by Stephen Leigh

Three blocks away from the Dime Museum, the clock tower of the Church of Christ the joker tolled midnight. "Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us. Happy birthday, dear Oddity, happy birthday to us."

The voice was off-key and cracked. "Look at the present I brought us," it said.

A fencing mask lent a shimmering distance to the heavy .38 cupped in Oddity's hand. Flecks of reflected light from the Jetboy diorama ran along the barrel and glimmered wildly from the mask's steel mesh. The interference shattered the harsh brilliance like a cheap spectroscope into pale, weak colors.

Evan could look at the gun and pretend the weapon was just a fantasy, something seen on television. He could almost imagine someone else was lifting it.

[Sixteen years. Sixteen years of pain in this monstrosity of a body, ] Evan said in his interior voice.

[Evan, please don't do this.] Patty's voice. She was Sub-Dominant at the moment, Oddity's eternal pain dampened slightly for her. [I'm asking you to please just let it go. I'll take Oddity for you until John's ready. You can be Pa.s.sive and rest.]

Evan ignored her. Far below, she could hear John the third of the trio of personalities who were Oddity. John was Pa.s.sive at the moment, down in the depths of the strangely-woven mind where Oddity's agony was a faint tidal wash.

The pa.s.sive personality could hear but couldn't intrude. Pa.s.sive could open the torrent of his thoughts to the others or shield them; the others could listen or not as they wished. The fact that John made no effort to conceal his feelings now spoke more than the thoughts themselves.

[ ... G.o.dd.a.m.n a.s.shole can't stand the pain like me no courage at all f.u.c.king artistic sensibilities Patty may like it but I'm d.a.m.ned tired of the complaining it hurts all of us not just him can't he see the power we wield ... ]

[No, John,] Evan sent down to him. [I don't see power, and I don't care. I want to be alone. Alone. I love you both, but being locked in here-]

Evan stopped. Oddity was sobbing with the emotional undercurrents. Evan raised Oddity's left hand. It was mostly John's, though past the lumpy interface the little finger looked to be Patty's and the thumb had Evan's coffee-and-cream coloring. The hand resisted him-Patty, trying to shove him from Dominant and take the body. Evan concentrated his will. The hand came up and slipped back the heavy cowl of Oddity's hood. As Oddity moaned, the fingers curled painfully with tendons crossed and overstretched, and lifted off the fencing mask.

The feathery touch of air-conditioning on Oddity's cheeks hurt, like everything else. The chill felt like ice water on a broken tooth. Without the mask, the gun in Oddity's other hand was very present, sinister and compelling all at once. It smelled of oil and cordite and violence.

Three hours past closing, the Jokertown Dime Museum was silent except in Oddity's head, and dark except in front of the Jetboy diorama, pinned in bright Fresnels with colored gels. Jetboy was caught in midstruggle. Evan had done most of the waxwork sculpture for that exhibit, working in those few hours when he was Dominant and both hands were mostly his own. Though Patty and John insisted it was all psychological, Evan couldn't work with Patty's hands or John's. They didn't have the touch.

Rare moments, those, when Evan could almost ignore Oddity's slow, continuous transformation as bits and pieces of their three merged bodies came and went, when he could almost believe he was one person again.

[Alone,] Patty echoed sympathetically. [I know, Evan. We'd all like that, but it can't be.]

Evan opened Oddity's mouth. The lips were thin and harsh: John's. Evan placed the barrel of the .38 there and closed John's mouth around it. The burnished metal was a sharp tang against the tongue.

Evan wondered what it would feel like to pull the trigger.

"Oddity-Evan. . ."

The voice was soft and came from behind Oddity. Evan ignored it and struggled to curl Oddity's finger around the forefinger. It wouldn't require but a fraction of Oddity's enhanced strength. Just the smallest t.i.the of it. Just the tiniest movement and Evan could find oblivion. Solitude.

[Evan, I love you. No matter what, remember that. I love you; John loves you, too.

