The Robin Hood Caper, Part 2 (105)

PSI-2

“Magic isn’t ‘just for fun!’ Call emergency services, one-one-one!” Bethany sang, skipping ahead of them.

“Too much sugar,” Maggie opined with a snicker.

“Creeps me out,” Soup said. “Where do little kids get all that energy? Why do they need it?”

“It’s like a phase,” John said. “They hit a certain age and walking is too boring. Jenny was basically glued to her jump rope, but now that’s getting too boring too.”

“Be careful she doesn’t drag a pushcart up on the roof of your house,” Maggie said.

“Like those guys that sell pretzels?” John said, blinking.

“Maggie’s daddy did that but he doesn’t like people to tease him about it all the time,” Erik whispered aside.

“Sold pretzels?” John said.

“Hamburgers!” Bethany declared, leaping to a halt in front of a chalkboard sign.

Soup tipped up his hat to get a better view and examined the brief menu. “Grass-fed hamburgers? Should I care what my food eats?”

“‘Mu,’” Maggie said, regarding the sign. She laughed. “Oh, that’s a great name for a restaurant. I guess they figure they’ll get more people to stop and look at the menu if they’re confusing.”

“Uh, ‘mu’ is the nothingness at the end of existence,” John said.

“Those poor cows,” Soup said.

“Mu is a chord,” Erik corrected them. “It’s jazz.”

“Those poor cows,” Soup repeated.

Maggie swatted him on the back of the head, knocking his cap forward. “We wouldn’t have rock-n-roll without jazz, so you can stow that!”

Erik pressed a self-conscious hand over his pocket with the expensive stockings in it and regarded the curly writing on the chalkboard. “You guys, this place looks kinda like Philomena’s Bottom Drawer…”

“No chandelier,” Bethany said.

“Fountain,” Erik said, pointing.

“It’s outside,” Soup said. “City probably pays for it. There’s, like, three things on that menu and it’s all burgers and soda. It’s practically a hot dog stand.”

As slum-dwellers and downtown-convenience-store-owners, respectively, the children and John Green-Tara had little experience of trendy food. Hyacinth would’ve recognized a setup that looked very much like the lunch menu at Cygnet (“And here is a selection of what our chef feels like making today!”) and walked rapidly past, while commenting that it was a real shame this nonsense had reached SoHo.

“Homebrewed soda,” Maggie read, baffled.

“See? They can’t even afford Min-Min,” Soup said. “They’ve got some guy in a basement making root beer without a permit.”

“Ew,” Bethany said. “I do not want grass on my hamaburger, John. Grass is vegetables.”

“I don’t think…” John said. Then he noted a little boxed meadow growing inside the window where the displays on the chip shops usually went. There was a porcelain cow sitting in it holding a little sign that said ‘Wheatgrass Shots!’ “Well, I dunno…”

“Oh, for gods’ sakes, they are trying to sell literal grass and bootleg root beer,” Maggie said finally. “It’s like the siege in there. How expensive could it possibly be?” She pushed open the door, engaging a happy little bell above it.

The bell decided John. Oh, like the store. That’s okay then…

He was greeted by an extremely eager young man bearing an armful of handwritten paper menus. It smelled like grease, but also dirt and plants and lemon-scented polish. There were more chalkboards with pithy quotes on the walls, undressed brick and black-and-white photos of cows and farmland. The chairs and tables were all brushed metal. Tastefully soft music was playing over a hidden sound system. “Hi! Welcome to Mu! We’re a new concept in food! Would you like to sit inside or outside?”

“Uh, uh, uh…” John said. He backed up and knocked into Soup.

“…Maggie!” Erik hissed. He yanked on her arm and indicated a little easel set up next to the grass: Fresh Made Wheatgrass Juice & Root Beer Chaser! 10sc! That was two whole loaves of bread! You could get coffee with cream and sugar for two scints!

“I may have made a tactical error,” Maggie said.

“Outside, please. I like your fountain with the fat cow,” Bethany said.

“Hey, thanks! Michel picked it out! We’ve got kind of a motif going, I don’t know if you can tell.” He plucked at a large tin button on his shirt that said, “I don’t like all those cows watching me while I eat their friends.” — some guy. Adjacent to it were slightly smaller ones asking, “What the hell is Mu?” and “Who eats grass?” “We’re embracing the controversy! Any publicity is good publicity. We were on the radio the other day, they said the wheatgrass juice was awful!” He smiled quite fetchingly. He had a shock of bleached blond hair in an asymmetrical cut and a single earring.

