Molly Moon & the Monster Music (7 page)

Molly, Hiroyuki, Chokichi, and Toka each caught themselves a silvery fish and gave it to the waiter to prepare. Gerry looked very uncomfortable.

“Have you got any vegetarian food?” he asked a waiter.

“Certainly,” the man said. “Sushi rolls with cucumber and vegetable tempura—that's vegetables fried in batter.”

“That sounds nice.” Gerry was relieved.

“Do you always eat out?” Molly asked Chokichi as they waited for their food.

“It depends on Mr. Proila,” Chokichi replied. “Sometimes he goes out on his own, but if he wants us there we have to jump to it.”

“Like a controlling parent,” said Molly, thinking of Lucy and Primo.

“No, he's not like a parent at all,” Chokichi replied. “He doesn't love us. He just loves the money we make for him.”

Molly nodded. For some reason, the way she felt at the moment, this didn't seem a bad arrangement at all. Then she asked curiously, “How did he get to the top? I mean, everyone seems scared stiff of him. Even though he's so small, and deaf. People could just pick him up and throw him over their shoulder, or his enemies could say things behind his back. It's amazing he's as powerful as he is.”

Chokichi nodded. “Being small doesn't matter. He's got four very loyal and very big bodyguards. He pays them lot of money. And with deafness—Mr. Proila not always deaf. He was in a shootout.”

“A shootout? Really?”

“Yes. To save Mr. Proila's life his bodyguard fired some gunshots, but guard's gun was very close to Mr. Proila's ears. Burst his eardrums. Three years
ago.”

“What happened to that bodyguard?” Molly asked.

Chokichi checked to see that Mr. Proila wasn't lip-reading him. “Nobody know,” he said. “He disappear. Mr. Proila say he move away, but nobody know for sure.”

Molly nodded, her hand on her coin. Strangely, she was beginning to admire Mr. Proila.

Petula watched her mistress. Again that acrid, bitter-lemon smell was coming from Molly. It was a smell that made Petula feel queasy and very uneasy. Petula sidled closer to Gerry. She was scared by whatever was happening to Molly, but most of all she was saddened. Saddened because her instinct was to keep away from Molly, and this felt unnatural, for Petula still loved her mistress. She didn't know what to do.

The waiter brought miso soup for everyone. Mr. Proila returned to the table, grunted, sat down heavily on the end of the bench, and started slurping his soup.

When his bodyguard returned, he was carrying a very smart red paper bag with gold lines around its edges. Without thanking him, Mr. Proila took the bag and peered inside. He pulled out a red box and
flipped its lid open. Snapping apart the chopsticks that had come in the bag too, he began pincering out pieces of pale pink marbled flesh from the red box and eating them.

“
Otoro!
My favorite!” he said with a full mouth. “Best, most delicious fish in the world!” he said, gobbling up his supper. Then he saw that Gerry was glaring at him. “What ya staring at, boy?”

Gerry looked furious. Molly wondered what could have caused his anger.

Gerry stood up and pointed at Mr. Proila's meal box. “How can you eat that?” he said coldly.

Mr. Proila squinted as he read Gerry's lips. “With great pleasure, that's how!” He laughed, showing a mouthful of half-chewed fish.

“But that fish . . . bluefin tuna—is rare. It is endangered. Eating bluefin tuna is like eating tiger meat or rhino!”

“Wouldn't mind a tiger steak!” came Mr. Proila's amused reply.

He scrutinized Gerry, so small and opinionated and cross at the end of the table, and he guffawed and then bellowed with laughter. But as his mouth was still full of chewed fish, a bit went down his windpipe. This sent him into spasms of coughing. For a moment the coughing was still accompanied
by laughter, then as he grew purple in the face and his bodyguard patted him on the back, he grew more serious. When he had finally rid himself of the cough and his breathing had leveled out, his sense of humor had vanished. As though the coughing fit had been all Gerry's doing, he gave him a nasty look and pointed his chopsticks at him.

“Listen, Tadpole,” he said, “and listen good. First of all, what I do is no business of anyone's except mine. If you ever talk to me like that again, I'll sushi you. And as for the tuna, I don't care if it's the absolute last bluefin in the sea. I get what I want, and if I want bluefin tuna, I'll eat it.”

