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The invitation came on Monday. Handwritten, with gold embellishments on the envelope. Wilford didn’t even have to open it to know what it was. A weekend away from everything seemed like exactly the sort of thing he needed. He’d just have to make sure Andy was available.
“What’s that?” Nichola asked from the sofa, where she was trying to juggle a glass of wine, a stack of notes, and Michael.
“Poker night,” Wilford said, tossing the envelope onto the table with the rest of it.
“That’d be good for you,” Nichola said. “When was the last time you had got some time to yourself?”
Wilford shook his head and tossed the rest of the mail into the pile. “When I got arrested,” he realised.
“Oh. Yeah. That doesn’t count,” Nichola said. She twisted away from Michael, holding her glass high out of his reach before he could spill it. “What?” she asked him.
“Ba ba ba ba!”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
Michael kept making his noise and trying to get to her wine, so she got up to take it out to the kitchen. Michael chased after her, nearly tripping her when he latched onto her legs.
“Oh!” She got the wine onto the counter and well out of harm’s way, sloshing some onto the counter. “How old is he? Exactly?”
“Uh.” Wilford didn’t know. He knew he’d seen the kid’s birthday in all the paperwork Tiffany had given him, and it stuck out in his mind as being close. It was probably important information to know, so he headed into the office to grab the envelope. He found Michael’s birth certificate, and checked the date against his watch. “Today. Apparently.”
“Do you think he’s ever had a birthday party?” Nichola picked up Michael to give him the attention he was clearly demanding.
Wilford started going through all the papers and notes the kid had come with, in case there was anything else important he’d missed during his tantrum. “Does he need one?” It had been a long time since Wilford had been three, and he didn’t remember much about it. Whether he’d had a birthday party or not wasn’t something he could even hope to answer.
“Well, maybe not a party. You don’t have to invite everyone over, but it would be good for both of you, I think,” Nichola said. She tried to stop Michael from trying to steal her glasses, but nothing she did seemed to work.
“Stop,” Wilford warned, taking him from her. Michael tried to take Wilford’s glasses, but changed his mind with Wilford glaring at him.
“He’s probably never even had cake before,” Nichola pointed out. “Come on, we can take him to that place in Vespucci to get him something, and then swing by somewhere for dinner.”
“What place?” Wilford asked. He pointed out toward their mess in the living room. “Besides, we’re working.”
“It’ll keep,” Nichola said. “Lock the dogs out. It’ll be fine. There’s this toy store that Bill and Sharon took Tim to for his birthday. They said he had a blast.”
Wilford started to argue, but sighed instead. He carried Michael around to lock up doors to keep the dogs away from the mess while they were gone. He didn’t want to go shopping, or go out for dinner, or do anything at all other than get his blog project figured out.
“You’re paying,” he said.
“Nope. Dad has to get the biggest gift. It’s a law,” Nichola said. She finished her wine quickly and walked over to put her shoes on.
“Whose rule?”
“Dad law. Ask Bill.” Nichola smiled sweetly at him as she opened the front door.
Wilford was going to poison her drink for this.
The toy store was a nightmare. Aisles and Aisles of things that light up, made noise, and broke things when thrown. Wilford pulled out his phone to remind himself to call about getting the windows in the living room replace while Michael tried to drag an enormous stuffed horse off the shelf. Eventually, Michael gave up with the horse and started wandering off again. He found a massive dollhouse that was taller than he was, and immediately started pulling pieces out of it and trying to fit inside.
“Don’t break it,” he said, trying to keep Michael from trying to cram himself into one of the tiny rooms. Michael wasn’t going to be easily convinced, and eventually Wilford left him alone to look at what was on the other side of the aisle. Crayons and colouring books lined the shelves. Wilford grabbed a big stack of the books, a couple books of blank paper, and the biggest box of crayons they had. Along the end of the row, there was a conspicuous display of Magic Erasers that were probably there for a reason. Wilford threw a couple boxes of those into the cart as well.