“Oh, that’s, uh, nice,” John said, smiling also.

“You guys are going to fold like a cheap lawn chair,” Soup said, looking around. He was well aware of the precipitous turnover in restaurant ownership, he ate out of trash cans behind them all the time.

“We almost broke even this month!” the young man with the menus said bravely.

“Good for you!” John said.

“Walk away, just walk away,” Maggie advised in a low voice. She couldn’t get past them all bunched up by the door like that.

Inexplicably (Well, perhaps not. He did have a tendency to do whatever came next.), John followed after the guy with the menus and allowed him to present them with a table next to the fountain with the fat cow.

“No, no, no!” Maggie said frantically, but she didn’t want to just walk off and abandon them. Uncle Mordecai would yell at her for letting Erik get stuck doing dishes all night.

“Relax,” Soup said. “If we sit here long enough, they’ll close.”

“We either have to go over the fence or back through the restaurant to get out,” Maggie said. She did not sit down.

“It’s very, ah, fashionable,” John attempted in the general direction of the fountain. He waved a hand. The cow had a head the size of a ping-pong ball and enormous chiseled concrete rolls depending from its neck and flanks.

“Thanks! Do you like the photos? Teagan did those, her aunt has a dairy farm!”

“Sure! It’s very interesting how none of them are quite in focus and you can’t tell what’s going on!”

“Yes! That was, uh, on purpose, apparently!” said the young man with the menus. “Michel likes them! Anyway, our special today has avocado and a fried quail egg on top!”

“Wow! Okay! Yeah! We’re just gonna need a couple minutes, I think. But thank you!”

“Not a problem! I’ll be right back with your complimentary pumpkin loaf!”

“John, we are not going to eat this ridiculous, expensive, weird food,” Maggie said, as the waiter vanished earnestly back indoors. “You have less than a sinq. No one is looking, come on!”

“No, no,” John said. He smoothed the menu out on the metal table top like a military map and weighed it down with the salt and pepper shakers. It was on thick, textured paper and already somewhat water-stained due to the proximity of the fountain. Someone had done little sketches of the food next to each item, there was plenty of room for it. “This is possible. We can do this. There is something on this menu we can order and eat so we do not make the cute waiter unhappy. We can split things!”

Maggie cleared her throat and indicated a notation in penciled script, Split Plates, 5sc Charge.

John frowned and laid a hand on his pocket. “Well, that is… fair.”

Soup leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “He’s bringing back free food, I’m not moving.”

Erik swatted him on the arm. “You… can’t eat the… free stuff and… go!”

“Maybe you and your silk stockings can’t,” Soup said.

“Is pumpkin loaf a vegetable?” Bethany said.

“It sounds like something my uncle would only do if he really, really had to,” Erik said, shaking his head.

“My daddy is scared of your uncle’s food,” Bethany said. “He says they used to hide spoiled stuff with magic during the war. He always pulls it apart and sniffs it first and Mommy says, ‘Stop doing that, Teddy, he’s going to see!’”

Erik frowned. “Well your… dad can… go…”

“Aha!” John declared, stabbing the menu with a finger. “We can each have a wheatgrass shot if we don’t get the root beer for after!”

The children exchanged glances.

“John… they make other cute people,” Maggie said.

“I did not say that out loud,” John replied firmly.

“I wanna hamburger,” Bethany said. “You guys can lift money off people if you have to. Like Robin Hood.”

“Keep your voice down, kiddo,” Soup said tightly. He’d been eyeing a lady’s bag that was hung over the back of her chair, but he couldn’t do anything if Bethany was going to advertise.

“My uncle says it’s a real bad idea to privatize the redistribution of wealth,” Erik said. “I think he means don’t steal stuff, but it’s way more complicated.”

“Lots of people like cute boys!” John said. “It’s not like a big deal! Oh, hello! Is that for us? Thank you!” He removed a basket of gray, brick-like substance from the hands of the stunned-looking waiter. “We would all like glasses of water!”

“Sparkling or still?”

