8. Walter
Walter
ONE YEAR AGO
MILFORD, Del.—In his idealistic youth, Walter had envisioned a journalistic career that made a difference: exposing corruption, holding polluters accountable, bringing medical advancements to light.
Nowhere in that list of Pulitzer-worthy investigative series had he predicted covering the Dark Carnival–themed wedding of two crypto bros.
The setting—on the grounds of an abandoned fertilizer plant in Delaware—would have been creepy enough without the truckloads of dead leaves that had been brought in for the occasion.
Walter had not previously been aware that autumn foliage was available out of season, especially in this quantity, but according to the wedding designer, the leaves were a crucial element of the Macabre Attraction aesthetic.
“It’s that crunch underfoot, like desiccated insect bodies,” she’d explained, with the air of someone who expected to be quoted in print. “Enhancing the awareness of decay and mortality.”
Certainly, the people in graffiti-covered hazmat suits wielding electric leaf blowers added to the apocalyptic mood.
To each their own, Walter reminded himself, fighting to keep his balance as the world shifted beneath him.
The bouncy castle had seemed like a less disturbing option than any of the rides, much less the fun house, plus it would be hard for any of the cyberpunk stilt-walkers to follow him inside.
Technically it was more of a bouncy maze, with one inflatable leading to another.
To the fleet of strobe-equipped drones zooming overhead, it probably looked like a quivering subdivision.
He glanced at his watch, making a silent bargain with himself.
If no one came through in the next five minutes, Walter would venture back outside.
Until then, he would sit … if not quite still, then almost stationary.
There was a telltale jerk beneath him the instant before a black-clad figure stumbled into view. Walter was about to announce his presence when the person removed their beanie, and a halo of curls spilled free.
“Hildy?”
She bounced to face him, landing in a half crouch with her arms extended.
“Are you here to rob someone?” Walter asked, taking in her head-to-toe black Lycra.
“I left my tutu in the car. With the glowsticks.” Hildy wobbled closer. “Nice vest, by the way. Wouldn’t have pegged you as a purple person.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” Like the fact that wearing a purple-and-lime striped “waistcoat” had been a condition of his attendance because the grooms didn’t want anyone to “adulterate the vibes.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re very complex.” It would have sounded more cutting if she hadn’t delivered the line while swaying like a drunken sailor.
“Is that why you’re stalking me?”
She swayed toward him, and then back again. “You wish.”
“Don’t tell me you’re covering this wedding.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because it doesn’t seem like your kind of scene.”
“Delaware?”
“All of it. Not exactly a Tiffany’s-and-champagne crowd. Besides, don’t you have minions you can send to do your bidding?”
Hildy gave a hop of outrage. “I don’t have minions. Our staff is a team. The kind that doesn’t bail on me at the last minute.”
Walter chose to ignore the silent accusation. Like she was one to talk about trust and loyalty.
“And what, you were the only member of the team who didn’t have plans tonight?” He tipped toward her like a bowling pin. Hildy took a wobbling step back before Walter managed to right himself.
“No, I had to cancel my extremely exciting social engagement to deal with you.” She moved to poke him in the chest. Thanks to Walter’s evasive stagger and Hildy’s overcorrection, her finger landed closer to his belly button. He choked down a laugh, but only because it was a ticklish spot.
“So you did follow me here,” he taunted. “Obsessed much?”
“In your dreams,” she hissed, with a bounce of frustration. “I’m here to deliver a message.”
“You could have texted.”
She scoffed at that. “As if I have your number.”
That shouldn’t have stung. Then again, his reactions to Hildy had never been entirely logical.
“You found me,” he said, as if he were eager to move along and see what the contortionists and fire-eaters were up to, or swing by the Nightmare Parlor for one of the wedding favors, a complimentary mystery tattoo.
“What’s the message? Or is that code for ‘someone’s about to give me a beatdown’? ”
“Stop messing with my people.” Hildy loaded each word with menace, hands fisted at her hips.
“Your people?” Walter shook his head in mock confusion. “I thought you were a team.”
“Don’t play innocent with me. I’m wise to your tricks.”
“Who’s playing? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let me refresh your memory. Two months ago, at that Edwardian LARPer wedding in Queens. A freelancer named June? Strawberry blond hair, with the little barrettes in front?”
