Chapter 9: Leaflow’s Adventures
The problem with getting fuel was that it cost money. The problem with money was that Leaflow had none. None to speak of, at least. And he could not just walk up to anyone and expect to get some without using force. If he did use force the best he could expect was to get beat up by the person’s relatives; they might even call the cops or, worse, an insane asylum on him.
He could go the honest way and get a job to earn the money, but that would take time. And he didn’t like to leave his car sitting beside the road for so long. Perhaps there was something he could do to earn a few fast bucks in this town. He would have to look around and see what would come up.
First he would have to figure out what to do with the camping supplies that had been left behind with him. Neither of the others had thought to take any of the items with them, leaving in a huff as they had. The tent, sleeping bag and cooking pot were too useful to get rid of. After looking at them for a moment, Leaflow decided to stash them in the nearby shrubbery. He might need them to camp with by night time, if he couldn’t fetch his car right away. If he did, somehow, strike the jackpot before then he would simply pick them up with the car later on.
The small amounts of bread and cheese left from their trip he stowed in the capacious pockets of his cloak, to be eaten later on. But the meat left in the ice chest was too likely to spoil for him to carry around with him. Even in the cooler they would soon be turning, as the ice had all melted to water by now. Hefting the chest in both hands, Leaflow began to walk down the nearby sidewalk into the more populous parts of town. Someone must need a bit of free pork, or at least be able to accept it with no questions asked.
Leaflow was given odd looks a few times, a cloaked man with glowing eyes walking down the side of the street with a big cooler in his arms as if he were going to a barbecue. But he was used to odd glances, so he ignored them or gazed back with bland inquiry.
His instincts led him to a poorer corner of the little mountain city, where simple houses stood in rows with small spaces of lawn around them. Rusting junk, dirty laundry and skinny dogs lay on the lawns, seemingly forgotten under the warm sun. Leaflow walked quietly now, keeping his eyes open. Coming around a dusty hedge growing between two houses, he heard a little girl playing close by.
Her high pitched voice was matter-of-fact as she spoke to some make-believe friend, “I know you would like to have steaks tonight, Angeline, but Mama doesn’t have any meat. She says we’ll have to just eat boxed macaroni and cheese, like we did last night, with no hamburger or ham. Now, now, don’t complain. You know money’s been scarce since Daddy broke his ankle. And the mortgage on the house has to be paid, along with the bills for the new truck.”
Leaflow stood still, listening to this sad but common story without a blink of his eyes. When the girl had stopped talking, he risked a peek around the bushes to see a little golden head bent over a round of wood, where a plastic doll sat with acorn cups in front of her as plates and bowls. It was a deep, dark secret that he would not have told his closest friend, but Leaflow had a soft spot for kids.
Moving around the bushes, he came to a stop behind the girl and gently lay the cooler down without making a noise. Then he leaned over and tapped the girl on the shoulder. She looked up, mouth and eyes widening as though she would scream, but she was too frightened.
“I heard you needed some meat,” Leaflow told her, gesturing toward the box, “so I brought you some. It’s in there. I hope you like pork.”
She was only able to nod in wonder. Slipping quickly away after this speech, Leaflow fancied himself being, in her mind, a sort of good fairy that had descended to give her a wish. As he was leaving he heard her voice raised in a shriek heading toward the house.
“Mommy, Daddy, an alien freak just left us some meat!”
“Ah, well, that’s more accurate, I suppose,” Leaflow muttered to himself, hoping that the parents would eat the objects in the cooler instead of being too afraid to touch them. Though they probably would not believe the little girl’s description, they might still think it unsafe to take slightly warm meat, drowning in ice-water, from a stranger.
With his good deed for the week dispensed with, the cloaked man started going slowly back through town looking for an opportunity to earn fuel for his car. It was a town mostly built around the timber industry, which he did not think that he had the skills or time to enter into, but there was also the usual small stores and businesses around. Could he perhaps wash windows, scrub dishes or wait at tables to earn the money he needed? It was a possibility. He certainly hated doing anything that required him to follow strict rules or act like an automaton. That was why he had cut the Rubles garden into such straight lines; not because he liked it that way himself, but as a subtle mockery of his employer’s way of thinking.
He was wandering down a side-street when he noticed a door open ahead of him and stay that way for a few moments, without anyone coming out. Leaflow paused in his walk, pressing himself against the wall in the shadows, curious to see what would happen next. It was not long before a tall man with a cheery, heavy-set face and a shorter figure with a weaselly chin came striding down the alley toward the door.
“Thousand-dollar limit, per usual?” The weaselly one queried, not noticing Leaflow in the shadows nearby.
