Always You Part 9
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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6.
I’d like to think my favorite movie in the world isn’t ‘Iron Man’.
Shocking, right?
I mean, who can resist that piece of genuine quality artwork? It’s the defining movie of our generation. Robert Downey Jr. is a damn craftsman, and crafting the character of Tony Stark from a multi-media franchise older than he is into a living, breathing entity was nothing short of godlike.
But it’s not my favorite movie in the world.
When I sit down to actually think about it, I think my favorite movie has to be ‘Die Hard’. The reason for such a choice as a virtually ancient Bruce Willis [with hair] movie is thus: it knew how to pace itself for suspense purposes.
That’s a really nice way of saying I spent a lot of time wondering why nobody was getting shot and why Alan Rickman was the biggest ham ever cast as a villain. Really, why didn’t they cast him as Doctor Doom in those abysmal ‘Fantastic Four’ movies? They weren’t fantastic at all. I left the theater feeling like Chris Evans had punched me in the face after he lit my money ablaze.
“Flame on,” my ass.
So anyway, I was talking about suspense; how crucial it is for the audience to be made to wait for the action, for Bruce Willis to say his infamous line after Alan Rickman asserts that he’s ‘some kind of cowboy’.
In the case of the hour-since-its-reformation-consisting-of-a-college-kid-a-gorgeous-nerd-and-some-mentally-off-kid, post-adolescence Animal House, riding up the elevator to meet Kenneth definitely counted as suspense. The elevator played light classical music while we ascended the high rise, the back of the elevator car giving an unhindered view of the city skyline. Under any kind of normal circumstance, that would be incredibly refreshing and potentially relaxing.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Carina said.
Now, hearing something like that from the supposed brain of the operation? Not exactly refreshing, nor potentially relaxing.
And where did that come from? This was all her idea anyway.
“You didn’t have to tell them who you were! He’s expecting you now.”
Because if I hadn’t displayed any kind of bravado in this misguided reunion season, we would definitely be where we are right now.
“Then next time, don’t go around saying ‘I’m Henry Collins, blah blah blah,’” her tone of voice was nothing close to mine, “Can you do that for a quick minute? Please?”
Carina, as much as I’d love to entertain the notion that I was completely and wholly in the wrong here, you have to realize just how much of this terrible, terrible idea was your call. I wouldn’t have bothered coming up at all if you didn’t have the directions, after all. Who tells somebody not to do something and then gives him or her the directions to go do said menacing thing?
It’s like telling your children not to waste their lives while you’re sitting in front of the television watching a ‘Firefly’ marathon. Nothing against ‘Firefly’, but a marathon isn’t the best way to spend your limited days as a carbon vessel for high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils.
So, my dear Carina, despite how you look positively fucking radiant staring at me with that thirst for murder, you’re wrong to pin it all on me.
Besides, this wasn’t my idea in the first place.
The redheaded girl who can see into the clock of the universe told me to do this.
No, I don’t particularly enjoy listening to myself. Why do you ask?
The elevator doors dinged open. A good three-fourths of me expected to find that opening party scene from ‘The Social Network’, with girls our age stripping on tables and everybody piss drunk. I mean, that’s what youth is like. There’s no such thing as homework, tests, nights where you actually don’t want to be wasted, or genuine feelings of intense attraction toward a pretty girl in your Italian class who just so happens to be sitting less than five feet away from you for weeks at a time.
We came out onto a plain, brown hallway. I stepped into the path with Carina and Paloma behind me, like a triangle of fear and uncertainty, and walked to the lone door at its end. Nothing special about the door, save for a table with a warming bowl of potpourri just beside it.
I debated knocking the door long before it opened on its own.
“Mister Collins,” a male voice a few years younger than my own, “We’ve been waiting for you.”
We walked into some poor man’s version of ‘The Godfather’. I apologize for the movie references, but there was no other way to describe the décor. A long, wood desk set near the window and running parallel to the wall, two big fellows to either of side of said desk with the third letting us in, and of course Kenneth would be sitting in the tall leather chair facing outward.
Part of my fear suddenly turned into mild amusement. Is this what happens when you stick around long enough in Miranda Cove’s crew system? You just become some kingpin or whatever?
When he didn’t turn around, I rolled my eyes and thought to speed things along. If we were going to get stabbed, there was no point in dancing around it. “You know, Kenneth? What’s it been, a year? I drove all the way over here; you could at least say hi.”
The chair turned around.
Plot thickener!
It wasn’t Kenneth sitting in it.
“Well hello, then,” said Zack Forest. “Henry, it’s been a long day for you, hasn’t it?”
One question through my mind: “What did you do to Kenneth?” You know, the guy who’s supposed to stab me?
Cue the big guys grabbing me by the arms and holding me in place. The third grabbed Carina and Paloma and held them by the door. This was going from bad to worse really, dangerously, absurdly quickly.
Zack continued on in typically menacing fashion. “As far as I’ve heard, you spend the day going to war with the Tides for that…unfortunate-looking young lady. Then you went my dear Evangeline, tried to keep said crew from kidnapping and harming your Operator, and came here for help in finding Familiars. Does that sound about right?”
