It was the first time Alastair had ever mentioned that he knew. “Yeah. Know all about it. There. Now you’re listening,” Alastair reached into his pocket. “I’m going to give you something. Tell me what it is.” He jammed a small…something…in the artist’s hands. “Now. What is that.”
Finn, furious, looked down. “…it’s a…ping-pong ball.”
“Very good. In all that stupidity there is actually some intelligence.”
Now Finn was just plain pissed off. “You have 5 seconds. 5—“
Alastair took the ping-pong ball, threw it with one hand; with the other, unleashed a beam of firework-like energy that looked as if he held a Roman candle up his sleeve. It hit the ping-pong ball, which flashed, and with a deep, sharp sound—like a glacier cracking—the ball exploded with a loud bang.
Finn didn’t even get to the “R” in “four.” He got as far as “foh.”
“Anything with more mass than a ping-pong ball and I do some real damage,” Alastair said off-handedly. “Shapnel.”
Finn just stared at the cloud of ping-pong-ball dust hanging in the air. If it weren’t for the fact they were connected to him, his eyes would have fallen out of his head.
“Now,” the punk-surfer said, doing his best Grandmother Abercrombie voice, “you can get mad it me for not telling you I could do that. You can get mad at me for knowing who you are and what you can do and never saying so. But it’s not like you were ever forthcoming, and the minute I stumbled across a clue, you threw me out.”
“You knew who I was?”
Alastair rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”
“And that’s why you came up to me? That time on the beach?”
“Actually, I came up to you because you were so tall, and the closer I got, hot. And that funky beard of yours. It wasn’t until I was a foot from your face that I recognized you,” Alastair replied. “But I woulda done you even if you weren’t Light-Show Boy.” He paused. “I just wouldn’t have kept you around as along as I did.”
“It’s not a light show.”
“No shit.”
Finn looked at him. Clearly he was thinking about it. “I have to set up.”
“You do that.”
Alastair spent the week fuming. At Finn. At himself. He didn’t even surf, which was a clarion call to his friends that something was wrong. He didn’t answer the door or phone. He did, however, drink himself silly on margaritas. And it was when he was lit up to the tip of his Mohawk that he heard a loud banging on the door.
“Fuck off!”
“It’s me! It’s Finn.”
“Fuck the bloody hell off!”
“Will you open the door? Please?”
“This is me imiday…imitatee…being you!”
“I don’t get drunk.”
The loud crash of the pitcher (margaritas) against the door let Finn know what Alastair thought of that. Also the storm of epithets that would have split the Red Sea. “Look, OK, I’m sorry. You freaked me out.”
“You threw me out!”
Arg, this was not going to work. “Yes! Yes I did! But look at it from my perspective! I didn’t know you knew who I was! It was a perfect logical reaction!”
“Fuckyouasshleohe!...hole!”
“You must really be plastered.”
“Yep! Feels great! Icanshoutatashehails!”
“’Assholes.’”
“Them too!”
“Open the door before I fry it off.” He actually couldn’t do that…
Like a true Abercrombie, the threat of property damage actually did the trick. He threw open the door, naked as a jaybird, cursed the air blue, took a swing at Finn, missed by a mile, hit the door jam, cursed some more, and promptly fainted into Finn’s arms. It took all of 5 seconds.
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