"Evan, I think that's my gun you have. I bought it for protection, not this."

[ ... can't even pull the trigger, can't even do the one thing he really wants to do ... ]

Evan gave a heaving inner sob. Oddity's mouth opened. The hand holding the gun dropped to the side of the ma.s.sive body.

Oddity turned to face Charles Dutton, who stood in the archway of the Jetboy room. Evan knew what the joker was seeing: the melted-wax cheeks, the patchwork, lumpy face that was part Evan, part Patty, part John. The skin would be moving like a veil of cheesecloth laid over a ma.s.s of seething maggots. The face would be changing even as he watched, features collapsing and melting back into the pasty sagging flesh. The only unity to it at all would be that each and every one of those mismatched, overlaid parts would be twisted and taut with the torture of the slow, restless transformation.

Dutton didn't even blink. But then Dutton had to face his own living death's-head face in the mirror every single day.

"Dutton," Oddity gated out. Even the voice was harsh and shattered, like some B-movie creature. "It just hurts so much. . ."

Evan could feel moisture on the ruined cheeks. The left hand (Patty's entirely, now), came up and brushed at it.

"I know it does," the owner of the Dime Museum said. "I know and I sympathize.

But I don't think you really believe this is the way. May I have my weapon back, please." The cadaverous joker held out his hand.

Oddity looked at the gun once more. Evan hesitated, playing with the control of the shifting, powerful muscles. He could still bring the gun up, place the muzzle against Oddity's horrific, deformed temple, and do it. He could. Patty tried to force him to give the gun to Dutton. Evan continued to hold it, though it remained at Oddity's side. Dutton shrugged.

"I saw the Atlanta diorama this evening," he said. "It's excellent work, especially what you did with the Hartmann figure. I like the hands even more than the face, the way the fingers grip the podium even though Hartmann's ignoring the carnage behind him. They lend a tension to the entire scene."

The hand that was Patty's twitched involuntarily. An elbow tore from Oddity's chest, ripping muscles and prodding the front of the cloak before subsiding again. "They broke him," Oddity's grating, slow voice declared. "They conspired against him. It wasn't the senator's fault. He wanted to help. He cared, he was just ... fragile, and they knew it. They did what they had to do to break him."

"Who, Evan?"

"I don't know!" Oddity's muscular arm swung wide. Dutton took a half step backward. A blow from that hand could kill. "Barnett, maybe. That Judas Tachyon, certainly."

"Maybe some conspiracy of the right-wing joker haters. I don't know. But they brought the senator down."

The gun beat against Oddity's thigh again. Dutton watched it. "There's nothing but pain, Dutton," Evan continued. "Every d.a.m.n joker's life is nothing but unrelieved, bitter blackness. Jokertown bleeds and there's nothing and no one to bind the wounds. I-we-hate it."

"You're one of the few who have done any good, Evan-you and Patty and John."

Oddity gave a short, ironic laugh. "Yeah. We've done a lot of good." The weapon's barrel glinted as Oddity started to bring it up again, then let it drop once more. "Is this what Patty wants, or John?"

Oddity snorted. A glob of mucus spat from one nostril onto its cheek. "John's a martyr. He's almost delighted that Oddity suffers, since it makes us such a f.u.c.king n.o.ble figure. And Patty"-Oddity's voice softened, and the mouth almost seemed to smile for a moment "Patty holds on to hope. Maybe Tachyon will find a cure in between his sabotage of the jokers he claims to love. Maybe the virus will go into remission. Maybe there'll be another secondary outbreak like Croyd's to pull us apart again."

Oddity seemed to laugh, but there was no amus.e.m.e.nt in the sound at all. The gun beat against the heavy cloth of Oddity's thigh.

"It's all bulls.h.i.t, Dutton. You know what the trouble is? There aren't any happy endings in Jokertown. No happy endings at all."

Oddity shuddered. The huge, misshapen figure brought the cowl up over the face before bending down to retrieve the fencing mask. Oddity placed the mask over its face and stared at the Jetboy diorama.

