The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Dane's Deals

Previously: "Dane's Domicile" 

Dwayne Macaulay is small and wiry and strong, dressed in dirty jeans and a dirty denim shirt. He looks like he's in his late twenties, and there's a rodent-like cast to his face: small mouth and pointed nose, with a trim, bristly blonde moustache between them. His eyes are dark, and he stares at you with a pinched expression.

You swallow your doubts, and try putting on Dane's usual blustery cheer. "Hey man, thanks for calling!"

He flashes the tiniest, briefest of smiles—which does nothing to make him look any more friendly—and gives you a hard clap on the shoulder. Abruptly, he turns back toward a small table. In that moment you glance around.

It really is a one-room place: along one wall runs a small countertop with a sink under a cabinet, next to a refrigerator. Wedged against the other wall is a low, narrow bed. On the third wall is a flimsy wardrobe and a chest of drawers, atop which sits a cheap TV. A door leads into a small bathroom. In the middle of the room is a table.

A wooden half-crate is sitting atop it, next to some brown paper sacks. Dwayne hands you the crate, and you blink dumbly into it and the small metal briefcase it contains. Dwayne gives you a very meaningful stare. "You know where to put it, right?"

"Uh ..."

He grabs a hank of your hair and pulls hard. "You know where to put it, right?" he repeats in a much tighter and rougher voice.

"Ow ow ow! Yes!"

"Right, where you put it every month. You do put it in the same place every month, right?"

"Yeah!" That seems like the best possible answer, for what other answer could you give him?

"Good. I don't wanna any phone calls complaining that you've spaced out on me." He stares at you, and when you just blink he grabs you by the side of the head again. "Am I gonna get a phone call, Dane?"

"No! I'll put it where—" You blink back tears as he releases you. "But, you know, just so I don't fuck up, can you tell me where you think I'm supposed to put it?"

He raises his hand again, but drops it when you flinch. "That's your fucking business. I don't wanna know where you put it. Okay, this is for you." He holds up a package wrapped in brown paper. "See? I'm putting it in here." He drops it into one of the paper bags, then drops the paper bag into the crate atop the briefcase. You peek into it, and see lots of cheap canned goods and packaged foods. "You coming over on Saturday?" he asks.

"Uh—" You hesitate, but he makes no move. "Uh, I dunno man," you say. "Like, there might be something going on with, uh—"

"Sure," he says. His tone is still sharp and guarded, but a lot of the unfriendliness has dropped out. "Gimme a call if you wanna hang out, though." He claps you again on the shoulder, then hustles you toward the door. "Say hi to Aunt Marianne for me," he adds before slamming the door behind you.

* * * * *

"Jesus, Will, what do you think is in here," Caleb says. His eyes are wide as he glares at the locked case. "Same kind of shit as over there." He nods at that brown paper package, which is now unwrapped, disclosing a small, tightly packed bundle of joints, tokes, and leaves. It's sitting on a table in the elementary school basement, for that's where you caught up to Caleb after leaving Dwayne's house.

"I know Dane shares his stuff, but I can't picture Dane as a dealer," you object.

Caleb glances up at you, and does a slight double take. "You have a point," he says. "Still less can I picture you pretending to be Dane-who-is-a-dealer. But what did this Dwayne guy say, exactly?"

"Just to put it where I put it every month, and that he doesn't want to hear any complaints."

Caleb chews on this. "Well, that's got to be it, right? Dane's not the dealer. Someone else is. And Dane—" He chews on it a little more, and his tone falters. "And Dane passes it along to the guy?"

"So how come this Dwayne creep doesn't pass it along directly?"

Caleb shrugs. "Maybe he can't. Maybe he can't get to—" A light breaks in his eye. "It's someone at school. That's it, he gives it to Dane, and Dane passes it to a guy at school."

"But why go round-about that way?" you protest. "Why not just give it to the guy directly? I wouldn't trust Dane to make regular deliveries of toilet paper, let alone-- I don't think this Dwayne guy does, either, the way he was talking."

"I dunno. But maybe it's someone who can't afford to be seen with this guy directly. Like, maybe Dwayne's a known distributor."

