by SK Dyment
“What for?” cries Gus.
Vespa arrives on her Honda. Gus and Wanda smile in surprise at the solo rider because they were afraid she was Ben and Swan.
“Because he’s planted land mines around the perimeter,” says Camelia. “I’m calling the police.”
Another explosion sounds from down the path where the book marker lies face down. Camelia picks up the book. The One Minute Manager. This is the spot alright. He marked it.” She sighs mightily, the sigh drawing Wanda’s eyes to her bosom.
“He’s in there!” cries Natalia. Breaking away, she begins to run to the path. “My boyfriend! He’s in danger!”
Vespa and Gus grab Natalia, who has been working out several hours a day with a personal trainer, and wrestle her to the ground. “Let me go, you fucked-up dyke!” she screams at Gus.
“Free me, faggot!” she snarls at Vespa.
“Never,” says Vespa.
“We don’t want you hurt!” Gus says, and looks at Vespa in confusion.
“Hello, police, there is a man….” barks Camelia into the phone.
“How did you find out?” Vespa asks Camelia from her position on the pavement. She has captured Natalia in an especially painful armlock. “Just calm down, straight lady,” she whispers to her. “Calm down or I’ll snap your arms like a stick.”
Natalia throws back her head and screams an operatic falsetto.
“Goddamn it, the police hung up. Would you tell her to be quiet? The goddamn police thought it was teenagers. Natalia calm down. I’ll redial….”
“But how did you know?”
“I was driving down here anyway. I knew something was wrong. I kept emailing Rudy, trying to find out what was going on. He only told me a few moments ago, on the email.”
“On the Internet?”
“Sort of,” says Camelia. “This isn’t an ordinary Corvette.”
“He’s got email in there,” says Gus. “He must have a satellite dish in the car.”
“Well, it wasn’t actually Rudy who sent off the message,” says Camelia. “It was someone named Jackie, and my -mail makes a dong, a donging sound, whenever….”
“What?” Vespa is off the ground and out of there like a shot.
“Stop!” shouts Gus.
Natalia makes an effort to kick him in the testicles. “You pitiful hormone-crazed hetero! I could out-tango your overly compact ass on any dance floor on the planet!”
There is another explosion. Gus jumps away from Natalia, who is hissing and gnashing her teeth. She grabs the phone from Camelia and throws it with a clatter to the ground. “Nooo way! My good thing’s in there! My multi-million dollar daddy, and I’m not going to let cops or anyone else take him away from me now. We are driving away to Manhattan to be married and enjoy our money and our love. The rest of you can butt out!”
Natalia dashes into the forest after Vespa, who is in pursuit of Jackie. Gus looks about him and realizes that injured Wanda, heavily favouring one leg with her cane, has rambled down the path ahead of the rest. Gus opens his mouth in a cry of horror when he spots scavenger birds wheeling in the sky.
“Uh-oh,” says Ben and then Swan almost at the same time. Lost, they are still enjoying each other’s company and trying to make light of the fact that they cannot actually find the highway they think they should be on. They do know that they are surrounded by beautiful mountains, snaking rivers, and that the Triumph is a hot sexy rumble between their thighs.
Wanda has made it a very good distance up the path and past several land mines, tapping them lightly with her cane and then stepping another way. She is trying to catch Vespa, who has passed her now and is further ahead. “Vespa, come back! I can feel the ground. Trust me with this cane! You’ll get hurt without me, Vespa!”
Vespa, who is no idiot, has made a rush through the trees, avoiding the path, and splashing through a brook that follows it.
She does not hear Wanda. Wanda hears a crashing sound behind her as Natalia leaps past with the grace of a white-tailed doe.
“Be careful, young woman!” she calls to her, even though Wanda is the same approximate age as the dancer. She calls again, then continues to pick her own way along the path. Behind them, Gus is feeling a sense that, twenty-five years later, the terrible avalanche has now swallowed the girl.
“How many more?” Jackie calls to Mimi.
