It didn’t seem that Saturday noticed Thursday as he approached. Thursday stared with astonishment at the old man and his farce of a mustache. A sick dread came over him, that the Idiots were more than mere mortals and they could succeed in their goals if left unchecked. Perhaps the Idiots had found a source of power to fuel their evil spread and they could use it to do things like teleport in an instant. Maybe Saturday and the other Idiot days were siphoning his powers as the Idiot God, readying themselves for Sunday’s hostile takeover of his seat.
But Thursday stopped on the sidewalk and eyed the old man, and his dread became skepticism. The old man didn’t have the bearing to siphon his power, he did good to sit in the presence of Azalaan, the Idiot Thursday God, or whatever his full name is now. To glimpse even a fraction of the inconceivable power of Thursday would drive a man to lunacy.
Thursday marched up to Saturday who had wrapped up his conversation with the guard at the booth next to the gate of the university. The two men nodded as they approached one another on the sidewalk and they stood about a foot from one another as people, mostly coeds, walked in all directions around them.
“Are you a spy?” Saturday spoke first and the question zapped Thursday of all the confidence he had mustered against the creeping doubt that the Idiot days were as powerful, or moreso, than himself.
“What…” Thursday stammered, trying his best to mask his shock at the direct nature of the question. “Why..I…what kind of question is that sir?”
“Are you a spy?” was Saturday’s response.
“How could I be a spy?” Thursday said. “Sunday would have busted me just like Wednesday, who is not at all who you think she is by the way. It’s funny, I didn’t find her attractive until I spoke with her in the men’s room after dinner, but that is a whole other thing to unpack I guess…”
“So you’re not a spy then?” Saturday asked, ignoring Thursday’s revealing rantings. Saturday seemed to take a quick glance around himself and then motioned for Thursday to follow him as he walked through the gate and to one of the tall buildings on either side of the entrance walkway. They walked in silence and once inside, they took an elevator to the basement. When the doors opened, Thursday realized where he was. He had worked in this very basement as a freshmen. Saturday led him to the blackbox theater located in the basement and he confirmed that the two were alone inside.
“I’m a spy,” Saturday said, standing in front of a stunned Thursday. “An investigator, really,” he showed a silver badge that Thursday recognized as he said it. “I guess I should arrest you now, but…
Thursday had doubled over in laughter and it really seemed that he had lost control. The old man stared at him with concern and his large mustache quivered.
“Are you alright?” Saturday asked.
Thursday sat upright with his back against a black wall of the theater and he shook his head as he smiled at the old man. He produced his silver badge and the old man stared at Thursday for about a minute in disbelief.
Then Saturday started to laugh as uproariously as Thursday had, and as he laughed, Thursday watched the old man rip the large mustache from his face. Without the mustache, Thursday could see the features of his face and they looked plastic. Then Saturday pulled at the skin of his neck and Thursday watched with horror as it stretched and Saturday tugged. Soon, Saturday had ripped the skin of his face completely off and Thursday looked away, unprepared for a grotesque scene of a face without skin. Maybe Sunday had scared the spy so much in unmasking Wednesday that this Saturday was willing to commit suicide rather than face him again, Thursday thought.
“I’m not an old man,” Thursday heard and he slowly looked back in the direction of what he assumed would be a bloody scene by that point. But rather than grotesquery, there was a young lady standing in the place of Saturday with what looked like a fat suit massed around her ankles. She was dripping sweat and the sleeveless shirt she wore was drenched.
“What is going on?” Thursday asked with astonishment as a clear theme was emerging. He had posed as a woman to infiltrate the Woke Brigade, a man had posed as the female head of Nature’s Wrath, and now, underneath the girth and mustache of the leader of the Anarchists was a young lady.
“I’m a graduate acting student here…”
“Oh God,” Thursday interrupted with audible annoyance.
“…and I was approached by a man who saw my recent performance here in this very theater. We were doing a gender swapped version of the Lysistrata…”
“Of course you were, I’m sure it was horrible.”
“…and we got a heckler during the performance. I approached the man, still in character as the Commissioner of Public Safety and I was dressed as a man by that point. I yelled at the man until he apologized and the audience was convinced that I was actually a man. After the play was done, the man approached and invited me to the deli on Riverside. I thought he was buying me dinner, but he took me to a dark room in the back. A man sat in the darkness and he said that there was a gathering happening soon, and they wanted me to replace one of the expected guests. Apparently the old leader of a group of Anarchists had died and they wanted me to impersonate him in costume, to go undercover and report everything I saw. I agreed, it seemed like an amazing test of my skills and everything was going well until that dinner. I was sure that Sunday had found me out, but apparently there were three of us there.”
“What’s the point of gender swapping the Lysistrata?” Thursday asked.
“That’s your question after everything I just told you? We have to go to the deli, we have to report the assassination plot.”
“Why don’t we stop it ourselves?” Thursday posed. He was hesitant to expose himself to Sunday before he knew more about the man. “What if we go to Houston and warn Beyonce ourselves?”
“How are we supposed to find Beyonce?”
“We follow Tuesday, of course, he must know where she is. Can you get in touch with him?”
“When I was at the office of the head of the Anarchists,” the lady Saturday said, “there was a black book with the days of the week listed and phone numbers next to each. I didn’t quite understand what it was at the time, but it must have been contact numbers for all of the Idiot days.”
Thursday agreed and they left the blackbox theater, but not before Saturday zipped back up into her costume, and headed to the office of the lead Anarchist that was located on the upper west side of Manhattan.
Saturday led Thursday inside of a fancy building and to the very expensive home of the man that Saturday had been impersonating since his death. The man who was Saturday was an old Frenchman who taught history at a university. He lived alone, the lady Saturday explained that he met regularly with a group of Anarchists in his home, though she hadn’t had the chance to impersonate him to his friends.
Saturday found the book with the numbers and called the number for Tuesday. Apparently a secretary answered and when she did the gruff voice of Saturday and said who she was, the secretary put her on hold.
“It’s ringing again,” Saturday told Thursday before someone answered. Saturday said that she was calling for Tuesday but apparently the call had been routed to Friday instead. “Thursday and I would like to get in touch with Tuesday before he completes his plans,” she explained to Friday. “We were hoping to travel to Houston…Oh, you’re still in the city? And would like for us to come speak with you? Sure, I know where that is, we will be there this evening.”
Saturday hung up the phone and looked at Thursday with dread.
“It might be a trap,” she said.
“We have to find Saturday fast,” Thursday said resolutely. “Even if it is a trap, we can’t afford not to go. What if he knows where we can find Tuesday?”
“Or what if he calls Sunday and instead of dismissing spies, he’s ready to bury them?”
Thursday shrugged, “Suck it up big guy, we got an icon to save.”
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