She waited for Walter to fill in the gaps, but he could only shrug. He knew which wedding she meant—the fashions were hard to forget—but couldn’t see how his actions that day had been problematic, unless it was the fact of his existence Hildy objected to.
“I loaned her a pen. Did it leak in her bag or something?”
“I’m not here about a pen. How petty do you think I am?”
“I feel like I probably shouldn’t answer that.”
Hildy stomped in frustration, then had to dance her feet around to regain her balance. “You told her to quit her job!”
Walter was shaking his head before she finished.
“I definitely did not do that.” They’d chatted a bit before the ceremony, sure.
And now that Hildy mentioned it, Walter vaguely recalled a young and nervous June bringing up her interest in macroeconomics.
Since most of his career was built on random confessions from strangers, it hadn’t struck Walter as a particularly significant detail.
“That’s funny, because she left before the freaking vows and came racing back to the office to tell us about meeting this super ‘wise’ older man who helped her see that her real passion was going back to school to finish her PhD.
I asked myself who she could possibly be talking about,” Hildy continued, walking in a slow yet lurching circle around him. “It was the ‘wise’ part that threw me.”
“Of course,” Walter murmured, when she glanced at him to make sure the insult had landed.
“But then it hit me—”
“Sounds painful.”
She held a finger to her lips for silence. “The only person who would do anything possible to undermine my magazine is you.”
“Believe it or not, I don’t spend my days thinking about how to thwart you, Hildy.” Walter waited for a bolt of lightning to strike him down for lying.
“Then why did you use your Jedi mind tricks on her?”
“All I did was listen. It’s called empathy.”
“Maybe you should invest in a thesaurus because I’m pretty sure the word you’re looking for is ‘sabotage.’”
It was possibly the dweebiest argument they’d ever had, and that was not a low bar. “Listen, Hildy—”
“Ooh, are you going to mansplain something to me?” She lowered her voice to a rumble, in apparent imitation of him. “‘Listen, Hildy, sometimes people don’t want a job at your silly little magazine. Get over it.’”
“That’s not what I was going to say.” Nor was it something he believed.
Once upon a time, before he realized their worldviews were fundamentally incompatible, Walter had imagined sharing an office with Hildy.
Even now, he maintained a grudging respect for her editorial skills, however much she annoyed him personally.
“Good, because Life, Styled is a fantastic place to work. We have an awesome time. In a serious professional way. And it’s not a vanity project.”
Walter raised both hands in a show of innocence. “I never said it was.”
“My sources beg to differ.”
“What sources?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to talk about that because I don’t need your approval.”
“What do you need?”
“From you? Nothing. Except to stay out of my way.” She squinted at him. “Do we understand each other?”
“Um,” he hedged. Had they ever really, even at the beginning? “Signs point to ‘No.’”
Hildy squared off with him, posture pure belligerence even as her lower body shifted like she was on a StairMaster. Walter’s pulse kicked up a notch.
Before she could unleash her tirade, a procession of clowns bounced through the entrance, laughing and shoving each other. It was a terrifying parade of white makeup and lurid red mouths. Walter could feel a brand-new phobia developing in real time.
The clowns jounced and collided, setting the floor beneath them into violent motion. It felt like trying to surf on a damp sponge. Hildy toppled to her knees, one hand grabbing Walter’s thigh on the way down.
A few inches to the left would have put them in a far more compromising position, though Walter was trying not to think about that possibility. Crouching, he reached for an elbow or a shoulder to help her up.
“Stop it,” she hissed, when he accidentally brushed one of her curls.
Something dry and leathery crunched between his fingers. It was too solid to be styling-product residue, which left one possibility.
“There was a leaf,” he informed her, in case she thought he was copping a feel.
Hildy’s fingers tightened warningly against his quad. “That’s because I had to crawl through a freaking hedge.”
Her voice rose in anger, which had the unfortunate effect of alerting the nearby clowns to their presence. The beam of a flashlight washed over them.
“Shit, sorry!” a clown sporting a candy-red pompadour called out, swinging the light up and away. “We’re totally leaving.”
“And don’t worry, we didn’t see anything,” another member of the party assured them, attempting to tiptoe across the heaving surface in a pair of giant yellow shoes.
As the first clown ducked to enter the tunnel leading farther into the castle, the smallest member of the party paused, plucking at her neck ruff. “Be careful. Somebody could get hurt.”