The Ambitious Card

by John Gaspard

  He closed the door and we could hear the lock snick shut. And then we were alone in the inky blackness.

  Chapter 20

  We stood together in silence for what felt like a long time. The noise the door had made while closing had the sound of real finality to it, like it was sealed tight. I listened closely, but couldn’t hear any noise from the room on the other side of the door. There was no air movement where we were standing. The only sound was our breathing.

  “Perhaps this is the wrong time to bring this up,” I finally said, “but I think your divorce may not be as amicable as you thought.”

  Megan sighed, long and hard. “The little bastard. Have I ever mentioned that he has a small penis? Well, he does. Tiny little thing. Almost laughable.”

  There was another long silence in the dark. “Thanks for sharing. Feel better?”

  “Not a lot,” she said, and then she sighed. “I spent a lot of time here with my cousins when I was little. I hate to think that this will spoil all my great memories of these caves.”

  “Hey, if we walk out of here with memories of any kind, we can consider ourselves lucky.” I squeezed her hand gently and she returned the gesture. A thought occurred to me. “When you say ‘a lot of time,’ do you mean in here or in the public spaces on the other side of that locked door?”

  “Both really. Back in those days, it wasn’t locked up like this. My cousins and I used to play hide and seek in all the caves. Of course, that was before the outside entrances were all sealed up. But yeah, we’d run through here for hours on Saturday afternoons with flashlights.”

  “Doesn’t seem like a very safe activity for kids,” I considered.

  “Well, there were a lot of us, so I guess the grown-ups figured that if we lost one or two, it didn’t really matter.”

  “Having just come from performing at a kid’s birthday party, I can fully endorse that point of view.”

  Another pause and then I felt Megan lean into me. I hugged her and held her close. “I don’t want to die in here,” she said quietly.

  “Ditto,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “So let’s see what we can do to ruin Pete’s day.”

  I stepped back and gave the locked door a useless thump with my fist, and then turned back toward Megan.

  “You know your way around here. They couldn’t have boarded up all the entrances. The job was performed by city workers after all…they’re not known for their work ethic. There must be at least one way out of here.”

  I could hear her sniffle. “Maybe,” she said. “But how do we find it in the dark before the carbon monoxide gets us?”

  A thought occurred to me. “You know, we might not be completely screwed,” I said as I quickly searched through my pockets. “My iPhone has a flashlight app on it. It doesn’t throw off a lot of light, but it would be better than nothing.” I came up empty-handed and then remembered when I had last used my phone. “Of course, the phone would be more helpful to us right now if it weren’t sitting on the front seat of my car. So I guess we are completely screwed,” I added.

  “Well, it was a good idea while it lasted,” Megan said.

  I patted my pockets one last time just to make sure, and then reached again into the inside pocket on my sport coat. “However,” I said, realizing what I had stashed away there, “I do have the ability to make it light, if only for a couple of seconds at a time.” I stepped toward what I thought must be the center of the pitch-black room. “Turn away from me and open your eyes. There’s going to be a short flash of light, so you need to look around and gather as much information as you can in just a second or so.”

  I took one of the pieces of flash paper from my pocket, attached the small igniter to my finger and set it off. There was a bright burst and for just an instant the cave was illuminated. And then, just as quickly, we were thrown back into the thick darkness.

  “Okay, I remember this room,” Megan said. “There are two corridors straight ahead of us. The one on the right is a dead end. My older cousin used to go in there and make-out with her boyfriend. He was gross. Big guy, football player. Cute but really dumb, which was the type she always went for. She’s married three just like him.”

  “That’s great, Megan,” I said softly, “but I think we need to focus.”

  “Right,” she said. “Focus. We don’t want the one on the right. It’s the one on the left that branches off into other corridors.”

  “Then let’s make our way down the left corridor.” With one hand behind me holding Megan’s hand, and one ahead of me—to prevent us from walking into a stalactite or stalagmite or whichever it is that hangs from the ceiling—we slowly made our way toward the left corridor.

  Once we were safely through the small archway, I gave Megan a warning and then ignited another piece of flash paper. This new small room lit up briefly and I could see Megan’s face for an instant as her eyes scanned the space.

  “Okay, I know where we are. There’s a crawlspace over to our right. It’s kind of tight, but once through it, we’ll have a lot more options.” We moved toward it together, getting down on our knees and feeling the dimensions of the opening in the rough wall. It didn’t feel very big.

  “Do you want me to go first?” I asked.

  “It’s not so much that I want you to go first, as it is that I would prefer that I go second.”

  “Oddly enough, I completely understand,” I said.

  I took a deep breath and bent down, preparing to crawl through the passage. Then I sat up again, unable to force myself to wiggle into the small opening. “I don’t know why this is so hard,” I said. “I’m only going from one really dark place into another really dark place. Sort of the story of my life, really.” I could hear Megan chuckling behind me. “That’s what we in business would call a polite laugh,” I said.

  “No, it was funny,” Megan said. “I’m just worried that we’re using up too much oxygen talking. Do you know the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning? I feel like I’m starting to get a little light-headed.”

