“Kenzo glances up from his chopping. “You look good enough to eat.”“Don’t tell that to Stu’s sleepwalkers,” I say.”

“I know you don’t….” He shook his head and glanced up at the stark white wall across the way from his cell, starting over. “I know you care about me. That’s all I need. I just figured… we have enough secrets between us,” he continued as he looked back up at Zane and smiled nervously. “Now it’s just one less.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Curiouser and curiouser.”Startled, I glanced at him. “I say that sometimes.”Even with his face tight with worry, Dad managed to look a little amused. “It’s from Alice in Wonderland. Appropriate, don’t you think?”

“In that case, it's good that you're a human Cuisinart," she said."I'm sorry?""A Cuisinart. It's an appliance from the Broken. You put vegetables into it, push a button, and it chops them into tiny pieces."Richard frowned. "Why would you need an appliance to chop vegetables? Wouldn't it be easier to chop them with a knife?""It's meant to save time," she explained."Does it?""Well, cleaning it usually eats up most of the time you save on chopping.""So you're telling me that I'm useless.""It's a neat gadget!""And I'm hard to clean, apparently."She checked his face. Tiny sparks danced in his eyes. He was pulling her leg. Well. If that's how it is... "Considering last night's argument, I think that you're remarkably difficult to clean.""There probably is a retort to this that's not off-color," he said. "But I can't think of one.”

“When I eat, everything tastes so good I can't get all the taste out of it; when I look at something-say, the lake-the waves are so green and the foam so white that it seems I can't look at it hard enough; there seems to be something there that I can't get at. And even when I'm with you, I can't seem to be with you...enough.”

“Fred whispered, “Okay. If I don’t come back, and say they don’t got my body, like if Justin eats me or somethin’, tell everybody you don’t know what happened. Make it mysterious. And then a year later spread rumors that you’ve seen me wanderin’ around town. That way I’ll be like fuckin’ Bigfoot, everybody claiming to have seen me here and there. Legend of Fred Chu.” John nodded, as if he were committing this to memory. He lit his own firebombs, glanced up at me and asked,“You got any final requests, in case this don’t end well?” “Yeah. Avenge my death.”