The Talisman

rancid undersmell. Wolf looked left and saw a glass box full of white stuff. That was the source of the good light smell.
    ‘Jack,’ he whispered.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘I want some of that white stuff, please. But none of the pee.’
    ‘Pee? What are you talking about?’
    Wolf searched for a more formal word and found it. ‘Urine.’ He pointed at a thing with a light going off and on inside it. BUTTERY FLAVORING , it read. ‘That’s some kind of urine, isn’t it? It’s got to be, the way it smells.’
    Jack smiled tiredly. ‘A popcorn without the fake butter, right,’ he said. ‘Now pipe down, okay?’
    ‘Sure, Jack,’ Wolf said humbly. ‘Right here and now.’
    The ticket-girl had been chewing a big wad of grape-flavored bubble gum. Now she stopped. She looked at Jack, then at Jack’s big, hulking companion. The gum sat on her tongue inside her half-open mouth like a large purple tumor. She rolled her eyes at the guy behind the counter.
    ‘Two, please,’ Jack said. He took out his roll of bills, dirty, tageared ones with an orphan five hiding in the middle.
    ‘Which show?’ Her eyes moved back and forth, back and forth, Jack to Wolf and Wolf to Jack. She looked like a woman watching a hot table-tennis match.
    ‘What’s just starting?’ Jack asked her.
    ‘Well . . .’ She glanced down at the paper Scotch-taped beside her. ‘There’s The Flying Dragon in Cinema Four. It’s a kung-fu movie with Chuck Norris.’ Back and forth went her eyes, back and forth, back and forth. ‘Then, in Cinema Six, there’s a double feature. Two Ralph Bakshi cartoons. Wizards and The Lord of the Rings .’
    Jack felt relieved. Wolf was nothing but a big, overgrown kid, and kids loved cartoons. This could work out after all. Wolf would maybe find at least one thing in the Country of Bad Smells that would amuse him, and Jack could sleep for three hours.
    ‘That one,’ he said. ‘The cartoons.’
    ‘That’ll be four dollars,’ she said. ‘Bargain Matinee prices end at two.’ She pushed a button and two tickets poked out of a slot with a mechanical ratcheting noise. Wolf flinched backward with a small cry.
    The girl looked at him, eyebrows raised.
    ‘You jumpy, mister?’
    ‘No, I’m Wolf,’ Wolf said. He smiled, showing a great many teeth. Jack would have sworn that Wolf showed more teeth now when he smiled than he had a day or two ago. The girl looked at all those teeth. She wet her lips.
    ‘He’s okay. He just—’ Jack shrugged. ‘He doesn’t get off the farm much. You know.’ He gave her the orphan five. She handled it as if she wished she had a pair of tongs to do it with.
    ‘Come on, Wolf.’
    As they turned away to the candy-stand, Jack stuffing the one into the pocket of his grimy jeans, the ticket-girl mouthed to the counterman: Look at his nose!
    Jack looked at Wolf and saw Wolf’s nose flaring rhythmically.
    ‘Stop that,’ he muttered.
    ‘Stop what, Jack?’
    ‘Doing that thing with your nose.’
    ‘Oh. I’ll try, Jack, but—’
    ‘Shh.’
    ‘Help you, son?’ the counterman asked.
    ‘Yes, please. A Junior Mints, a Reese’s Pieces, and an extra-large popcorn without the grease.’
    The counterman got the stuff and pushed it across to them. Wolf got the tub of popcorn in both hands and immediately began to snaffle it up in great jaw-cracking chomps.
    The counterman looked at this silently.
    ‘Doesn’t get off the farm much,’ Jack repeated. Part of him was already wondering if these two had seen enough of sufficient oddness to get them thinking that a call to the police might be in order. He thought – not for the first time – that there was a real irony in all this. In New York or L.A., probably no one would have given Wolf a second look . . . or if a second look, certainly not a third. Apparently the weirdness-toleration level was a lot lower out in the middle of the country. But, of course, Wolf would have flipped out of his gourd long since if they had been in New York or L.A.
    ‘I’ll bet he don’t,’ the counterman said. ‘That’ll be two-eighty.’
    Jack paid it with an inward wince, realizing he had just laid out a quarter of his cash for their afternoon at the movies.
    Wolf was grinning at the counterman through a mouthful of popcorn. Jack recognized it as Wolf’s A #1 Friendly Smile, but he somehow doubted that the counterman was seeing it that way. There were all those teeth in that smile . . . hundreds of them, it seemed.
    And Wolf was flaring his