O.Z. and Jade were runaways who had disguised themselves as elderly "retired circus performers" in order to avoid being busted as kids and sent home. It was a ridiculous plan but it actually seemed to be working- they'd even managed to rent an apartment. Then they met the neighbors and things turned seriously weird.

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#.1 /// EL CORTEZ GARDENS APARTMENTS

The apartment was mostly one huge room, with six good sized windows running along one wall. It had a kitchen that was big too, but it was oddly shaped- long and windowless like the inside of a semi trailer.

The kitchen echoed like a cave. They plugged in the cord of the old round-cornered white refrigerator and it began chug-chugging noisily. There was no stove but on the long tiled counter there was a hot plate and truly ancient microwave oven with toggle switch controls.

The front room held a few pieces of what had to be some of the saddest and most beat up furniture the kids had ever seen. There wasn't a picture on the wall or a nicknack anywhere. The manager jokingly referred to this style as "the early suicidal look"...

But from the row of windows their room did have a nice view of the old Spanish style building's central courtyard- nearly overrun by bushes and ferns and squat palms. And there was a skylight like a big glass pup tent over the Murphy bed. Hanging on a frazzled loop of shoelace in the tiny bathroom's shower was a pair of vise grips, which you had to use to get water. The manager admitted that this could be awkward, and promised them real shower handles by the middle of the week- "So you don't boil yourself alive in there. If you need anything I live downstairs in #101, the one that says OFFICE."

Beat, bored with everything and mainly concerned that they wouldn't blame him for the apartment's condition but the Beverly Hills lawyer who owned the place ("Some day I think I'll go crazy and give all the tenants his phone number!"), the manager had hardly given them a second glance. This was despite all of O.Z.'s crazy arm flapping---the exaggerated gestures whenever he spoke---and his accent that drifted from French to German to horror-spoof Transylvanian.

Jade cringed every time he opened his mouth, but she guessed it had made sense to try and pass themselves off as European circus performers. If they ever ran into someone who was familiar with American circus companies they could cover for any mistakes in their story by saying that these things were done differently over there.

The main room had a bed that folded up into the wall and came crashing down like some medieval execution device when you tugged at it. Apparently the counterweights inside the wall that were supposed to let you raise and lower it with one hand were missing. It was large enough that their sharing the same bed didn't seem all that different than the times they'd unrolled their sleeping bags side by side in the backyard. They slept soundly that night, oblivious to the 3 a.m. raindrops hitting the skylight and the loud crazy argument full of cursing and vicious threats out in the hallway just before dawn.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

The next day they went shopping for toys and groceries and a television. They arrived back home late in the afternoon, rumbling up the hallway and into their apartment.

"I'm sure glad you thought to buy this wagon, O.Z.!"

"Yeah, but what a hassle getting it up those stairs. This sucker weighs a ton even by itself! I still think it would've been more fun to stay at that place with all the streams and that big four story waterfall in the lobby. God am I thirsty! Let's make that Kool Aid."

"You're thirsty?" rasped Jade as she plopped down in a kitchen chair and took off her flea-bitten mink stole, fanning herself with it. She was wearing her Saturday and Tuesday clothes, having bought four complete outfits. She tore off her wig, then pulled the two grapefruit free of their sling and out through the neck of her blouse and set them on the table. She stuck her chest out at O.Z., "Look- Instant mas-mectopy!"

"You're sick!" he chortled appreciatively.

They dug into the groceries, setting the jalapeno cheesedogs and the rainbow yogurt bars in the freezer and piling everything else on the kitchen counter. They had remembered to buy a pitcher and some plastic tumblers but had forgotten to get ice, and when Jade read the instructions on the can of drink mix she groaned.

"What's the matter?"

"This is the wrong kind. This kind takes a cup and a half of sugar to make. Now we have to go a-a-aaall the way back to Safeways!"

"To hell with that noise. I'll drink milk. Or do you think we might be able to borrow some from a neighbor?"

"Good idea. I'll go..."

Jade hastily reassembled her outfit, putting on some more lipstick and a few good squirts of perfume and went out, cup in hand. She knocked on the door of their closest neighbor, that chunky young blonde woman in the jeans and white tube top they had seen earlier in the day.

She hated to admit it but she felt more confident in her role without her friend along, not having to worry about him suddenly falling out of character, like calling the salespeople "Dude", or his obnoxious displays of wealth. He'd offered the man in the t.v. department $50 if he could make sure the set was delivered that same afternoon- "So vee can vatch zee Ooop-rah Vin-free!"

She knocked again.

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#.2 /// CANDICE

Candice Evertsen opened the door part way and looked warily at Jade, not altogether sure that she wasn't hallucinating. "Yeah?"

Jade beemed a smile at her and gestured with the white tumbler, trying for a blase, sophisticated tone, "Ah! Hello Dearie, I am Mrs. Babalooski, your new neighbor from number 349. And I was vondering, could I borrow perhaps a cup or two of sooker?"

Candice grinned from ear to ear. Babalooski? A cup of sugar? This was just too bizarre!

"Sugar? I don't think we have any. I have some honey though. Come on in. My name's Candice, by the way."

"I am Jadzia," trilled the tiny woman, "But everyone calls me Jade."

Candice found herself instantly charmed by this ridiculous creature, possibly a hundred years old under all that white powder. The goofy, gap-toothed grin just melted her heart. Funny how some old people brought out such a strong impulse in her to mother them.

Jade entered. The place was as small and cramped as theirs was large and spacious. Dark and messy and smelling of cat pee and sweat. There was a blanket tacked up over the single window. Milk crates full of pots and pans, paperback books, old-fashioned record albums. A mountain of laundry in the corner with an immense pair of scuffed-up work boots perched on top.

Candice stretched, yawning noisily, and headed for the kitchen, "I know I had a thing of honey in here somewhere."

Jade followed her in, "Did I wake you?"

"Sort of, but I needed to get up anyway. I work nights, tending bar. A place called The Animal Shelter. My boyfriend usually gets home from work about now and wakes me up, but for some reason- Ah, there you are!" She handed Jade a plastic bear with a spout protruding from its head.

"This might work. We are making Kool Aid."

"Kool Aid? Yeeeeuck!" shuddered Candice.

"Yes.... well we are all out of caf-fay."

"Then you're in luck. I was just about to make some. Fresh ground beans from Sumatra, my one extravagance. This stuff is da kine! You're not seriously going to drink that sugar water crap, are you?"

"Coffee does sound good," said Jade, who was particularly fond of cappacino with a shot of vanilla in it, "But my Osvald doesn't even like the smell of it. I could never get him to try it."

"Huh? He's never had coffee?"

Damn! What a stupid thing to say!

"Well no, of course he has! But in our part of Europe we don't.... I mean not since... vith the war and za bombs and all," said Jade, not even sure what she meant by this. It had been the first thing that popped into her head.

"Oh yes, I hear the shortages were something terrible," nodded Candice, feeling just a bit guilty at having lived her life untouched by the horrors of modern warfare. Or not exactly guilty but somehow spooked; knowing that any given spot on the globe might luck out for only so long...

She tried to imagine what it might be like, the smoggy skies of her own city torn by wailing sirens. Not "The Bomb"- which was as abstract and unconceivable to her as being dead was (you see a funny vapor trail streaking across the sky and an instant later---without even noticing the transition---you're just a gust of boiling atoms!) but the weighty thrumming of dozens of bombers darkening the sky overhead, the scream of falling bombs, the thunder of flying brickwork, the terrible heat as your whole world burns! And then the aftermath: Proud old buildings smashed like sandcastles, discolored bodies stuck in ghastly poses, bundled refugees pushing ricketty black baby strollers full of whatever they could salvage down cratered avenues...

She shook her head, chasing away the gruesome images. "So coffee for us, and Kool Aid for your little.... Uh, I mean, assuming that your husband is a..."

"That's quite alright, dear. We have made ourselves a fine career from being little, my husband and I. 'The Flying Babalooskis: World's Greatest Miniature Aerialists!' We toured with Collander Brother's Circus up until 1980. Now we sometimes work in television. Not so much climbing for us. You have seen us?"

"I think maybe I have," said Candice, who had been wandering around looking for something and finally found it- a tiny alarm clock that had fallen behind an end table.

She said, "Oh man, it's almost six! I wonder where the hell he could be. Do you suppose I could use your phone real quick? It's local..."

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#.3 /// SANTA'S WORKSHOP

O.Z. continued unloading the wagon. Under the many boxes of toys were a hammer and nails and six large framed photo posters they had bought at the gallery at the mall. He dug them out. He slid a kitchen chair around the apartment, hanging a print up wherever the walls looked barest. Alternating the ones he had picked, of women in postage-stamp bikinis leaning seductively across Porsches and Corvettes, with the ones Jade had selected- teddy bears in atheletic outfits competing in the 1984 L.A. Olympics. The salesman had explained to them what a smart investment fine art photography was these days. When O.Z. did return to his parents they would be glad to know that he hadn't just been throwing his money away on junk.

Standing on the chair next to the low-sashed windows he had a deliciously dizzying view of the courtyard. It was easy to imagine that you were thousands of feet in the air. The dense mass of ferns and elephant ear plants below was the giant trees of some rain forest, and the irregular flagstone slabs of the patio were a patchwork of farms and pastureland..... A secret world hidden inside the caldera of a great dormant volcano. High in the mountains of Nepal, it has remained undiscovered to this day, perhaps cloaked by some ancient magic. The soaring weathered walls of the courtyard looked amazingly like rock...

All those neighors' windows sure didn't belong inside a volcano, but those could be the teleportals that this race of wizards uses to trade with different planets and historical eras and dimensions. Too bad their twenty thousand years of peace and prosperity was soon to be threatened, by an evil rogue volcanologist named Malodron Spektor...

What was this? A pair of wires crossing the courtyard and terminating just to the right of these two windows. He leaned over and peered through the dirty screen. Telephone lines? No, it was an old clothesline. The last of what had long ago been a whole maze of them, which none of this building's superintendants must have ever gotten around to removing.

O.Z. hopped down and unhooked the window screen, easing it into the room. He reached out and pulled on one of the wires. The pulley next to the window spun with a piercing shriek- feeding rusty cable out into the void. He rushed to the kitchen and began tearing through the bags, looking for toy aircraft. Did he buy that set of die-cast fighter jets, or had they run out of room in the wagon first? RATS! Oh well, tomorrow they could go buy a whole fleet of planes and spaceships! He heard the front door open.

Jade appeared in the kitchen doorway, her appearance so different from the girl he had grown up down the block from that for an instant it startled him. "Hey Jade! Check out what I found outside the window."

She gave him a wild desperate look that could only mean one thing. Uh oh...

Where was that stinking toupee?! He jammed it onto his head just as Candice came in with two mugs and a steaming glass coffee pot.

Jade perfomed a graceful curtsey, "Osvald, this is Miss Candice Evertsen from next door. She needs to use our telephone."

Candice clunked the pot down on the counter and said, "Holy Moly! Look at all these toys. It looks like Santa's workshop in here!"

No, thought Jade nervously, it looks like a couple of brats had found a bag of money and gone on a spending spree. She stammered, "Yes, well you see, these toys-"

"Are for zee little ones. I am testing zem---each one!---for quality and for making sure has safety, before ve ship zem over to our be-luffed grandkidders back in Old Country," nodded O.Z. He inspected a section of model train track with the stern authority of a watchmaker.

Candice filled the two mugs and handed one to Jade. She shook her head, smiling, "You must have a lot of grandkids."

O.Z. acknowledged this with a depraved leer.

"The phone's out there beside the good chair, Lovey," said Jade, referring to the vinyl recliner that no longer stayed upright and had to be kept up against the wall. She tasted her coffee and added milk and honey. When Candice went out she flashed her friend a 'thumbs up'. He had come up with a reasonable explanation for all these toys without missing a beat! Maybe O.Z. would be all right at this game after all...

She called out to Candice that she could use their phone whenever she wanted.

O.Z. gaped at her. He hissed, "Are you nuts?!"

"They can't afford a phone," she whispered, "They're like living on cheap ramen and sardines every night. And it's not like it's costing us anything. Didn't Dave-the-manager say it must still be hooked up from when the last tenant had it?"

"That's not the point! We'd have to wear these disguises all the time, in case she drops by. And how would we ever explain something like that fort we wanted to build in here?"

Damn, she hadn't even thought of that. Which made this a much bigger screw up than any of the ones that O.Z. had committed so far. But the fact was that Jade liked Candice, who reminded her so much of the sister she seldom saw, and the invitation had just popped out. She shrugged, "Then maybe we can limit them to only certain times. Because we're so old and need to take a lot of naps."

Candice must have heard them arguing. She clamped her had over the mouthpiece and said, "Don't worry, it's only a local call..."

Then she was talking to whoever it was she had dialed, "Hello? Hi, is Byron still there? Maybe out in the- What? Oh God, not again! He called you that? Well he's sensitive, Mr. Gorkis, he doesn't take criticism very-" (even at this distance they could hear the explosion of tinny laughter and the faint buzzing of angry words-). "He did? I'm sorry he did that, Mister G. ......... Yes, I know .......... You didn't call the cops on him, did you? Because- Thank you! Yes. Thank you so much! No, if you already paid him I don't see why he'd ever have a reason to 'darken your doorway' again- Hello? Are you still- Well screw you too!"

It was pretty obvious what had happened. They went out into the living room. Candice was staring at the phone in her hand. She said faintly, "If he got paid then he's probably at the Taj Mahal."

"Imagine that," whispered O.Z.

"I think she means that bar we passed."

"Oh. That place..."

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#.4 /// BYRON JOINS THE CIRCUS

They stood there, offering her their awkward, silent sympathies as she continued to look at the phone. Finally she sighed and started dialing again- but stopped as the wall began to thump with a driving rock drumbeat, the song also echoing in through the windows. She hollared, "THAT YOU, BABES?"

"NO, IT'S BLOODY LORD MOUNTAIN-BAT! WHO THE HELL DIDJA THINK IT WAS?"

"WELL COME ON OVER AND MEET THE NEIGHBORS, YOUR LORDSHIP."

"YOU MEAN THE DWARVES? YOU'RE KIDDING! OKAY..."

The music stopped. There were sounds of cussing and thrashing about, then a door slamming. A moment later someone knocked on their door, tried the knob, and entered by opening the door a crack and sort of curling in around it.

Six-foot seven in a denim jacket that was frayed around both cuffs, his cheeks two long slabs of acne scars framed in ragged sideburns. Crooked teeth. Long brown hair streaming everywhere. He hesitated a second then bent forward, and engulfing O.Z.'s hand in his own grease-blackened one he shook it once---up then down---carefully.

He bowed in Jade's direction. "I'm Byron Brown. Candice's- uh, fiance."

He stood like that, stooped over, until Jade dragged the wooden chair over from the window. He plopped into and sat with downcast eyes; as if he were uncomfortably aware of how lowlife and scary he must appear to them- these tiny old fashioned people his own parents age. He almost seemed afraid that O.Z. was going to start yelling at him to get a haircut and clean up his act.

But it was Candice who lit into him, her voice steely and calm: "I talked to your boss a few minutes ago. He was in a real jolly mood. It seems you were fired today."

"Fired?! That lying sack of dog-" he remembered his hosts and caught himself, "-biscuits. He didn't fire me!"

"Jesus, Byron! You can't go quitting your job every time someone insults you."

"I don't! How can you say that? It didn't happen just like that, with him making some little comment and I couldn't handle it. I put up with him riding and ragging on me for a long time. But everyone has their threshhold. I do have a certain amount of dignity, you know!"

"Great! Run down to the market with your dignity and pick us up a couple of steaks and a pound of spinach, a can of Bugler and a bag of oranges."

"Yes, I know it was bad timing. And believe it or not I know the importance of keeping a job. I'm not that jerk- that same strung-out mess I was a year ago. But I'm not going to stand there and be that twerp's punching bag forever. In the half a year I was there I saw them come and go. Good mechanics, driven off by that maniac! In any reasonable society he would be the village idiot. They'd let him jabber and rave harmlessly in the town square, not put him in charge of a dozen workers..."

He stopped, sighing mightily. It was bad enough going through this with her. Why did they have to be doing it in front of these two wizened smiling leprechauns? And what was that all over their faces?!

The Babalooskis sat on the end of their bed facing their two guests. O.Z. laced his fingers together around the front of his knee, cleared his throat and smiled gently, "A big goozel like you vill have no trouble getting a new job. If we vas still with the circus I would tell them to hire you in one second!"

Byron laughed with wild enthusiasm, "You were really with the circus? Incredible! Maybe that's what we should do. Run away and join the circus...."

Candice snorted and rolled her eyes irritably.

Jade said, "We could have used you putting up za tents. The Strong Man. Or maybe as lion trainer."

"A lion tamer," laughed Byron, "Far out! And what about my lady here?"

"Riding horses around za ring," said O.Z. excitedly, "In one of them suits mitt da shpangels and the feathered head-thingen! Or you can be aerialists. The two of you. We could train you!"

"Start our own circus!" giggled Jade.

Candice stood up and lurched toward the door. Byron called out, "What's wrong, Honey?"

