by Dick Wybrow
"Or those airline peanuts. I think planes are supposed to have those, by law or something," he said.
What he really wanted was a big glass of clear, cold water. There would be bottles of it in the fridge.
He dropped out of the cockpit and shuffled his feet across the carpeted floor of the cabin. Uncle Jerry opened the door to the galley. The fridge was on the left side on the bott—
He froze, staring at what stood before him. A woman, dressed in spiky leather from head to toe, was shaking a tumbler. When she caught sight of him, she dribbled clear liquid into two martini glasses then frowned at him.
"I don't expect," Angel said, in a voice deeper than the pilot expected, "this plane has olives anywhere, does it?"
* * *
Anza leaned hard on the Actor as they stumbled up the dirty beach. He cast a quick glance back at the inlet and saw the coast guard boat shooting twin fins of water from its stern. Men and women scrambled across the deck, some fruitlessly shooting at the water.
There was a loud, low boom, and the big boat shook slightly.
The two of them stepped quickly over a patch of sea grass and headed to a row of small homes with metal roofs.
"We've got to get out of here," the Actor said. "Once they're done playing with the twins, they'll be looking for us."
Anza nodded, breathing heavy. She reached up to her arm and winced a little as she poked through the fabric. "I think it scratched the top," she said and grunted.
For a moment, they caught their breath, and the Actor looked at her bloodied shirt, then quickly turned away.
"I, uh, don't do so well with blood."
"Is not bleeding so much," Anza said, examining her arm. "Hurts though. Oh!" She looked closer. "Is that a hole?"
The Actor bent over and heaved, but nothing came out.
There were a few bursts of sand near the grass. Someone on the coast guard boat was again shooting at them. They ran.
On the other side of the homes, by the street, they scanned around, looking for a way out. Anza pointed to a run-down, late-eighties BMW sitting in a driveway. The dirty, weathered sign on top gave her a bit of hope. They ran to the house with the car and banged on the steel screen door.
After a few moments, a man in a dingy T-shirt and sweatpants came to the door. In his one hand was a plate with a healthy serving of rice and beans, in his other hand a fork. He was wearing a bib, strangely, with a cartoon lobster on it. The lobster had seen better days.
"Si?"
The Actor nodded to his car. "Is that your cab?"
"Cab?"
"Taxi."
The man looked at Anza, caught sight of her shoulder, and frowned. He pointed with the fork. "You need to go to the hospital?"
Anza shook her head. "Cozumel."
He pushed his fork around his plate, contemplating this, and shoveled a big bite into his mouth. "My taxi does not float."
* * *
Angel was sipping his cocktail, sitting in one of the four lounger seats.
Uncle Jerry couldn't sit, his eyes dancing around in his head. "Uh, so wait… who sent you?"
"Well, no one sent me, per se," Angel said and took a sip of the clear liquid. He hadn't found any olives. "But we're here to spring you. We just need to turn around. Land somewhere safe."
Uncle Jerry shook his head. "Can't. I can't deviate from this course, or they'll blow the plane. They told me there's a tracker on this thing and some trigger in the fuel tanks." Uncle Jerry stood at the cockpit door facing the man, his hands casually gripping the lip between the piloting area and the main cabin. "Dunno if I believe them, but I believe them."
"They would blow up their own plane?"
"With me in it, sure," Uncle Jerry said and finally sat on the other lounger. "If they thought I was trying to escape, I could tell the authorities or whatever. Better to, you know, cover their asses."
"Well, Anza and the little guy are waiting for you. For us."
"Little guy?" he asked and laughed. "Oh, Christ! The Actor is with her?"
"I never got his name."
"Good-looking fella? Short temper, usually scowling and complaining."
Angel nodded. "And some guy named Rasputin."
Uncle Jerry wrapped his arms around himself and rocked. He smiled, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt… good. Despite there being no way he could follow through with their plan.
