The Dinner Guest - Chapter 34: Disco Latinum

The zoo was almost closed when I pedaled up to the gates, holding the still unconscious Chick Sanders over my shoulder. It was getting late and the High Council had made it clear that this could not wait till tomorrow.

“ERECTIUM!” My incantation instantly woke Chick Sanders.

“Where are we?” he asked, still a bit groggy form my earlier incantation. Perhaps I had should have used something less powerful.

“We’re at the elephant cage at the zoo. Here, take the Relic. Come on, let’s get those superpowers.” The light was fading – this had to happen soon.

“Did the Yukon Brushmasters take Olaf Oleson in the fifth round of the draft?”

“They’ll be plenty of time for all that, let’s just do this now. Come on, throw that Relic.”

Chick cocked his arm, planted his foot like a mighty redwood, and hurled the Relic into the elephant cage. The smallest elephant trudged over and picked up the Relic with his trunk. Without further examination, the little giant popped it into his mouth and chewed slowly.

I steeled myself for what was to happen! Lightning! Columns of fire! Choirs of demons! Oh what the prophecy foretold would happen when the Relic was used! Meteors! Dancing she-beasts ten feet tall springing from the earth!

But nothing happened. The smallest of the giants just swallowed and walked back to his mother. Chick was not the totally worthless one! I had mistranslated the Prophecy!

“Was that it?” Chick seemed puzzled.

I had to think fast. The High Council would surely at least banish me from the Society of Dead Tongues at least, but mistranslation carried death as the maximum penalty. Right then, I remembered something my Mentor had taught me: there is no word for failure in Latin. Chick would have to fulfill the Prophecy one way or another.

“Yes! It has come to pass!” I yelled.

“Really? It kind of seems like nothing happened,” Chick said, “I mean, I don’t really feel, like, you know, different or, like, super.”

“I know! That’s part of the Prophecy! You won’t feel your powers until you truly need them.” Would Chick buy this load of crap?

“Oh, I get it.”

“Yeah … so don’t try to test your powers, okay? Because if you try to use them when you don’t need to … they’ll disappear.”

“Oh! Okay. What to we do now?”

Oh, Jupiter! I was counting on Chick’s powers of flight to move us on our journey. This was going to be harder than I thought.

“Well, we’ll have to keep a low profile. So we can’t just fly around, you know, we’ll be spotted.”

“Yeah! And I bet that’ll mess with my superpowers!”

“That’s right! So let’s just call some friends and see if we can get a ride.”

“Well I can’t help because I take the bus. I used to have this car that was ugly, unreliable, and really old. I like to tell people how it was one of the many humorous reasons my romantic life never took off in my adolescence.”

“Your romantic life never took off because you come off as a spineless whiner that would rather blame bad luck than do something with your life,” I muttered.

“What?”

“I said let’s make some calls then.”

“I don’t have a cell phone. You see this one time, I got a bad deal on a cell phone because I just took the first offer I saw so now I just assume they’re too expensive.”

“Okay, fine. Use my phone, who should we call?”

Chick started dialing. Instantly, I regretted my decision. I knew he was calling his old journalism buddies, a deplorable hive-mind of insides jokes, narrow viewpoints, and frowning judgmentalism. He stepped away and mumbled into the phone. Oh Zeus, would I be trapped with this tap dancing pack of jackasses for the whole journey?

“Chick, are you asking for help from more than one person?” I asked.

“Well, I called Kathy, but Jules and Leslie and Devon are demanding to come along. Maybe something funny will happen and we all want to be here so we can joke about it for the next seven years,” Chick responded with a shrug.

I sighed deeply and steeled myself again. This time not for wondrous terrors and sights not yet seen by man, but for endless hours of quotes from The Onion and holier-than-thou scorn. As I exhaled, a burgundy minivan pulled up in front of the zoo.

“Hey, Chick,” called Kathy from the driver’s seat, “I guess you can’t stand on the litter box without proper attire!”

Chick, Jules, Leslie, Kathy, and Devon burst into laughter. After a few minutes Jules looked at me and smirked. “You wouldn’t get it. Last year, we were having a party and Chick was trying to put on a jacket, but a cat scared him.”

I didn’t think that was funny. “And then what happened?” I asked.

“He finished putting on his jacket.”

I briefly thought of using a silence spell, but decided against it. No need showing them my mystical powers.

“Well, we’d better get going,” I said after a long pause.

Chick and I piled and in and told Kathy to head northwest, towards the desolate waste of Forth Worth. I tried to think of something to say to stave off the banter that was sure to come. But I was clearly too late:

“Chick,” Jules said, “has anything FUNNY happened to you recently?”

“The other day, I was in a mildly awkward situation. Nothing really happened and the awkwardness passed when the other party didn’t make a big deal out the things, but I put it in my blog anyway.”

“Chick, you should write for Saturday Night Live!”

Leslie perked up. “Did you see the one where they made fun of George Bush!”

The van laughed in unison.

I groaned and rolled my eyes. Bad move. Kathy jammed on the brakes and the entire van turned to stare and me.

“Oh my God, if you don’t agree with our politics, you’re stupid,” Leslie shrieked.

“Yeah,” they all said in unison.

“’Cuz global warming is the biggest threat we face today,” she said.

“Did you get that from a peer-reviewed scientific study or the Daily Show with Jon Stewart?” I asked.

“Jon Stewart isn’t a scientist?”

“No, he’s a comedian on a basic cable channel.”

“But we should still stop using oil.”

“Why? So every other nation on earth could buy it more cheaply and use it less efficiently? It’s the greatest resource humanity has ever had; we can use petroleum to wipe diseases off of the face of the earth and make hunger and poverty things of the past.”

“But Bono says –”

“Bono is a rock star that flies from fund raiser to fund raiser in a private jet. Why are you listening to him?”

“God, you are just so ignorant. You should watch more Daily Show,” Leslie said.

I choked back the silence spell once more. Kathy eased the van forward and we passed a mileage sign. It read DALLAS 512 mi. If only I had learned a suicide spell.