The Robin Hood Caper, Part 1 (104)

PSI-1

John Green-Tara was sitting on a slatted bench outside a movie theater in SoHo and waiting. Erik and probably Maggie, if she wanted to come, were supposed to be along at ten o’clock. Which it already was. About forty-five minutes ago, according to the clock/lamp-thing across the street near the bus stop. He was quite used to waiting around for Erik to show up. They couldn’t visit each other’s houses, he had a dog and Erik had an uncle. It was easier to pick a halfway point and an activity — but it did mean he spent a lot of time wandering around SoHo with a little green boy in tow and wondering if people thought he was a kidnapper.

Well, at least it got him away from the store for a little. The part where it irritated his mother was annoying and guilt-inducing and exciting all at once. It was almost worse than when he used to run around with Ed.

John had every right to expect two children or less to accompany him on this sub-rosa excursion to the movies. When he saw four of them striding up the sidewalk like miniature street gang, he kicked over the cement vase next to the slatted bench, spilling sand and cigarettes everywhere. “Oh, gods!” He knelt and began trying to scoop sand back into the vase with both hands. The vase was decorative and shallow and horizontal, so the sand just spilled back out again.

The blond boy with the driving cap and the red bow tie cupped hands to his mouth and called over, “Don’t hang around like it’s your fault, idiot!”

“Uh,” John said, sand running through his fingers.

“I’ll get it, John!” Maggie said. It was easy to recognize Maggie, even at a distance. She was like a cookie-cutter image of herself — a generic little girl shape with cartoon pigtails that bounced around, always the same. Even the same colors, dark blue and brown. He guessed the clothes were because she was poor — all the women in his family took mixing up colors and patterns and glittery accessories as a matter of pride, never exactly the same outfit twice. Was it possible she only had the one dress? She increased her pace to a jog.

Another little girl shape ran after her, this one three-quarter scale and done up in pink and gray. She had shaggy white hair that fell about her shoulders in unkempt waves and soot black stockings.

John fell backwards (it wasn’t far) and planted both hands on the pavement.

Oh, gods, wait, no. Does Erik have a little sister? I thought his mom died!

Maggie ran around behind him and set up the vase. “Geez, it’s heavy. Did you do that on purpose?”

“I was playing with it and you scared me,” he said. “You guys look like an invasion.”

“Out of the slums and into respectable society,” Maggie said. She pointed to the shallow depression in the vase. The sand leapt back into it like the film reversing. Then she went after the cigarette butts. “Silicon-based, carbon-based…”

“You know, they said you were kinda silly,” said the blond kid. He extended a hand. “Even Erik knows you leg it when you break something.”

“I-I don’t think I broke it,” John said. He examined his hand after the shaking. It felt greasy. And sandy, but that was his own fault.

“That’s Soup,” Maggie said. “And that’s Bethany. Don’t worry, they’ve got money for themselves.”

“Your parents named you Soup?” John said.

“Oh, man, we’ve got a live one over here,” the blond kid said — which John recognized as yet another comment on his intelligence or lack thereof, so he shut up about the kid being named after canned goods.

The pink girl extended her hand. “So you’re the guy who kicked Erik, huh?”

Soup swatted her lightly on the shoulder. “You promised!”

Bethany pointed, “What? I’m not supposed to tell him? He knows already!”

“I, uh, I, uh,” John said.

“It’s okay. I do that too,” Bethany said. She glanced appraisingly at Erik. “He needs it sometimes.”

“No,” John said, frowning. “He does not. That’s not nice. Erik, how are you?” Erik had a hard time putting a sentence together when it was just two people. This was impossible. John spread out his arms as if to make a physical space for talking.

“Spent all my money,” Erik said glumly. He had both hands jammed deep in his pockets and he swung back and forth with his head hanging.

Soup cackled. “Go on! Show him on what!”

“Get… bent.”

Maggie positioned herself between them, folded her arms like a determined gatekeeper and frowned. “He spent it trying to be a decent human being, leave him alone. It’s not his fault you dragged him into a lingerie store trying to get away from a dog!”

Soup lifted a hand and enumerated on fingers, “Okay, one, I don’t look at signs when I’m trying to keep a couple of kids from getting eaten. And, two, how in the hell am I supposed to know what they sell in a place called ‘Philomena’s Bottom Drawer?’”

