The Bard scowled in the parking lot, his Tercel blocked in by a row of state troopers. He shifted ponderously in his seat, causing the car to rock menacingly and causing Troopers Masterson and Rand to rest their hands on their sidearms like birds on a power line, ready to fly, as they peered into the suspect car over the hood of their own vehicle.
The Bard paid no attention to the official scrutiny, instead unfastening the seat belt on the instrument in the passenger seat. Masterson raised a knuckle and knocked on the window as Rand stayed back, radio at ready. The Bard rolled down the window, grunting at the effort. As the window dropped unsteadily, Masterson saw that the big man had his hand on the lyre’s strings.
“Put your hands where I can see them, please,” the trooper commanded and as the Bard moved his hands to the wheel, his right hand brushed the strings. The lyre purred out an open chord and the Bard looked Masterson right in the eye and sang a note. It started scratchy, as though the man were an instrument himself, played by someone out of practice but then the words flowed out in a gush, water from a fountain.
Esmerelda Jackson watched the action from the entrance walk to Iron Skillet. She too watched Masterson drop to the ground, followed by Rand. She didn’t see any blood anywhere, but she jumped back anyway and ran into the restaurant.
“I’m no hero,” she thought. On her way in, she almost knocked over a couple on their way out. “I’d stay put, if I was you,” she told them. “Right put.” They ducked by her, and walked out the door just in time to be plowed over by the Bard, who was running in looking at the ground through a pair of opera glasses.
“She was in here,” he said to himself, although he said it loud enough to reach across the street. Peering through the glass, he saw the same shade of blue that Brad had seen, but in splits and splotches. He looked at Esmerelda, blue dripping off her hand. “What did she give you?” he asked.
“What’s it to you?” Esmerelda said.
“It’s this to me,” answered the Bard, holding out a one hundred dollar bill.
“Oh no, I’ve had enough funny money today,” said the waitress.
“Take a good hard look at this one,” he said. She took it and stared for the strip inside, unconvinced. “Well, I’m not going to give you a bloody block of bullion!” the Bard yelled. “Sorry, sorry,” getting himself under control.
Esmerelda quickly weighed her options, and found them far to the side of the man in front of her, nearly three hundred pounds of him. She pocketed the hundred and held out the piece of paper Callie had given her to the Bard, who glanced at it through the opera glass, winced and put the eyepieces away in a bulging pocket the size of a woman’s handbag. The paper he kept out, looking on the back and seeing plain white.
“Why didn’t she wait for me?” he wondered loudly.
“Perhaps because you a large crazy man,” Esmerelda thought, but held her tongue.
“I’m not crazy,” he said, winking at her. “I’m gifted.” He walked out the door whistling as Esmerelda sat down on the floor, unwilling to stir up anything else in the day.
Masterson woke up next to his car. Rand was sitting next to it, eyes shut. Masterson shook his partner awake. The two looked unsteadily around, daring the other to be the first one to speak about their morning.
“Guess we need to put an alert out,” Rand said. He picked up his clipboard from where it was sitting on the ground next to him. He looked at the top form, where he’d written down the license plate of the black Tercel. “Uh, Bill, I, um.”
Masterson looked at the paper. “Did he do this?”
“If he did, then his handwriting looks exactly like mine,” Rand said.
Sure enough, in Rand’s strange block lettering was written “sheep sheep sheep” over and over, obscuring all the lines on the form.
“You are not what I expected… Brad,” Callie said.
Brad wondered why this girl kept pausing before saying “Brad” as if she was reformatting her words as she spoke. Brad also wondered why she was expecting him in the first place and would have asked except these are the first words she’s spoken since “We should go.”
So instead, he kept conversation to what just happened. The past could wait.
“So what have I gotten myself into, here?”
Again the strange look flashed on Callie’s face, one that said, “I am on page 24 and you’re still at the cover page of the assigned reading.”
“I am here for the trade, of course.”
“Trade.”
“The statue for the lyre.”
“The statue.”
“I want my sister’s lyre… you want the Inspiros.”
“Inspiros.”
“Are you really gifted?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. Aced my SAT and all that.” Brad was dismayed. He wasn’t even wearing his glasses and she thought he was a geek. Perhaps he needed an earring.
Callie nodded and imperceptibly shifted her weight in the leather seat farther away from Brad. Then in an easy motion, she sprang for the door handle and flung it open. She dove out the door, backpack cradled in one arm.
