by Jeff Oliver
As Ramin looked down at his hands, his eyes lit up in epiphany. He smiled for the first time in days. “Thank you, Ruti,” he said. “I will never forget you.” He hugged her tightly as if he was about to depart on a long voyage. Then he left the patio in a trance.
Sara passed him on the way out. “What was that?” she asked Ruti.
“I told him about a man I once married to pay off a debt. The story inspired him to be brave.”
“You were married?”
“Who’s to say?” Ruti said, smiling in that cryptic way Sara had come to recognize. “One should never let the truth get in the way of a good pep talk.”
Tanya was applying makeup in the mirror when Ramin appeared in her doorframe, panting from his run over.
“You’re blocking my light,” Tanya said. “If my makeup goes on uneven, I’ll end up skewered on Fashion Police, so move it or lose it.”
Ramin took a step to the side. Tanya pulled open her eyelids for more mascara.
“So, you’re just going to stand there, staring at me creepily?” she said. Ramin said nothing. “Suit yourself,” she said. “At least allow me this opportunity to school you on the wonders of female face-painting. You’ll need to know this someday when you date a girl. This is called base. Gets rid of nasty bumps and zits by turning everything the same color—works wonders on camera. But that’s only the start. Then we reach for this little product here. Costs a pretty penny, but it’s basically a hangover cure for your face.”
“You need none of those things,” Ramin said.
“Psht! Someone’s never heard of hashtag no filter,” Tanya said. “Anyway, are you here to learn or is it time to leave?”
“Your beauty cannot be painted on,” Ramin said, his voice filled with passion.
“Oh, go on.”
“You have a light, Tanya,” Ramin said. “It is bright but flickers under the winds of past hurt. Makeup cannot hide your light and it cannot hide your hurt.”
“You don’t say?” said Tanya.
“I cannot go back and protect you from the past, but I can shield you today,” said Ramin. “Your light is special to me, Tanya. And if you would allow me, I would stay up all night doing nothing but shield your light from the whipping winds.”
“Whipping winds? Inner light? Did you drink some of my daiquiri? You know you’ve got to be twenty-one to consume alcohol.”
“I am in love with you, Tanya Lazar. There is nothing a man in love cannot do.”
Tanya put down her mascara. She looked over at this scrawny boy, and saw the seriousness in his face. To her surprise, she felt her throat tighten. It was a feeling she mainly experienced when re-watching The Notebook on Epix.
“You know I could send you to the hospital with one punch,” she said, her voice cracking. “How could you ever protect me?”
The young terrorist walked over to Tanya. He boldly took her hand and got down on one knee. “I swear to Allah, I will protect you, Tanya Lazar, to my dying breath.”
In the mirror, to her surprise, Tanya saw her eyes get wet. “Ugh! Now look what you’ve done. I’m a raccoon.”
“To my final breath,” Ramin said, eyes ablaze, “I will protect you.”
“But you’re nothing more than a boy,” said Tanya.
“I am your prince,” said Ramin. “And you are my queen.”
And with that he stood up and kissed her. Ramin tasted bubblegum, apricot lip-gloss, and warm, salty saliva. It was the taste that men cross oceans for. He opened his eyes, drinking in the sensation, and found that Tanya had her eyes open too.
“You’re a pretty good kisser for a rookie,” Tanya smiled. Then she grabbed his face hard and kissed him again, eyes closed and open mouthed, just as in The Notebook.
Tanya took Ramin’s hand and led him to her bunk bed. She had a hungry look on her face that Ramin hardly understood, but he tried. It was important that he comprehend each movement, demystify every sensation and lock it away. This was the poetry of life, the beauty of love. He would finally know it from experience.
As he lay down next to her, Ramin looked over to the mirror to witness everything in full view, but what he saw astonished him. In bed, Tanya was a mermaid. She had wavy golden hair, a long curved tail, and gills that breathed. And then he saw himself next to her. But he was no longer a scrawny kid with bony elbows and jet black hair. He was a shark—a mighty gray shark with rows of razor sharp teeth and black eyes.
