OtherWorld

by Sarah Dreher

  “Of course,” Marylou said. “And I find your offer both generous and touching.”

  “We’ll have to wait until this particular episode is over,” he said confidentially. “This place… well, it’s not exactly fitting, is it?”

  He was after sex, all right. Well, that was no surprise. Sooner or later, they were all after sex. Young, old, rich, poor, all walks of life—sex, sex, sex until you thought you’d die from the pure unoriginality of it. “No,” she said, “not fitting at all.”

  “And we don’t want our child…”

  Our child? OUR CHILD?!!

  “...getting off to an unlucky start. That was my trouble, you know. I had an unlucky start.”

  He wants us—ME—to have a child? Me? Marylou Kesselbaum? A child?

  She thought she was going to faint.

  Marylou forced herself to appear calm. Which wasn’t easy with mushroom sauce and white wine fighting for supremacy in her alimentary canal. As a matter of fact, serious curdling was about to take place.

  “Did you have an unlucky start, David?” she asked sympathetically through clenched teeth. If she could get him off the topic of their child...

  He looked at the ground, sadly. “Born on a Wednesday.”

  Yes, that explained it, all right. “I see.”

  “‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe.’ That’s what she said.”

  “She?”

  “My therapist.”

  Ah, yes, his therapist. His revered therapist. “Well, then,” she said, “it must be true.”

  “She’s very smart.”

  “She must be.”

  “She helped me a lot.”

  “I can see that.”

  “That’s why I’m doing this for her.”

  Marylou’s heart stopped. “For her? For your therapist?”

  “Oh my gosh!” David felt his face grow bright red. He broke his own rule! “I shouldn’t have told.”

  It’s a mistake, Marylou thought. It has to be a mistake. Because, if it isn’t, I’m in the worst trouble I’ve ever been in. Even worse than that time back in college when I went on an M.I.T. fraternity weekend to the Cape with a blind date. At least I could take a bus home from there.

  She stifled an impulse to look wildly for an exit. “You can trust me,” she said shakily. “After all, we’re going to share...” She swallowed to get the mushroom sauce under control. “...something precious.”

  “You won’t tell?” he asked pathetically.

  “My lips are sealed. Forever.” Which will be more than a metaphor, if what I suspect is true.

  He gave a great sigh of relief. This woman might be a pervert, but she was one A-okay pervert. “Thanks,” he said. “Dr. T would never forgive me.”

  Dr. T. Millicent Tunes. He’d been in jail, and so had she. Maybe even done some parole work before, to make her resumé look legit. And, when she was nailed for the Shady Acres scam, Tunes had gone on practicing her craft behind bars—and no doubt looking for the perfect patsy, and having found him, primed him for this…

  Oh, God, get me out of this, and I promise I’ll keep Kosher for the rest of my life.

  But if Stoner gets me out of this, I won’t have to keep Kosher.

  Come on, Stoner!

  David was glancing at his watch. “Uh-oh.”

  Uh-oh? What uh-oh?

  “Told my client I’d check in at midnight. I have to find the public phone,” he said. He got to his feet.

  This was not a good idea, checking in with the client. Time standing still was a good idea. The only good idea she could think of. “Do you really have to go?”

  He smiled. “I’ll be back.” He moved toward the door.

  “David!”

  At the panic in her voice, he looked around. “Yes?”

  “Uh...don’t be long.” If I have to fuck him to keep Tunes away, I will. I’ll hate it, but I’ll do it. Thank God I have condoms in my purse.

  “I won’t be.”

  He opened the door.

  He started through it.

  “Remember,” she called after him, “I’m the mother-to-be of your child.”

  * * *

  George and Stape arrived around midnight, carrying some Xeroxed blueprints and a huge set of keys.

  “That was quick,” Stoner said. “I thought you couldn’t get those before Monday.”

  “Stape remembered someone on her softball team who works in the County Court House. They broke in.”

  “That’s great,” Stoner said as Stape spread the blueprints out on the bed. “I’ll have to remember to take up softball next spring.”

