Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (17 page)

Baron swallows hard.
“Joyce,” he says.

Joy slaps the book down. “Joy.
My name’s Joy. Not Joyce.”

“Joy.”

“Sit down.” Baron risks a
glance over his shoulder, weighing his chances of making it to the door. Joy
tenses. Her eyes narrow and her smile turns wolfish. “Go ahead. Try to run.”

He sits.

“Aren’t you going to ask me
how I’ve been doing, doc?” Joy says. “That’s usually the first question out of
your mouth whenever you see me.”

“H-how have you been doing,
Joyce — Joy?”

“Been in prison. You? Been
up to anything interesting? Like maybe taking weird notes on some of your patients?
Me, for example?”

The last of the color drains
from Baron’s face. “I don’t know what you’re —”

Joy shoves the table,
ramming the opposite edge into Baron’s gut with enough force to drive the
breath from him. Her grin vanishes.

“Don’t screw with me, man.
Don’t you even.” Baron nods. “Okay. So long as we understand each other...which
is kind of my problem here. You seem to understand me, better than I understand
myself, but I don’t get you at all. You’re, like, a normal old doctor, but you
know all kinds of stuff about my...”

Baron, hesitantly, fills in
the blank. “Special abilities.”

“Special abilities.” Joy
reaches into her stolen jacket and produces the contents of the file
she...found? That sounds right. She must have found it, but damned if she can
recall where. She unfolds a page and reads from it as best as she can. “
Subject
ten has displayed signs of greatly...ac-cel-er-a-ted reflexes, superior
physical strength as compared to baseline
blah blah blah — ah, here it is.
Initial
blood screens recorded dis-pro-por-tion-ate levels of ho-mo-van-illic acid and
five-hydro
...umm...

“Five-hydroxyindoleacetic
acid,” Baron says.

“Yeah, that.
As well as
high levels of test-os-ter-one and low levels of ser-o-to-nin. Further,
personal observations of subject’s behavior, see attached add-en-dum, suggest
high likelihood that subject ten suffers from mild to moderate psy-cho-sis,
additional screenings are strongly recommended to
blah blah blah.”

Buzzkill Joy lays the paper
on the kitchen table and bares yellowed teeth in a crooked grin. A wave of
flop-sweat breaks free and cascades down Baron’s forehead.

“Are you saying I’m crazy?”
Joy chirps. Baron’s throat constricts, choking off any response. Joy’s face
goes slack, settling into a perfect neutrality that betrays no emotion, and
when she speaks again, her voice is soft, bland, flat. “I asked you a question,
doc. Are you saying I’m crazy?”

“...”

“You can tell me. I promise
I won’t get mad.”

“Joyce.
Joy
,” Baron
croaks.

“Know what? Screw it.
Doesn’t matter,” Joy says, flipping her hand dismissively.

“Joy, please. I was only —”

“Keeping tabs on me was what
you were doing. Why? What the hell is this all about?”

“I don’t know,” Baron says,
prompting Joy to slam her fists on the table. “I swear, I don’t know! They kept
me in the dark deliberately.”

“What
do
you know?
Spill.”

Spill Dr. Baron does, in as
much detail as his terror-addled brain can muster. It was sixteen years ago,
give or take several months, when he was approached by a man seeking doctors —
pediatricians, to be precise — interested in making a substantial amount of
money in exchange for their services, and for their discretion. He wouldn’t be
involved in anything illegal, Baron was assured. All he had to do was provide
medical care to a young mother’s child, keeping a sharp eye out for any unusual
developments or physical anomalies, then file detailed reports with his
contact. He was instructed to never discuss the patient with anyone, never
share his findings with anyone but his contact, and never reveal his contact’s
identity. He signed a lengthy confidentiality agreement to that effect, even
though he doubted a deal with such questionable overtones would be enforceable
in a court of law.

Under normal circumstances
he never would have agreed to something so shady, but he was in a bit of a bind
at the time, he tells Joy, hoping to wring even a drop of sympathy from the
girl. His wife was preparing divorce proceedings and had declared up-front she
planned to soak him for all he was worth, and the temptation of a generous
secret paycheck was too great to resist.

Joy takes a long, slow look
around Baron’s kitchen, a room larger than her bedroom back in Roxbury — and
much larger than her cell at Byrne. The glow of a small chandelier-style light
fixture, dripping from the ceiling directly over the table, reflects off
lacquered cabinets, off tile floor the color of beach sand, off the matching
stainless steel appliances. The stove is especially impressive: four burners,
plus a central griddle, and an oven spacious enough to bake a whole cow.

Even fancy stoves like that
can have problem. They can have gas leaks. They can spark massive house fires.

“Your contact,” Joy says.
“He can tell me what this is all about?”

“Maybe,” Baron says. “I
don’t know. Maybe.”

“His name.”

Baron balls his shaking
hands into fists. To hell with confidentiality. A lawsuit is better than a
funeral.

“Hamill,” he says. “Dr.
Kenneth Hamill.”

PART TWO: SINS OF THE FATHER

FIFTEEN

We leave Matt at the Coffee
Experience, though not by choice. He resisted our efforts to gently pry him out
of his chair, preferring to stay there and sulk over joining us for the nightly
homework jam. I get the feeling he’d sleep there if Jill let him, anything to
avoid going home.