Michael had given up trying to fit into the dollhouse, and had found some Barbie dolls to put into it instead. Wilford watched silently as he arranged the dolls in the house — one bent over with her head in the toilet and one on the floor next to the bed while he used a third as a tool for thrashing the furniture around. Any other kid, Wilford would have chalked it up to kids being creepy as fuck, but somehow he felt like there was more to it than this.
“You found a house!” Nichola said as she walked around the corner into an aisle. “You know what houses need? Pets.” She handed him a bright orange plastic dinosaur she’d found somewhere. Michael shoved it into the closet, so maybe part of it was just down to kids being creepy as fuck.
After twenty minutes of standing in the aisle, watching Nichola and Michael play with the dollhouse, Wilford knew what they were going to be dragging home. How, he wasn’t sure. The house didn’t appear to come apart, and there was no way in hell it was fitting into his car. He looked around helplessly, spotting a kid in a yellow vest tidying up the other end of the aisle.
“Do you guys deliver?” he asked.
The kid looked over, seeming momentarily confused about the situation until he spotted Michael and Nichola. “Uh. Yeah. It should have a bar code on it somewhere. Take a picture on your phone, and they’ll scan it at the register.”
Wilford nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He found the sticker on the back of the house and snapped a picture.
“All right, you two. Let’s get out of here,” he said, tossing his phone into the basket with the colouring books so he didn’t forget to scan it.
It took some coaxing, but they got Michael back to his feet. He grabbed all of the Barbies he’d found, as well as the dinosaur before he started following Wilford.
“Barbies too?” Wilford asked. “When’d you get so greedy?”
He didn’t miss the bemused look Nichola shot him as she picked Michael up to carry him. He just kept walking toward the register, ready to be done with the building full of screaming kids. Wilford had the clerk scan everything in his basket, and set up delivery for the stupidly large doll house. Somehow, he’d spent over $300 on one toy and a few crayons. That sure as hell wasn’t going to become normal.
Nichola was getting Michael the dolls and the dinosaur, which was predictably when the trouble started. As soon as she tried to take them from Michael, he only held on tighter and started crying.
“We have to pay for them,” She said.
The clerk was already on top of it. She grabbed something from underneath the register, made a strange noise with a machine Wilford couldn’t see, and suddenly produced a bright red balloon.
“Your dolls have to go take a bath and get cleaned up before they can go home with you,” she said. “Here, why don’t we trade?”
Michael still whined as he hesitantly reached out for the balloon. Once he took it, Wilford was able to get the dolls from him and put them on the counter. The clerk quickly scanned them all, and stopped when the register beeped strangely after she scanned the dinosaur
“Just him, or the set?” she asked.
“There’s a set?” Nichola asked.
“Two, it looks like. Thirty and fifty,” the clerk said.
“Oh, the fifty. For sure.”
Wilford had opinions about dragging home fifty plastic dinosaurs, but Nichola wouldn’t have listened to them so he kept it to himself, and felt a little bit better when she wound up spending $200 on dinosaurs and Barbies.
Nichola ran her card, and was handed a numbered flag with her receipt.
“If you could wait just over there, someone will be out with everything soon,” the clerk said, pointing to a lounge area near the door. They took Michael over to one of the sofas, distracting him further with one of the colouring books and a few crayons. By the time one of the yellow-vested employees walked over carrying a plastic crate, Michael had apparently completely forgotten all about the dolls being taken away. While Nichola compared what was in the crate with what was on her receipt, Wilford got the crayons all packed up and ready to go. He shoved the box of crayons into his inventory to keep them from melting in the car, and shoved the books back into the bag.
“Looks good. Thanks,” Nichola said once everything had been transferred from the crate to bags. That was Wilford’s cue to get the hell out of there. While he got situated in the car, Nichola got everything into the trunk. She opened up the frankly enormous case of dinosaurs, and dug out the orange one Michael had been playing with earlier.
