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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

It had been bad the last time I visited him, and it was bad this time but in a wholly different way. I don’t know where the Boy goes or what he does—his dance is a complete mystery to me—but I can promise you no explorer of jungles or mountaintops works harder or suffers more. I sat and watched him for what must have been half an hour as he slowly twisted and curled into terrible shapes, the rubber tubes stretching with him so that at times they looked like the external arteries and veins of some completely alien creature. During that time I heard three more bones break. There might have been others I didn’t hear. And every moment I watched I felt like a monster.

Like any decent person, when I first met him I had tried to get him off the streets and into some kind of facility, but he wouldn’t do it. “I was in one of those places once, and I’m never going back,” he had told me. “Never.” He told me that if anyone tried to force him, he had just enough control of his arms to be able to jam one of his fists into his mouth and choke himself to death, and that’s what he’d do. I believed him.

But of course, nobody could watch what he was doing to himself, or what I was indirectly doing to him, and feel comfortable. Like I said, there are a lot of people that live in the gray areas, the between areas. And when you go to those places, it’s hard to know what rules apply.

He finally went slack and stayed that way. I went to disconnect him from his apparatus, but he shook his head and whispered something. I couldn’t hear him so I bent close. His breath was surprisingly sweet, like cinnamon.

“Get . . .Tico . . .”

I called to Boy’s helpers, and they trotted in like a pack of efficient ER nurses, gently untangling the tubes and disconnecting him, pushing up his sleeves and pant legs to reach the knots. As they rubbed life back into his pale pink limbs Tico came forward with a hypodermic, but the Broken Boy waggled his head.

“Bobby . . .” I got down close so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. “They built a gate . . . just for the emperor . . .”

For a moment I thought he was babbling again, but he kept talking and I began to understand. I crouched by him, straining for whispers deep underground, as he told me about the Neronian Bridge.

When Tico had sedated him, the urchins carefully lifted the Boy down from the exercise station and onto a blanket so they could carry him off to his bed. Tico moved up close behind me, letting me know that it was time for me to leave.