Page 43 of The Bad Weather Friend

From the back seat, Harper said, “I am strangely moved—and I do meanstrangely.”

By the time the destiny buddies were heading south and inland, out of the ocean-side city of Newport Beach proper and toward the annexed community of Newport Coast, Jill and Handy had perhaps paused in the rubbing of their bodies together long enough to drink champagne, whereupon they would surely have noticed the mystifying origami squirrel that had once been a cast-iron skillet.

How curious it was, Benny decided, that from one day to the next, Jill Swift could fade from being the sunshine of his life to an increasingly dim figure no brighter than a low-wattage bulb in a bathroom night-light made of pressure-molded plastic in the shape of, say, a miniature antique lantern or an outhouse with a crescent moon cutout in its door. No less curious was that Harper Harper, in that same span of time, had evolved from a cute and perky waitress into an intriguing woman, still cute and perky, but also possessed of a sharp wit, good judgment, the courage of a first-rate private investigator in the making, with mysterious depths, who was terrific fun to talk to and look at. Benny didn’tknow if the rapid rise of Harper in his affections meant that, at the age of twenty-three, he was developing a more accurate and mature appreciation of character, personality, and beauty—or whether he was so shallow that he could discard one love for another as easily as throwing away a Kleenex and plucking a new one from a box. He wanted to think that, in the ongoing crisis, he was being shaped into a better man by the stress of events, but he knew that the human heart was deceitful above all things, a truism he’d first read on a slip of paper from a fortune cookie, at the age of twelve, and had at once known was the essence of wisdom. Well, if he was to have a future with Harper Harper, only time would tell, and more than anything else, it would depend on whether, at the end of this night, he was dead.

While Harper was prominent on the stage of Benny’s mind, other important issues jostled with her for his attention, including the phrase “destiny buddies,” which had troubled him since Spike first spoke it. Now, as they made their way to the home of the attorney whose name they had gotten from Handy Duroc, he said, “So, Spike, what happens if I get my career back?”

“Not if. Never if,” the giant admonished. “Whenyou get it back. Cragglethink allows no possibility of failure.”

“Not even if a bogadril shows up?”

“In that event, things can get messy. Terribly, terribly messy. But you will nevertheless get your career back or something better.”

“What is a bogadril?” Harper asked from the back seat, as she had asked earlier, on the way to Handy Duroc’s house.

“To discuss those creatures at length is to draw one of them to us. We do not want to draw one of them to us. End of discussion.”

“Okay,” Benny said, “but what happens when I get my career back or something better?”

“Don’t think you’ll be happy ever after, everything wine and roses for the rest of your life.”

“I was disabused of that fantasy a long time ago.”

“You’ll be happy for a while, very happy, and then you’ll be assaulted by nefarious forces.”

“Them again.”

“What’s new is this—these people aligned against you aren’t ordinary nefarious forces. They’re organized. They remain anonymous and yet produce a newsletter that can be read by only those with an implanted identity chip, have an awards banquet, and meet biannually in person under the most stringent secrecy. Antwerp in the spring, Aspen in the autumn. They have many targets, not just you. They possess the resources to torment thousands like you. From time to time, we’ll have to take countermeasures and set your life aright once more.”

Benny neither doubted Spike nor was disheartened to learn that the misfortunes besetting him all his life were no longer the acts of merely random dark forces, but were engineered and executed by a conspiracy of powerful individuals. Although he was very much an optimist, he had expected something like this sooner or later.

“So then, when this is done,” he said, “you’re not going away.”

“I would never leave you,” the giant said. “Don’t worry about that, my friend. Cragglethink places great value on duty.”

“How long were you with my great-uncle, Talmadge Clerkenwell?”

“Seventy years, from his nineteenth birthday.”

“But you left him.”

“His time had come to move on from this world. I could do no more for him.” A single tear slid out of the craggle’s right eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. He licked it away and smackedhis lips a few times and said, “Your uncle was a lovely person. So nice. Like you, niceness was his curse. He became a special target. They wanted to grind him down, ruin him, leave him so depressed that he would kill himself. But Talmadge had me, as you ... as you, another special target, now have me on your side.” His voice grew huskier and caught on a snag of emotion, and then he said, “Destiny buddies. You cannot survive without me, but you don’t have to try. You no longer have to walk alone through the darkness and storms of this world. I will never let you down.”

“That’s sweet,” Benny said.

“When you get to know me,” said Spike, “you’ll find that Iamsweet. Oh, sure, I’m big and kind of scary looking, and when I need to, I can intimidate the shit out of anyone, but the real me, in my heart, I’m a muffin.”

Behind them, Harper said, “I’m an emotional wreck back here.”

Benny was determined not to get sentimental until he understood what being destiny buddies entailed. “So what arrangements will I need to make? I mean, you know, as regards the box you came in and everything.”

“Well, I could stay in my time-out tube—”

“Your what?”

“Time-out tube. My box. I could stay there, in a corner of the garage, no trouble at all, and come out whenever things go to hell in your life and you need me. That would be fine. I have no problem with that.” He hesitated as he braked to a stop at a traffic light, at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Newport Coast Drive. “But if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, there is something I would like better, a different arrangement from the box.”

“Tell me.”

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