The tall one nodded, not saying anything. They disappeared into the door afterwards. It closed after them and latched quietly. Not much had been said to give a clue as to what they were doing there. But it was enough for Leaflow. They were playing poker and gambling at it, down in that door. The stakes were set fairly high as well; it was no matchstick-and-dime sort of game. But Leaflow had played around with higher stakes before. He had once bet his life against a car and won. The only things he had in his pocket worth much money were a quarter, a nickel and the food from their camping supplies. Even his lighter was gone, stolen by Eugene. The boy had not yet admitted to it, but Leaflow knew. It had been one of his few possessions valuable enough to barter with. Now he would have to do without.
Walking up to the door, he rapped on it softly with his knuckles. A scratchy voice came from just within, “what do you want?”
“To play the game,” he answered in a matching low tone.
“Care to give a name?”
“Not my real one.”
“Then you may come in.” The door opened half-way with the last words spoken, letting Leaflow slip into the dim lighting of the building. An old, buck-toothed woman hunched next to the door, partially hidden in the shadows behind it. Her white hair straggled down over her shoulders in long strands like a witch’s locks, hanging incongruously over the cellphone in her shirt pocket. Without another word she pointed a finger down the steps inside, which led to a faint light in the basement underneath the building. Leaflow thanked her with a nod and trotted down the steps, letting his gloved fingers run lightly over the banister.
At the bottom he came upon the scene he had expected. A round table sat in the middle of the room, surfaced in wood-printed vinyl and spotted with coffee rings. A dim electric light hung from the ceiling, kept in its place by a metal cage. This threw striped shadows across the table below and the three men sitting around it. There was the two men Leaflow had seen earlier, on the right and left, while an un-before discovered personage sat facing the newcomer. He was a slab-faced fellow with thick, black eyebrows and a pack of cards in his hands.
“Who the heck are you?” this man demanded, setting down the cards to pull a cigarette out of his mouth and bend his eyebrows threateningly.
“I am the eye in he sky, gentlemen, looking at you I can read your minds,” Leaflow told them with a half-bow, “the offspring of another dimension and time.”
“Hey, what sort of nut is this guy?” The weaselly man sputtered in a whiny voice.
“A fool, more like,” Slab-face said thoughtfully, “I don’t know why Gretel let him in.”
“I came to play the game,” Leaflow explained, moving over to sit in the only empty chair, which was on his side of the table.
The tall, cheerful player chuckled at his audacity, “a rich fool, I take it, by his glowing contacts and theatrical suit. Either that or a runaway from the circus. How 'bout we let him play, just this once? It can’t hurt anything.”
“As long as he knows the game,” the slab-faced man seemed to be the leader, giving his consent even though their other companion still whined and complained about letting Leaflow join.
But once the cloaked man had told them that he played poker often, things settled down and the game began.
Leaflow had little to go on at first and even had to borrow some cash to meet the first bet that he thought he could win. But after that he met a winning streak, before losing a little, gaining some, and losing a little more. He played quietly, his hands moving quickly when he drew or discarded. The others rarely spoke, though sometimes Weasel made a complaint or Cheerful a joke to keep the mood evened out. They were all a little surprised at how often the newcomer won, having expected to clean him out and send him on his way.
The bets were getting steep on the fifth round. Sensing that the others had fairly high hands, Leaflow rearranged his own a little before betting for the last time. Cheerful folded, getting up to stalk around the basement with a series of jokes which no one paid attention to, especially as it was just his way of complaining.
“Three aces,” Leaflow declared, laying his cards out in an even spread. Weasel had two pair, kings and queens. Slab-face was watching the newcomer with a peculiar expression as he set his own cards down, “Two aces, three sevens.”
There was a heavy pause, the air seeming to fill with a leaden weight hanging just above them. Weasel broke it, exclaiming, “something’s wrong here! Somebody’s been cheating us!”
With a quick hand he turned over all of Leaflow’s cards, as well as the ones that the boss had put down. All of them had red backs with a criss-cross pattern, but the lines on one of the cards were just slightly tighter in weave than the others.
Cheerful had come back to lean over the table at the commotion and now snatched up the odd card with a cry, “this one is different! Why, that clown has inserted another ace into his hand!”
All eyes turned to Leaflow. Slab-face took a pocket knife from his coat, flicking open the long blade thoughtfully, “he’s been cheating us all along. Haven’t you, weirdo? That’s how you won so often. Well, we don’t like that here, see? A man who cheats at cards deserves whatever life gives him. Hold him, boys.”
