Inside Straight Read online

  But reading still beat venturing outside. The place was awful crowded; all but five of the American Hero contestants had joined the Discard Pile. (Twenty-three aces. Four bathrooms.) Of those not living in the overcrowded mansion, two had up and left the show: Bugsy was in Egypt, and Drummer Boy had decided he’d rather be a rock star than a discard. The other three—Curveball, Rosa Loteria, and, of course, Stuntman—were still competing.

  Oomp-thump-oomp-thump … Somebody cranked up the bass downstairs. Tonight, the others were holding a knockdown, drag-out party to welcome the arrival of Dragon Girl, Jade Blossom, and the Candle, whose team had been eliminated in the most recent challenge.

  Wally didn’t much care for Joker Plague. Not because of Drummer Boy himself (although he wasn’t all that swell) but because their music was so angry. He would have used headphones to drown out the noise, but he’d never found a pair that fit around the massive hinge joints on his steam shovel jaw. Not that he had anything to listen to. His Frankie Yankovic CDs had disappeared when the others sent Joe Twitch to his room to complain about the polka music.

  The scent of grilled meat drifted through the open window. When Wally’s stomach gurgled, it sounded like somebody squishing up water balloons inside a soup kettle. Earlier that evening the Maharajah’s invisible servants had fired up the grill and laid out one heck of a spread on the long, cantilevered deck suspended over the pool and patio. Wally scooted off to his room as soon as he realized the others were preparing for a party. That had been hours ago.

  A splash, followed by peals of laughter and a brief rainstorm. Holy Roller must have joined Diver in the pool.

  He tried to put food out of his mind and opened a bookmark for the network’s American Hero website. Wally had stopped watching the show. At first, he’d tried to watch the dailies in the TV room with the other discards, but he might as well have been ice fishing, it got so cold down there. Even Holy Roller, who seemed like a nice enough guy, had taken to saying things like, “As you have done unto the least of my brethren,” every time he saw Wally. So Wally stuck to himself and got his information about the show off the web.

  Huh. The new arrivals had been close to winning the latest challenge until Rosa got a good draw from that magic picture card deck of hers. They had a picture of the winning card on the website. It was called “El Tragafuegos”—whatever that meant—and it showed a fellow with fire coming out of his mouth. Wally didn’t know what to make of this, except that it had cleared the way for the final three contestants, Curveball, Rosa, and Stuntman. Mighta been me up there, but for what he said I said.

  It didn’t matter. Curveball was a shoo-in. Lots of people said as much, too. They said tons of stuff on the message boards. Stuff like:

  Why is Rustbelt with the other discards at all? I can’t believe they’re still letting him participate after—

  CLICK.

  Stuntman might be an arrogant jerk, but Rustbelt is a racist, plain and simple, and—

  CLICK.

  Rustbelt-Redneck hick.

  CLICK.

  The New Face of Racism. This one was just the one line, followed by an image of Wally’s publicity head shot from the American Hero press package Photoshopped onto the cover of Time magazine.

  CLICK.

  The next one started out: You go, Toolbelt! You got friends out here. … Finally. Friends were friends, even if they didn’t always get the name right. Drummer Boy had a knack for giving people catchy nicknames. Wally kept reading: … you done nothing wrong but put that spear-chukkin’ jungle bunny in his place—

  CLICK.

  What’s worse than being loved by hateful people?

  Tiffani’s throaty laugh came through a lull in the music, just as Wally took a long pull on his glass of pop. Something about the Candle trying to light Toad Man’s gas. It startled him. The glass shattered in Wally’s fist, dousing his face and hands with sugar water.

  “Cripes!”

  He’d have to scrub his face before going to bed, otherwise he’d break out in new rust spots by morning. This time he’d try to remember to clean the bathroom sink afterward. Nobody got mad at Pop Tart for leaving her makeup stuff all over the bathroom, but they sure got sore when he left his used SOS pads on the sink.

  A guy would think they’d never scrubbed a pot before.

  He’d been a pimply kid before his card had turned. Turns out you can have bad skin even when that skin is living iron.

