We are the Public Beach Preservation Society
Gods save Xinese food, Music Vox and Calliope
We are the Silver Streak Appreciation Society
Gods save jelly-glasses, arsonists and anxiety

Defending our family, without much to lose
We share all our victories, and our failures too
Just paying our dues!

We are the Soda Pop Preservation Society
Gods save Pin-Min drinks in all their different varieties
We are the Overlooked, Underrated Consortium
Gods save the marginalized, and all those who notice ‘em
We are the Public Domain Appropriation Regiment
Gods save parody from copyright infring-i-ment
We are the Strawb’ryfield Renovation Insurgency
Gods save bargain bins, coffee mugs, and tenacity
We are the Razed Building Reclamation Fellowship 
Gods save boarded windows, homeless people, and brokenness

Defending our family, without much to lose
We share all our victories, and our failures too
Just paying our dues!

We are the Public Beach Preservation Society
Gods save Xinese food, Music Vox and Calliope
We are the Silver Streak Appreciation Society
Gods save jelly-glasses, arsonists and anxiety
We are the Public Beach Preservation Society
Gods save Xinese food, Music Vox and Calliope
We are the Silver Streak Appreciation Society
Gods save jelly-glasses, arsonists and anxiety

Gods save the public beach!

Uncle Mordecai had suited up like he was going to war. Erik was trying to be patient with it, but he thought it was kinda silly. They were just going to the beach and it wasn’t even cold out. His uncle’s hair wasn’t going to stay like that no matter how much stuff he put in it, even if he didn’t do so much as take off his shoes. There was air at the beach, it tended to move things around. That was the point. People went to the beach so they could relax, usually.

That wasn’t true this time and Erik was sorry about that, but he couldn’t un-beach the beach. They should’ve gone to a play if Uncle Mordecai wanted to be formal.

…And then nobody would talk to anybody and they’d all go home with nothing fixed — but it would be much less stressful!

Uncle Mordecai couldn’t seem to decide whether he wanted his greatcoat on or if he wanted to carry it. He examined himself in the small bedroom mirror doing both, and in different positions. Smiling and frowning.

When he took off his suit jacket and tried it that way, Erik dropped the tote bag on the floor with a crunch and folded his arms. “Uncle! He’s not going to…” He frowned and shut his eye. I can do this, he thought.

He was a tentacle monster with a million arms and there had to be one that worked for finding words in his own head. He didn’t have to slow down. After that first storm when he found out about the tentacles, he didn’t slow down for, like, a whole day. The radio knew what he wanted to say right away when it was doing that weird thing too. He could talk with the tentacles, everyone understood that — he just couldn’t use them without sharing too much.

He knew the words were there. He had a gap between knowing and speaking, and he was going to teach that stupid cartoon octopus in his head to reach over it and grab what he needed. It had to be good for something other than upsetting people.

He pictured himself with a whip and a chair like a lion tamer. Stupid octopus. Go through the hoop.

“Dear one?” Mordecai said.

“…date us,” Erik said. “He’s not going to date us! We’re not going to meet his… … …parents! His mom… … …already hates us.”

“I’m upsetting you,” Mordecai said. “I’m sorry.” He bundled his suit jacket and coat together and stepped away from the mirror.

Erik picked up the paper shopping bag again. “No,” he said. “I’m a…” Long pause with his eye closed. “Octopus tamer!” He grinned.

“Oh.” Mordecai sighed. “Okay, but it’s making it harder for you to talk, dear one. I need you on this. Do you have to do that today?”

“You need me to… … …talk. I’m going to make it… … …work! If I let him… … …backslide he’ll never… … …learn!”

“Erik…”

He shook his head. He didn’t have the energy for this argument. Not today. He was just going to have to deal with John Green-Tara and a kid who took five minutes to finish a sentence. They would have the discussion about whether that octopus trick was even possible, and he would try to get Erik to believe his self-worth didn’t hinge on being able to talk normally, at some other time. And then again later, because Erik was stubborn.

“All right, dear one. Let’s get going.”

◈◈◈

Milo and Calliope were walking ahead of them. Calliope had Lucy, and Milo had an old blanket, a bag of diapers, baby food and toys, and a paper sack full of sandwiches and bottled sodas.