She stopped, crossing her arms, "Wrong? Nothing. It sounds like you have your future all mapped out. But meanwhile, back on planet Earth, Dave came by asking about the back rent, for the third day in a row. Now Dave is a great guy and everything, but him keeping his own job depends on getting the rent from the tenants. I had to promise him the full amount by Tuesday. That's four days from now! And now Mister Human Dignity here quits his job, and sits there laughing it up like he hasn't got a care in the world! Which you probably don't- having spent God-only-knows how much of your last paycheck on schooners down at the Taj. So you three can plan your circus, and I'll go home and try to figure out where the heck we can move to."

She resumed her march toward the door. Jade jumped to her feet with her palms held up- "WAIT!"

She put an arm around O.Z.'s shoulder and crimped her other hand around his ear, whispering intently as she steered him into the kitchen, her breath tickling his ear. How she knew it was his money and she had no right to press him for such a large amount, and she never would have---(hadn't she selected the cheapest, dustiest old posters that she could find at that art place, and almost none of the toys they'd bought?)---except this wasn't for her. And she would never ask him to get her another thing with his money, ever again...

She hadn't needed to lay it on so thick. He was happy to help her, or even her new friends if it made her happy. But Jade had always been self-conscious about her family being on the far end of the middle class from his. While she would snack with him on stuff from the pantry, she always turned down his mom's offers to buy them both lunch at some fast food place, claiming she was looking forward to a big dinner, but really not wanting to seem anything like her folks, who were famous up and down the block for borrowing money and not paying it back, plus a lot of other sleazy behavior that Jade had to bear the shame of. And now there was all this cash for her to feel funny about...

O.Z. went into the kitchen and fumbled around with something in the cabinet under the sink, then left the apartment whistling.

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He was back in ten minutes, "I had good talking with Dave. Is all taken care of!"

Byron didn't understand how this new arrival could pull so much weight around the building. "What do you mean? You stalled him until when?"

"I took care of last month and this month. You yoost worry about paying in July."

Candice gasped, "You paid our rent?! Why? Not that I'm complaining, but you barely know us! I hope you realize it will take us a long time to pay it all back..."

"Is not a loan. Is old European custom. To every ten years do a big good deed for a stranger."

"In the Air Force I was stationed at Ramstein for a year," pondered Byron, "I never heard of that one..."

"Is secret, is why. Old European secret dwarf custom. You must tell no one!" said O.Z., not wanting everyone in the building to come putting the touch on him, "It is where from comes the legends of za little elves helping people."

Candice did not believe for a second that there was any such "secret dwarf custom", but figured they were just a nice elderly couple with a little extra money and a rare willingness to help others. A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She and Byron were farther along on rent than they had been in ages.

Byron started to reach for his back pocket, looking inquiringly at her.

She shrugged, "Oh go ahead. But you are looking for a job tomorrow. Hung over or not."

"Then uh, speaking of old customs, I think we should throw a good old American housewarming party for our wonderful new neighbors here. I'll get a keg and some tequila, invite the whole gang!"

Candice grinned and shook her head, "That's just great. You guys all having a big bash while I gotta work. Are you sure it has to be tonight?"

Byron lunged from his chair, grabbing her in a fierce bear hug as if he could not endure the thought of her leaving. Candice started laughing as he mewled pathetically- "Oh please baby, angel lambchop fluffy wuffy kittyface! Pleeeeease don't go to work! Oh my love, light of my life, my turtle dove, my precious pumpkin! Please please please please just phone in sick! PLEASE, Baby!"

"Quit it, you nut! They need me to be there in about twenty minutes."

"I don't care! I don't care! I need you HERE, myum-myum-myum-myum-" He slid his mouth across her cheek, giving it loud slobbery kisses, "No you don't! You won't get in trouble, you're too valuable to them! Hank wouldn't dare fire you! Oh my snooky-wookie sugar thing, myumm, myumm, myummmmmm-"

She ducked her head down and slipped free, "I'll try, but I'm about at the limit of my sick days here. If he sounds too mad about this I'll have to go in and cough on people until he sends me home, and not do it again until at least November. One of us needs to hold down a job around here!"

"But not tonight! This is Oswald and Jadzoozia's house warming party! Welcoming them to the building, letting them meet our friends and neighbors."

"Or neighbors? Good God, is that any way to repay them?" laughed Candice, "But you're right. We're about due for a major party. Now everyone be quiet while I call the Shelter and- Oh man, he's never gonna believe this! What did I tell them last time? Bronchitis? I better go with the old 'might be stomach flu or food poisoning'..."

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#.5 /// PARTY PREPARATIONS.

After Candice used the phone a final time she went home to get spiffed up, and Byron took the wagon and went on a liquor run. The kids tidied up the apartment, stashing toys under the bed until they ran out of room, then hid the rest in the doorless closet in the little hall leading to the bathroom.

O.Z. grinned, "Wow, a real party. Not some stupid little kiddie thing with parents lurking all over us, going: 'Okay we're gonna play this game now. Everybody line up here. You there, no roughhousing!' This is gonna be cool!"

"Adult parties seem pretty boring, actually," said Jade, "Don't your folks have parties?"

"Not really. The closest thing they do is they 'have people over'. Like 'Let's have the Fishers over Saturday night.' They play cards, they drink some, but they act pretty much the same. They don't even call it a party."

"Well mine sure do. They all get drunk and argue about the elections, or about what was the name of that actress who played the daughter on some bad t.v. show twenty years ago. Or they all start singing. It's ridiculous!"

"I think this is going to be a little more interesting than that."

They made some snacks, grilling the jalapeno dogs right on the surface of the hot plate, then cutting them into pieces, spearing them with toothpicks and piling them on a paper plate.

Jade said, "You know, you and me can be pretty smart sometimes. We're really pulling this off! I bet if we dressed up nice and got some luggage, we really could buy a ticket and b.s. our way onto a plane. Go to New York or someplace."

"We'll try it after our week is up here," said O.Z. He pulled the frozen yogurt bars from their box and arranged them on a plate, setting it inside the top freezer section of the refrigerator and wedging the door open with the empty box. "There. Now they can help themselves..."

"I like how the smoke creeps out. Hey, what were you and Byron whispering about out in the hall?"

"I'm not even sure. He said he wanted to bring some herbs over. I guess for the dip. He made this weird big deal out of it. How he knew that hip, show business folks like us can really appreciate a good herb. I said to bring the whole dang spice rack if he wanted."

"You're joking! You really don't know what he meant by 'herb'?"

"No, because he was talking crazy! Wanted to bring some killer skunks and some red haired Hawaiian. I told him the Hawaiian guy was invited but not the skunks."

"Y'know O.Z., those are all words for-" Jade pretended to suck hard on a tiny cigarette and pass it to him.

"Is that what he meant? OH NO!"

"Don't worry about it, it'll be funny. Don't you want to see a bunch of grown-ups talking backwards and stuff? It doesn't mean we have to smoke any."

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Candice brought over the biggest boom box they had ever seen, and the chairs from her dining room set. She had on her best butt-hugging jeans, wedge cork sandals and a little red v-neck vest that fit so snugly it was almost a corset. It showed some cleavage without seeming to be entirely about showing off cleavage. Her hair was put up nicely, but her eyes were rimmed in about three times too much mascara and a splob of bright red rouge rode high on each cheek like a leech mark. Jade was sure that she---at ten years old---could do a better job of putting on cosmetics, but she said in her best grandmotherly tone: "My, don't we look pretty tonight?"

Byron came back pulling the wagon, the silver keg sitting in it like a fat bomb.

He led in a pair of winos carrying grocery bags packed with fifths of booze, and said, "This is No Toes and this is Fifth Street Freddy. I told them they could come if they helped me haul this keg up the stairs. Hey? Where's that other guy? He had the box with the cokes and the Bloody Mary mix!"

"Oh my gawww!" cackled one of the winos, "Ernie snaked with th' mixers! He musta thought he had booze in there! HAW!!! Serves 'im right, the greedy bastard! It's bums like him gives us bums a bad name."

Someone found a station they liked on the radio. Screamin' Jay Hawkins was singing:

"Shake your hip, bite your lip, shoot your mother-in-law...
Put on your gorilla suit, drink some elbow soup and have a ball...
Get it straight, don't be late, it's time for mad fun...
The Feast of the Mau Maus has begun!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNqO88cIIug

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#.6 /// THE COMEDY STYLINGS OF OSWALD ZENGLER

The party happened.

Byron got the tapper for the beer keg working. Jessi, the enormous sleepy-faced woman from across the hall (who never seemed to be looking directly at you even when she was) wandered over in her fuzzy pink slippers and shiny mint green slip. Then three shy young Honduran men from the second floor who apparently knew very little English and smiled with nervous politeness at everything anyone said.

The guy with the t.v. showed up. Not a delivery man but the floor salesman himself, his shirt collar twisted around from when he had torn his tie off after getting off work. He said, "Sorry I'm late! You were serious about that fifty bucks, weren't you?"

O.Z. nodded and discretely slipped it to the man, who got two recently arrived members of Byron's motorcycle club to help lug the giant box up from his van parked out front. Then he found a beer mug and joined the party.

Time went by, and as each new batch of Byron's freinds and freinds of friends arrived there was another round of hand shaking and back pounding. Some had girls with them, either wore leather jackets and jeans like the guys or were dressed in outfits that reminded the two kids of gypsies. Written across the backs of the gang's jackets, in elaborate gothic lettering, was:

"GENTS"
So. Cal.

The man from the appliance store programmed the television for them. O.Z. was disappointed to learn that he couldn't get his favorite music video channel without a cable hook up. When people acted surprised that he would want rock videos, he added, "Not for us, of course.Ve're happy just hearing Frank Cilantro or the Ink Blobs on za Golden Age Radio Network. But you crazy kids like all that shtuff and who are we to be poopers of this party?"

But Candice turned the set's sound all the way off and cranked up her radio, showing them what she and her friends used to do to create primitive music videos. On the screen was an old color movie about airial combat in the Pacific during WWII, while the soundtrack was a long song by some 1970's rock band who sounded like they were lost in outer space. Fighter planes took off from aircraft carriers and little airstrips on jungley green islands; they soared and banked and swooped and machine gunned each other---seemingly in time to the music---the defeated ones spiralling down to the glittering water trailing great long plumes of black smoke.

O.Z. was skeptical at first, but then decided it was pretty good watching it this way. He sat on the bed, in the middle of a dope smoking pack of military analysts from the motorcycle club. For the most part he remembered to shout "Bravo!" or "Splendid!" instead of "Ooooh, wicked!" whenever a Japanese Zero would disintegrate under anti-aircraft fire.

He didn't touch the marijuana. He knew that smoking anything was not good for your lungs, but did take the drink that somebody handed him. He could smell the liquor in it, but he was kind of parched and would just wet his lips with it until a scene came on that would be pointless to watch if you couldn't hear it, like people talking in a room someplace; when he'd rouse himself to go get something else to drink. What he really wanted was a Pepsi.

A skinny old man in a rayon Hawaiian shirt with a crusty flattop haircut stood next to the t.v. set squonking on a tenor saxophone- a long complicated arpeggio that somehow went with what the band on the stereo was playing and also seemed to weave and loop like the dogfighting airplanes on the t.v. screen. This turned into a stream of random sounding notes that---defying any sort of logic---twisted themselves into the opening bars of Somewhere, Over the Rainbow. Clear and sweet and....... subtle. "Whoah," croaked someone in a small voice.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Jessi, still in her slip and eerily self-absorbed, stood behind the huge wooden reel---stolen years ago from the telephone company---that someone had donated to serve as the bar. Nobody knew who had appointed her bartender, suddenly she was just there.

Without a word she would dump some or all of the seven different kinds of booze into a tumbler, adding as much kool-aid as she thought the person needed. The way she poured and paused and decided which bottle to pick up next looked like witchcraft.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

A second large group of bikers arrived. A pair of elderly ladies cut a swift departure when one of them launched into a joke with, "Now here's a filthy story-", but basically the Gents were on their best behavior. Someone passed a spaghetti strainer around for donations toward another liquor store run.

Already?? O.Z. dropped in two twenty dollar bills, saying, "Here, but bring me back some Pepsi this time, dammit! And some Cheetos..."

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

O.Z., who was just finishing his second weak drink, could not figure out how he had ended up here, right next to the bar, sitting on one of these giant gaudy tassled pillows that had appeared from nowhere, at midpoint in a conversation with the mean-looking leader of the Gents and his two aides-de-camp.

His name was Skutch. A great big guy with massive arms oozing out the sides of his leather vest. His dense black beard splayed down into two long points. He wore a German U-Boat commander's hat.

Skutch looked around the packed room and grinned devilishly, "So you're the one who's throwing this bash, huh? Hell of a whoop-de-doo!"

"Well, yesssss. But I never thought that all ziss many vood show up. You and your fellows are...... friends of Byron's?"

The chapter president slammed down his mug and snarled, "Byron Brown is a fool and a wussie! I don't know why the hell we even let him stay in the club!"

"And why do you say that?" asked O.Z. cautiously, not wanting to hear bad things said about his new friend.

Skutch glowered at him, furious that someone would even hint that they were questioning something he said, then started laughing, "Aw, he's alright. I was just yankin' your chain!"

Relieved, O.Z. laughed too. It didn't seem like it would be safe to have this man mad at you. They all drank up, Jessi moving in ghostly silence to top off their glasses.

After a long pause O.Z. pointed, "That is a cool hat."

"Why thank you. It's a Nazi submarine captain's hat," a woozy deliberateness had entered Skutch's voice and mannerisms. He pointed and grinned, "That's a nice toupee."

They all guffawed at the absurdity of complimenting a toupee.

O.Z. bowed grandly, his arm held across his middle. Then he blurted out, "It's a Nazi toupee!"

This unleashed a torrent of table pounding, drink spitting laughter. Each time they started to get it under control someone would say 'Nazi toupee' and they would all lose it again.

Emboldened by this, O.Z. decided to go for the big laughs: "Here's something for you. This is parted down the middle, see?"

Skutch made a stacatto snorting noise, laughing at what O.Z. was going to say next before he even said it, and nodding encouragingly.

"So if I want it to be parted from side to side, I just go-" he twisted the hairpiece 90 degrees, so that his nose stuck out through where the ear should be, then started throwing his head forward and back like a deranged Muppet, the fake-looking hair flopping around ridiculously.

Total, helpless hysteria ensued. One of Skutch's deputies rolled over onto his side and started inching toward the bathroom.

Skutch wiped tears from his eyes with a bandana and tried to catch his breath. With the exception of Jessi, who seemed wrapped up in her own version of what was going on at this table (for some reason she was fanning Skutch with a large imaginary fan...) O.Z. had his little audience right in the palm of his hand. The ability to make a bunch of people laugh flooded his brain like some drug, filling him with a powerful sense of euphoria. But also now there came creeping in an addict's worries about how he might keep getting these big laughs. Now what could he do next?

.
#.7 /// IN WHICH BYRON REVEALS HIMSELF TO BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO PROBABLY JUST SHOULDN'T DRINK...

Jade was at the kitchen table with Candice and Byron. Byron was sobbing, shaking his head in a dazed sort of misery, overwhelmed by the growing realization that all was lost, doomed- eternally damned! People wandering into the kitchen grabbed whatever they had come in there for then got the hell out.

Candice's brow was a mound of furrows as she pressed Byron's big gnarled hands between
her own small pink ones- "Come on Babers, talk to me! What's wrong?"

Byron pulled his hands free and clamped them to the sides of his face where his long hair hung down. He managed to say between sobs, "Me! I'm Wrong! I'm such a loser-loser-loser-loser..."

"Why?" asked Candice softly, "Because you quit your job?"

Byron shook his head yes, then shook it no. "I'm forty years old," he gulped, as if this in itself was a good enough reason to be crying. "I worked there for all of six months. Y'know what I'm sayin'? Because I never... I'm never gonna..."

"Oh baloney," Candice pulled his hands away from his face and twined her fingers through his, "Look at me! You'll get a job. You have a trade, you're a mechanic."

"Obsolete mechanic. A flunky. These new cars, all them little computers and stuff in 'em, it's all getting so crazy, y'know? I'm always taking orders from some damn kid.... And now I gotta go talk to the parole officer again. Henderson. Smug little prick! He could really.... And he knows it, too! Loves th' power. 'Thumbs up! Thumbs down!!'..... Like some frickin' Caesar! A-and anyway-" Byron lowered his head to the table with a loud thunk!

And anyway it wasn't his job history or their rent or his parole situation. It was everything. People caught up in war and suffering all over the world under the cold indifference of Heaven; the way you will probably be diagnosed with some terminal cancer the week after you win the lottery. It was Earth's disintegrating ozone layer, overpopulation, the high price of car insurance, busted pull-tabs, colliding galaxies tearing through each other sending suns and planets smashing together, earthquakes leveling churches on Easter Sunday, rained out picnics, Bambi's gut-shot mother and the looming threat of nuclear terrorism...

It was Byron Brown, coming face to face with that razor-edged wrongness at his very core, as he once again got all stupidly morbid after drinking a lot of beer very fast. It was a scene that was eerily familar to Jade...

Byron sobbed, "I can't go on like this. I'm gonna go score some chiva and have one last big fix!"

"No, Sweetie! You've been doing so good," Candice cooed, "It's been almost a year..."