John mulled that over with a pained expression. “Tap…?” he hazarded.

“…Like, we should have a progressive tax. Not a sales tax, those are regressive. That means poor people pay it more. And, um, capital gains.”

“Taxes are evil,” Bethany said. She poked the… the whatever-it-was in the basket with a finger. “The bad king rolled around in all the taxes and giggled.”

“You’re not supposed to do that with ‘em, you’re supposed to build roads and buy food for poor people,” Erik said. Yes, he was reasonably clear on that part. They’d put it in the Declaration of Intent for the Revolution.

“Who’s gonna make ‘em?” Bethany said.

“We are,” Erik said. He frowned. “But that didn’t go very well.”

“You can, um, sit down at the table and I will actually bring it all the way over there,” the waiter said, smiling.

“Oh, what a good idea!” John said.

Bethany took a cautious bite of pumpkin loaf, chewed twice and then ejected it onto the tablecloth with her tongue.

“Oh, gods, Bethany, that’s what napkins are for!” Maggie said. She swept the gray chunk onto the ground where hopefully the birds would get it.

“It’s cloth ones, you can’t throw ‘em away,” the pink girl said.

“You’re supposed to spit chewed food back on your fork and scrape it off on the side of your plate,” Erik said. “Then everyone pretends it’s not there and you didn’t just do that.” He put a hand to his head and adjusted his eye. Hyacinth knew that for some reason, he saw her doing it when she was little. Her feet didn’t even reach the floor. There was a great big candelabra and a damask tablecloth, white plates with a gold edge and about seventeen different kinds of silverware. “Geez, rich people are weird.”

“I’m not gonna sit around with gross food in my mouth until somebody brings me a plate,” Bethany said.

“Eh, I’ve had worse,” Soup said, chewing.

John pitched forward and thudded his head on the table. “For gods’ sakes, will the four of you please act normal? People can see us.” There were a few sitting at tables but more walking by. It didn’t seem like Mu was very popular.

“You’re not,” Maggie said. “Did you figure out what we’re going to eat or am I about to steal from the rich and so we can give to the terrible restaurant?”

“It seems like they’re trying very hard!” John said.

“Running headfirst into a brick wall is like that,” Soup said. He took another slice of pumpkin loaf. “Never gets any easier.”

“Look, give me the menu and give me all your money,” Maggie said. “I’ll figure out what we’re gonna eat and you figure out how to get the waiter to notice you.”

“I don’t necessarily… I mean, he is nice to look at,” John said. “Like the fountain. I don’t need the fountain to notice me, especially when I don’t know if it wants a boyfriend.”

“He’s wearing one of those faggy little earrings, you’re golden,” Soup said.

Erik slammed his palm on the tabletop. (The pumpkin loaf didn’t budge.) He glared at Soup and they all had to wait for the message like a ticker tape. “John… Lennon… used to… call… Brian… Epstein that… all… the… time… and it was… not… okay!”

“Golden?” Soup said.

“You… know!”

“Well, what else am I supposed to call it? That is a very specific look he seems to be going for.”

“Trendy,” John said. “It’s trendy. People in SoHo are trendy.” He sighed. “So you can’t tell.”

“That kid with the earring is a total trend,” Soup said. Maggie punched him in the arm. “Ow! Goddammit!”

“You’re supposed to love and tolerate people, you ass!” Maggie said.

“Gods, if I had to do that the whole time I’d never get out of bed in the mornings,” Soup said. Bethany, on the other side of him, kicked him. “Hey, what the hell?”

“Everyone’s doin’ it,” she said.

“It’s a trend,” Erik added gravely.

The waiter with the disputed-adjective earring returned holding five water glasses in an awkward clutch. “Did you get a chance to look over the menu? How’s the pumpkin loaf? It’s my mother’s recipe!”

“Oh, it’s very,” John said, grabbing a slice.

“It tastes like sand,” Bethany said.

“Ha-ha,” John said. He absently tore his loaf slice in half, then in quarters. It did not seem to occur to him to put any of the resulting pieces in his mouth. They smelled like paint. “Bethany, don’t tease the nice man.”

“It has wheat germ in it,” the waiter said defensively.

“Ew, germs?” Bethany said.

