Chapter 51: Ted: "It's Basically a Child!!!"
The sun was going down over Brooklyn in the particular way it did in October — fast and amber, painting the brownstones across the street in colors that had no business looking that good on a neighborhood this run-down.
Rango locked the front door and stood on the stoop for a moment, taking in the street.
Quiet. Almost nobody around. The block had that specific desolation that comes from having a reputation, and his house had a reputation. The neighbors who'd been here when he moved in had gradually found reasons to be elsewhere, and the ones on either side had been empty long enough that the city had started sending letters.
The real estate agent had mentioned, somewhat hopefully, that the place across the street — a legitimate Victorian, worth a few million to the right buyer — had finally sold. New owners moving in within the week.
Rango looked at it for a moment. Dark windows. A sold placard still zip-tied to the gate.
Hope they're not light sleepers, he thought, and left it at that.
He turned and waved at Teddy to bring McQueen around from the garage.
New car, no reason to take the truck. Simpler.
The one complication was that McQueen was a two-seater, and there were four of them — Rango, Ted, Megan, and Emma. The working plan involved Teddy folding himself onto the center console, Megan in the passenger seat, and Emma on Megan's lap.
The problem with the working plan was that Emma had, since the incident where Rango had called her out on her act, stopped performing the sweet-little-girl routine for anyone. The mask was down. What was underneath was considerably more stubborn, considerably colder, and absolutely unwilling to sit on Megan's lap under any circumstances.
She wanted to sit on Rango's lap or she wasn't getting in the car.
He'd agreed, because arguing with her took longer than just agreeing, and he had a shift to get to.
He glanced down at her now, standing beside him on the stoop — arms crossed, face closed off, looking at nothing in particular with the focused blankness of a child who has decided that reacting to things is beneath her.
She'd chosen one of the three relocation options he'd given her, which was progress. He'd confirm the details with Amos tonight and move her by end of week.
Also, he needed to talk to the Curator again. He'd been mentally rehearsing that conversation for the last twenty minutes and hadn't landed on an approach that felt watertight—
"WHAT—"
Ted's voice came out of the garage at a volume that suggested something had gone badly wrong.
Rango was through the side gate and into the garage in about four seconds.
He stopped.
He took in the scene.
He put one hand over Emma's eyes.
McQueen was — there was no version of this sentence that ended well — McQueen had positioned himself in the bed of the F-650 and was engaged in activities that belonged, at absolute minimum, behind a closed door, while the exhaust systems of both vehicles were connected in a configuration that produced a sound like sheet metal arguing with itself.
Ted stood with both hands on his head, staring, in the posture of a man watching his house catch fire.
"McQueen."
Rango's voice came out very flat and very controlled.
McQueen reversed off the truck bed at speed, retreated to the far corner of the garage, and if a car could look like it wanted to be somewhere — anywhere — else, this was what that looked like. His windshield had gone a deep, mortified red.
"Did you ask?" Teddy pointed at the truck, whose rear paint was decorated with several new scratches that definitely hadn't been there this morning. "Did you get consent?"
"I did ask." McQueen's voice was very small. "I said — I asked if she wanted to, and she didn't say anything, so—"
"She's a truck, McQueen. She doesn't talk."
"That's — I didn't know that was—"
Teddy opened the driver's door, checked the production sticker on the door frame, and then straightened up with an expression of profound personal betrayal.
"She was built two years ago." He turned to Rango. "It's basically a child."
"Okay, let's—" Rango pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nobody is going to prison. Teddy, relax." He turned to McQueen. "You — that was out of line. We'll talk about appropriate boundaries later. Right now—"
He reconsidered for a moment, then made a decision.
"The truck has no inner life, so technically no harm done. But we are not taking this to a parking lot." He pointed firmly. "Garage only. And you ask me first. We clear?"
McQueen's windshield wipers, which had apparently been running this whole time in the automotive equivalent of mortified crying, stopped.
He looked at Rango with enormous, blinking eyes.
"You're not — you're really not mad?"