  Hunger got the better of him. I wonder if they got any of them Rice Krispies bars downstairs? Maybe he could just slip out long enough to fill up a plate.

  K-chank! K-chank! K-chank! K-chank!

  It’s hard to tiptoe when you’re three hundred fifty pounds and wrapped in inch-thick iron. But Wally was getting better at it, skulking around the Discard Pile.

  Chank. Chank. Chank. Chank.

  A little better.

  Wally paused at the bottom of the stairs for a deep breath before wading into the fray. It’s hard to slip through a crowd unnoticed when your elbows can crack ribs.

  “Look at me, I’m big and important!” said Mr. Berman. Jade Blossom, Matryoshka, and a few of the others stood around him, laughing. He waved his arms over his head. “I’m a rich Hollywood weasel! I’m—” Something crunched when Wally tried to sidle past the group. The television executive howled in pain as he dissolved into a pale-faced Andrew Yamauchi. “Aaah! My tail!”

  “What?”

  “My tail! Get off my tail!”

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” Wally jumped back. Wild Fox swished his tail around and delicately inspected the tip. The last few inches, where the coppery fur blended into smoky gray, had been flattened. It also had a new kink.

  “My tail …”

  Wally spun around to get out of there, only to bowl over Spasm, causing him to splash his drink on Pop Tart.

  “Damn it, you stupid tool. I was going to swi—talk wardrobe into letting me keep this top, too.”

  He tried to apologize, but he couldn’t form the words around a very violent sneezing fit that nearly knocked his eyes out of his head. Wally bashed a hole in the wall as he stumbled blindly away, trailing apologies as he went.

  “Clumsy oaf! Go crush some rocks or something.”

  “Did you hear about his audition?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, man. It was classic.”

  Wally pushed his way toward the kitchen.

  Somebody had made a pan of Rice Krispies bars. Now, how about that? Wally got the last one, too, until Blrr came zipping past and snatched it from his hand. He found some brownies, but Joe Twitch got those, too. They were having some kind of competition, she and him. For crying out loud!

  Most of the good stuff was gone, but he managed to fill a plate. He didn’t feel up to braving the crowd again on the way back upstairs. Instead, he slipped into the library. Nobody ever went in there, not even for a party. Wally didn’t, either. He wasn’t much of a reader.

  Seated in a leather recliner with a paper plate perched on one massive knee, Wally took his first good look at the library. The first thing he noticed was that the books lining the shelves along every wall weren’t actually books. They were cheap cardboard facades with the spines of books painted on them. Up close, there was no mistaking them for the real thing. Maybe they looked real on TV.

  He did find one real book, a dictionary at the end of one shelf. Fanning through the yellowed pages released a cloud of dust and the mustiness peculiar to books.

  They didn’t do it.

  The entry on Egypt was short. “A country in northeast Africa, bordering the Mediterranean and Red seas and containing the Nile Delta. Capital: Cairo.”

  Not exactly what Wally wanted. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Thinking about those people in Bugsy’s blog felt like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  It was a long time before the party quieted down enough to let a guy sleep.

  He woke around dawn to the loudest sound he’d ever heard. It was l
ike a couple of freight trains, loaded up good and heavy with taconite ore, colliding head-on in the middle of the room. Over and over and over again. It shook the house so badly that he almost tumbled out of bed. Instead, the bed just collapsed underneath him.

  A whump, and then from the floor, Hardhat yelled: “Ouch! God-fucking-damnit!”

  Back home in Minnesota, summer thunderstorms were nothing special. But this was different. First off, thunder was never this loud. Plus, there wasn’t any lightning. The house just kept shaking, shaking, shaking. And for another thing, a bad storm came with clouds so thick they turned the sky to ink. But he glimpsed sunrise peeking over the Hollywood Hills as the blinds danced and shuddered over the window. Something dusted his face when he opened his mouth to ask Hardhat about this. He tasted grittiness on his tongue. Plaster, raining down from the ceiling. Boy howdy, was this weird!

  Tornados could be pretty loud. Maybe they were inside one, and the whole house was whirling away like in that scary movie with the flying monkeys?

  “Um,” Wally had to shout over the rumbling, “strange weather we’re having.”