“If you keep doing that I suppose it might dissipate into the atmosphere,” Maggie opined of the remains of John’s slice.

“Heh, little kids, they’re funny,” John said. “With no taste.” He swept the crumbs into a pile and drew a spiral like a little Zen garden.

Soup sat forward and spoke honestly, “My man, the birds aren’t even eating it.”

Several sparrows were hopping around on an abandoned tabletop with dirty dishes and a full basket of loaf on it. One of them flew off with a straw wrapper, triumphant.

The waiter frowned at the birds. “Well, they should. It’s healthy!” A couple of the birds flew off. None of them took the advice. “You’re all going to have… have tiny little heart attacks, that’s what!”

“Excuse me, we’d like to order three Plain Janes and split two of them,” Maggie said.

“What? Oh.” The waiter regained his smile. “Would you like to add sweet potato frites or a kelp salad for fifteen scints?”

“Definitely not,” Maggie said. “Thank you,” she added, with a glance in John’s direction. “I’m sure it’s very nice, just not today.”

“Are you very sure you don’t want them with avocado and a quail egg?” the waiter said hopefully.

“Extremely sure, thanks.”

“Do you like the menu? I did the menu.” He collected the menu.

“Oh, it’s lovely!” John said.

“I’m sure it tastes better than the loaf!” Bethany said brightly.

“…Maggie, what is a ‘Plain Jane?’” John asked, once the waiter had vanished inside again.

“It’s a hamburger, John. The whole menu is one hamburger, and grass and bootleg soda. ‘Plain Jane’ is the cheapest and most palatable iteration.”

“Ah, right. Okay. I’ve just… uh, never eaten one of those.”

Erik knocked over his water glass and put up his hand. There’s a god that says no hamburgers? he thought. Auntie Enora says no killing things, but she still lets you eat! Unless she’s in you, but that’s different.

“There’s… a… god…?” he said.

John lifted a hand too. Like he might be able to pause Erik asking for a pause that way. “I’m sorry. Erik, do you just want me to explain it?”

Erik nodded. “Uh-huh.”

John sighed and sat back. “Okay. Well, it’s not one god, it’s lots of them. They’re all friendly with each other and people have written about things they’ve done and things they said. They all like cows. Or, maybe it’s like, the idea of cows. How they give milk and take care of everyone.”

“Goats do that too,” Bethany said.

“I have never once been taken care of by a cow or a goat,” Soup said.

“Jim was nice,” Erik and Maggie said on top of each other. Maggie snickered and Erik made a small smile and flushed a shade darker.

“Jim was a goat,” Maggie added. “She lived in Calliope’s room. Or possibly ‘he.’”

“You gotta look under ‘em, Mags,” Soup said.

Erik was already shaking his head.

“Yeah, it wasn’t that simple,” Maggie said.

“I don’t think they said anything about goats,” John said. “Animals in general, yeah, but it’s mainly the cows.”

“Chickens lay eggs,” Bethany said. “From their butt.”

“I think the things with the eggs is, it’s a little house for growing a bird,” John said, making a small space with his hands. “It’s not like milk you can share and not kill anything. So it’s not nice to smash something a baby needs to live. Even less nice than eating a grown-up bird.” He glanced at Maggie. “Er, no offense?”

“Magpies eat everything, don’t worry about it,” she said. “But most chicken eggs aren’t fertilized, John. You know that?”

“No,” he allowed. “But maybe they don’t either.”

“Stupid gods,” Maggie said. “What do they do all day? Why don’t they pick up a book?”

John wildly shook his head and bobbed both hands for ‘quiet down.’ Erik nudged her and spoke in a low voice, “Maggie… they… listen!”

“What, are there any around?” Maggie said. “I’ll give ‘em homework.” Something about coming up with a comprehensive religion that jibed with a rational understanding of the natural world, not just ‘no hamburgers because milk.’

Erik shook his head, but he wasn’t looking very hard. He was staring at the napkin three inches in front of his face and afraid. “Don’t… always… see.”

“Are there any blue ones?” John asked pensively. “They always draw ‘em blue, so you can tell… When they look like people.”

“Gods can be any color when they’re being people,” Bethany said.

“Are there any around that look like they’re upset about the hamburgers?” John said. “Or me thinking the waiter’s cute?”

