Page 3 of The Best Trick

“Come on, the heavy, deliberate steps? The trunk-like legs of manly men, the sense of great purpose. If that's not stalking…”

“This is bad,” Thor said, shaking me off and doing a little stalking of his own—into the house.

I followed him, pulse racing. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. “What’s up?” I asked.

“This can’t go on, that’s what.” He twisted off the top and chucked it angrily across the room.

“What are you talking about? This is good. We’re good.” I plopped myself down into a comfy pine-and-plaid chair. “They're going to work it out—they always do. Come on, baby, we're a happy badass criminal family.”

Thor just scowled. He sometimes got unbalanced when he couldn’t practice medicine for long stretches of time. Was that it? Being kept from his heart’s calling for too long? Though this seemed different.

And fabulous as our travels were, we all missed having a real home—there was that, too. We all missed our hideout in the Hollywood Hills where we’d spent a few blissful months playing house. We got to decorate the place in our own way and have friends over and not worry about breaking stuff. It was the closest we ever felt to being a normal family.

I missed my girlfriends, too—the Gigis, an awesome jewel-thief girl gang. But now that our enemies knew about our hideout, I wasn’t sure when we’d ever be able to return there.

Probably never.

Thor continued to scowl at the forest.

“They'll be back with Odin grudgingly acknowledging the wisdom of a chain of command, and Zeus acknowledging the wisdom of flexibility. You know that's how it ends. You know it'll be fine.”

Thor sank heavily onto the couch and plopped his feet onto the coffee table, inconsolable.

“Right?” I pressed.

He shook his head.

“Is this about Odin and his sleep issues?” I asked. “Are you worried about that?”

Morosely, he shook his head.

I put on the new Marvel movie. Comic book movies always cheered up my guys…over and over and over. How many times could my guys watch a comic book movie? We were well into double-digits territory on that one. Though to be fair, I had made them watchMiss Congenialityeasily a dozen times.

Wasit about Odin’s sleep issues? Thor desperately wanted to help him; I knew it was really bothering him that he couldn’t help him.

Odin had these sleep issues where he’d thrash around at night. One time, in Rome, I’d gone into the bedroom and stretched out next to him while he was snoozing, and he’d bopped me in the face. It was a total accident, obviously—the man was sleeping, after all, and I should’ve known better—but Odin was mortified.

He’d refused to sleep with me ever again—the slumbering type of sleep, anyway.

I hated that, because Odin had endured a lot of trauma in his life, and one of the few things that enabled him to have any kind of peaceful night’s sleep was when he and I slept next to each other. It had meant so much that I could help him in that way—to me, and really, to all of us.

Sleeping side by side was off the table now, no matter how much I begged him to give it another shot. It had only happened once, and I would have gladly risked it to see that he had a peaceful night’s sleep.

Thor was desperate to help Odin have a non-thrashing sleep, constantly seeking out cures and remedies. He was a doctor with one patient to focus on, much to Odin’s dismay.

Recently, he’d created this special harness out of seat belts made to fit around the bed, with the idea that it would help Odin keep still so that he could then sleep next to me without worry.

Odin had found being strapped like that intolerable.

Odin and Zeus returned three hours later, slapping each other’s backs. Zeus drunkenly informed us that Odin was the best guy ever, and Odin drunkenly informed us that Zeus was the best guy ever, and then they drunkenly wrestled. Then Zeus announced that the gang would have a meeting soon about being more flexible, but not a drunken meeting, and Odin announced that sticking to the rules had saved us a lot.

And then they raided the refrigerator.

And I gave Thor such a triumphant look, like,I told you.But he still looked upset. What was up with him? Was it something more than Odin’s increasingly dire sleep situation? Something more than Zeus’s philosophical struggles about too much structure versus the tyranny of structurelessness?

* * *

Odin and Thorand I scrambled to be packed and ready to go ahead of time the next morning so that we could relax for a few last blissful moments on the woodland porch of awesomeness.

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