“Seventeen!” says Mimi.
Rudy begins to stir. “Oh holy masters of forest and leafage, oh cherished and whiskered animals, oh six-legged friends that munch upon the foliage and bounty, oh mice and rat and birds and bat….”
“He’s talking to himself!” says Jackie.
“Smack him! Wake him up!” directs Mimi from the centre of a crater. Jackie does both.
“Oh winged beasts that … oh … Mama, someone slugged me.”
He reaches out his arms to Jackie like a little child and begins to cry. Jackie sits down beside him and unwraps a mocha and vanilla energy bar. She strokes his hair—something she is not used to doing to a male.
“So, little sweetheart, it looks like you planted a whole mess of little bombs around your fort.”
“I didn’t mean to, Doctor Pop-Tart.”
“He just called me Doctor Pop-Tart,” calls Jackie.
Mimi is pitching stones. Another bomb goes off and when the rubble is finished raining around her, she says, “That’s a good sign. Dr. Popair. I went to that psychotherapist too. He’s a group regression therapist.”
“What the hell is a psychotherapist?” starts Jackie, and then realizes it must be of no importance. She begins to take her own munch of the candy bar before she realizes it is infested with weevils. Furious, she pitches it over the side of the platform. Another mine is detonated at the foot of the tree.
“Jesus, Mary, Jo Jo, and Donkey! Would you be more careful?”
“Sorry,” Jackie apologizes.
“Sixteen,” says Mimi. “Good shot.”
“Honestly, there’s way more than twenty-four, Doctor Popcans. I know where each of them are. I can take them all out again, and make this place sacred again for the birds, the eight-legged, eight-eyed companions of man, the….” Rudy says.
“He just said there are more than twenty-four. And he says he remembers where they all are and wants to help take them out.”
Mimi gives out a cry of despair. Real tears are now mixing with the sweat that is running down the inside of her helmet. “Well, untie him then. Let him come on down here.”
“If he’s coming down, I am too,” says Jackie. She unties his hands, and Rudy scrambles away down the swinging rope ladder.
“Fuck!” Jackie remembers she has thrown the rifle at the foot of the tree. She shakes the rope ladder violently, causing Rudy to fall the last few feet onto his ass.
“There’s one right around here!” says Rudy, and he picks up a rock that had held down a tarp. He tosses it. Unlike Mimi, he is not wearing riding leathers and a protective helmet. He throws up his arms to protect himself from the blast but is knocked off his feet. He staggers upright, bleeding from the gravel and nails that he had packed inside and have now struck him.
“Oh lovely, terrific,” says Jackie, swinging from the ladder. She watches Rudy staggering over to Mimi like a real-day zombie and wonders what to do. Gingerly, she picks up the rifle.
Vespa bursts from the woods. Rudy focuses his eyes on her and says her name, first in a whisper, then in a shout. “Vespa, it’s Vespa! She finally made it past my security people!”
“Jackie!” Vespa cries. “You’re okay!” Her face drops as she surveys the scene. “You’re with Mimi again!”
“This is not a sex thing, believe me,” says Mimi.
“Vespa,” says Jackie, “do not move one more inch forward or I will have to shoot you.”
“Shoot?”
“There are
land mines everywhere and I will have to shoot you for your own protection.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t care. Put your hands on your head.”
“Jackie, can’t we save this for the bedroom? I really wanted to see you, but this is a little extreme, don’t you….” She makes a move toward Jackie and then stops.
“I don’t love you, Vespa!” says Rudy. “But there is a land mine one boot-width from your running shoe. And I don’t want to see you lose your legs. Your pretty, honey-coloured, silky smooth…”
“Shut up, guy!” says Mimi.
“Yeah, shut up!” says Jackie.
“She has a chisel injury above the left knee and a sweet little old mole on her right thigh…” Rudy continues.