“I don’t see ‘em, my brain’s normal,” Bethany said.

Erik shook his head some more. He lifted his gaze, Phew, none so far, and put his hand on John’s arm. “It’s… too many,” he said. “My… uncle says. You can’t make them all happy, they all want different things. Real people and things are more important. If you only bother about the gods when you need them, most of them will work with you. And you can’t do anything about the ones that won’t.”

John sighed. “Yeah, it’s kinda why I wonder about the hamburgers. I didn’t think I’d get trapped in a restaurant with literally only one thing on the menu, but here we are. I don’t want to send it back…”

“We can literally just jump over that fence and go eat something reasonable,” Maggie said, pointing.

“Maggiiie, cute waiterrr,” Erik reminded her, patting John.

“Oh, for gods’ sakes, have Soup make him a fake ID and Ann can get him into the Black Orchid for free!”

John straightened. “Oh, wait, hang on, I’m not one of those…”

“A singer?” Erik asked honestly.

“A potted plant,” Maggie said with a snicker.

“A fruit,” Soup said.

“Two people!” Bethany chimed in.

“I only let Jenny put me in saris because she doesn’t have a sister and I want her to be adjusted!” John cried. “I don’t like ladies’ things! Actually they are really impractical with no pockets — Oh, my gods! Why do you keep showing up at the worst times!”

“I’m the only waiter and you ordered hamburgers,” the waiter said, wounded.

“And they’re very nicely, uh, plated!” John said. Although I am not totally sure why that costs a sol… “The sprig of grass is a lovely thought! I don’t suppose you know if they made them out of cows that were really unfriendly to people and never gave anyone any milk?”

“Uh, they’re grass-fed, uh…” He put down the plates and read off an ink smear on the palm of his hand, “Grass-fed Iroquoise Red Anguish!” He blinked. “Oh, gods, that can’t be right.”

“Cows kill more people than sharks do, if that’s any help,” Maggie put in.

The waiter regarded his palm, “Well, fair enough, but I don’t think they’d name them that.”

Erik opened his gray eye and uncovered the metal one. “I don’t know about the cows,” he told John. “Sorry.” He glanced at the waiter. “But they really should… pay you. That’s not… fair.”

“What?” John cried, in the midst of an ontological crisis. “But why would they do that? They’re not even going to eat us!”

“It’s only until we’re up and running!” the waiter said. “We’ve all got to make sacrifices! I can eat anything I want as long as someone sends it back!”

“It’s because they’re territorial,” Maggie said.

“No!” said the waiter. “Michel gets to be the manager because he’s the only one who knows how to work the deep fryer! And Teagan gets her art on the walls first because it’s cow-related! Have they been out here talking to you?” he asked suspiciously.

Soup nudged Bethany, “All is not well in restaurant-land.”

“The burgers are okay,” Bethany said.

“Lunch and a show,” Soup said, chewing.

“My life is a lie!” John said. He sat and buried his face in both hands.

“I think it’s probably just some kind of garbled metaphor about you being nice to people, John,” Maggie said.

“That’s not any better, Maggie!”

“I should write ‘garbled metaphor’ on Teagan’s stupid photos,” the waiter muttered. “You can’t even tell they’re cow-related. It’s just because she’s Michel’s girlfriend.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Erik asked.

“What? Don’t be silly.”

Erik glanced over at John, but John had bigger things on his mind than an unattached cute waiter. He picked up one of the half-hamburgers and had a decisive bite. “Oh. That’s not terrible.”

“It’s good they’re plain,” Bethany said. “Vegetables come from nature, and nature is basically a giant toilet.”

“Bethany, you’re going to get scurvy that way,” Maggie said. “People rinse vegetables off.”

“Would you eat toilet paper if somebody rinsed it off?”

John slowly stopped chewing. “I feel bad. Should I feel bad about this?”

“Well, it’s not your fault, is it?” the waiter snapped. “You don’t work here! You only wanted some quality grass-fed Red Anguish!” He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Excuse me, can we get our cheque?” an older gentleman put in. He was sitting at a table on the other side of the fountain with empty plates and a full basket of pumpkin loaf in the middle.

The waiter glared daggers at it. “Look, will you just give me two…” He smiled and willed himself to be personable. “…two… two seconds, please, thank you. I hope you enjoyed your meal. Please come back and see us at this crumbling house of lies any time!” He pushed open the door and went back inside.