“Look what we got!” she said, handing it off to him before the door was closed.
The first thing Wilford saw when he got behind the wheel was that balloon in his rear view mirror. Fantastic.
They didn’t get home until almost 9pm, with more shit than Wilford knew what to do with. He took their to-go boxes up first, leaving the rainbow cake out on the counter, and putting everything else into the fridge. Once he and Nichola got everything else up the stairs, Wilford took Michael back to the bedroom. He didn’t like having the kid sleep on his bed, but the couch was extremely occupied. He found the blankets he’d nailed up over the windows when he’d first moved in, and laid those over the bed as an added layer of protection for the stupidly expensive mattress that was in no way suitable for a kid who still wet the bed.
Once he was certain Michael was out for the night, Wilford headed back to the kitchen to grab a beer and the rest of the cake, handing the fork over to Nichola so they both had something to munch on while they worked on their project.
Getting out of the house felt better than it had any right to. The drive out to the canyon was a long one, and spent in glorious silence. About halfway there, Wilford turned on the radio and lit a cigarette. For the first time in a long time, he felt like himself. Two weeks into the month — two weeks after that disastrous Jackson Levy appearance — and Wilford was finally starting to feel like maybe he could forget it ever happened. Her people had been just as eager to keep it out of the papers as he was, and remarkably nobody was talking about it. Not even the 400 wild cards in the audience seemed to be taking any effort to get it out there. That was the biggest relief of all of it.
He was a little early arriving, but he wanted to talk to Celine again if she hadn’t already managed to storm off. He got through the front door, handing Benjamin his invitation just in time to see Celine rushing toward the garage.
“I really have to go,” she said quietly, looking over Wilford’s shoulder toward the stairs.
Wilford started to take the ring off she’d given him, but Celine stopped him, holding his hands still.
“No, keep it. I feel like you still need it,” she said.
“All right,” he said, not really fond of the ring. But if she thought he should still be wearing it, he wasn’t going to argue. “Call me when you’re done hiding. I do want another reading,” he said.
Celine nodded. “Okay. But I am out of here.”
Wilford stepped back, giving her room to make her escape before the rest of the madhouse arrived. He turned around as the front door opened again, and Abe sauntered inside while completely ignoring Benjamin. Someone else Wilford was eager to talk to. The night was already going wonderfully.
The night went a little less wonderfully as soon as dinner was over and chips were bought. Damien had clearly bought a book on counting cards, and was painfully trying to use it to get a leg up on the rest of the table. A little less eager to get into an all-out brawl, Wilford grabbed all of his chips and stuffed them into his inventory while he fled to a quieter part of the house. He found himself in the theatre, and decided that seemed like a good place to be for a while. There was an iPad somewhere in there that controlled the projector, and finding it had suddenly become his top priority. Once he had it, he found a good spot in the middle of the room to see what Mark had in his library. Celine had mentioned the Joey Drew movies before, but Wilford was a bit overwhelmed from kids’ programming as it was, and wanted something with a little more meat to it. What he found were old monster movies. He landed on one about a werewolf and let it play while he lit up a joint.
Not too long into the movie, right as the kids were being attacked by the werewolf out on the moors, the door opened and someone slipped inside. It wasn’t until he got close that Wilford recognised Craig. As soon as he saw the movie, Craig quickened his pace to walk over and sit next to Wilford.
“Do you think Landis did any research for this one?” he asked.
Wilford passed him the joint. “I think this is the movie that made me think England was thirty years behind us.”
Craig laughed. “It is a little Masterpiece Theatre, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t enough to convince Wilford to change it though.
“So what type was Bigby?” Craig asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
“Two,” Wilford said. He wasn’t the man’s doctor, so what did he care about confidentiality? “About half the size of a truck, too. I don’t know where they get the energy.”