Ramin blinked and rubbed his eyes, but the shark remained, moving its enormous fin over the beautiful mermaid like a blanket. Ramin tried to fight the vision, but the powerful narcotic of conquest came alive within the boy and could not be denied. No poetry could battle millions of years of genetic destiny. No verse could romanticize the sheer power of having a beautiful woman cede to one’s desires. Ramin was a shark now. It scared the living hell out of him…
But it was the poetry of life.
CHAPTER 10
Ramin would write an epic poem about her. No, a book of epic poems. No, a trilogy.
Because she gave him the strength to do so. To defy his parents’ wishes. To be his own man. Small presses at first, but there might be a mainstream publisher, even an American publisher, interested in a fledgling Palestinian poet. That might be in vogue.
Morning light streaked onto the bunk bed as Ramin lay there gazing at Tanya in wonder and dreaming of their life together. Because she had never completed her makeup ritual, the stark rays revealed pores and blemishes on Tanya’s face that Ramin had never seen. He found her even more beautiful.
Their lovemaking, despite the shark that had risen up within him, had been pure poetry. Gentle, deep, and spiritual. A bit quick. And now he could not wait for her to wake up, to begin anew, maybe even to do it again.
When Tanya shifted in bed, he tingled. He wanted to tell her, “My love, I had the most amazing dream. We had a dog—a shaggy dog that had been mistreated, but he lives with us in Bethlehem. We trained him to love, and he learned tricks to please us—he catches tennis balls we toss him. When the baby arrives, he protects her.”
When Tanya did finally wake, she lifted her head groggily and checked the clock. Through a blur of exhaustion, she saw that it was a mere six a.m. She slammed her head back down onto the pillow.
“Ugh, daiquiris! Never again,” she said, her voice throaty and gruff. “Where am I?”
“You are with me, my love,” Ramin said altogether too eagerly. “That’s all that matters. You are safe here with me.”
Tanya sat up, confused. She looked at Ramin with a sudden sharpness. “You wore a condom, right?” she said.
Ramin nodded. Tanya groaned. She stretched out her arms, pulled on a pair of fluffy baby blue UGG slippers, and went to the bathroom. The door shut. The shower turned on. Ramin sat there for five, maybe ten minutes. He thought to tidy up the bed. Clora, who was listening to her iPod on a bunk across the room, decided to be kind to the young terrorist.
“When that happens, it means you leave,” Clora told him.
“Oh, yes,” Ramin said. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, ya big stud.” She tapped her iPod back on and turned away.
Ramin pulled on his pants and walked out of the room and into the cool, crisp morning air. The grass on the hills shimmered with dew. Birds chirped melodic tunes. Ramin touched his stomach and the muscles felt tauter than usual. He did a little dance, then steadied himself, whistling absently when a fellow terrorist walked by with a machine gun.
Ramin coughed low. “Nice morning for a walk,” he said quietly.
The other terrorist looked him up and down, saw a condom wrapper stuck to Ramin’s shoe, and shook his head. Ramin blushed, picked up the wrapper, and slid it neatly into his journal for posterity.
Back at The Grand Sheba Excelsior, a bloodcurdling screech jolted awake the terrorist guarding the Lopezes. The guard fumbled with his ring of keys and unbolted the supply closet door. Inside, Warren Lopez lay white as a sheet with
his head on his wife’s lap. His mouth and eyes were wide open, a shocked look of death painted on his face.
“He was bucking, then he stopped!” Sharon sobbed. “You killed him. My husband—you killed him!” The guard grabbed for his walkie. “No!” Sharon yelled. “Get him off me first, you animal. He’s heavy and cold.”
The terrorist leaned in to lift up Lopez, and that’s when they made their move. “Now!”
Sharon brought a pink pepper-spray key chain close to the guard’s face and sprayed out its entire contents. The terrorist grabbed his eyes and fell to his knees in agony. Lopez shot up and pried the gun from the terrorist’s hands. He then sat on the terrorist while Sharon used several of her silk scarves to tie the terrorist’s wrists and ankles. His screams became muffled under a Dolce Gabbana knock-off tied around his mouth.
“He’s secure,” Lopez said, testing the tightness of the scarves.