Mordecai glared at the wrinkled white shirt between the suspenders and willed it to become a dress, but it didn’t make any difference. None of those people were capable of understanding that this was not an opportunity for beach fun. This was a duel and he wanted some competent seconds.

And a doctor, but Hyacinth refused to come with him because of the doctor thing. When she wasn’t home people had to hook up to the hospital or down to the free clinic. That wasn’t fair to the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood that kept breaking their windows and trying to set them on fire. We wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

You’ve got half of Recovering Arsonists Ltd. with you, you’ll be fine, she told him.

He’d told Calliope about the arsonists-with-extinguishers thing and Calliope thought it was great. She drew up some papers and made a sign for Hyacinth’s birthday. Hyacinth found the sign two weeks early while snooping around Calliope’s room for metal, laundry, and/or drugs. She also thought it was great. Now the sign was hanging in the kitchen and they were all arsonists with limited liability. The children were provisional. It was extremely comforting/irritating.

The doctor thing was an excuse. The Arsonist-in-Chief just didn’t want to deal with him. Now he was stuck doing this with nobody he felt safe talking to.

Maybe Calliope. If he could get Calliope alone for a few minutes she’d come up with some brilliant hat metaphor, but she had the baby and she thought they were having fun.

Milo was loaded down with cargo and he’d still kept one hand free so she could hold it.

He wanted to tell them to stop being cute. This was serious.

The appointed place for the meeting, agreed upon over the phone by surrogates from both parties, was the end of the pier. He could already make out a dark-haired figure in a neat linen shirt leaning against a pylon. He wasn’t even going to get a couple minutes to shake Calliope’s weird brain and hope some advice fell out.

He wished he’d brought his violin — no, not the one John Green-Tara found him in a bookshop, a different, uncomplicated violin. Erik was carrying the tote bag. All he could do was clutch his greatcoat a little tighter, like a security blanket. At least the greatcoat didn’t have anything wrong with it. He just stole it off some dead person he’d never met. Easy!

“Uncle, do you want your hat?”

“No.” I want a gun.

He caught himself. Erik could hear things like that. “No, thank you, dear one. Not yet. It’s not very sunny. It’s all right.”

Erik spared one hand from the ragged handles of the bag to hold his.

Mordecai gave him a light squeeze and hoped Erik didn’t notice how cold he was. He took a breath. He was going to have to look up and look this person in the eyes and say something. He had rehearsed a hundred different scenarios, but he didn’t like any of them…

“Okay, stop,” Calliope said. She held up her hand like she was signalling a left turn. “Hi, John. You’re John, right? I only met you a couple seconds.”

“Uh, yeah,” said the kid in the neat linen shirt. It had embroidered detailing around the neck and no collar. His pants were rolled up a few inches above his bare, sandy feet and he was holding a pair of plain brown shoes with no laces.

Oh, gods, I’m turning into Milo, Mordecai thought. It would be so much easier if this were a clothes hanger instead of a person.

“Hi,” the clothes hanger said.

“Cool. We’ve got terms and conditions,” Calliope said.

She stuffed a hand in her pants pocket and retrieved a lined piece of paper that was smudged with multiple erasures. Milo dropped his bags and took Lucy from her so she could unfold it and her reading glasses.

“First thing, no violence. Verbal or physical. Milo and I are gonna keep an eye on him.” She cocked her thumb back at Mordecai and his mouth fell open as if she’d loosened a hinge. “Do you have someone to watch you or are you responsible for yourself?”

“I, uh… I, uh… I brought my little brother and sister?”

“If they intend to participate in the picnic, I’m going to need them to hear and understand these terms and conditions, so find ‘em and bring ‘em over, okay?”

John wandered a few paces away and had a look under the pier. “Hey, you guys? Are you down there?”

“Calliope, what the hell are you doing?” Mordecai said.

“Lawyer shit,” Calliope said. Milo gave her a light nudge. “Lawyer stuff,” she amended. “Brackets, otherwise known as ‘shit’ and hereinafter called ‘stuff’ in front of the children, close brackets.” She smiled. The gods alone knew if this was a joke. “Milo got notarized at the Temple of Leslie Bowman, so he’s got a stamp!”

Milo reached into the bags and produced a stamp, so either that part was not a joke, or this was an incredibly elaborate joke.

“Why didn’t you involve me in this?” hissed Mordecai.