“I had a roommate in college who was a Type One,” Craig said. “He was a pretty cool guy. He warned me when I moved in, but I thought that meant he’d go to the clinic or something.”
Wilford laughed. “I guess if you’ve got to have it, Type One’s the one you want. I met a Type Three once that could change at will. That was a trip.”
“Jesus, I thought that was a myth,” Craig said.
He passed the joint back, trying not to cough.
“So did I,” Wilford said. He re-lit it to get it going again. “But I’m not the one who’s supposed to be an expert.”
Craig laughed. “I don’t specialise any more than you do.”
“Isn’t that what your website said? Paranormal Expert?” Wilford asked. He took another hit and passed it back.
“No, it says Expert Investigator. I’m an expert at investigating.”
“And I’m an expert at detecting bullshit,” Wilford said.
Craig laughed again. Conversation turned as they passed the joint back and forth. Eventually the movie ended, and they found another to watch. This time, Craig took the iPad and found a Godzilla movie. Kaiju were just about the one monster that genuinely made Wilford nervous, and he was glad as hell that they tended to stay far away from his continent. The movie was just as bad as the last one though, and didn’t seem to be written by anybody who knew anything about what they were writing about.
Wilford wasn’t sure when it had happened, but about halfway through the movie he noticed Craig had got awfully close to him. Wilford sat up a bit, but didn’t really want to move away. He needed to sort his shit out, and maybe that started here. Maybe he was reading the situation wrong. He’d been so keyed up all week, everything seemed like a threat. They were finishing off the second joint by that point, and Wilford was starting to feel heavy all over. Craig was probably ten minutes from falling asleep.
Then Craig shifted, leaning heavily against Wilford’s side. All the pot in the world wasn’t going to get him relaxed enough to ignore it. But there was a little part of him, buried deep, that was kind of into it. He didn’t miss it, necessarily, but he didn’t completely hate the idea. Mostly hated, sure. He clamped down on the urge to get up and run away, and moved his arm instead so Craig wasn’t crushing it between them. That was how he figured out that Craig wasn’t just dozing off. As soon as Wilford raised his arm to the back of the seat, Craig snuggled up even closer. Wilford tried to ignore the cloying closeness by distracting himself with another hit.
“What is that cologne?” Craig asked suddenly.
“Huh?” Wilford didn’t wear cologne. “Probably wax crayon,” he realised. For some reason, Michael’s new favourite game was stuffing them down the front of his shirt.
“That’s a new one.”
Craig fell asleep shortly after, but Wilford couldn’t make himself doze off if he tried. He’d thought he might catch a nap when it was just him, enjoying shitty movies by himself, but that security had dissolved, never to be seen again. Even after finishing the rest of the joint by himself, he was too keyed up to get any sleep. He switched over to another movie once Godzilla was over, barely able to focus on whatever train wreck he’d landed on this time. He tried to force himself to get a little sleep, but it worked about as well as forcing a Buick into his inventory. He managed to get through one more movie before he couldn’t stand it. His watch said it was starting to get to a reasonable hour in the morning, so Wilford shut down the projector and tried to escape from the mess he’d got himself into. He was hoping after the amount they’d smoked, escaping unnoticed would be easy, but Craig woke right away and looked at him.
“Shit, what time is it?” he asked.
“About seven,” Wilford said. “I, uh. I gotta get home to my kid.”
Craig nodded, seeming a little lost. Wilford briefly wondered if Craig even knew about the kid, but he didn’t wonder for long. Now was the time to make his escape, and he jumped on it.
By the time he got to his car, he nearly collapsed. He managed to get inside and close the door, but didn’t go anywhere for a long time. Unable to do anything else, Wilford leaned his head against the steering wheel, and just breathed. He felt like he hadn’t taken a single breath all night. AC. The AC needed to be on. Wilford turned on the engine and reached over to crank up the AC as high as it would go. The frigid blast seemed to clear his head a little bit, and help calm him down. After far too long, he was able to turn it down a little bit and put the car in reverse.