He squeezed his arms tighter around himself and fought back a sob. Grinning ear to ear, he said, "Razzie, too, huh?" His eyes misted. "They tried to spring me."
Sip. "That's the plan."
"Can't do it," Jerry said. He was still smiling.
Angel stood up and sauntered to the front of the plane, looking out at the blue sky and burnt land below. "Okay," he said. "Then we need to come up with another plan."
Uncle Jerry chuckled. "My friends didn't forget me after all."
Angel looked behind the two seats in the cockpit. Then he looked past Uncle Jerry, deeper into the cabin.
"If you stayed on the same path but flew low enough to hit a mountain or something, I think we could still pull this off."
"Right," Uncle Jerry said, slipping past Angel and sitting in the pilot's seat. "Except for that would leave anyone on the plane dead."
"Fine. Then we just need to get off the plane," Angel said. "Where are the parachutes?"
Uncle Jerry laughed.
"Naw, there ain't no parachutes here. If this goes down, they want me underneath it." Still smiling, he sighed and rubbed his haggard face. "Only way I land is if I'm dead. No other choice."
Angel looked back outside, looked down, and looked at Jerry. "Not necessarily."
* * *
Back at Anza's apartment, I felt like an intruder. In part, that was probably because I was going through her stuff, not rifling through undie drawers or anything, but I walked to her room. It was weird. It was like she was dead, and it was my job to pack away an old friend's stuff.
She's not dead.
"I know, baby, but… you know."
No, I don't know.
I smiled. "All this stuff. It kind of reminds me of how you used to decorate our place."
We both did that, not just me. You just stopped caring about that stuff. That townhome you had in Texas looked like a safe house.
"I never got around to settling in," I said and looked at a photograph. Picking it up, I stared at the happy faces of Anza and Dan. Their wedding day. "Where was I in this photo?"
From what I remember, passed out in the bathroom.
"Well, it was a tough time."
No, that was a happy time. The tough time came after that.
"You mean when you got sick," I said, "and died. Yeah, that wasn't so good."
Don't be pitiful. It doesn't suit you. You used to be so much fun.
I sat down on the edge of Anza's bed. It was tidy, just like the rest of her room. It looked like it had never been slept in.
"I don't feel like fun," I said aloud. "I miss you."
I know. But we'll see each other one day. Until then, have a bit of fun.
I smiled and shook my head. I stood up. My legs were still aching from the swim in the creek, and I made a noise like a man twenty years older. Then I turned back and fixed the dent I'd left in the bed.
That was when I noticed the old AC/DC shirt on one of the pillows. One of Dan’s, I was sure of it. A warm bloom grew in my chest when I realized that Anza had slept next to it, the scent of her husband nearby, each night.
However, given the condition of my ruined shirt, I dumped my old one in the small wastepaper basket and slipped this on.
Clicking the light off in her bedroom, I closed the door. A nosy part of me thought to look in Angel's room, as if it might tell me where he'd gone, but I didn't think I was prepared for what I might find in there.
The living room was gloomy except for the sunlight peeking into the kitchen. I shuffled over to the fridge, feeling sorry for myself. Pulling its ha
ndle, I grabbed one of the beers in the door.
"Fun," I said.
In truth, I didn't even remember walking to the couch, let alone falling asleep on it, but I came awake quickly when the front door flew open.
"Angel?"
"I've been called worse," the Actor said, walking across the threshold. Behind him, Anza came through and clicked on the light.
I then saw the dark stain on her shirt. "Shit, what happened to you? Wait… why are you guys here? Aren't you supposed to be—"
"We got attacked," the Actor said and grabbed a bottle from the fridge. "Coast guard. The boat is toast. So, back to square one." He frowned at me. "Why are you here? You're supposed to be with Uncle Jerry."
Ignoring his question, I stood and walked toward Anza, then backed away a step. "You're hurt."
"Is okay," she said with a brave face. "Just needing to clean it."
