Page 37 of The Bad Weather Friend

“Indeed, you are not,” Spike agreed, “and nobody with a brain would ever mistake you for one. You are something unique, Harper Harper. Together, in the perilous hours ahead, we’ll discover what you are. And I, for one, believe that discovery will delight the three of us.”

“‘Nefarious schemes,’” Benny said.

“‘Nefarious,’” the giant said, “has been rendered a trite word by its overuse in the bombastic movies of our time. Nevertheless, I like it, and it’s more expressive of your enemies’ plans than are the wordscriminalandunlawful. Perhaps the wordabominablemight be appropriate as well, except that it brings to mind such silliness as the abominable snowman and Bigfoot.”

“‘Silliness’?” Benny said.

The glance with which Spike favored him virtually dripped with incredulity. “Benjamin, surely you don’t believe in such nonsense. Reassure me that you don’t.”

“Not wholeheartedly, no. I’m somewhat skeptical. It’s just that, all my life, things that seemed to be impossible have proved to be possible.”

“The abominable snowman and Bigfoot are modern myths,” Spike said emphatically. “They do not exist. They are pure silliness. Case closed.”

Harper was concerned about another word Spike had used. “Uh, ‘perilous.’ In what way are the hours ahead perilous?”

The giant was as adroit at modifying his statements as he was at maneuvering the Explorer through the blacktop jungle. Glancing at her in the rearview mirror, he said, “My error. I should have saidprecarious, which isn’t an acceptable synonym fordangerousorperilous, but only meansuncertain. The events that may befall us in the dark hours ahead are uncertain, but not necessarily full of peril.”

“Ah,” said Harper.

“Unless a bogadril shows up, which is most unlikely.”

“‘Bogadril’?” Benny asked.

“Here we are,” said Spike.

“What’s a bogadril?” Harper asked.

The giant pointed through the windshield. “Mr. Hanson Duroc’s house is ahead on the left.”

The giant parked in the driveway. “You’ll both come along. We’re destiny buddies now. But once we’re inside, leave the torture to me.”

Benny flinched, blenched, and shrank a little in his seat. “Torture?”

“Psychological torture. Intimidation. Just the usual craggle techniques,” the giant assured them. He got out of the Explorer with a sound like a tight cork being extracted from a bottle.

DUROC REDUX

Handy Duroc, former lifeguard and currently a dirt salesman extraordinaire, lived in a house on Newport Harbor with its own dock and a boat slip that accommodated a fifty-foot coastal cruiser. The property was worth many millions. Many. Year by year, as long as government programs promising equity and social justice did what they were actually designed to do, which was transfer wealth from the poor and the middle class to those at the top of the economic ladder, this residence would be worth ever more fantastical sums, until it had greater value than any city with a population of one hundred thousand in the nation’s heartland—or until the US dollar collapsed and you could then purchase the place with a year’s supply of canned food and whiskey.

Uncharacteristically, Benny was feeling a little cynical as he approached the house on foot with Harper and their destiny buddy, Spike the craggle. He also felt unsteady, shaken by a sense of unreality, as perhaps were those who operated under the influence of crack cocaine or crystal meth, though he had achieved this quasi-delirium without using illegal drugs.

In the weak onshore breeze, the queen palms and phoenix palms produced a soft sound, as if shushing the hoi polloi of a clamorous world and warning them not to disturb the serenity of this favored neighborhood. The night smelled of salt air and roses and steaks grilling on a barbecue.

Fronting the shrubbery to the right of the main entrance, a small sign advised that the property was protected by a security company providing an armed response; an image of a snarling dog implied that each agent would arrive with a firearm in one holster and a Doberman in the other. To the left, a sign virtuesignaled the homeowner’s commitment to an environment free of carbon dioxide, though presumably he did not meansofree of it that all plant life would perish and therefore production of oxygen would cease.

The first entrance was not into the house itself. An ornate oiled-bronze gate provided access to a courtyard. The gate was locked. A backlit button glowed on a call box.

“Handy won’t want to see me,” Benny said.

Spike said, “We’re not asking.”

The electronic lock could be disengaged by entering the correct code on a keypad or released from inside the residence in response to a call-box request. Spike placed one immense hand on the armature containing the electromagnetic assembly and regarded it with quiet consideration, in a pose reminiscent of a faith healer with his hand on the head of a seated paraplegic who hoped to walk again.

Benny didn’t yet know what to make of this craggle business. He might never know what to make of it, but certain expectations flowed from what he had seen of Spike thus far. He imagined that the giant, whether a supernatural or science-fictional entity, possessed the psychic ability to interrupt the current and thus demagnetize—and thereby disable—the lock.

Instead, the giant violently twisted the assembly once, broke the several welds that fixed it to the gate, and threw it away into the yard.

“Wow,” said Harper.

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