He really, desperately needed to get this shit under control.
“What’s that?” Nichola asked from the sofa, where she was trying to juggle a glass of wine, a stack of notes, and Michael.
“Poker night,” Wilford said, tossing the envelope onto the table with the rest of it.
“That’d be good for you,” Nichola said. “When was the last time you had got some time to yourself?”
Wilford shook his head and tossed the rest of the mail into the pile. “When I got arrested,” he realised.
“Oh. Yeah. That doesn’t count,” Nichola said. She twisted away from Michael, holding her glass high out of his reach before he could spill it. “What?” she asked him.
“Ba ba ba ba!”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
Michael kept making his noise and trying to get to her wine, so she got up to take it out to the kitchen. Michael chased after her, nearly tripping her when he latched onto her legs.
“Oh!” She got the wine onto the counter and well out of harm’s way, sloshing some onto the counter. “How old is he? Exactly?”
“Uh.” Wilford didn’t know. He knew he’d seen the kid’s birthday in all the paperwork Tiffany had given him, and it stuck out in his mind as being close. It was probably important information to know, so he headed into the office to grab the envelope. He found Michael’s birth certificate, and checked the date against his watch. “Today. Apparently.”
“Do you think he’s ever had a birthday party?” Nichola picked up Michael to give him the attention he was clearly demanding.
Wilford started going through all the papers and notes the kid had come with, in case there was anything else important he’d missed during his tantrum. “Does he need one?” It had been a long time since Wilford had been three, and he didn’t remember much about it. Whether he’d had a birthday party or not wasn’t something he could even hope to answer.
“Well, maybe not a party. You don’t have to invite everyone over, but it would be good for both of you, I think,” Nichola said. She tried to stop Michael from trying to steal her glasses, but nothing she did seemed to work.
“Stop,” Wilford warned, taking him from her. Michael tried to take Wilford’s glasses, but changed his mind with Wilford glaring at him.
“He’s probably never even had cake before,” Nichola pointed out. “Come on, we can take him to that place in Vespucci to get him something, and then swing by somewhere for dinner.”
“What place?” Wilford asked. He pointed out toward their mess in the living room. “Besides, we’re working.”
“It’ll keep,” Nichola said. “Lock the dogs out. It’ll be fine. There’s this toy store that Bill and Sharon took Tim to for his birthday. They said he had a blast.”
Wilford started to argue, but sighed instead. He carried Michael around to lock up doors to keep the dogs away from the mess while they were gone. He didn’t want to go shopping, or go out for dinner, or do anything at all other than get his blog project figured out.
“You’re paying,” he said.
“Nope. Dad has to get the biggest gift. It’s a law,” Nichola said. She finished her wine quickly and walked over to put her shoes on.
“Whose rule?”
“Dad law. Ask Bill.” Nichola smiled sweetly at him as she opened the front door.
Wilford was going to poison her drink for this.
The toy store was a nightmare. Aisles and Aisles of things that light up, made noise, and broke things when thrown. Wilford pulled out his phone to remind himself to call about getting the windows in the living room replace while Michael tried to drag an enormous stuffed horse off the shelf. Eventually, Michael gave up with the horse and started wandering off again. He found a massive dollhouse that was taller than he was, and immediately started pulling pieces out of it and trying to fit inside.
“Don’t break it,” he said, trying to keep Michael from trying to cram himself into one of the tiny rooms. Michael wasn’t going to be easily convinced, and eventually Wilford left him alone to look at what was on the other side of the aisle. Crayons and colouring books lined the shelves. Wilford grabbed a big stack of the books, a couple books of blank paper, and the biggest box of crayons they had. Along the end of the row, there was a conspicuous display of Magic Erasers that were probably there for a reason. Wilford threw a couple boxes of those into the cart as well.
