Curioddity (2 page)

“I'd like a large regular coffee with space for extra cream, please,” said Wil.

“One Hefty with extra space,” replied the teenager. “Would that be a latte?”

“No, a large regular coffee. And I don't want a ‘Hefty.'”

“But you just said—”

“I said large. I'm not going to fall victim to Mug O' Joe's' corporate vernacular. I just want a large coffee.”

The teenager blinked, confused. This was beginning to go in the exact same direction it normally went whenever Wil stood up for himself: namely, south.

“Hefty means big. So does Bulky. And so does Outsized. We've had this conversation before.”

“No we haven't. This is my first day.”

“Well, I've had it with all thirty-five of your predecessors. I'm not using your terminology because it doesn't make any sense.” Wil pointed at the overly indulgent chalk-drawn menu just to make it clear he and the teenager were discussing the same issue. “Just because someone in marketing happens to own a thesaurus, and just because your shareholders insist all of your drink sizes must appear bigger than they are, and just because you are in between liberal arts colleges and wish to bring your artistic talents to bear on today's menu, it doesn't mean I have to join in. I would like a large coffee with space for extra cream. Please.”

“One Heft—”

“Don't say it.”

“One large coffee. Regular. What flavor?” The teenager was beginning to get the hang of this argument. He wasn't about to go down without a fight.

Wil looked at the ridiculous array of exotic coffees from around the world piled inside rack after rack around the entire store. True to form, he resolved to ignore each and every one of these exotic flavors individually.

“What's the flavor of the day?” he asked, thrusting out his jaw and widening his stance.

“French Roast,” replied the teenager, who at this point was beginning to realize a concession of defeat would probably maximize his chances of receiving an adequate tip.

*   *   *

R
OUGHLY FORTY-NINE
seconds later, Wil found himself glowering in the general direction of the Castle Towers, this time armed with a large cup of French Roast. The daily dose of caffeine confrontation he endured at Mug O' Joe's was beginning to grate. He consoled himself with the thought that while his job was marginally less enjoyable than working in a coffee shop, at least he'd left behind the acne of his teenage years, if not the angst.

Trudge, trudge, trudge …
KLONNG
.

Monday was getting longer and louder by the minute.

*   *   *

T
HE WALK
to Castle Towers would take another ten minutes or so—time enough for Wil to harden his heart and appropriately lower his expectations for the day. He trudged past an oversized billboard upon which was an oversized poster of a man with oversized hair, a spray tan, and teeth so white you could have skied on them. This was the ubiquitous Marcus James: a national TV personality of no apparent talent who nevertheless possessed the ability to persuade millions of people to part with something useful in exchange for something useless, usually in three or four easy payments. “Do you want teeth as brilliant white as mine?” asked the ad copy below Marcus James. “Then you want the Gleemodent toothpaste system.” Further ad copy suggested three easy payments of $19.99 for what appeared to be a double order of ordinary toothpaste and the second (and most vital) part of the Gleemodent system: a toothbrush. Wil quickly decided that no, he did not want teeth as brilliant white as Marcus James for the simple reason that he preferred people not to stare at him and point. Besides, he had no desire to be held responsible for snow blindness or traffic delays.

Wil moved past the billboard and settled back into his reluctant trudge, subconsciously conforming to the flow of the city's one-way system. The warmth of the coffee near his lungs was now putting up a barrier against the freezing mist. While Wil maintained his steady course toward the Castle Towers, he allowed his thoughts to wander, as he always did at this point of the walk. He began to think of better days, all of which lay in the opposite direction from the one he was facing. He thought of those long, lazy afternoons when the future seemed less full of freezing mist. He thought of swimming holes and summer days. And, naturally, he thought of his mom.

*   *   *

M
ELINDA
M
ORGAN
possessed a healthy sense of mischief and a love of life unparalleled by any other adult Wil had ever met. It was she who encouraged Wil to learn, to embrace knowledge as if it were a glittering prize. It was Mom who taught Wil about the value of imagination, and the acceptance of magic. Wil's dad, Barry, was an accountant at a large firm in town. He generously tolerated his wife and son's bond of adoration, and though he barely understood the first thing about science and magic, he always knew when to get out of the way and let the magic happen anyway. Barry Morgan was a good man: a good, solid, unimaginative man. Together, he and his wife made an effective and unorthodox team.

