Dollar For Your Thoughts, Part 11/14
By Lou Blodgett
- 479 reads
“Stick with me. Close.” Connie stood and shouted- “Mea Culpa!”
And walked toward the mayor who now held the smokin’ pans to either side, with a pair of tongs, looking deified. I jumped up and followed Connie.
“Mea Culpa!”
Connie spun to me.
“No! Mea Culpa.”
I hoped it was all part of her act.
“You’rea Culpa? I thought I was Culpa.”
I stuck with her as she weaved slowly between the tables through the dazed crowd, taking the both of us toward red hot disaster. The mayor held his tongue. The laminated badge mystique might have been doing its job. That, and Connie was nuts. She whispered.
“Prepare for attack.”
I whispered back.
“Attack?”
From the base of the bar, Connie made a quick move. She dove between the man’s legs. I stuck with her like a salmon swimming upstream. Upon finding two culprits slithering between his legs, he reacted by swinging a pan down. He hollered. Did it hit his thigh? I joined Connie, tumbling down to the other side of the bar, with me sticking too close to her feet, and getting clocked on the front of my chin by the heel of one of her size 6 Kimberlies. I bit down, tooth to tooth. Luckily, there was no tongue between them. But I’d lost most of a tooth. And, do you think I cared? Something hot brushed my ass as I went down. With his second try, the mayor had hit himself again. Mostly. Enough. He hollered. The other red hot pan had just seared itself onto his knee. We were on our feet in the midst of a crowd that had just gone from homicidal to rabid. I had no choice but to stay with Connie, since there was little room behind the bar, what with all the Ims. Connie hopped left. I hopped left to the space she left behind, and she jumped through the order window. We both went through that window like trained dolphins near retirement, our laminated badges fluttering in the lee, with the crowd behind us baying for blood. From behind us came the sound of dismay. But it was muted enough for everyone to hear the ‘order up’ bell clatter to the floor along with us. Neither of us, however, were impaled on the order spindle, which was a blessing in curse milieu.
The sole crew member holding down the kitchen after closing, the dishwasher, tried to stop us, but soon found his hands full as we tumbled onto the smelly mats and sprung to our feet- ‘Ta Da!’ I could hear those we left behind arguing about how to best scoop up the still hot pans which had been meant for me but were now leaving a scorch divot on the wood floor, the mayor being hors-de-combat.
“Pick it up.”
“NO! You pick it up.”
“Just pick-it-up.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Then, the sound of boos behind us. The show was a flop. The dishwasher, in the meantime, had armed himself with a spatula and skipped to the side. So, now Connie and I knew where we wanted to go. The back door had to be behind him. I shouted.
“Back off!”
He did. A bit. He lowered his ineffectual weapon.
“You back off.” He backed to a spot near wire shelves. “I’m not on the health plan.”
Connie and I sprinted through the kitchen toward freedom. Behind us was the din of a patron posse, all as unsure of the layout of the kitchen as we were, plus, they were equally unsure on whose side the dishwasher was on.
“Drop your spatula!”
And, another,
“Clear. No, wait, not clear! We have two. And, one! One standing! Man standing!”
Then they began to chastise the dishwasher for not keeping his end up. Connie was going into spasms as we found the back door.
“How’s your ass?”
“Singed.”
“The mayor’s is fried, then!”
In short, we made a hysterical couple. Connie shoved through the door, activating the fly-fan and it blew us out into the mild night. I spun, though, and planted myself in front of the pursuant vanguard. Two men.
“MEA CULPA!”
From their vantage at the threshold, I must have looked like a devilish whirlwind, with my scared shitless expression, with one of my incisors a fang, blood dripping from my mouth, and the fly-fan fluttering my jacket and hair. They stopped in their tracks. I slammed the door shut on them.
Once alone in the alley, our conversation went thus:
Connie: Wah?
Me: Ope? (She was headed the wrong way, toward the rusty guts of Lumber City.)
Connie: Herm.
She followed me in a southerly direction, cracking up at the sideways ‘This way I think. Hurry’ attitude that I exhibited. That back door stayed closed an impressively long time- two seconds. Now that we were facing our hoped destination, City Hall, I swiveled my head left and right, looking for Im Vigilantes. The back door groaned, and the fly-fan re-activated, but by then Connie and I were a pair of bats in the shadows from their perspective. But the shadows held more hazards. We heard one immediately as we raced around a corner, fleeing south. Someone was taking pot-shots at us. It had only been a matter of time. We stopped. Connie held a hand against my chest. She had a plan. I hoped it would work. There were another couple of pops and she spun toward the source, and what she said made me jump more than the shots themselves.
“Ugh-Ugh Humina Ugh-Unn GUN!”
Then, there was nothing but the sound of chirping crickets. That wasn’t enough for Connie, though. She kept her hand on my chest, and shouted louder and more insistent.
“HUM UNGA GUN.”