"It all started here. The hero's supposed to win. What a shame. What a horrible, awful shame."

Oddity seemed to notice the gun once more. The hand came up, held the weapon before the fencing mask. "I didn't finish Hartmann's figure," Evan said.

"He can wait. I've been contacted by a source who claims to have Carnifex's actual fighting suit from that night. If I can buy it. .." Dutton shrugged.

"You're ghoulish, Dutton."

Dutton almost smiled. "So is the public."

"A ghoul and a cynic," Oddity said, and its voice was higher and less raspy.

The hand holding the gun trembled, then reversed its grip. "Charles..."

Dutton reached with a thin, bony hand and placed the gun in his suit pocket.

"Thanks, Patty," he said. "Where's Evan?"

"Pa.s.sive," Oddity replied. "We'll keep him down there for a few days if we can.

He's tired, Charles, very tired." Shapes humped along Oddity's back and a soft moan came from behind the mask. Then Oddity sighed. "All of us are tired. But thank you for listening and for helping."

"I didn't want to lose my artist."

Oddity gave a dry, rasping chuckle. "I know better. And I think it's time to go.

Evan probably won't be back for a while."

Shadows flowed over the black cloak as Oddity turned to leave.

"Patty?"

Steel mesh glinted; the head looked back to Dutton but they didn't speak. Oddity lurched heavily away. Dutton watched until she/it/they (Dutton was never sure which p.r.o.noun was appropriate) closed the door of the rear entrance. The joker looked back at the Jetboy exhibit, brilliant in the darkness.

"They're right, you know," he told Jetboy. "You were supposed to win and you f.u.c.ked up."

Dutton turned off the exhibit's lights with a savage swipe of his hand and went back to his office.

He locked the gun in the museum safe.

It was a cool night for May. Oddity's heavy, black ankle-length velvet cloak was comfortable. A cold front had swept the late-spring humidity and smog out to sea.

The air was crisp and crystalline. Patty could see the light of the Manhattan towers between the older, lower, and far grubbier buildings of Jokertown.

May 14, 1973, had been a gorgeous night as well, in its own way.

Patty sighed with the o.r.g.a.s.m, her eyes closed. "Yes. . ." Evan whispered in her ear, and John laughed in satisfaction, lower down. When the long, shuddering climax had pa.s.sed, Patty hugged both of them to her.

"G.o.d, you two are lovely." Then, giggling, she flung Evan aside and bounded from the bed. Naked, she padded across the room and flung open the doors to the balcony. A breeze lifted her hair, fragrant with a warm, sweet-tasting rain that was scrubbing the city clean. Twenty floors below, New York spread out in noisy brilliance. Patty opened her arms wide and let the night and the elements take her, joyous. Droplets shimmered like crystal in her hair, on her skin.

"Jesus, Patty, anyone could see us..." John came up behind her, also naked, hugging her. Evan stroked the two of them in pa.s.sing and went to the railing.

"It's wonder ful," he said. "Who cares what they see, John. We're happy."

Evan smiled at them all. They melded into a long triple embrace, kissing and touching as the rain slicked their bodies. When it seemed to be time, they went back inside and made love again....

They'd gone to sleep that night, but they'd never awakened. Not really. It was Oddity who had opened its eyes on the fifteenth. Oddity, the horror. Oddity, the wild card's mockery of their relationship. Oddity, the torturer. Gone forever were a social worker named Patty, a rising black artist named Evan, and an angry young lawyer named John. Like a thousand jokers before them, they disappeared into the warrens of Jokertown.

Oddity looked at the brilliant concrete spires of Manhattan and moaned, as much from the memory as the physical pain.

[At least in Jokertown it's harder to feel sorry for yourself, when every day we see the other horrors, the ones who are helpless. Oddity's body has strength to match that of the aces.] John.