"Come on," I said, leading her to the chair opposite the sofa. "Sit down."
I went into the bathroom and searched for a towel.
"Get the pink one," Anza called to me from the living room.
I opened the cupboard under the sink and almost laughed. "They're all pink!"
"Oh, the dark pink. Angel washed a pair of his frilly red underwear in with the towels, so they are all very much pink. Is not so bad. Is like getting a new set."
I grabbed one of the smaller towels and dampened it in the sink. After ringing it out, I went back into the living room.
The Actor was throwing away a half-drank bottle of beer.
"Jesus, what a waste," I mumbled.
"Raz, please," Anza said, frowning.
"Sorry, sorry."
As I cleaned the wound, she winced a few times, pulling away. After a minute, she took the towel from me and finished the job.
When she handed the rag back, she finally noticed what I was wearing.
“Why are you are wearing Dan’s shirt?”
“It’s a long story,” I said and sighed. The Actor had already laid out on the couch, his eyelids getting heavy.
Finally, Anza looked around. "Wait, new question, more important. Why did you say 'Angel' when we came in? Where is he?"
I told them what had happened.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Hooded One slid open one of the glossy black cabinets that had been built into the wall of his tower office. Humming along to some music dribbling out of the perfectly placed speakers, he searched for the new recruit's record. He knew what he would find. He'd read it just the day before. It was part of the process.
It was a bit like something he'd read about called "dream shopping," when people went to a car lot in the middle of the night. They would leave their run-down studio apartments, get into their piece-of-shit Hondas, and head out to dream amongst the beautiful array of shiny vehicles, under the bright lights, picking out the ones they would want when they made it. When they had the money to afford luxuries like those.
Inspiration. Hope.
"Fantasy," Hood said, smiling.
He was worth billions. In the aforementioned dream scenario, he would have owned the car lot—and refused to sell to the dreamer in the shitty car, maybe have them arrested for trespassing.
He stared down at the file in his hands, scanning it for the date and time the recruit would finally be in place, doing his job. A glance at the large digital wall display told him that within two days, the Actor would be there, strapped in, and helping crush humanity.
Chapter Twenty-Four
For the next hour, we talked about what we could do next.
After a while, I got up and went to the living room window, pulled back the curtain, and smiled down on the parking lot.
"Hi, gorgeous," I said, and the handlebars of the bike moved toward me. The headlamp, still dark, pointed slightly upward. It had such a strange way about it. It was as if it were a dog sleeping at the foot of the bed, and I'd just said something about going for a walk.
I smiled and said to it, "Soon. We just gotta work out where we're going."
The Actor threw a couch pillow at me. "Who are you talking to?"
Turning from the window, I went to the kitchen in search of coffee. "I'm plotting, scheming. We've got to come up with a new plan."
The Actor pushed off a purple shawl he'd mistaken for a blanket, making a face.
"Don't put that on the floor," Anza said as she stepped from her room, closing the door behind her. "It's Angel's."
"Great." The Actor frowned. "Now I'm going to smell like drag queen."
"Good," she said and headed to the bathroom. "He has very nice smell. You, not so much."
I rifled through the cupboards, looking for a bag or cylindrical can that might have coffee in it, but came up short.
"What now?" she asked, her voice low. Her eyes were on the floor.
"How am I supposed to know?" The Actor took another sip of his beer. There were two half-filled bottles on the table next to him. "We came here for your help. You're the planner—what should we do?"
She looked at her hands, and her lip trembled. "Uncle Jerry, he still is not safe. Angel is missing, maybe getting shooted by that psycho gun lady. We lost the Widow's boat, so she wants to shoot us. You said there were redneck biker people chasing you, so there's that."
We both stared at her. It was hard hearing her so down.
She asked, "Am I missing anything?"
"Yes," the Actor said through gritted teeth. "I still have a contract out there somewhere with my name on it that will enslave me to the lords of hell!"