  “Comes in handy,” Stape muttered. “Only two good ways to meet dykes—softball and bars. And since I’m not allowed to hang around bars any more...” She let the silence become heavy with accusation.

  “Don’t expect me to feel guilty,” George said. “You’re the one who made a mess of your life.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Stape searched through the lines and squares of the maps. “Okay, here’s the tunnels. George, show me what ones they use now.”

  George took over, crossing things out with a large Magic Marker. What remained was a series of short, stubby arms that surrounded the perimeter of the active tunnels like rays of sunlight.

  There were hundreds of them. It would take days to follow them all.

  “Have you ever seen any of these?” Stoner asked George.

  George shook her head. “They must have walled them up.”

  “Not all of them. Marylou’s in one.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Stoner shot a glance at Aunt Hermione, who smiled mysteriously. “You don’t want to know.” She turned back to the blueprints. They made absolutely no sense to her. “Can you find Mexico?”

  George pointed it out. One of the little un-crossed-out rays ran from the basement of the pavilion to the edge of a twenty-five-cent-piece-sized circle.

  “What’s that?” Stoner asked, as she pointed to the circle.

  George peered closer. “It must be…Horizons.”

  “Nah,” Stape said. “It’s the Odyssey Restaurant.”

  “I should have known,” George said. “Your favorite spot in EPCOT.” She touched Stape affectionately. “Which isn’t saying much.”

  “EPCOT’s okay,” Stape said. “Especially the Maelstrom. You been on Maelstrom yet?”

  Stoner shook her head. “Things have been a little hectic.”

  “You gotta see that,” Stape said.

  “Don’t give it away,” George warned her.

  “Right. Just don’t miss it. It’s cool.”

  Stoner turned her attention back to the maps. She ran her finger down the legitimate tunnel leading under Mexico. “Have you ever been down here?”

  George rolled her eyes. “More than I’d like to say. When you draw after-hours duty, you have to go through them all.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a door here.”

  “A blank wall. Sorry. If that’s the place, they must get in another way...” She searched up and down the tunnel way. “But I can’t imagine what it’d be.”

  “They have a toilet in this one,” Stape said, tapping the map with her finger.

  “That must be it. How can you tell there’s a toilet?”

  “See that drawing? Looks like a short bullet? That’s the architect’s symbol for toilet.”

  “Boy,” Stoner said with genuine admiration, “you learn a lot of stuff doing aluminum siding.”

  “Don’t learn a shootin’ thing doing aluminum siding. Except how to cut yourself twenty-five ways to Tuesday. Want to branch out some day, so I’m taking a correspondence course in architectural design.”

  “Well, that certainly looks like the place,” Stoner said. “But how do they get in?”

  “If I was going to go down there,” Stape said, “I’d dig my way in from the top.”

  “Perfect!” Stoner said. “But how could they do that without anyone noticing?”

  “If
you waited until very late,” George explained, “you might be able to work between the patrols. It’s really dark back there. And at this time of year, there are a lot of hours of darkness and a lot of time between patrols.” She thought further. “You could even do some of the noisier work during Illuminations. Once they get going with the music and fireworks, you can’t hear yourself think.”

  “They must have wanted this real bad,” Stape suggested. “That’s real shit work.” She glanced up at Aunt Hermione. “ ’Scuse me, Ma’am.”

  “That’s all right, dear,” Aunt Hermione said. “I’ve heard dirty talk before.”

  Stoner couldn’t resist it. “She’s been on Earth at least thirty-two lifetimes, and remembers most of them.”

  “No shit?” Stape asked, round-eyed.

  “The French Revolution,” said Aunt Hermione. “Now, there was a time for dirty talk.”

  “Jeez, Louise,” Stape said. “I wonder if we ever ran into each other before.”

  “Very likely. We do tend to reconnect with the same souls.” She held out her cigarettes. “Care for one?”

  Stape blushed. “Uh, thanks, but I don’t smoke.” “

  Oh, yes, you do,” George said. “At work.”

