l8r, yes.

She holds the phone to her chest and smiles. The whole thing will flip soon enough. Thanks to her. And then she’ll have all the Cerulean she could ever want.

And Daddy will have to ask her for permission to get a taste.

Mookie gets a text from Werth. It’s the address. Then a follow-up text, all caps:

WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU YOURE LATE

Mookie doesn’t know what to say so he texts back nothing.

He knows the address, at least. East Village. Little Poland. Tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Wila’s. Good golabki. Killer kielbasa.

He thinks to take a cab, but most the time they don’t stop for a big scary bastard like him. And fitting into the back of a cab sucks. It always feels like one of his elbows is going to bust out a window, or his head is going to pop up through the roof. He’s been in tighter places – the Great Below isn’t always roomy, what with its tight labyrinthine hallways and suffocating chambers – but somehow the back of a cab always makes him feel claustrophobic. And out of control.

And Mookie doesn’t like to feel out of control.

But today, no choice. Cab’ll move quicker than he can on foot. And he’s already late.

To stop a cab he steps out in front of one. Brakes screech.

He gives the chipmunk-cheeked Sikh behind the wheel the address. The Sikh gives him a look of bewilderment and maybe even fear. But Mookie just growls and the man flips the meter and drives.

At this hour, the streets are crowded. People going to work. Or looking for work. Or tourists coming into the city. A hippy woman on her cell bumps into a reedy little black dude struggling past with a Great Dane that looks more horse than dog. A Korean pushes a bike with a bent wheel. Homeless guys push shopping carts filled with cats and blankets, booze and busted-ass dreams. Men with loud ties pass women with short skirts. Children run to school, mothers trailing after.

None of these people get it.

It’s not their fault. He knows that. They’re ignorant. Blind. Eyes stapled shut. It’s like how nobody in this city looks at anybody else. They don’t look because they don’t want to see. Someone gets mugged, another yells “rape,” and nobody comes calling. People get beaten to death in stairwells, cries rising up through the building so that half the apartments can hear it, and by the time someone calls the cops, the body is cold, the blood is thick, and the killer is on the L train ten blocks away.

They don’t know what lies beneath. What walks around them.

Maybe it’s because they know. Secretly. They feel it vibrating in the deep of their bones, twisting in their stomach like an unspoken and misunderstood fear. Some part of the primal animal mind tells them, hey, right now, something awful – not someone, but something – might be walking right next to you. Sizing you up for a snack. Thinking to drag you down into the dark and stuff you full of its fingers and tongues and lay eggs in all your holes. The monsters are here. You know it, I know it – so why even look?