The Door

[Near]

It’s just a small envelope. Padded. Orangey-tan. The outside is unmarked. Near was this close to tossing it into a trash bag. One corner is bent, and he can’t remember if it was like that when he came across it, or if it happened in the meantime. Shaking it in the air a couple times to emphasize to Jude that, look, here is what you’re supposed to be paying attention to, fails to create much effect. The contents aren’t enough to jostle, so it feels like shaking a broken rattle for a distracted baby. Or semaphore on a distant hill.

Reaching in, he pulls out a key so flat as to be almost two-dimensional, a cartoon key with a shape like someone took a bite out of it, which he had to Google to identify as possibly belonging to a safe deposit box. Possibly. Or some other locked container. Who knows, really, since the key itself lacks any apparent indication of its intended use. The only other item in envelope is extracted just after and held out to Jude: a half-sheet of paper on which someone has written, in black marker,

LN DYER
3420 SAN LESMES
LAS VEGAS, NV 89193

The letters are neat and blocky. Near assumes there is a possibility Courtland wrote them, but of course Near wouldn’t know Courtland’s handwriting to see it, so the possibility is based solely on its point of origin.

“It was in a box the lawyer gave me,” he explains. “Under a bunch of papers. From Courtland.” He shrugs, casual, snatches his beer back from the counter. “Thought you might know what it was for. Since –”

he is about to say, snidely, since Courtland was your best friend, but he changes his mind and finishes with,

“-- you knew him better than me.”

[Jude]

Las Vegas, Nevada. The Family hated that place: 'cartoonish' was the word most frequently assigned with a heavy sneer, all vice infantilized and turned into a playground. The apotheosis of nothing mattering, a Shangri-La built in the desert, recklessly defiant. Actions have consequences. Things should matter.

Jude does know Courtland's handwriting. The shock of recognition blanches the frown from his face. 'Best friend' projects an equality between Jude and Courtland that did not exist; 'father' is too foreign a concept for a being that was born already ten years old. Courtland represented something far more abstract: hope.

He has not been hopeless these past months, but he has certainly not been hopeful. Near is gifted as reminding Jude how despair tastes. Suddenly, Near holds hope in his hands. Jude's fingers curls into the couch, his forearms and thighs tensing as he restrains himself from moving too suddenly.

Since you knew him better than me.

He doesn't answer that right away. Jude has been focused on the Big Picture, which is that great and terrible Somethings will come through from another dimension to this one, enslaving humanity for the rest of its days. The drama of an estranged father and son is microscopic by comparison. It has not so much as crossed Jude's mind, until now.

He wants the key. He needs the key. He stands, slowly, and takes the paper carefully from Near's hand. He begins to immediately memorize the address. "Not off the top of my head," he says, the words dripping out. But it does not escape Jude's notice, that LN DYER is in a place Jude has specifically never been, the capital of charlatans and pageantry.

[Near]

Because Near has not once managed to maintain what he would qualify as a civilized conversation with Jude for more than a few turns at a go, his understanding of the Jude/Courtland thing remains fuzzy at best. The fundamental outline is shaped something like “Jude came around to the Reaches for demonic tupperware parties,” painted in with a smeary conviction that there must have been some level of weird masked sex involved, because isn’t there always with that kind of thing?

So the statement that Jude knew Courtland better is less a specific concession than a general one. Shouldn’t cost a damn thing to say it. Anyone who knew Courtland knew him better than Near, basically. That doesn’t keep the words from leaving a shitty aftertaste.

Jude’s interest has obviously shifted to the note. He plucks it out of Near’s hand and stands there looking at it like he’s searching for a secret message hidden between those three lines. But that’s all there is. An address. A key. Near takes another drink to wash down the bad taste, then lays the key and the envelope down on the counter next to the ring of condensation.

“Huh. Well, it’s probably nothing important. Thought I might go take a look anyway, blow some money before Minnesota. I’ve never been to Vegas. Maybe being a wizard makes you lucky, right?”