  “Huh?”

  “You come home reeking of it, Stape.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “When I’m absolutely convinced you’ve stopped abusing alcohol,” George said, “I’ll start in on the smoking.”

  Stape mumbled and grumbled and turned back to Aunt Hermione. “Can you read the future?”

  “Sometimes. And, yes, you will stop smoking. Don’t worry about it.”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” Stoner said, “I’d like us to worry about Marylou now.”

  Stape shrugged. “What’s to worry? We know where she is, let’s go get her.”

  * * *

  “You’re late,” Millicent Tunes said.

  David glanced at his watch. “Only five minutes.”

  “We agreed on midnight.”

  “Sorry.” Crim-in-ent-ly. Was she tight-assed or what?

  “You know how I feel about lateness.”

  He knew, all right. Back when he had therapy appointments… man, five minutes late, you apologize; ten minutes, you have to discuss the underlying hostility; fifteen minutes and she’s out of there. “I couldn’t help it,” he said meekly. “There was stuff going on.”

  “Stuff? What kind of ‘stuff’?”

  “Well, we had to eat, and…”

  She heard the hesitance in his voice and cut him off. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No, everything’s fine.”

  “It doesn’t sound fine.”

  “Really,” David said, trying to conjure up enthusiasm. “Everything’s under control.”

  “I’m coming over there,” Millicent Tunes said, and hung up before he could reply.

  * * *

  “Gwen called,” Edith said, popping her head into the room. “Subject just left the hotel. She’s following.” She popped back out.

  “Who was that?” George asked.

  “Edith Kesselbaum,” Aunt Hermione said. “Marylou’s mother.”

  “Exotic looking woman,” Stape said.

  “She’s a psychotherapist,” Stoner explained.

  “Hey,” Stape said, “wonder if she could do anything for Rita.”

  She was reluctant to leave. Suppose Gwen, following Millicent Tunes, got into trouble and needed her help. They wouldn’t be able to communicate. If she started for the Dolphin now, she might intersect with Gwen and they could follow together.

  But, of course, that was exactly the wrong thing to do. Chances were they’d miss each other. And, even if they didn’t, Tunes might see them together and catch on to the fact that they had caught on.

  On the other hand, a lot of time was going to pass while they were out of touch. She didn’t like that at all.

  Meanwhile, George and Stape and Aunt Hermione were waiting for her to get her stuff together and pile into George’s car so they could breeze on over to Mexico and nab the villain in the act. If they were right about where Marylou was, and if that’s where Millicent was headed, they’d all end up at the same place at approximately the same time. But if they weren’t, if Gwen had to confront Tunes alone, and unarmed… And they knew, or at least had a pretty good idea, that she wasn’t working alone. Marylou was probably tied up, or locked in. That meant Gwen would be unarmed and outnumbered.

  Inspiration struck. “George,” she said, “do you have your walkie-talkie with you?”

  “Always,” George said.

  “Can we get one for me?”

  “No problem,” said Stape. “I carry one in the truck, for calls from the office. We’ll just tune them to the same channel.”

  “Okay.” She went to the closet and pulled down the knapsack she had brought with her for trudging around WDW on a shopping trip and not having to lug a lot of stuff by hand. “Here’s what we’ll do. Aunt Hermione and I’ll go over to Mexico and see if we can find an entrance to the tunnel. You guys head for the Dolphin and try to pick up Gwen’s trail. Edith can describe the car to you. Once you find it, stick close. I mean, really close.” She dug through her luggage and pulled out a flashlight. “We’ll keep in touch by walkie-talkie. If it turns out we’re right, and Tunes and Gwen are headed for Mexico, we’ll wait for you and all go in together.”

  “Why don’t we just arrest her on the spot?” Stape asked, obviously into the action aspects of it.

  “Because we may need to follow her to find our way into the tunnel. Once she knows we have her number, she’ll stay a hundred miles away from there. If her cohort’s expecting her and she doesn’t show up, he or she will undoubtedly try to do something to Marylou.”

