Inside Straight

Daniel Abraham Jonathan Hive

Better than television

“ST—hic—OP THAT!” Joe Twitch yelled.

“It’s not me,” Spasm said with his shit-eating frat boy grin.

“Seriously, just because I can do that doesn’t mean every time you get the hiccups, it’s because of me.”

“Bu—hic—llshit,” Twitch said, pointing an accusing finger at the newcomer. The camera crew was eating the whole thing up with a spoon. “Just be—hic—cause you think I moved your—hic—junk out of that room hic …”

The new round of losers had arrived that afternoon—Blrr, who was probably as fast or faster than Twitch, but only when she was wearing her rollerblades; Spasm, who had taken the bedroom across from Joe, only to find his things transported to a smaller, more distant room (to leave the first room available for one of the women, it was assumed); and Simoon, the girl who could become a dust storm. It was just an hour past dinner, and things had already devolved into a shouting match.

Jonathan was secretly pleased. Another few days with just King Cobalt and Joe Twitch, and he would have lost his mind.

Plus which, Simoon had taken the bedroom across from his.

Jonathan sat on a couch in his bedroom, trying to avoid his fellow inmates. He could hear the argument between Twitch and Spasm coming in from the hall. In the front room, the television was yammering on about events in Egypt; antijoker rioting was causing problems, the Egyptian army was threatening to impose a curfew, and the new UN Secretary-General was using the whole thing as an opportunity to show he could handle the job. There was a special report coming up on how the new Caliph, Abdul, had ordered all his brothers strangled, and whether that was going to be a stabilizing move politically, just in time for a switch to Entertainment Tonight. King Cobalt was obsessive about watching the entertainment news on the show. Blrr was probably going around the block for the three thousandth time that hour. And Jonathan just sat there, staring off into space. He had his arms folded so that no one was likely to notice that his right thumb was missing, small green wasps crawling over his skin where it used to be.

His attention, you could say, was elsewhere.

The beach wasn’t empty, even at night, but it was close. There were only a few college-age kids down by the pier, an old lady walking a dachshund with a frilly pink leash, and Drummer Boy sitting near the water with his middle pair of arms propping him up and his upper and lower pairs wrapped gently around someone. The wasp, bright green in daylight, was hard to see by the moon; the sound of its wings was muffled by the surf. So it could get in pretty close.

“We probably shouldn’t be here. You know. Like this,” she said. “We’re enemies, after all.”

Jonathan recognized the voice: the woman from Team Spades who pulled cards from a Mexican tarot deck and got a different power with each draw. Rosa Loteria. That was her name.

“Whatever,” Drummer Boy said. “It’s just a game.”

“I guess,” Rosa said. “They’re going to get rid of me. So then it won’t matter, right?”

“Why do you think they’d lose you?”

“They don’t like me,” she said. “Especially Cleopatra. She finds out I’m out with you …”

“Who? Pop Tart? She won’t care,” Drummer Boy said. “That’s over.”

“I thought maybe,” Rosa said. “I’m sorry about that.”

Ah, Jonathan thought. The oh-poor-you approach. Ham-handed as seduction techniques go, but it wasn’t like Drummer Boy was what you’d call a difficult lay. Still, the man was quiet for long enough that Jonathan and Rosa both started rethinking her tactics.“Why did you do it?” she asked. She traced the ink on one of his arms with her fingertips. “Get on the show, I mean.”

“I thought, you know, if I won… I thought maybe I could make a difference. You know, really do something.”

Oh puh-leeze! Jonathan thought, but Rosa shifted around in the cage of Drummer Boy’s arms. Her face tilted up to gaze into his eyes. The hush of the waves almost drowned out her words.

“You don’t need this. You can make a difference now.”

He kissed her. Because of course he did.

“It’s not like that,” Drummer Boy said. “The band… the band’s great. They’re really great guys. And we’ve cranked out some wicked shit. It’s just that I thought this would be a way to, you know, talk about the music. What it does. What it means.”

Rosa kissed him again, so the negotiation was going pretty well so far. Back at the Discard Pile, Jonathan propped his legs up on the couch. From here on in, things were going to get predictable.

Together, they walked out to the edge of the surf, the near-invisible wasp overhead at a discreet distance. They said something more that he couldn’t make out, and then Rosa slipped out of her clothes, Drummer Boy did the same, and they dove together into the water. So that was it. Show’s over. He took his wasp up into the salt-rich, thick air, spun around the beach a few times until he found the camera crew who’d been following the couple, and then headed the wasp back to the Discard Pile.

