Chapter 82 – Masquerade Ball
Ethan could have afforded a car a long time ago. He'd just never seriously considered it.
In New York — and specifically on the Upper West Side — owning a car didn't mean what it meant everywhere else. It didn't mean convenience. It didn't mean freedom. It meant a recurring, low-grade logistical nightmare that consumed time, money, and a measurable portion of your will to live.
The thing that truly killed the idea wasn't traffic. It was parking.
He still remembered Leonard's first week with a car. Leonard had announced at ten on a Tuesday night that he was going out for a late snack and would be back in twenty minutes. He walked back through the apartment door at one in the morning wearing the specific expression of a man who had seen something that changed him.
Ethan had looked up from the couch. "Did you take a detour through New Jersey?"
Leonard sat down slowly. "I drove around the block seven times."
A pause.
"By the seventh lap I wasn't looking for a parking spot anymore." He stared at the middle distance. "I was just — driving. Thinking about my choices."
After that, Ethan had watched variations of the same scene play out with painful regularity. Rushing downstairs at seven in the morning in a coat and pajama pants to move the car before the street sweepers came. Circling for twenty minutes after work only to end up four blocks away. The occasional parking ticket that arrived with the cheerful indifference of the universe reminding you that it didn't care about your schedule.
Calculated over a year, Leonard's parking fines cost more than his car insurance.
That was when Ethan had arrived at the conclusion he'd held ever since: in New York, if your net worth isn't covering the carrying costs, don't own a car. The subway was crowded but it ran. Walking was free. Cabs were expensive but they dropped you at the door and then became someone else's problem.
He had considered this the most rational position available.
Until the Charger showed up.
After actually driving it — after that first push on the Atlantic Avenue on-ramp — he found himself revising his position with a speed that would have embarrassed him two days ago. There was something about a car that answered the accelerator with genuine conviction that made the entire cost-benefit analysis feel slightly beside the point.
He even thought, with the self-awareness of a man catching himself mid-rationalization, of Iosef Tarasov.
The kid who'd seen John Wick's car in a parking lot and decided, with the specific confidence of someone who had never once experienced real consequences, that he simply had to have it. That one decision had cascaded into the complete professional and personal destruction of an entire organized crime operation.
A man's relationship with a car, Ethan thought, is apparently not fully rational. Evolution apparently hardwired something in there.
His parking solution was straightforward and expensive. He'd called a garage two blocks from the apartment that same evening — attended, access-controlled, camera-monitored, no street sweeping variables, no luck required, no midnight coat-and-pajamas sprints. A fixed spot with his name on it.
The monthly rate was a thousand dollars.
Very New York. Completely worth it. Moving on.
He was on the stairs when he heard footsteps coming up behind him.
"Hey — Ethan?"
He turned.
Penny had just come through the building's front door, jacket over her arm, hair slightly windblown in the way that happened when you'd been outside long enough for the evening to get into it. She looked up at him and smiled.
"You're back late."
"Had some things to take care of." He waited for her to reach the landing and they fell into step together, their pace slowing the way it did when neither person was in a hurry.
Penny seemed to remember something. "Oh — I'm throwing a party Saturday night."
Ethan glanced over. "What kind of party?"
"Nothing fancy. Halloween masquerade — people dress up, drink beer, dance badly." She tilted her head. "You free?"
"As it happens, yes."
"Good." She brightened. "Come over. Costume optional but encouraged. Bring something to drink."
Ethan considered. "I could go as a doctor. I already have a white coat and a stethoscope. Technically the most accurate Halloween costume I could put together."
Penny laughed. "If people figure out you're an actual doctor, you will spend the entire night fielding medical questions from strangers."
"Is that different from a regular Tuesday?"
"Fair point." She looked at him. "Okay, real talk — if you want, I can introduce you to some people. What's your type?"
Ethan thought about it with apparent seriousness. "If they're not interesting, come rescue me. If they are—"
He paused.
"— don't worry about it."
Penny laughed harder. "Done. Deal."
She noticed the key in his hand as they reached the fourth floor landing. Her eyes went to it immediately — the way eyes go to something that doesn't fit the expected inventory.
"Wait — is that a car key? Did you get a new car?"
"Picked it up today." He held it up briefly. "Still getting used to it."
"What kind?"
"Dodge Charger."
Penny stopped walking. "A Charger?" She stared at him. "You drive a ten-year-old Corolla to the clinic and you're telling me you just casually acquired a Dodge Charger?"
"It was a gift."
"From who?"
"A patient."