“Rudy!” screams Natalia, emerging from the bushes. “I thought you really loved me. I thought you were going to marry me in Manhattan. She’s a lesbian, you screwball fuck. Half the men and women around here are lesbians. Even Camelia is a lesbian. I’m all you’ve got, honey, I’m all that’s left. Don’t you tell me about her cute little chisel scars. I’m here to get you away from these people. They were threatening to disclose your past and blow everything out of the water. If Vespa’s here, don’t you think that Ben is lurking somewhere around here as well?”
“Ben,” says Rudy. “I did love Ben like a brother. I wanted to make love to Ben. And he betrayed me.”
“That’s why we came here,” says Jackie. “To tell you the threat-to-disclose letter was not actually sent from Ben. Ben loves you, and better yet, he is on his way here now to tell you that in person,” says Jackie.
“No clue why, but that much is true,” says Vespa.
“Don’t you remember the email? I sent it. It was supposed to read, ‘It wasn’t Ben.’”
“No! All I got was the one that came from Natalia’s apartment. It said, ‘It bent Swan.’”
“No, Swan is Gus’s boyfriend. That makes no sense.”
“Sent from my apartment. These fucking scumbags broke into my…”
“Oh, I used to do that kind of shit all of the time,” says Rudy.
“Don’t you see,” says Natalia, “the letter was encrypted, and you didn’t apply your usual fastidiousness to unravel the code. You’re losing your mind, Rudy. ‘It bent Swan’ has the same letters, but it was sent by people who broke in.”
Natalia moves closer to Vespa, across an area that Mimi had been convinced was peppered with mines. “Nobody move!” shouts Jackie, but the tree she is standing next to has started to fall.
The few mines detonated by Mimi and Rudy have dislodged the old tree and blasted the stump, and it is beginning to topple. “Everybody, look out!” shouts Jackie. “This whole tree, it’s coming over!”
The group freezes and looks at Jackie. “Where are we to go?”
Mimi stares at Jackie. The toppling tree is headed straight in her direction, and directly beyond her, Vespa, and the dancer, frozen in a quarrel. “Well, kid, guess this is it,” says Mimi.
“Move!” shouts Jackie.
“Which way?”
Jackie turns and begins to scramble up the tree even as it is beginning to fall. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m getting the Flying Squirrel! What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m running for my life!” Mimi starts to run forward, jumps into the protection of another crater, overcome by the enormity of the tree about to crash down on their group. Other mines will be detonated, and the forest around them is already starting to burn.
“At the beginning, I was attracted to the mystery of evil. But later on, I just felt like they needed my help,” says Mimi weakly. She feels overcome by emotions. She is alone and concussed in a crater.
44.
JACKIE FINDS THE GLIDER difficult to control. It is snagged on the branches of the tree next to the one that she first scrambled up, and she jumps to it, then pulls herself with the strength of her upper body into the machine she built with Ben.
The glider wing that has been shot has grown into a tear. A few moments later, she lets herself drop and swings past Vespa, grabbing on to her with her legs. The heat of the burning forest ignites another mine and the force of it throws them together up into the air and across the convection of heat over the small clearing Rudy has called home. Vespa is not holding on to Jackie, who grips her tightly between her own thighs.
Jackie sweeps above the trees, and sees Wanda and Gus stumbling back down the path, away from the fire. Neither sees the other one and both are calling each other’s name. Swan and Ben have arrived in the parking area and are no longer wondering what is going on. Ben sees the fire and rushes to it, running straight through the woods. He meets Natalia who is carrying Rudy in her arms. They are both covered with blood.
“I’m so glad to see you,” says Natalia. “You really loved him, as much as I do.”
“I did once. I don’t know if I do now. But I would never betray him. I can carry him out if you like, if he’s not too heavy.”
“I guess love is love,” says Natalia. She shakes her head. “I can carry him out. I work out four hours solid twice a day with a personal.…”
The smoke has grown so heavy that they can no longer speak. Ben is glad that Natalia sounds like a bit of a dull blade. Swan finds Gus along the path and leads him out along the footsteps they can see through the thickening smoke, while Wanda continues wandering the path calling his name. When Ben stumbles out to the parking area, he finds Gus is passed out on the pavement and Wanda nowhere to be found. Natalia loads Rudy into the back of the Corvette with Camelia. Ben begins to panic and starts up the path. It is thick with smoke.