"I don't mean to get high on. I'm done with that whole miserable merry-go-round! Just one giant shot and-"

"Don't talk crazy! You've got a lot to live for."

"Ha! Like what?'

"Like me, stupid. Us!"

"You mean you ain't gonna leave me? But who could stand me?! I'm such a-" Byron raised his head off the table and gazed into her eyes in wonderment. He began to sob again, then lunged across the table and threw his arms around her, moaning, "Oh my honeybunny angel sugar cookie snookie baby pink stuff-" and like that, like he'd done this afternoon, but without the joking tone he'd been using.

Jade's vodka-loving father had got like this a time or two but when he did her mother usually just handed him a razor blade and told him not to make a mess bleeding all over; and it would be his sudden rage at her ("Oh you'd like that, wouldn't you?!!") that snapped him out of it. Byron and Candice might be just as messed up and dysfunctional as her parents but there was love and caring here, not the constant bitterness and contempt that poisoned the air where Jade lived. As screw ups went they were a whole lot more likeable. She decided that the crisis---if it had actually ever been one---was over and that it was safe for her to go to the bathroom. She got up, clapping her hands to the music, and weaved her way out through the partiers...

.
#.8 /// THE WRATH OF SKUTCH

One of Skutch's deputies lay curled asleep under the overhang of the wooden spool.
The other came wobbling back and dropped clumsily onto his cushion.

"Jeez it's hot in here. I'm glad we're here next to the window. Some idiot has been in that bathroom for fourty-five minutes!" He addressed Jessi uncertainly, "Is that your apartment across the hall? The door was open so I used the one over there. The party is over there now too, I thought..... you might..... want to know."

Jessi had bared her huge bulging teeth at him in an expression that could've meant anything. She floated off out the door like a sleepwalker. Skutch, O.Z. and Spider---the deputy that was still awake---went back to their conversation.

O.Z.'s face felt hot and rubbery, and he knew it was the liquor. It was kind of confusing, but he could see how adults who had to be serious all the time might resort to this. Then he had a bizarre thought, and chuckled, "You know what would be really gross?"

"What?" asked Spider and Skutch.

"Little packages of meat you put in your coffee. They call it 'Coffee Meat', see? Instead of Coffee Mate, that Cofee Mate stuff, it would be Coffee Meat. People putting-"

Skutch went off on another explosive laughing fit. He boomed, "Coffee Meat! God that is so utterly stupid! You have this silly-ass quality that I-" he groped dully for the words, "What I like about you is you're real, y'know what I'm sayin'? You see, I don't care! I don't care if a man is a banker, or some stew bum, even a damn cop, but-"

O.Z. found the man's sudden earnestness to be quite tedious. Whatever he was babbling about, it wasn't funny. He wanted to talk about Coffee Meat. In the middle of Skutch's harangue the blurted out- "And the meatniks could drink it!"

"That's what I'm sayin'," nodded Skutch. "Even a beatnik! But what I can't stand is a phony, a sham! Like all these rip-off preachers on TV. Or a slumlord, or some lawyer who will twist the facts into whatever you want if you pay them enough. You give some guy a suit and a fancy title and all of a sudden thieving isn't theiving, lying isn't lying. But it is, man, it is! And yet they have the nerve t' look down on me and my brothers like we're some kind of animals!"

"I mean picture it!" laughed O.Z., "MEAT-niks! They could play bongo drums made from hams, and wear hamburger patties on their heads for those, uh, beret things. And pork chop medallions..."

"But I am what I am, right? I may be a crazy, dope-guzzling male chauvinist lowlife thug, but I don't pretend to be some pillar of the community like they do! What you see here is what you get! Just like you, my tiny freind, don't even try to hide the utter stupidity of your thoughts, which any self-respecting man- Hey, wait a minute!"

O.Z. couldn't figure out why his new friend was suddenly staring at him like this, his expression darkening ominously. "C'mon Dude, that isn't any worse than 'Nazi Toupee-'"

Dude.... It was then that O.Z. realized that he hadn't bothered to use his accent for some time now. Oh crap.

Fear drove all the lazy well-being from O.Z.'s brain as Skutch swelled up, like something ready to explode, the anger seeming to pour from his muscular frame in visible waves. No, this was not good! The bit of silence between two tracks on Candice's old Pink Floyd CD stretched into eternity...

Then suddenly on the CD a bunch of clocks were chiming, while way off across the room a voice crowed blearily, "Hey everybody, it's exactly midnight. Happy Midnight, everybody!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Jade stood in the dimly lit hallway pounding on the door of the bathroom. A crowd was hooting and laughing in there but no one answered. The man with the saxophone was in there too- apparently using the shower for an echo chamber, blowing intricate variations on the Grand Canyon Suite. And even with the door shut something inside there smelled just awful. Hydraulic fluid or something weird like that...

Jade swore. It was as if their whole house had been taken over by distructive idiots! Some bozo had scrawled KEEP OUT! and drawn a skull and crossbones on the door with a fistful of crayons. Which meant that they had found their way into-

She stepped back and peered into the narrow hall closet. Two of the Gents were tearing through the cache of toys in there like greedy children. She hollared, "Stop that! Those are not your toys! Those are for zee grandchildren!"

One of the men gestured at Jade with an orange plastic sand shovel, "Who's this?"

"Beats the hell out of me."

"This is my house!" Jade screamed, barely keeping in character. "Put those back, you hooligans!"

"Oooooh, Granny's pissed off!" chortled the tall one, and kept digging through the toys, then held up a sponge rubber American football and exclaimed, "Perfect!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Skutch and Spider were on their feet, Spider still uncertain as to what was going on.

"Stand up, you fraud!" boomed Skutch.

Terrified, O.Z. stood up. "Vot is zee problem?"

"You're not from Europe! You ain't no Count!"

"I never said I vass no Count. If I has offended zee in some zay-"

"Drop the act, Shorty!" thundered Skutch. He batted the toupee from O.Z.'s head and grabbed a hunk of his hair and stood up, forcing him to his feet as well. "What's this? Huh?"

"Owwww!!"

"You've got hair. Brown hair! You're not a little old man. I'll bet you're not even a dwarf!" He yanked upward on the boy's hair, "Stand up!"

"But I AM standing!" blubbered O.Z.

Skutch snarled, "Okay, so you're a dwarf. But you're still as phony as a flea market Rolex, you damned liar. And I'm gonna kick your crummy lying ass!"

"I don't think that'd really be a fair match," interjected Spider.

"Fair?! He sits here conning us, playing us for a couple of chumps! Yeah, I'll be fair ........ 'Fair and equal treatment'. Isn't that what these cripples and dwarfs and gorks and gooks and geeks are always squawkin' about? With their own little drinking fountains and all the best parking spaces? You want equal treatment, Little Man? I'll do to you what I do to any sneaky rat who tries to run some game on me! Lying motherf-"

"GO OUT FOR THE LONG BOMB, DANNY!"

The nerf football---tossed from over by the bathroom---caught Skutch square in the face, and more from surprise than from the force of it he fell; twisting in vain to find something to grab hold of as he crashed through the loose window screen and flipping back over the window's knee-high sash like a sack of bricks.

His scream echoed briefly through the courtyard briefly then was cut short.

.
#.9 /// A ZEN EPIPHANY OR SOMETHING...

O.Z. and Spider stumbled over to the window, to see Skutch laying in a flattened patch of bushes with a strange look of joy on his face.

Spider called down, "Are you all right?"

Skutch laughed, "Spider, my Brother. It's great to see you!"

The Gents' leader had always been quick to laugh, but it was an ogre's laugh; self-centered and cruel. His laughter was now full of innocence, full of a joyous sense that all was well, everywhere in the universe. Always had been, always would be. That his lifelong habits of belligerence and suspicion and macho posturing had been about the most absurd thing a person could do. But this was okay too. It is what it is...

He got up, checked himself over briefly and whooped, "That was just amazing! You have to try that."

Spider shouted down, "Try what? Try to fall out the window? You're crazy!"

Skutch sighed with deep contentment, "I have never been saner. Jump! I can't describe it- words just fall so short. You just have to do it! Aim for that yucca tree like I did."

"There ain't a whole lot left of it. You sure you didn't hit your head on something?"

"Spider, my poor doubting brother, have I ever steered you wrong?"

It appeared that Spider might actually be going to do it (Finally answering his mother's exasperated question: "If your friend Skutch jumped off a cliff would you jump off a cliff too?") when the explosion hit!

.
#.10 /// INFERNO

Jade heard the blast and the bathroom door flew open. The room was in flames, the walls and floor awash in burning chemicals. The guy with the saxophone and a dozen people rushed out past her, emerging from a roiling cloud of toxic smoke and screaming "Fire! Fire!", which caused a general stampede for the front door. She saw O.Z. start across the main room toward her- only to be slammed into the wall by someone much larger than himsef. O.Z. took a few random incoherent steps then gave up and just leaned against the wall, stunned.

A big muscular shirtless man strolled calmly out of the smoke, holding an ice cube to the tip of his nose. With his wide chest bearing a tattoo of a jade green dragon coiled around a blazing orange mushroom cloud, with his bald head and sooty face that had dots of blood welling from dozens of small cut in it, he looked like some blacksmith from Hell. He said, "You need to get these people calmed down. We'll get this put out, there's no need to bother the fire department about this- er, incident."

He and Jade went in with pillows to battle the flames. He chuckled, "You see? It's not as bad as it looks..."

Burning pieces of jars lay everywhere. The hot plate---however it had gotten into here from the kitchen---was now a twisted piece of black wreckage. Someone turned on the faucet, and with his finger over the tap was spraying down the burning goo on the wall. Buckets and pitchers from the kitchen were flung, until it was out completely. Jade's eyes stung from the fumes.

The bald giant was holding up a small jar over his head, looking up through it at the 40-watt bulb in the ceiling. It was half full of an unsavory greyish/yellowish liquids. He seemed satisfied with its appearance. There would have been a lot more of the drug if his makeshift factory hadn't exploded, but this was better than nothing. He exited the bathroom with it, whistling...

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

O.Z. staggered in circles. A blurry figure handed him his toupee and offered to help him but he skulked off, looking for a place to just curl up and whimper like some wounded animal. He limped over to the deserted bar and flopped down across several pillows.

He intended to get up and go help battle the fire, but found himself listening as others accomplished this. The last of the booze in his stomache was entering his bloodstream and the adrenalin surge of fear from facing Skutch's rage was wearing off, leaving him feeling very sleepy.

"Coffee Meat" and "meatnik" didn't seem even remotely funny to him now.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Jade, sitting exhausted on the lid of the toilet, caught herself almost drifting off to sleep. Opening her eyes, she was startled to see a haggard, extremely skinny woman in a GUNS N ROSES t-shirt licking some of the stuff up off the filthy floor.

"Are you sure you want to be doing that?" Jade asked.

"I found it first!" the woman snarled, cupping her hand around the stuff protectively. She resumed her floor licking.

"Careful. There's glass all over," Jade warned her and left, not wanting such a grotesque image to get permanently lodged in her memory.

Out in the living area, Candice's stereo had been knocked over, the cord yanked out of the wall during the tumult. The sudden quiet was calming. Most of the Gents were gone now, evidently not wanting to be around when the cops-

AND HERE THEY CAME! They weren't even up to this floor yet but you could hear them, thundering up the stairwell like a herd of buffalo!

It was all over now, Jade thought despondently. The police would soon figure out they were runaways, putting an end to their amazing odessy. And suddenly she realized just how desperately she wanted it to continue...

It had all been wonderful, at least up until this past hour or so. The freedom of it, the way they'd somehow managed to make this "circus midget" nonsense work, doing what they wanted, making friends, and the best part for Jade was what she'd escaped from! She couldn't bear the thought of being led docilely back to that life- not after just two lousy days of freedom. She and O.Z. just had to escape!

They could grab the money and get out of downtown, regroup at some comfy little motel down at the beach before taking a Greyhound up to Ventura to find her sister. All they had to do was get out of this apartment before those cops showed up. She ran for the kitchen.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

O.Z. could hear Skutch down in the courtyard, crashing around in the bushes and howling miserably that he couldn't find his Nazi hat.

Everything was happening far away and with liquid slowness. His limbs had gone on strike- they lie scattered around him like dumb tubes of meat...

He remembered lectures in health class about underage binge drinking and alchohol poisoning, and he knew that he was dying.... Which wasn't fair, because he hadn't even set out to get drunk. He had just wanted a Pepsi. He just wanted a Pepsi, and now he was dead. Dead, dead, dead...

And now something very big and noisy with many legs was coming up the hall.

Jade ran past him, headed for the kitchen. "Hide O.Z.!"

"Gw'thahhh, Jaeeeeeeeee..."

.
#.11 /// HIGH WIRE ACT.

In the kitchen, Jade ducked under the sink--where hopefully she could both hide and protect the bag of money---and pulled the cabinet doors shut behind her. She knew now that they were never going to get away in time. Not with O.Z. laying out there like a sick jellyfish.

But as the intruders clattered up onto the third floor landing it was becoming clear that whoever was coming, they weren't the police. She heard them pounding on people's doors all the way up the hall, screaming "Avon Lady!" and "Hey, wake up in there!" and laughing like idiots. And then the front door burst open with a volley of sickly sounding Tarzan yells and someone bellowing, "T'is a night of revels! These gallants desire it!"

She heard Spider saying that the party was over, and that anyway Berserkers weren't invited.

"I'll ignore that statement," one of them announced loudly, "Because us Berserkers are gonna show all you lightweights how to party, which you Gents don't know the first thing about. 'Gents'! Where did you get your club name, off the bathroom door? I mean look at you, you're all conked out like a bunch of old ladies that had their two glasses of sherry and tottered off to bed. You call yourselves loadies? This is disgraceful! This is pathetic! This is- SLEEPIN' JESUS! WHAT'S THIS?!!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

O.Z. was still trying to remember how to turn his head so he could see these new arrivals, when suddenly they had shoved the wooden reel-table aside and were looming above him on three sides, staring down like menacing giants!

The one who had challenged Spider wore wire rimmed glasses and had a deceptively mild, boyish face. In fact he reminded O.Z. a singer who had died recently, a guy named John Denver who O.Z. didn't know a whole lot about but he knew his parents had liked his music and had been shocked at the news that he'd crashed his little plane; a performer who was known as a nice, easy going fellow who sang a lot of songs about trees or something. But the resemblance was shattered once this guy spoke. He rudely kicked the bottom of O.Z. shoe, repeating, "What in thee hell is THIS?"

"That's Mister Babalooski," Spider warned him, "an honorary Gent!"

"IT'S A DWORK!" shrieked John Denver, "MY GOD, YOU'VE GOT DWORKS!"

O.Z. smiled up at them, his mouth a wavery line. The leader shuddered in revulsion and said, "The place is probably crawling with them. Check it out, men!"

His crew spread out, chanting, "DWORKS! DWORKS! DWORKS! DWORKS-"

He kicked at O.Z.'s shoe again. "At least this one looks just about done for."

"Hey ponk, don't kick the man!" shouted Spider, "You think you're funny with this 'dwork' shit? He's a human being, dammit! He's not an it or a what; He's a 'he', a 'who'; the same as me and you!"

"That's cute. My mom writes poems like that," smiled the Berserker blandly before pushing Spider out the window in attempted murder.

There was a loud crack like a giant celery stalk snapping. Skutch whooped hoarsely from down there, "Alriiiiiiiight! I knew you wouldn't let me down, Bro!"

He was drowned out by a high-pitched screaming as Jade was carried in from the kitchen by a big fat biker with a dim-witted grin on his face. Jade struggled ferociously, the satchel jerking wildly around in her fist.

The fat man drawled with bashful pride, "I found this one under th' sink..."

"Good Lord, the female!" exclaimed the leader, "This means there could be whole generations of them in here. I need to question this one. Bring it here."

Alarm cut a swath through the fog in O.Z.'s brain. He had to get up and save Jade! He managed to jerk one leg, "Nuhhhh.... you.... oh God."

Jade bellowed, "You let go of me right now, or I swear you'll be in zee... in zee joint so long you'll forget what zat yellow thing up in the sky is called!"

O.Z. groaned. Even as drunk as he was, he saw that she should admit that she was just a kid, pretending at all of this. These "tough guys" might steal from her, but he was pretty sure they wouldn't hurt a little girl, there was nothing big and tough about that.

But Jade was sticking to their story. She cursed them all as ignorant things, and began boasting about the mighty Babalooskis, their trapeze act's legendary place in circus history...

This was a bad thing for her to mention. Their cries of "Dworks! Dworks! Dworks!" turned to-

"CIRCUS! CIRCUS! CIRCUS!"

"Yeah, show us. Give us a circus!"

"CIRCUS!"

Someone pointed out the window. "Hey, we even got a high wire!"

As Jade was passed bodily toward the window screaming in terror, O.Z. whimpered, "Take muh-money. God sake just don' h-hurt-"

With a sudden burst of effort he somehow managed to totter to his feet.