The two men made a dart for Leaflow’s arms, but he was quicker. Jumping up and back, he knocked the chair over onto the floor with a slam. His hand darted into the folds of his cloak and he drew his sword with a deadly swish, backing up as he pointed it at first one and then the other of them.
“Men who allow themselves to be cheated so easily should learn not to gamble.”
Cheerful and Weasel hesitated, neither wanting to be the first to run into the obviously sharp point of the sword. It was an archaic weapon, one which their breed had not seen as a serious threat in a long time. But it made the blade no less destructive. Leaflow swung its point back and forth until he reached the bottom of the stairs, upon which he turned suddenly to run up them. Behind him Slab-face slammed the table with a fist, shouting, “he’s getting away!”
There was a whiz and the pocket knife clattered off of the banister near Leaflow, thrown with poor aim. Footsteps thumped after him as he dashed up the steps to the door. There he found Gretel standing, a rolling-pin held threateningly in her hands. “You shall not pass!”
“No lies now,” Leaflow swung his sword so that it bit into the wood, knocking the pin out of the old woman’s hands. She clutched her hands together, crying out at the shock. Carrying the weighted blade with him, the cloaked man tore open the latch and hurried out of the door. Cheerful and Weasel were still hot on his heels, shouting after him, “come back! Cheater!”
They ran down the alley this way, out into the street. Cars honked and pedestrians screamed as Leaflow jumped out into the middle of the road, narrowly avoided being hit by a pickup truck and scrambled on to the sidewalk at the other side. Glancing back, he saw his pursuers caught behind traffic for the moment, so took the time to remove the rolling pin from his blade. As he was glancing over his shoulder again a hand descended on his shoulder.
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“Now, then, what’s all this about?”A stout, red-haired pedestrian asked, a frown on his honest face.
“They were gambling secretly and I found out,” Leaflow said truthfully, pointing back at the two, who were starting to cross the road with purposeful strides, “now they want to punish me.”
“Really?” The stout fellow took his hand away and began to move toward them, his frown even deeper. Leaflow took the opportunity to sheath his sword and slip away, before their side of the story could be told.
“Perhaps that was a foolish way to get money,” he told himself once he had put some distance between himself and the gamblers, “I should really know better by now. But it worked.”
Taking a hand from his pocket, he looked down at the bills he had taken from the table while everyone else had been looking at the cards. It was only his own winnings, but that was enough to fill his car and get back on the road toward Yad.
---
A few days later Leaflow pulled into the city where Yad’s address was. Yad had given it to him when they first met, in case they wanted to exchange letters later on. Which Leaflow had tried to do to get his fair share of the money, but to no effect.
He could remember the city name and street number, but the name of the street he had forgotten by now. Something about gems or flowers, he thought, but the actual name had escaped him. And he had lost the piece of paper with the address written on it in the jail cell before they escaped. But with his car he could buzz around a little and see what he came up with; spotting the street name on a sign was sure to bring it back to him. He had some fuel to spend now; after having filled it once in California with the money he had won at cards, Leaflow had driven it through to Nevada. There he had worked honestly for a couple hours fixing a rich, eccentric old woman’s house and been given enough money to see him through to Montana.
Yad might listen to him in person though he was not a stable character. Leaflow knew what he looked like, unlike either of his former partners in the venture.
It was early in the morning when he drove his car slowly down the main street, looking to each side in hopes of recognizing the right road name. He passed streets named after presidents, ones named with letters and a taco van which smelled tempting on an empty stomach. He was about to pass it, but then decided to stop for breakfast since he was there, anyway. He had not eaten dinner the night before, being too eager to get to the city to stop. And his bread and cheese was just about gone.
Leaflow turned the car into an empty lot, spinning it around to drive back to where the van was parked. Leaving the car running, he hopped out and moved over to the large, open window of the van.
“How much are your tacos?”
The Mexican woman inside pointed at a sign on the outside of the van, saying something in her own tongue. He turned his head to read down the list, muttering under his breath, “Hot tacos. Extra hot tacos. Burning hot tacos. White hot flames of Hades tacos. Hmm, not much choice, is there?”
He turned his eyes back to the window, “I’ll take the hot tacos, please.”
“Si, si, they’re all hot,” the woman nodded pleasantly, waving at the sign again.
“Yes, I’ll take the regular hot ones,” Leaflow explained, tapping the first one on the list with a finger.
“Si, si all hot,” the woman nodded again.
Leaflow sighed, before meeting her gaze and saying in the same voice as he had used on Waffle, “I want a taco, please.”
Finally, the woman made him a taco and he was allowed to pay for it. He walked away unwrapping it, thinking unpleasant thoughts about the Earthling ancestors who had built the tower of Babel so long ago.