Michael had given up trying to fit into the dollhouse, and had found some Barbie dolls to put into it instead. Wilford watched silently as he arranged the dolls in the house — one bent over with her head in the toilet and one on the floor next to the bed while he used a third as a tool for thrashing the furniture around. Any other kid, Wilford would have chalked it up to kids being creepy as fuck, but somehow he felt like there was more to it than this.
“You found a house!” Nichola said as she walked around the corner into an aisle. “You know what houses need? Pets.” She handed him a bright orange plastic dinosaur she’d found somewhere. Michael shoved it into the closet, so maybe part of it was just down to kids being creepy as fuck.
After twenty minutes of standing in the aisle, watching Nichola and Michael play with the dollhouse, Wilford knew what they were going to be dragging home. How, he wasn’t sure. The house didn’t appear to come apart, and there was no way in hell it was fitting into his car. He looked around helplessly, spotting a kid in a yellow vest tidying up the other end of the aisle.
“Do you guys deliver?” he asked.
The kid looked over, seeming momentarily confused about the situation until he spotted Michael and Nichola. “Uh. Yeah. It should have a bar code on it somewhere. Take a picture on your phone, and they’ll scan it at the register.”
Wilford nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He found the sticker on the back of the house and snapped a picture.
“All right, you two. Let’s get out of here,” he said, tossing his phone into the basket with the colouring books so he didn’t forget to scan it.
It took some coaxing, but they got Michael back to his feet. He grabbed all of the Barbies he’d found, as well as the dinosaur before he started following Wilford.
“Barbies too?” Wilford asked. “When’d you get so greedy?”
He didn’t miss the bemused look Nichola shot him as she picked Michael up to carry him. He just kept walking toward the register, ready to be done with the building full of screaming kids. Wilford had the clerk scan everything in his basket, and set up delivery for the stupidly large doll house. Somehow, he’d spent over $300 on one toy and a few crayons. That sure as hell wasn’t going to become normal.
Nichola was getting Michael the dolls and the dinosaur, which was predictably when the trouble started. As soon as she tried to take them from Michael, he only held on tighter and started crying.
“We have to pay for them,” She said.
The clerk was already on top of it. She grabbed something from underneath the register, made a strange noise with a machine Wilford couldn’t see, and suddenly produced a bright red balloon.
“Your dolls have to go take a bath and get cleaned up before they can go home with you,” she said. “Here, why don’t we trade?”
Michael still whined as he hesitantly reached out for the balloon. Once he took it, Wilford was able to get the dolls from him and put them on the counter. The clerk quickly scanned them all, and stopped when the register beeped strangely after she scanned the dinosaur
“Just him, or the set?” she asked.
“There’s a set?” Nichola asked.
“Two, it looks like. Thirty and fifty,” the clerk said.
“Oh, the fifty. For sure.”
Wilford had opinions about dragging home fifty plastic dinosaurs, but Nichola wouldn’t have listened to them so he kept it to himself, and felt a little bit better when she wound up spending $200 on dinosaurs and Barbies.
Nichola ran her card, and was handed a numbered flag with her receipt.
“If you could wait just over there, someone will be out with everything soon,” the clerk said, pointing to a lounge area near the door. They took Michael over to one of the sofas, distracting him further with one of the colouring books and a few crayons. By the time one of the yellow-vested employees walked over carrying a plastic crate, Michael had apparently completely forgotten all about the dolls being taken away. While Nichola compared what was in the crate with what was on her receipt, Wilford got the crayons all packed up and ready to go. He shoved the box of crayons into his inventory to keep them from melting in the car, and shoved the books back into the bag.
“Looks good. Thanks,” Nichola said once everything had been transferred from the crate to bags. That was Wilford’s cue to get the hell out of there. While he got situated in the car, Nichola got everything into the trunk. She opened up the frankly enormous case of dinosaurs, and dug out the orange one Michael had been playing with earlier.
“Look what we got!” she said, handing it off to him before the door was closed.