But as the room began to somersault he was pitched forward, a vast sky-diver's distance that it seemed to take whole minutes to descend through..... plunging toward his own shadow on the floorboards...... which he saw now as a terrible dark void sweeping up to claim him, its borders swirling like the edges of a cape..... like smoke..... like one of those ink-blot tests for crazy people.... a winged thing spreading its wings as it forshortened,

now far bigger than he was

and finally it was boundless

and evil flapping

all-engulfing

black

black

black

bird

of
.

.

[[[ END OF PART TWO ]]]

O.Z. and Jade wake up to find everything in their apartment wrecked, and they're not feeling too great either. When they somehow get saddled with the task of babysitting an evil child our two "retired circus aerialists" are outed as the runaway children they in fact are. So they abandon their new home and hastily depart for Florida. At the airport things rapidly begin to go south, and there's a whole lot of yelling and running around and mistaken identities and cops and FBI agents and more yelling and running around as our story rushes toward its insane conclusion.

[As previously mentioned, this story takes place in those innocent, carefree days of the late 1990's, when security at airports was a bit less diligent than it is today and there was a bit more leeway when it came to letting strange looking people go around in them acting strangely...]

.
CHAPTER #.1 /// WRECKAGE

O.Z. sat in bed, propped up against a mass of half-charred pillows. He wore his big green boxlike sunglasses. Jade handed him a glass of water, which he drank, wincing at the pain that gripped his skull. His tone was utterly humorless, "Oh. My tongue..... S'like a dead squirrel in there. My head hurts awful. And why'd you make me put this stupid gunk on my face again?"

"Byron's coming over with some Advils," said Jade, "Here, put on your wig."

He set it gingerly on his head. Advils. Take two Advils and call me in the morning. Anvils. Take two anvils and kill me in the morning...

The windows gaped, revealling a grey drizzle. "What happened last night? Those guys had you! How'd you get away?"

"Spider, Skutch, Byron and Candice came in with baseball bats and ran them out."

"Not so loud," he grimaced. "Candice had a baseball bat?"

"No, she had the shotgun. Which was really what made them start behaving. But then one of the Berzerkers tried to grab Byron's bat away, and Candice screamed and fired the gun off!"

"I was wondering what did that to the ceiling. That's what brought the cops?"

"The cops never got here. They were probably headed for here, but they wound up busting this freaky orgy or whatever it was at that spooky lady's place across the hall; after she came flying out of there naked and jumped on one of the paramedics, calling him 'My swarfy barbarian lover-man!'"

"I didn't hear any of that."

"Well I heard a bunch of ruckus out there, but I was pretty out-of-it by then too, and I really only got the details about it later. Byron and Candice and Skutch had got everyone cleared out. They took our shoes off and made sure you were in the middle of the bed and not gonna fall off, and rolled you onto your side so you wouldn't puke to death in your sleep, like you do when your dad is- well I guess not your dad. And as they left Skutch was looking at you kind of funny, and he said, 'Maybe the little dude's alright after all...' Did you and him have a fight or something?"

"I- Gee, I'm not sure. So it was all over by around one o'clock?"

"About that. I woke up later, and heard someone crying right outside our door. He was the one who told me about the whole thing next door, the cops and everything."

"You went outside?"

"I know I said we shouldn't, not that late at night, but the guy out there had been crying and crawling around for like an hour. He was actually at that Jessi lady's party. He said it all kept getting louder and weirder, and he was really wanting to get out of there, but couldn't find his fake leg someone had took. Jessi had them all riled up, like some psycho cult preacher. They were all jumping around and slamming doors and yelling like a bunch of crazy spastic cannibals..."

"I didn't think it was possible, but that sound worse than what happened here!"

"They were drinking some poison kind of alchohol that you're not supposed to drink at all. And he would have left, but he was crippled. When the cop cars pulled up, and the bums started whizzing out of the window onto them, Hoppy crawled under the bags of garbage that filled her whole kitchen. He hid there, not making a sound, until they took everyone away. I helped him down to the sidewalk where we found his leg. You gonna be okay?"

"I guess so. Agggghhh, My back is all stiff! What's wrong with this bed? It's like big rocks or something under here."

"Yeah, it wasn't very comfortable in there last night- The toys!"

"Oh no, they must be pulverized!"

This hideaway bed would never fit back into the wall again. The box-like frame was broken, right on the floor instead of up on its little fold down legs, the panel at its foot leaning out at a weird angle, held on by one twisted nail. The mattress rose and fell like a hilly landscape, the shattered plywood beneath it bearing down on the toys that they'd tossed under it before the party.

Jade reached down and yanked something out from under one corner. A large stuffed Bugs Bunny that didn't seem too badly damaged. She 'walked' it up the bedspread until it stood on O.Z.'s chest, and said, "Gee Doc, you look like crap! Didja get the numbah of that truck that hitcha?"

He swatted it out of her hands- "Knock it off!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

There was a soft tapping at the door and Byron came in. His hair was combed back neatly and he wore a long sleeve shirt and pressed slacks. His 'looking for work' clothes. He held up a white plastic bottle of over-the-counter pain medicine, "I brought you these."

He looked around the apartment. Everything in the place had been savagely demolished, and all of it---the busted plumbing, the smashed t.v., the toy arrows that had been sharpened and fired into the wall---had stemmed from his decision to throw a party for the Babalooskis. Byron wondered what in the hell was the matter with him. Why the things he did with the best of intentions always ended up like this. He handed them the pills and---with his self-confidence in low ebb---went out to find a job.

.
#.2 /// MRS. PORTELIEU

Using a pole lamp and a large chunk of the bathroom sink they were able to lift one end of the bed. Jade pulled down on the makeshift lever while O.Z. scrambled under the busted bedframe and raked toys out with his hands. Most of them were still in their packages, smashed flat.

Someone knocked on the door. Assuming it was Candice, Jade yelled, "It's open!"

In walked a stocky woman of about fifty, her short hair flat and shiny on her head, and with eyes so far apart they seemed to look in different directions. The eyes, the hair, and the amazingly wide, lipless mouth made her look like a large pompous frog in hoop earrings. She ushered in a young boy whose features bore a disturbing similarity to hers. Neither had any more of a neck on them than Humpty Dumpty did.

The woman steered the child into the room by his shoulders, gripping them in a way that seemed to suggest that if she let go he might go careening around the room like a top, or that Tazmanian Devil from the cartoons. He was about six, but he was a bit taller than either O.Z. or Jade and a lot more massive. She did not release her grip on him until she'd shoved him into a chair, and stayed positioned behind him as she sang the words, "Hel-lo? Remember me?"

"How could I forget?" smiled O.Z. as he vainly wracked his brain for some memory of her.

"Such gracious hosts! I wasn't sure if you would. I was only at your lovely soiree schwa for a while. I had to get back and take care of little Adore here. And when those-"

She had pronounced his name AY-door. It seemed like such a ridiculous name to Jade that she almost burst out laughing. She faked clearing her throat.

"...and then when those hippies or punkies or grungies or whatever that sort are calling themselves these days had the gall to invade your charming little bon tempura, you can bet I went home! I'm sure you see now that you can't just fling your door open and let any and all just hoi palloi on in here!.Not in this neck of the woods, Buster! I mean just look at what they did to your place!"

O.Z. had taken an instant dislike to this phony overbearing woman, and an even greater dislike to the kid whose slick blonde hair she kept patting. He peered dully out at them from under the thick ridge of his brow with an expression of deep mistrust.

The woman wanted something, and all this parlay-voo. lah-dee-dah chitchat was just a smoke screen. O.Z. said, with as much politeness as his hangover would allow, "So vat brings you here this morning, Miss uh..."

"Portelieu. Mrs. Thelma Portelieu. I just wanted to pay a little social call, under more haut gout circumstances than last night, with all those weird people and 'way out' music. Although that young neighbor of yours Candice was very nice, in a cheap sort of way. And when she told me about all your travels and munificent exploits, I just knew I had to bring Adore by to meet you. I also am from over there; Although---alas---I was not even Adore's age when I was brought here by my dear Pate and Matte. Yet we do share this distinction, being born in the Old World. A world of elegance and charm, with all those dukes and duchessess; and oooooh those grand balls on those lovely Viennese nights!"

"Spare us za details about you and the knights," puffed Jade under her breath.

"But you're right," smiled Mrs. Portelieu wanely, "That was so long ago! And poor Adore here has never been. So I was wondering if you would be good enough to watch him for a bit while I went to the beauty salon. Perhaps you could tell him something of your lives. I do so want him to have a sense of how it was back on Zee Continent..."

O.Z. couldn't be sure but she seemed to be using a lot of foreign phrases completely wrong, as she quickly fell into the same dubious accent that he was using.

Adore's vicious expression and brutish features went strangely with the sissy haircut. He looked as if at any moment he might swivel his head around 180 degrees to take a bite out of the hand that was kneading the back of his fat neck.

O.Z. stammered, "Mein golly, Mrs. Portelieu, we would love to! But I'm afraid we are being interviewed at ten-thirty by za man from WHAT IT IS L.A. magazine-"

"Ah.... well then! My appointimento is only at nine. So you see we shall be no trouble at all."

Adore had not spoken yet. When he did, it was in exactly that voice that both Jade and O.Z. just knew he would have. Demanding and spoiled and whiny, irritating and feeble-minded: "I DON'T WAAAANNA STAY HERE, MAMA! THESE PEOPLE ARE CREEPY!"

O.Z. tittered, "You see? The child would be much happier going with you."

"I know, Sweetheart," cooed Mrs. Portelieu (apologizing not to O.Z. but to the boy who had just insulted him and Jade), "But Mr. Charles doesn't allow you- uh, does not allow children into his shop. He says my little snuggle-kins distracts him. Chuckie is such a high strung old goose! But seriously, I shan't take long at all. His salon is just over in the Greyhound station. Toodle-pip!"

She waggled a jangling armful of cheap metallic bracelets at them and was out the door.

.
#.3 /// ADORE

The boy glared at them suspiciously, then seemed to forget all about them as he fell upon the pile of toys and games on the floor.

"Why didn't you stop her?" whispered Jade.

"Me? I told her we couldn't watch him. Who would've thought she'd just go stomping off and leave him here?"

They heaved a sigh of defeat together.

Adore shoved his hands roughly through the toys, playing tidal wave. His face twisted into a childish sneer, "These toys are all gross and busted! Where did you get these? From some pooptard's trash can?"

"Why? Do you recognize zem?" smiled O.Z.

"Yeah, I rec'nize them from some stupid pooptard's stupid trash can! A stupid pooptard named yoouuuuuu!" laughed Adore, proud of having dealt them such a clever put down.

Jade picked up the stuffed cartoon rabbit and tried to give it to the boy, "Here Adore. You can play with this. Here is a nice Mister Bunny!"

"What do I want with that junky piece of junk? I got a Bugs at home twice as big as that! And mine talks!"

"I'm sure you and your bunny has hours of stimulating converzation togezzer. Now stop messing with our grandchilder's presents and go sit over there!"

Sullenly obeying his elders, Adore took the toy cartoon rabbit and sat over there. Mr. and Mrs. Babalooski kneeled on the floor, sorting through the toys. Making a seperate pile of anything that looked salvageable.

But then the kid's tone changed abruptly. The two were as startled by the sweetness in his voice as they were by the question: "Were there really pirates here last night?"

"Huh?!"

Adore strangled the stuffed animal absently as he said, "I saw them! They looked like a bunch of pirates going up here! And when I asked Mama about them she said they were bad people and to shut up!"

"Oh, those pirates," grinned Jade, "They vas pirates all right. You betcha! Real cut-throats. Zey almost made me walk za plank!

"NO WAY! YOU LIE!"

"How else do you think ziss place got so all wrecked up?" asked O.Z. He pointed at the crater in the ceiling, "You see where one of zem took a shot at me? Jadzia pushed his musket up just in time."

Adore looked up at it in awe. His babysitters got up and began walking toward where he sat with eerie slowness, O.Z. staring coldly at him from behind the strange green glasses, "And who shot all those arrows there if it wasn't pirates? Hmmmmm?"

"Indians?" gulped Adore.

"Indians don't do that shtuff no more," hissed O.Z. as they crept toward the boy, "This was pirates. Big...... mean...... ugly...... PIRATES!"

"With hooks!" barked Jade, making a vicious hook-twisting gesture in front of his face, which made Adore jump back.

"And do you know what else vass in here?" croaked O.Z., pointing at the jagged, gaping hole in the glass face of the t.v. set.

Adore shook his head.

"Monsters!! They came slizzering out of za television there, hungry for a nice fat little boy, Like in Dimension of The Damned!"

Adore's lips curled inward and his whole head quivered for a second. But then he shouted, "Oh banana oil! YOU LIE! The pirates did that."

"Well, I can see you're too slick for us," chuckled Mr. Babalooski good naturedly, and they went back to sorting the toys. That at least had been kind of fun.

His new set of SPACE GOONS had evidently fared all right, although the cardboard "Orbitron Castle" they came in, with its rows of cellophane portholes, was smashed flat.

Adore lept from his chair, "WOW! You got the whole set!!"

"For zee grandchildren, yes. Go sit down."

"Just lemme see for a second."

O.Z. held the box behind his back and twisted back and forth, blocking Adore, "These toys we got is just garbage for stupids, remember? You couldn't possibly want to see this."

"You got #35 in there! That's 'Hatchet Face'! You can't get that one unless you get the whole set! Mama and me went to nine different stores lookin' for him! Lemme see!"

"No."

"I just wanna look at him. Come aaaaaawn!"

"I said no! Go sit down or ve shall tell your mother what a brat you was."

"I JUST WANNA SEEEEEEEEE-" shrieked Adore like someone in excruciating pain as he lunged and grabbed onto the box.

"Knock it off!" shouted O.Z., skipping backward with it, almost tripping over a smiling yellow toy steam shovel, "Let go, ya little twerp!"

Adore slugged him in the stomach, making him grunt. "Give it!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" shouted Jade as the cardboard space station came apart like a pinata and SPACE GOONS flew everywhere.

Adore went scrambling for them, but O.Z. managed to grab him from behind and pin his arms to his sides. Just barely. This kid had twenty pounds on O.Z. and was completely insane. He spun wildly around in circles, dragging the older boy with him. When he got an arm free he dipped down and grabbed two of the toy creatures. O.Z. began punching him in the side- "You drop those! Drop 'em, or I swear I'll-"

Adore started to bawl, wailing in a voice that the whole building must've heard. Jade pulled O.Z. off of him, "Alright, that's enough! He's just a little kid."

"Little? You try wrestling with him. He's the freakin' Incredible Hulk!"

Jade went over to Adore, who at least wasn't screaming now. "You all right, kid?"

"I just wanted to see," he snuffled, the two plastic mutants clutched tightly in one fist, the back of which he dragged across his nose.

He glared at her. Tears rolled down his reddened cheeks, and a bubble of snot expanded and contracted at the rim of one piglike nostril with each pantin breath. Hatchet Face.... He just wanted to see Hatchet Face. And these rotten kids wouldn't even let him-

"Hey wait a minute- YOU'RE KIDS!!"

O.Z. slapped himself on the forehead. Damn if he hadn't gone and done it again.

.
#.4 /// "PLAN B"

Suddenly Adore was howling, "YOU'RE NOT GROWN UPS! WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YA DOING?!"

"Just shut up," groaned O.Z.

"YOU DON'T TELL ME TO SHUT UP, YOU AIN'T NO BABY SITTERS! YA AIN'T EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO WATCH NO KIDS! YOU'RE JUST A COUPLE OF FAKES!"

O.Z. drew back a fist but realized that hitting him would just make the brat yell louder. "I'm older than you are. And this is MY apartment, so just shut your drool hole!"

It was a bad, bad situation. Universal drunkenness and a wayward foam rubber football had smoothed over the previous night's threat to their masquerade, but they would never be that lucky a second time.

"All right, we're kids," said Jade, "You caught us. There's no need to shout."

"BUT YOU LIED TO MY MAMA THAT YOU WAS OLD PEOPLE!"

Jade smiled gently, "No we didn't. We're just playing grown up. Just having some fun..."

"THAT'S NOT PLAYING!" roared Adore, "YOU GOT NO PARENTS HERE, AND YOU GOT ALL THESE TOYS.... I BET YOU STOLED ALL THESE TOYS! I KIN.... I KIN CALL 1-800-U-SNITCH AND GET A BIG REWARD!"

"But we bought all these. You want to see the receipts?" asked O.Z.

"YOU BEEN TELLIN' ME ENOUGH JUNK, IS WHAT I THINK! AND I'M TELLIN' MAMA ON YOU!"

O.Z. picked up one of the plastic figures and stuffed it into the large pocket of the boy's pajama-like shirt, "Here Adore, here's Hatchet Face. You can have him. And you probably don't have #81 either- Professor Craniac. Isn't he neat? Just lower your voice a little..."

"PIRATES! MONSTERS! BABY SITTERS! BULL PUCKY IS WHAT I SAY; AND WHEN MY MAMA GETS HERE- Hey, you got Snorklepuss?"

Jade found it and brought it to him. She said with conspiratorial warmth, "You know Adore, this could be a whole lot of fun for you. Think about it! We could be like your secret friends. Just imagine, if your mama never found out that we weren't really old folks, and if we told her how much we enjoy watching you.Then whenever she left you with us we could all just hang out and play and stuff. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Adore hunched his furry eyebrows, deep in thought. "Could we torture bugs?'

