Big Egos Read online

  Considering I’ve used both The Indiana Jones and The Captain Kirk more than three times the average over the same period of time, I’m wondering if I should be concerned.

  I think about whether I’ve been exhibiting either of the anomalies. I don’t recall the number zero showing up an unusual amount in my daily routine. At least not that I can recall. I definitely haven’t been looking for it. And I’m pretty sure I haven’t repeated any unusual or specific phrase over and over.

  Truth is, I think I’d notice something like that.

  “I called Diagnostics and they ran it through some additional tests, which confirmed our findings,” says Angela. “Then they ran them past Applied Research, which is who I just got off the phone with.”

  “And what did Applied Research say?”

  “They said not to worry about it.”

  I nod, feeling a little better about the anomalies. After all, if Applied Research doesn’t think it’s a problem, then it’s probably not.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  Angela doesn’t say anything for a few moments but just sits in her desk chair staring at her monitor, her right index finger tapping on her desk. I watch her face, looking for any signs of what she’s thinking, but if Angela were a poker player, she could be holding four aces and I wouldn’t have a clue.

  Then she finally looks at me. “Honestly, I’m a little worried.”

  CHAPTER 14

  William Shakespeare stands on a milk crate out in front of the ArcLight Cinerama Dome, wearing a soiled doublet and torn breeches and needing a bath. Next to him is a shopping cart filled with a blanket and a pillow and other personal belongings. In front of him sits a battered felt hat containing a smattering of coins and a handful of dollar bills as he quotes from Hamlet:

  “To be or not to be, that is the question . . .”

  “Yeah!” yells some guy with a shaved head and a goatee who leans out the window of a passing Mustang hybrid and gives Shakespeare the finger. “And this is the answer!”

  Laughter drifts out from the car windows as the Mustang drives off down Sunset Boulevard. Shakespeare watches them go, then makes a comment about something being rotten in the state of Denmark.

  Just up Sunset, less than half a block away, a small group of protesters marches back and forth out in front of the Hollywood Big Egos store, carrying signs and chanting slogans like

  Just be yourself.

  Big Egos = Small Minds.

  Jesus does not have an Ego.

  They’re probably upset about The Jesus, which we plan to release this Christmas. If pre-orders are any indication, the Son of God is going to be an instant bestseller.

  It’s the first Friday in October, and Delilah and I are standing in line outside the Cinerama Dome waiting to buy tickets to the latest Leonardo DiCaprio film. At least I’m here. Delilah is Scarlett O’Hara.

  “Oh fiddle-dee-dee,” she says. “I wish Rhett were here. It’s just not the same without him around.”

  We used to go out in public together as ourselves more often. Lately, it’s just a couple of times a month, but Delilah is becoming less and less interested in being herself. She loves the attention she gets from being someone else and I’m finding it harder and harder to be me. But after my office meeting with Angela, I decided to play it straight for a night, just to prove to myself that I could.

  Kind of like someone who thinks he’s an alcoholic going to a party and not drinking so he can convince himself he doesn’t have a problem.

  “That poor man,” says Scarlett, motioning toward Shakespeare. “How long do you think he’s been out here?”

  I just shrug.

  “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause,” says Shakespeare. “There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.”

  He offers a slight bow to phantom applause and the ghostly donation of a few lonely coins.

  “I feel sorry for him,” says Scarlett. “Do you think he was Shakespeare before he became homeless?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say no.”

  Either way, I’m betting his Ego isn’t legal.

  I watch him, looking for any of the telltale signs of a black market Ego. Twitches or tics, anything that might give him away, but he seems perfectly normal. Not that I could do anything about it. I didn’t bring any of the antidote with me.

  Even before college I read a lot of Shakespeare, especially in my high school Western lit class. I was always a fan of the Bard and wonder what he would think about his words being performed by a black market version of himself, who is now quoting from a different scene in Hamlet.

  “This above all: to thine own self be true,” he says, his right index finger sweeping across his captive audience. “And it must follow, as the night follows the day, thou cannot then be false to any man.”

  When he stops, he’s looking and pointing right at me. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help thinking that he’s trying to tell me something.

  Scarlett pokes me in the ribs with her elbow. “Why don’t you be a dear and give him some money?”

  “What? Why? He’s just going to use it to buy booze or drugs.” Or another black market Ego.

  “Great balls of fire.” Scarlett fishes a five-dollar bill out of her clutch. “He can do with it what he wants. What does it matter to you?”

  “I just don’t want to be supporting his bad habits.”

  She holds the money out to me. “Please darlin’? For me?”

  I never can say no to Delilah, even when she’s Scarlett O’Hara. Which is a problem.

  “Okay.” I take the money and walk up to Shakespeare and deposit the five dollars in his hat. He nods and bows and then breaks into a scene from As You Like It.

  “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

  When he finishes, he looks at me with a smile and nods again, as if we’ve just shared some great secret. This strikes an uneasy chord with me and I think again about his previous quote, about being true to myself, and I wonder if he’s just quoting random passages from his plays or if there’s something more to it than that.