  “He,” George said. “I’m betting on ‘he’.”

  “How come?” Stape asked.

  “The M.O. feels like a ‘he’.”

  “Yeah, but how can you...”

  Stoner felt like pulling hair—her own or someone else’s. “Please,” she said earnestly, “discuss it in the car.” She suddenly realized something. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Stape asked.

  “How are we going to get into the park? Does the monorail run after the park closes?”

  “Not often,” George said. “You’d do better to drive. Security will try to stop you at the EPCOT lot and at the gate. I’ll call ahead and tell them you’re coming.”

  “Right.” This was going to be endless—getting there, identifying herself to the security people...

  “I have another one for you,” George said. “Could be a problem.”

  “What?”

  “The Dolphin is only about a ten-minute walk from Mexico. You don’t even have to leave the area. There’s a guard on the bridge leading over, but if she can get past...”

  “Damn!” Stoner sank down on the bed. It wasn’t going to work out at all.

  “Excuse me, dear,” Aunt Hermione said. She looked up from the blueprints she had been examining. “I might have a solution for us.”

  They all gathered around.

  “George, does this tunnel...” Aunt Hermione pointed to the blueprint. “...have an above-ground entrance?”

  George examined it. “Yep. It’s one of the ones the Characters use to go from one part of the World to another. They can go in at the Transportation and Ticket Center, or Cinderella’s Castle, or—”

  “And it intersects with all these other tunnels?” Stoner interrupted.

  “Sure does. And I think I get what you’re driving at.”

  “So this would take us right up to the abandoned tunnel, and all we’d have to do is find the entrance. Now, how do they travel within the tunnels.”

  “Electric car!” George shouted. “Let’s do it.”

  “Give me a moment,” Aunt Hermione said, and trotted from the room.

  Stoner began madly stuffing items into her knapsack. Flashlight. Wallet for ide
ntification. A compass—she’d gotten lost so many times over the years, she never left home without one any more. Tissues—you never know. Briefly considered the handy-dandy metal camping knife, fork, and spoon set she always carried in case she got stuck eating at some fast food place like Kentucky Fried Chicken that supplied only flimsy plastic half-fork, half-spoon items (Gwen called them “sporks,” though sometimes “foons” seemed more appropriate), but decided it wouldn’t be needed. Rejected check book and keys to the travel agency back in Boston… wait a minute, keys might come in handy, you never knew when one would fit. Added a handful of Jolly Ranchers and hoped she hadn’t put in any Cinnamon Fires by mistake. Hikers’ first aid kit, yes. Small razor blade knife for clipping grocery store discount coupons, no, yes, you never knew. Hand cream, definitely not. Ticket stubs? Nope.

  “Are you ready?” Aunt Hermione asked. She had changed into her dark blue work-out pants and gray sweat shirt and running shoes.

  “Ready.”

  George had the pick-up revved up and waiting. She motioned Stoner in beside her. Stape gave Aunt Hermione a hand up into the open bed. “If you see anyone looking at us suspiciously,” George instructed them, “whoop and toss beer bottles. They’ll think we’re just college students on a spree.”

  She threw the truck in gear and peeled out of the parking lot. “Reach under the seat,” she said to Stoner. “You’ll find the walkie.”

  By the time they’d reached the Magic Kingdom parking lot, she had briefed Stoner on the uses and abuses of walkie-talkies. “Remember,” she said as she swung down from the cab, “keep it on that channel. Push to talk, let go to listen. Keep the volume turned down until you’re ready to use it. Otherwise, you’ll broadcast every bit of static within a twelve-mile radius of Orlando.”

  “Got it.” She stuffed the instrument into her knapsack.

  “Stoner,” George said patiently, “you’re supposed to clip it to your belt. That’s why it’s called a walkie-talkie. As in walkie?”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” She looked at her watch. It had already been twenty minutes since Gwen called. They weren’t going to make it.

  “We’ll make it,” George said. “Wait until you see how Stape handles those electric cars. Better than bumper cars at the amusement park.”