JANUARY
Two-story houses with garages on the side and two cars in the driveway wrap around the fat droplet at the end of a dead-end road. The fronts are painted white and the roofs are alternating between forgettable shades of brown and grey. The grasses are an acceptable green, and everyone has one tree to their lawn that never dares to give fruit. And from the windows, the parents watch hesitantly as a sound outside of children laughing and cars parking and lawnmowers grinding and sprinklers clacking punctures the still, concocted air of the neighborhood.
It wasn't an unfamiliar noise; they had heard the sound whisk by their ears many times in the past, but it was louder and lower than it had any right being, and it was not a sound to be found on the usual winter agenda. As Broderick entered the ticky tack cul de sac, he was more than aware of the noise.
"I must agree the droning noise can be quite grating when in absence of any contributing noise, I suppose I should endeavor to find a more silent means of travel, or else surround myself with more company than a picturesque Las Vegas cul de sac," he muses aloud, no one visible to hear the words but his need to speak overriding it. Raising a hand and swirling it in the air, it soon found itself full of a wine glass, Broderick not wishing to imbibe any of it, but he felt compelled to move the red liquid around as he pensively surveyed the area.
"It is quite easy to forget the City of Lights's more demure settings, but I shan't run brazenly in to a foreign land without knowing its ins and outs." The wine glass was gone now, disappeared with no announcement or flourish. It didn't excuse itself in any way, simply leaving when Broderick needed the arm to join another in fixing his collar. Must always look presentable, he managed to say solely in his mind, which was fortunate, for it allowed Broderick to hear the only other voice to puncture the din of the droning roll.
"WOAH!" came the simple noise, from a simple child. A young Caucasian boy, hair brown and clean cut hiding on a propeller cap, t-shirt bearing a safe logo of an acceptable children's property, and an acceptably thick pair of pants to excuse the flip-flops on his feet in this "cold for Las Vegas!" sort of weather. The child rushed over in a half-run, gawking at Broderick with neck craned high.
"Are you for real?" The kid asked. Broderick might have scoffed at such a lack of decorum in an adult, but in a child such things could be excused.
"Indeed I am, young master. I am Broderick, at your service," he says, dipping into the best bow he could perform.
"How'd you do that thing with the cup?" the boy asked, ignoring the more present questions his parents would ask if they could brave anywhere beyond their house's threshold.
"It is all up here, my boy," Broderick said, pointing at the tall stove pipe hat on his head with a wink, knowing the similarity it bore to a maigican's own preferred headwear.
"Wow... how do I get a hat like that?" the child asked, eyes nearly glittering in the soft sunlight.
"It appears you have quite a fine hat yourself, young master!" Broderick laughed, flicking the pinwheel aboard the boy's cap. "Quite a whimsical declaration of youth, if I do so observe myself."
"Oh, yeah! My dad got it for me! I saw kids on tv wearing it and I kept asking my mom to buy it over and over but she kept saying no but then my dad got it for me!" He said excitedly and somehow in one breath.
"Sounds like your father is a mighty fine fellow!" Broderick declared. "May I see your hat?"
"Sure!" The kid pulled the toy hat off, handing it over with little worry. "But you gotta show me another magic trick!"
Broderick took the cap in his hands, gloves appearing to cover them as he looked it over. "No problem my dear boy," he laughs, a cane appearing in a free arm and nearly startling the boy in its sudden appearance. Broderick offered it over for the boy to play with as he looked over the cap.
"This is a mighty fine, if simplistic, piece of headwear. Constructed of course out of this country, but bearing the marks of the time you've spent with it. It appears you got this at an amusement park, no? I can sense your mother's misgivings on the mark-up alone, but you have spent much time blowing on the propeller or watching it move in the breath of your fan, have you not?" Broderick looked towards the boy, noticing he was now more interested in the cane than the conversation.
"Ha ha, never underestimate the distracting power of youthful wonder... Either way boy, it is a mighty fine hat and-"
"GET AWAY FROM MY BOY!" came the shrill voice of a brown-haired woman, her personality immediately apparent in the structure of her face.
"I apologize ma'am, we were merely making conversation," Broderick began to apologize, his mustache appropriately frazzled and a handkerchief materializing to make the appearance of his form match the feeling in his voice.
"I don't care what you are, stay away from my son!" She yells, running up to her boy and grabbing him by the shoulders, crouched down so low it almost looked like she was using him as a shield. The boy tries to sputter out an apology on Broderick's behalf, but the mom's ears are closed to anything beyond the screaming warning of danger in her head. The cane drops from the boy's hands, disappearing unceremoniously as the child is yanked away from the cul de sac's center.
"Wait! Should you not take the boy's hat as well?" Broderick adds, waving the hat in the direction of the family as the mom pushes the boy into their house.
"JUST STAY AWAY!" She yells, slamming the door as hard as she could to add the punctuation to her statement. Broderick's mustache drooped, and the neighborhood was once more quiet if but for the sound of the low droning. Sighing, he looked the hat over in his hands once more.
"You will be missed, but I wager you will be replaced. It was understandable fear in the mother's heart, but I am certain when the story reaches the father I do not doubt he will find you a suitable replacement for the boy."
Extending an arm, actual energy seemed to coalesce to his side, yellow lights converging to make a hat rack, which appeared to have a duplicate of his current stove pipe sitting on the end of a branch. Placing the child's abandoned cap on the end of an arm, it burst into the same yellow light before being reborn in the same place it had been placed.
"I am curious and apprehensive to see what this new addition will provide, but it was a long overdue expansion to my paltry collection," Broderick muses.
"STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF, YOU BUMBLEFUCK!" roars the angry voice of a rather rotund fellow in the window of a nearby house.
"Good evening to you too, my good sir!" Broderick counters with unwarranted politeness, doffing his hat in the direction of the man.
"FUCK OFF!" The man adds before slamming the shutters of his predictably placed window shut.
Broderick did not abandon talking to himself, but he did begin his departure from the cul de sac, droning din in tow, as he made his way away from the suburb.
"That certainly was an educational venture, and productive as well, if sadly tinged with the sadness of a child. I wager the hat would have only met the bottom of a trash can rather than the top of a head if it had been returned regardless. The older a human gets, the more they fear the world, even its most benign sides it seems. The unfamiliar is a cause for woe rather than wonder when the age increases... Oh I musn't talk like some sort of biologist! I haven't a hat for that yet!"
"But my time here is yet to continue regardless of my approach. Perhaps soon I shall observe the city's famed hub, but I daren't settle in to a city based on the polished presentation of the marketable center. The people, their stories, and most importantly, their hats, are what I am here for!" Broderick declares, an already lit cigar popping out of one hand to be placed in his mouth as he ensured his cloak looked presentable with the others.
And the droning rolled down the streets of suburbia as Broderick learned not of the resort city Las Vegas is presented as, but of the people who decided to live around the hive of debauchery. But as the months wore on, the hat-rack remained unseen, no need to pull it out when there were no new hats to add to it. At least, that is, until May rolls around...
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