Penny opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I have so many questions and I feel like the answers are all going to raise more questions, so I'm just going to move on." She pointed at him. "Where are you parking it?"
"Rented a spot at the garage on Seventy-Eighth."
Her expression shifted into pure undisguised envy. "A fixed parking spot." She said it the way people say a house in the Hamptons — the thing that signals a person has moved into a different category of New York existence. "Do you understand how many hours of my life I've spent driving in circles looking for street parking? Do you have any idea?"
"Leonard has given me a comprehensive education on the subject, yes."
"The number of times I've parked on West End and had to drag groceries three blocks—" She shook her head. "Okay. Here's what's happening. The next time I buy too much stuff at Trader Joe's, I'm calling you for a ride. That's not a request, that's a policy."
"Completely reasonable," Ethan said.
"Saturday," Penny said, pointing at him as she stepped toward her door. "Costume or no costume, doesn't matter. Bring drinks. I'll handle the rest." She grinned. "And if you wear the white coat, I will personally run interference on anyone boring."
"Then the white coat stays on the table as an option."
"Smart man." She pushed her door open. "See you Saturday, Doctor."
The door closed.
Ethan turned toward 4A, dug out his key, and the door swung open before he touched the lock.
He stopped.
Standing in the doorway — red spandex, gold lightning bolt logo, skintight from collar to boot, arm raised in a starting-sprint pose — was Leonard.
Ethan looked at him.
"—Leonard?"
Leonard puffed his chest out. "I was listening for your key in the lock and opened it at the exact moment you would have turned the handle." He held the pose. "Speed. Precision. Reflexes."
Ethan looked at the slight convexity of Leonard's midsection, the wire-frame glasses sitting on his nose below the mask, and the specific optimism of a man who had purchased a costume that required a certain body type and decided to proceed anyway.
"The Flash," Ethan said, slowly. "With glasses. And — I say this with genuine affection, Leonard — a silhouette that suggests you've been enjoying the Cheesecake Factory more than the treadmill."
Leonard opened his mouth to respond —
A blur came through the stairwell door.
Howard. Also The Flash. Red spandex, gold lightning bolt, identical pose, the turtleneck underneath visible at the collar in a detail that somehow made it worse and better simultaneously.
He landed in front of them with full theatrical commitment and looked up.
Saw Leonard.
The smile evaporated.
"Oh — no."
Both of them stood frozen in matching poses, staring at each other with the expression of two people who have just discovered they've shown up to a job interview in the same outfit.
Before either could process this —
"I told you both we should have coordinated."
From the center of the living room, in the most precisely fitted Flash costume Ethan had ever seen — every seam aligned, the lightning bolt logo appearing to have been measured with a ruler, the posture of a man who had done this correctly and was prepared to be disappointed by everyone else — stood Sheldon.
He surveyed them both with the expression he reserved for situations he had predicted and taken no satisfaction in being right about.
"I said this explicitly. I said: we should hold a brief planning meeting before anyone makes independent purchases. No one listened. This—" he gestured at the three of them "—is the direct result."
Before anyone could respond, the apartment door burst open one more time.
"MAKE WAY FOR THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE—"
Raj ran in at full speed, arms pumping, committed entirely to the bit —
Then looked up.
He slowed.
He stopped.
He stood in the doorway of an apartment containing three other people in the exact same costume.
The silence lasted about four seconds.
"...Oh," Raj said. "No."
Ethan stood at the door and looked at the four of them — four Flashes, standing in a living room, in various states of personal devastation — and slowly, deliberately, closed the apartment door behind him.
"Is this a Warner Bros. casting problem?" he asked. "Or a communication problem?"
"Both," Sheldon said immediately.
"It's a him problem—" Leonard started, pointing at Howard.
"You didn't say anything either—" Howard shot back.
Raj raised his hand. "Okay — hear me out. What if we go together? Single file line, all night. It looks like one person moving at super speed."
Everyone turned to look at him.
Sheldon actually began running calculations on this premise.
"No," Leonard said flatly.
"Hard no," Howard confirmed. "This is a co-ed party. The Flash doesn't work as a committee."
Leonard thought for a moment. "Alright — new rule. Nobody goes as The Flash. Everyone change. Agreed?"
A beat of silence.
Collective nodding. "Agreed."
Leonard exhaled with visible relief. "Good. Okay. So I'll go as—" He brightened with the energy of a man who had been waiting to deploy his backup idea. "—Frodo."
Three heads turned.
A pause of exactly one second.
"LEONARD—"
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