SUPER TOM TOM, Part II

Level 7:

Hank organizes dinner parties to introduce Tom Tom to his important friends. He assures Tom Tom that dinner parties are where the real business happens. Tom Tom feels confident that, though it’s not as he expected, this is his best option. At the parties, Tom Tom serves drinks and dances on request.

Tom Tom decides that putting up with Hank’s oafish friends who tell jokes he doesn’t understand and have so many more golden octagons than he could ever make working at Sledgehammer, is all in the interest of freeing the princess. It’s noble, really. Hank’s friends are important government people and if Tom Tom can humor them by letting them pat his shell and whisper crude things in his ear, then it’s the least he can do. This is, after all, the princess’s life we’re talking about. Hank just doesn’t like to force the issue. It comes up a couple times and everybody offers their sincerest promises to look into it, but the whole process is terribly slow. “Relax,” Hank tells Tom Tom. “These things take time.”

Level 8:

When Tom Tom’s not working at Sledgehammer—Bernie had winked and said, “I had a feeling you’d be back”—he spends his days together with Hank. Tom Tom thinks a place like Bruiserland’s not so bad when you have a friend to guide you through it. Hank knows the rules, has a nice apartment with nice things, is a terrific cook, and goes out of his way to guide Tom Tom. In fact, Tom Tom has come to depend on Hank in a way he never thought was possible. He believes this may have something to do with his father. Sure, his father gave him things like toys, and food, and the boat to come here, but what about affection? Tom Tom doesn’t remember his father ever hugging him or telling him he loved him. Hank is different. He loves to touch Tom Tom. At first he does this as if it were bypretends it’s an accident when helike he pretends to accidentally touches Tom Tom’s hand as they reach for a sprig of fresh thyme at the farmer’s market. Later he’s more overt, resting his paw on Tom Tom’s leg during a screening of The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant at the annual Fassbinder festival.

At night, Hank rubs Tom Tom’s shell and tells him how cute he is. Tom Tom presses his face into Hank’s furry chest and takes in his scent, rich like roasted almonds. Tom Tom feels an attraction that makes his eyes burn. Hank leans down and offers his horn to Tom Tom. Tom Tom takes it gently in his mouth, as if it were a sick creature, needing his warmth. Tom Tom feels so much pleasure he thinks he will break into a thousand particles of light.

Level 9:

Sometimes, after Hank has fallen asleep, Tom Tom imagines his mother. She dances to the happy music of Tom Tom Land, and when she meets her neighbors in the street, she tells them of her brave and precocious young son, fighting the dangerous creatures of Bruiserland, sacrificing so much to bring home the princess. They smile and wink because they know that implicit in any rescue mission is the promise of marriage. Tom Tom tries to envision himself living at the palace with the princess, making love to her, having little happy children, pretending he is everything they’ve expected of him, but the whole scenario is terribly unclear, like he’s standing at the edge of a swimming pool, trying to spot a coin on the bottom. Tom Tom wishes he could talk to Hank about this, but Hank, he feels, would never understand.

Level 10:

One night while preparing dinner—Tom Tom pats dry the endives, and Hank mixes Roquefort into freshly blended mayonnaise—Tom Tom brings up the idea of moving into Hank’s condo. Tom Tom has been thinking about this for weeks, yet this is the first time he’s brought it up. “I’m paying all this money for my apartment but I’m always over here,” Tom Tom explains. He tries to sound casual. “It makes sense, don’t you think?” Hank doesn’t say anything. He’s looking intently into the creamy white mayonnaise. Tom Tom continues. “Anyway, I just thought, why not take the rent I’m paying to essentially store my things and apply that toward paying more bribes to free the princess?”

“Right,” says Hank, turning his back to Tom Tom. “The princess.”

“What did you say?”

Hank makes a few angry bursts from the hand blender before looking up. “Look,” he says. “If you want to move in here with me, just say it. Don’t blame it on the princess.”

Tom Tom is quiet. He did not expect Hank to react in this way. “It was only a suggestion. Forget I mentioned it.”

“Fine,” says Hank. “I will.”