“It looked like a pink cupcake and there was a chandelier in there! It sure as hell wasn’t going to be cheap!”

“Well, he didn’t have to buy anything, did he? I told him not to!”

“My uncle says you should,” Erik muttered. He looked up at John. “If you hide someplace or you hafta use the bathroom. To be nice. Because of the depreciation.”

“Your uncle runs around all over town playing violin without a permit,” Soup said. “He trades on nice. You don’t. You get a pair of sheer black silk stockings and then you hafta beg the rest of us to break into our snack budget so you can get into the theater at all.”

“I’m sure I have enough,” John said. He put a hand on his pocket, telegraphing to all potential pickpockets (and Maggie and Soup, who were off-duty at the moment) where to go for the cash. “It’s only a matinee…”

“Maggie, be a bird,” Bethany said.

Maggie dissolved into acid. Her whole head went sideways. “Bethany, I am not a jukebox. I don’t take requests! Being a bird is expensive, I have to give up part of my body to change it, and then change it back. I don’t just do it because you think it’s neat and you’d like to play with me. All magic is not the same. I only make it look easy!”

Bethany indicated the ticket booth in front of the theater with a pointed finger. “If you be a bird, we can hide you and you don’t ever have to buy movie tickets ever again. That’s cheap.” She eyed Maggie up and down. “You look fat today. Tell your mom you were practicing and get extra credit.”

“It’s only fifteen scints!” John cried. “Nobody needs to lose any body parts for fifteen scints! I have a sinq!” Oh, gods. Two minutes ago he was sitting on a slatted bench and being bored. What the hell happened?

Maggie waved an impatient hand at him. “No, no, no. This is not fifteen scints. This is me trying to work out whether I wanna pull the pin on free movies for life. And anyway, then Erik wouldn’t have to feel bad about the stockings…”

“There’s a bus stop right across the street!” John said. “Why are all of you walking past dogs and lingerie stores in the first place?”

“Some idiots in a horse-drawn carriage,” Soup said. “I was yellin’ at ‘em to go around, but I guess they just thought I was screwing around in the back window. I should’ve sent Maggie up to the top deck to pitch magic at them, but they peeled off eventually. I don’t know why we even bother,” he plowed on, gesturing. “I mean, I’ll give you dogs. Okay. They’re cute. You can teach ‘em to fetch. Dogs are better than people. But horses are just dumb. They leave enormous poos everywhere and they freak out all the time. It’s not just colored people,” he added in Erik and Bethany’s direction. “They’ll flip out if they see a line on the street. We’ve got cars. There’s been cars practically forever.” At least, he never remembered there not being cars.

Is this a twelve-year-old grandfather? John thought, staring. The hat and tie made it especially easy to imagine. Teach me your wisdom, Baba Soup.

“It’s ‘cos of the war,” Erik said. “You need stuff for cars. Parts, and factories. We don’t get stuff like we used to. We used to buy whole cars from Roma and they came over on big ships all stacked on top of each other. There were lots more ships… and airships. There were three airports in San Rosille, now there’s just one.”

Soup looked pained. “Erik, would you please ask them about the horses?”

“Horses are lots easier to make,” Erik said, nodding. “They make themselves.”

“No! The ones at Hileigh Park that we could make money on!”

“But I… wanna go to the… movies,” Erik said. He noted the marquee. “It’s Robin Hood.” Also something called ‘More Dangerous Than Dynamite!’ but it said that was a PSA — those were boring. Mr. and Mrs. Marsellia always did something dumb, and then something that was supposed to be smart but still seemed dumb.

“You get us a sure thing at Hileigh Park and I’ll buy you a damn theater!” Soup said. “You’re old enough to put money on horses, aren’t you, Mr. John?”

“I, uh, I, no,” John said. “I’m not that old.”

Soup pondered a moment with a hand to his mouth, then he clicked his tongue and pointed a finger, “I’ll get you a fake ID. You can pass for a white guy, we’ll cut a photo out of a magazine. Would you rather have a driver’s license or be authorized to handle heavy machinery?”

“What?”

“I mean, you don’t look much like a tradesman… or a prostitute…”

Maggie snapped her fingers decisively. “Okay, let’s do it! We’ll call it a beta test!”

“I don’t want a fake ID!” John wailed.

