Krystal shook her head, but it wasn’t a no. It was a “what furry little animal did I kill in my former life, or what frail old grandmother did I defraud to get punished like this?” kind of shake. She looked at Vesuvius, who’d been listening in on the whole thing.
“Well?” she said.
Vesuvius looked at Danny. Danny did his best to look pathetic, something he was becoming increasingly adept at. Vesuvius looked at Krystal and nodded.
“Seriously!” she said, her hands held out like Krystal the Redeemer. “I expected more from you, Suvi.” She sighed and looked at Danny. “Okay, fine, whatever. I’ll help. Just as long as you know that we’re not going to win.”
“You mean it?”
“That we aren’t going to win? Absolutely.”
“That you’ll help me,” said Danny.
“I said so, didn’t I? Monday. Eight a.m. Don’t be late.”
“Thank you,” said Danny. “Seriously. You don’t know how much this means to me. You are such a… WANKER!”
“What the—”
“Not you!” he said before Krystal could hurt him. “That guy!” He pointed to a man with a bony face and a deathly pallor who was standing behind Krystal. “That one. Right there. That’s the guy who got me fired.”
Three men in black suits were talking together near the stage. They looked like they’d just come from a funeral, and Viktor looked like the deceased, his already pale complexion almost translucent beneath the cold white light he was standing under.
“So this is all his fault?”
Danny nodded, his jaw flexing as he stared at Viktor the way El Magnifico stared at something he wanted to ignite.
“Suvi,” said Krystal, “pass me that mic, would you?”
She took the microphone from Vesuvius and shoved her way through the door behind the bar. Danny was still wondering where she’d gone when everyone in the room started cheering and chanting. He turned to see what the fuss was about and found Krystal standing in the middle of the stage, surrounded by a sea of punters who wrongly assumed they were getting an encore.
“You all having a good night?” she said, aiming the microphone at the crowd.
Everybody roared in agreement.
“I thought you might say that. Anybody up for a little game?”
Another boisterous chorus of approval.
“The prize is one private dance with yours truly…” she said. She waited for the room to calm down before continuing. “… and the winner is the first person to unblock the men’s toilet using that guy’s head.”
Vesuvius cut the lights and turned a single spotlight on Viktor. The man raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, but to everyone else it looked like he was inexplicably trying to identify himself, as if being used as a human toilet brush was something he actually quite enjoyed.
“May the best man win!” she shouted as everybody piled on Viktor, who turned an extra shade of pale as the crowd dragged him off to the bathroom.
CHAPTER 19
A man with what appeared to be a single giant dreadlock slowly pushed his rickety drinks cart along the path. Danny watched him from his place on the bench, his soggy panda mask steaming gently beside him after a flustered and ultimately misguided attempt to entertain the crowd with his own rendition of the Gangnam dance.
He bought a can of Pepsi (which on closer inspection turned out to be something called Popsi) and held it against his forehead while he watched an elderly lady in a cardigan, far too thick for such a sunny day, trying to attach a leash to a hyperactive beagle. Every time she came within arm’s reach of the animal, the beagle would gallop off and patiently wait for her to catch up before repeating the process ad infinitum. Noticing Danny, either by sight or by the curious odor that continued to emanate from his costume no matter how many times he washed it, the dog trotted over to investigate, sniffing his furry leg as if it wasn’t sure whether to bite it, hump it, or use it as a pee-post. It was still trying to decide which course of action to take when the old lady seized her moment to creep up from behind and fumble the leash onto the distracted dog’s collar. She gave Danny a knowing nod, as if the two of them had been catching dogs together for years. Danny nodded back and watched the lady shuffle off while her beagle kept trying to trip her up with the leash.
He’d barely put his mask back on when somebody spoke behind him.
“Do you just sit in the park all day?”
Danny fumbled for his pad and pen with his cumbersome panda paws as Will appeared in front of him.
It’s nicer than sitting in the middle of the motorway, he wrote.
“No, I mean, don’t you have a job or something?”
I’m a panda. This is my job.
Will smiled. He took off his schoolbag and sat on the bench.
Don’t you have a job? wrote Danny.
“Yeah,” said Will, removing his tie and wrapping it around his hand. “School. I work long hours and don’t get paid. It’s the worst job ever.”
I think I prefer my job.
“I’d prefer your job too,” said Will. “Except today.” He squinted at the sun. “It’s too hot to be a panda today.”
It’s okay. Pandas have complex cooling mechanisms.
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
Danny held up his can of Popsi.
Will rolled his eyes. “Very complex,” he said.
Danny stared at the unopened can and wished he could take a sip without blowing his cover.
“Mr. Carter’s Complex Conundrum,” said Will, as if to himself.
Danny looked at him, confused.
“It’s this thing in my maths class. The teacher, Mr. Carter, he always writes a problem on the board at the start of every lesson, and at the end he picks somebody in the class to solve it. He calls it his Complex Conundrum. I hate it.”
Why? wrote Danny, unsure where this was going exactly but eager to keep Will talking.
“Because I can never figure it out. Sometimes I know the answer, but most of the time I don’t, so whenever it’s something I don’t understand, I stay quiet and put my head down and hope he doesn’t see me.” Will thought for a minute. “It’s hard to explain, but that’s sort of why I stopped talking.”
Because of maths class? wrote Danny. He made a mental note to find Mr. Carter and give him a complex conundrum of his own.
“No,” he said. “Not because of maths class. Because, well, something bad happened last year. Something really bad, and it just didn’t make any sense.” He pulled on the end of his tie and it closed around his hand like a mini boa constrictor. “It was like Mr. Carter’s maths problems but a million times worse. I didn’t know what to do, so I just did what I always do in maths.”
You stayed quiet and hoped people would leave you alone? wrote Danny. Will nodded. Danny scrapped his mental note to wait for Mr. Carter in the school car park.
“I just thought it would all go away if I ignored it for long enough. Like, as long as I didn’t attract any attention to myself, then the problem would just, I don’t know, disappear or something.” Will unwound his tie and started wrapping his hand up again. “It seemed a lot more normal when I said it in my head. Now it just sounds weird.”