They finish preparing the meal in silence and during dinner, Tom Tom hardly eats, concentrating instead on the bitterness forming like a block in the back of his throat. Later, while using the butane torch to caramelize the sugar on the crème brûlée, the phone rings. Hank, who’s been sitting at the table, swirling his Pinot Noir, gets up to answer it. Hank never answers the phone during dinner. He hates interruptions. “Dinner is a sacred time,” Hank says.

“What a surprise,” Hank chimes into the receiver. “I never thought you’d call, but I’m thrilled you did.” Hank steps into the bedroom and just before shutting the door, Tom Tom hears him say, “Of course it’s not a bad time. It’s a pleasant diversion.”

Tom Tom does not hear more of Hank’s conversation. There is no theme music either. The only sound passing through Tom Tom’s ear holes is the slow clean hiss of butane feeding the flame of his torch. He knows he has made a terrible mistake, but he’s unable to comprehend the weight of it. He watches the heat curl off the blue flames and vanish into the air. His mind feels as blank as freshly pressed aluminum. Before leaving, he cooks Hank’s crème brûlée into a black smoking puck.

Level 11:

Tom Tom goes home to wait for Hank’s apology, but itwhich never comes. Tom Tom calls Bernie and asks if Hank’s stopped by Sledgehammer looking for him. Bernie says sorry, he hasn’t.

Tom Tom waits two days before deciding that personal feelings cannot get in the way of his mission. He must save the princess, and if that means putting aside his anger and making the peace with Hank, so be it. He has a lot of time and money invested in Hank’s friends. Tom Tom decides he will stop by Café Istanbul to surprise Hank with some baklava. While he’s waiting in line, he sees a horn poking above the plush velvet booths in the back. He leans in close to the fluorescent display case and pretends to be deciding between pistachio and walnut, but really he’s thinking about that horn, how it doesn’t necessarily mean anything; horns are ubiquitous here in West Bruiserland. Tom Tom orders and as he holds the little paper bag, heavy with the baklava, he blinks a few times and decides a peek won’t hurt.

The horn belongs to Hank and across from him sits a small, mole-like creature with a short naked snout, whiskers, and large round eyes. An empty plate with a few flakes of phyllo dough occupies the space between them. Their fingers are touching, but when Tom Tom comes marching over, Hank withdraws his hand and hides it under the table. “Tom Tom,” says Hank. “God, it’s been forever? How’ve you been?”

“Go fuck yourself,” says Tom Tom.

Level 12:

Tom Tom unplugs his phone and locks himself in his apartment. He is frozen, his eyes half-closed, his mouth a squiggly line. From the lack of activity, it would be easy to think there’s been some glitch in the programming, yet the grey/brown sky lightens and darkens with each passing day, and the theme music—it’s picked up with added intensity as if to add irony to the situation—plays on. From time to time, Tom Tom stumbles into the bathroom to look into the mirror. Poor Tom Tom! What’s happened to him? It would be too simple to say that Tom Tom feels naïve or stupid or betrayed. Instead, Tom Tom feels burdened by the sense that his body is nothing more than a series of tediously rendered pixels created by some caffeinated programmer in the midst of a deadline, but his essence, that which guides him, that which has pushed him forward in his life, the thing that inhabits his shell that makes Tom Tom Tom Tom, is no longer there.

Level 13:

After a week, Bernie leaves Tom Tom a message on his machine, telling him not to come back to Sledgehammer. “Don’t worry,” says Bernie. “You’re cute and exotic. You’ll find other work. How about waiting tables?”

Tom Tom runs out of food and as he’s searching for a stray box of soda crackers he thinks might be at the bottom of his closet, he finds his green knapsack. He checks around for the beret of invisibility, but remembers that he gave it to a pig-like creature with giant wings who claimed to have influence with the princess’ captors. And the rocketship? The magic pointer? He sold them to pay bribes, bribes that never amounted to anything, bribes that Hank assured him would bring the princess closer to freedom. Tom Tom counts his golden octagons. Only 13 remain. He uses most of them to buy instant soup and canned chili.