The incident might be good for a line or two when it came time to write the book, something about how the famous aces get all the sex maybe, or the total lack of privacy. Or exactly what the hell a loteria deck was anyway, and what kind of sad-ass power someone might gain from drawing El Pescado or El Melon. Nothing much more than that.

One fishing expedition officially a bust.

Jonathan shifted his attention.

“You’re really going to add a lot to the show,” Berman said.

“I tell you, we had quite a furball working out the rights with your agent. She’s a machine.”

They were on the deck of what Jonathan assumed was Peregrine’s house. Los Angeles spread out below them like a fire. Peregrine herself was just inside the huge glass wall, looking classy and talking to a young woman who Jonathan was pretty sure he’d seen on a magazine cover. Out here in the open air, it was just Berman and this other guy.

“Thank you,” the guy said. It came out like tank you, with very round vowel sounds. The wasp on the rail buzzed by for a closer look. Natural blond, blue eyes. German accent. It rang a bell. Something about BMWs. “But what does this mean, furball?”

“A disagreement. A little dustup. Nothing serious. Just that she really knows her stuff.”

“Genevive is a very smart woman,” the German guy said.

“She sure is,” Berman agreed with a smile.

He hates her, Jonathan thought, or he is fucking her. Or both. He made himself a mental note to find out which.

“The guest aces episodes are going to be central to the show. Really central. And having someone of your stature gives the whole thing a sense of that international respect. That’s what we want. A real demonstration that American Hero isn’t just about America.”

The penny dropped.

Lohengrin. He was the guy who could generate a suit of medieval-looking armor and a sword that could cut through more or less anything. All very Neuschwanstein. He’d made a big splash a few years ago over something, but it had only played for about five minutes on American news.

So what exactly was it he was doing here? He had to be the Kraut Berman had been talking about before.

“I wanted very much to help promote heroism,” Lohengrin said. “There is not enough of it in America.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, too,” Berman said.

The wasp landed on the rail, just a few feet away. Still close enough to hear and see.

“When am I to meet with the team that I am to lead?”

“Ah,” Berman said. “That’s actually changed a little. The part where you lead the team was just preliminary brain-storming. No, what the network settled on was having you face off against the team. Part of their task will be getting past you.”

Because American Hero isn’t just about America, Jonathan thought. It’s also about beating up foreigners. Lohengrin’s expression told him that he’d drawn the same conclusion.

“Genevive didn’t mention that change?” Berman said, oozing apology without actually offering one. Lohengrin smiled coolly. Jonathan saw Berman flinch when the sword appeared in the German ace’s hand, and flinched himself when the sword darted at his wasp. It felt like being pinched.

He hoped the display had proven Lohengrin’s point. He didn’t have a backup wasp there, though, so he’d never know. It was a bummer. That angle might have been juicy.

The wasp in the fold of Curveball’s purse took to the air as Jonathan’s attention inhabited it. It took a moment to get his bearings.

“I…I don’t really talk about it, you know,” Fortune said. The bar roared dully behind him, half a hundred conversations running in parallel. The décor was unfinished wood, painted ductwork, and odd signs and objects epoxied to the walls in lieu of actual character. “I spent most of my life with Mom trying to keep anything from setting off the virus. She’s great, you know. I mean I really love her.” He paused. “That’s not something guys are supposed to say about their mothers, is it?”

“Probably not,” Curveball agreed. “But it’s okay. I know what you mean.”

Curveball and John Fortune, sitting together in a booth at the back of some unholy Bennigan’s clone. There didn’t seem to be a film crew nearby. Either they were really well-hidden, or John Fortune had used his connection to the show to sneak Curveball out of the panopticon. And if that wasn’t reason enough to go out with a guy, Jonathan wasn’t sure what would be.

The wasp high on the wall edged down, keeping its green carapace hidden behind the fake antlers and 1950s outhouse humor. Jonathan tried to make out what the body language was saying; Fortune with his hands on the table, a little slumped over, Curveball sitting forward too, leaning on her elbows. Listening, but not flirty. She had her hair down. It was the first time Jonathan had seen her without her ponytail.

“And then, when I drew an ace… when I thought, you know, it was an ace. I don’t know. It was wild. Everyone was calling me the savior, or else the antichrist. And the thing with my dad. The thing with Fortunato.”

Fortunato dying to save me, he didn’t say. Now that Fortune laid it out like that, Jonathan could see how there’d be a certain amount of couch time called for.

“Intense,” Curveball said.

