Bossman Sevenday begins laughing
again. “Of course you are, Trickster. You have twenty-four
hours.”
Street says, “I might need a
little—”
Bossman Sevenday frowns.
Street says quickly, “—less time
than that. You never know. Twenty-four hours, that’s plenty. You’ll
have it in a day, at the very latest.”
“Good Trickster,”
says Bossman Sevenday. And, as he laughs and Street backs away, the
flesh from Bossman Sevenday’s face drips like candle wax from his
skull.
Street trips and leaps up and runs.
Bossman Sevenday’s laughter follows him around the bone-white
mansion and down the cobblestone drive. The cobblestones sound
hollow like drums beneath Street’s feet. As he reaches the front
gate, he thinks the cobblestones are skulls and imagines people
buried together, packed as tightly as cigarettes. He leaps onto the
gleaming ivory gate to climb it, but it swings inward. He drops
from it, runs into the road, then hears a car racing down the
driveway.
3
The silver roadster pulls up beside
him. O says, “Faster if you ride with me.”
Street doesn’t slow down. “No,” he
puffs. “Way.”
O says, “I’m not about to take you
back. Not without the rock. If you want to get away from
here—”
Street jumps over the side of the
roadster and buckles himself into the passenger seat. “Go!” O puts
the speedometer exactly at the posted speed limit. Street says,
“Faster!”
O says, “If a cop stops us, we’ll
go a lot slower.”
Street nods. “Right. Good thinking.
I’m cool with that.” But Street breathes fast and sweats profusely.
He knows he doesn’t smell like he’s cool with anything. He says,
“Back there. Did you see anything odd?”
“Odd?”: O grins.
“Nope.”
The melting face must’ve been a
freak of the sunlight. The cobblestones must’ve only sounded
hollow. Street says, “Me, neither. Just wanted to show the Bossman
I’m dedicated to finding his rock.”
O says, “I think he knows
that.”
“Except I don’t know
what it is,” Street admits. “Or who took it. Or why he expects me
to find it.”
O says, “Why doesn’t matter as much
as the fact he expects it.”
“True. You know where
it is?”
O shakes her head. “If you were
looking for something that people wanted, where would you
go?”
Street frowns, then
grins.
4
Street leads O through Meandering
Market. Today, it’s in a freight lot near the docks. His grin is
back, because people are nodding and smiling, saying, “Howzit,
T-man!” and “Yo, the Streetdog!” and “Tricks baby, lookin’ so
fine!” The impromptu aisles are thick with people who like bargains
and don’t care about sales slips. Street usually moves through the
Market like a prince, perusing each dealer’s wares, looking over
clothes, tunes, shows, tech, gems, and all the sweet distracting
things of the world. Now he’s moving just fast enough not to make
anyone wonder why he’s moving fast.
The crowd is full of people who
want to be seen in their bright colors and careful hair. Picking
any of them out would be a challenge, but Street’s challenge is
greater. He looks where he thinks no one is, in shadows and quiet
places. He spots the little brown man at the tent and
aluminum trailer called Pele’s Cafe. Mouse sits on a stool near the
back, nursing a cup of the house java.
Mouse spots Street just as quickly.
He sets the coffee cup down, looks around, and Street knows Mouse
is doing the math, distance to aisles and number of obstacles and
the length of Street’s stride and the speed of Mouse’s. Then Mouse
smiles at Street, telling Street two things: Mouse figures he can’t
get away, and Mouse would really, really like to get
away.
Mouse says, “How ya, Tricks? You
and the lady seeking a seat? You can have mine in half a mo, if you
fancy.”
Street says, “Ah, Mouse! How long
has it been?”
Mouse shrugs. “There’s just dead
time between deals. You looking for a ride? I know someone with a
lead on a silver Zephyr, good as new—”
O says, “If it’s parked by Dingo’s
newsstand, you don’t.”
Mouse says, “Or a bulletproof vest?
Only one hole in it.”
Street says as if he knows exactly
what he’s talking about. “I’m after the rock.”
Mouse’s eyes don’t change at all,
meaning he’s much more guilty than if he looked scared. Mouse says,
“The actor? Plymouth? The Hope Diamond? Not my speed, Tricks. You
know me. Sweet and small, nothing memorable. I so hate
trouble.”
Street says, “Mouse, you got to
know yourself. Take me, for example. I am a very smooth
liar.”
O snorts, but if it might have
turned into a laugh, she stifles it when Street glances at
her.
He tells Mouse, “You’re a smooth
facilitator. Someone wants to sell and someone wants to buy, no
one’s better than you at making it happen. But you’re not a smooth
liar. No shame there. Perfection in all things is a gift given to
few of us.”
“Very few,” O agrees.
“Very, very few.” Street glances at her again. She says, “So very
few—”
Street tells her, “Should I need
your help, you’ll know because I’ll have ripped out my tongue and
used it to hang myself to spare me from asking you.”
O says, “Ooh! Looking forward to
that!”
Street puts a hand on Mouse’s
shoulder to keep him from sidling away. “So. The rock.”
Mouse says, “Haven’t seen
it.”
Street says, “And if you had, what
would you have seen?”
Mouse shrugs. “A black rock. I
don’t know. I just hear what you do.”
“And if you were
looking for the black rock, where would you go?”
“You got me confused
with the library reference desk, Tricks.”
“Fair enough. Should
I receive anything of value, you take ten percent.”
Mouse shrugs. “But I don’t know
anything.”
Street nods.
Mouse says, “And I take
fifteen.”
Street nods again.
Mouse says, “Mama Sky.”
O’s mouth opens as if she’s going
to say her nickname, but she closes it.
Mouse says, “See you in better
times,” and slips away, a faint shadow that dissolves in the
surging sea of Market shoppers.