"I'm something. Mad isn't quite the right word." Rango exhaled. "Just — garage. Ask first. That's the rule."
McQueen made a small, happy sound and rolled forward to bump gently against Rango's leg, his headlights doing something that could only be described as nuzzling.
"You're literally the best. Can I move to a parking structure? Just occasionally? There are so many—"
"Absolutely not."
Ted shook his head slowly and looked at the ceiling.
"Every single thing you bring home," he said, to no one in particular, "is deranged."
The museum was quiet the way it always got after closing — the particular hush of a large space that's been full of people all day and has now released them. Footsteps echoed differently. The air felt heavier.
Rango came in through the staff entrance, said his hellos to the day shift guards heading out, and ran straight into the Curator stepping off the elevator — cane first, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, moving with the unhurried authority of a man who owned every room he walked into even though he technically didn't own this one.
The old man clocked Rango, made a face that communicated several things at once, and then visibly softened when his eyes found Megan and Emma a few steps behind.
He waved at them.
Did not wave at Rango.
"Curator." Rango fell in beside him, matching his pace. "Got a minute?"
"You're asking for leave again."
"I'm not. I'm doing the opposite, actually." He held the door to the corridor open. "I want to bring someone on. Night shift, same hours as me. He's solid — I'd stake my job on it."
The Curator slowed. "Tell me."
Rango gave him the short version on Kevin: the gang background, the informant situation, the fact that it was now public knowledge and made staying in his previous life more or less impossible, the absence of any obvious legitimate work history.
"He's careful, he's punctual, and he knows how to handle himself in a crisis," Rango said. "I've seen it firsthand. Having a second person on nights makes the whole setup more secure, and frankly I've been covering this building alone since I started and it was only a matter of time before that became a problem."
The Curator considered this. His cane tapped the floor twice in a thinking rhythm.
"The pay is fifteen an hour. Night differential doesn't kick in until after midnight. And I'll need him here for a trial week before anything's official."
"That's fair. He'll take it."
"See that he does." The old man pointed his cane briefly in the direction of the main gallery. "And Rango—" he paused, something shifting in his expression toward the almost-paternal tone he occasionally let through— "it's a good thing you're doing for him. Don't make a habit of advertising it, but it's a good thing."
Rango watched him go, tapping down the corridor, and felt a quiet, uncomplicated warmth about it.
The Curator was genuinely decent underneath all the curmudgeon. Rango made a mental note to remember that next time he needed a favor.
An hour later, he'd done a full sweep of the building, confirmed it was empty over the PA, and was heading to the main entrance to lock up for the night.
The city was doing its evening thing outside — streetlights flickering on, a few dog walkers, a couple on the steps of the building across the way eating takeout and watching the foot traffic. The museum's entrance, with its unusual architecture, always attracted people to stop and look, even after hours.
Rango reached for the main door to pull it shut.
Two hands appeared in the gap first.
White. Perfectly manicured. Moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once considered the possibility that a closed door applied to them.
Then the rest of her followed — same tight-fitted dress, same elegant lines, the same presence that had knocked on his door after midnight the last time and refused to be forgotten about.
Anna Manina stepped into the museum, let her eyes adjust to the low light, and found Rango's face.
She smiled.
The kind of smile that arrived at the destination before the rest of the expression caught up.
"Good evening," she said. "I was hoping you'd be working tonight."
Rango let the door close behind her.
He did not, for reasons he couldn't entirely articulate, reach for his keys to lock it.
"Ms. Manina." He kept his voice even. "We're closed."
"I know." She tilted her head slightly. "I won't take much of your time."
The foyer was dim — emergency lighting only, long shadows, the kind of quiet that a building full of old things gets after dark that feels different from ordinary quiet. The kind of quiet that showed up in the first ten minutes of Night at the Museum before things started moving, except this didn't feel like a comedy.
This felt like the other kind.
"Then say what you came to say," Rango said.
[Reader Event Active]
500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter
10 Reviews = +1 Extra Chapter
Thanks for reading!
20+advance chapters on P1treon Soulforger