“Because you would’ve told us not to,” Calliope said.

Milo nodded firmly.

Erik had dropped the tote bag and clamped both hands over his mouth, concealing a smile and trying as hard as he could not to laugh.

John returned with two small-to-medium children and introduced them as Tom and Jenny. Tom waved and Jenny said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Calliope replied. She held up the paper and repeated the part about the violence, in slightly more detail. “So, you guys accept partial responsibility for separating the party of the first part and the party of the second part, hereinafter known jointly as ‘those two,’ before anyone does what could fairly be construed as verbal or physical violence? Or what?”

“Yes,” Jenny answered gravely.

“I’m twelve!” Tom protested, wide-eyed.

Calliope considered him for a moment. “Babe, gimme the board book.”

Milo handed her a board book. It had a purple duck on the front which had been coloured with crayon. Lucy reached for it and complained, so Milo let her play with the stamp.

Calliope held the lined paper against the firm surface and added a clause with pencil. “Given that minors cannot be held legally responsible, we will consider the document more of an anarchist’s agreement, and the consequences for a violation will be that nobody gets any dessert today, and the provisional friendship will be annulled until a new agreement is produced and fulfilled. Babe, put the stamp away.”

Milo seemed disappointed. Lucy had already notarized her face several times, with the date and time visible on her left cheek.

“Use the one with the sea horsie instead.”

He smiled at her and signed her a thumbs up.

“Okay, what else we got here…?” She tucked the pencil behind her ear and pushed up her glasses. “We agree that the previous incident of violence against Mr. Weitz is forty-five-percent the fault of Mr. Green-Tara — with a further forty-five-percent being the fault of his friend Edward, last name redacted ’cos Milo and I don’t know it, and race prejudice in general being ten-percent at fault — but in light of his sincere effort to make restitution we consider his participation forgiven with prejudice — not race prejudice, the legal kind — with the exception that! If he ever perpetrates another act of violence against any member of Recovering Arsonists Ltd., full or provisional, his previous behaviour will be understood to aggravate the charges.

“Unprovoked violence,” she added, with the pencil. “It’s weird over there sometimes. We get that.”

“Oh, my gods,” John said. “What?”

“The friendship negotiation-slash-picnic will take place on the agreed upon neutral ground, otherwise known as ‘the public beach,’ with an option to go to the arcade or something if we want. Milo knows how to hack the machines, it would be extra fun.”

Milo gave her a nudge.

Calliope added a carat, “Super extra fun. Sorry, babe. We reserve the right to come back and do the magic rides together tomorrow, if the friendship carries, but not today because this is a business meeting and stressful enough.

“If it gets too intense and anyone needs a break for any reason, they can call a no-fault timeout and leave the main venue, with or without company, at the discretion of the person who called the timeout and with consent from the desired company.

“We will not be leaving ‘those two’ alone unless they both verbally request it of their own free will, and Mr. Eidel, otherwise known as ‘Em,’ does not have to take his shoes off and play in the water if he doesn’t want.

“If Lucy needs attention, either Mr. and Miss Rose or I will take her away and give it to her, but not both of us. I get to sketch anything that looks interesting, but I promise I won’t do any art that looks like you if you don’t want.

“To the best of our knowledge, we certify the sandwiches and sodas don’t have any eggs or parts of a cow in them. What’d you bring?”

John, Tom and Jenny stared blankly at her.

“That’s not a term or a condition, I’m curious. What’d you bring?”

“Chips and cupcakes,” Jenny said.

“Sweet,” Calliope said. “Anyone need anything explained?”

“All of it!” John cried.

“Everyone be nice or no more picnic,” Erik said.

Mordecai glanced back at him, wondering if that was his eight-year-old interpretation of the legalese, or just his honest desire. Either way, he considered all of Calliope’s clauses to be ancillary to this one.

“I want to stickulate in there that my brother is a good brother and he’s trying, he’s just a screwup,” Jenny said.

“Stipulate,” Calliope said, writing. “So noted. Everyone sign so Milo can use his sea horsie stamp.”

“I also want to stipulate I get to use the sea horsie stamp too,” Jenny said.

“All in favour of Miss Jenny Green-Tara getting to use the sea horsie stamp too, raise your right hand,” Calliope said. “Motion carries with a simple majority. Sign the document.”