Sharon high-fived her husband, then turned to the terrorist. “This is for taking a pregnant woman hostage, asshole!” She kicked the terrorist square in the nuts with her Manolo Blahniks. The terrorist coiled in pain and rolled on the floor.
The couple creaked open the door and tiptoed out into the hall. A terrorist was asleep on a cot with a machine gun lying across his chest. Warren hobbled past him, pointing his stolen gun at the terrorist just in case he woke. In the sparse dawn light, they spotted two guards smoking cigarettes by the front gates. Lopez crouched low and held the gun tight to his chest like some bloated suburban Rambo.
“What do we do now?” Sharon asked, but her husband just shrugged. “You said you had a plan, Warren.”
“To get us out of the closet, which I did,” said Lopez, triumphantly.
“Great. Classic Warren,” Sharon sighed.
In the distance was a van—one of those custom jobs with blacked-out bubble windows and curtains. Was that a naked woman riding a unicorn spray-painted on the hood?
“Walk low,” Sharon said.
Warren followed his wife, dragging his bandaged foot through the dirt, careful not to be too loud. They arrived at the van. Sharon tried the front door and it clicked open. They slid low into the front seats. Warren searched the places he’d seen car keys hidden in movies—the glove compartment, under the front view mirror, inside a hide-a-key rock under the seat. Nothing.
“We’ll have to hotwire it,” Sharon said, as if she’d done it before and it was a pain in the ass. She swiped at her iPhone and pulled up her Survivor Man: Middle East Edition app. “We’re going to need wire clippers and a Phillips head.”
“Maybe they’re here. I’ll check,” Warren said. He slid through curtains into the back. Sharon scanned for terrorists. Still those smokers by the gate, but no one else yet. The Nordstrom scarves must have held.
“Holy shit, Sharon, there’s a waterbed back here,” Lopez said. “Hey, we used to have these same sheets.”
“A screwdriver, Warren. A screwdriver.”
A few minutes later, Lopez slid back into the front with an entire tool case in his lap. “Told you I had a plan. Warren Lopez always has a plan.”
“Get down,” Sharon said. “That guard’s awake. He’s headed towards us.”
Warren slipped into the back and Sharon followed. They fell onto the waterbed, which squished loudly as water waves swirled under them. Sharon noticed a rusty crack through the side of the van covered with a flimsy strip of duct tape. She peeled back the tape and saw the guard walking directly towards her. She realized that if she pulled her face away from the crack, the light would pour in and reveal their position. She kept herself steady as the terrorist stopped in front of the van.
He unbuckled his pants and took a long, hot piss against the wheel. It was interminable. He moaned and shook when he finally finished. The terrorist then lit a smoke and leaned up against the van, his ass millimeters from Sharon’s eyeball. Sharon backed away and replaced the duct tape over the crack ever so carefully. She lay back in bed next to Lopez.
The guard turned towards the van and pressed his face up to the bubble window but couldn’t see past the darkened screens and frilly curtains. He pulled at the back doors, but Sharon had not lost the good sense to lock the van when they entered. Eventually, the terrorist climbed up onto the van’s roof. The roof lowered several inches under the terrorist’s weight as he found a comfortable position to lie down.
As Lopez’s heart pounded in his throat, they waited. It may only have been five or ten minutes, but it felt like days until… snoring. Loud, deep snoring right on top of them. Sharon took out her iPhone and opened her notebook app:
“#dontwakethebaby,” she wrote.
Warren bit his hand so as not to crack up. He took the phone: “Remember when Kale walked in on us having sex and u said: Mommy & Daddy r playing rough and tumble. Haha!!”
“#futuretherapybills,” Sharon wrote.
Lopez stifled another laugh, then wrote: “u still luv me?”
“(emoticon wink with lipstick) Unfortunately, yes,” Sharon wrote.
Warren nuzzled his wife’s neck and kissed her cheek. Just to check, Sharon brushed a hand against Lopez’s groin.
She typed: “#alwaysonhard.”
A decade before, Sharon had revealed in her wedding speech that Warren could be headed to the gallows and still might have a semi hard-on.
She typed: “be vewy quiet—I’m hunting wabbits.”
Then she placed the phone on her husband’s stomach, unbuckled his pants, and let Lopez’s long-neglected manhood out to play.