[Jude]

Near's supposition would be correct in almost any other circumstance: that some sort of masked sex was involved, perhaps some level of molestation. Luckily, mercifully, he is incorrect. Jude and Juliet have lived a sheltered life, but not an abused one. Their sometimes coerced, often sheltered life has been relatively comfortable. It helps that they are not completely human, if to be completely human requires a life begun at infancy, impressing such a creature with the neuroses necessary to make one legible to one's species. Jude was very directable, until the day he up and ran away.

He hears what he thinks is the absolute closest he is going to get to an invitation, or acceptance of his own. Near would find a way to argue water isn't wet, but if he takes his umbrella in hand, Jude will count his blessings.

"Maybe your kind of wizard is lucky," he says. "I think I'm the person best qualified to observe and judge." His tone is joking when he says it, but after the words come out, Jude sincerely wonders. The lightness in his eyes falters. He really doesn't know what Near can do at all, other than slap down a Reverse Uno card on Jude.

LN DYER
3420 SAN LESMES
LAS VEGAS, NV 89193

"Do you have to work tomorrow?" He came here for Near. His whole schedule is open to Near. Which, now, means Las Vegas.

Driving to Las Vegas with Near.

No drinking and driving this time, Jude tells himself.

[Near]

Near has no statistics to back up his declaration of wizards as lucky. He has nothing to refute it, either. He doesn’t know much about wizards in any case, not the mythological or the pop fictional or the real – such as it is – kind. He would venture to say, if pressed, that they are probably luckier than witches at least, in that he has never heard of a wizard hunt. He waits for a peevish explanation of why luck is or isn’t manipulable like a kitchen floor, but Jude doesn’t press; he just offers something resembling a quip. “Your kind of wizard.”

So, standard-ass human being, then.

There does exist some evidence Near could provide to make a case that he is not especially lucky, gambling-wise. See: a handful of stories that begin with high hopes and end with lost paychecks and Near swearing off the activity entirely, right up until the next poker night when surely his fortune would have moved into an upswing phase. But if he starts going on about that, he may begin to question the wisdom of having spent a week learning the finer points of casino blackjack on his phone.

“Observe and judge?” he repeats. Yes, that does sound very right, very Jude. “You sure know how to have a good time.” This is flat. Sarcastic. But it stops short of snide. Jude and his preferences remain a mostly empty category, save a spot tentatively sketched in with Netflix romcoms. Perhaps Jude’s idea of a good time is participating in satanic sex tupperware parties, arguably a more adventurous pastime than watching a roulette wheel spin.

“Tomorrow? I’m on the schedule,” he adds. Being on the schedule is not, technically, having to work. “You ever going to tell me where you’re going? Or is that classified?”

[Jude]

No one is more determined to have a bad time than Near, so Jude does not understand the point of this remark. He would also be willing to explain that luck can, in fact, be manipulated, but that is in terms of physics, the way Jude can connect two points and reverse entropy. As it stands, he cannot manipulate time itself, thereby generating outcomes through repeated cycles of events. Instead, if Near flipped a coin, Jude could weight one side of it. Or, he could change the order of cards in a deck, by changing the cards themselves. He has never attempted to do such sleights of hand, which, while they might lead to financial gain, would be annoying to do, and anyways he was never in the business of monitoring his own finances. One more thing he has learned to do with difficulty. He sticks with his donation-based income.

"Are you asking me where I'm staying?" Where are you going? brings with it a feeling of abstraction. Going? Like, where is this all going?

If Jude was to name a preference, he would put, at the top of the list, when people are more polite to him, and Near's persistent lack of cordiality has always rubbed him wrong. He prefers pad see ew to pad thai; limes to lemons; a sandal to a flip flop. But what do those really matter? He would prefer to better understand the shell game of Near's mind, but a preference only matters when it is honored. Otherwise it's just a mental footnote. I wish, coulda, shoulda, woulda.