Rabbits(18)

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.”

“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.