Everyone signed, with more or less enthusiasm. Milo drew a heart, which Calliope said was allowable, as long as he recognized it. Mordecai caved to the peer pressure and signed last, rubbing his head with his off-hand the whole time, as if humiliation were a migraine. Milo stamped the paper with a self-inking pink sea horsie in a party hat and Jenny stamped it twelve more times.

“Okay, okay, I’m hungry,” Calliope said. “Let’s find somewhere to negotiate.”

◈◈◈

The beach was moderately busy, despite the limited time opportunity for the magic rides at Papillon Island. It was late Frig’s Day morning and people with regular jobs had to work. There was plenty of room on the sand, and in the cordoned-off safe area of the water. A few men were selling things out of boxes, cheap food and trinkets, but most of them expected to do better business in the late afternoon before sundown.

They tried to split the difference between not too far from the boardwalk with the public toilets for diaper changes, and not too near the salesmen. They parked their towels and blankets just before the wet sand, where it was cooler. John sat hesitantly at the edge of the blanket his family had brought and began to unpack chip bags and sand toys. Mordecai distanced himself at the farthest edge of the blanket his people had brought, and put on his hat.

“Do you get sunburned?” said the little brown girl who had signed his cast in huge capitals.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yeah. How do you tell?”

“It hurts,” said the red man.

“I guess that makes sense,” Jenny said.

“What kind of a name is Green-Tara?” Calliope said.

“It’s made up,” John admitted, looking away. “It’s a made-up name. It’s stupid. My dad asked what you guys call Khadiravani around here and somebody at the immigration office said Green Tara. I’ve never heard anyone call them that. Only people from Priyat know Harindravara at all, let alone parts of them. San Rosille has a ‘Harinda’ at the Small Gods Temple. It looks weird. Harindravara are not small.”

“I think it’s more like small amounts of people want to pray to those at the same time,” Calliope said. “So they smoosh ‘em together. Small, semicolon, Gods.”

“Maybe.” John shrugged. “We don’t usually pray to the whole thing. That wouldn’t make sense. Harindravara are like an apartment building.”

“A bunch of gods living together?” Calliope said.

“No. One god, a bunch of personalities. You pick one to talk to. They change back and forth.”

Milo dropped a soda bottle in the sand and looked up.

“Milo wants to hear more about this god right now,” Calliope said.

“I’m a tentacle monster!” Erik informed Tom and Jenny.

Mordecai choked on his sandwich. “Erik, no! We don’t just talk about it like that!”

“…Diane… did,” Erik managed, blinking.

“And we don’t defame our first coloured Prime Minister in public! Oh, my gods. Erik, you’re smarter than this!”

Erik’s expression twisted. He put up both hands for a pause. “You… said… it… … … I… didn’t. Lots of… Dianes.”

“Who?” Tom said.

Erik sang a verse from “The Village Green Preservation Society,” which Calliope had on a record. Tom and Jenny accepted this as normal Erik behaviour, causing Mordecai to blink and stare at them. They stared back at him, because he was the one being weird.

Erik made friends with these people months ago, he reminded himself. Nobody told me about it because they knew I wouldn’t be okay with it.

He wasn’t okay with it now, but he needed to try. He was still terrified that Erik’s tendency to pet monsters was going to get him killed, but that needed to go on the back burner. The events of the first magic storm this year were more pressing.

Erik needed a firm and constant reminder that sometimes we don’t kill people — even if we really, really want to — and sometimes that turns out okay. So Mordecai was going to will this situation to be okay, no matter how he really felt about it.

He probably knows exactly how I really feel about it, Mordecai thought. Stupid tentacles.

He had to be extra careful thinking about the magic storm because Erik didn’t remember it, but he’d sure be upset if he found out about it.

I’m wondering what the heck a “Village Green Preservation Society” is, Erik. In case you were wondering. That’s what I’m thinking about. That music sounds new. Yuck.

He didn’t think he’d ever have to neaten his own mind like that again, not after Diane died, but at least he knew how.

“You’re lucky they don’t go to real school with Seth,” Erik scolded him. “They just do workbooks with cartoon people in them and listen to the radio all day.”

“Hey!” Jenny said. She gave him a light swat. “I like workbooks!”

“Real school costs money,” Tom explained, with an air of patience that said they’d had this conversation before. “It’s not for free under a bridge. You don’t go to real school either.”