5
As the Zephyr speeds up Sunset,
Street says, “You got to admit that went well.”
O keeps her eyes on the road.
“True. If there’s one thing you know, it’s how to deal with
scumbags.”
Street glares at her, but she’s not
looking, so he laughs. “Got us a name, didn’t I?”
“A name’s not the
rock.”
“Anyone else get this
far?”
O says grudgingly, “No.”
Street laughs.
O says, “How’re you going to find
Mama Sky?”
Street smiles. “I’m
not.”
O glances at him as a truck comes
around the corner. O takes the shoulder of the road, spraying dirt,
then swings back onto the road, and says, perfectly calmly, “You’re
not.”
Street shakes his head. “Saw your
face when Mouse said the name. You know her.”
“True.”
“I’m thinking we’re
heading there now.”
“You’re thinking
right.”
“So. Who is
she?”
“My mother.” O’s
voice says it would be a good idea not to ask more questions, which
makes Street want to ask a lot more. Then he looks at her face and
decides that while she’s probably twice as annoying as any annoying
person could be, he can wait until she’s ready to talk
again.
6
O slows at the top of Sunset, then
speeds along High Road and parks. For a moment, Street thinks
they’ve stopped at a garden with a view of the city and the ocean.
Then he sees they’re in front of a small house that’s the same blue
as the sky. A large woman in a loose house dress of the same blue
comes out of the front door to stand perfectly still with a
perfectly calm expression. Her skin is as dark as O’s. Her white
hair billows from her round face like clouds.
Street looks at O and the large
woman. The light dims, and he glances up. Heavy clouds are
gathering in front of the sun. As the sky darkens, so does the
color of the house and the woman’s robes.
Street says, “If it’s about to
rain, it’d sure be nice to go inside or put up the top.”
A drop of rain hits him, then
another, and water begins to fall more heavily.
O says, “Mother.”
Mama Sky says,
“Daughter.”
O says, “Is this
necessary?”
Mama Sky says, “Am I
happy?”
O says, “You have the
rock.”
Mama Sky says, “Why would I have
the rock?”
O says, “You never tell me what I
want to know.”
Mama Sky says, “I always tell you
what you need to know.”
O says, “How do you know what I
need to know?”
Mama Sky says, “Because I’m your
mother.”
O says, “I don’t know why I came
here!” and reaches to start the car.
Street catches her hand. “Because
of the rock.”
“I don’t care about
the rock!”
Street says, “I wish I could say
that.” The rain is a cold torrent. He’s soaked, like O and the
roadster. He gets out, splashing through deep puddles to stand at
the bottom of the porch. “Mama Sky, ma’am? I’m—”
She says coldly, “I know who you
are.”
Street says, “Oh. Well, I’m
powerful sorry you don’t like what you’ve heard. I hate the notion
that a fine looking woman like yourself isn’t glad to see
me.”
Mama Sky squints at him, then
laughs. “You are a most foolish young man who thinks that flattery
excuses most of his faults.”
As the rain slackens, Street says,
“When a fine looking woman with a laugh as big as the world thinks
a man has faults, he hopes telling her the truth will excuse all of
them.”
Mama Sky shakes her head. “What my
daughter sees in you, I’ll never know.”
O says, “Mama!”
Mama Sky smiles again, and the rain
stops. Street thinks that Mama Sky knows what a young woman might
see in him. Then he wonders if that means O sees something in him
that isn’t as annoying as what he sees in her. He glances at her
and only sees annoyance.
Mama Sky says, “You children come
in.”
The return of bright sunlight feels
good on Street’s skin, but he says, “Thank you, ma’am,” quickly to
keep O from saying anything. He grins at O, then heads
inside.
The living room is small and
comfortable and filled with furniture in every shade of dawn and
dusk and clouds and rainbows.
Mama Sky says, “Let me get you some
tea,” and O says almost as quickly, “We can’t stay,” and Street
says just as quickly, “Tea would be lovely.”
O glares at him. Mama Sky beams and
goes into the kitchen. Street circles the living room, ignoring O
and looking for anything that might be called a black rock. The
only things in the room as dark as an overcast midnight are a
pillow and a plate stand and the bindings of some books.
Mama Sky returns with a blue tray,
a blue teapot, and a blue plate heaped high with macaroons and
meringues. Street says, “Allow me,” and hurries to help
her.
She smiles and shakes her head and
sets the tray on a coffee table painted with children flying kites
and sailing in boats. “I’m not so helpless.” She pours a cup of tea
for each of them.
Street’s afraid that O will refuse
hers, but she accepts it and says quietly, “Thank you,
Mother.”
Street takes a deep drink. It’s
green tea with ginger, and he doesn’t have to lie when he says,
“Delicious!” He crams a meringue into his mouth, swallows, sips
tea, crams a macaroon, swallows, sips tea, and then notices the
women staring at him.
Mama Sky says, “When did you last
eat?”
Street opens his mouth to answer.
When he thinks about the past, he remembers playing tricks,
sometimes for money, sometimes for fun. He remembers running and
hiding because few people have as finely developed a sense of humor
as he. He remembers eating and drinking things that had to be
consumed quickly because they tasted terrible or he had to get
someplace quickly. But he can’t remember when he last sat still and
ate. “I’ve been kind of busy today.” He eats six more cookies, but
more slowly, savoring each bite.
Mama Sky says, “Let me fix you a
sandwich.”
Street says, “I’d surely love that
some other time, but I’m under a deadline. With the emphasis on
dead.”
Mama Sky frowns. “Whose
deadline?”
Street says, “Bossman
Sevenday’s.”
The room darkens. Street thinks it
will rain again. Then everything lightens, and Mama Sky says,
“You’re trying to find this rock for Bossman Sevenday?”