“Yeah. Yeah, intense. And now,” Fortune shrugged, “it’s all over. You know? I used to have guards around me all the time. And then I was one of the most important aces in the world. And now I’m Captain Cruller.”

Curveball shook her head, shifting her hand from the opposite elbow to the beer bottle in front of her. Dos Equis. Jonathan would have thought she was a wine cooler girl. “That’s Drummer Boy,” Curveball said. “Blow him off. He’s a dick.”

And dicking away, even as we speak, Jonathan thought.

“He’s not wrong, though,” Fortune said. “I mean it’s weird being ordinary, you know? Not being anyone in particular.”

“Maybe you should get on a TV show,” Curveball said.

The wasp was in a pretty good position to see Fortune’s face while that sunk in.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t mean anything about you guys. I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to slag on you.”

“No, it’s okay. I mean, apology accepted, but it’s not what I was thinking.”

“What was?” Fortune asked.

She looked up, half-smiling a question.

“What were you thinking?” Fortune asked.

Curveball frowned, picked up the beer bottle, drank a little, and put it down with a thud. Fortune let the silence stretch. If it had been a manipulation, it would have been a good one. The poor bastard was sincere, so it was even better.

“I’m thinking about the reasons we all came to this thing,” she said. “Drummer Boy, Earth Witch. Me. It’s been fun, and I’ve met a lot of people who are really great. And some that aren’t so great. But the thing that… the thing that’s weird in me? I want to win. I came here and I thought, whatever. I’ll try and we’ll see what happens, but I’m around everyone, and it’s like it’s important. I want it. I want to be the American Hero.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“That maybe we can never be special enough to be happy,” she said.

Ooh, deep, Jonathan thought. But Fortune was nodding and smiling.

“Can I tell you something? You have to promise not to pass it on,” Fortune said.

Curveball raised her eyebrows.

“I tried to get my power back. After… after what happened. I thought maybe I could get it back and control it. Since my dad … since Fortunato fixed me.”

Curveball shook her head. Someone at the bar shrieked with laughter that sounded as fake as the ambiance. Curveball’s hands were on the table now. There were probably six or eight inches between Fortune’s hands and hers—flirting distance, maybe. Or maybe not. Jonathan was having a hard time getting a good read off the interaction.

“I tried everything,” Fortune said. “Meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture. Rolfing.”

“You’re kidding,” Curveball said with a laugh that managed to be warm and sympathetic.

“Seems kind of stupid now,” Fortune said into his drink. Jonathan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the guy was blushing.

“Maybe,” Curveball said. “I get it, though.”

“I don’t care if John fucking Fortune gets his powers back!”

On the couch at Losers Central, Jonathan felt a wave of vertigo, suddenly uncertain of where he was. Someone was talking about Fortune. And she sounded pissed off.

He stood up, tucking the hand with the missing thumb into his pocket.

“No!” the voice said again. A woman’s voice. “No, I’m not. They voted me off the show, Mom. I’m off. I’m stuck with all the other losers.”

Jonathan walked to his doorway. Across the hall, Simoon’s door was ajar. He could just make out her sand-colored skin and black hair as she paced.

“Yes, he’s here sometimes. But it’s not like…”

A faint treble yammer, a voice on the other end of a telephone connection, buzzed like a mosquito. Jonathan came closer to the door.

“I’m American, Mama. I was born in America. I’ve never been to Egypt. Egypt isn’t my problem. John Fortune isn’t my problem. I got kicked off the show, and now I’m rooming with the most annoying guy in the world, a Mexican wrestler with a fake accent, a guy who turns into bugs, and a girl who thinks roller derby never went out of style. My career is over. Peregrine already thinks I suck, I’m not going to try to get her son to—”

The mosquito whined again. Simoon paused in the narrow strip. One hand held her cell phone to her ear. Her head bowed, and she sighed.

“I’ll try, okay? If the occasion comes up, I’ll try—and don’t push me, Mother. Honest to God, if you give me any more shit about this, I won’t even talk to him.”

The mosquito was much quieter.

“You too,” Simoon said. “Give my love to Uncle Osiris.”

The cell phone closed with a click, and Jonathan rapped gently on the door, swinging it open an inch in the process. Simoon looked up, her eyes round and surprised. Jonathan waved, hoping the gesture was appropriately friendly and not particularly stalkerlike.

“Oh my God,” Simoon said, her brows furrowing with concern. “What happened to your thumb?”