"Sure," laughed Jade, "Me and O.Z. are old bug torturers from way back!"

O.Z. cursed inwardly, but it did seem like the only way out. In fact the more he considered her plan---her unspoken real plan---the more he liked it! He smiled with love for his quick-witted friend but pointed his smile toward Adore and said, "And when we get tired of murdering bugs, we can always go buy some more toys! Because this is all about buying stuff, isn't it Jade? Buying us tee-eye-em-ee..."

"Yep."

They'd slipped it into the discussion very casually, but the paranoid kid pounced right on it, "Hey, what are you spelling stuff for? You're trying to trick me, I can tell!"

O.Z. said with wounded sincerity, "Trick you? No! Surprise you is all we wanted to do. We wanted to keep your special present a surprise."

"But spelling stuff ain't fair! And when Mama does it, it's always something bad, like gettin' a shot! You ain't my friends-"

"How do you expect us to want to be your friends when you keep threatening us?" snapped Jade, "I mean cripes, Adore! Here we are offering you something any other kid around here would give his left foot for, and all you can do is call us names. We could even go out on day trips- Take the Amtrack down to Sea World!"

"I HATE porpoises! Always smilin' like they think they're so damn smart!" Adore humpfed, not wanting to admit just how tempting her offer sounded.

He tried to picture what a trip like this might be like. Cruising along, mile after mile, without having to endure Mama's constant fussing with his seatbelt, his hair; and without having to listen to her nonstop fantasies about the moral, cultural and hygenic faults of all the other drivers on the road. And Sea World did have that new Shark Attack Adventure exhibit.

With Tadzio and Ramona (his cousins, who were brought over every other Saturday and forced to play with him-) he made it a point to veto any plan or game or t.v. show that either of them came up with. But those two simpering goody-gumdrops were only as much fun as he was bigger than them. They could never come up with anything like what these kids were offering. So maybe he would go along with these liars for a while and get some toys from them before unmasking them in front of Mama like some television detective. That would sure teach old hot-shot Ozzie to not even let him look at his stupid SPACE GOONS!

"Suuuure, let's be friends." he smiled, his eyes two fat little slits. He shook hands with Jade and then with O.Z. The two boys grinned and squeezed, crushing each other's hands in a death grip.

O.Z. pounded on Adore's shoulder hard, "Say there, Buddy-o-Mine..."

"Yeah, Pal-o-Pal?"

"There's a bunch of toys in the closet over there. Go ahead and take any you want!"

Adore rushed off around the corner. O.Z. snickered, "Be ready to hit the road the minute the old bat takes him home."

For a kid that didn't appear to have any ears Adore had exceptional hearing. He came running back, "I HEARD THAT, YA BASTIDS! HIT THE ROAD, HUH?"

"Whah?" asked O.Z. innocently, "Yes, hit the road! Go get that bicycle down at-"

"SAVE IT FOR THE POLICE, YOU LIARS! BECAUSE WHEN MY MAMA GETS BACK YOU'RE GONNA BE SO SORRY-" The brat was screaming about his Mama again, going on and on. MAMA this, POLICE that, and something about that lawyer who advertised a lot on television and used a samaurai sword for a prop ("At Eagleton and Associates we cut through the hassles to get you the money you deserve!"), who Adore seemed to think would come here and hack O.Z. up with it.

O.Z.'s headache was coming back with a vengeance. That hideous voice seemed to fill the room, driving out all the oxygen, until finally something inside O.Z. snapped. He screamed something about Adore's Mama that made Jade gasp- "Oswald!"

"Well I'm sick of this little no-neck turkey! My mama! My Mama! Mama-Mama-Mama! Wonderful! By all means, tell her! Because then there will be absolutely no reason for me not to kick your bratty little butt!"

"THEN YOU'LL BE IN REAL TROUBLE!"

"And so what's a little more trouble? They might ground me until I'm thirty, but at least I'll have had my fun! More fun than you'll ever have in your crummy little apartment with your wierd phony mama!"

Jade tossed Adore an olive brance, "Fun you could have too, if you'd just join us instead of fighting us!"

"Oh give it up, Jade!"

Adore looked from one to the other in confusion.

"No, I'm not gonna give it up! You're talking like our adventure over already! Like you're ready to slink back home just because we met this horrible little- uh, obstacle. Maybe you've had enough of being the Flying Babalooskis but I sure haven't. We're gonna go places, see the world! And if Adore here would just get off his weird trip-" she stopped. You could practically see the lightbulb appearing over her head. "Hey! Why don't we take him with us?"

"Just what kind of drugs were you taking last night?" laughed O.Z., "That's insane!"

"No it isn't. He couldn't tell his mother if he was three thousand miles away, stuffing his face with cotton candy at Disney World, could he? I'll bet if he came along, and we show him what it's like to have some real fun, and have some real friends.... I'll bet getting him away from Mama Porta-Potty would do wonders for him."

O.Z. mulled it over. "I still say it's nuts, but it's better than just giving up. What do you say, kid? You want to run away to Florida with us?"

"I think you're still trying to trick me!"

"Listen, I'm doing this for her---Jade says to give you a chance---and I'm going to make this offer exactly once. We can fly to Disney World, check into that big hotel that the monorail goes through, do our dwarf act down at the registrator's desk, and once we get our room we can all just go back to being our own age again! Get out of these costumes and this makeup. No one will notice an extra couple of kids running around the place..."

Adore wanted to act like it was all the same to him if he went or not, but they were talking about Disney World! Images of the Disney parks he'd seen on the t.v. had always mesmerized him. He had asked Mama about it once, and she'd been shocked that he would even bring it up. Silly amusements like that were for the unrefined rabble. And besides they couldn't afford it.

He knew he would have to watch these two, they were tricky. But if they really meant what they said this could even be more fun than the time he'd forced Tadzio and Ramona to sample that concoction he had made in the blender out of grapefruit juice and raw eggs and chocolate syrup, dirt and leaves and dish soap and taco sauce (etc.) when Mama and Aunt Vivian were down at the store; and that had been one of the highlights of his life. He shrugged, "I guess so..... But no more of your sneaky spellin' stuff."

Jade smiled, "Well okay!"

"I said, NO SPELLING!"

.
#.5 /// GRANDPARENTS

Mrs. Babalooski swung her purse impatiently, "Quit foolin' around you guys; It's 9:53 already!"

O.Z. and Adore had been able to raise the Murphy bed to a 45 degree angle and stuck the pole lamp under the end. The middle sagged precariously. They'd set up a model village made out of boxes, cars, dinosaurs, plastic army men and those Space Goons that Adore hadn't pocketed. One end of a florescent pink nylon jump rope was tied to the pole lamp. Oz handed the rope's other end to Adore and gestured for him to do the honors. Adore pulled.

"A-A-A-AAAAAH! DOOMSDAY METEOR!!! hollared O.Z. as the bed slammed down- demolishing the unsuspecting village. The last of the framed photographs fell from the wall and shattered.

O.Z. grabbed up the valise and they lit out into the hallway for the stairs.

"Yooooo-Hooooooo!" came a voice from the stairwell, and they spun around to go the other way. Mrs. Portelieu was down at the second landing, puffing and complaining to herself about various matters as she climbed...

"This way!" cried Adore, and led them down the hallway and around the corner to a door labelled FIRE EXIT.

A narrow set of stairs angled straight down through the blackness toward a narrow strip of light where the street level door wasn't closed all the way. They warbled "Woob-woob-woob-woob-woob-woob!" like Curly Joe Howard as they clattered down the darkened steps!

It was still drizzling. They sped down a series of L-shaped brick alleyways. Odd images loomed up briefly in the mist: A doorway buried in the gristly remains of mannequins, the rusted out front half of an ancient truck, a dry sagging skeleton of a Christmas tree with a cheap foil star on top. They got to the corner three blocks away where the taxi was supposed to meet them and waited.

"That was an awesome escape route," laughed O.Z.

"Ahhhh, but of course," exclaimed Adore in a comically pompous voice. Then he said, "Hey, lookit what I kin do!"

He stood on one leg and began hopping in circles with his eyes shut and one index finger pressed to the top of his head. It was such an unexpected and pointless feat that the two found themselves laughing and cheering him on. What a strange kid! Adore stopped and grinned dizzily, basking in their applause.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

A homeless man came lurching down the street toward them. Jade grabbed Adore's hand protectively, the way her own mom did whenever she saw anyone of the wrong class or color. She thought this was a nice touch, but Adore struggled until he had freed it.

The man guffawed as he got closer, "Hey, it IS you! How the hell ya doin'?"

As O.Z. shook his offered hand, he grinned, "Man, that was some party you guys had! Only Jessi throws a better party, but there's only one Jessi. No one can do what she does. I was at yours 'til hers got going, it was great. A nice warm up. This your little boy here?"

"This is our grandson, Adore," clucked O.Z. proudly.

"Boy, that was some party! Out for a morning walk, huh?"

"WE'RE GOIN TO DISNEY WORLD!" shouted Adore gleefully.

"Right now? This minute?"

"Y-Y-YEEEAAAHHHH!!!"

"So didja forget your luggage?"

"Well, I tell you. Ve have just a beautiful little summer house down zere. Everythink what we need is inside!" O.Z. shrugged, and held up the maroon bag, "Ve just bringink some few clothes for boy is all!"

"Wow, jet-setters! Must be nice," laughed the wino wistfully, just as a yellow taxi glided up to the curb. He chuckled as the trio slid into the cab's rear seat, "Good to see someone is getting out of this stinking town! Have fun in Florida! And..... GREAT PARTY!"

.
# .6 /// SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

As they pulled out into traffic Jade turned to Adore, who was sitting between her and O.Z., and said quietly, "That was perfect."

Adore gave her a tight, controlled grin. He was still unsure if it was a good thing to become too friendly with these two. He missed being in charge, like he was with Tadzio and Ramona. Also there was the way they tricked him with their old people act. To feel fondness for them would be the same as saying he forgave them for the insufferable humiliation of fooling him like that.

Yet it was impossible not to admire how clever they were with their people fooling. He watched as O.Z. dealt with the middle-aged African American cab driver, in a cheery but slightly bossy tone of voice. The driver was nodding. This was like being in some movie or something...

In fact this was a lot like Mama's "Escape From the Iron Curtain" stories from when she was but a bon mot, which he knew to involve lots of neat spy stuff like this, disguises and secret tunnels and false papers. But being six years old he also thought it involved a real iron curtain; this sinister thousand foot tall thing, maybe cut from the same material as the Statue of Liberty's dress, dividing the landscape as far as the eye could see- all flowers and dancing villagers on one side, on the other people sitting in gloppy grey mud in eternal darkness.

The driver shouted back at O.Z., "Which terminal do you want at the airport?"

"Uh, I think some lunch first. Zat restaurant looking like it's from Futurama..."

"I know the one."

They thundered up a steep short ramp onto the freeway. Jade gazed into her compact mirror smearing on powder and making old lady kissy-faces at herself. Thinking that here, finally, was the real start of this game. Setting up house in their own apartment had been fun, but everybody gets to do that sooner or later. But taking a transcontinental airplane ride just for the heck of it was something that even adults didn't do very often.

Adore was scowling at the back of the driver's head. Jade put a hand on his knee, "Well Liebchink, ve are on our way. How exciting!"

"I wanna see that space thing with all the rockets!"

"I'm not sure if they got a Tomorrowland at Disney World," said O.Z., "I think they has a E.P.C.O.T. instead."

"No! The SPACE THING!" demanded Adore at a near shout.

"What space thing?"

"I think he mean the Kennedy Space Center," suggested the driver.

"Yeah," giggled Adore, "Where that spaceship was takin' off and it blew up with all them people in it; and they all went 'A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A--A-A-A-A-aaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaa-aa-aaaahhhhh...."

"Jesus!" muttered the cabbie.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

They looped through downtown toward the 405. The sky was clearing above this intricate diorama of rises and valleys covered in freeways and houses, palm trees and evergreens, in blocky stucco apartment houses, schools, churches and fast-food places with brightly colored plastic roofs. Everything looked clean and toylike after the rains....

The sun was behind the last remaining knot of clouds. Dramatic shafts of light angled down to land on ancient factory buildings, their skylight roofs peppered with whirling metal mushrooms. Distant clusters of glass office buildings shone like diamonds in the yellow light.

O.Z. couldn't see why his parents always spoke about this area with such irritation and loathing. It was all so fascinating..... The vast freight yard with oyd strings of rail cars parallaxing together in the distance. The towering doors of a foundry open to show a vast cavern that blazed with majestic geysers of sparks; and these rickety old wooden two story houses with ornate porches standing a mere foot beyond the wire fence here, where the freeway had carelessly cut these crabbed little hillside streets in half.

Shirts rocking on a clothes line. A man on a rooftop waltzing precariously with a giant ham radio antenna mast. A sad looking girl in a plaid Catholic school uniform sitting on the steps of a beat up old R.V. painted in big sloppy black polka dots, blowing bubbles from a bright plastic wand. An indignant tom cat wearing a turban of bandages and a silly cardboard cone around his neck. Tantalizing snapshots from a thousand random lives, seen for an instant and then whisked away forever...

They soared up a flyover and down, onto the San Diego freeway, headed for the costal flatlands of Santa Monica and Inglewood. The driver pointed. Against the smogless blue coastal sky they saw a jetliner, many miles ahead of them, dropping low across the freeway to make its landing at LAX. Another followed it seconds later.

At the sight of their destination O.Z. felt a vague fear edging into his excitement. Could they really pull this off? And how the hell were they going to ditch this awful brat?

Adore ignored the view entirely. He had found an old cigarette burn in the seat and was quietly at work, making it bigger with his finger, an expression of grim concentration on his face. O.Z. caught Jade's eye and nodded toward the kid. This had been an awful idea.

Jade shrugged, holding her palms up in comic despair. I know, I know- I blew it! She felt stupid now for insisting they take him along. For here they were on the crowning adventure of their young lives, and she had shackled them to this vicious little nimrod!

Adore startled. He knew some private exchange had taken place between them and he reacted by taking the offensive. He pointed, "Hey GRAMPA. Give me my suitcase!"

O.Z. put his hand on the satchel at his feet and stammered, "This? This isn't your-"

Adore didn't know what was in there, but he could tell they didn't want him anywhere near it. "You took that stinky ol' bum back there it was my stuff, so GIMME IT!"

The cab driver muttered something and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Jade said blandly, "There is no need for you to be getting into your underwears now and messing zem all up. Unless you had another one of your accidents. Just sit there and be good boy and we'll have a nice surprise for you when we get to Florida."

"What kind of surprise?'

"A nice surprise."

"Well that don't tell me nothin'!" Adore said sullenly and gave the black rimmed hole in the seat a loud sharp tug.

"What's he doin' back there?" asked the driver warily, and adjusted the rear view mirror to keep an eye on the boy.

Adore met his gaze in the glass. Asked him accusingly, "Are you on steroids?"

It seemed like a bizarre question. "Now why would I take steroids? I'm sixty-four years old and I drive a cab. So unless you count the cortison cream I use for my elbow-"

"Then what are ya starin' at me for?!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Adore was making farting noises with his mouth. He was really getting into it, bouncing in his seat with each spittle producing "Pppppttttthhdddttt!"

OZ remembered how he had felt waking up this morning. The last couple of days posing as elderly little people had been very strange, and very busy; but in the dead calm of that smashed up apartment, in that depressing neighborhood, and with the worst headache of his life, it had occurred to O.Z. how much he missed his mother and dad. And now, when he thought about this cross-country trip they were taking, he was feeling more and more like he shouldn't be off whooping it up at some theme park while they were worried sick about him, waiting by the phone for some horrible news to arrive. Yes his mom had doubted his story about Grandpa the other day, and that had stung, but she shouldn't be punished for that. It really was an unbelievable story.

The trouble was, he knew Jade had no similar desire to head back home. The farther she got from those poisonously burnt out and hateful parents of hers, the more alive she seemed. And he didn't want to take that from her. If only Jade had a home life more like his, O.Z. thought. She really deserved it. He smiled at the thought of how his parents interacted with Jade, the way her whole face would light up at some small gesture of friendship or simple courtesy from them. How his mom could always make her laugh...

Adore was kicking the back of the driver's seat. When Jade whispered for him to stop doing that, he whispered back: "No! You start doing that!"

If O.Z. told Jade that he wanted to go home she would understand, and then would bid him goodbye. At which point she'd find herself out in the world, ten years old and alone. And even if he gave her a good chunk of the money to travel on this just didn't seem safe. Not that he was some great protector, but he was someone she could trust, another pair of eyes. "Safety in numbers" and all that. So he couldn't abandoned his friend, but he would start sending a postcard home every day for as long as this journey lasted, to let his folks know that as of a day or so ago he was still okay.

Adore was giving the finger to all the people in the cars to the left and right of them, grinning maliciously! The cab driver hadn't missed any of this...

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

As they banked down the offramp onto International Airport Boulevard, Adore was bellowing that he wasn't going to eat at no restaurant. That Mama said them dirty restaurant people laughed and throwed your food onna flooooooooooor!