  “Are you talking to me?” I say. Not like De Niro in Taxi Driver. I’m not trying to be a tough guy. It’s just a question.

  Shakespeare just smiles and gives me a wink.

  I look around to see if anyone else noticed, then I walk back to Delilah, who gives me a kiss on the cheek. “See. Now that wasn’t so awful, was it?”

  As we wait in line to get our tickets, Shakespeare continues his performance, quoting scenes and passages and lines from play after play. The Merchant of Venice. As You Like It. Richard III. Julius Caesar. Macbeth. And he keeps quoting lines that make me wonder if he knows something he’s not telling me.

  Now he’s saying it’s the winter of our discontent.

  Now he’s saying to beware the Ides of March.

  Now he’s saying something wicked this way comes.

  I’m not exactly getting a happy vibe here.

  It doesn’t help that I keep glancing over and catching him looking directly at me. As if there’s no one else around. As if he’s performing for me and me alone.

  Part of me realizes I’m only imagining things. That he’s just a crazy homeless person who bought a black market Ego and ended up spouting random quotes from Shakespeare. That it’s just a coincidence I’m even here.

  But another part of me believes there’s no such thing as coincidence.

  “Now thou art an O without a figure!” he yells. “I am better than thou art now. I am a fool. Thou art nothing.”

  I think about zeros and repeated phrases and Angela telling me she’s worried.

  I listen to Shakespeare until I start to feel as if there’s something going on I should know about. Until I think he was sent here to give me some kind of message. I realize it’s prepostero
us, but I can’t seem to let go of the thought.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say.

  “Where are you off to?” asks Scarlett.

  “To give him some more money.”

  I walk over to Shakespeare, who stands there on his milk crate in his dirty clothes wearing his knowing smile. He gives me a wink.

  “Do you have something you want to tell me?” I ask.

  “Oh, that way madness lies.”

  I look back at Scarlett, who watches me while she cools herself with a hand fan. I turn back to Shakespeare. “It’s okay. You can tell me what it is.”

  “Chaos is come again.”

  Not the most promising of answers, but the Bard did write his share of tragedies. Still, I’m hoping for something a little lighter. Something uplifting. Something with a happy ending.

  I know they’re just words spoken by a street person strung out on a black market Ego, but I can’t help thinking that this madness and chaos he alluded to are somehow related to me.

  I step closer and whisper. “Tell me what I need to do.”

  “What’s done is done,” he says.

  Great. I’m hoping for Twelfth Night and instead I get Macbeth.

  “What on earth are you doing?” says Scarlett.

  I turn around to find her standing right behind me holding the movie tickets. “Nothing,” I say. “Come on, let’s go.”

  As we walk toward the theater entrance, Shakespeare shouts out behind us. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”

  We turn around and Shakespeare winks and bows to Scarlett.

  “Well, isn’t that just too sweet?” She pulls another five-dollar bill out of her purse and hands it to me. With a sigh, I take the five and walk back over to him.

  As I put the five into his hat, Shakespeare looks toward Scarlett, who smiles and waves, and he says: “She is a dish fit for the gods.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I say.

  “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

  I look at him and he raises his eyebrows a couple of times.

  “Not a chance, pal.”

  “A plague on both your houses.”

  I turn away and walk back to Scarlett. Behind me, Shakespeare calls out:

  “O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright!”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Fire!”

  Nat is running toward me wearing a look of terror, his hands waving back and forth in the air. His expression is pretty believable, especially for Nat. He’s not much of an actor. He doesn’t own a poker face and he tends to make fear look more like constipation. But this time he’s got the expression nailed. Even the smoke alarm is going off. When I see smoke starting to pour out of his bedroom, I almost believe there’s a fire. Either his parents finally caved in and bought him a smoke machine or else he’s taking the game to a whole new level.

  Where we are is Nat’s house during the summer after sixth grade. We’re playing Emergency, one of the games we’ve made up to entertain our twelve-year-old imaginations. Most kids our age pretend to be their favorite baseball or football or basketball player whenever they get together for some street ball or a pickup game, but Nat and I aren’t much into sports.

  So we invent games where we pretend to be firemen or secret agents or surgeons. Some of the other games we play include Rescue, Global Disaster, and Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program. One of my favorite games is Reanimation, where we pretend to be a zombie in a society in which we don’t have any rights and are abused by the living. Usually Nat gets dressed up like a zombie and I pelt him with expired food products, but sometimes I play the part of the recently reanimated and he pretends to be my therapist.

  Emergency, what we’re currently playing, is this game where one of us creates an emergency and the other one has to figure out how to solve the problem. And not just fires or natural disasters, but all sorts of emergencies.

  Blackouts. Famines. Alien invasions.

  Most of the time, we just flip some circuit breakers or empty the cupboards or put on an alien mask and let our imaginations do the rest. One time when we were playing Emergency, Nat went out and caught five dozen frogs and released them in the backyard, which was really more of an infestation than an emergency, so he decided that should be a new game called Plagues of Egypt.