True to her off-the-wall nature, Melinda was a scientist who worked at a jet propulsion laboratory built into the side of a small mountain on the outskirts of town, where she performed exotic experiments understood by no more than twenty people on the entire planet. Young Wil understood the very basics: these experiments involved something called “electromagnetism,” which was a fancy term that Mom used to describe big magnets powered by ten squazillion volts of electricity. On the rare occasions Wil had been inside Mom's lab, he'd been struck by the generous amounts of fizzling material and the fact that everyone's hair stood up on end. Mom's laboratory carried the distinctive smell of fresh ozone formed by any one of the fifty electrical experiments that littered the various test stations, and legend had it that her building could often be seen at night from space.

At home, Wil and his Mom spent countless hours designing exotic inventions and creating elaborate experiments. She bought him his first chemistry set at the age of five, and his first fire extinguisher a couple of weeks after that. Together they had tested the combustibility of virtually every substance in the neighborhood. Using a mixture of soluble starch and baking soda, Wil had once set fire to a local waterfall, which event had made the nightly news. Unbeknownst to him at the time, word of his alarming pyromaniacal tendencies would spread as far as the North Pole. That same Christmas, he received the most stupendous gift of all time: the Nikola Tesla Junior Genius Mega-Volt Test Kit.

Santa was a big fan of Mr. Tesla; and by sheer coincidence, so was Melinda Morgan. Wil had never met the man but he had it on good authority that Tesla was a mad genius who liked to give pretty much anything a good jolt of electricity just to see what would happen. He was Mom's hero, and—by default—he became Wil's. At the urging of his mom—and with his trusty Nikola Tesla Junior Genius Mega-Volt Test Kit always on hand—Wil pushed the limits of creativity to their maximum levels of stretchiness. At the age of six, he designed the ill-fated five-dimensional multicube out of an old cardboard box. It would have worked, too, if he had remembered to take it in out of the rain. A year later, he created the ill-conceived Magnesium Volcano experiment, which garnered him an impressive last place at his school science fair after it covered the gym floor with a noxious substance that lingered long after the gym floor was eventually replaced. And then there was the ill-advised Unsinkable Electro-Concrete Troop Carrier, which had transported Dad's model soldier collection on its maiden voyage across a local lake. The less said about that, the better. Suffice it to say, Wil learned that day that cement is less buoyant than, say, the engine block of a Ford Crown Victoria, and that certain tin soldiers are worth more of one's allowance than they have any right to be.

*   *   *

W
ARMED SLIGHTLY
by these memories of past conflagrations, Wil's pace quickened as he passed Gretchen's Flower Shop some two hundred yards from his office building. Being of Dutch descent, Gretchen liked to present ornate tulip displays in her storefront. The closer Wil got to his oh-so-forgettable job, the more he would try to remember things that would connect him to his mom, just to give him the strength to wade into his day. Tulips were Melinda's favorite flower, though she wasn't allowed to bring them in the house on account of Barry's allergies. Wil liked the smell of tulips, and Gretchen was the one person he'd always wave to on his way to work if she was outside by her flowers.

Outside the Castle Towers stood a naked statue of Pan, which seemed to shiver ever so slightly in the frozen fog. Mom would have approved of it for the simple fact that Pan's oversized naughty parts tended to make passersby cover their children's eyes or look the other way. Certainly, the statue engendered two opposite reactions: upon seeing Pan for the first time, drivers would either avert their gaze or gawk like crazy people and run the risk of possible death or dismemberment at the hands of the too-complicated one-way system they were supposed to be navigating. Mom always liked stuff that challenged people to think differently. And Pan was certainly a challenge to the safe driving record of the local municipality.