And there was a- “thunk! rattle” of the gun being dropped to the ground. Connie plucked at my shirt and I fled with her into the light near the main drag.
“Grandpa taught me that,” she panted to me as we ran.
We rounded the restaurant and found ourselves faced with a crowd. But they weren’t facing us. They were unknowing, or uncaring about the event and resulting chase, milling around and checking out Wingnut and his bulky metal flying carpet. Some were having their pictures taken with it, and him. Connie stood- transfixed.
“I want that.”
“Everyone does.”
“But I don’t want him.”
“Goes without saying.”
“How do I get that, though?”
I looked at her and wanted so much for her to have the anti-grav wagon. For her, and for us. She wiped my bloody mouth with her sleeve.
“They getcha?”
“You got me.”
“Sorry.”
“Ok,” I said. “You distract Wingnut, and I’ll figure out how to spark up the wagon. And we’ll fly away.”
We took a breath and regrouped, there in the topiary shadows.
“Has it come to that?” Connie asked.
“I’m afraid so,” I told her. “You’ll have to use your feminine wiles.”
She had no response.
“Go pose for a picture with him.”
Her eyes brightened. Then,
“We don’t have a camera.”
“Doesn’t matter. By the time they know, they’ll be wondering where their anti-grav went.”
Connie spun away from me and toward him. I followed her and whispered:
“Embrace the role. You love him.”
She betrayed an eek of laughter. We walked quietly to the crowd.
“You had posters of him up on the wall of your bedroom in your teen years.”
“Okay. Enough motivation.”
“You would leave me for him at the drop of a goofy leather cap.”
“No. I’m afraid I’m stuck with you.”
She peeled toward Wingnut and I kept going, to the wagon. Connie worked quickly, slipping an arm around the guy and smiling proprietarily bright- toward absolutely no one. I suppressed a guffaw and leapt onto the wagon. Connie put her hand seductively on the back of Wingnut’s head. I found a toggle switch at the base of the pull bar and tried that. The machine bucked. Connie gave Wingnut a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and a shove goodbye. He wound up in the thick of the crowd.
“Hey!”
Connie hopped into the wagon as it rose with me. I’d slid to the back as I started the machine, so she wound up in front; the default driver. She grabbed the pull bar. The wagon must have had a hell of a gyro, the wagon stayed true and level and rose slowly with us jumbled within, legs dangling over either side.
“Ah. Up is up and down is down,” Connie muttered.
“Then ‘up’ us then!” I shouted. We rose along with the hot air from a chorus of “Heys”. There was Wingnut, raising a fist toward us from 7 meters below as we ascended. It was beautiful.
“Where’s the car?” Connie asked.
“South!” I was distracted, scared, and uncomfortable. My legs were letting me know that they weren’t designed to hold half my weight on 40 cm of edge.
“Okay. Where’s south?”
The wagon spun as it went up, but Connie learned to pilot it, turning us toward a bright spot on the horizon. I pointed at it from over her shoulder.
“That transmission tower.”
She’d been steering with the wagon handle, lifting to ascend, and visa-versa. We rose to the tree tops and glided toward the glow, away from the bleat of Ims. It became nearly silent up there.
“I get it!” Connie piped. “It’s foolproof!”
“It must be foolproof for Wingnut to fly it.”
“That’s it,” Connie said. The Town Hall presented itself before us. “I’m sitting on his gear. Lookit me!”
“Huh?”
“To fly this,” she told me as she swooped a bit down and to the left, “you have to think like Wingnut. Lookit me!”
“I hugged her and laugh-spasmed.
“Connie?”
“Yes, dear?” She stared at the tower target, intent, but motionless. Not much action was needed on her part, at that point.
“You’re so dreamy.”
“Lookit me!”
It was what it was, there above Lumber City. It was a moment, and it passed, and we never spoke of it again.
Coming down, we wove among trees and beneath power lines, which were unused and brittle. Connie was a good anti-grav pilot. Perhaps the first of our species. She took us to the Town Hall parking lot, 10 meters above my glorious champagne Imno 400. She jimmied the child’s fantasy ship left, then right. We swooped up, then down. But not much. I reached in front of her, demonstrating.
“Perhaps with a swooping…”
“Yes, perhaps that’s the best way. But I want to go straight down. We shouldn’t have to swoop.”
We spun.
“I see a recall in the future.” I laughed. “Just flip the switch.”
“No. Hey!”
“What?”
She flipped the switch.
“Yer right! It’s fooolprooof!”
But nothing happened. We seemed to just hang there. Then I noticed that the transmission tower was rising.
“Lookit me!”
We touched down. I felt, with my toes, the roof of my now less-than-lovely Imno 400, and we scrabbled off. We stood and looked at our ship on top of that car.
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Comments
Splendid fun. So visual -
Splendid fun. So visual - like a movie playing out in front of you.
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