They meet for the last time in Sicily, near Pozzalo. The news is panicked with the sub-Mediterranean tremors, but these three knew weeks ago: they heard the flat note in the music of the world.
They stand on the beach as the tide rushes out too fast.
“Our biggest command performance ever,” chuckles Placido.
“At least,” says Luciano, “the whales will hear it.”
“Give us an E, Paulo?” Jose kindly asks his attendant.
Water thunders toward them, a hundred feet high. The boy blows a note on his pitch-pipe.
The Three Tenors open their mouths, and the tsunami hesitates.
“Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler!” growls Rotten Gamble, stalking toward them down the pier with guards at either side.
“Me?” mouths Dog Shouting, like a bad actor.
They embrace, then, laughing, until the caped man glimpses baleen scars down the flanks of Loveblind Bird. “What have you done to my ship?”
Dog Shouting’s eyebrow quirks. “You lost her to me fair and square.”
They pause and eye each other for a moment, grins a little edgy now.
“Well, he seems very friendly,” remarks Blow the Skin.
“Yes,” says the Princess Leaves, watching the two of them. “Very friendly.”
“They’re going to end up on the floor,” says one of the watchers dryly.
“Have a little faith.” Proserpina smiles. “Iala will want to mess up her face a little first, and this way they can’t use their fingernails.”
“So what are their sandwich board names? Messface McRichiegirl and the Scratcher?”
Proserpina realizes, with a motionless shock, that her interlocutor is a boy–around her age, long arms draped over the scaffolding, dark shirt and suspenders blended with the shadows of the large and dusty hall.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.
“Neither are you,” he points out, correctly.
“Well, your newts’ eyes need rotating,” Townsend informs her.
Tabitha waits.
“And we can re-groove the brake runes, top up your dryad’s milk and crushed tanzanite.” He takes the pen from behind his ear and pokes it into the pocket of his coveralls. “Honestly, though, Ma’am, I’d just drive it until it stops an leave it there. What’s the model year?”
“1039.”
“And what’s it run on, anyway?”
“Clarified virgin’s blood,” she sighs.
Townsend opens his mouth.
“If that’s going to be a joke about gas prices I will hit you in the neck,” Tabitha informs him.
Townsend shuts it.
“Why do you wear gloves?”
“My hands get cold,” says Annamarie.
He quirks an eyebrow. “In Mississippi? In July?”
“Why do you wear yours?” she counters. “They’re stupid.”
Remy’s wounded. “They’re for tricks,” he says, wiggling his fingers: ring and middle covered, index and pinky exposed. “Otherwise you have to wrinkle your cards to palm them easily.”
“Well, exactly. Might as well shout ’something up my sleeve!’”
“So you’d keep your eyes on my hands, neh?”
“Damn straight.”
“Which one?” he asks, and spreads them apart, and when her eyes flick left his right hand plucks a quarter from her lips.
Jude, seriously, how many chili dogs are necessary to get you born?
So your dad asked us to write you about songs that are going to matter, in the future, when you’re ten or fifteen. Besides the obvious (the ones you’ll write), Jon gave me almost all my music, so this is kind of pointless coming from me. But still: “Maybe You’re Right” by Barenaked Ladies. Our world loves its irony, but even if 2021 is a better year, we’ll need our protest singers.
Also, “Still Not a Player” by Big Pun (ft. Joe), which will teach you everything about love.
“It’s the greatest horror of the twentieth century and the fact that we’re constantly re-enacting it–at what should be beautiful and life-affirming celebrations–indicates an influence that is evil if not downright infernal,” says Cote. “Am I saying that the whole thing is a ritual set of gestures for summoning foul tormentors from the pit into our world? Maybe! Maybe I am! Now what were you saying before?”
“That it’s not technically ‘The Electric Slide,’” Ballard points out carefully. “It’s just ‘The Electric,’ and–”
“–Both of those titles are factually inaccurate,” Cote hisses, eyes narrowed with incisive certainty.