  “How can you tell?” I made a quick rim shot sound effect.

  “Again, funny, but do we really want to waste the oxygen?”

  “You’re probably right. I’ll do my best to keep the graveyard humor to a minimum,” I said. “Must be the way that I cope with stress, although to be honest I’ve never reacted this way in the past.”

  “Eli, you’re still talking,” she said patiently.

  “Yes, I agree,” I said. “But as to your earlier question about the symptoms, in a situation with a really heavy concentration of carbon monoxide, I don’t think there really are any symptoms. I think you just pass out.”

  “Then shut up and start crawling.”

  I heeded her advice and bent down, pulling myself into the small space. Megan had described the passageway as kind of tight, and if that was her recollection of it as a child, I looked forward to hearing how she described it as an adult. At its narrowest point, it felt like it was about a half-inch wider than my shoulders, and just exactly the size of the height of my horizontal body. And, since I couldn’t see anything ahead of me, I had no sense of how long I would be stuck in this confined space. I was truly unnerved and I could feel myself begin to sweat, the moisture rolling off my neck and down my shoulders, making me shiver.

  I dragged myself along, silently cursing the small helium tank strapped to my lower back, which dug deeply into me at a couple of really tight points in the journey. I began to wish that I had taken it off back at the car.

  And then, after what felt like a long trek but was probably only about eight feet, the passageway opened into a larger black space.

  I pulled myself out, not wanting to go too far into the darkness but still wanting to put some distance between myself and the claustrophobic passageway.

  “It’s all clear,” I called into the hole. Megan didn’t respond, but I could hear her struggling to pull herself through.

  “Here’s my hand,” I said, groping in the d
ark. Our hands found each other and by counter balancing my weight against hers, I was able to provide some traction to get her out of the tight channel and into this new, unknown space. We sat for a moment, catching our collective breath, leaning against each other and the rough wall behind us.

  “There used to be a hole leading to the outside in this chamber,” Megan said finally as she caught her breath. “It should be over to the right, but since we can’t see outside right now, I suspect that they sealed it up.”

  “Let’s see what we can see,” I said. “Here comes the flash.” I ignited another sheet of flash paper and for just an instant we got a quick snapshot of where we had landed.

  The headroom was a lot lower than the last chamber, maybe four feet at the highest point. There were two passages out, both to the left of where we were sitting, and a large gray spot on the wall on the right.

  “How many of those flash paper things have you got left?” Megan asked.

  “I didn’t count them, but whatever the number is, I’d be willing to bet you that it will be one or two short of what we actually need.”

  “Those were the numbers I was thinking of, too,” she agreed.

  “So the exit you mentioned…”

  “It’s that gray spot on the wall. I was right. Looks like they filled it in.”

  “Let me check.” I crawled across the bumpy ground to the wall on the right and felt along the uneven surface. The texture of the wall changed to something much smoother for a couple of feet, and then back to the rough texture.

  “Hard to say for sure,” I said, “but I’m guessing they cemented this one shut. We’re not getting out here. Ready to press on?”

  She didn’t answer and after a moment I heard a whimper that indicated she was crying. I crawled through the dark until I found her. We hugged awkwardly. She buried her face into my chest.

  “I really, really hate him,” she said. “I’m just kicking myself for being so nice to him about the divorce.”

  “Well, with any luck, in an hour or so, you can stop kicking yourself and start kicking him. And when you’re done, I’ve got a couple places I’d like to kick him as well.”

  “But they sealed up the exits,” she said, trying to control her crying and coming up short. “All of them.”

  “Maybe. But maybe not. So we’ve got to keep moving. We have two options ahead of us. Do you remember which one is which?”

  She sighed and it sounded like she was wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Hey, what are you doing, that’s my sleeve,” I said in mock horror, which made her laugh. She sniffled again and I could sense that she was done crying, at least for the time being.

  “Okay, we saw two corridors in here, correct?” she said. “And then the filled-in hole as well.”

  “That’s right. The corridors are to our left, the filled-in spot is to our right.”

  She took a deep breath. “Both corridors are good, but I think the one on the far left has more exit options.”

  “Then I vote that we take the one on the far left. Follow me.” I started to crawl in the direction of the opening. I heard Megan start to move behind me, and then she stopped.

  “Eli,” she said quietly. “I’m really starting to feel light-headed.”

  Now that she mentioned it, so was I, although I was unwilling to admit it just yet. “Really?” I asked. “How bad?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Being in the dark makes everything disorienting. But something’s going on, that’s for sure.”

  I had made it across the small cavern and found the space that I believed was the corridor on the far left. I leaned back against the rough wall and felt an immediate sharp pain in my back, which made me call out.

  “What is it?” Megan said, a hint of panic in her voice.

  “It’s this stupid thing,” I said. “For the kid’s show. I keep jabbing myself in the back with it.” I took off my jacket and began to unstrap the tank when an idea occurred to me.