The next words came out of my mouth with a mind of their own. "Let's have some fun."
Anza shrugged. "Okay."
* * *
"I don't remember getting drunk being this difficult," I said, tapping the bottom of my frozen margarita into my mouth. Anza was battling a drink umbrella. She gave up, pulled it out, and tossed it at the Actor. It hit him in the head and got stuck in his hair.
"He seems to have worked it out," Anza said and laughed. It was a sweet, wonderful sound that made the air light all around us.
"Yeah, but he's had like ten beers!"
"Half beers," she said and laughed again. "What a stupid idea."
"Whatever works," I said.
"If is to cut down on the drinking, I don't think it work."
We looked at the ten beer bottles surrounding the Actor—the waitstaff had refused to take them away because he'd finished none of them. He looked like a chess champion using brown bottles for pieces, contemplating his next move. Obviously, he had been in check the last three beers.
"Okay," Anza said, nodding to the waitress to bring us a few more frozen margaritas. "Plan time."
"Great," I said. "What's your idea?" My heart sped up a bit. That was why we'd come to find Dan's wife. Her English might be suspect, but her reasoning was unmatched.
"First, we have to finding the Devil's lair—" The expression on Anza's face changed. She looked worried then frowned and winced.
"What's wrong? Is it your shoulder?"
"No!" She leaned forward, pounding her fist to her head lightly. She'd realized something. Something terrible.
"What? What is it?"
"Ugh," she said and leaned back in her chair. A tear was falling from her cheek.
"Dammit, Anza, what's wrong?"
"Uggghhh," she moaned then closed her eyes tight. "I gave myself a freezie headache."
My mouth opened and moved, but nothing came out a first. Then I just laughed.
She started again. "Well," she said, eyes still closed, taking deep breaths. "When we get to his lair—"
"I don't think he's got a lair."
"Whatever," she said and slowly opened her eyes, as if waking from a horrible dream, lying in the blazing sun. "Wait, you guys never said where the Actor's devil contract was."
"Ah," I said and grabbed one of the half beers on the table. "That part is a bit, you know, blurry."
"How blurry?"
"Like legally bl
ind blurry?"
Her eyes drooped. "That is not blurry. Is black."
"Not really, it's l—"
Anza shushed me. Then she thought for a moment. "NoCal."
I blinked. Her voice had sounded so strange when she'd said the word. Like she'd gargled with gravel and cast some Harry Potteresque spell.
I looked at her and asked, "What does that mean?"
"Northern California," the voice said.
Dan's wife hadn't spoken. Anza's face looked pained, but this time it wasn't about any freezie headache.
Slowly, I turned my head, but after my creek adventure, I had to half turn my body. A collection of rags and dust in a cowboy hat sat sipping a whiskey. Faced away from us, she was watching me in the mirror at the bar. I began to stand.
"Ah, ah, ah," she said and wiggled the pistol pointed at me under her drinking arm.
"Now, hold on," I said, trying to sound brave.
She cocked the gun.
"I'm listening," I said. "Very attentively. You have my full attention. All attention—"
"Shut up," she said, nodded to the bartender, then laughed. "You do work that mouth of yours. Ah well. Might come in handy later on, if it suits me."
Wow.
In the mirror, I caught Anza's face. Thin lips, teeth bared, she had a look that could kill. "My friend does not perform cunnilingus on cowboys!"
I flinched. Then a slight shiver went through my body.
The gunslinger turned and put her dirty boot up on the seat next to her. She smiled at Anza. "I ain't particular. You'll do just fine."
I started to stand but then she raised her pistol ever so slightly. She hadn't even looked in my direction, her eyes locked on Anza.
I asked, "What do you want?"
She smiled and nodded at my friend. "Well, if—"
"I mean what do you want from us?"
The bartender put another double whiskey in front of her. From his angle, he couldn't see the pistol. It couldn't have been the first time she'd pulled that move before.