Tune in Tomorrow, page 18
“This won’t happen again,” said Nico.
“You can’t guarantee that.” Starr gave him a hard stare. “Not unless you know what caused it in the first place.”
He set a hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear this will never happen to you again.” He withdrew a green MARBLE from his pocket and set it on the side table. A blue swirl danced inside. “Use this tomorrow, if you’re up for it. One o’clock.”
That would be tricky timing; Dakota was expecting her in the lobby at three. Starr decided she’d make it work. “Where are we going?”
“Outside.” He raised an eyebrow. “Mythic outside.”
“And here we are.” Mav set the pitcher down and handed over the mug, then dropped a stack of scripts on the side of the bed. “Well?”
Nico rose. “Tomorrow, then.” He hurried away from the set. A moment later, the doors closed.
“Something I said?” Mav slid back into his seat, taking some of the scripts onto his lap. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.”
Starr raised an eyebrow; this was the most disingenuous she’d ever seen him be. “Mav—do you love this place?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Never thought ’bout it. What’s the mumbo-jumbo? I’m in a co-dependent relationship.”
“How so?”
“The longer you’re here, the less you want to leave. And then the less you can leave. This place has a way of erasing what’s important on the other side of the Veil.”
Starr nodded. Already much of what made up her daily life on the other side paled in comparison to what she was doing every day at Tune in Tomorrow. Her apartment was just a place she slept, and sometimes, not even that. Her friends were wondering when they would get to see her again and asked all the time about her secret project. What was that like after decades? “So why stay? How do you make it work?”
He rubbed his face, then got up and walked around the set. “I’m not the fella to ask. I’ve just been limping along for a bunch of decades. See, I was married when they first hired me. You try and tell your wife—who knows you’re an actor all the way through—that you’ve got this job you can’t talk about. And no, she can’t visit the set. And no, you can’t even bring her pictures of it. Further, she can’t see the finished deal. Stephanie thought I was working blue.”
“Blue?”
He glanced away. “Nudies.”
“Oh!” Starr sat up straight and her side jolted with pain. “Ow. You mean porn.”
“That’s not what polite folks called it in my day.” He returned to sit on the edge of the bed. “Maybe that’s what split us in the end. Or maybe it was how I kept lookin’ like the far edge of thirty, and she didn’t—not after twenty years. Steph was a real linear thinker. So I did bring her here once. Showed her around. Introduced her to everybody. And of course, like I knew they would, they wiped her memory of it the minute she stepped through the Gate. I came back the next day, same as usual and had this flash: everybody was in costume, and we were just a bunch of children playing dress up. But I did stay. I picked the place, not the woman. She left me a year later.”
“I’m sorry, Mav.” Starr rested her hand on his. He stared at the contact, then back into her face. “Thing is, I don’t want to quit. I want to fight for my job.”
Face it, Sam piped up. You’re not going anywhere.
Sam was right. But this wasn’t about Jason. Or Nico. Or Mav. It was all of it—all of them. She wasn’t going to throw away this chance.
Mav turned his hand around and gave hers a squeeze back. The soft press of his fingers calmed her. “Thing is,” he said, “it’s kind of fun to keep play-acting. Maybe it’s not so bad, being a bunch of children telling stories after all.”
Starr’s resolve felt renewed. Mav was here. He’d stayed when everyone else left. He was a good man. “Hand over my pages, please,” she instructed. “Let’s read some lines.”
Chapter 21
We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at the Starrs
Starr held the green MARBLE Nico had given her up to the lobby light. The blue swirl inside reacted, creating a tiny tornado of excitement inside. “How does it work?” she asked Phil.
The dragon took a slurp from his gallon of sriracha—which Starr had hauled through the Gate from a warehouse in Queens a week ago—and burped the scent of barbecue grill. “Something to do with your hands,” he said. “I don’t think you swallow it.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s hands,” she said. “Can you tell where it goes?”
Phil squinted at the tiny bauble. “Pretty little patch of green. Might even look familiar. If you run into Kyle, tell him I said his mare smells of elderberries.”