“We’ll have me a bird at the movies, I mean,” Maggie said, frowning. “I don’t want to stand around all day while Soup forges things, we are right here at the theater, for gods’ sakes. Only let’s work out where you’re going to hide me, first. I can barely talk when I change and I don’t wanna be stuffed down somebody’s pants.”

Soup snickered. “‘But, honey, this one’s eating my popcorn,’” he said in a fussy voice.

Erik put up his hand like he was going to say something and all conversation ceased. But instead of trying to get words out, he just stood there with his eye closed — the one he could. The metal one seemed to be examining a lamppost. He opened his gray eye and frowned at Soup. “Oh, yuck.”

“It’s a joke, Erik!” Soup said. “This guy buys a chicken,” he informed John.

Erik put both hands up and waved them. “…No! …Bethany!”

“Aw, she probably knows it already,” Soup said.

“I know a dirty joke!” Bethany said.

“The horse fell in the mud?” John asked hopefully. Bethany looked younger than his sister.

“There’s a horse in it…”

“Let me see under your coat,” Maggie said. She lifted John’s arm for him. “You smell weird. Is that cologne?”

“I-I have samosas in my pocket,” John said.

“The eagle flies at midnight,” Maggie muttered. She adopted a Prokovian accent, “Hand over briefcase, Agent Green.”

“Huh?”

Erik shook a scolding finger. “Movie theaters make their money on concessions, John. The ticket money goes to the distributors.”

John made a sheepish smile. “Then they really should sell samosas.”

“…And he says ‘Daddy, I think the mailman wants to buy Mom,’” Bethany finished and Soup brayed laughter.

“Oh, man, that’s great. I gotta remember that!”

“I guess I don’t mind it for a few minutes,” Maggie said. “I can come out when it’s dark.” She reached into her pocket and handed John coins. “This is all my money. Buy me lots of food or I’ll bite you. And I wanna try a samosa.” She wandered off into the alley beside the theater.

“What?” John said.

“Privacy,” Erik said.

“You can’t just be turning into birds in public all willy-nilly,” Soup said.

Bethany elbowed Soup lightly. “If she’s a bird, she’ll eat less snacks.”

“You’ve never seen Maggie eat, have you, Pinky?”

“Don’t call me ‘Pinky,’ you asshole!” She planted the toe of her small black shoe firmly in Soup’s shin.

“Hey, we don’t do that,” John said gently. He pulled her back. It was automatic.

Bethany frowned at him. “What’s this ‘we’ shit? You’re not even colored. You ain’t even know me. I’ll cut you!”

Even Soup and Erik blinked at that last one.

Bethany grinned at them. “I know how to throw down!” she said proudly.

“Man, our neighborhood’s fuh… Bartholomew’s dogs,” Soup said. He didn’t feel right swearing after Bethany. It was like she sneezed all over it.

There was a flash and a roar and John would swear a breeze from the alley beside the theater, and the children around him were all way more nonchalant about this than he felt they should be.

I think… You know, I don’t think we should put them in institutions or anything… But I think they’re right about magicians being crazy. Magic-users, he corrected himself. I mean, they have to be, right?

A few moments later a large magpie came striding out of the alley, to Bethany’s visible delight. “Yay! Maggie!” She darted forward and Erik snatched at her billowing skirt and dragged her back.

“Hey!”

“Will… bite… you,” Erik said tightly.

“Or she’ll explode your head,” Soup said. “She can’t push you off if you pinch her, kiddo. She’s not a toy.”

“She lets me pet her,” Bethany said.

“Gently,” Erik said.

“That’s Maggie?” John cried.

“What’d you think we were all talking about?” Soup said. He leaned down and offered her a hand up. She hopped onto his palm. She was a heavy sucker, for a bird.

“I don’t know! Fifteen different things at once and something about a horse and a mailman!”

Maggie fluttered out of Soup’s hand and alighted on John’s shoulder. She had white patches under her wings that showed like flashing lights, and beady little eyes with brown-red rings around a wide black center — like taxidermy eyes, but alive and staring right at him.

“Chirp, chirp,” the magpie said. She pronounced it. It sounded like a crackly voice over a telephone line.

“Oh, my gods,” John said.

“You get both your shoes this time, Miss Magpie?” Soup asked.

The magpie slowly lifted one clawed foot, balancing, and signed ‘okay’ with it.

Erik grinned. “Wanna, uh, feed her a, ah, samosa?”

