(eng) K. A. Applegate - Everworld 02 by Land of Loss

Author:Land of Loss [Loss, Land of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIX

Sitting on the couch watching sitcoms on TV. The definition of normal. When life goes weird on me I touch base with sitcoms.

The familiar sets. The familiar sound of laugh track or live audience. The entrances and exits. The pauses as the actors wait for the laugh to build and fade. The familiar setups and payoffs to the jokes.

All that stuff is like part of my DNA. The new and the fairly recent: Frasier and Seinfeld and Friends. The older stuff, M*A

*S*H* and Mary Tyler Moore and especially the great, the incomparable Dick Van Dyke Show. The stuff is the map to my brain. The foundation of my thinking.

When life becomes surreal, unrecognizable, strange, I go back to the source. Talk to me, Niles; toss off that snobbish line and Frasier will take that Jack Benny reaction shot that milks laughs out of thin air. Talk to me, Tim and the Tool Man; show me that tired, satisfying formula, hah-hah, too much power, better talk to Wilson about it. Phoebe! Monica! Chandler, could you BE more funny? Talk to me, Rob and Laura; make me laugh, make me laugh at all the jokes I've heard and seen a million times before.

Master of your domain. I hate spunk. Rucy, what are you ap to now? Ohhhh, Rooooob! So no one told you life was gonna be this way, clapclap-clapdapdap.

You're the guys I can count on. You're the guys who stay the same, day in, day out.

I clicked back and forth, thumb on the “last channel” button between an old Mary and a not-quite-so-old Friends. A definite resemblance between Mary Tyler Moore and Courtney Cox.

Huh. Never noticed that before.

Stay focused on that, Christopher. Not Loki's son the gigantic wolf, or Huitzilopoctli's priest-killers, or the thousand terrors that even now may be crowding around your sleeping body in a jungle that may be a trillion miles away or right here, in this very room.

The phone rang. I jumped. I tried to ignore it, but it felt bad.

Then my mom's voice.

“Christopher! It's for you.”

“I'm not home,” I yelled.

“It's someone named April, and I'm not paid to lie for you.”

“No, you're paid to lie for your clients,” I muttered so that she could hear me muttering without hearing what I'd said. I clicked the TV off. “Sorry, Mary, sorry, Monica, gotta go.”

I got up and went to the phone in the hallway. “What?” I snapped.

'You fell asleep while you were supposed to be on watch,"

she accused.

“Sorry. I was tired. Arrest me for dereliction of duty. Are you here or there?”

“I'm here. Jalil took over guard duty, so he's over there and I went back to sleep. David says we should get together. We need to talk. He's at his job at Starbucks. He gets off in an hour.”

“I'm busy,” I said.

“Busy? Doing what?”

"Watching TV, April. Is that okay? I'm very busy watching TV.

So why don't you and David go have your little conference without me?"

Silence. No answer.

“Well, bye, April,” I said.

“Christopher, we need to figure a way out of !this.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.