Starr raised an eyebrow, then palmed the MARBLE. It was time to go. She downed the rest of the special tea Oleander had been making for her each morning since the wardrobe incident—it masked most of the soreness of her healing ribs—and took a breath. “Now, don’t forget about the message for—”
“Dakota.” He gave her a talon-up and went back to slurping.
Starr thought she had things under control: Nico now, Dakota two hours later. Both at the same MARBLEd green patch. She was certain Dakota would be grateful to escape the sterile confines of the studio after nearly three days; Starr herself was feeling like a shut-in. She’d had to take things carefully: her bruised ribs hurt if she breathed too hard, and she walked with the speed of an old lady. But the call of the outdoors—particularly mythic outdoors—was a siren in her ears.
She stared at the MARBLE one last time, curling her fingers around it as she’d seen the other actors do. “So, you just close your hand and—”
“—Whoa.”
Starr appeared instantaneously on a rambling, grassy knoll that was far beyond a ‘patch.’ Her insides jolted, like she was in a plane that had lost altitude. A cotton candy-scented breeze ruffled her hair, and she shaded her eyes from the bright sun above. In the distance, a spire and crenellated fortifications poked from a stand of trees. Nearby, a pond surface sparkled with reflected sunlight.
She knew this place.
Central Park? It certainly looked like it. Or… maybe a heightened version of the legendary New York green space. Mythic Central Park. And only a dragon could consider it ‘little.’
The expansive grass was perfect, every soft blade an unblemished shade of green. They shifted colors when she brushed her hands over the tips. Starr gazed into the cloudless azure sky, which was broken by two swirling, dancing wyverns. They were singing.
“Dashing through the snow,” cawed one.
“In a one-horse open sleigh,” the other picked up the line.
“O’er the fields we go?” Starr couldn’t help but fill in the next part and giggled. Wyverns singing holiday carols. Well, Nico had promised something special.
Speaking of which, how did one find a Nico in a haystack in this Central Parkiest of Central Parks?
As if in answer, the earth rumbled. Shook. Did some jazzy moves. Starr stumbled, and nearly fell: it was like a ten-horse open sleigh was coming her way. Pounding hooves closed in from all sides. Just a few yards away, a gang of shirtless men astride enormous steeds crested a hill and came bounding in her direction. Their long, flowing hair billowed behind and down their backs, joining neatly with their mounts’ bodies—
Centaurs!
Very, very near centaurs!
Starr waved her hands. “I’m walkin’ here!” she shouted, but the din of the hooves and cries of the herd drowned her out. Her legs felt rooted to the spot, so she crouched down, covering her head and braced to be run over.
Silence, followed by soft snorts. A whicker, then a gruff nicker.
Starr released her arms and stared up into the shadows. She’d been encircled by a pack of seven centaurs staring down at her, breathing heavily, sweating. Their bodies were the size of Clydesdales, all sleek and varying shades of chestnut, black and patchy pinto; their male halves came in equally as many shades, and each was toned and buffed to a high, shiny gloss. They smelled like a combination of grass and Axe body spray.
“Hi?” She carefully raised a hand.
“Do you think the small mortal has it?” asked one with short-cropped greying hair and glasses.
“Let’s find out!” cried a second, his deeply tanned skin perfectly blending with his horsehair shade, blond mane-hair a striking contrast. He wore glasses, but the lenses had no frames. He lurched forward and grabbed Starr’s ankle.
The next thing she knew she was upside down, trying to press her skirt over her thighs, so as not to show off her pale blue underthings to the entire mythic world. “Stop that!” she shouted. “Hey! No manhandling—or horsehandling!”
“I don’t see it,” said a third centaur in a high, thin voice. A mustached face appeared beneath Starr’s, and she had to stop squirming; it was hurting her chest. “Not sure where she’d hide the flag anyway.”
“Those fillies are totally kicking our hindquarters,” sighed one of the smaller centaurs, folding his arms over a magnificent chest. “Again. We are never gonna win Capture the Flag at this rate.”