  “You know,” I continued as I removed the tank and then reconnected the long tube and the nozzle, “We could actually use this thing.”

  “What thing?” Megan asked from across the small space. “Can we use it to punch through the concrete they used to seal up the exit?”

  “No,” I said as I crawled back to her. “I think we can use it to buy ourselves some time. It’s a mixture of helium and oxygen that I use in the act. As luck would have it, though, I didn’t use much of it today. Normally, after a show, it would be completely empty.”

  “And we can breathe it?”

  “I don’t see why not. There’s really only one side effect.”

  “It’s carcinogenic?”

  “No,” I explained. “It’s cartoonogenic.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It will make us sound like cartoon characters. You know that high-pitched voice you get when you suck the helium out of a balloon?”

  “No, I’ve never done that.”

  This stunned me into momentary silence. “Never? Even as a kid?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Well, you’re in for a treat,” I said, handing her the nozzle. “Place this in your mouth and press down on this switch. That will start the flow of air. Then just breathe it in.” She took the device from my hand and a moment later I heard the tell-tale hiss of gas as it flowed out of the tube. I could hear her breathing deeply for a few seconds and then the hissing stopped. “How did it work?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said in a high, squeaky voice. It was as if I had suddenly been joined in the cave by Minnie Mouse. “Let me try it again.” She took another hit off the nozzle. “That feels better,” she said, her voice a notch higher now, almost up to Betty Boop range. “You should have some, too,” she added in her new, squeaky voice as she placed the nozzle in my hand.

  I put the nozzle in my mouth and hit the release button, which immediately filled my mouth with the gas. I tried to breathe it in, but the first pass went down wrong and I started coughing. “This is like the first time I tried a cigarette,” I said.

  I tried it again and this time was able to pull the air into my lungs. I breathed out and took another hit, and then one more. I’m not sure if it was a placebo effect, but my head did feel a bit clearer.

  “I think it’s working,” I said, sounding very much like Alvin or one of the other lesser-known Chipmunks. “I feel a little better.”

  The sound of my voice produced a huge laugh from Megan. “You sound ridiculous,” she said in her new falsetto, in between bursts of laughter.

  “Well, you’ve lost your Kathleen Turner quality as well,” I said. “Now it’s like being stuck in a cave with Cyndi Lauper.”

  “Or the munchkins,” she added.

  This last example sparked a thought. “You know,” I said, “Franny told me that she saw something in my future that involved the dark and munchkins. And here we are. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Did she say how you got out of it?”

  “That didn’t come up.” I handed her the nozzle and waited while she took another hit. She handed it back and I filled my lungs to capacity. We sat for a moment in silence, knowing that the next person to speak would re-start the wave of laughter. Finally I spoke.

  “We should keep moving,” I said, trying to deepen my voice and coming up short.

  Megan stifled a laugh. “Yes, you’re right,” she finally said. “Let’s see if we can find the yellow brick road out of here.”

  After several minutes of slowly making our way through the various sized caverns, we fell into a sort of routine. We’d crawl into a new cavern, take a couple hits off the tank, use one of the diminishing sheets of flash paper to determine our next step, and then move on.

  Then rinse and repeat, as the saying goes.

  I had to hand it to the men and women of the St. Paul Parks department. So far they had done a very thorough job of blocking each of the potential exits we had come across. Any image I’d had in my mind of
lazy, indolent public works employees had been completely shattered. Those guys were good and even though it might end up killing me, in a way I grudgingly admired their determination to find and plug every damned hole in the bluffs from Wabasha Avenue all the way down to the Sibley Memorial highway. It was evident that at some point in the past someone had taken his job very seriously.

  It was hard to keep track of time in the dark, but after traversing several small and medium-sized caverns, I guessed that nearly an hour had gone by.

  As we moved forward, Megan’s memory of the layout of the caves had started to become less precise. I didn’t blame her—it had been over twenty years since she’d played hide-and-seek in this space and we had gone deeper and farther than the areas she had previously played in. However, she wasn’t looking at it that way and her level of frustration grew with each new, unfamiliar cavern.

  Unfortunately, I was unable to take her self-recriminations seriously, because the madder she got at herself, the more she sounded like Donald Duck in the midst of a bout of cartoon road rage. And of course, my laughing only made things worse.

  “Shut up,” she snarled at me after one particularly hilarious outburst. “It’s not funny. We’re going to die in here.”

  “That may well be,” I said, my voice just a tad lower than hers. “But we’ll die laughing.”

  “And it’s all my fault,” she continued. “If I’d only let Pete sell the corner when he first suggested it, nobody would have died. Nothing bad would have happened. We wouldn’t be stuck this cave right now.”

  “Megan, I don’t think your ex-husband’s murderous tendencies really fall under the heading of your fault,” I suggested. “You’re the victim here and Pete is the bad guy and you didn’t do anything wrong. Here’s what you should do,” I said, moving into therapist mode. “Instead of beating yourself up, you should push that energy outward and use it to get out of here and bring that little bastard to justice.” I paused for a moment, waiting for a response.