  “Weather? It’s a big, motherfucking”—just then it stopped—“earthquake.”

  And then it was quiet again, at least compared to the sound of the house shaking apart. New sounds floated through the near silence. Creaking, as the house settled, punctuated with sudden cracks like gunshots. And a little fainter, but still nearby, moans and groans.

  The floor shifted a little bit each time a new gunshot crack ripped through the house. More plaster sifted down, getting in Wally’s eyes. He rolled off the mattress and climbed to his feet. The blinds came clattering down in a tangled heap around his feet when he pulled the cord to raise them. The glass in the window was cracked, but it hadn’t shattered. Outside, plumes of smoke and dust threaded the hills and canyons, lofted skyward on the beeping of car alarms and the barking of terrified dogs.

  Hardhat joined him at the window. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and camel. What a clusterfuck.”

  The floor shifted again.

  Hardhat rattled the doorknob. “Door’s stuck. Piece of shit.”

  Wally tried the door. Yep. It was wedged in the door frame good. “Some folks might wanna stand back.” Wally gave the stubborn door a good yank. The doorknob snapped off in his hand, but otherwise the door didn’t move.

  Hardhat laughed. “Smooth move.”

  Wally stuck two fingers through the hole where the doorknob had been, braced his feet on the floor, and pulled. The door screeched open a few inches, gouging the floor, then cracked in half when it got stuck again. Wally gave up and smashed the two halves of the door into the hallway.

  Apparently they weren’t the only ones having trouble. People pounded on doors up and down the hallway. Wally worked one side of the hall, shoving the doors open. Hardhat worked the other side, prying them open with a glowing yellow I beam that he wielded like a crowbar.

  Halfway up the hall they met up with King Cobalt. He seemed to be enjoying himself as he ripped the door frames apart with brute strength. Even tossed out of bed early in the morning, he still wore his Lucha Libre mask. Wally wondered if he ever took it off.

  “I guess we work pretty good together, hey?”

  King Cobalt shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I like smashing stuff.” His tone suggested that this was the end of the conversation. Maybe he was black underneath that costume, like Stuntman.

  I’m darker than all of them, though.

  One by one, people assembled in the big TV lounge on the first floor. The bamboo floor had buckled and warped, and a couple of ihumb-thick cracks in the walls ran from floor to ceiling. The flat screen TV had jumped its mounts on the wall, and was lying facedown on the floor.

  Matryoshka took a head count while two of the camera guys went off to disconnect the gas and turn off the water. He came up short until Earth Witch stumbled through the front door. Wally noticed a pile of bricks strewn across the U-shaped drive. Apparently the chimney had collapsed. And from the trickle of blood on Earth Witch’s forehead, she’d been out there when it came down. Sweat streaked her face. People cleared a spot for her on a sofa. When she plopped down, Wally saw dirt on the soles of her feet, the palms of her hands, and crusted under her fingernails.

  Jade Blossom said, “Well?”

  “This quake was strong and very deep,” Earth Witch said, “and it caught me by surprise. I was sleeping.” She looked around the room. “I couldn’t stop it, but I did my best to weaken it. I might be able to damp down the aftershocks a little bit.” Earth Witch said this last with her eyes closed, like she was ready to take a nap.

  Just then another gunshot crack echoed through the house, making the walls shake. The cracks in the walls widened a little bit, as more plaster sifted down to the floorboards.

  Wally jumped.

  Bubbles went off in search of bandages and hydrogen peroxide. In addition to Earth Witch, a number of people had bumps, bruises, and cuts.

  The others took stock of the damage. If it hadn’t been for the cracks in the walls, it might have been difficult to distinguish between earthquake damage and the aftereffects of a major party. As the Maharajah’s servants swept up the sizeable pile of glass where the sliding doors to the patio had stood, Diver went outside to check on the pool.

  She returned a few seconds later. “Well, this sucks. The pool is completely empty.”

  Wally and a half-dozen others filed outside to see for themselves. The pool technically wasn’t empty, because the gas grill had rolled off the upper deck and crashed into the deep end. But it was empty of water. A wide crack had opened along the bottom of the pool, pulling the tiles apart like a long, snaggletoothed grin.

