Go Fly a Kite

"We should really be at the office," said Atticus Hawk, as he helped Ava Kahdo Green untangle her kite string.

"This only comes once a year!" she said, and winked at him.

"But the law never sleeps," he said, and sighed at the sight of the now untangled kite string--which meant he had to start running into the wind again.

"Go!" the U.S. Attorney ordered her Justice Department coworker, and he obediently took off again. "It's good for your heart," she whispered to herself, and she meant that in both senses of the word.

"Hey, Ava!" Green turned with a start to see her pro bono acquaintance from Goode Peepz law firm walking up to her. "My son's going nuts!" He pointed out a young boy with a red kite running spasmodically in and out of the Cherry Blossom Festival kite crowd. "Who's your friend with the kite?"

"He works at Justice--he CANNOT meet you!" Green exclaimed.

"Ohhhh...OK. See ya later!"

Hawk was already trotting up to her. "Who was that?" he asked jealously, even though he had been ignoring her romantic advances for a very long time.

"One of my neighbors--he ran off to catch up with his son. Hey, keep moving!" But it was too late, the hawk kite she had bought him had already fallen back to the ground.

"Can we go now?" asked Hawk.

"One more time!" she ordered him.

Ten yards away, Buffy Cordelia Wu was devastated to see the hawk kite drop to the ground. "That's alright, Delia--look at the red one over there!" Charles Wu took his baby's head gently in his hands and pivoted her view until she caught sight of another kite and the smile returned to her face.

"As I was saying," said the Condor (who was trailing a helium-filled kite balloon so he wouldn't have to run to blend in with the crowd), "the Shiite arms flow into Syria--"

"What?" said Wu, straightening up and suddenly remembering he was a spy and this was important.

Twenty yards away, "Shear Madness" actor Bucky was prancing around theatrically with a Lady Gaga kite, and Bridezilla was laughing in spite of herself. "J'adore l'amour!" he sang, swiveling his hips at her, and she laughed again. "I don't wanna be friends!" he sang, and trotted straight at her, but she dodged the collision at the last minute. "Are you afraid of grass stains?!" he hollered, and then wrestled her to the ground. "Your problem is that you live in W.A.S.P. World," he said, suddenly very serious. "You need to open up and experience more of life." He kissed her passionately, as Lady Gaga fell down on top of them.

"I don't live in W.A.S.P. World!" Bridezilla protested, pushing off Lady Gaga. "I was engaged to a Hindu, and then--"

"What?!"

"I was!"

"So what happened? Why didn't you marry him?" asked Bucky.

Bridezilla puzzled over this but remained silent. (Because I felt safer in W.A.S.P. World?)

Not far away, John Doe was sitting in his portable lumbar-support fold-out chair, trusty Lucky Charm by his side. The visions had become very frequent. The doctors told the amnesiac they were from his temporal lobe epilepsy, but he knew he was an autistic-mystic-shaman now. Everything falls away....Soon only one thing will remain. He turned tenderly to Lucky Charm, the only one who understood his visions when he blurted them out in tongues...but she had no voice to translate them to anybody else. He had tried to have her describe them to the dog whisperer, but Sebastian didn't understand them, either. You gave me nothin'--now it's all I've got. He looked up at a butterfly kite. Nobody makes pupa kites, but you have to be a pupa first. His eyes lost focus as a hundred kite colors swirled and merged in the sky above him. Lucky Charm felt the seizure coming on, so she wrestled him down to a safe, fetal position on the ground.

Not far away, Golden Fawn was watching the kites with as much delight as baby Delia. Soon her husband would finish his Coast Guard shift and they would have their first spring picnic on Roosevelt Island. He was all recovered from the amoebas in the brain, and things were really good at work, and--

A sudden scream grabbed her attention, and she turned to see an epileptic twitching on the ground. She ran over to where he lay, but nobody could get near him because the dog wouldn't let them. Then Lucky Charm saw Golden Fawn and let her kneel beside them. The man was mumbling something in Osage! Her uncle's wife knew Osage, but Golden Fawn only knew a little. "The new prophecy"?

Fifteen yards away, Glenn Michael Beckmann was watching the epileptic convulse and speak in tongues. It's a sign! He looked up at the sky, and a sudden parting of the kites looked like the Heavens splitting open and shooting a shaft of light down on the special one. The new Messiah! Then he noticed the squaw-looking woman, and the unnatural way the dog lay over the man and glared at Beckmann. Oh, no! What if it's an anti-Christ?! He instinctively felt for his gun with his right hand and his dagger with his left. But what good are these against an anti-Christ? He looked up at the Heavens for an answer, and saw a nuclear mushroom cloud. (It was actually a jelly fish kite, but he saw it as a nuclear mushroom cloud.) But how? What do I do?

A few blocks away, the White House Chief of Staff was asking himself the same question: But how? What do I do? And Ghost Dennis patiently explained it again.