“End of Act One,” Soup noted. “Intermission.”

“Snacks,” Bethany said, laying into her burger. “Are you gonna eat the rest of that, John?”

John Green-Tara bowed his head and pushed the plate away. “I’ve got no… no… whatddaycallit… Moral fiber.”

“Oh, you don’t want that stuff,” Soup said. “Anything that stops you from putting food in your mouth where it belongs is trying to kill you, kick it to the curb.”

“It’s… okay to… feel stuff,” Erik managed, slightly delayed. “We’re just supposed to be careful what we do about it. Especially if it’s a big feeling because we might act dumb and hurt people.”

“Okay, yeah, I have been really bad at that too,” John said. He put both hands over his face and then moved them back to lace all his fingers into his hair. He spoke to the tabletop, which had pumpkin loaf crumbs all over it, “Erik, why do you keep coming back to do stuff with me? We shouldn’t be friends, this is not… this is not how things go. You keep telling all these people what I did. Why doesn’t one of them yell at me and grab you away and we don’t do this anymore?”

Erik frowned and considered that. He took a few breaths and tried to sort his words so he wouldn’t get hung up on any of them in particular, but he put up both hands because it felt like a big thing to say. “It’s not… fair if you say… ‘that person is the… worst thing they ever did.’ Or the… best thing. It’s like a… movie, and you only have one… frame and you… try to say what the whole thing is… about. You have to… play it. Every frame.” He put one hand down but not the other, still thinking. “Maybe that’s how come it’s hard for people to change. It’s so many… pieces. You have to do it… different every time.”

“Yeah, I get a look at you and I don’t think I need to drag Erik out of this picture,” Maggie put in. “I guess everyone has so far. It’s just if Uncle Mordecai sees you he’s probably not gonna be, you know, fair. Maybe if we could disguise you so he doesn’t know…”

“Maggie, please don’t turn me into another person,” John said weakly.

“Oh, gods, John. I can’t do faces! I don’t think even Mom could change up a person. Optical magic, maybe, or one of those stick-on moustaches…”

“Put him in a dress,” Bethany opined around the remains of John’s half-hamburger.

“What if we could find you a sari with pockets?” Erik said.

John sat forward urgently and put a hand on Erik’s arm, “Erik, you know you can’t ever, ever tell my mom I like the cute waiter, or boys like the cute waiter, or… or…” He cringed. “He is standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

Erik shook his head, wide-eyed.

John turned and regarded the young woman with the upswept blue hair and the form-fitting dress with the fashionably tattered edging who was standing right behind him in the cute waiter’s place. Standing behind her was a young man with a grease speckled apron who looked equally annoyed. “Oh, hello,” John said.

“You got some kinda problem with my photographs, pal?” she said.

“Why, it’s Teagan and Michel with Act Two!” Soup said. He put down his napkin and scooted to the edge of his seat.

“Oh, no, they’re very nice! I like how they’re all blurry like that! It’s…”

“Do you have any idea what the world looks like when you’re a cow?”

“Uh, no, I, um… Do you?”

She raised a fist and the boy in the apron pulled it down and held her back by the arm, “They don’t even have binocular vision, you ignorant preet!”

Maggie put both hands on the table and stood up. “Okay, and we’re done here. When the management comes out and starts calling us slurs, we do not have to pay for the meal. I’m sure the police will back us up on that if necessary.”

“Oh, don’t you dare, you little thief!”

The boy in the apron stepped in between them and put up both hands, “Teagan, it’s all right, we don’t need their money. I’ll take it out of Rob’s paycheque. It’s his fault…”

“What paycheque? I don’t know why you had to go and partner up with that mincing little queerboy in the first place! Armand was happy to give us the money!”

“I don’t want to share an apartment with your ex-boyfriend!” cried the boy in the apron. “I have feelings too, Teagan! I have feelings too!”

Soup spoke aside to Bethany, “Suddenly Armand, Teagan’s former lover with the mysterious past, appeared!”

Bethany splayed her fingers in front of her like she was playing the chords on the soap opera organ. Maggie just shook her head and stared.