Brad stared dumbly at the open door before it slammed shut again. He was going 80 miles per hour and she had jumped. He pulled the SUV over, glancing at all of his mirrors in an attempt to catch sight of his ex passenger. Brad hit his emergency flashers and ran out of the car, locking it with his key fob as he sprinted back, looking for Callie’s body on the side of the road.
Callie had no time to even drink from her bottle, much less grab a rice cake. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to blast the boy running towards her with an image of empty roadside, but she had nothing in her left to use.
“I probably broke the Inspiros. I got in the wrong car. I… am unfit to lead my family,” she thought to herself.
Brad came up on her with a full head of steam. “You are nuts!” he was about to say before realizing that she didn’t have a scratch on her. He looked at her hands. Her sleeves. Her backpack was the only thing that had been altered at all by her dive into gravel. It had a small rip in the corner and from it, a small bronze arm poked out, pointing at the ground.
“Just go on your way,” Callie said to him. “You do not wish to become embroiled in this matter.”
“I’m already in it. Listen, I can help you. I don’t know with what, but I mean, I can,” Brad’s words followed one another out of his mouth as if they were all attached by string.
Callie gasped. Brad followed her eyes down to the rip in her backpack, which was now dripping light, no, not light, shining water. The girl put the bag down tenderly and gingerly opened the zipper of the main compartment. The water bottle had cracked and the tape had not held together and the liquid inside was all over the notebooks and statue.
“Do you have anything in your car that could hold the rest of this?”
“Hey, wait a second-“
“You said you wanted to help.”
Brad turned back and ran for the thermos of chocolate milk his mother had packed that morning. He grabbed it from the seat in back and returned to Callie. Not wanting to waste the milk, he chugged it quickly (it was only lukewarm after a morning succumbing to entropy). She waited, trying not to show her impatience, but failing. It came out of her seams like the ambrosia soaking out from between the tape. Brad grimaced. He could never drink or eat on command. Louie had always been first to finish sodas, draining the can in a solid swig and then belching loudly. Brad’s mother thought drinking from a can or bottle was uncouth and so only bought two-liters, on the extremely rare occasions she bought soda.
He handed over the empty thermos, a bit of froth still sticking to his upper lip. She wrinkled her nose a bit, but noted approvingly that the thermos was quite opaque. She unscrewed the cap of the bottle and poured the contents carefully into the thermos, not spilling any from the spout, just the crack. She licked her fingers like a child eating four ice cream desserts in one sitting, not wanting them to go to waste. It was the most Callie had allowed herself in the three months she had been on Earth.
“I can pay you for this,” she said, with a much rounder voice than before.
“With the kind of money that made that waitress so mad? I think I’d be more satisfied with knowing who you are, and what trouble you’re in.”
“The money would be accepted anywhere you spend it. I have more… power now.” She’d said too much.
“Power?”
“You should just forget about me. I could make that happen, but you would rather forget on your own.” She looked away from him, down to road headed north. “I have to find that man.”
“Bluto? In the black car? Bluto Bad Driver?”
“Yes. I was supposed to go with him. I just got confused and I was so tired and you said your name was Brad,” she gave a quick laugh, “and I jumped to a conclusion.”
“His name is Brad too?” He knew it. Whenever he met another Brad, he wondered if he was the only one normal with that name. Other Brads were goth, or into month long games of Axis and Allies or were just plain annoying. It was enough to make him want to use his Chinese name.
Callie laughed. “His name is the Bard. I guess humans hear what they want to when they are under stress.”
Cars passed them, slowing to see if there was a juicy accident or the aftermath of one, then speeding up and away.
“You’re just going to sit here and wait for him to come along? Hope you can wait the months it’ll take him to get out of prison for resisting arrest,” Brad said, a bit snottily.
“The Bard can take care of himself,” she said, half convincing herself as she said it.
“Can you?” He cliché checked all of his words. He couldn’t help it. All he knew was that this wasn’t the sort of thing he’d expected to happen on his trip, but it was exactly the sort of thing that would never happen in Milwaukee and that was good enough for him.
“You are headed south,” she stated.
“If that’s where you’re going.”
“I do not want to divert you. I will ride with you until Georgia, if you are certain you want to take me.”
“How fickle do you think I am?”
“I do not want to tell you. It will make you upset.”