“Education wants to be free,” Erik said firmly. “Tell them about the tentacles, Uncle. I’m gonna run out of… words.” He sighed and knocked the heel of his palm against the side of his head. Get with the program, octopus, I know you’re in there.

“Erik,” said Mordecai, “right now I am remembering when you were four, and we were also at the beach, and you demanded that I explain to a couple of Iliodarian tourists, who I do not think even spoke Anglais, that you were a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Along with many interesting Tyrannosaurus Rex facts. As I recall, your teeth were as long as steak knives and your mouth large enough to swallow a five-year-old child whole. Do you know why I’m remembering this?”

“No,” Erik said. Then it hit him — Mordecai saw it, although neither one of them could be sure how he got it — and he frowned. “But I really am a… tentacle monster,” he muttered. “They know I… …” Come on, you lazy thing, I just said it! “…know stuff. They won’t think you’re… … …nuts.”

Mordecai sighed. He gave a bowdlerized lesson on tentacle monsters while John was over there telling Milo and Calliope about gods and incarnations or whatever.

“My mom is named after soap flakes,” Calliope said finally.

“Huh?” John said.

“I mean, you have a made-up name, and my mom does too. Marketing made her name up. It’s trademarked. She can’t put it on her law firm in case people think it’s soap.”

John stared at her for a moment. “Okay?” he said.

“She signs it like it is on the box. That doesn’t count, it’s not commercial.”

“Mister Green… John, what about a sandwich?” Mordecai said. He hit himself on the leg, but only because he didn’t know how to burn to death of embarrassment on cue. Mister Green-John? Mister Green-John? You moron, pick a name!

John slowly took down the sandwich he’d been eating. “Yeah, uh… Yeah. Yeah.” He was going to put the sandwich on the blanket, then he thought Mr. Eidel would be upset that he already had a sandwich, then he tried to hide it behind his back, then he was worried he’d forget about it back there and sit on it, then he tried to put it in his pants pocket, then he realized he’d have to stand up, so he put it in his shirt pocket.

The dark-haired woman whose mother was named after soap had her hand out. “I woulda held it,” she said, smiling.

He took the sandwich out of his pocket and gave it to her. The bread had shifted and it got dressing on their fingers. She snickered. “Okay. Cool.” She put the sandwich in her shirt pocket and signed him a thumbs up with a wink.

This is stupid, Mordecai thought. This is so stupid. There is no reason to follow through on this. We need to stop and wait until we can both pretend we’re not this stupid. There is no reason to do this.

He did not turn his head enough to focus, but he glanced in Erik’s direction anyway because he knew, he just needed reminding.

No. There is a very important reason to do this. This is not any more stupid than trying to explain dinosaur facts to tourists on the beach, so come on.

I promised her I’d take care of him.

He picked up a wrapped sandwich, crept across the blanket and held it out. John leaned forward and took it. He peeled back the wrapper and had a bite.

“You’re eating the paper. John…? You’re eating the paper.”

“It’s fine, thank you.”

“Give me that!” He unwrapped the sandwich and handed it back, crumpling the paper. “Don’t make it worse than it is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. If we stay in that groove this record is going to skip forever and my nerves can’t take it. We didn’t meet well, and we hurt each other, but nothing broke that couldn’t be fixed. It may not work very well, but we all get to be alive and eat sandwiches, and I’m glad. I’m glad I didn’t break your family so it couldn’t be fixed, and you didn’t break mine. That’s all. Hand me that bag of chips.”

The bag was waxed paper and he didn’t even read the flavour. He crunched slowly, looking at his sandy shoes on the blanket.

Erik plunked down next to him and gravely stole a chip. They sat leaning against each other, not hugging or holding, just near. One scratch-and-dent unit of family, missing pieces and a few whole people, no instructions, no box, but it still worked okay.

The seagulls seemed very loud.

“I’m glad too,” John said. “Are we… I don’t know.” He glanced up and then looked away. The ocean was bright like glass. “Are we having a new record now?”

“No, gods,” Mordecai replied, making him jump.

The red man shook his head. “I can’t meet that standard, don’t hold me to that. A new track. A new song,” he clarified. “On the record. That other one is messed up and we don’t need to hear it, okay?”