“Well, I don’t want to get up to pee in the middle of the night and there’s a pervert with a sketchpad asleep in the bathtub! Why don’t you make him sleep downstairs in the refrigerator?”

“Because that’s a health code violation, you dumb quiff!”

“So’s the dead bats in the stove vent and you’re not bothered about them!”

“You didn’t want to clean them out and we can’t afford the man with the pressure washer!”

The older gentleman who was waiting for his cheque spoke softly to his companion and they also got up to leave. The cute waiter with the earring met them halfway to the door, bearing a little leather folio with a slip of paper peeking out of it. “Where are you going? Is there anything I can put right?”

“I’m sorry, I very much doubt it.” The man pushed past him and left.

Teagan had twisted her hand into John’s shirt collar and both Maggie and Michel were trying to dislodge her, “Don’t you understand I have quite enough going on without uneducated morons like you trampling all over my artistic vision?”

“I didn’t, but I think I have quite a good idea now,” John said. “Honestly.”

“Teagan?” said the waiter. “What the hell? Put the nice customer down!”

Michel stopped him with a hand planted in the center of his chest, “This is your fault, you know! I keep telling you, she is sensitive. Why do you have to come into the kitchen all snidey and tell her what some rando thinks of her weird photos?”

The waiter frowned. He leaned back from the touch and folded his arms across his chest. “I dunno, Michel. Why do you have to put her weird photos all over the restaurant so there’s no room for my sketches?”

“Oh, it’s the finale,” Soup said. “Erik, lay off. Don’t you wanna see how it ends?”

Erik let go of Soup’s arm and crawled under the table, so apparently not. Bethany stood up on a chair.

“I keep telling you, we will rotate the art as it sells!” Michel hissed. “You are doing the menus! Now if you’re not happy with…”

“What, with staying up until three o’clock in the morning every night drawing hamburgers? No, I don’t think I am very happy with that, actually, Michel. It’s funny how nobody ever asks to buy a menu. You know, I think I am also not very happy with sleeping in the bathtub while you and Teagan get the mattress and eating nothing but remaindered hamburgers and… and grass!” He turned to John and the kids, and also to the few passersby who had stopped on the street. He flung a gesture at Michel and Teagan like a sideshow presenter. “I mean, my gods! They actually expect people to eat grass! You can ‘embrace the controversy’ so hard it becomes pregnant with your children and it will not make wheatgrass juice taste anything other than awful!” He tore the large tin button from his shirt and flung it at Michel’s feet. “I am not a lawn mower, Michel! I am a human being!”

There was some applause. A voice said, “Bravo!”

John considered and then raised his voice to opine, “And they should pay you too!”

There were noises of disapproval from the people on the street.

“You really are terrible at not acting dumb,” Maggie said. She abandoned him to the harpy with the blue hair and looked for Erik so she could make an escape.

“We’re not paying ourselves either, you know!” Teagan spat. She released him and wheeled on her boyfriend, “You said it would be like our own art gallery! This is nothing like a gallery! This is a grease-covered hellhole with actual bats in it and I have to clean out the toilets ten times a day and my hands always smell like a kelp salad! And we are STILL losing money!” Here she kicked over a table which knocked into the fountain and spilled some of it.

“Nobody else was going to display your incoherent photographs, Teagan!”

“Well, nobody wanted your idiotic newspaper collages either, Michel!”

“I am taking my menus!” the waiter declared. “And this chair!” He dragged it towards him. “I own thirty-three percent of this travesty, don’t I? Give me that apron!”

“This is my apron from the studio, you asshole!”

“Well, then I’ll have that hideous fat cow!” the waiter said.

“You leave Teagan out of this!” Michel cried.

…And Teagan hit him in the back with the chair.

The waiter was too engaged with trying to remove the fat cow from the top of the fountain to notice. Maggie yanked on his arm and he wheeled on her with a fist raised.

She smiled at him and put up her hands, “Listen, I like you. This isn’t your fault. But it’s time to run away now so you don’t get bottled or hit in your cute face, you get me?”

“I’m so sorry I’m not the sexy hamburger wench of your dreams, Michel!” Teagan cried, shaking the chair.

“I’m still taking my goddamned menus,” the waiter said.

Maggie gave him an encouraging shove, “We’ll cut through the inside. Come on!”

