The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(66)

“All right,” she said, tossing the hair. “Crispin has agreed to meet with you.”

Secretary clearing the boss’s calendar.

Milo said, “Great,” and we stood.

“But,” said Haley Moman, “you must stick to only relevant topics and avoid nonsense.”

“Such as?”

“I’ll direct you.” She racewalked toward the rear of the house, speeding past three bedrooms on both sides of a skylit corridor. At the back, a space the width of the entire structure was set up with aqua leather theater seats and a hundred-inch screen on one side, a wet bar and a pool table backed by a floor-to-ceiling aquarium filled with marine fish on the other. Taupe drapes covered every window. Light courtesy dimmed LEDs in the ceiling.

All those toys still allowed for plenty of square footage in the center of the room. A queen-sized bed shared the space with a black leather Eames chair and six feet of Lucite bent into an upside-down U. Atop the Lucite: two laptops, three twenty-inch screens, half a dozen Rubik’s cubes, and a large, yellow softcover book.


MIRE PANDEMIC: A GUIDE TO MINDCRAFT VOID-SATIATION



On the bed, his scrawny butt barely taking up a corner of mattress, perched a pitiably thin, undersized boy with long, straight hair colored a curiously waxy tan. Spidery soft-looking fingers rested on bony knees. Skin so pallid and blue-veined it verged on translucent.

Crispin Moman was seventeen and a half but could’ve passed for fourteen.

This time he revealed his face, expressionless but for the merest sense of expectancy in narrow-set gray eyes. His features were well set but skimpy, as if a sculptor had roughed in then run out of clay. The exception, his eyes, purplish blue, luminous, and huge, fringed by long curling lashes.

The oddly colored hair was cut in a pageboy with straight-edge bangs that bisected a high, white brow. Already sporting brow lines his mother had avoided through lucky genetics or botulin toxin. He wore a dark-green polyester jumpsuit that evoked an old guy loafing in Palm Springs decades ago. Ralph embroidered across the right breast. Black wingtips, no socks. Four red strings banded a flimsy-looking wrist.

He looked at us but didn’t seem to see us.

Haley Moman said, “They’re here, honey.”

Crispin didn’t react.

She looked at us and wagged a warning finger. Don’t push it.

Milo walked over and faced the boy. “Crispin, I’m Milo.”

Without looking up, Crispin said, “What’s your title?”

“Pardon?”

“Your real identity has a title.” Nasal voice, tremolo modulation, the volume dialed a smidge too high.

“Lieutenant.”

Crispin Moman said, “Lieutenant Milo…?”

“Sturgis.”

“Lieutenant. Milo. Sturgis.” One of the hands extended.

Milo took it and shook gently. The boy’s fingers held on until Milo unpeeled them, then flopped back to their knee-perch.

“My identity is Crispin Bernard Moman.”

Milo grinned. “How ’bout that. Mine is actually Milo Bernard Sturgis.”

Haley Moman shot him a doubtful look. Lying to manipulate my child?

Crispin said, “You didn’t include that initially.”

“Don’t use the middle name much, Crispin.”

“Incomplete data,” said the boy. “Can lead to errors.”

“Ah.”

Without acknowledging me, Crispin said, “What’s your full identity?”

“Alexander Dumas Delaware. I go by Alex.”

Milo gaped. He’d never known about the flight of literary fancy cooked up by my mother before the postpartum depression set in and never left. Leaving me to be disparaged throughout my childhood as “sissy-boy Froggy” by my violent sot of a father.

The initials didn’t help, either: A.D.D. I’d tired of the ridicule at school, abandoned the offending “D” on my Missouri driver’s license and every document since.

Haley said, “Bernard is my dad. Crispin likes going to Montana to visit him.”

Crispin picked up the book and began reading.

Milo said, “Do you know why we’re here?”

“I threatened Todd and Shirin.”

Haley said, “He means you think that.”

Crispin said, “I mean I know that.”

Milo said, “So you did it.”

“Of course I did it.”

“Todd and Shirin got pretty upset.”

“That was the goal.”

“To make them upset.”

“Yes.”

“Because…”

“I hate them,” said Crispin. “They hate me. Expecting pleasantries in a situation like that is unrealistic.”

“Would you ever act out on the threats?”

Haley said, “Of course not!”

Her son regarded her as if she was beyond reasoning with.

Milo said, “Crispin, would you ever—”

“No. It’s an inefficient and stupid strategy.”

“How so?”

The boy’s withering glance shifted to us. “Why would I endanger my freedom for the short-term pleasure of harming them? At least not under current circumstances.”

Haley said, “Oh, Crispin, stop screwing around and just tell them the truth.”