The first thing Wilford saw when he got behind the wheel was that balloon in his rear view mirror. Fantastic.
They didn’t get home until almost 9pm, with more shit than Wilford knew what to do with. He took their to-go boxes up first, leaving the rainbow cake out on the counter, and putting everything else into the fridge. Once he and Nichola got everything else up the stairs, Wilford took Michael back to the bedroom. He didn’t like having the kid sleep on his bed, but the couch was extremely occupied. He found the blankets he’d nailed up over the windows when he’d first moved in, and laid those over the bed as an added layer of protection for the stupidly expensive mattress that was in no way suitable for a kid who still wet the bed.
Once he was certain Michael was out for the night, Wilford headed back to the kitchen to grab a beer and the rest of the cake, handing the fork over to Nichola so they both had something to munch on while they worked on their project.
Getting out of the house felt better than it had any right to. The drive out to the canyon was a long one, and spent in glorious silence. About halfway there, Wilford turned on the radio and lit a cigarette. For the first time in a long time, he felt like himself. Two weeks into the month — two weeks after that disastrous Jackson Levy appearance — and Wilford was finally starting to feel like maybe he could forget it ever happened. Her people had been just as eager to keep it out of the papers as he was, and remarkably nobody was talking about it. Not even the 400 wild cards in the audience seemed to be taking any effort to get it out there. That was the biggest relief of all of it.
He was a little early arriving, but he wanted to talk to Celine again if she hadn’t already managed to storm off. He got through the front door, handing Benjamin his invitation just in time to see Celine rushing toward the garage.
“I really have to go,” she said quietly, looking over Wilford’s shoulder toward the stairs.
Wilford started to take the ring off she’d given him, but Celine stopped him, holding his hands still.
“No, keep it. I feel like you still need it,” she said.
“All right,” he said, not really fond of the ring. But if she thought he should still be wearing it, he wasn’t going to argue. “Call me when you’re done hiding. I do want another reading,” he said.
Celine nodded. “Okay. But I am out of here.”
Wilford stepped back, giving her room to make her escape before the rest of the madhouse arrived. He turned around as the front door opened again, and Abe sauntered inside while completely ignoring Benjamin. Someone else Wilford was eager to talk to. The night was already going wonderfully.
The night went a little less wonderfully as soon as dinner was over and chips were bought. Damien had clearly bought a book on counting cards, and was painfully trying to use it to get a leg up on the rest of the table. A little less eager to get into an all-out brawl, Wilford grabbed all of his chips and stuffed them into his inventory while he fled to a quieter part of the house. He found himself in the theatre, and decided that seemed like a good place to be for a while. There was an iPad somewhere in there that controlled the projector, and finding it had suddenly become his top priority. Once he had it, he found a good spot in the middle of the room to see what Mark had in his library. Celine had mentioned the Joey Drew movies before, but Wilford was a bit overwhelmed from kids’ programming as it was, and wanted something with a little more meat to it. What he found were old monster movies. He landed on one about a werewolf and let it play while he lit up a joint.
Not too long into the movie, right as the kids were being attacked by the werewolf out on the moors, the door opened and someone slipped inside. It wasn’t until he got close that Wilford recognised Craig. As soon as he saw the movie, Craig quickened his pace to walk over and sit next to Wilford.
“Do you think Landis did any research for this one?” he asked.
Wilford passed him the joint. “I think this is the movie that made me think England was thirty years behind us.”
Craig laughed. “It is a little Masterpiece Theatre, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t enough to convince Wilford to change it though.
“So what type was Bigby?” Craig asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
“Two,” Wilford said. He wasn’t the man’s doctor, so what did he care about confidentiality? “About half the size of a truck, too. I don’t know where they get the energy.”
“I had a roommate in college who was a Type One,” Craig said. “He was a pretty cool guy. He warned me when I moved in, but I thought that meant he’d go to the clinic or something.”