He had just taken a large bite and was about to get into his car when he saw someone go into a building across the street. For a moment he continued to open the car door, the image not registering. But then it matched up with another picture in his memory and he realized what he had just seen. That strange, puffy-cheeked face, with a tuft of pale hair at the top and a mouth quirked as if puzzling over a deep question.
It was Yad.
At that same moment the heat from the taco hit, making his eyes water from the spicy sauce. He wondered briefly if, somehow, he had ended up with a White Hot Flames of Hades taco. He should have bought a drink to go with it.
Leaflow told himself he had more important things to do right now than worry about the hotness of a taco. Throwing it unfinished onto his seat, he shut off the car and tucked the keys into his pocket. Then he crossed the street to see what sort of building his quarry had just gone into. It was not a house or apartment complex, as he had expected. There was a brass plaque on the door, with the words, 'William Moss, Psychiatrist’ stamped on it.
“Uh oh, this isn’t the sort of place I wanted to go in to,” Leaflow murmured to himself, stopping in front of the door. He disliked being studied as a subject or case, or having to talk to the sort of person who would do that to others for a fee.
He considered just staying outside and waiting for Yad to come out, but that could be hours. Or the man could slip out of a back way without Leaflow noticing. The best thing would be to find him in the waiting room and press him to promise to talk to Leaflow afterwards or even ask him straight out where the money was being kept. Steeling himself, the cloaked man went striding up the steps and in.
The door opened soundlessly into a short hall, which opened on to a waiting room at the far side. It had only a few chairs in it, spaced far apart in case the patients got on eachother’s nerves. Leaflow could see from where he stood that Yad was not in any of the chairs, though a door on the right side of the room had just closed, so perhaps he had gone in there. But that door was not the doctor’s office; the office door was directly across the waiting room from Leaflow. Perhaps the one on the side was a restroom, or then again it might be that Yad had seen him coming and it was a back exit.
Walking down the hall, Leaflow stepped into the waiting room. It was empty except for the receptionist, a young lady with very straight black hair.
Leaflow began to move toward the door on the right-hand side to see if it was labeled, trying to convince himself the whole time that no one was going to reach out from behind and drag him into the doctor’s office. He had been able to see that the door said ‘Employees’ when the receptionist spoke.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for someone,” Leaflow told her, intending to add a description.
But before he could say more she replied, “Oh, yes. That is a very common feeling. Many of our patients feel that they are looking for someone, a new love, a friend or just someone to talk to. It’s Dr. Moss’ specialty.”
“No, I meant that I’m looking for someone in particular. He just came in here a moment ago,” the cloaked man tried to explain, gesturing around the room.
Once again she cut him off before he could tell her who it was, “oh, yes, Dr. Moss can also cure that feeling. You know, when you think that you know people whom you’ve never met? It’s such an embarrassment. I understand; I was one of his patients once, too.”
“I can believe that,” Leaflow nodded to her, coldly, “excuse me, but I need to follow someone through here.”
“Oh, no you don’t, sir. What you need is to talk to--”
He didn’t hear any more of what she said. He simply went through the door and left her talking to herself. She was not, he decided, a receptionist. She was a living advertisement.
Through the door was another short hall, with three doors branching off of it at the end. The one on the left had symbols on it to show that it was a fire escape with an automatic alarm, while the other two were blank. Leaflow went quietly to try the one straight ahead, but found only a storage closet with cleaning tools and a sink inside. Closing that door, he put his hand to the one on the left to open it a crack. Peering through, he saw the doctor’s office, with a desk, easy chair and book shelves. There was also another door leading off of it on the far side and a water dispenser under a window. But neither Yad nor the doctor was in the room.
Seeing the water in the clear plastic tank reminded Leaflow of the taco which had recently made a fine Pompeii of his innards. Stealthily, he moved across the floor to take a paper cup and fill it. He downed it in only a few mouthfuls and began to refill the cup for another round. It was half-way full when he realized that the door into the reception room was opening. Shutting off the tap, he took a step toward the escape. But just as his hand touched the knob a mild, nervous voice spoke behind him, “Doctor? The girl outside said that you were ready to see me.”
The cloaked one’s head turned, green eyes glinting around his hood. Standing in the center of the floor was a thin, worn man with hair and eyes so pale they were like a hazy winter sky. This figure did not seem to notice Leaflow’s odd appearance at all. He simply stood with his eyes focused gently on something above Leaflow’s head and his shoulders stooping.
“You’re not going to leave, doctor, are you? The girl said that I could see you now.”