———

The six of them were standing at the bus stop out in front of the theater. The waiter was a little apart, dripping wet and clutching two dozen hand-lettered menus with sketches of hamburgers on them. He also had bruises under both eyes and two pieces of tissue stuffed up his nose. Teagan had caught him with the chair when he tried to get upstairs and pack a suitcase from the apartment.

“Well!” John attempted with breathless optimism. Then he had no idea how to follow it up. He gestured, he swung his arms at his sides and he gave up and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Well…”

Soup spoke up gravely, “And today’s lesson, children, is that you never open a restaurant. Never.”

“Especially if you’re trying to accomplish something other than have a restaurant,” Maggie added in the waiter’s direction.

“Never,” Soup repeated. He cut the word with a hand.

The menus gently fluttered to the ground as the waiter pressed both hands over his face and began to sob.

John stepped up and laid a hand on his back, “No, no. I mean, obviously sometimes you open a restaurant. There’s lots!” He smiled. “Just… maybe not one like that.”

Erik tugged on the edge of his coat and shook his head.

“I don’t have anywhere to go!” the waiter said. “I’m standing at a bus stop with nowhere to go! I don’t have money for a ticket! I don’t have a job! I don’t have a bed! The bed was on top of the job! I mean, it wasn’t a bed…” He lifted his head and shook it at John. “Where am I going to sleep tonight?”

“Well, obviously you’ll come home with me,” John said. “Oh, my gods, I said that out loud. Wait…”

“Do you have an apartment?” the waiter said hopefully.

“Er, well, yeah, in a way,” John said. He staggered a step back and gazed heavenwards. “It… I mean, it is definitely an apartment. And a store. It’s just that my mom and brother and sister are also there and… And I think there’s going to be an argument, but if you don’t mind that I’m sure I can get you the couch for a night. And maybe a couple days helping move boxes around in the back.”

“I would be so grateful,” the waiter said, clasping hands.

Maggie cleared her throat and offered a small gold pocket watch, depending from its chain. “So, like, I basically cleared out Michel’s pockets while you were yelling at him. Now seems like a good time. I know it’s not a paycheque, but you can pawn it. And there’s money in the wallet.”

“Aw, Maggie, you didn’t hafta give him the wallet,” Soup said. Erik elbowed him. “This is an abusive relationship, you people are worse than Teagan,” Soup said.

“All she had was this lipstick tucked down the front of her dress,” Maggie said. She took off the cap and twisted the bottom to bring up the color. “I’m keeping it. It’s a trophy.”

“Sweet Violet is more my shade,” the waiter said. “It’s sheer. I’ll trade you one of Michel’s photos of her for it.” He sorted through the wallet and offered one with a blue-haired girl making an idiotic puckered expression for the camera.

“Deal,” Maggie said.

Violet, Erik mouthed. He couldn’t tell anyone. He was trying not to talk because the waiter wouldn’t know he wasn’t stupid for slowing down.

The waiter shook Maggie’s hand. “What are the names of my rescuers?”

“I’m Maggie. And that’s Erik,” she said for him. “And Soup and Bethany and the one with the gold repairwork who needs a boyfriend is John.”

“Oh, my gods, Maggie, no!”

The waiter shook John’s hand too, grinning. “Little John! I’ve been wondering when I’d run into you! I’m Robin, like the movie!” He indicated the marquee above the theater. “Robin LeCapot!”

Erik emitted a low groan and smacked both hands over his eyes. Of course he is. When he looked up again he caught sight of Violet sitting atop the marquee and kicking her legs back and forth in the air — with an enormous black beetle in a satin waistcoat and top hat sitting next to her and doing likewise.

Oh, look, it’s Doctor Beetle, Erik thought jadedly. I guess he has a sense of humor too.

Violet waved. Erik shook his head and turned away. You got a guy fired, you guys. He doesn’t even have clean underwear right now.

But he has a lovely consolation prize, said Violet’s voice in Erik’s head.

“You can hardly tell!” said Robin the Hood, collecting his menus. “I thought it was body glitter, honestly! It looks good!”

“Oh. Thanks,” John said, blushing.

A jolly male voice, which Erik could only assume was the beetle, spoke up: If you pick them up a Will Scarlet, I’ll owe you anotha dolla, Miz Violet!