Level 14:

A notice appears on Tom Tom’s door. He finds he’s too depressed to read it.

Level 15:

Tom Tom needs some air. He takes a walk down by the shore where he landed so long ago. He looks for the boat his father gave him, but all he finds are strips of rotting lumber and some tattered remnants of sail. He stands for a long while, contemplating the waves, watching as they rise and swell in the wind. Tom Tom thinks it’s too bad they come in instead of going out. He might be able to get back home otherwise.

When Tom Tom gets back to his apartment, he finds that his key no longer works. He bangs on the door for a while, hoping to get back his green knapsack, but nobody answers.

Level 16:

Tom Tom wanders West Bruiserland in search of stray golden octagons. He thinks that perhaps he should start anew, forget all his previous machinations and charge forward, saving the princess using his natural abilities. Yet as he walks, perhaps from the ache in his round toeless feet or the stench of rotten milk that infuses the night, he begins to think that maybe he’s not as brave or precocious as everyone always claimed. After all, if character is forged by experience, up until now, Tom Tom hasn’t defeated a single enemy. If anything, he’s shown himself to be weak, easily tempted by physical gratification, undignified in his pursuit of money, and a bad judge of character. Tom Tom feels completely ordinary, not the right choice for this or any other mission. He uses his last three remaining golden octagons to buy a small bottle of Uncle Vladimir’s Magic Tonic.

Level 17:

The sound of metallic clicking wakes Tom Tom. He remembers having lain down on a pile of damp flattened cardboard, his eyelids feeling as if they’d been filled with sand, but now the grey/brown sky has lightened to a pleasant muddy hue and the clicking sound fills his mind. He sits up, and rubs his eyes—a gesture that, had it happened in Level 1, would have seemed cute, but now it comes off as pitiful. He looks for the source of the sound. No more than twenty feet away, outside a short brick building with revolving doors and frosted glass windows and a wrought iron awning, stands a creature, thick in the belly with tusks and long white whiskers. His thin lips hold the stub of a black cigar and he tries with one of his webbed hands to get a lighter to work. Click. Click. Tom Tom approaches him.

“Bloody thing won’t light,” says the creature, whose gaze lingers for a long time on Tom Tom before returning to the lighter. Click.

“May I?”

“Be my guest.” The creature hands Tom Tom the lighter. His webbed fingers are hot to the touch. Tom Tom shakes the lighter, flicks the metal wheel, and a small blue flame appears. Lighting cigarettes for patrons at Sledgehammer always got him a nice tip. The creature leans in so that Tom Tom can light his cigar. He smells earthy and clean, with a hint of vanilla. His eyes remind Tom Tom of the dancing chocolate drops back home. For a moment, the cigar smoke consumes Tom Tom, like a cloud of burnt cinnamon, and he thinks he might faint.

“I’m Nigel,” says the creature, rolling the cigar stub around in his mouth.

“Tom Tom.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says Nigel, pausing to blow another dense smoky cloud from his mouth. “Tom Tom, I’d be honored if you’d let me buy you breakfast for your help. There’s a cafe around the corner from here. They make the most wonderful blintzes.”

Tom Tom blinks. It’s a new day and there’s no better time to start his mission. In fact, he should view losing everything as a blessing. He can go, clean of body, clean of mind, into the next land, not having to worry about his rocket ship running out of fuel or misplacing his beret of invisibility or the magic pointer backfiring. There is no better time that the present to save the princess. But he is hungry. There’s no reason to turn down a good, hearty breakfast—one that will replenish his stamina points. Plus, this Nigel fellow may well know the way to the enemy castle.

“Shall we?” Nigel says, gesturing with one of his wide webbed paws.

“Okay,” says Tom Tom. “But it’ll have to be quick. I have big things to do today.”

“You don’t say?” says Nigel. “Sounds intriguing.”

“It’s nothing really,” says Tom Tom with a giggle. He’s not one for giggling. He must be nervous. “Just something I’ve been putting off.”

Read Super Tom Tom, Part I here.

By Adam Scott (Illustration by Johnathan Reid Sevigny)