Spoonbenders

God he hated his body. It was kuh-razy that he had to carry this thing around with him all the time. What was the point of being a mind anchored to this dead weight—or dying weight, that was it, a blobby mass already becoming old, bubbling with latent cancers, each cell wall ready to rupture like a cheap sandwich bag and spill its chemicals back into the soil. If people had to be trapped inside something, why not a robot body made of something dependable, something solid, like that brick wall? God, the wallness of it, looming over him, holding up the night sky, a black ceiling decorated with star stickers. If he weren’t trapped like this he could climb that wall with his ghost fingers, so easy, like pulling himself, weightless, along the bottom of the pool, and then, at the top of the wall, look down at the school yard that had become as small as a child’s bedroom, the grass as luscious as carpet.

His body lay there, fat and unmoving as a Beanie Baby, but Malice and her friends were dancing, laughing, alive. Malice and Janelle swung each other around with half-assed square dance moves while Robbie and Lucas sang “You-ooh-ooh, why you wanna give me a run-around.” But there was so much more, beyond this yard. The sky lifted up and up like a box lid, teasing him, and he followed it up. Below him, the suburban landscape unspooled in all directions, porch lights and streetlamps as small as fireflies, and the highways winding through them, twin rivers of lights, white on one side, red on the other, flowing between the city and the suburban lowlands. He laughed to himself, surprised to find that he was happy, very happy, the happiest he’d been since moving back to Illinois. In the distance, the towers of Chicago waited for him like women in sequined gowns, all of them gazing up at their queen, the Sears Tower. Hello, ladies! How y’all doing tonight? Maybe he should—

Suddenly he felt himself yanked through the air. The world around him blurred—and then Malice appeared in front of his face.

“Get ahold of yourself,” she said, laughing. “You keep yelling like that you’re going to get us all arrested!”

Then she let go of him and he fell back against the lawn, giggling. He was back inside his big, blobby body. But that was okay. He’d found another way out of it.

7 Teddy

Love makes a man desperate. After he’d exhausted his scant resources—two phone books; a suspicious operator; a useless, fruitless, but cinematically romantic drive around Oak Brook—he was forced, at long last, to ask for help from Destin Smalls.

The previous time they’d talked it was the agent who’d called, pestering Teddy about the psychic activity among his descendants. Teddy may have implied that Smalls was a nosy, paranoid drama queen. Now it was Teddy calling, and the foot was in the other mouth.

“You’ve gone off your rocker,” Smalls told him.

“It’s a small favor,” Teddy said to him. “Hardly anything for a man with your connections.”

“What in the world do you want it for?” Smalls asked.

“Can you get it or not?” And within hours, Smalls arrived at his front door—but with company.

“Jesus Christ,” Teddy said. “You brought him?”

G. Randall Archibald—tinier, balder, and more mustachioed than ever—held out his hand. “A pleasure to see you again, Teddy.”

“The Annoying Archibald. My God, you look like the guy on the Pringles can, but with less hair.”

“And you still dress like an extra in an Al Capone movie.”

“Says the cue ball with Kaiser Wilhelm’s mustache.” To Smalls he said, “Did you bring it?”

The agent held up a slip of paper. “I want to talk first.”

“Of course you do,” Teddy said with a sigh. He led them to the back patio. The men settled awkwardly into their folding chairs. Archibald eyed the hole in the yard and said, “Burying a body?”

Teddy ignored him and nodded at the paper still in Smalls’s hands. “So?”

“Tell me what you want with it, first,” Smalls said.

“You scared the lady away before we could finish our conversation.”

“Then why don’t you just call her? I can give you her phone number.”

“I’ll take that, too. But I’d prefer to mail her a card. It’s more gentlemanly.” Teddy reached into the ceramic flowerpot that sat under the window, and came out with the plastic baggie that held his secret stash: a box of Marlboros and a Bic lighter.

“She’s married, Teddy.”

“I’m aware of that.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled gratefully. “You want one?”

Smalls didn’t pretend the offer was sincere.

“Archibald?”

“No thanks. Had a touch of the cancer a few years ago.”

“What kind?”

“Prostate.”

“I’m not asking you to smoke it in your ass.”

“There’s quite enough emanating from yours,” Archibald said.

“Can we please stay on topic?” Smalls said. “This woman’s husband is on trial for murder.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Teddy said. “I just want to help her out.”

Smalls leaned forward, the piece of paper in his hand like bait. “Two conditions. One, I never gave this to you.”

“And?”

“I want you to be straight with me.”

“You want to know about the kids.”