John was made to purchase four admissions with a magpie stuffed in his coat — and no samosas. Maggie wanted one and Erik wanted one and then everyone wanted one and now he was gonna have to eat popcorn like some kind of peasant.

Maggie also expressed her opinion of his taste in movie theater candy several times by needling her beak into his side. “The malted milk balls — Ah! — I mean the chocolate covered raisins! — Ah! — Erik, you pick, I have to go to the bathroom!” He found it on the third try. He also found a storage closet and the stairs up to the projection room.

He set Maggie on the brass ledge under the gilded mirror and washed the cigarette-sand and Soup-smudge off his hands in the sink. “What’s your problem?”

Maggie tilted her head back and forth, narrowed her glass-looking eyes and squeaked, “Ga-a-a-a-mie beh-hahs!” in her tinny little phone-voice.

“Well, I can’t ask for candy with you stabbing me the whole time so you’re just going to have to have whatever Erik wants. You’re making me look like a mental patient. Does your brain shrink when you’re like that?”

A man stuck his head out of one of the stalls and stared at them.

“Hello!” John said, smiling. “Don’t worry, I’m just a harmless ethnic person! It’s a Priyati Good Luck Magpie! It’s got the soul of my father in there! We’re animists!”

The man left without either washing his hands or zipping his fly.

“Well, you think of something then, damn it,” John snapped at the magpie.

John stuck his head out of the men’s room a few moments later with damp hands and his coat buttoned wrong. He looked both ways across the palatial lobby like there might be a truck coming. He waved at Erik, who was juggling three bottled sodas and a bag of gummy bears. “Okay, we need to get into a dark room and be invisible right now, I don’t know if that guy bought it about me being harmless. Come on. If you want more food, sneak out during the PSA!”

Soup and Erik and Bethany fell in line. All three of them were used to moving fast when everything went sideways. John beelined for the large double doors between the twin sweeping staircases and Erik yanked on his coatsleeve to correct him.

The green boy gravely shook his head.

“You will be enjoying this series of films from the abode of the gods, Mr. John,” Soup elaborated. He tipped off his hat and flung a gesture at the staircases, “Welcome to the wonderful world of discrimination!”

“I’ve been,” John said pensively.

“A new country, then,” Soup said. “Candy Dish Land!”

“You’ll fit right in!” Bethany giggled. She pushed him from behind. “You’re almost the same color as my mom!”

The stairs were a bit creaky, despite the sparkling red linoleum, which did not improve his confidence in the balcony. Nor did the sound of yelling and cackling, audible behind the closed doors.

You know, there is a reason they put them up there like that, John recalled his mother saying.

It’s probably a stupid one, he assured himself. He pushed open the door.

He was hit in the face with an empty popcorn box.

“Oh! Sorry!” A colored kid (maybe red or orange, it was hard to tell in the light) around his age stood up and brushed the stillborn kernels and salt off his coat. “You just missed the best film in the history of mankind!” he informed John and company.

A contingency of teenagers and small children near the front were chanting, “Play it again! Play it again! Play it again!” drowning out the informative portion of the newsreel.

“It’s ridiculous,” an older gentleman said. He squeezed past John and left.

“Robin, um, uh, Hood?” Erik managed at last.

“Man, I’ll even watch that again if I have to,” the red or orange kid said. “Sigur’day, I’m gonna bring all my friends!” He counted past four empty seats at the back and plunked down so the new arrivals didn’t have to squish past any more people. John gratefully accepted. Bethany complained, “I can’t see!”

“Sit on your knees,” Erik suggested.

“It’s uncomfy. Mommy lets me sit on her purse.”

“John doesn’t have one of those.”

“You can have my coat in a minute,” John said. “I just have to…” Maggie popped her head out of the neckhole before he could even get a button undone.

“Wow. What the heck is that?” said the red or orange kid.

“Uh… A Priyati Good Luck Magpie.”

“Cool.” The colored kid squinched up his face. “It’s not a snack, right?”

“No. No. It just likes movies.”

Maggie chattered companionably. A couple of kids sitting in front of them turned around to look. “Oh, neat. Can we pet your bird, Mister?”

“Uh… I guess so, but be careful. She bites.”

Without warning — apart from the fact that the newsreel had just ended, but nobody was paying any attention to that — the house lights came up. John urgently threw his coat over Maggie again. Erik and Bethany craned their heads and shifted, trying to see.