“I am not hiding anything,” Starr barked, about one percent more angry than she was terrified. “Including a flag! And if you don’t put me down I will summon my security dragon and he will send you all off to the glue factory!”
Blond mane and glasses appeared beneath her. “You know Phil?”
Starr’s eyes widened. “Kyle?”
The world upended again, so that she was right-side up, head spinning. Kyle held her shoulders, then set her gently on the ground. Indignant, she stomped one foot and brushed her skirt.
“You know Phil,” he repeated, then gasped. “Wait!” Kyle gazed around the circle. The centaur’s eyes were saucer-sized. “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!”
Kyle’s voice boomed so forcefully the circling wyverns paused in their carol. Starr felt her hair wilt.
“YOU ARE SAMANTHANA DRAPER! WE LOVE YOU AND EVERYONE FROM SHADOW OAK!”
Legs flew. Several centaurs reared up. One got so excited he defecated, and everyone had to shift a few yards away. Starr considered trying to escape, but there was that whole moving like an old lady thing. She settled for slowly edging away from the centaurs, who had transformed from considering her a mere ‘small mortal’ who might be trafficking in game flags to her Biggest Fans Ever. And they were very, very big.
The centaurs hardly noticed she was trying to get away and kept trotting after her. “Sam Draper! What are you doing here?” Kyle asked, clasping his hands in front of his chest. “Is this a Very Special Episode? Are you going to invite us to Shadow Oak, Sam? Are we going to be on the show? Where are all your friends?”
The correction was out before she could think about it: “Actually, my name is Starr Weatherby.”
Silence. Blank faces. Twitching tails. Then the grey-haired one grinned. “Of course it is!” He winked. “It’s your CODE NAME. You’re UNDERCOVER!”
Another round of excited whinnies and snorts, but fortunately no bowel evacuations. Starr opened her mouth to protest—this wasn’t on the show, they had to know that—but closed it again. They kept referring to a VSE—the Very Special Episode—the kind of thing she knew only happened once each year, at a convention. But even there, reality was the watchword. Reality kept the show going; Jason was insistent on this point. The viewers had to believe it was totally happening, in one-hour bursts five days a week.
“Riiiight,” she said at last. “Undercover.”
“On a SUPER IMPORTANT MISSION,” the centaur with the high voice added.
“And a VSE!” cried a third.
“Sure,” she nodded, the yes, and-ing kicking in. “It’s part of the VSE.” She felt Sam step into her like putting on an inner costume. “Thank goodness I found you all.” Starr gazed around at the eager, grinning herd. They’d completely abandoned their game and were now doing the equivalent of live-action roleplaying with her. Part of Starr wanted to forget Nico and Dakota and have adventures with centaurs for the rest of the day. Or week. Or lifetime. But every time she took a breath, she was reminded of why she’d agreed to meet Nico out here in the first place.
Not that she knew where he was—though the centaurs might have ideas. “Shhh! You are brilliant for having figured this out! But this is an Incredibly Secret Mission. Coded 007.”
The centaurs quieted, and a few looked over their shoulders with worried glances.
“It is urgent that I find Nic—er, Roland,” she continued. “I don’t suppose—”
“YES!” boomed Kyle, turning to the others. “I TOLD YOU I SAW HIM. YOU NEVER BELIEVE ME.” He lowered his voice when Starr winced.
“So maybe you can point out where he is?” She batted her eyelashes.
“I can do better than that,” Kyle grinned.
“You sure know how to make an entrance,” said Nico, fists on his hips, marveling.
Kyle slowed from a canter to a trot, then turned around and knelt so Starr could slide from his broad, sweaty back. She patted the centaur’s side and grinned at Nico, positive she was glowing, too. Riding astride a centaur’s back had been nothing like riding a horse—there was no bouncing, no jostling, no sense that she could fall off. Her ribs hadn’t twinged in the slightest. It had been as if they flew across the field and into this shady glade next to the sparkling pond.
“Kyle, meet Roland. His code name is Nico.”