[Bull s.h.i.t, it's all bulls.h.i.t rationalization.... ] Evan screamed back, down below. [It hurts, it hurts.... ] [Rest,] Patty told Evan. [Rest for a few days while you can. We'll be needing you to take over again soon enough.] John scoffed. [I'm not rationalizing. It's the truth-in Jokertown Oddity can do some good.] John especially seemed to enjoy the role of vigilante. Oddity: protector of jokers, the strong right arm of Hartmann.

Hartmann's defeat still hurt. John especially throbbed with bitterness. But John was strong; Evan wasn't. Patty sent her thoughts down to him.

[I understand, Evan. John does, too, when he takes the time to think about it.

We understand. We do. We love you, Evan.]

[Thank you, I love you, too, Patty. ... ] Evan could have said it only to Patty, but he left himself open to both of them, deliberately.

John was surly; Patty knew he'd noted Evan's intentional snub. [He has a h.e.l.l of a way of showing his affection, doesn't he?]

[John, please ... Evan needs the rest more than us. Have some compa.s.sion.]

[Compa.s.sion, h.e.l.l. He almost killed us. I'm not ready to die, Patty. I don't give a s.h.i.t how much it hurts.] [Evan doesn't really want to die either, or he would have gone ahead. I couldn't have stopped him, John. This was a gesture, a plea. He wants to be free of it. Sixteen years is a long time to be in a room you can't leave. I can't blame him for feeling that way.]

[He's come to hate me, Patty.]

[No.] But that was all she said. John scoffed at her. "Y'know, if you ignore the fact that there's three of us, we're almost staid," John said one night as they lay on the couch, sipping at gla.s.ses of cabernet. "We don't swing, we don't sleep with other people. Within the triangle, we're as monogamous and conservative as some married couple in Podunk, Iowa."

"You complaining, John?" Patty teased him, running a finger along his upper thigh and watching what that did to his face. "You getting tired of us?"

John groaned, and they all three laughed. "No," he said. "I don't think that's ever going to happen."

[Okay, maybe "hate" is a little strong,] John said. [But he doesn't love me or like me anymore. Not for a long time. Do you, Evan?]

[d.a.m.n egoist, no, I want out, I just want to be alone.... ] Then, the barest echo: [John I'm sorry I'm sorry. ... ] [This might have happened anyway,] Patty said to both of them. [Even without Oddity. Those were different times.

Different moralities than now.]

[Sure. But there's no divorce from Oddity, is there?] [Which is all the more reason we all need empathy and understanding-all of us.]

[You always were the G.o.dd.a.m.n saint, Patty] [f.u.c.k you, John.]

[I wish I could, Patty. G.o.d, I wish I could.]

Jokertown had always been a night town.

A little past midnight, the main Jokertown streets were still busy. Darkness hid or amplified deformities as needed. Night was the best mask of all.

Not many nats traveled to J-town in the last several months. Tourism was something done in daytime, if at all. The streets had become too unfashionably dangerous.

At night, Jokertown was left alone like a bad dream. Still, the locals were out and Oddity decided to keep to the plentiful back alleys. John might find some small enjoyment in being public, in the respect and sometimes outright adulation of the jokers, but Patty didn't. Patty could forgive John's egotism-it was little enough balm for the pain-but she didn't need it or want it herself, especially not tonight.

They were a few blocks from the ruins of the Crystal Palace, in the back alley where Gimli's inexplicably empty skin had been found. The Oddity stared at the stained concrete where Tom Miller's body had lain: another death, another nameless violence. Patty was certain Gimli had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by a rogue ace, Evan thought that maybe Gimli had been an early victim of the Croyd outbreak, John (always the skeptic) thought maybe Hartmann had arranged it. [And good riddance, too,] John added in counterpoint to Patty's thought.

The Oddity shuffled on, limping because one leg seemed to be mostly Patty's and was attached at a decided angle to the hip. Moving it hurt like h.e.l.l. The Oddity moaned and moved on.

"s.h.i.t, man. She's just a toy. Ain't worth wasting time on taking."