A yellow woman in an usher’s outfit jumped onto the little stub of stage below the screen and lifted her hands for quiet. “Due to popular demand,” she announced, “the public service announcement, ‘More Dangerous than Dynamite!’ will be shown again after the cartoon and the music reel!” Somebody on the ground floor hucked a popcorn box at her and there was a scattering of boos. She caught the box and smiled, “Don’t shoot the messenger, dearie. Comment cards are in the lobby.”

Cheering and applause from the candy dish. She saluted them and hopped down. The lights dimmed and the cartoon started up. Maggie peeked her head out and looked around curiously.

“People are this excited about a PSA?” John cried, loud enough for the whole theater to hear him over the sound of ‘The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.’ There was some laughter and more applause.

“Wait’ll you see it,” the colored kid said with a grin.

Due to ‘popular demand,’ they saw it three times. It quite overshadowed Robin Hood in the imagination.

John and Erik stumbled out of the theater in a state of shock. Soup was still laughing intermittently and shaking his head. Bethany had the hem of her skirt in one hand and was skipping in a circle.

“Oh, man, we’re gonna need a new Mr. and Mrs. Marsellia after that one!” Soup said. This was an old joke — the PSAs with Mr. and Mrs. Marsellia were a joint production with Elbany and the ILV, the actors and sets varied according to studio location, and the Narrator called them Mr. and Mrs. Wherever-it-was. The circumstances of ‘More Dangerous than Dynamite!’ lent the idea of replacements a new poignancy, however. “Erik, isn’t that basically your house?” Soup said.

Erik scowled and shook his head.

John’s coat answered “Yaaas!” without any care for the bystanders. He clutched both hands over it.

Maggie only made tentacles that one time and they were not alive and from another dimension! was what Erik wanted to say, but it was hopeless at the moment. Even after seeing it three times over and noticing all the wires and the brush marks where they painted the frames. He shoved Soup hard with one hand. He didn’t like to go after John’s coat, he didn’t know where Maggie was in there.

“The lady gave herself three heads trying to fix her hair!” Bethany giggled. “Wow!”

“And a cow in the oven trying to fix the roast!” Soup said. “An entire cow!” They hadn’t even shown it, just Mrs. Marsellia’s horrified reaction and the sound of tortured mooing. Uh-oh! That’s a lot harder to explain than a burned dinner, Mrs. Marsellia!

“That doesn’t actually…” John said, with one hand on the door. Maggie dropped out of his coat like some kind of devil baby as soon as she saw pavement under his feet instead of linoleum. She fluttered off towards the alley. She needed her voice box back!

“I mean,” John continued. “She’s not going to…”

“Rip a hole in reality and end the world trying to turn back into a human?” Soup asked.

“Well, yeah.”

Soup shrugged. “Eh, prolly not.”

“Prolly not!” Bethany echoed, grinning.

They could not see the flash from where they were, but they heard the tearing sound, which was queasily similar to the noise of tentacles coming for Mr. Marsellia after a fatal attempt at lawn mower repair. Maggie popped around the corner an instant later, out of breath but with only one head and sans tentacles. “A propaganda film!” she cried. “An honest-to-gods propaganda film! I thought they quit making ‘em after the war!”

“Propaganda, propaganda!” Bethany said, dancing. She had the damp edge of her sleeve in her mouth.

“What?” John said. He’d always pictured them playing those in Prokovia, or the ILV, with lots of uniformed soldiers and martial music and stuff about protecting our glorious mother/homeland. “No. It’s not like attacking the dirty Sergeis or anything like that. Don’t they just want people to be careful with magic?”

Maggie lifted a finger and scolded him. “They want people to be scared, John! That is the essence of propaganda right there! Scared people clump together like Rice Krinklies in milk, then all you hafta do is tell ‘em what to do. They want something to do, so it won’t be so scary anymore.”

“What’re they trying to get us to do?” John said.

“Be more suspicious,” Soup suggested.

“Not do magic,” Erik said, frowning.

“Call the police if someone does,” Bethany added. “One-one-one!” There had been a catchy little song at the end.

“They called people who know how to do magic ‘scientists,’ Erik said. “That’s made up. Nobody ever says ‘scientists’ around the house, they do stuff like invent vaccines and sanitize milk, not fix the lawnmower or un-burn a roast.” Milo could do one of those things and Uncle Mordecai could do the other one and it wasn’t scary and they didn’t have to put on white coats and go to school to learn how.