Gerry looked stunned. He sat down, shaken. Petula jumped up on his knee to comfort him. Hiroyuki, Chokichi, and Toka patted his back reassuringly. Molly went to sit beside him. She put a hand on his shoulder. Half of her knew she ought to stick up for Gerry, but the other half didn't care enough to.

“Don't worry about it, Gerry,” she said under her breath. “But you shouldn't have wound him up.”

Gerry stood up. “I'm going to the toilet,” he announced. “To be sick!” he added.

“I come with you,” Toka said.

M
olly watched Gerry and Toka go, then turned her attention back to Mr. Proila. Her hand strayed into her pocket. She touched her gold coin, and as she did, a curious impulse overwhelmed
her—to take her harmonica from her other pocket and play it. Molly pressed the instrument to her lips and with a deep breath began to play. Only a small part of her wondered why she was doing this.

Hiroyuki and Chokichi looked up. The notes from Molly's harmonica danced through the air. Molly could certainly play the small instrument. As its metallic melody filled the restaurant, Hiroyuki and Chokichi became immersed in the sound. Miss Sny tipped her head to listen, too. People at other tables looked up. The waiters halted what they were doing. Even the bodyguards gazed at Molly, as the marvelous sound rippled into the air. The music she was making was fantastic, like something heaven-sent. And, Molly noticed, the more she played, the more in awe her audience was.

Petula sat on the second table boat, away from Molly. Molly was smelling ever stronger—now of sharp thorns and poisonous flowers. Petula knew that normally Molly had no musical skills. Yet here she was, as though she had been born playing a harmonica—as though she had been taught to play it by the angels.

As Petula looked about, she saw the effect the music was having on the humans in the restaurant. They seemed hypnotized by the sound. Petula
squeezed her eyes and checked herself. No, she was definitely not hypnotized. But it was clear to her that everyone in the restaurant, except for Mr. Proila, who was eating a chocolate dessert, was. This music Molly was making, Petula thought, was hypnotic, and in a way more powerful than Molly's hypnotic eyes could ever be. For this hypnotism was effective en masse. If there had been a thousand people in the room, Petula knew that they all would have been affected by Molly's music.

Petula knew this sudden musical ability, and Molly's new meanness, were both connected to the coin. The foul-smelling, evil-feeling coin that Petula could sense right now in Molly's pocket.

When Molly finished her piece the customers and the waiters let out cheers of appreciation. Everyone was smitten. Everyone that is bar Mr. Proila, who was wiping his mouth with a napkin.

Chokichi shook Mr. Proila's arm.

“Mr. Proila,” he said, making sure his manager could read his lips, “Molly's an amazing musician!”

Mr. Proila looked up from his dessert and saw the enthused faces about him. He studied the waiters' gleeful expressions and he saw that the object of everyone's enthusiasm was the plain-looking girl with the scruffy hair, who held a harmonica in her
hand. Mr. Proila had never cared for music, even when he had been able to hear, but he was very interested in the money he could make from it.

“I've an idea, Mr. Proila,” Chokichi said. “Why doesn't she play with us at the concert tomorrow night? She's great. The audience will love her.”

Mr. Proila had been in the music business long enough to know a hot thing when it sizzled in front of him. Regardless of what the potato-nosed girl looked like, it was quite obvious from the faces of the people in the restaurant that whatever she did on her harmonica was hot. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

“Of course,” he said nonchalantly. “Good idea.”

Then, deciding that one pudding hadn't been enough, he waved at the waiter to bring him the dessert menu.

When Gerry and Toka returned to the table, Petula could tell they hadn't heard any of Molly's music—and they hadn't been hypnotized. Did Molly know what she had done to the others? She must, Petula thought, for Molly was experienced enough to know what hypnotized people looked like. Then Petula wondered whether Molly had even registered that Gerry and Toka had been absent. Petula began to shiver with worry. Somehow she must protect
Gerry and Toka from this new Molly and her dangerous music.

She thought of the coin that sat like an evil imp in Molly's pocket. Petula knew what she must do. She must get the coin off Molly.