Wilford laughed. “I guess if you’ve got to have it, Type One’s the one you want. I met a Type Three once that could change at will. That was a trip.”
“Jesus, I thought that was a myth,” Craig said.
He passed the joint back, trying not to cough.
“So did I,” Wilford said. He re-lit it to get it going again. “But I’m not the one who’s supposed to be an expert.”
Craig laughed. “I don’t specialise any more than you do.”
“Isn’t that what your website said? Paranormal Expert?” Wilford asked. He took another hit and passed it back.
“No, it says Expert Investigator. I’m an expert at investigating.”
“And I’m an expert at detecting bullshit,” Wilford said.
Craig laughed again. Conversation turned as they passed the joint back and forth. Eventually the movie ended, and they found another to watch. This time, Craig took the iPad and found a Godzilla movie. Kaiju were just about the one monster that genuinely made Wilford nervous, and he was glad as hell that they tended to stay far away from his continent. The movie was just as bad as the last one though, and didn’t seem to be written by anybody who knew anything about what they were writing about.
Wilford wasn’t sure when it had happened, but about halfway through the movie he noticed Craig had got awfully close to him. Wilford sat up a bit, but didn’t really want to move away. He needed to sort his shit out, and maybe that started here. Maybe he was reading the situation wrong. He’d been so keyed up all week, everything seemed like a threat. They were finishing off the second joint by that point, and Wilford was starting to feel heavy all over. Craig was probably ten minutes from falling asleep.
Then Craig shifted, leaning heavily against Wilford’s side. All the pot in the world wasn’t going to get him relaxed enough to ignore it. But there was a little part of him, buried deep, that was kind of into it. He didn’t miss it, necessarily, but he didn’t completely hate the idea. Mostly hated, sure. He clamped down on the urge to get up and run away, and moved his arm instead so Craig wasn’t crushing it between them. That was how he figured out that Craig wasn’t just dozing off. As soon as Wilford raised his arm to the back of the seat, Craig snuggled up even closer. Wilford tried to ignore the cloying closeness by distracting himself with another hit.
“What is that cologne?” Craig asked suddenly.
“Huh?” Wilford didn’t wear cologne. “Probably wax crayon,” he realised. For some reason, Michael’s new favourite game was stuffing them down the front of his shirt.
“That’s a new one.”
Craig fell asleep shortly after, but Wilford couldn’t make himself doze off if he tried. He’d thought he might catch a nap when it was just him, enjoying shitty movies by himself, but that security had dissolved, never to be seen again. Even after finishing the rest of the joint by himself, he was too keyed up to get any sleep. He switched over to another movie once Godzilla was over, barely able to focus on whatever train wreck he’d landed on this time. He tried to force himself to get a little sleep, but it worked about as well as forcing a Buick into his inventory. He managed to get through one more movie before he couldn’t stand it. His watch said it was starting to get to a reasonable hour in the morning, so Wilford shut down the projector and tried to escape from the mess he’d got himself into. He was hoping after the amount they’d smoked, escaping unnoticed would be easy, but Craig woke right away and looked at him.
“Shit, what time is it?” he asked.
“About seven,” Wilford said. “I, uh. I gotta get home to my kid.”
Craig nodded, seeming a little lost. Wilford briefly wondered if Craig even knew about the kid, but he didn’t wonder for long. Now was the time to make his escape, and he jumped on it.
By the time he got to his car, he nearly collapsed. He managed to get inside and close the door, but didn’t go anywhere for a long time. Unable to do anything else, Wilford leaned his head against the steering wheel, and just breathed. He felt like he hadn’t taken a single breath all night. AC. The AC needed to be on. Wilford turned on the engine and reached over to crank up the AC as high as it would go. The frigid blast seemed to clear his head a little bit, and help calm him down. After far too long, he was able to turn it down a little bit and put the car in reverse.
He really, desperately needed to get this shit under control.