At the gates of the airport they pulled into the right lane, joining a long stalled line of taxis and sooty-rumped tour busses. Palm trees sprung from the banks of tropical fantasy
landscaping on either side of the entryway. Adore yelled, "What're ya doin' in this lane?
Them cars over there are going good! Why are we in this lane? Go over there! That lane there! What are you doing, Stupid? Go over there!"

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" exploded the driver. He began pounding the steering wheel, raging in temporary but total insanity- "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"

George Higgens had always prided himself in his professionalism, and he was as startled by this outburst as his three passengers were. The circular yammering and incompetent address directions of drunks, the rudeness of self-important minor celebrities, even the unfriendly racist "kidding" of the occasional hard core bigot didn't phase him much. But right now it was all he could do to keep from reaching back and strangling the evil little troll!

Oh well. Since he had already blown his chances for any kind of decent tip he might as well speak his mind. "You mean you're taking him on a vacation to Florida and he actin' like that?"

O.Z. gave the man a pained, apologetic smile, "I'm afraid ziss child has serious psycho problems. After Disney World we is putting him in a special koo-koo hospital what zey has for kids down there..."

"Sounds to me more like a plain old discipline problem. You shouldn't be letting him get his way all the time. It ain't good for them in the long run. Now I raised three kids myself-"

"WELL WHO ASKED YOU, YA BIG FAT DOOFUS-FACE?!"

"Adore!"

"ENOUGH!" roared Grandpa Babalooski. He handed the driver a wilted hundred dollar bill, "Whatever is left from this you have more than earned, my friend! Right here is fine. We must punish this horrible behaving little piggie at once!"

A string of signs on steel poles said NO STOPPING, but traffic in their lane was stopped anyway, so the driver just edged the cab over to the right a bit, a look of sublime satisfaction on his face.

"Keep going!" screamed Adore, "To them buildings up there. You gotta let us out where there's people around!"

The cabbie turned around to face him, and grinned broadly, "Your grandpa's the one who paid the fare. I think I'll listen to him."

"HE'S NOT MY GRAMPA!!"

"And I'll bet he was wishing that too right about now," grinned the man as he strolled around the car and opened the rear door with a courtly flourish.

Adore clawed to get away, but his guardians each held onto an arm and slid out with him, looking sad and embarrassed over his insane delusions as he howled, "THEY'RE NOT OLD PEOPLE! THEY GOT WIGS ON AND STUFF! THEY'RE GONNA KILL ME! HEY, LEMME GO!!"

The driver had stuffed an index finger in each ear---his elbows sticking out---and he sang, "I can't heeeeear youuuu!"

"THEY'RE KIDS," wailed Adore, "MURDERERS! LISTEN TO MEEEEEE-"

As the cabbie climbed back into the car he sang a flat little tune; about how he NEV-er listened to rude little monsters who scream....... had as little as POSS-ible to do with rude little monsters who scream........ Singing and rolling up the windows as he pulled out of the line and sped toward the terminal buildings.

Adore jabbered and writhed and shrieked like some straightjacketed maniac! This didn't quite fit in with their plan of making a discrete entrance to the airport, but luckily they were out in the middle of this vast desert of parked cars, the banks of the windshields gleaming dully in the sun, and the boy's cries were lost in the roar and crash of overlapping jet sounds.

They got him quieted down surprisingly quickly with another bribe; O.Z. telling him that he could have all the ice cream he wanted if he would just cooperate.

.
#.7 /// MIKEY THE MAGNIFICENT

On the sidewalk in front of the WESTERN/SMALL AIRLINES terminal a magician in mime's makeup was doing tricks involving scarves and an oversized top hat. Most people hurried on past, wary that his act might involve something more sinister than passing the hat for change (like suddenly haraguing them about the plight of the endangered Paiute Creek pupfish or the need to abolish the World Health Organization), but a fairly large audience had assembled. There were a lot of people with an hour or so to kill, and you could only do so much browsing at the gift shop. Adore bulldozed his way forward through the crowd, having forgotten all about his travelling mates.

"You're right, O.Z. He's a hopeless case," sighed Jade.

Adore bellowed at the magician, "THAT WAS SOOOOOOOO FAKE!"

Jade shook her head, "How did I ever think he would be grateful to us, or would mellow out, or whatever it was I thought! I guess I was thinking about what I heard about dogs on the radio..."

O.Z. watched a cop car roll by in traffic. It was the fifth he had seen in only four minutes. He asked distractedly, "Dogs on the radio? You mean that Hooked on Barking Disco Beethoven?"

"No, not that stupid song! It's what I heard some dog trainer guy saying on one of my mom's talk shows. About how there are regular mutts, who know how to be around other dogs, and play and stuff; and then there's another kind, the little foofie-dog who lives his whole life on somebody's lap wearing some dorky sailor suit."

"Those yappy little rat-dogs are useless," smirked O.Z. dismissively.

"Or any size dog. It's not the size. The ones that are screwed up in the head. And if some other dog gets near them they freak out and pee all over themself and want you to get them away from this thing! They got no idea about what being a dog is. Or else they attack any other dog they see. And if they never get to know other dogs early on they just stay like that! And so I figured with Adore-"

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! FAKE!"

"But I figured wrong," sighed Jade. "My dad says it never helps to try to help anybody. Something about 'the arrogantness of the do-gooders'..."

O.Z. thought this was pretty strange coming from a guy who owed his parents.... well he wasn't sure how much but they had really come to hate Frank Thompson, and had stopped loaning him money that he didn't seem to feel obliged to ever pay back. He frowned, "That's messed up. There's nothing wrong with helping people..."

"BOOOOOO!! GO BACK TO FAKERS-FIELD, YOU FAKER!"

"Well we did try. We gave the little fink every chance, and then some. Let's just ditch him, O.Z.. Right here!"

She sure didn't have to ask him twice. Facing the magician like all they were doing here was watching the performance, they casually eased their way backward through the audience and toward the wall of glass doors that fronted the terminal building...

"THAT AIN'T REAL MAGIC! YOU'RE TRICKIN' US SOMEHOW!"

"Shut up, kid!" snapped someone in the audience.

"IF YOU WAS REALLY MAGIC YOU COULD FLY AND STUFF! YOU COULD THROW LIGHTNING BOLTS!"

The mime rolled his eyes upward, imploring the heavens, then strained ferociously to reduce Adore to cinders with a lightning bolt. The crowd laughed and cheered.

"YOU SEE? THEY'RE LAUGHING AT YOU!" boomed Adore. And when the performer simply stuck out his tongue, he yelled, "HEY! HE CAN'T EVEN TALK! WHAT A RETARD! WHERE'D YOU GET YOUR MAGIC STUFF, OUTTA SOME TRASH CAN?!"

The Babalooskis had reached the edge of the crowd and were turning to slip into the terminal, when0

"Oh crap, here he comes!" O.Z. cried and started to bolt, but Jade grabbed his arm. She gestured toward the handsome young Latino cop in the stylish haircut who stood flirting with the clerk at the far end of the broad Western Airlines ticket counter.

So ditching Adore would have to wait. But then O.Z. had a brainstorm, and suddenly was smiling. It was a rather evil smile. "Not to worry! I know exactly how we can get rid of him! It is the absolute bitchenest, most brilliant plan-"

Adore flew in through the glass doors, his tennis shoes chirping on the linoleum as he skidded to a stop- "And where do you two think you're going?"

"Well I thought we should come in here and buy us some plane tickets," smirked O.Z., "I mean if that's alright with you. Or maybe you want to watch Mikey the Magnificent all day instead of going to Florida."

"No way! That was so PHONY!"

O.Z. grinned and boxed him chummily on the shoulder. They got in the ticket line.

O.Z. was noticing police and security people everywhere. He and Jade might have hoodwinked a few uncritical skid row neighbors, gaining acceptance by buying liquor for them all; but these cops' whole reason for being here was to spot the criminal and the deceitful. He hoped that when their turn came it would be with a ticket seller far down the counter from the girl at the end who was chatting with the loitering policeman...

.
#.8 /// CRIME SCENE...

On his way to Jessi's place Leo was almost knocked over by a squat woman with an immense head who had gone flying down the second floor hall screaming, "My baby! My baby!"

Weird. He rapped on Jessi's door for a while but she wasn't answering. She might have been under the bed, consorting with the dust balls like she sometimes did, so he decided to go sit in the dark untravelled back stairs and try again later...

Thanks to the fact that all this stairway's lightbulbs had been stolen, twenty feet from the top he was virtually invisible to anyone looking down from above. He had even slept here one night, when the cops had busted up his little band's encampment beind the Pan Pacific Novelty Importers. He took out his plastic pint bottle of vodka and had a long pull.

After he'd sat drinking in the dark a while he began to wonder how much time had gone by. Then he started reflecting on the nature of time itself. He wondered whether it was true---as some professor had told him years ago, back in that other life---that time was not actually a real thing, and could only be described in relation to the movement of things. Like a planet, the hands of a clock, or the chemical trajectory of a human lifespan. But then again it seemed just as likely that time might be one of the realest things there are. That it was actually a sort of stuff- a medium of being, like water was to the fish who lived in it, and any motion would be impossible without it. Leo knew that Jessi would have some input on this cosmological puzzle, however cryptic her response might be...

There was a commotion up on the third floor. Blast it, what had Jessi done now? He capped his pint of hooch and went up to try and help.

Only the problem wasn't at Jessi's place. There was a crowd in front of that oversized studio apartment across the hall from her. That bullet-headed lady who had almost run him down was one of them. Leo hung back, watching.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

The building manager stood at the door of the apartment, looking for the right key while trying to make some sense out of Mrs. Portelieu's hysterical screeching. He could tell that this wasn't one of her usual "emergencies", but he wasn't prepared for the raw chaos they found when he finally got the door open...

The Portelieu woman had convinced herself that there had been a gas leak (although there were no gas lines into the individual units), and that her child was in here unconscious and dying! She caroomed around the apartment with a hanky clamped over her face before announcing, "THEY'RE NOT HERE!!!"

She swooned, dropping into the recliner chair shoved up against the wall.

Dave-the-manager picked up the shattered picture of a teddy bear javelin thrower, and said, "Looks like they had one heck of a struggle here!"

"A struggle?" Thelma Portelieu had seen this apartment in about the same shape as this earlier, but she had been so intent on talking the couple into looking after Adore it hadn't registered. Now as she looked around, it did, and she pictured her Adore valiantly fighting off his attackers, who she pictured as Bedoins with large scimitars. "A STRUGGLE!"

"Somebody must have seen that little old man flashing that big roll of bills around, came up here and robbed them! But where are they? That's what-"

Leo cleared his throat in the doorway.

Dave whirled around, "I thought I told you to stay the hell out of this building!"

"You're talking about the dwarves and their little grandson, right?"

"GRANDSON?!" cried Thelma as she bolted upright.

"Yeah. The boy was named somethin' like Day Star, Ray-Doo ........... Some stupid name like that, like the brand name off of an old refrigerator or somethin'. I met 'em as the three of them were getting' into a cab. Flying down to Florida on vacation."

"Well that certainly puts an interesting slant on events," pondered Dave. "I wonder what they're up to."

"KIDNAPPERS!" shrieked Mrs. Portelieu. She sprawled back in the chair, her wrist across her forehead, crowing hopelessly, "And they seemed so nice..."

"They always do, Sister! They always do," jeered the manager as he strode over to the phone and started dialing. "I knew there was something not quite right about those two. Kidnappers, of course! And apparently not very bright ones, trying to collect a ransome for somebody who lives in this dump..... Hello, Police?"

.
# .9 /// MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS

Despite what the people glaring at her from inside the switchback of velvet ropes seemed to think, Suzie Weller was not goofing off. She wished she had one of those gate things like the bank tellers had, to let them know that she hadn't just taken it on herself to ignore them, but that her station at the end of the service counter was not open. She was putting address stickers on these envelopes stuffing them with some newsletter her boss wanted mailed today. And while it was a thing that she could do as easily while chatting with her friend Raul as not, their conversation really made it look like she was just slacking here...

Officer Raul Ochoa was telling her how he wanted to quit the LAPD and open up an expensive men's shop. She laughed and said she couldn't picture him as a tailor.

"Everyone says that, except my mom and my pastor. It's dangerous being a cop! I don't have anything to prove. I didn't join the force like a lot of my brother officers, and even some of the sisters, their heads filled with dreams of shoot outs and high speed pursuits. I mainly wanted to help people. And there's all different ways of doing that."

"Maybe it's bad out in some places, but this doesn't look too dangerous." She indicated a chubby family wearing plastic leis and sunburns, huddling together laughing for a snapshot. "You don't get the gang wars and things."

"No, here you get the federal crimes. Highjackings, bombings- airports attract the real loonies. Like that little dwarf couple over there. Probably a paramilitary hit squad, gonna shoot somebody in the ankles."

"You're terrible, ha ha! But do you think you would get any real satisfaction doing that kind of thing? I mean year after year?"

"Oh absolutely. I mean, take for example some overweight shlub, he doesn't have much confidence, doesn't think much of himself, is kind of a dud with the ladies. But then he gets a decent haircut and you put him in a nice suit that maximizes the features he does have. He sees himself in the three-way, and suddenly he realizes, well he's still not so handsome, but he's commanding now. He hikes up those slump shoulders and he thinks, 'Gee, maybe there is hope for me after all. Maybe I won't go into work today armed to the teeth and- Well, maybe that's an extreme example, but it stands up in principal. To make someone feel better. The police mostly catch people after they've said 'TO HELL WITH IT ALL!' and went and did something stupid. And yeah, you need that. But I think the real victories are in the area of prevention."

"I guess that sort of makes sense. You got a name for your shop?"

"Yeah, it's ah.., It's-"

His eyes had been drawn to the strange threesome again. The tiny old man kept sneaking ashen looks in his direction. Maybe he was just an old guy from some corrupt, liberty-starved country, where a phobia about cops was completely justified..... Or maybe the narcotics traffickers were employing dwarves these days. Nobody poured off more animal fear than a first-time smuggler. And while it was true that far more dope was smuggled into L.A. then out, he was considering sauntering over that way to see how they would react...

...when there was a bleeeble-eeble-oop! noise from his belt.

He unclipped his radio and had a short conversation, then told Suzie, "Oh God, here we go. Someone complained about Mikey the Magnificent, I have to go roust him. I told him the airport doesn't care if he pulls Hare Krishnas out of his hat as long as he doesn't ask for money, but the jerk says it's 'part of the street performer's tradition'..."

"Be careful out there Raul! He might turn you into a rabbit, ha ha!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

"Disneyworld? That would be Orlando. I'm sorry, the last of the morning flights just left. The next one won't be until-" the beautiful Hindi woman with a dot on her forehead checked her monitor and frowned, "Five o'clock tonight..."

O.Z. was growning edgier with every passing minute. He didn't like the idea of hanging around this airport for another seven hours one bit.

"But one of the other airlines should have something coming up soon," she smiled brightly, clicking at the computer keys, "Let's try Florid*Air. They have that deal, you know, where kids seven and under fly free. And it's not a bad airline, just kind of- Well, lucky you! Their next Orlando flight leaves in thirty-five minutes. They're down there at the far end of the building, let's reserve your seats to make sure. There's no charge for that, by the way. And your name is?"

"Name?" O.Z. looked around indoor space for ideas, his eyes finally settling on some food businesses down at the end, "Uh, Domino, Dominique... Starbu- Starr! Dominique Starr."

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Getting their tickets at the FLORID*AIR was a breeze. The employee there had hardly glanced at them, and had been mostly focused on the information on her screen. Jade and O.Z. were each given a paper sleeve with their ticket in it, and Adore got a sticker of a smiling airplane with the words I'M A FLORID*AIR FREEBIE FLYER, which seemed to please him as much as if he'd been awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

O.Z. was glad that he hadn't had to buy a ticket for the kid, who had a much shorter itinerary in store for him; heh heh! It was time to set his little trap.

But there were just too many cops here. The same free-floating sense of apprehension that had caused O.Z. to reserve his flight under a new alias was telling here not to try to ditch Adore right at this terminal. They had a half hour, that should be plenty of time. He nodded in the direction of the building's front entry. "Come on, you guys!"

Jade didn't know exactly what was up, but nudged Adore into motion and followed O.Z. toward the tall glass doors.

O.Z. said in an awkward, embarrassed tone, "You know Adore..... I guess we kind of got off on the wrong foot here today. And I'm..... Well no one likes to admit they were wrong, but as I get to know you better I can see that you're just like the coolest dude!"

"I know. Mama says I get all my blood from the King of Europe!"

"And because you're so cool, I want to.... Well you know that present we said we had for you when we got to Florida? Well actually, we have another present for you right here at the airport."

"Neato! What is it?"

As he swung the door open for them he pointed west and smiled, "You'll see! It's just over in this next building here."

But when they got out on the sidewalk he saw that the next building in that direction WASN'T right next door as he'd assumed. There had been these four big terminals right in a row, but here was a gap of some two blocks between here and the next one.

It had just been a dumb fifty-fifty choice that made him point left instead of right, but to suddenlychange directions might raise a warning in the always-suspicious Adore. So he led them down the long empty stretch of sidewalk toward what the bold logos on its flank showed to be the CONTINENTAL/UNITED terminal. They would still have time to do this. Barely.