Well, there goes not telling Carina about the threat on her life.
“You have to feel pretty stupid at the moment, Henry.”
“Well, Evangeline did make a lot of sense at the time.”
He laughed and stood up, if only to sit on his (Kenneth’s?) desk and look at me with faux-fatherly eyes. I wanted to punch him in said eyes.
“That’s Evangeline. She has no control over herself, and when I’m not around, she starts to get a will of her own. She’s my personal wild card in this whole thing.”
“’This whole thing’? Weren’t you, like trying to destroy reality?”
His face hardened. “Please, don’t hate me. I know I probably seem like a Saturday-morning, one-dimensional cartoony supervillain—”
“I wouldn’t say ‘super’.”
“But trust me,” he went on, “My heart is pure. It’s how Evangeline and I are connected, and its why her desperate attempt to confide in you did nothing more than seal my victory.”
Who the hell says things like ‘seal my victory’? This kid was worse than crazy. He forgot to take his meds. Paloma’s weird, but at least she stays out of your way. It’d be a little different if she tried to destroy reality.
A snap of the fingers from Zack Forest and another person entered from where I did. A good year older than when I’d last seen him but looking frozen in time, with a blond cowlick and a look on his face that read, well, ‘fuck you’: Kenneth Broderick.
“Kenneth, don’t tell me you’re working for this guy,” I groaned. “Look at him. He’s like Tobey Maguire’s stunted little brother.”
A dramatic beat as Kenneth and I made eye contact—
And then comes the expected right hook to my pretty face. I went down with the blow, the arms of the two goons keeping me from smashing against the desk.
“You brought this shit in here,” Kenneth said with the familiar low baritone. “How dare you.”
“After Evangeline told me what she told you—against her will, of course—I set about finding dear Kenneth. He’s got his own crew now, did you know?”
“No, I didn’t,” I talked through the taste of iron and sting of a potent pain in my mouth, “Glad to hear it. Have them beat this guy into snot, would you?”
“I can’t do that, Henry.”
“What are you, his lap dog?”
Left hook, meet my face.
“Jesus,” I spat out a wad of fluids, “You’ve got a bite on you, huh, doggy?”
“Don’t patronize the poor man, Henry,” Zack maintained his attempt at suave, “I threatened to peg last night’s murder on his crew. It’s amusing how killing one middle-class teenager gives you so much leverage.”
I kept my eyes on Kenneth. Looking at Zack made me literally sick. “You don’t have to take his orders,” I retorted, “I can help you. We can be a team again.”
“That’s exactly why I kept Kenneth here and not in a back alley with my Alchemists,” Zack stood up and looked between the two of us, then back at Paloma and Carina.
“It looks to me like you’re down one member. If you’re going to find the next Familiar for me, you’ll need a fourth member.”
“You’re full of shit, Forest. What makes you think for a minute that I’ll—“
In one swift motion, Zack removed a .9MM pistol from the desk drawer and trained it on Carina.
That shut me up real good.
“Here’s how it’s going to play out,” Zack dropped the relaxed pretense, “Miss Guerrin stays with us. She operates for you from Kenneth’s computer room here. One wrong move from the three of you,” he motioned to me, Kenneth, and Paloma, “And she meets an untimely end.”
Well, fuck me.
There were a few ways to deal with this situation. I could dare him to shoot, except that unlike any normal human being, he’d actually do it, and then probably aim for Paloma.
I could try to overpower the guards holding me while Kenneth takes the gun away. Kenneth owes me absolutely nothing, but he might be willing to save Carina. It’s a gamble, and not one I feel exceptionally good about.
That left one option: go along with it like a punk.
“I don’t even know where to start looking,” I admitted.
“That’s not the problem,” Zack corrected. “I know the Familiar’s location and identity.”
“Then get her yourself.”
“I can’t,” he snapped. “She is protected. This Familiar is the oldest; another crew worships her as a god. I can’t get close, and my men are young and lack connections. Henry Collins will have no trouble getting close to her.”
I didn’t have to look at Carina to know her reaction. That name was going to be the end of me. When I graduate college and come home, I should change my name to something like Norman. Norman Durwinkle. Norman F. Durwinkle the Fourth.
The guards abruptly let me go. My feet buckled slightly, and my jaw still stung. Surprisingly, Kenneth didn’t make a move to make the stars appear again. The door guard shoved Paloma toward us, pulling Carina closer to him.
“It’s getting quite late,” Zack said. “Go to your homes, reconvene here tomorrow at eight o’clock. You’ll being your mission tomorrow.”
“Leaving you twenty-four hours before the end of the world.”
His smile died. “Show Mister Collins and the girl the way out, please,” Zack announced to nobody.
Opting for the slightly more dignified variant, I took Paloma by the arm and led her out the way we came. I looked at Carina at the last possible moment.
She didn’t even look scared.
Just…conflicted. Worried.
Melancholic.
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Read the next installment here.
