44

"This meeting of the Sloan City Common Sense Patrol is now in session," Alan said.

They all laughed. It was Alan, Nora and Debbie, eating at Saffron Path.

"Well," Nora said. "I like the idea of everybody takes a quadrant and we just patrol till we find him."

Alan nodded.

"But I'm not sure how much I can really walk around, or how fast I'll be."

"You can come in the car with me," Debbie said. "We're going to want your intuition. You know Ned better than anyone."

Nora nodded.

"Is there anyplace he would definitely definitely not be?" Alan said. "Do you want to--"

Alan was momentarily distracted by a scraping at the window. Merry Conrad, in a polka dot shawl, tapped out a rhythm on the surface of the window glass with the bottom of an empty bottle.

"Tap-tap-tap."

"Merry!" cried Debbie. Merry looked up with her round eyes, chubby face.

"Merry Conrad! Get in here!" cried Debbie happily. She jumped up from her table and ran outside and hugged Merry, who looked bewildered by the attention. The pair of them came back inside and sat down.

"Merry," Debbie said. "This is Nora Bronsky, and this is Alan Hamel."

Merry shook hands. She looked confused, a little scared. She turned to Debbie, with an expression that said she was busting out with a question she had been avoiding asking.

"Do I know you?" asked Merry.

"You know all three of us, as a matter of fact," Debbie said. "Let's see. You have a brother called Charlie?"

Merry nodded.

"And Charlie is best friends with Derf, and Derf's dad is Jim Bombarde, um, that's my editor! You could just say that my boss is your brother's friend's dad."

"Wow," Merry said.

"But how would we have met? I don't remember. At a party, maybe? I've just seen you around town I guess. How are you?"

"Oh," Merry said. "I've been pretty depressed. I had some really weird things happen to me."

Debbie nodded. "Oh, have you, um, have you been to see a professional? To talk about it?"

"Oh, I don't know," Merry said. "I was talking to one friend who was giving me her opinion of therapists and psychologists and she said something I thought was really good. I even wrote it down."

Merry looked in her purse and pulled out a sheet of paper with a few lines of writing on it.

"'The reason you can't think what they do, is that you can think what they do and it's not enough.'"

"Interesting," Nora interjected.

Merry nodded. "But that's the stock advice, right? I mean, if you aren't interested in a therapist, what else is there?

"I don't want to get myself put on something. Those drugs scare the crap out of me, and I think they're overprescribed too, because managed care likes how cheap they are, and the lazy doctors don't have to treat every patient like an individual. Get 'em in, pump 'em full of drugs and move 'em out."

"Mmmm, maybe," Debbie said. "Did you see the series that we had in the News?"

"No," Merry said. "I didn't. Do you work for the Sloan City Daily News?"

"Yeah. I didn't write the series, but it was pretty good. I don't know, you might be right but it's a little more complic--"

She broke off because the waitress had come around. "Would you like something to drink?" she asked Merry.

"Yes, could I have some orange juice?" The waitress nodded and left.

"Well," Merry said. "Anyway, I've been trying to find my friend Sam and I think he's disappeared."

"Really?" said Debbie. "Is that the same Sam we've been writing about?"

"The playwright? No, it's a different Sam. But did you see the Tribune today?"

Debbie shook her head unhappily, both because she was reluctant to admit she hadn't read the Trib, and because she was disappointed that the first newspaper to come off the lips of a random Sloanian was the Trib rather than the Daily.

"Well, they added quite a few more Sams. And Grahams too. I had no idea all these guys lived in Sloan."

"Does anyone here remember the Son of Sam?" asked Nora.

"No," said Merry.

"Not firsthand," Debbie said, " but I read about him later on."

"You know Sammy Davis is missing?" Alan said. "And Sam Yorty too."

"Oh," Nora said. "I thought he died. I thought they both died, as a matter of fact."

"Nope," Alan said.

"Who's Yorty?" asked Debbie.

"Former mayor of L.A. He ran for president a couple times but now he owns a flower shop downtown."

"Extry!" cried a newspaper vendor at a little stand just outside the restaurant.

"Oh god!" said Merry suddenly.

"What's the matter?" asked Debbie.

"I ... I had to come here! I had to come back here! But there's something wrong with this place! What is it?" she rasped to Debbie.

Debbie noted with disappointment that after behaving relatively normally for several minutes, Merry had lurched back into a dramatic, histrionic state.