They walked alongside a tall chain link fence, beyond which was the airfield itself. Miles of concrete runways interspersed by grassy fields in the shape of rectangles, rhombuses and triangles of various sizes...

The taxiway in the foreground crawled with fat colorful passenger jets. O.Z. was surprised by how clumsy and poorly designed they looked when you saw them down here on the ground, out of their normal element. Like hippos might seem, waddling along, unless you'd ever seen films of how gracefully they can swim.

Adore ran along twenty, thirty then fifty feet ahead of them, dragging his hand along the chain link fence, intrigued by the sensation of his fingers growing numb as they thrummed against the diamond patterned strands of wire.

Jade reached into her purse for the big bottle of Gatorade she'd had in there since yesterday and cracked it open. She took a thirsty gulp of the greenish drink and passed it to her friend. As warm as it was it was pretty awful, but at least it was wet.

"So tell me about this big plan of yours," she asked. "How we gonna ditch him?"

"Oh you're gonna love this! What we do is- wait, nevermind, here he comes!"

Adore had turned and was running back toward them, twisted sideways, doing the numbing thing against the links of the fence, but with his face this time.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Jade wondered.

"Seems like it should. Maybe he doesn't feel pain the way we do."

The boy ran up to them, out of breath, his face all ruddy and smudged from the fence.

"Having fun?" asked Jade. Adore nodded happily as he skipped alongside of them.

And there it was again, thought O.Z. The innocence, the simple friendliness of a six year old. If only he could be like this for more than a minute at a time!

'But he can't!' O.Z. reminded himself, 'And he WILL turn on us again, and in the rottenest way he can think of, the second things aren't going his way! Even Jade thinks so, and she's a lot nicer person than I am...'

They were approaching the CONTINENTAL/UNITED building, when the rudimentary logic circuits in Adore's brain flickered to life: "Hey wait a minute! How didja put a present for me in here if you just met me this morning?!"

O.Z. came to a stop. It was an excellent question. It took him a second to concoct an answer. He snorted, "Well duh! We didn't put it here for you. This was gonna be for me and Jade. We knew we'd be coming this way when we left, and it was way too valuable to keep at that apartment so we stashed it here."

"Valuable? Really? So what is it?"

O.Z. smiled blandly at him from behind his big green shades, "I'll give you a hint. It's black-"

.
# .10 /// ADORE'S BIG SURPRISE

Officer Raul was arguing semantics with the street magician ("How the heck could I be soliciting? I never said a word!") when the radio on his belt squawked again. He listened gravely as a flat voice read a bulletin adressed to ALL PERSONNEL..

Other voices cut in, asking the dispatch to repeat that, assuming they had mis-heard the description of the suspects, or even suggesting this was some kind of joke that would get someone in big trouble- as forbidden as it was to horse around on these official police frequencies. But Raul remembered the tiny couple who looked exactly like the description they'd heard. Leaving Mikey the Magnificent in mid-justification he sprinted back into the building and to the Western Airlines counter.

"Hey Suzie! Those two with the kid who just bought tickets from-" he pointed to the work station where the Indian woman had been, "Oh hell, where did Vasanti go?"

"On her lunch break," said Suzie, "And I don't think they flew Western, I think she reserved them a seat on another airline. Why, what's going on? "

"Those two were kidnappers, and they're supposedly headed for Orlando with the kid they grabbed!"

"Then you might try Florid*Air. They have the most- Hey, you can't use that!"

Raul tapped rapidly on the keys of Susan's computer, brought something up. "Damn! There's nothing here under Babalooski. Let's hope Vasanti remembers where she she sent them and what name they used. Where does she usually go for lunch?"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

O.Z. looked around the bustling lobby and seeing that there was indeed a locker area, pointed toward ut. He was using his Grandpa Babalooski voice without even realizing it. "Und now ve go get your present! Is right over there."

Jade groaned in sudden comprehension, "No, O.Z.!"

Adore cackled at her, "Too late. He said it was mine! And YOU can't play with it!"

They made their way to the maze of lockers. Adore skipped circles around O.Z. as he read off the numbers in the corner of each steel door, "Here's J-57, and K-57, K-68. So it's gotta be down this way. One of these big ones along the bottom..."

Jade said gravely, "I don't think we should do this."

"Don't listen to her! Give it to me! Let me have it!"

The fake grandpa clapped his hands together, "Ah, here we are."

Adore's eyes glazed over in lustful anticipation as Ozwald fed six quarters into the slot and swung the door open. Adore hunched forward, ready to pounce on his prize...

"Awwww, there's nothin' in there! HEY!!", he yelped as O.Z. ripped the airplane sticker from his shirt and shoved him into the empty steel cabinet.

Adore immediately tried to back out ("Ver-r-r-y funny you guys!") and with as strong as he was it took both of them to push the door shut until they at last heard the loud satisfying click of the lock engaging. O.Z. twisted the funny plastic-handled key and yanked it out of the slot.

"But he could suffocate in there," said Jade.

"No he won't. See these vents?"

"Let me outta here," came a muffled cry.

"Or what if-"

"We can call and tell them he's in there once we're in Florida. Now let's go!"

O.Z. tossed the incriminating key and Adore's boarding sticker (which had his flight and seat number written on it in felt pen) into a nearby trash can, and they set out at a brisk walk toward the lobby's front doors.

.
# .11 /// COPS AND MORE COPS!

Adore had managed to turn himself around in there and his voice no longer sounded the least bit muffled. If anything it seemed amplified by the steel box somehow. It boomed out from the locker area- "HAAAAAAAALP! LEMME OUTTA HEAR, YA POOPTARD CAKE SNIFFERS! HELP! SOMEBODY! POL-I-I-I-I-I-ICE!!!!"

Airport patrons were looking around in confusion.

"I WANT MY LITTLE AIRPLANE STICKER! HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY! SOMEBODY?!"

They quickened their pace. Jade frowned, "I don't think your 'absolute bitchenest plan ever' was very smart at all."

"Okay maybe not. But we have ditched him, and we can do this. It took us nine minutes to get here. If we get back there in seven that leaves us-" on a big cylindrical plastic kiosk was an ad for some upscale store, a woman's high heel shoe on a background of shiny silver. O.Z. glanced at their reflection in the ad's mirrorlike surface, noticing how it distorted with the curvature of the kiosk. Then he saw the reflection of who was behind them. His voice cracked, "Run!"

Jade looked back. A couple of airport cops had noticed their guilty, hasty walk and had fallen in behind them, about twenty meters back. One spoke with calm precision into his walky talky.

"Don't run. You're supposed to be old!" she cried, but O.Z. was already way ahead of her.

Jade ran. The cops ran.

"There's the kidnappers- STOP!"

As they ran for the glass doors of the entryway what had to be a pair of plainclothes detectives walked in through them. The man looking like a 1970's sports announcer in a blazer and slacks with his hair just covering the top third of his ears, the woman in a drab tweedy outfit with a drab tweedy mid lenght skirt. Both of them were looking around with intense, watchful eyes. The woman held a radio to one side of her head.

Caught between the two pairs of law officers they turn and ran the only way they could, sideways across the big square lobby. Over at the locker area O.Z. noticed a crowd was gathering, to witness the miracle of the talking locker. Even out here you could hear Adore bellowing, "I GOTTA GO TO THE BAFFROOM!!"

Then they spotted a wide portal with a big sign over it that said:

ARRIVALS / DEPARTURES

...and sprinted through it. The corridor beyond angled shallowly downward and then levelled off underground. Jade gasped as they ran, "Did you hear them? They think we're kidnappers!"

"It's some kind of mix-up. But once Adore explains the truth about everyth- Oh God we're gonna get the chair! RUN!!"

A deep voice boomed from behind them, "STOP! POLICE! CLEAR THE WAY, ALL OF YOU!"

A wave of yawning lethargic people with carry-on luggage poured up the corridor toward them. The two kids were managing to slip through this crowd faster than the pursuing cops, but they were running up a dead end! Soon they would arrive at the metal detector, manned by guards, and their tickets were no good for the planes that lie beyond it!

But just before the tunnel angled upward again there was an intersection---which they nearly shot past---a broad corridor stretching off to the right and left for what looked like miles. They had discovered the ring of passenger tunnels that connected the airport's various terminals.

The one on the left was labelled WESTERN / SMALL AIRLINES. They darted down it, toward their flight.

A voice over a loudspeaker echoed from way up the corridor that their flight was now boarding. But it was a long way ahead, so long that they could not clearly make out the intersection at the far end. These tunnels were equipped with moving sidewalks, rolling rubber strips contained by waist high metal walls topped by rubber escalator handrails that moved along with the flooring. Eastbound and westbound sidewalks were seperated by a wide central linoleum aisle, which was used by the more dedicated walkers, and by electric luggage carts that beeped continuously, driven by airport luggage handlers.

The rubber strip only moved about two miles an hour, but Jade and O.Z. appreciated any extra speed they might gain by running with the motion of the walkway. They shoved through the clusters of people, apologizing with winded monosyllables...

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

At the underground crossroads the cops split up and went three ways. It was the woman detective who hopped onto the moving sidewalk they were onand began fighting her way foreward...

Was that the suspects way up ahead there? She couldn't be sure. A whole busload of boisterous and probably tipsy fat men in cheap suits and tassled fez hats blocked her view. Members of the Fraternal Order of Electric Eels lodge, they kept reaching out and giving each other their "Secret FOOEE handshake": clasping hands and then both thrashing around like they were being electrocuted!

The officer brought her radio up to her ear to ask if anyone had spotted them, but the security-band relay antenna up in the ceiling must have been out, and all she could hear was static. That, and the men in front of her laughing and going "Ddddddzzzzzzttttt!!!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

They had finally extricated Adore from the locker, and were questioning him in the security office. "What happened, Sonny? Who did this to you?"

"I GET TWO PHONE CALLS! I WANT TO SEE MY LAWYER!"

They kept trying to explain to him that he was the victim here, and did not need a lawyer because he wasn't being charged with anything.

"BALONEY!! I KNOW MY RIGHTS!! YOU'RE TRYIN' TO HORNSWOGGLE ME!! I WANT A LAWYER. I NEED..... THE EAGLETON EDGE! IF YOU'VE BEEN HURT IN AN ACCIDENT, YOU NEED A SAMURAI IN YOUR CORNER. WILLIAM EAGLETON AND ASSOCIATES, THE PLAINTIFF'S CHOICE! SE HABLA ESPANOL.."

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

It was like running in a dream. The ease with which he passed the people walking in the concrete center aisle made O.Z. feel like he had some modest degree of superpowers. As they wormed through the groups of standing riders they spotted the policewoman behind them, as she finally broke through the pack of rowdy conventioneers.

Then they looked ahead, and saw two LAPD coming up the tunnel's center aisle from that direction. The two cops were decked out like science fiction centurions---in visored helmets and what looked like kevlar-panelled uniforms, their belts laden with every imaginable sort of cop gear---assidiously checking out everyone coming their way.

O.Z. and Jade just stood there as the moving sidewalk dragged them slowly toward the helmeted officers. And there weren't going to be any more side tunnels. They were trapped!

O.Z. whispered, "Maybe we should just give ourselves up! I think they'll go easy on us once they see we're just a couple of kids."

Jade gasped excitedly! She took a firm grip on O.Z.'s bolo tie and dropped beneath the level of the moving sidewalk's waist-high metal enclosure, taking him down with her until they were both sitting on the moving matt. The rubber flooring undulating across the steel rollers beneath their butts was a strange sensation.

This part he understood, hiding down here from the approaching STAR WARS storm troopers. But now Jade was frantically trying to pulling his jacket off. "Hey! What're you doing?"

"It's what you said- Kids! If all they see is a couple of kids, they might not see us at all. We won't be who they're looking for. We can get away!"

"Oh wow. That's right," said O.Z., and quickly shrugged out of his buckskin jacket.

Jade took out the bottle of Gatorade and dumped the remaining two thirds of it out all over the jacket. Then they each grabbed an end and started scrubbing their faces hard, taking off their makeup as best they could with it. They dropped their wigs, Jade's shawl and purse, and O.Z.'s string tie into the soggy smeared up jacket. Jade pulled the bobby pins out of where she'd tucked her hair up under the wig and let her own long red hair fall free.

O.Z. stripped down to his t-shirt, a laughing Albert Einstein printed in brilliant psychedelic colors, and gave Jade his tuxedo shirt to wear, which with its ruffled front would kind of look like a blouse. The boy averted his gaze as she quick changed into it. The couple standing behind them, anthropologists from Denmark who had been in town researching a follow up to their 1986 paper on the "valley girl" phenomenon...) would argue for months about the meaning of this strange ritual they were witnessing.

Jade added the two grapefruit and her bra and Mrs. Babalooski blouse to the stuff in the coat. As they stood back up, kids again, O.Z. chucked the whole soggy bundle onto the rear deck of a beeping yellow Cushman cart going past carrying big bags of trash. Looking around, they saw that they had gone right past the two cyborg cops.

Fifty feet behind them the plainclotheswoman had hopped over the railing and was conferring excitedly with them, gesturing with her radio back toward the Continental/United terminal. The three of them loped off that way...

O.Z. and Jade bolted from the mouth of the people-mover and dashed up the ramp. At the intersection at the top they turned right, down the hall to the SMALL AIRLINES departure gates.

And as they ran toward the metal detector they yanked all the change out of their pockets and let it clatter all over the floor. They waved their tickets at the airport security attendant there, "OUR PLANE!"

The attendant knew there was something major going on right now in this part of the airport---the FBI had just shown up---but whoever all the uproar was about it wasn't a couple of children late for their flight. Grinning in amusement, he stuck out his hand, slam-dunked their satchel through the X-Ray machine, nodded his official benediction as they failed to set off the metal detector portal, and forward-passed the bag to the running boy all in one fluid motion.

They sprinted across the glass walled waiting room to Gate C-7, where a man was clipping a stiff naugahyde snake across the opening of a rubber-lined accordion gangway tunnel that had obviously been closed and retracted.

"Flight 413?" wheezed O.Z.

"Awwww..... I'm sor-ry," the steward cocked his head and treated them to that exaggerated pout of sympathy that people gave to young children. It seemed strange and artificial after living as adults for the past three days. He pointed throught the tinted windows at the plane with the FLORID*AIR logo on its tail, at the back of a long line of jets that curved across the taxiway to where the runway started. It was several minutes until actual takeoff, but it might as well have been orbiting the third moon of Saturn for all the good it was going to do them now. So much for Disney World.

"The next flight is at 2:15. I can call your mommy and daddy or whoever is waiting for you there, so they don't worry about-" the man started to say, but they were gone.

They sped down the sloping exit corridor and past the long side tunnel they had just come from, toward the Terminal proper. Toward that street out front, where some cab driver was going to get the biggest tip of his career if he could just get them safely out of this place.

.
# .12 /// SECURITY ANNEX #3

Two large men in black suits and narrow ties stood grimly down by the portal into the lobby, airport patrons streaming around them like surf around a pair of dark forbidding rocks that they had no choice but to navigate close to. Jade figured they were FBI agents brought in for the kidnapping case, which is what O.Z. was guessing too, although he wouldn't have been surprised to learn they were the Men In Black---like in his favorite movie---and were packing ray guns under those jackets.

"This'll be okay. All we need to do is act casual," said Jade, but she didn't sound too convinced. Since Adore started yelling inside that locker they had been running blindly, falling back on progressively weaker and hastier back-up plans. And now they'd missed their plane.

Hoping to blend in with this group, they moved in close to a large family that was circled around a tough-looking bald old man. Six children were shouting for the man's attention ("Unca Louie! Unca Louie!"), and his balding kid brother was arguing with him over wanting to help him with his two heavy bags.

"I never said you were an invalid, Louie. I just meant that you're on vacation, and might let somebody help you with something for once..."

The brothers compromised, each taking a bag, and the clan continued on toward the two unsmiling men and the freedom that lie beyond. The oldest of the children turned around and made a face at Jade and O.Z. like she had been sucking on lemons all day, "What are you doin' following us? Are you pickpockets?"

"Pickpockets?" exclaimed O.Z., "Heck no! We're um..."

The agents they were stopping groups of people, asking them if they had seen the suspects, gesturing "about so high" with a palm turned downward.

The row of glass doors just past them beckoned to O.Z. like the surface of some hellish lagoon he was trapped in, so near yet so far, lungs burning for air, his leg held fast by a murderous giant clam. (Should have heeded those "DON'T TEASE THE CLAMS" signs, he thought deleriously...)

The girl was about to alert her father to their presence when O.Z. meekly apologized, and explained that he and his sister were orphans, whose parents had been decapitated by a poorly-installed ceiling fan, when it had fallen on them in that Olive Garden restaurant in Encino. Right in front of their eyes. And for the past year they had lived in this miserable barracks-like orphanage, where they and their fellow wards of the state were all called by a number instead of a name.

"It makes you feel like you're hardly a person," added Jade.

...And so on their one "free day" each week they liked to come down here, to just hang out on the edge of scenes like this and bask briefly in the reflected warmth and love of other family's togetherness, something they would never have again.

They couldn't tell whether the girl was buying this or not. They were about twelve meters from the two serious looking men in suits, when-

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

"That's them!" said Agent Charbydis out ouf the side of his mouth, and nodded discretely toward the laughing and bantering family. "The two in the funny clothes!"