“Trained scientists, Erik!” Maggie said with a grin. “That puts a nice little fence around magic that says when it’s okay. Some smart guy with a lab and a lot of test tubes can make detangling hairspray, but you can’t, Mrs. Marsellia. And you better not even try!”

“Is it really safer to use gasoline on your clothes?” John said.

Bethany nodded. “Uncle Steven does that! He’s a dry cleaner. Mommy doesn’t like it, because we live over him, but he says it’s easier. He only does magic if he really can’t fix whatever it is because that eats the clothes sometimes and gasoline doesn’t. It says ‘petroleum solvent caution flammable’ on the cans,” she gave each word its own weight, like an incantation.

“I dunno about ‘safer,’” Soup said. “But it sounds like they’d rather you blow yourself up than let the tentacle people in.”

“Oh, yeah, that was scientific as all hell,” Maggie deadpanned. She grinned and swept out a hand, like reading words on a marquee, “They blinded me with science! You guys, we cannot tell my mom about that film, okay? She will do something to get them not to show it anymore. She might figure out some way to ban it from the country.”

“How…?” John said.

“Oh, probably it would disintegrate if you brought it over the border. Like when you puke on the Gravity Drop. I could do it myself if I could get hold of the film and specify, and if I really wanted.”

“I,” John said. He crossed both hands in front of his face and shook his head. “Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Wait.”

Now nobody was talking and they were all staring at him, some with arms folded. Which did not help.

“Is he like you or what?” Soup asked Erik.

“No. He gets jammed up processing things like Milo, except different stuff.”

“He smiles like a normal person,” Bethany noted.

“Why,” John managed finally. “I’m sorry. If you could make them stop showing a movie that tells lies to make people afraid of you, why would you not do that?”

“I think my mom would say customs laws,” Maggie said contemplatively. “She would want them to stop showing it because they agreed with her about it being wrong, and she’d yell at them until they did. I might want that too, if you just told me about it.”

Erik lifted a hand, “My uncle would say we just don’t come back and see it again. If you did it with magic like Maggie said, it would be trying to change people who aren’t ready to change and it wouldn’t work. And if you did like Maggie’s mom it would ruin the rest of our nice day. You hafta pick whether you wanna save the world or do fun things with friends.” He frowned and shook his head. “But that one guy was gonna come back and bring friends to it.”

Maggie pointed at him and nodded. “And that is why I don’t mind them still showing it. It is stupid. It is obvious. And it is hilarious. The whole candy dish thought so. They were having a great time. I’m not gonna take that away from everyone. Laughing at the government being stupid makes people clump up like Rice Krinklies too, and they act a lot smarter than scared people.”

“Are… Are you…” John said. “It sounds like you’re trying to start something.”

Maggie clasped her hands and batted her eyes like a cartoon character. “Why, John! I am allowing the government to disseminate valuable information, like any concerned citizen. What jury in the world would convict me for that?”

“Psychological warfare,” Erik marveled.

“Erik, if you’d called and asked me whether I wanted to go down to SoHo and start a revolution, I wouldn’t have come,” John said. He glanced furtively over both shoulders as he said it.

“I just wanted to see Robin Hood,” Erik muttered. “I like Robin Hood. I didn’t… make the dumb… PSA. I wish I could just… see a… regular movie sometime.”

“What about ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?’” Maggie asked.

Erik kicked the ground. “Oompa Loompas.”

“Mommy tried to get our money back!” Bethany agreed. She spun around and flung a gesture at John like a game show presenter. Ta-da! “Take us to lunch, Mr. John!”

“Huh?”

“You have money, and you feel guilty about Erik. I want hamaburgers.”

“Hamburgers, Pinky,” Soup said.

“I know what I said, jerkwad!”

“Stop! Stop it!” John positioned himself between Soup and Bethany before the kicking could start. “If I buy you each a hamburger will you promise to act like normal children and talk about stuffed animals or comic books or something?”

“Nope!” said Bethany.

“That is so not happening, John,” Maggie added. She strode past him in the direction of the nearest burger joint. Bethany, Soup and Erik followed after.

“Jenny’s right about how bad you are at negotiating,” Erik told him, aside.

The four kids got about half a block down the street while John was mulling that over, then he ran after them to make certain they didn’t turn the nice burger shop owner into a frog.