“Yeah. It’s pretty nuts,” I said.
Of course, Alan Scarpio hadn’t told us something was wrong with the game, he told me, but I didn’t have the heart to correct Baron. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard him this excited.
“I hope he’s okay,” I said.
“Wait, do you think his disappearance might be connected to his visiting you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck, K. Is this Rabbits?”
I ignored his question. I was still processing the news of Scarpio’s disappearance. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
“What the hell are we supposed to do now? All we have is a cryptic visit from a billionaire and some mystery woman who cornered you at the diner,” Baron said.
But that wasn’t all we had.
“I’ll call you later,” I said, and hung up.
* * *
—
The diner was half full, and the staff were settled into the calm just before the lunch rush. The woman with the grayish-green eyes who’d served us the other day was working.
She recognized me with a smile and waved me over to a booth.
“Welcome back,” she said as she filled my cup with coffee.
I told her that my friend was busy and had asked me to pick up his phone.
She brought it over the next time she refilled my coffee. She obviously had no idea that the person I’d been sitting with was a missing billionaire. I guess she didn’t watch the news.
As soon as she handed me Scarpio’s phone, I threw down a five-dollar bill and rushed out of the diner. I was worried she’d suddenly figure out whose phone it was and change her mind.
* * *
—
There wasn’t much on Scarpio’s phone. No photographs, aside from the picture of the dog that functioned as his wallpaper, and no records of any calls—including the call I’d watched him receive that had clearly disturbed him and sent him rushing out of the diner to attend what he’d referred to as a late meeting. Those factors, along with the lack of a connected email account and an empty contact list, made one thing absolutely clear: This was definitely not the missing billionaire’s primary means of communicating with the world.
* * *
—
“Rhubarb pie?” the Magician asked, staring at Scarpio’s phone as if it were the Ark of the Covenant.
“That’s what he ate,” I said.
“And coffee?”
“Yep, and coffee.”
“Any special kind of coffee?”
I shook my head. “Just regular diner stuff.”
The Magician nodded and went back to work, his wiry black hair hanging low over cool green eyes, long fingers bending and flexing as he connected Scarpio’s phone to a laptop running an operating system I’d never seen before. He was wearing a light brown suede jacket over a vintage pink-and-yellow Teenage Fanclub T-shirt. He looked a bit thinner than the last time I’d seen him, and, although it had only been a month or so, he looked years older.
Chloe said he’d been in northern Russia for a while, but she didn’t know where he’d gone after that; the Magician was always traveling somewhere last-minute for wildly disparate amounts of time and then just strolling back into the arcade as if he’d never left. None of us had any idea what he did for money, fun, or anything else.
“You met Scarpio here in the arcade before he had pie in the diner?” the Magician asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Right downstairs.”
The Magician hit a few keys and waited for something to boot up on his laptop.
“What did he want?”
“He asked me to help him.”
“He asked you to help him?” The Magician’s choice of emphasis would have been insulting, if it wasn’t so completely warranted by the situation. Me helping Alan Scarpio fix Rabbits? It wasn’t just surprising, it was completely insane.
“And you’re sure this was the phone in Scarpio’s possession?”
“Positive,” I said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. It looks the same.”
“Tell me everything you can remember,” the Magician instructed.
I went through all of it: how Scarpio had told me something was wrong with the game, that he needed my help for some reason, and if we didn’t fix Rabbits before the next iteration of the game began, we’d all be well and truly fucked. Then I described the pie, the mystery woman, the rhubarb recording, and, finally, the waitress who’d eventually handed me Alan Scarpio’s phone.
“Scarpio was playing Robotron the night you met him?”