He hears an explosion behind him.
“Oh God, I’ve killed her,” he says, not sure why it would be his fault. He runs in the direction of the detonated mine, certain he will find Wanda in bits.
“Take your helmet!” shouts Swan, who is giving CPR to Gus. Gus sits up and tells Swan to take a mint. When Ben reaches the site of the mine crater, he looks around in terror. Lying by the side of the path, mangled and burned even more seriously than Ben was the night of his collision, is Wanda’s prosthetic hand. It seems to be reaching for him, reaching as it always did, but it is still too hot for him to touch. Then he hears her voice, the voice of his love.
“Gus!”
She is standing in the little brook of running water that follows the path. Ben runs down the slope. “My name is not Gus,” he tells her.
“Well then, treat me right,” says Wanda.
“Could you find your way out of here without me?” asks Ben.
“I think I detonated that mine fairly well with what was at hand so to speak. And I felt my way along the rest of the distance with my cane.”
Another blast issues behind them, the fire igniting the powder.
“This is awful. To think I ever loved him, let’s get out of here before we are killed!” Ben yells. He reaches for her hand and it is not there.
That particular hand will never be there again. She has given it away to Gus.
They wade through the creek and emerge at last a short distance from the group by the car. The group is shaking with shock.
Jackie is leaning over Vespa, across the lot from the others. The broken glider is smouldering in pieces at their side.
Ben runs to his sister. Wanda follows him more slowly, as if there are still mines on the surface of the pavement.
“She’s not … she’s not responding. She’s like you were, when you went over the cliff. She’s hardly breathing….”
Vespa does not react to touch. Her limbs are cold, her breath is shallow, her face is expressionless of life.
“No,” says Ben. “I think she might be even worse off than I was that night, even worse.”
Wanda sets down her cane and rests her head lightly on Vespa
’s breast, an intimacy Jackie has never seen before. Wanda takes Vespa’s hand. “Her heartbeat is irregular. Don’t die, kid,” she tells her.
Ben’s eyes fall on the mangled glider, then onto Jackie’s face.
“How are we to get her out of here? She won’t make it. She needs emergency medical help. Even if we all packed in to the Corvette, we might not make it….”
“A Corvette can move pretty fast with the right woman at the wheel,” says Wanda.
Ben turns his head back to look at the others, and then stands and breaks into a run. He stops at the Corvette and leans into the window. “Rudy, please wait, Vespa is … she’s…”
“I saw,” says Natalia. “She’s dying. Now back off so I can get him out of here.”
“Please wait. Can you take her to a hospital? Rudy, it’s Vespa, can you, can you….”
A voice rattles out from the back seat. “Natalia, you will wait for Vespa to be carried to the car. Otherwise I will die, and I will leave you with nothing.”
Natalia bites her lip. “But she’s slipping away, even if we got her medical help….”
Jackie looks up at the sky, and sees a small furry animal jumping through the air. The clouds are beautiful; the mountains are too pretty to be missed.
“Vespa, Vespa, look up at the clouds,” she says. She is greeted by silence. She brushes a strand of hair clotted with blood away from Vespa’s face. A shadow falls over them, and for a moment, Jackie bows her head. Then she touches her lips to Vespa’s lips and again runs her hands through her hair. “Don’t die, baby. Please, sugar, don’t die.”
Mimi, shambling out of the woods, unscathed but for a small trickle of blood at her temple, has a more squirrel-like countenance than Jackie has ever noticed before.
“Sorry to arrive so late. I had a small concussion. Thanks for looking for me.”
“Mimi!” says Jackie. “it’s Vespa.”
“Rough shape, huh?” says Mimi. Jackie nods. It has always offended Vespa to speak the obvious.