Agent Scylla pointed, "Those two? The two kids? But the bulletin said seventy, maybe eighty years old."

"Somebody screwed up, then. They just don't fit in with that bunch somehow. And that sure looks like the velour bag they're supposed to be carr- HEY THERE THEY GO!!"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

When they saw the FBI man pointing they knew they'd been made, and bolted.

They ran past the glass fronts of shops- Orange Julius, Oakley Sunglasses, See's Candy. In the space between a book store and ROUTE 66 GIFTS an ugly plain looking door with a wire mesh window in it buzzed and clicked and opened. The man who came stepping out through it yelled as they muscled past him- "HEY!!"

They skittered down a stark empty corridor lit by a strip of bare florescent tubes down the middle of its high ceiling. At first they passed the back doors of shops and offices, but then there was nothing but these cinderblock walls painted a gooey gloss beige. They were clearly in AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY country...

A wall loomed ahead of them. They bounced off the cement bricks with their hands as the passage made a right turn, and emptied them into a small office where two policemen sat in swivel chairs, each of them staring at a grid of small t.v. screens. The room---Security Annex #3---resounded with the whine of jet turbines, which poured in through a door that they had propped open with a riot baton.

The guards had to speak loudly to hear each other over the engine noise. They had neither heard the children enter nor noticed them stealing across the room behind their backs, toward the open door, trying to gasp for air as quietly as they could...

Baffled voices squawked from the police radio:

"Anybody got a twenny on the perps?" asked a staticcy voice.

"That's a negative. Where the hell did they get to?!" wondered another.

A tumbleweed skidded past the open door. A bit farther out an emerald green jet rolled slowly past the opening in the opposite direction. One of the guards in the room said, "I don't see how we could have lost them."

"These cameras suck, that's how!" said the guard next to him, tapping one of the screens, "There's no kind of organization to how they have them set up. I mean what's this one supposed to be, the inside of a cow? And there's blind spots all over. Now Dallas/Fort Worth, there's a surveillance system!"

I'm right behind you stupid, thought O.Z. and had a perverse impulse to let out kick one of the men in the ass.

Jade and O.Z. had almost made it to the outside when the Men In Black came bursting in from around the bend in the corner: "GRAB 'EM!"

The seated men spun around and saw Jade and O.Z., "What are you kids doin' in here?"

"It's them, idiot! It's who you're supposed to be looking for!"

The children shot out through the door, kicking out the black plastic weapon that held it open.

"That ain't them. That's just some kids," said one of the monitor watchers. "And who the hell are you?"

Agent Charbydis pulled out his badge, flipped open the case and showed it to him, "Well it sure the hell is somebody. They have that bag, and the were running from us!"

The other seated man said slowly, "Even if it's not those kids shouldn't be out on the tarmac. Blakely, go help them!"

As the three men pushed out through the door he grabbed the microphone on his console,
"All units-"

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

The three men peered out across the airfield. There was no one running out on the windswept expanse of the runways...

"Must have gotten back inside somehow," puffed one of the FBI men, before heading left down the steel flank of the building to a door a hundred feet away.

The other went right, toward the squat tower of a boarding area, a disk of windows and rubber skirted hatchways perched atop a shed-like bay where men were tossing luggage onto a flat trailer behind a tug tractor...

Blakely scanned the windy taxiway again, making absolute sure that they hadn't gone in that direction, before starting up the caged ladder that led to the roof of the terminal. This didn't seem very likely, but it was better than standing around here like some indecisive dummy...

.
#.13 /// FANTASIES DIE HARD

The green AIR TONGA jumbo jet rolled slowly forward on tires the size of dinner tables. O.Z. and Jade jogged along, crouched behind one of them, out of view from the door of the security station.

"You're not serious about this, are you?"

O.Z. pointed at his ear, then at the huge engines hanging over them. "WHAT?!!"

Jade screamed hoarsely, "I said we can't possibly get on that jet!"

"Probably not. But since we're out here we might as well try."

The 747 came to a stop, having joined the long line of parked jets. Now it began revving up its engines, testing them- a wavery cone of kerosene scented air blowing out behind them. Even here, well forward of the blast zone, it felt like someone had opened the door of some mammoth oven. Not the safest place to be. Their Florid*Air plane was the third from the front now, out where the procession curved out onto the start of the runway itself.

Jade shouted into O.Z.'s ear, "They're gonna think we're trying to highjack it or something! Don't you think we're in enough trouble already?"

O.Z. had been thinking about climbing up into the plane through the wheel compartment, but most people who tried that wound up freezing to death at 40,000 feet. "Yeah, your right. We should just try to get out of here. But how? The place is crawling with every kind of cop there is, and they know who we are now."

Jade pointed. "I don't think they'll have the south end of the airport covered too heavy."Tf we can just get to the far side of these runways without the control tower spotting us we should be able to get out that way..."

Three parallel runways extended away from them across the flat plain. By some trick of perspective they seemed to stretch all the way to the green hump of Palos Verdes Peninsula, twelve miles to the south. And off to their left a bit, seemingly at the foot of that hill but probably no more than a mile from where they stood, was an area of hangars, machine shops and office buildings. There were air cargo companies, a shop that reupholstered seats from jetliners, a FORKLIFTS ETC. rental place- all the usual obscure businesses that spring up around large airports. With all those cars and trucks parked around them there would be some kind of street leading out of there, which eventually would lead to a bus stop. It seemed like the place to head for.

The Florid*Air plane was now at the front of the long line. O.Z. resigned himself to taking a loss on the tickets in his pocket, although it might be fun to try to give them to the bus driver, acting like some dimwit who doesn't know a bus from an airplane. 'Duuuuh, where'd yer wings go?'

"What's so darn funny?" asked Jade crossly.

"Nothing. Probably just the jet fumes. Let's get out of here/"

They left the cover of the 747's vast wing and lit out for the grassy strip that seperated two of the runways. A man in the control tower had caught their hunched over scrambling forms out of the corner of his eye, but figured it was just a couple of coyotes.

They ran crouching through the waist deep grass, which was a fortunate by-product of these rare summer rains the southland had been getting over the past week. Whenever one of the jets went roaring past---building up speed for takeoff---they ducked down.

They had covered over a third of the length of the airfield, and could see the red metal racks topped by blinking lights that signalled the end of these runways. The airport businesses park was farther off to the left than they had originally though. They would have to start moving sideways somehow. Across these big runways. Jade pointed, and O.Z. gestured in agreement.

Up ahead of them, just off to their left lie a large rectangular field, big enough to safely seperate the jet runways from the starts of some shorter ones for smaller craft, running perpendicular to these three. The field they needed to get to had been plowed under recently and wouldn't provide a lot of cover...

But angling across it was a concrete storm drain, a narrow trench surrounded by a chain link fence. If they could just get across these three runways to it, it would hide them from the control tower. And if it continued in a straight line after it disappeared underground it would lead them straight to the business park, which they could see much more clearly now. Hangers and big glass walled helicopter showrooms. An old wooden sea plane with a huge gaping hole in its hull leaned against some rusted scaffolding like it had been shipwrecked there. A couple of little squat palm trees next to it completed the picture.

They dropped to the dirt as another jet thundered past. And got back up to see it lifting ponderously from the ground, much closer to the end of the runway than looked safe. It would be another fifty-five seconds before the next one came.

They ran across the runway and into the next strip of field. This field was somewhat wider. Jackrabbits hopped around, foraging, carefully keeping their distance from these two-legged intruders.

It was an amazing place. Now that the weren't quite so desperately on the run O.Z. could sort of enjoy this new chapter in their adventure. Exploring an area that few ever got to visit, except fleetingly, from behind a tiny oval window up in some hermetically sealed up jet plane. Being on foot here reminded him of being in the part of some amusement park you were never meant to see, like the time their little train broke down at Knotts Berry Farm and the employees led them out that way. To O.Z. it was better than the ride...

Jade pointed to where a fat rodent reared up, sniffing the air at the mouth of its burrow.
"A prairie dog!"

"Hey!" yelled O.Z. as he clapped his hands at it- "HEY!"

It didn't even blink. Living amid the incessant scream of turbines had made it stone deaf.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

Blakely, searching for the two suspects amid the maze of ducts and blowers on top of the terminal building, looked out to see them shambling across the field toward Airstrip #14.

Yep, definitely a couple of kids. He reached for his radio.

|||=O=O=O=O=O=>

They approached the next runway, its clouded concrete surface striated with layer upon layer of overlapping black skidmarks.

"O.Z., stop!" hollared Jade, and pointed at the approaching aircraft, its headlight hanging in the sky above Hermosa Beach like a bright fat star. Laden down with industrial hardware, the oversized Soviet-era Russian cargo jet needed this extra long runway to land on. Since it was coming in from the direction the passenger jets usually took off in, all take-offs had been suspended from the adjoining strips until this thing had landed...

"He's miles away!" Laughed O.Z. and started across the concrete at a trot.

There was a tiny patch of oil a third of the way across. As small as it was, it was large enough to send O.Z.'s foot snapping violently upward, his shoe flying clear across the tarmac!

He fell, slid, rolled...

losing the satchel...

the satchel opening...

"THE MONEY!" he shrieked in mid-roll.

The money tumbled out across an area the size of a large blanket. O.Z. hobbled, ignoring his smashed knee as he wildly stuffed the money back into the bag.

The plane had grown from the size of Venus in the pre-dawn sky to the size of a seagull. Most of the cash was still in bundles, but they had done so much spending lately, and enough of the ancient rubber bands had shattered that a lot of it was in loose bills. Jade ran out to help him scoop up the money...

The seagull was now a winged minivan. It was as improbable a machine as humans had ever designed and flown. Jet engines like massive oil drums tacked on just about everywhere you could put one, its banana yellow fuselage a mass of random-looking bulges, the whole thing less than symmetrical somehow. An airplane like Dr. Suess might have dreamed up, which might have been fun to look at if it wasn't barrelling down on them.

"Leave the rest!" yelled Jade as the swollen jet bore down on them.

O.Z. nabbed the last two bundles and was going for the $5000 or so in loose bills. Jade grabbed the satchel's straps and attempted to drag him off the runway by it.

But at the same time O.Z.---who had also concluded they were out of time---started running in the other direction. Each thought they were pulling their insanely stubborn friend to safety, until they had used up the two or three second they'd had to escape in. The yellow behemoth filled the sky, in the cockpit they could see a bearded man yelling frantically as he pulled back on the stick-

"DOWN!"

They flattened themselves on the ground, and as the plane swooped over them they could see every rivet on the great craft's belly, the various dings and scratches and oddly shaped little service hatches with blocks of googly Russian lettering stencilled on them.

Hard to believe that mere moving air could do this to you, though O.Z. as they were sent rolling down the runway by the big plane's wake turbulence. He curled himself around the bag protectively and hoped he would come to a stop before he was battered to pieces; which he gradually did. As he sat up he saw Jade was already doing so. She gave him a look like, 'What a day this turned out to be!'

Slowly, and with what seemed like great effort the ungainly cargo plane started to climb. It cleared the building by less than ten feet!

The loose money had risen up like a cloud of leaves and blew toward the terminal in its wake. The kids staggered to their feet and watched it swirl and dance through the air...

Some seconds later people poured from the terminal building, many spilling out of high doors meant to connect to the sides of planes that they had to jump from, tripping the alarms on the emergency exits. Their cries and the jangling of the alarms sounded oddly faint and shrill from this far away. Like a riot of cartoon insects.

They watch the weirdly mesmerizing melee for a moment before starting off again, at a pace that was more like shambling than running. O.Z. had gotten the worst of the injuries, he ached all over and his knee was trashed. Jade helped him as he limped along. The grey concrete trench was closer now but not nearly close enough. The pilot had radioed the tower now to complain "Who were those idiots on the runway?"

O.Z. sensed an ominous change in the air, some disturbing new quality that he couldn't quite put his finger on it-

"It's so quiet!" panted. She hadn't had to shout at all. Every one of the taxiing jets had shut of their engines, and no flights were coming in. It was like the eerie lull in the film's soundtrack just before the atom bomb detonates. Atop a nearby bus a small bird took note of the opportunity and belted out his song for all it was worth: "Chirpitty-chirpitty chir chir che-oop pee wheep!"

Suddenly The leaden air was pierced by a wail of sirens and the throaty roar of car engines being gunned. O.Z. looked back to see the long string of police black-and-whites, a white FBI sedan, and three blue Airport Security wagons that were howling up the runway that the kids had just crossed. All their light bars strobing frenziedly. A classic red fire engine and of large ambulance with airlocks for doors (Some kind of HAZMAT wagon intended for chemical weapon attacks?) raced toward them from a different angle.

"Run O.Z.!" groaned Jade exhaustedly.

O.Z. ran, but he was laughing. A bleak laugh of futility. This field had been mowed to a stubble and there was not so much as a post to hide behind. Seeing their chances of success dwindling like a snowball in Hell, he began to slow up. Some of the cop cars veered off to go deal with the mob that was grabbing at and fighting over the money that had blown that way, which still left five cop cars all for him and Jade.

Jade threw herself forward, like a runner approaching the finish line. Her bedroom at home called to her: Thought you could get away, did you?

There wasn't much in that nine-by-twelve enclosure that really felt like it was hers. Her books. Her fish tank, burbling empty since Gil died. Her pop band and tennis star posters strove in vain to transform the room into her space, but it never could be. It belonged to them, those hateful warring voices booming through the wall. It felt so claustrophobic hiding in there, yet to leave the door open was to risk being hit by crossfire.

The narrow bed with that ugly pea-soup green bedspread on it. The even uglier printed cardboard dresser. The hollowly smiling Barbies that her mom bought her on every gift giving occasion, any lack of enthusiasm for which (like the time she'd wondered just how many Barbies did a girl need? Or when she suggested that her mom just go ahead and buy them for herself, since they seemed to be for her anyway...) was perceived as a betrayal, provoking a torrent of disjointed and contradictory insults: One minute calling her a stuck-up little princess---too damned spoiled to appreciate what was good enough for Every Other Girl on Earth---and the next minute screaming that she obviously wanted a jock strap instead, since she was obviously some kind of goddamn inter-gender freak in training! And her father, off on Planet Smirnoff, had laughed loud and heartily over that; as if that whole hateful tirade had been nothing more than some twisted sitcom being aired for his amusement.

All of this flashed through her mind in an instant. The memory of that humiliating incident---which had taken place just a day before they'd ran away---acted on Jade like some huge wall of fire at her heels, driving her across the lumpy field. She screamed out, "Come on O.Z., we've got to get to that trench!"

But O.Z. was shaking his head. The cop cars were closing fast. So unless they could run at sixty miles an hour...

"No, we can do it! We've beat them all so far, and we can again. We're The Flying Babalooskis, damn it! We're just getting started!"

O.Z. trotted to a stop. "Come on Jade. You know we'll never make it!"

"But the ditch is right there! We can disappear.... under the city..... where they'll never find..... RUN!!"

O.Z. had never seen his friend like this. She was screaming now, babbling crazily, "We can live, we can hide- Go to my sister's! Get Byron to say he's our dad, take the train with us! That'll work- it will! You like trains! Ivory can get that place.... start her restaurant; She's a great cook! She'll enroll us in school up there, close to the ocean. We can learn to surf for real, and not just boogie boards, like you always wanted-"

"We can't. They got us."

Jade gripped him by the shirt and shook him, tears streaming down her cheeks, "Okay, okay- we got maybe seventy thousand. But it's enough to start with if your smart. Buy some good stocks, invest it, and just travel. Buy a boat. A boat, O.Z.!"

"Oh God, Jade," was all O.Z. could say. He had never hurt so much for someone else in his life.

"But a boat, it's perfect! Go anywhere, even clear up the Amazon! Hang gliding off Gibralter, mountain bike the Wall of China! 'Cause it's the world, O.Z.! Oh please run..."

The screeching of tires. A bullhorn barked something unclear but very threatening about "ARREST" and "HANDS UP"...

An astonished voice exclaimed, "Hey, Deidrich was right. It's just a couple of kids!"

More vehicles brakes screeched. More doors flew open. Serious looking men had guns pointed at them.

"Come on Jade. Put up your hands," coaxed O.Z.

Jade raised her hands.
.

.

THE END

EPILOGUE: Luckily they got their story straight before the cops seperated them. When the detective asked O.Z. where they got the bag of money O.Z. said that they'd found in the shadows under a bus bench on La Vista Boulevard, and Jade followed along. They basically told the truth about everything else, and weren't faced with kidnapping or any other serious charges. They were each in trouble for a long time at home, and the remaining money (after no one claimed it and it was returned to him) was put away for O.Z.'s college education.

Byron didn't get a job that morning, but he did the next. And kept that one for almost three years; while Candice, who didn't get fired, kept bartending.

Two years later O.Z. and Jade finally got to Disneyworld, on a trip with O.Z.'s parents. Outside the park gates, while his dad and mom were buying tickets they heard a loud annoying voice, "YOU'RE NOT EVEN A MOUSE! YOU'RE JUST SOME POOPTARD IN A COSTUME, YOU PHONY FAKER-" and The Flying Babalooski's Florida Adventure had begun...