  “I think the grill is broken,” said Wally.

  Another crack echoed up and down the canyon. It sounded louder out here than it had inside.

  “Holy shit.” As one, they looked at Hardhat, then followed his gaze overhead to the long, cantilevered deck, then to the wall where it adjoined the mansion.

  And then, also as one, they stepped all the way back to the railing at the canyon edge.

  The immense deck wasn’t level any longer. Now it sagged, with the far end tilting down over the canyon. It dropped another inch while they watched. The first and second floors of the mansion were cracking apart. And they didn’t line up anymore, either.

  Wally added, “I think the house might be broken, too.”

  “No shit?”

  “Maybe we should get everybody out.”

  “On it,” said Blrr. She disappeared.

  Hardhat peered over the fence, down into the canyon. “Yep, we’re boned. Used to be a couple support columns at the end of the deck.” He pointed to a pair of jagged concrete buttresses perched on a narrow outcrop on the otherwise sheer canyon wall, about thirty feet below the end of the deck. “Quake ripped those sonsabitches right off.” Wally tried to see where they had landed, but the shadows and the tinder-dry brush in the canyon were too deep. Hardhat continued, now speaking with the professional authority of a fourth-generation construction worker. “Now the fuckin’ deck is coming down, and that cantilever’s prying the house apart like a cheap hooker’s gams.”

  Wally had no idea what his roommate said. But he got the gist of it: the house was coming down around their ears.

  “What kind of moron would build a house that way?” Pop Tart tossed her arms up, clearly exasperated. “This has got to be the stupidest thing in the world to do in an earthquake zone.”

  “Jesus, don’t be so goddamn naïve, sweetheart. These old houses get grandfathered in all the time. Grease a few palms and any shithole can—”

  CRACK! This time the deck sagged a full foot in one go. Glass shattered on the second and third floors. A quieter “pop” followed the crack as Pop Tart reappeared briefly on the far side of the canyon. She came back a moment later, after apparently deciding that the building wasn’t going to collapse just yet.

  A luminous yellow scaffold
blinked into existence, extending from the severed buttresses all the way up to the deck. Hardhat grimaced. “I can’t do this all day long, but—OH FUCK—”

  The scaffolding suddenly dropped, like it had fallen through a trapdoor. The deck sagged again. An assortment of yellow beams and crossbeams of various sizes flickered in the canyon for several seconds before stabilizing again.

  “What happened?”

  Hardhat gripped the railing, frowning in concentration. “Pool water caused a mudslide. Now the goddamn buttresses are gone, too. Gotta build this motherfucker all the way up from the bottom of the canyon. It’s the only solid ground.”

  Wally peered over the fence again. Sure enough, now the ethereal scaffold extended all the way from the road, sixty or seventy feet down.

  Blrr herded the others out of the house. Nobody spoke. They stood on the crowded patio, listened to the wail of sirens echoing across the Hollywood Hills.

  Through gritted teeth, Hardhat said, “I’d appreciate it if you cocksuckers did something besides stand around with your thumbs up your asses all day long.”

  “Maybe Ana could help.” Holy Roller shook the unstable structure every time he moved.

  “No good,” said Earth Witch, leaning on Bubbles for support. “I won’t move earth up from the roadbed down below—that would make it impossible for emergency vehicles to get through. If I start moving things inside the canyon, this whole house could end up at the bottom. The pool water has made the foundation unstable.”

  “Now you’re talking my language,” said Gardener, pulling a handful of seeds from a canvas pocket on her belt. She flung them over the fence and down into the canyon. A few fluttered away on the breeze, but in seconds the muddy hillside turned vibrant green, as shoots and vines snaked up the canyon like one of those fast-forward nature documentaries. They burrowed into the soil, too, making little sucking and squelching sounds. The smell of fresh vegetation wafted up on an updraft from the canyon.

  Wally looked up at the deck again. Pebble-size chunks of concrete rained into the pool, making a patter like hail on a tin roof. In some places he could see the steel cantilevers that now imperiled the house.