After the Caper

The light clicked on, startling him badly. He whirled. There she stood, framed in the glow from the hallway. She looked tired. “Okay. Where’d you put it?”

“Put what?” he said, rather lamely.

“You know what,” she said. “Jupiter. Great big planet, big red dot. Where’d you put it?”

“Honestly, Min, I don’t know what you’re-”

“Oh, yes, you do,” she shot back, and now she sounded angry rather than tired. “I checked, okay? I’ve got friends at NASA who’ll still speak to me. They’re flipping out because they lost a freakin’ planet. One of them told me they picked up some sort of funny radiation. You don’t think I know what that means? I helped you build the Shrink-O-Mater, genius. I know it runs on terseron particles.”

“So someone stole Jupiter,” he said defensively. “Why do you assume it’s me? Plenty of supervillains out there. The Red Mushroom, Crudmuffin, the Rogue Jaywalker-”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Like that guy could steal a planet. Anyway, none of them have a fully functional Shrink-O-Mater, which, funny thing, isn’t in the vault downstairs. I checked, I said.”

He knew the game was up. “Fine,” he said. “Yeah. I stole Jupiter. Shrunk it, stashed it.”

“Where exactly?”

His eyes flickered towards the crib. She looked that way too. Then she looked back at him. “What…” she said slowly. “What did you put in that diaper?”

“Well…”

“Tell me you didn’t put the King of Planets in our baby’s diaper.”

He shrugged. “There’s plenty of room in there. We just went up a size in Pampers, remember?”

“But…” she asked plaintively. “Why? The hell, why?”

“Seemed like a good place for it?”

There was a long silence. “Okay,” she said. “You’re going to put Jupiter back. Now, before the Great Red Spot becomes the Great Brown Spot. You’re going to put the Shrink-O-Mater back downstairs. And in the morning, you and I are going to have a talk.”

“Yes, dear,” he said, reaching for the diaper. Next time, he decided, he would swipe Saturn. Min liked rings, he knew. She’d swiped more than a few in her day. And Saturn, he decided, would be a perfect “I’m sorry I stole a planet” present.