“Oh,” Jonathan said, sticking his hand back in his pocket. “It’s nothing. It just does that sometimes. Little bits of me kind of wander off. They’ll be back.”

“Oh,” Simoon said, and Jonathan mentally removed her from the list of women who would ever, under any circumstances, consider sleeping with him.

“I was just… I couldn’t help overhearing you, ah, shouting at your mother there.”

Simoon sighed and sat on the edge of her bed. She looked smaller than he’d thought. “Sorry about that,” she said. “It’s this whole long thing.”

“The camera guys are still watching Joe Twitch and Spasm fight it out,” Jonathan said. “You want to talk about it?”

“It’s nothing,” Simoon said.

“Egypt. John Fortune. Something that wasn’t your fucking problem?” Jonathan said.

Simoon shook her head, paused, looked up at him.

“Okay,” she said. “But just between us, okay?”

“Absolutely,” Jonathan lied.

“My mom’s a god. The wild card hit Egypt way back when, and a bunch of the people who got it wound up looking like the ancient gods. You know. Crocodile heads or lion bodies, that kind of thing. They called themselves the Living Gods. My mom’s Isis, or, you know, an Isis. There are several.”

“She’s in Egypt?”

“No. Vegas. A bunch of them emigrated and got jobs at the Luxor. My mom hooked up with Elvis when she got here, and here I am. Daughter of a god and the King, and still kicked off the show. But anyway, I have a lot of family back in Cairo. Cousins and stuff.”

Jonathan moved slowly into the room and sat on the couch there. The bed would have seemed a little too familiar. “So how does John Fortune figure in?”

“My uncle Osiris has this thing where he sees the future. Bits of it. They don’t even let him into the casino part of the hotel. Anyway, ever since the Twisted Fists killed the Caliph there’s been a lot of antijoker sentiment in the old neighborhoods. And Osiris told Mom that there’s some kind of amulet they gave Peregrine back in the ’80s, and that it’s time she got John Fortune to wear it.”

“Ah,” Jonathan said. And then, “I don’t get it.”

“It’s supposed to give him the powers of Ra, whatever that means. And that’s supposed to help things back in Egypt. I don’t know all the details, and Uncle Osiris really likes to play how he’s all mystical and wise and shit, so getting a straight story out of him is, like, good luck. It’s all destiny this and fate that. But Mom decided that I should tell John Fortune about the amulet. And now she’s giving me all kinds of shit about how I haven’t done it yet.” Simoon shrugged like it was obviously the worst idea in the world.

“And you don’t want to because…?”

“I came on the show to help my career. Get some exposure,” Simoon said. “If I go talking crazy shit like this to Peregrine’s kid, what kind of reputation do I get? And anyway, after what happened to him before, he probably doesn’t even want powers, you know?”

“Have you ever tried Rolfing?” Jonathan asked.

“What?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Just gimme your phone for a minute.”

“Why?” Simoon asked, suddenly suspicious. Late in the game for that, Jonathan thought.

“Trust me,” he said.

He dialed with his remaining thumb. The connection rang twice, then a click.

“Hello?” Curveball said.

“Hey,” Jonathan said. “Give him the phone.”

There was a pause.

“What are you talking about, Hive?”

“I don’t know his phone number. I know yours from when we were all buddies and gosh-darn-it friends for life, so I’m calling you. Now slide the phone across the table, okay? I need to talk to him.”

Simoon, jaw slack with horror and surprise, made a waving motion with both hands. Don’t do this. Jonathan gave her history’s least-successful thumbs-up.

“Jonathan?” Fortune said at the other end of the line.

“Hey,” Jonathan said. “I’m over at Losers Central with Simoon, and you need to get over here.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s a story you’ve seriously got to hear. And funny thing is, it’s all about you and how you get ace powers back.”

There was a pause.

“Is this a joke?” Fortune asked.

“That’s the funny thing,” Jonathan said. “It really isn’t. Get over here as soon as you can.”

He hung up before Fortune could say anything else, and tossed the cell back to Simoon. She didn’t look pleased.

“Hey!” Blrr said from the doorway. “We’re going to make some popcorn and watch some TV. You guys want to come?”

Simoon hesitated, her gaze shifting from Jonathan to Blrr and back.

“Nah,” Simoon said. “Next time. Bugsy and I are in the middle of something.”

Blrr looked mildly surprised.

“Nothing like that,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, didn’t figure,” Blrr said, and vanished.

“You shouldn’t have called him,” Simoon said. “That was supposed to be just between you and me.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Jonathan said with a grin. “You’ll thank me for this later.”