“I have a record like that,” Calliope said. “It’s ‘Never My Love’ and ‘Requiem for the Masses.’”

Milo nodded emphatically and pointed at her with both hands. Lucy rolled over on the blanket and grinned at her. “Ma!”

Calliope waved back. “You just have to be careful with it. Check and make sure which side you’re playing,” she said. “Flip it around if you start the crummy one on accident. It’s not worth pitching out the whole record. The other side is really good.” She smiled at Milo and bumped him gently with her hip.

“I’m having a hard time deciding if you’re being literal or metaphorical,” Mordecai said.

“I can do two things,” Calliope said. She picked up Lucy. “Does anyone mind my tits out? Do I need to hide?”

Erik shrugged. Mordecai and John looked pained. Tom looked confused and Jenny giggled. Milo unrolled a towel and wrapped it around Calliope’s shoulders, soft-sticking it in the front. “Thanks, babe,” she said.

They finished the chips and the sandwiches. Calliope declared that they had met the terms of the agreement and they were allowed dessert, so they ate the cupcakes — which were the prepackaged kind common to bodegas.

Everyone got stamped with at least one seahorse by at least one child. They looked dark red on John, Tom and Jenny, and brown on Erik, which they were okay with. The one Mordecai allowed on the back of his hand was invisible, which he was also okay with, but Erik was disappointed.

Jenny put in a request to change Lucy’s diaper. Calliope overrode the protests and horrified reactions with an abbreviated explanation of how Milo had made them all self-cleaning, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

“…when you take out the pins, it slides right off. Just shake ‘em over the toilet, or the trash. Cin doesn’t like doing laundry.”

Nobody knew what to say about that, and Milo couldn’t verbally express that he was proud of himself.

Jenny decided to amend her request: “Lucy, do a poo.”

The baby eventually provided. All parties who went into the public toilet for the demonstration were satisfied with how cool it was.

And as long as they had to take the baby to the bathroom anyway, they decided to do the arcade.

After renting a locker for the bags, Milo dragged Calliope aside and indicated with gestures that the two family groups had split up again and he was not thrilled. He also noted that Erik didn’t seem thrilled, but was unwilling to say so. He kept looking from the section with the minifilms and automatons (where he was with his uncle) across the floor to the games (where John was with the other kids).

“I know, babe, but they need a break,” Calliope said. “Let’s find something blinky or bouncy that Lucy can do and give ‘em fifteen or twenty.”

Lucy was able to do a red postal truck that wobbled and played endless tinkly music — after Milo stuck her bottom to the seat so she wouldn’t slide off. Calliope did a quick sketch of Lucy as a sexy postal worker, then she and Milo practised holding each other in various ways for a few minutes.

When Calliope decided Em and John must’ve decompressed at least a little, she kissed Milo on the cheek and told him to go hack two skeeball machines right next to each other.

They finished off the afternoon as a cohesive group of ticket thieves, one of whom kept expressing doubts about the ethics of the situation.

“Milo’s a volunteer security consultant,” Erik said finally, wreathed in tickets and beaming. “Banks hire people to break into them, Maggie and me heard it on the radio. It’s a service. They tell you what’s wrong with your bank and you fix it. He’ll just keep doing it until they fix it, and all he wants is tickets and toys and candy and stuff.”

Milo straightened proudly and saluted.

“Erik, that’s a bank robber,” Mordecai said, which didn’t make as much of a dent in Milo’s pleased expression as he would’ve hoped. “Someone who does that when you don’t hire him and pays himself is a bank robber, okay?”

Erik considered that for a moment. “What if you just stole those mints they leave out?”

“It’s bad karma,” John said pensively. “When you do something you shouldn’t, it’s like buying on credit. You have to pay it back, and you don’t get to pick how. Karma will get you.”

“Is it a god?” Calliope said. She’d been eying a fluffy pink unicorn at the prize booth.

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. More like gravity. This was fun, but we should give them back.”

“Dumb big brother, I want stickers,” Jenny said.

“We’ve got money for stickers, Jen.”

“If we give them back, they’re gonna know we stole them, Johnny,” Tom said.

“Well… Okay, yeah, I guess…”

Erik put up a hand. “Is giving stuff… … … away good… …karma?”

So they gave away two skeeball machines’ worth of tickets. Calliope found a couple extra strips in her pocket and left them in the mouth of a mechanical horsie on their way out the door.

