or what?"
Don looks down at the package in his lap, pulls at the ribbon.
Byron studies his face, the way his mouth moves, the way his eyes seem to follow every thought. Maybe Kabou wasn't crazy, maybe there really was...
He shakes the thought from his head, concentrates on Don.
April thought this was crazy when she started this; now you couldn't drag her away
from the computer.
"Mom," Shadow says. "What about his Social Security number?"
"Hadn't thought of that," she says. "Thanks, honey."
"Do you really think you're gonna come up with anything?" Casey says.
"So far, I haven't come up with anything," April says. "Nothing before 1995,
anyway."
Mike asks, "So Byron Hughes didn't exist before 1995?"
"It's starting to look that way."
Mike says, "we shoulda done this weeks ago..."
"You don't have any idea where they were going?" Casey asks.
Maureen says, "We don't know. Not La Nouvelle Justine, I bet." Mike laughs.
"What?" Casey asks.
Maureen explains, "Half restaurant, half S & M bar. Byron dragged him there one night
and Don's never going back..."
Shadow asks, "Whatsa S & M bar?"
"You know," April says, "I think it's past your bedtime."
People don't really kiss their dates at midnight, do they? Don thinks to
himself. That's just one of those breeder myths, right?
"Ten, nine, eight..."
Byron keeps touching the back of his neck. This isn't what I want, Don thinks,
I can't handle this, I'm not ready...
"Five, four, three...two...one!"
Don smiles, happy despite his better instincts. He looks up at Byron. "Happy
New..."
And that's when Bryon kisses him.
"No," April says, ignoring the celebration on the TV. "After that, I can't find
anything."
"Shit," Mike says.
"That could mean anything," Maureen says, "I mean, people run away from abusers, they
change their name, they go into witness protection and...I mean, there's lots of
possiblities, right?"
"Right," April says skeptically.
"We've been takin' way too many chances," Mike says.
"It could be anything," Maureen says, trying to reassure them all.
"I know," Mike answers her, his frown deepening.
"Hey, sistaaahs...wait up!" They can hear laughter; somebody behind them.
"Note to myself," Byron murmurs, "never hold hands on the friggin' subway in the first
ten minutes of the new year."
Nobody on the platform now but Don, Byron and the gang; Skinheads, Don
realizes. Great.
"Aw...what a cute widdle couple."
"Y'see how many?" Don asks softly.
Byron shakes his head.
"Look, if anything happens..."
"We'll ignore 'em," Byron says, staring straight ahead. "We'll be fine."
Casey suggests, "We could leave a message on his machine..."
Maureen rolls her eyes. "Oh yeah. 'Hey, Don, just checking up on you, see if
you're home yet...oh, we ran a background check on that guy you've been seein',
too...that would go over well..."
"We just gotta wait," April says nervously.
"All we can do, I guess," Mike stands up, puts his arms around Maureen. She puts her
hands on his, rubs his arms to try to soothe him.
"I mean, if we don't hear from him, we just call Byron up--" April shuts the computer
down-- "and if he's uncooperative, we nail his cojones to the wall, right?"
"April," Mike asks, a little shocked. "Where did that come from?"
She smiles. "Didn't Raph always say I had that killer instinct?"
"Such a pretty outfit..." one of the skinheads says, circling around Byron. "But I
thought all that Carmen Miranda shit was outa style with you fags."
Thought the skinhead look was out and you fuckers were back to wearin' sheets, so I
guess we're both wrong, Byron thinks, but holds it back.
Don's summing them up; seven of them, don't look like much at first glance, but the one
that just harassed Byron might be trouble. Shit. It's been too long since he fought
anyone. Sparring with Mike's one thing...
Don't look at them, that's what you're supposed to do, right? Don't make eye
contact...they're predators, they'll attack if they think you're scared.
They're psycho, they'll attack if they think you're not scared.
Twenty minutes into 1998, Don thinks, and already--
Skinhead #1 pulls a knife and the rest of them start bringing out their weapons.
"C'mon, fag-boy," one of them taunts. "Let's see what you can do--"
Don's shuriken cuts him off.
"Nice," Byron says. "So you were one of them..."
"You can get behind me--"
"Ah, it's like ridin' a bike, you get it back fast..." Byron smiles at the skinheads. "C'mon, boys, ya don't wanna spend the first hours of '98 in an emergency room..."
"What, you wanna let 'em live?"
"You're so damn butch--"
The skinheads' attack cuts them off.
Byron's pretty fast; kicks the first one hard enough to wrench the razor blade away-- two on Don, he catches the first one with the bo, throws him into the second and comes face-
to-face with Skinhead #1, the one he's still assuming is the leader. It comes easy, easier than Don had expected-- throw the bo onto the knife, catch the blade, pull it back-- he's
got something else, nunchaku.
Don almost wants to laugh.
Byron hates fighting with this messy shit, he'd drop the razor in a second if he could get a
nice solid bludgeon, the tonfa he used to use, but all these assholes have is blades. Cuts the second one across the
face and the kid screams, drops to his knees. He kicks him off the platform and has a
second to glance over to Don--
Shit, he's already down to one?
This one's an aggressive little creep; Don lets him tire himself out, ducking, blocking, the
easy stuff, keeping an eye on Byron...a little rusty, out of shape you can see, but not bad.
He lets the asshole pound at him for a few more minutes, before he decides he's sick of
waiting. One stroke with the bo and he's caught the chain of the chucks, jerking them
away, smashes the other end of the bo into the creep's face, follows it with a kick,
discovers to his amazement that he's almost enjoying himself. Almost
Byron's nailed the last one and they stand there for a second, catching their breath. Byron
adjusts the Carmen Miranda hat, turns his attention to Don. "Grab that star and we'll get
outa here," he says, "fix that arm."
Don looks down at the thin razor cut tracing down his forearm. He hadn't felt it yet.
Byron offers, "I can stitch it back at my place..."
"Deal."