“Of course...yes, I have time now.”
Trapped, Leaflow decided to play along instead of arousing the patient’s curiosity with a violent escape, “I just need to check something in here for a moment.”
He opened the door and stepped through with confidence, as if he knew his way. But inside was only another storage room, this one with shelves of blank paper, boxes of pencils, ink-splatter tests, files on patients and other psychology props. It had no halls off of it, or even a window big enough to escape through. Leaflow was truly trapped, as well as thoroughly puzzled about how Yad had made his escape. Unless he had made it out of the large office window, and managed to shut it behind him before Leaflow caught up. Having found no way to get out, Leaflow was forced to go back and carry the masquerade through.
He grabbed up a sheaf of papers and a pencil, trying to look both competent and carefree as he came back out. He waved his patient to a chair and took the large, leather one across from him. “First of all, what is your name?”
“Simeon Tinker.”
“Good. And your occupation?” Leaflow continued, scribbling on the top piece of paper without looking up.
“I’m a cashier at a food mart, as well as a dog walker on my weekends,” Simeon explained, leaning forward anxiously to peer over the table at what the supposed doctor was doing. Leaflow moved his head back, letting the patient see the papers as he began shuffling steadily through them. All but one of them were blank, without a mark to mar the glaring white. But on one piece he had drawn a sketchy explosion with the word 'Boink!’ written in it as you might see in a comic book. He kept flipping through the papers, letting the marked one come up at random intervals while they watched in silence.
Shuffle, shuffle, BOINK.
Finally he spoke with a faint sigh, “mm-hmm. Your case is an interesting one. What are the names of the dogs you usually walk?”
“Fluffy and Waggers,” Simeon returned, staring at him with a dawning look of surprise in his watery face, “but I came to discuss my nervous loneliness. Since my wife passed on, you know.”
“I see,” Leaflow swiveled in the chair to reach behind him and finish filling the paper cup of water. When he turned back he lay the papers on the desk and took a packet from his cloak. It had a yellow label with the word 'Lemonade,’ written on it and when he poured it into the cup the liquid inside turned faintly yellow.
Without a word he passed it to his patient, who thanked him before taking a small sip. It wasn’t until then that Leaflow went on, in a thoughtful voice, “I know how it is to lose someone who is a part of your life. Whether you liked them or not, they became part of you. Take one of my old mentors, for instance. He taught me much of what I know about poisons and was an expert himself. But I never really liked him. He was foul-spoken, rough and often abusive. One day, once he had taught me his trade, he had a sudden heart attack and died. Very strange circumstances...”
Simeon choked on the drink, coughing politely into his hand before setting the cup hastily aside on the desk.
“...But I’ll never forget him,” Leaflow finished reflectively, “his lessons effect my life to this very day.”
Both of their eyes fixed on the paper cup for a few minutes, contemplating the tinted fluid inside.
After a time Simeon looked up hopelessly, “do you have a suggestion for a cure? For my nervousness, I mean.”
The last words he added hastily, quickly distancing them from having anything to do with the drink.
Leaflow regarded him carefully, leaning one finger against his hooded head as he considered the possibilities, “trust yourself. It’s not advice that many psychiatrists would give you, because most of them just want you to keep coming back for their 'cures.’ Stop coming to places like this. All it does is make you rely on someone else to help you, which in turn makes you feel lonely and nervous when no one is there to hold your hand.”
Simeon blinked a few times, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling as if he had just seen a vision there. Finally he looked down to ask, “do you really mean that? Just trust myself and everything will be okay?”
Leaflow nodded once, firmly, “of course.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Simeon stood up, his face suddenly gaining some expression and life. He leaned over the desk to shake the hooded man’s hand, adding with a wry smile, “you know, when I first came in here I thought that you were crazy. In fact, I did up to just a moment ago. Now I’m not even sure that you are Dr. Moss, but if you are than you are the strangest and most effective psychiatrist I’ve gone to yet. Once I leave here, the rest of the world will seem perfectly sane.”
“Thank you,” Leaflow said gravely, letting the patient see himself out. As soon as he was gone Leaflow got up and went to open the back window, peering out at the ground beneath. The grass was difficult to find tracks in, but just below the window did not seem to have been disturbed by human feet recently. Though by now, he was beginning to wonder where the real Dr. Moss had gotten himself off to, as well as where Yad had gone.
But it was best to leave before he found out where the doctor was, or the doctor found him. Yad would just have to wait until Leaflow could get to his apartment. As he was leaving, Leaflow felt a sudden wish that his old prison buddies were there to share in the spoils when he was so close to getting them.