"Is the cat gone?" Extra said when we loaded our stuff into the Squirrelmobile.
The bird had been hiding from that cat the whole time we stayed there, popping out every so often to look around.
...And nibble a little pizza crust.
Morris would paw at the air whenever he came out. Even when I was trying to sleep, the cat would try to grab him, so he kept tucked in my shirt, kimono, or whatever else I had on, hiding in Hammer Space or wherever he goes when he's inside my clothing.
The cat had been nearly always underfoot from the time I entered my apartment to the time in which I'd finished unloading the Squirrelmobile's cluttered seats onto my carpet, but I managed to convince Amanda to leave the feline alone now, as Morris had an owner, er, someone that fed him in an upstairs apartment. Judging by the `drawing' in the hotel, Cool World was no place for non-animated cats anyway.
"Yes," I said to Extra. "It's safe to come out now."
It was a little after midnight. I had emptied my wallet of everything except money and my driver's license, but I had brought along some fairly useful tools, pencils, erasers and pens, a flashlight, a digital camera, one of those miniature sketch pads I had from some art gallery open house, and some of dad's comics.
My phone had charged some during the pizza cooking, so I hoped it would be usable for awhile. I had already called work and left a message about being out of the country for a few months. I hoped that would be good enough to avoid a no-call-no-show termination. In a more ideal situation, I would have called during business hours and informed a live person, but this was not to be.
I glanced uncomfortably at Amanda. Despite setting out separate sleeping bags and telling her to sleep on the other one, she kept curling up with me during that tiny amount of time I had been able to get some decent rest. She played with my feet, run her hands up my calves. One time she even tugged the bottom of my shorts. I got so mad that I slapped her in the face with a fly swatter. She thought it funny. I did not.
Our chauffeur sat in the front seat, eating toaster pastries as she pulled away from the curb. For food, I had given her two packages of those and a peanut butter sandwich.
I frowned when thought about that pizza again. If you've ever seen a cartoon character eating, you'd know that two slices were pretty much wasted on Sneezer and Riffraff. It looked like someone throwing food into one of those trash cans with the pedal operated lids.
In between bites, Dane waved a CD case at me. "Who in their right mind listens to Mike E. Clark and Whitney Houston in the same setting?"
"Got me," I said.
Inside my shirt, I heard Extra whistling What Is A Juggalo.
Our driver grinned. "So we're going back to the hotel, then?"
"Unless you can find a pawn shop open this hour of night," I said.
"I think some of them are open pretty late..."
She actually took me to one,but it was closed, so she drove me to the hotel instead.
As we drove past the front of the building, I saw a parked car with a piece of plywood embedded in its roof, and chunks of wood lying on the sidewalk. It seemed no one had cleaned up yet.
Because of my strange cargo, we took the back entrance with the garage instead of navigating the valet area.
The guard booth was still wide open, and we had a parking tag, so we had little trouble taking the elevator back in with our odd collection of supplies.
Dane, of course, just had to follow us. Holli put her to work carrying things.
It turns out the hotel had a camera and a tinny little microphone above the elevator buttons.
"What are you doing with that trash can and all those sacks?" a muffled voice said as the door was closing.
"We're going to get plastered," I said, holding an empty decanter up to the camera. The bottle was opaque, so a person might assume that there was something in it. "You know those parties where you pour a bunch of liquor into a big bowl?"
There was a pause.
"What's the tape for?"
"What do you think it's for?" I said, pushing the button. "I like my kinky sex."
"So do I," Amanda said.
I cringed.
"Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong," Dane muttered, probably to herself.
The elevator went up.
"You...aren't that guy who knocked that big hole in the top floor wall, are you?" asked the elevator man.
I feigned surprise. "Someone knocked a hole in the wall?"
The speaker went silent again.
And then, "I've got to stop working nights."
I hurried out, wondering if the hotel had other cameras, and what kind of camera footage they already had on me.
Filling up a bunch of Gladware, Tupperware, bottles and a trash can with black glop was the easy part. Lugging full containers and a duct taped but still slopping trash can back down through scaffolding crawl spaces was something else. Especially while trying to remain a doodle the whole time.
One time, I actually brushed a loose wire. I probably would have been paralyzed or dead had I not turned into a flashing monkey skeleton the moment I started conducting.
At last we stood in that dusty bedroom with our pile of bottles and containers of glop, staring at the marked up walls.
I kept fearing that Sneezer would get choked up by all the dust and blow out another wall, but Holli had a solution to this, for inside her dress she kept a little bottle containing the Nasonex bee.
She let the bug loose, pointed to the mouse. "Pica aqui."
The bee stung Sneezer on the face, and that somehow stopped the rodent from sneezing. I don't know if the real product actually does what it claims, but if you get stung by an animated bee with a Spanish accent, I guess it works really well.
"So," Holli said. "Sneezer. How did Drew get into Cool World again?"
Mr. Smiling Door was gone. There was a giant clean spot where the image had once been, dust free, like some maid had scrubbed it off...or Mr. Door had slipped into another dimension.
The mouse frowned. "There used to be a door here."
Holli let out a sigh of frustration. "So we can't even get into Cool World. Is that what you're saying?"
Sneezer shrugged. "Looks like it. Unless you want to try squeezing through that little Smurf window."
Dane, who had been admiring the various drawings, pointed to the image in question. "You mean this window?"
"Yeah," I said. "That's the one."
"It's a drawing," she said. "I mean, if you originally got there through a two dimensional image, why don't you draw another door and try that?"
I chuckled, offering her a pencil. "That's why you're the artist and I'm the tax man."
Instead of accepting it, she pulled out one of those fancy green ones with no eraser that they sell in art supply stores. "Thanks. I got it."
She got a little carried away. Instead of the oversimplified shape of the previous door, Dane sketched something that looked like the entrance to Skeletor's bathroom, all covered in skulls and jewels and snakes and robot parts, with a big metal ring for a handle.
Somehow she got all this done in about five minutes. The automatic writing thing, I supposed.
The moment my hand touched it, the door turned green and heavily shaded, making that shimmering noise things made in He-Man whenever anyone walks through a magic portal.
"Oh my God!" Dane cried. "That's totally bitchin'!"
I pulled the door handle, but it didn't open.
"Where's the keyhole?" I said.
Dane blinked. "Why would you need one?"
"The last door had a keyhole so you could unlock it."
"I thought it would be better without one, so you could pull it right open. I mean, I drew hinges and everything."
I sighed. "You're the artist. What do you think I need to do?"
"I don't know. Maybe you do like Beetlejuice and knock three times."
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the ring and banged it down the prescribed number of times.
Immediately the door opened, and I was looking at dad.
Black hair touched with gray, large nose, big ears, long Italian face. The man looked old before he was old, like Mick Jagger.
He was standing in the upstairs hallway in some cartoon house, with a doe eyed tight spacesuit wearing Anime female clinging to his arm.
"Hello?" he said as he stared through the open door.
His brow furrowed as he saw me change to my normal human form.
"God," he said. "It's like I'm looking in a mirror!"