Interruption Five - Streets Of Fire
The aftermath of Midas Day was surprisingly light the second time around, and Kevin found himself in much better spirits about it, even if he didn't have a clue what was happening to him or why. The next day it was as though everything had simply returned to normal, and none's the wiser for whatever had happened. They had the camera footage, of course, and so he and Fatima had watched it back with him running for his life like he was in some sort of found footage horror movie. Fatima had had a proper giggle that lasted several minutes watching it, even needing him to stop the film every so often so that she could recover her breath, all of which Kevin found rather embarrassing.
"You don't have to laugh
quite
so hard, dear," he told her at one point, when tears were streaming down her dark cheeks, her breathing so roughly staggered he was afraid she might pass out from inconsolable mirth.
"Oh babes, if you can't laugh at this, I dunno what'll ever make you laugh," she said in between giggling fits. "I know it's less funny 'cause it's happenin' to you, but jaysis, you have to admit there's a sense of wondrous insanity about all of it. And you say there's supposed to be some kind of reason for it?"
"That's what Merlin claimed," Kevin said with a shrug.
"You say that like he could be dickin' with ya," Natalie grinned, sipping from whatever was in that glass of green liquid she was drinking from.
"It's Merlin," Kevin replied. "I think 'could be dicking with you' is the first line in anyone's description of him. He's practically a leprechaun. He likes getting into the middle of people, introducing trouble and then fucking off, leaving someone else holding the bag. Sure, there's the depiction of him as the kindly old wizard, helping Arthur get his feet placed as the King of England, but it all goes a bit off the rails pretty quick after that."
"And you think he'd lie about there being a reason?"
"No, I think that his 'reason,' whatever it is, might only make sense to him personally, or that it might be related to something outside of anything I might actually know anything about," Kevin said, as they turned off the television, the three of them sitting around the living room. "But then again, it also might be something so painfully obvious that I'm going to kick myself when I figure it out."
"There's also the chance that it's something specifically to irk Morgana," Fatima replied. "The two of them have a pretty intertwined history if half of the stories are to be believed."
"'Don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear,' is how that one Lou Reed song goes," Kevin said. "So, I'll believe just enough to believe that I don't know much of anything at all. But yeah, you asked, love, so that's what Midas Day is pretty much like - an endless swarm of women throwing themselves at me until one of them has their way with me. And each day, in the hour or so before it starts up, I'm compelled to take myself to some different location. That's happened both times now, so I suppose that shoots down the idea of locking myself in a bank vault or something. I suspect that compulsion's mostly to prevent me from doing something crazy like trying to isolate myself away from women. I think that if I planned to go on a ten-day drive across the middle of central Asia with Midas Day somewhere in the middle of it, I'd still find myself near a major metropolitan area when the actual Miday Day itself came."
"Sneaky lil fucker, innit he?"
"I imagine one doesn't live this long as a magician without being especially clever."
"What's on our agenda today?" Kev asked, glancing around. "I should probably be asking Elizabeth that, shouldn't I? Where is she, anyway?"
"She's off doing background research on the next person she wants to present to you for here in the house," Fatima answered. "Which I
told
her today would be a good day for, because it wouldn't let you duck out of the thing that
I
have on your schedule today."
"Uh oh," Kevin laughed. "What's that?"
"You're meeting my father for a late lunch this afternoon," she told him.
"The footballer media mogul?
That
father?"
"He's a great big pussycat, so you shouldn't worry too much."
"But I should worry some?"
"Well," she grinned, "worrying a little anytime you're about to meet someone who used to play the footie professionally is a fair cop."
"That completely puts me at ease, Tee," he groaned. "Thank you for that."
"If you weren't at least a
little
nervous, how would it be any fun?"
"And we're not going to tell him about the whole magic thing, I take it?"
"I think that would be best," Fatima replied. "The last thing I want is to have to explain to my father all about magic or that you've met people who knew King Arthur."
"But I could've made a joke about your dad being old enough that he would've known King Arthur as well."
"Hardy har har."
"Who's watching over us? Miriam, Jackson or Mike?"