CHAPTER 11
Despite her incarceration in a basement laundry room, Jennings had not ceased giving creative notes on Natural Dish-aster: Season Five. She insisted that Sara shoot some “emotional verité,” and that meant giving the cast a forum to express their feelings. To cry. Because crying was the key. Yes, they’d need to give context to story and establish a dynamic, but wet faces and snotty criers were supertease necessities, and a campfire session always yielded gold.
So wood logs were set up in a circle and a campfire lit. Flames danced and sparks rose into the air, disappearing into a starry sky. The moonlight was so bright you could almost shoot the scene like that, but klieg lights were brought in nonetheless. The lighting was tasteful, lush.
A man and a woman, both in their fifties and wearing ponchos and colorful beads, sat at the fire’s edge, their hair braided like Native Americans. The man had a prominent nose overwhelmed by a lavish beard, and the woman, who was beautiful and dark with bright yellow eyes, wore a wooden necklace with the star and crescent of Islam. The man tapped a conga drum with one hand and the woman rhythmically stirred a shaker as the cast members and terrorists took their seats in a semi-circle around the fire.
Ramin sat next to Tanya; Clora was flanked by Cowboy and Joaquim; Ghana and Nisha shared a blanket, and when Nisha slid a hand on Ghana’s knee, it tingled.
“You don’t know what you’d be getting into,” Ghana whispered to Nisha.
“I have an idea,” she replied.
“I’m a mother of two. They’re my priority.”
“And I’m a twenty-four-year-old adult too scared to come out to my family, let alone admit I’ve fallen in love with a girl I met on set.”
“Maybe you’re not ready.”
Nisha turned to Ghana. Fire danced in her eyes. “I want to kiss you so bad right now,” she said.
Ghana leaned forward, and their quickened breath met inches apart. Ghana slid a hand under the blanket and led Nisha thighward. Their eyes glazed. Both turned back to the strange man and woman in Native American braids so no one would notice.
“Namaste,” the man in the poncho said when the producers gave him word. He tapped his drum with one hand as he spoke. “I understand that you have been put at odds with each other in this competition. That you are sworn enemies with different political, geographic, and culinary views. There is tension and misunderstanding between you?” The group nodded. The man’s face split into a beatific smile. “Bhiza
and I were once like you—we were at odds too. And then… we were not,” he said. He squeezed Bhiza’s hand, and the group understood her to be his wife.
Then the man pulled his hand away and threw off part of his poncho. Protruding from his left shirtsleeve was a prosthetic arm, smooth and rounded like a dolphin’s snout. The one-armed drummer tapped at his conga drum, his thumb and index finger playing a hypnotic beat.
“Yes, we were at odds,” he said. “I was a volunteer in a radical Zionist group, urging Israeli expansion into the territories. Bhiza lived in the territories and was the sister of an Islamic radical. It was her job, using her innocent face and dazzling eyes, to get her brother access to highly populated areas without suspicion.”
“Ayaaaaa—dangooooorouuuuuuus!” The woman, Bhiza, suddenly belted out in song, startling everyone. It wasn’t clear if her words were English, or if she understood them, but the result was the same—a hypnotic howl of pain. The man was unfazed. He smiled, winked, and tapped on his drum, his hand rattling like a snake, his eyes closed in blissful meditation.
“Yes, Bhiza and I were who we were. Who knows which was the real terrorist?” he continued. “I saw her in the street one summer day and my heart stopped. So innocent, so beautiful. And she saw me too. And she felt what I felt because she grew so nervous. Right then and there, she dropped her brother’s detonation device.
“Love-struck, I didn’t even notice what it was. I picked it up and handed it back to her. Then she handed it back to me. I handed it back to her—me, her, me, her—like a suicide bomber hot potato. Ha!” He got a few chuckles from the group, but he was used to a big laugh on that one.
“Heeeeeee ggggaaaaaave it baaaayayyayayack,” Bhiza sang out.
“Seconds later, there was an explosion from across the street,” the man said. “I felt a stinging in my arm and blacked out. But from my unconscious state, I felt a protective hand on me. A tug.”
“He feeelt a tuuuuuug.”