  Apparently, for this episode of Emergency, Nat has decided to actually start a real fire rather than a pretend one.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Fire!” he shouts as he runs past me and around the corner into the kitchen.

  I look back down the hallway toward his bedroom, where smoke continues to drift out of his open doorway to the wailing alarm of the smoke detector.

  “Is that a real fire or are you just trying to trick me?” I ask.

  “It’s a real fire!” he shouts from the kitchen.

  I hear the sound of a cupboard banging open, something metal hitting the kitchen floor, followed by running feet. An instant later, Nat is racing past me toward his bedroom with a fire extinguisher.

  “I thought it was my turn to solve the emergency,” I say, walking down the hallway after him, the calm yin to Nat’s yang.

  When I reach Nat’s room, he’s managed to put out the fire, which isn’t really much more than a smoldering pile of paper and scrap wood and something that looks like it used to be a plastic garbage can, which has more or less melted and burned a hole in his carpet. The room smells like burned rubber and plastic and ammonium phosphate, so I open a window to help air it out.

  “You know, you could have just lit a candle and we could have pretended it was a real fire,” I say, waving my hands at the smoke and coughing.

  “You’re not helping,” says Nat, emptying the last of the fire extinguisher on the charred and melted mess.

  “I think it’s out.”

  “Not helping!” he shouts, his pitch nearly matching the wail of the smoke alarm.

  I understand his concern. This is, after all, his house and not mine. Still, Nat’s my best friend and I don’t want him to get into trouble. But as far as I’m concerned, this is just another game of Emergency and it’s up to me to figure out how to solve the problem.

  “Crap.” Nat sets the fire extinguisher down and looks at the mess of melted plastic and burned carpet and dry chemical. “My mom’s gonna kill me.”

  “Not if we fix it before she gets home.”

  “Fix it?” He gestures at the floor. “How are we going to fix this?”

  I look around the room, sizing things up, considering possible solutions.

  “Okay,” I say. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’ll air the place out, then we’ll throw some frozen pizzas in the oven and burn ’em to a crisp. Light some scented candles or spray a bunch of deodorizer to pretend like we’re covering the smell of the burned pizza.”

  Nat looks at me, scratching his head the way he does whenever he’s thinking something over. Either that or he has lice.

  “But don’t admit to burning the pizzas right away,” I say. “Not before your mom asks. If you admit too soon, she’ll figure something’s up. So you have to act like you’re trying to hide something, just not what you’re really trying to hide.”

  “What about the carpet and the garbage can?”

  “We’ll replace the garbage can.” I glance around his bedroom, thinking. “We throw the old one in the Dumpster out behind the 7-Eleven, then we buy a rug to cover the hole in your carpet. Maybe a bed pillow to match so it doesn’t look so out of place.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “So long as we make it look like you’re trying to cover something else up, she’ll never know what really happened.”

  Nat stares at the melted sculpture on his bedroom floor, scratching at his head, not saying a word. The only sound in the house is the insistent wail of the smoke alarm.

  “Okay,” he says, nodding. “What do you want me to do?�
��

  “Get me a fan,” I say. “And some Febreze or a can of Lysol or some kind of deodorizer. Then throw the frozen pizzas in the oven. But first, shut off that stupid smoke alarm.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Nat sits on the couch next to me, drinking a Guinness as he looks over my updated selection of Egos, which includes The Mark Twain, The Kurt Vonnegut, and The Great Gatsby.

  I’ve been in a literary mood lately.

  Nat, however, tends to be more movie focused.

  “What happened to The Luke Skywalker?” he says, checking the labels. “And The Bruce Wayne? That was pretty cool being Batman’s alter ego. Hey, can you get The Batman? Or how about The Neo from The Matrix? Or The Dude? Yeah, I’d love to be The Dude.”

  I never should have introduced Nat to the world of Big Egos.

  Not that I haven’t enjoyed spending time with him. We’ve spent at least one night a week over the past month going to Ego parties and bar hopping, pretending to be Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I’d almost forgotten how much fun we could have together. Plus I’ve seen the positive change this has had on Nat, improving his self-esteem and making him more self-assured. It’s as though by becoming someone else for a few hours, he’s finally been able to become the person inside of him waiting to get out. The person he’s always wanted to be.

  The problem is, I get the feeling Nat’s becoming dependent on Egos in order to maintain his newfound persona. While I’d hoped to convince him of their merits and get him to appreciate the experience rather than fear it, he’s begun to develop a predilection for them. An almost obsessive compulsion. Over the past week, he’s called me up to come over and try another Ego every other night.

  Which doesn’t exactly make for a happy Delilah.

  “Is he coming over again?” she asked a couple of hours ago, complete with eye roll and exasperated sigh. “In that case, I’ll make myself scarce.”

  So she did. And here we are, two childhood friends sitting in my living room drinking Guinness—one of us watching while the other one hovers over four dozen vials of alternate realities.