They split up at the end of the pier. John and his siblings were going to walk home; the Recovering Arsonists needed a southbound bus.

“Wanna come back tomorrow and do the magic rides?” Jenny said.

Erik regarded his uncle, who appeared so heavy with too much thinking that he couldn’t pick up his head. “Next… week,” he said. “I’ll…” He poked a finger in the air and made the motion of dialing a phone.

She smiled at him and signed OK.

Mordecai gave it a few moments and then spoke very softly, “Erik, I don’t want you to get this on random or see something you don’t know what it means, so I’m just going to say it. You know I tried to kill your friend John, and you know it was because he was hurting you and that was all I saw.

“Back at his house, after he saved me and let me ruin his couch, they have this monkey in the bathroom with toothbrushes in its head. It has four spaces. I think about it a lot.

“I don’t think what I tried to do would have been wrong, but it would have been bad. I would’ve taken away his chance to be a better person and your friend. Our friend. I know his friend in the red jacket took that chance and pissed it away, but that doesn’t always happen. I feel scared and sad about how fragile things are, but really lucky this turned out the way it did. That’s what’s going on in me. You don’t have to look for yourself.”

Erik nodded and took hold of his hand. “Gonna be… … okay?”

Mordecai managed a smile. “I will be, dear one. I just need a little time.”

The bus ride home was quiet. Lucy fell asleep and drooled a big transparent spot on Milo’s shoulder.

◈◈◈

They went around the back because they were full of sand and there was water in the kitchen. The towels and blankets went over the railing, and they left their shoes on the stairs.

Hyacinth was sitting at the kitchen table with a large dish of pink ice cream. She removed the spoon from her mouth and said, “Didn’t you bring me dinner?”

Mordecai couldn’t even find the words. He just looked disgusted at her.

“It looks like somebody else did,” Calliope said. There was a pile of items on the counter which included a canned ham, presumably bartered payments.

“It’s not assembled,” Hyacinth replied. “I have better things to do than assemble food. I assemble people. You walked past food on the way home, why didn’t you buy any?”

Mordecai exploded, “You went out and bought ice cream you… you… lazy cow!”

“No, it walked in the back door,” she said. “It’s in the basement if you want some, but I know you don’t like to feed the kid sugar. Here, kid.” She handed him a toy convertible car, which had been on the counter among the other things. “Maggie took off on us, it’s all yours.”

Erik accepted the present with a mystified expression and just held it. He didn’t even check to see if the top worked.

“You kinda had a busy day, huh?” Calliope said.

Milo was sorting through the things on the counter and triumphantly held up a bag of really good coffee. It had to be good, it had that little one-way vent thing to keep it fresh. He began to put together a pot.

“Eh. About usual.”

“What the hell is that painting?” Mordecai snapped.

It was two weeping earth-toned doves on black velvet. Their beaks made a heart. Someone had hung it under the arsonists sign.

He refocused all his stress and frustration at it. “Are you trying to decorate this house? You’re like a monkey with a Maxim gun… Oh my gods, Calliope, it’s not yours, is it?” He turned with both hands clapped over his mouth. “Is it… a statement?”

“It’s so ugly I’m going to die!” Calliope shrieked joyously. She put a hand over her mouth too. Lucy woke up and said, “Weh.”

“Can I have it?” the young artist asked shyly. “I just want to mutilate it a little, then you can put it back.”

“I hate it. I only hung it up to annoy Mordecai. Take it with my blessing.”

Calliope squealed, “I love karma!” and departed for her room with the baby and her new art project.

Erik burst out laughing and leaned against the table, bent almost double.

“Dear one?” Mordecai said.

Erik shook his head and waved both hands, one of which was still holding the car. “Uh-uh,” he managed finally. “Random.” He put the car on the table and addressed Hyacinth, “Don’t… tell.”

Hyacinth smirked. “Wouldn’t dream of it, hon. I’ll go out and get dinner.” She took her purse out of the drawer and departed down the back stairs.

Erik pointed at the ham. “Can we have… that for… breakfast?”

“I suppose,” Mordecai said. He had a look through the things on the counter. Maybe somebody brought eggs. “Is this one tangerine? What kind of a mentalist buys one tangerine?”

Erik just smiled at him and shrugged.