By the time Wil made his way through the revolving door that led inside Castle Towers, the memories of his childhood were winning the battle against his reluctance to show up at work; they always seemed to invite escape from his current predicament. He surprised even himself with a sudden and alarming notion that today might be different after all. Perhaps this would be the Monday when the first day of the rest of his life wouldn't be like all the hideous days that had preceded it. Perhaps this would be the Monday when something finally happened. Perhaps this would be the Monday when—Heaven forbid—someone actually gave him something interesting to do.

Wil moved quickly past the two denizens of the Castle Towers lobby: a pair of identical twin brothers who could be found playing chess by the front window come rain, shine, or Martin Luther King Day. Wil had never learned the brothers' names; they appeared to be in their mid-fifties, and each had chosen a last line of defense against encroaching baldness by reverting to a disconcerting comb-over that could only be considered an act of desperation. The twins always gave Wil the creeps, though he could never put a finger on what exactly was the problem. It was probably the fact that they never spoke. Once, he'd made eye contact with the one nearest the window. It wasn't so much that the twin had scowled at him on that occasion; it was more that the guy had looked right through him. Wil often wondered if one or both of the twins were blind.

Trudge, trudge, trudge …
KLONNG!

Certainly, chances were high that the brothers were both deaf; they had every right to be.

*   *   *

T
HE ELEVATOR
was dank and possessed its own peculiar brand of pungency. No matter how many times Mr. Whatley, the superintendent of Castle Towers, had replaced the single light on the elevator's ceiling, it always flickered on and off and made a sound like an electric horsefly. As Wil ascended toward the nineteenth floor, he found himself being jolted out of his optimistic reverie and back toward reality. The elevator usually had the effect of bringing him down to Earth the farther upward it went.

Wil exited the traveling coffin trying (and failing) to suppress his gag reflex. Mr. Whatley had cleaned the walls of the elevator with bleach on numerous occasions yet the place still always managed to smell like a mixture of curry powder and rat vomit. Curiously, Wil had never seen an actual rat inside the entire building. No doubt they were repelled by the smell of the elevator.

Wil stood for a moment before the door of his office and fumbled inside his pocket for the smooth edges of his trusty English penny, trying to summon the courage to select his keys instead. He knew exactly what awaited him inside his office: an emptiness to match the one inside his heart, the emptiness that had followed him ever since the 207th day of his tenth year of existence. That was the day his mother, Melinda Morgan, had died.

*   *   *

O
N THAT
particular morning, Wil and his mom had been hard at work on an old and favored experiment: the Perpetual Penny. It was Melinda's contention that somewhere in the world existed a penny that—if spun properly and with the right amount of inverted friction—would continue to spin forever and never fall to the ground. She and Wil had collected empirical data on the spinning of every American cent they could find, so much so that young Wil had the habit of asking people for spare pennies in the event they were unknowingly carrying with them the Holy Grail of all coins. Wil and his mom had collated the results of every penny spin since he was two years of age but had come no closer to finding the Perpetual Penny. They had so far achieved a 0 percent success rate but, as Mom pointed out, the experiment called for a 2 percent margin for error. This meant that conceivably, 2 percent of their spins had been successful—they just hadn't known it. Despite his lack of success, Mom had encouraged Wil to always keep trying. For a good experiment, she said, could never be rushed.

Lately, Wil had been resistant to his mom's optimism. He had begun to exhibit the typical frustration of a ten-year-old coming to terms with stubborn reality. Something was going to crack, Mom had said, and her money was on reality cracking first. Even though young Wil was not so sure, he'd decided to play along.

That morning, Mom had had an epiphany. She'd given Wil an old penny she'd brought back from a trip to England, where she and Barry had visited for their honeymoon some years before. This penny had a picture of the Queen of England on it, and she appeared to be floating on the sea in some kind of chariot. Like most of Mom's notions, the idea of an English penny being any better than an American one seemed to make little sense at first blush. Wil's dad, as usual, was skeptical about the potential for success. He'd given the pair his customary haughty sniff and had gone off to the upstairs toilet to read about something called the Dow Jones index. So while Mom busied herself with some scientific paperwork, Wil got to work trying to impart just the right amount of inverted friction upon this new candidate. It wasn't long before frustration took hold of the process.