that was part of the process—part of the hunt—to wonder, to feel confused.
The man was strapping the toddler into its stroller now. They were leaving, which was good, because Tupper wanted to dangle a leg from the top of the big winding slide, let go, and see where it landed. The monkey bars would be perfect for an arm.
“Don’t go overboard,” Elizabeth had warned. “Just a light touch. This isn’t a carnival show. Be provocative, not obvious. Best-case scenario, no one even notices them for days and it rains and green stuff starts to grow on them. The more integrated into the environment the better.”
Weedy vines grew up the fence behind the big-kid swings. If only the teenagers would leave. The sun had set. Soon it would be very dark. If he creeped them out enough, they might take off.
He dragged the trash bag full of limbs across the rubber mats of the playground. The teenagers, a boy and a girl, both long-limbed and skinny, were lying beneath the swings, batting at each other like kittens and laughing their heads off.
Tupper sat down on a bench and tried to look threatening. The teenagers took no notice of him. He cleared the mucous from his throat and spat into the dead leaves. Nothing. He reached down, pulled a foot from the bag, and cradled it in his lap.
“We have to wait ’til dark,” he told the foot in a loud, creepy voice. There was ketchup in his bag, for blood. He took it out and squirted some on the foot.
* * *
“Hey, see that guy?”
“The one talking to his food?” Liam pushed himself up on his elbows and peered through the dusk. “He’s not homeless. His clothes are too nice.”
“I know. He’s still weird though. What’s he eating anyway? It looks like a foot.”
“Should we go?”
“Are you okay to go?” Shy asked. Liam’s eyes were slits and he could barely talk.
“I don’t want to go home. Can we go to your house?”
“Yes. My dad might be home though.” Her dad was always home.
“Can we have sex?”
“Maybe.”
“Seriously? Okay, let’s go.”
* * *
Tupper’s scary-man act had worked. The two teenagers got to their feet very suddenly and ran out of the park, holding hands and shrieking. They’d left their schoolbags beneath the swings. All the better. It was a nice effect, the abandoned schoolbags, the scattered limbs, the darkening sky. Just for fun he’d leave a head.
* * *
Roy slammed his laptop closed and sank back in his armchair. The notion that he could pull off a Russian assassin in space detained by oversexed—possibly pregnant—teenagers with a backpack full of gold and urinals that made Evian water out of piss was completely ludicrous. He was once a beloved, prolific author, but the current mess on his laptop was a not very subtle sign: his authoring days were over. Time to get a proper job like Wendy and end the misery.
Roy had always admired Wendy’s attitude toward work. You got it done and then had a glass of wine. Roy could never quite leave a book alone. Once it was in his head, it stayed there like an infection or a tick, niggling at him, filling him with guilt and dread, or inspiration and elation. Writing novels was like walking endlessly up a hill made of shit, stopping to eat the shit along the way and deceiving oneself into thinking it was cake. Each night when Wendy came home from work, poured herself a glass of wine, and switched on the news, Roy would follow her into the kitchen and pour himself a glass of wine too. But no sooner had he finished the glass than he was filled with self-loathing. At most, he’d written yet another stream of shit that day, even runnier and smellier than the last. What on earth did he have to celebrate?
“Oh, this part always makes me cry,” he heard Wendy say in the kitchen.
Wendy was preparing dinner and watching her new favorite TV show on her computer, A Royal Week. If she missed anything about living in England it was the royal family. She knew it was dopey of her, but she just ate it up, every last fascinator and footman. Right now, they were doing a recap of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding at Windsor Castle. The show was focused on the changes to the family as a whole since then, including the couple’s escape to America, and the fortitude of the Queen’s husband, HRH Prince