The rest of the evening passed quickly. They piled into the limousine once more and were soon back at the apartment.

Gerry was exhausted, and he and Toka went upstairs to bed. Petula hid under a chair and watched Molly pacing the lounge with the coin in her hand. Petula was sure she overheard her whispering to it.

More frightened than sad now, Petula crept up the stairs to Toka's room. She hopped onto Gerry's bed and curled up there.

Molly meanwhile had sat on a stool beside the window and was stroking and adoring her coin. “To think I've been carrying you about without realizing until this evening what you can do,” she whispered to it. “All that power sitting in my pocket! You are amazing. You make me amazing.”

All of a sudden a flickering to her right caught her attention. She glanced quickly up, at the same time automatically closing her hand over her coin.

Someone had just jumped over the edge of the balcony outside. Molly put the coin on the table and went to check that the balcony door was locked.

She pressed her nose to the glass and tried to see into the darkness.

“Pick me up,” a voice whispered behind her.

Molly's eyes shot to the grandmother's hiding place. So the old lady spoke English! Molly tentatively approached the space under the stairs, but when she got there she found it was empty.

“Pick me up, Molly!”

Molly swung around. Her eyes fell on the coin. This was the first time she'd put the coin down in the open. It was obviously not happy.

It was not happy . . . ?
It?
Molly must be going mad. For it was a coin, that was all. She must have imagined it talking to her. But she knew she hadn't.

For the first time since the coin had been in her possession, Molly was startled and shocked by it. Suddenly she became acutely aware that the coin was somehow like a person—a very powerful, controlling person—a person that was trying to change her.

A film started running in her mind, one about all the bad things Molly had done over the last few
days. Molly observed her behavior. She'd been horrible to Micky. She'd even hypnotized him. She'd hurt her parents' feelings and she'd not helped Gerry in the restaurant when Mr. Proila had been mean to him. She'd ignored Petula. In fact, she'd been spiteful to her and scared her. All because of this thing on the table, because of this coin.

Trembling, Molly reached for the phone and dialed the number for Briersville.

“Hello?” came Rocky's comforting, warm voice.

“Rocky, it's me.”

“Molly! Where are you? Are you OK? Primo and Lucy are tearing their hair out. They've gone to Ecuador to find you. They're on the plane right now. Are you all right?”

Molly could feel the coin tugging at her. Now it was calling her in a different way, with thin, harp-like music that she couldn't ignore. A music that seemed to tear at her will and prevent her saying what she meant to.

“Come to Tokyo now,” she managed to say. “Please. Next plane.”

“Molly, what's wrong? Has something happened? Where are you?”

“Pea-pod Building. There's a band called Zagger. I'm with them.” As Molly spoke, tears welled up in
her eyes. The coin on the table was beginning to send more than messages and music to Molly. It now seemed to have looped her with a dangerous lasso. “Rocky, I don't know what I'll be like when you come. There's a c-c- . . .”

“NOOOOO!” the coin whispered fiercely. “Don't give me away. You need me, Molly.”

“A what?” Rocky asked frantically.

“Come!” Molly begged, starting to pant from the effort of resisting the coin. “Hurry, Rocky. Before it's too late!”

As though a spirit had hold of her, Molly's whole being felt swamped by the coin. It took control of her hand. Without wanting to, Molly found her finger pressing the End Call button.

Molly was sweating. Her brow was damp and her lips were dry. The coin started to sing to her more loudly now, embracing her.

“Come on, Molly!” it sang. “We could be marvelous together. The world will be ours!”

Molly found herself walking toward the table, overwhelmed. She picked up the coin.

At once she felt wonderful. It was a feeling of perfect joining—like when two pieces of a puzzle slot beautifully together—but multiplied hundreds of times. All the guilt she had felt just moments before
evaporated, as did her feeling of needing Rocky.

“I'm sorry,” she apologized to the coin. “I was a fool. I won't leave you out in the open again. Forgive me.”

P
etula woke early the next morning and immediately switched to high alert. She stayed by Gerry's side at breakfast, determined to protect him from Molly's coin. She sat sentry-like outside the bathroom while he was taking a shower. But it was soon obvious that Molly was far too distracted to think of playing her harmonica.