I walked Chloe and Amanda to the door, and on the way there Chloe and I shared a brief look. She smiled just a little as she pulled her hair behind her ear, and I felt a wave of electricity move through me. I suddenly couldn’t figure out breathing.
Was I on an inhale or an exhale?
I eventually remembered how to work my lungs, the three of us hugged goodbye, and I shut the door.
As I made my way back to the living room, I thought about the best way to ask Chloe out. Was dinner too prosaic? Definitely. Was there maybe a cool band playing The Crocodile this weekend? I would check first thing in the morning.
Then I heard a knock on my door.
I was absolutely positive that when I opened the door, Chloe would be standing there. She’d tell me she came back to suggest a late-night walk or something similar, that she’d been having a great time and that she didn’t want it to stop.
But it wasn’t Chloe at the door. It was Amanda.
She said she’d forgotten her glasses and suggested we have one more drink. She wanted to talk about Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.
We ended up staying together for five years.
* * *
—
Chloe was balanced precariously on a stool behind the front counter when I arrived. She wore a faded NPR T-shirt, ripped jeans, and standard-issue Apple AirPods, which she pulled out of a tangle of crimped blond hair when I walked in.
She smiled and held up her middle finger.
“Super unprofessional,” I said. “This is a place of business.”
She shrugged.
I asked about the mystery woman from the diner. Chloe told me that the woman didn’t ask any questions, just played one game of Robotron and left.
“Why the interest in random business lady?” Chloe asked, suspicious.
I told her about what had happened with Scarpio.
“Alan Scarpio?”
“Yeah.”
“Asked you to help him fix the game?”
“Yeah.”
“Rabbits?”
“Yes.”
Chloe stared for a moment, then shifted her weight to her back foot and crossed her arms. “That didn’t happen.”
I smiled.
“For real?”
“I swear. It really happened.”
“Holy shit!” Chloe said, and her gum almost fell out of her mouth. “That woman did ask if I’d seen Alan Scarpio in here. I thought she was fucking with me.”
“It really happened, but Scarpio missed our meeting earlier today and I haven’t been able to get back in touch.”
“Tell me everything,” she said.
So I did.
Chloe made me describe what had happened with Scarpio down to the most minute detail—twice. As I found myself repeating what had happened, it made less and less sense. Alan Scarpio, billionaire philanthropist and possible winner of the sixth iteration of Rabbits, had told me something was wrong with the game and that he needed my help to fix it.
Chloe asked me if I was sure it was actually Scarpio and not some kind of look-alike or something.
I nodded, but, in that moment, I didn’t actually feel all that sure about anything.
7
JEFF GOLDBLUM DOES NOT BELONG IN THIS WORLD
Three days after Alan Scarpio stood me up at the diner, I called the number on the business card he’d given me for the last time.
Out of service.
Baron had taken on another complicated coding project and Chloe was busy at the arcade, so I spent most of my time cleaning up a couple of online trading accounts I’d been neglecting and taking care of a few things around the house.
Meeting Scarpio had begun to feel like some kind of weird fever dream—a brief glimpse into an alternate reality where I was important enough to be sent on quests and billionaires sat down with me for pie.
Since the number Scarpio had given me was out of service, and he was legendarily reclusive, I had no way of getting in touch with him.
If he really did need my help fixing Rabbits, he’d have to find me.
* * *
—
I did my best to dive back into my life, and tried not to think about Rabbits, Scarpio, or anything connected to our strange conversation in the diner.
Two days later, Alan Scarpio was reported missing.
One of the public relations companies he owned held a press conference. They said that he’d been missing for what they referred to as a “significant, but as yet unknown period of time.” They were asking for help. If anybody had any information on Alan Scarpio’s whereabouts, they were to please call the number.
* * *
—
“Holyfuckingshit!” Baron Corduroy’s voice burst out of my phone’s tiny speakers. He could clearly barely contain his excitement. “Alan Scarpio went missing right after he told us something was wrong with the game.”