"So it's Dane's ass—my ass—that's in the crosshairs," you gasp.

"How do you keep getting into these messes, Prescott?"

"Hey, it wasn't my idea to—"

"Sure it was! You're the one who said, 'Put me in for Dane, coach, that's a safe place for—"

"I'm in this mess because you put me in for Gordon!"

"I saved you from Gordon!"

"Yeah, and how's that working out?" you demand. "Which reminds me, what happened today, after that fight he had with Lynch?"

"He got suspended," Caleb says, and that bit of news causes you to have to sit down. "Yeah, he busted Lynch's face pretty good, and I don't think he got a bruise on him. Except on his knuckles."

"Oh, Christ! And what did my dad say? You went to see him after school, right?"

"Yeah. He's grounded, but he didn't tell me much. He's all moody, of course. I tried getting him to see things from our point of view, you know, reminding him of all the shit that the Molester and Chen and Kirkham do to us, and how we're actually lucky we've not run into Lynch and Patterson and Black before—"

"You mentioned Gordon to him?" you gasp.

"Sure. I want that fucker to know what it looks like from the other end. He didn't say anything, though."

You're both silent for a bit before you raise the obvious question. "So what do I do with this thing?" You pick up the locked briefcase. "I don't want to take it to school. I don't even know that's where it's supposed to go."

Caleb takes it from you, and studies it, then puts it in one of the desk drawers. "All the rest of our shit is here, this might as well stay here too. Until the person you're supposed to give it to comes looking for you."

You cover your face with your hands. "Oh Jesus." Through your fingers you gaze at the workspace where you'd been making those masks. "Where's the book? The next spell, that's gotta have something in it that can help us."

"I'm working on it," Caleb says. "I mean, I'm gonna start working on it." From another drawer in the desk he takes out the book, and from a sack on the floor he pulls out some tracing paper. "I tried copying that sigil for the next spell, last night, while I was at Gordon's, but I couldn't get it to— You copied those others free hand?" he asks in an accusing tone. You nod. "Jesus. I just couldn't get it to come out right, so I'm gonna trace it tonight. Tomorrow I'll pick up the supplies. I didn't have time today, thanks to all the shit that went down."

"Need any help from me?"

"I don't think so. But try to meet me here tomorrow, around five."

* * * * *

The evening passes quietly. Dane's mom accepts the appearance of the groceries as though it's a kind of magic that always happens, and in a lazy, dreamy way makes up some cheap noodles with jarred spaghetti sauce. Afterward, she lights up again, and in a casual maternal way shares it with you; you partake while laying in the beanbag, and drift off far further than you'd intended, so that it's nearly two in the morning before you stumble down to the bedroom.

The alarm shrieks you awake at seven o'clock, and after slapping it into silence you lay in bed for almost half an hour, trembling with exhaustion and trying to summon the strength and willpower to wake up. You finally haul yourself up, feeling weak and bloodshot and burned over; your mind is a jumble of gears with broken teeth that don't want to engage. Not even a shower can restore you, and out of desperation you smoke a good portion of a joint—which you find under the sink—after getting out. That leaves you feeling more mellow and human, at least enough to dress. You mix up the wardrobe a little, donning some torn up jeans that are cut off just below the knee, but otherwise stick to Dane's usual t-shirt and shabby sports coat. You stock its pockets with some of the shit that Dwayne gave you yesterday. In the bathroom after breakfast you study yourself in the mirror; you still look too freaked out, even after trying to relax, so you smoke down some more of that joint and slap yourself hard in the side of the head. "Hey man! Hey!" You practice a few more of those smiles, using Dane's selfies for reference, and when you feel you've settled into character lope out the door. Dane's mother is still asleep when you leave.

You drive very slowly and carefully to school, arriving with only five minutes to spare. With long strides you hustle off toward Intermediate Algebra. No one pays any attention to you, not in the halls and not in the room after you drop into a desk, panting. No one seems to care that you're there.

Until something big looms in the corner of your eye. You turn. Gordon Black stares at you from the doorway.

You swallow. Dane Matthias, in Gordon's body, has finally caught up to you.

He breaks into a huge grin, and gestures you to follow him.

* To continue: "Hit from All Sides" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"