Lot of that feeling going
around lately. As we head home, Sara and I debate whether to sneak a quick
dinner at my house or hers before zipping off to Stuart’s place. We come to the
conclusion that any lingering tension between the Hauser women would be easier
to endure than Mr. Danvers’ increasing contempt for the world at large.

“I don’t know how much
longer I can put up with his crap,” Sara says. “I get it: He thinks the world
is going to hell and people suck, but making my life miserable isn’t going to
fix anything.” She sighs. “I get the feeling we’re going to be spending a lot
of nights at Stuart’s place. At least his parents aren’t insane.”

“Missy’s parents aren’t
insane,” I point out.

“Are you sure about Dr.
Hamill? I could see him snapping, guy that uptight...”

“Yeah, but I think if Dr.
Hamill snapped, it’d still be pretty mellow. Like, he’d stop wearing neckties.”

Sara giggles. “He’d wear
something with color.”

“He’d stop watching PBS.”

“He’d smile.”

“We’re awful.”

“We are.”

Our good mood lasts until we
reach my house, and this time I can’t blame Mom or Ben for spoiling it: We step
into the living room and freeze up at the sight of my mother sitting on the couch
with Mrs. Steiger — who, judging by her bloodshot eyes and splotchy face, has
been crying, a lot. Mrs. Steiger sits upright and puts on the worst
everything
is okay
face I’ve ever seen.

“Carrie, Sara, hello,” she
says, her voice raw.

“Hi, Mrs. Steiger,” I say.
Sara nods in greeting.

“I’m sorry, honey, I haven’t
had a chance to get dinner going,” Mom says. Mrs. Steiger offers a stammering
apology for intruding on our evening, but Mom quickly cuts her off and insists
she has nothing to be sorry for.

“It’s okay, I’ll scrounge
some leftovers,” I say as I hustle through the living room, hoping to avoid any
further involvement in this very awkward encounter.

No such luck. “Have you seen
Matt?” Mrs. Steiger says. “Mr. Dent called me this morning. He said Matt never
showed up at school.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess he was
hanging out at Coffee E all day,” Sara says. “He was still there when we left.”

“He needed time to clear his
head,” I say. Mrs. Steiger nods.

“Girls, would you mind
taking dinner upstairs?” Mom says. “Barbara and I have some things to talk
about.”

Things to talk about? Oh,
no.

My mom and Matt’s mom aren’t
exactly friends. They met at a parents’ night at school soon after we moved to
Kingsport, but they don’t hang out at all, or even talk to each other as far as
I know. It seems unlikely that Mrs. Steiger would turn to my mom for
consolation or a sympathetic shoulder.

She might turn to Mom for
advice, however. Mom is very knowledgeable about cooking, about marketing (or
advertising, whatever it is she does for work), about driving me crazy...

She also knows how to file
for divorce.

“Hey, kiddo,” Jill says,
“closing up shop in about fifteen minutes.”

Matt grunts in
acknowledgement, then ponders where he might go once the Coffee Experience
shuts down for the night. The Carnivore’s Cave stays open late. The McDonald’s
at the far end of Main Street is a twenty-four hour place, though he suspects
the staff might not allow a minor to loiter there into the wee hours. Wandering
around town isn’t an option, not when the temperatures are still dropping below
freezing every night.

Matt pulls out his phone and
scrolls through his directory, wondering which of his friends might put him up
for the night. All of them
would
but it’s unlikely any of them
could
,
not as long as their parents had a say in the matter — and their say would
undoubtedly take the form of an inquiring phone call to his mother.

Or worse, his father.

“Hey, sexy. What are you
doing here so late?”

“What?” Matt says, realizing
immediately the question was not meant for him.

“Hey, Natalie. Mindy called
in again,” Jill says, “so I got stuck working open to close. Again.”

“Want me to take her out
back and work her over for you?”

“And deprive myself of that
delight? Oh, no. What can I get you?”

“Short espresso,” Natalie
says. “Just need a boost to get me home.”

“Right up.”

Natalie leans against the
counter as the espresso machine hisses to life. “Hey, Matt, fancy meeting you
here,” she says as she turns to drop a dollar in the tip jar. Matt gives her a perfunctory
hello nod. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing I want to talk
about,” Matt says, more to the table than to Natalie.

“Okay.”

He looks at her quizzically.
“You’re not going to harass me into telling you what’s bothering me?”

“Nope.”

“That’s what everyone else
does.”

“Look, something’s obviously
eating you, and it’s not that I’m not concerned, but pestering you about it
won’t help. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t want to talk.”

“Good. All talking does is
make me angry all over again.”

Jill presents Natalie with
her coffee, which she chugs down in a single gulp. “All right, bud, you’re
coming with me.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

“Why?”

“Because I got the cure for
what ails you. Come on.”

Too curious to refuse her,
Matt follows Natalie outside to a car so dinky Stuart could flip it with a
stiff sneeze.

“This is your car?” Matt
says. “You actually drive this.”

“It’s my boyfriend’s car,”
Natalie says, somewhat defensively, “and don’t laugh. It gets fantastic mileage
and I can park it anywhere. Perfect car for a city-living college girl.”

Matt folds himself into the
passenger’s seat. Natalie slides in, her petite frame better suited for the
cramped quarters, starts the car, and cranks the stereo for the short drive.
Matt recognizes the tune: “One Step Beyond” by Madness, old-school ska at its
finest. His respect for Natalie grows by a leap and a bound.