"I can feel it! This whole place, someone's dream, and it's a fraud!" The other three blinked at her. Why? Why does nobody around me see, it's like you can see the pixels dissolving around the edges like -- this whole little restaurant is just someone's cruel joke! Why???!"

Sharp-eyed readers may consider three question marks and an exclamation mark excessive, but Merry was so overwrought in how she asked the question, the extra marks were added on the end.

Alan blinked.

"Look!" Merry cried. "I can almost just" she put out her hands. "I can feel the lines!"

She looked like a mime, only she was tapping out, tracing, something she evidently felt as a solid.

"I can see the power lines from this place. God!" She went over to the wall and fiddled with a promotional poster of Bob B. Soxx, lifting enormous dumbbells over his head. She wrenched it off the wall.

There was a gasp!

"Knock that off!" said a burly waitress. Two burly waitresses and a burly waiter came along and restrained Merry by the elbows.

"Look!" she cried. Far behind the poster was what looked like a tiny hamster wheel and inside the hamster wheel were tiny humans running.

"Hey, look!" said Alan. "Sammy Davis Jr.!"

"Beautiful, baby!" Sammy Davis Jr. said to no one in particular.

The treadmills contained hundreds of Sams and Grahams, some famous, most not, running a wheel, seemingly forever.

"Why!" shouted Merry. "Someone in earshot knows!"

"What is your answer?" she cried histrionically.

So much for common sense, Alan thought. The histrionics get old really fast. I guess she has a point but it's easy to overdo it with too much drama.

Nothing continued to happen. The other patrons looked embarrassed. Some fled -- others shied away into all the other corners of the restaurant, carrying their plates with them, picking at saffron while standing up. Merry's captors were holding her back, but not taking her anywhere. They looked more embarassed than angry.

Alan, Nora and Debbie stood speechless, examining poor little Sammy Davis Jr., running on a treadmill.

Either Sammy Davis has gotten extremely small, thought Nora, or we're seeing that thing through some kind of lens. Or a computer, I suppose.

Merry sobbed. She addressed an invisible presence again, quieter. "I know you're there, I can see you coming out of the box!"

Coax me, the box seemed to say. Cajole me.

She pointed at a corrugated metal box on the far side of the room. It had been almost indetectible, camouflaged into a piece of three-dimensional artwork someplace between a painting and a sculpture.

"I can't see you, but I can feel you. And I exposed your wheel! You think you're going to go unnoticed, well, somebody just noticed you -- me! And I want to know, why is there a tiny hamster wheel embedded in the wall of Saffron Path?!?"

A doorbell rang and the cry of the newsboy came through, louder. Wuxtry!

"Wow!" Alan cried out in recognition. "Wolfgang Puck!"

Puck stepped in, all dressed up like a 1930s newsboy in flannel cap and overalls.

"What are you doing in that getup, Wolfgang?"

"Just making a little extra money," Puck said grimly. "You can call me 'W.'"

"So you're a mononym now?" Alan asked.

Merry needs to be snapped out of her funk, Alan thought. Let's have a good-natured conversation with Puck and act like nothing's happening. She'll have no choice but to feel better.

"Only sometimes," Puck said. "I go by W. when I want to hang around with the other mononyms. You know what they say?"

He winked at Alan.

"Huh?" Alan said. "Mononyms sleep around a lot?"

Puck gave a respectful whistle.

"How could there possibly be any connection between having just one name and-"

"Take a look," Puck said. He handed Alan a copy of the Trib, late edition.

Don't go anywhere, Merry, thought Debbie through the chatter. At least not until I have a chance to quote you.

The top story in the Trib was Sam Cooke, the pioneer of soul music, missing.

"I could have sworn Sam Cooke was dead," Alan said.

He read lower. Phil Spector picked up for murder! Smaller stories trumpeted Cher and Sting in secret mononym lovenest. There was another story about Madonna and Seal doing the same.

"It could be one of those urban legends," Puck said. "But what if?, you know?"

"You know I'm on to you," Merry said to Puck, angry and snide. "You can't play games forever. You're either going to kill me or I'm going to expose the hell out of you."

Puck blinked. "Er, have we met? Ahhh, I think I remember you from the Loyd Society," he said, extending his hand.

Merry didn't shake. "I can feel it coming," she said. "Gathering. You can run," she told Puck, "But you have no place to hide."