Nico’s eyes widened.
Kyle did a little hoof dance, then craned his head to Starr. “I won’t tell ANYBODY about the Incredibly Secret 007 Mission,” he stage-whispered behind a hand. “Especially not the FILLIES.”
Starr suspected that wherever the herd of centauresses was—probably still looking to capture a flag someplace—they’d know everything within fifteen minutes. “Thank you, my brave and trusty steed.”
Kyle handed her a small whistle made of an oak branch. “When you need to get back, just use it. You know how to whistle, don’t you?”
“I sure do.” Nico waggled his eyebrows, Roland-style. “You just put your lips together and—”
“Good! Then you can show her!” Kyle gave both of their heads a small pat and squealed, “Away with me!” And he galloped back into the park.
“Well, that’s an interesting way to thread the needle,” said Nico. He looked every inch the Romeo, in spotless white trousers and a periwinkle chambray shirt. “Centaurs are not known for offering themselves as transportation.”
“Well, he didn’t give Starr a ride. He gave one to Sam.”
“Who’s, what, undercover as Starr?”
“Exactly.”
“Well played. Though it might give Jason a conniption if he knew you’d been talking to the fans.”
“You were the one who brought me here! You had to know that was a risk.”
He shrugged. “Best to throw you into the deep end. If you failed, we could always say Sam was having a brain aneurysm or something. A dissociative moment. There are all kinds of Band-Aids to cover a bit of awkwardness. You’ll see a lot more of that at the convention.”
Starr tried to wrap her head around that and gave up. “So, is this Central Park, or Centaur Park?”
“Both.” Nico gestured her toward the pond, and they stared out over the waters. “Our different worlds stack like a club sandwich and while every version is different, there are a few nexus points, like Central Park. Here, centaurs rule the place.” He took her hands. “Close your eyes.”
Starr swallowed, the warmth in his touch almost like another centaur ride. The world darkened. A moment later came the rumbling of movement deep underground, like being on the sidewalk when the A train rushed beneath. She opened her eyes. “What’s that?”
“Worlds, turning.” They resumed their stroll down the path. “Cogs and gears and time and space.” He turned. “I’m so pleased you came with me today, Starr. A person can go a little stir-crazy spending all their time in the studio.”
Starr wasn’t concerned about her mental state—until this weekend, she’d returned home each night and slept in her own bed. But as the months progressed, she wondered why she bothered. Emails? Laundry? Bad TV? Posting on social media when she couldn’t even talk about the most important things? (She had tried, but any comments about the show vanished seconds after she posted them.) Who wanted any of those things when you could hang out with brownies?
“I never see you leave,” she noted.
“Seven decades in, and there’s nothing for me to leave for.” He toyed with a leaf. “The world you live in? Your time? Not mine. Everyone I ever knew is either doddering or dead. I visit places like this instead. Maybe you’ll let me show you some of the others. When you’re a long-timer, most of what we have is time.”
Starr hadn’t thought about all of that before, what it was like to have infinite time and endless MARBLEs. It all came down to Temporal Arrest, as explained in chapter sixteen of the Guide. From the moment an actor won his or her first Endless Award, they ceased to age for the duration of their employment with the show. Once they left—quitting or being fired—the clock started again. To Starr, immortality was one of those thought experiments you get into with people during all-night drinking sessions. But as she was starting to understand, having the chance to stand still in time didn’t prevent the rest of the universe from going on dancing without you. It actually put you out of step.
“You’re a time traveler,” she realized.
“If so, I’m a terrible one. I travel very, very slowly. You’ll see.” It was a promise, not a threat. His eyes twinkled.
“Not if furniture keeps dropping on me.”
Nico slowed, gesturing at a park bench. “Let’s sit.” Seated, he clasped and unclasped his hands before looking at her again. “That situation won’t happen again. I told you that.”
“Other situations might,” she said. “Other situations have. Like… Amelia. Am I wrong?”
“I heard you’d been asking about ’Melia.” He stretched his arm across the bench’s backrest.
