Just a Couple of Days (30 page)

Upon our return, we found General Kiljoy and Tynee standing by the bar, surrounded by several boxes that had been cut open. They were in the midst of cussing each other out, and so neither thought to immediately inquire how our dogs were still alive.

“Just figure out where the goddamn food stores are located,” General Kiljoy commanded Tynee.

“Figure it out yourself!” Tynee hollered back. “You're the hothead who eliminated Captain Down. This wouldn't even be an issue—” Before he could finish, General Kiljoy collared him
and lifted him clear over his head. This act of aggression set Meeko and Ratdog to barking, but General Kiljoy ignored them as he strode across the room and heaved Tynee onto one of the sofas. Tynee landed as gracelessly as a hissing cat scrambling out of a tub of water.

“Search the schematics, find out how to access prisoner rations for all I give a shit. I don't care what kind of clearance you have with what agencies. Here, I'm in charge, and you will follow my orders. There will be a chain of command. Are we clear?”

Tynee stood up, stupefied, and nodded.

That satisfied General Kiljoy momentarily, and he turned to Miss Mary and me. “Shut your goddamn dogs up!” We did not hesitate to obey his order and soothed our respective canines, who continued to whine nervously.

After Miss Mary had calmed Ratdog, she stood and addressed General Kiljoy by his first name. “This may not be the best time to mention this, Veechy, but my Tippy needs to take a . . .” She cleared her throat properly.

“Shit?”

“Walk.” Miss Mary voiced her preferred euphemism.

“Christ.” He paced about. “Take her into the observation room.” He pointed to the glass wall Tynee was staring at, which now served as an enormous computer screen while he searched through the mainframe files. “That'll be the ‘walk' room for now.” He pointed his remote control at a portion of the bookcase, causing it to open. His action had the effect of kicking the jump rope of my heart and causing it to trip as I realized that it could very easily become public knowledge that I was in possession of Miss Mary's personal remote control. I resolved to return it to her as soon as possible.

Miss Mary exited the room, carrying Ratdog. Although I could tell that nature was whistling for Meeko as well, I decided to wait my turn, or his turn. I did not wish to have any additional adventures with Miss Mary.

Shortly after she left the room, Tynee announced that he thought he knew where the emergency rations might be and shut down the computer screen. The image was replaced, of course, by the room formerly occupied by Blip, Brother Zebediah, and Manny. It was now occupied by Miss Mary, who sat at the table admiring her antique teapot that had served the Pied Piper virus to them, and Ratdog, who was squatting shamelessly, looking as if she were reading a Russian novel.

Once Ratdog finished her novel and Miss Mary primmed her disheveled self to no avail before the mirror, they exited the room. I, meanwhile, wandered over to the bar to look inside the open boxes. They were filled with hundreds of aerosol cans. I pulled one out and saw that it was a consumer product called Wrinkle-B-Gon. Wrinkle-B-Gon was a “fabric relaxant,” possessing the remarkable ability to spray away wrinkles, and, as the manufacturers claimed, “all without ironing!” My immediate question was why there were cases and cases of something so perfectly useless as Wrinkle-B-Gon fabric relaxant in a survival compound. No one answered me, but Miss Mary was intrigued by the claims, dressed as she was in a linen day suit that had endured sitting two hours on the floor of an elevator. Flaunting more wrinkles than a used piece of aluminum foil, she emptied half a can on herself. It worked. The wrinkles-were-gon.

Her clothing now unwinding poolside with a cold beer, Miss Mary joined her garments. She plopped herself drunkenly
onto one of the sofas, giggling stupidly, having discovered that Wrinkle-B-Gon relaxed much more than just fabric. Slackened as she was, however, the narrow nicotine ditches of disgust that webbed her face remained, erosion ruts of rudeness disinclined to loosen up, obstinate and aloof like a jackass on a high horse.

Wanting to escape the rapidly expanding cloud of Wrinkle-B-Gon, I excused Meeko and myself to take him for a . . . walk. Once in the walk room, I took a seat at the table where Blip had been sitting while Meeko marked his new territory. Knowing that I was being watched, I pretended to examine the teapot, doing my best to imitate Miss Mary's admiration. Nevertheless, I'm certain I gave a visible start when I happened to see what was scratched into the table's surface below the teapot. Blip, presumably, had marked this territory as well, for the present proclamation from Graffiti Bridge was carved into the shellac, much smaller in scale but a great deal more emphatic.

NOW
!

 

104
Thus it became inevitable that I would risk calling Blip once again before returning the remote control to Miss Mary. Cunning as a duck in a kiddie pool, I hatched a scheme that turned out to be as flawless as a broken egg. After trotting Meeko back to the observation room, I excused myself to use the lavatory once again. Once I relieved myself of a triflingly small amount of urine, a wee amount of pee (tee-hee), I used the relative privacy to telephone Blip once again, running the water in the sink to camouflage the beeping of the phone. Clever, I thought.

Blip's voice-mail service answered again, and to my great surprise and relief, the recording had been changed. He now spoke with a great absence of effort, disregarding any impulse to hide his profound amusement, and I could hear Sophia's hysterical laughter snorting occasionally in the background.

“Ho there, O wanderer of the wasteland,” Blip spoke loud and brazen, as if he were a medieval wisenheimer guarding the portal to some magical forest. “Do you want your questions answered or your answers questioned? What's going on is the question. What's going on is the answer. An answerable question yields a questionable answer. Such is the state of things, good friend. Feel no distress for my condition; forgiveness is as assured as sunrise. Your only penance is this: Write down what has happened. Leave a record of the past. It is no more, and deserves a last hurrah. And don't break up the festivities, man. History is spent. Peace and absurdity, old friend. If I don't see you soon, I'll see you soon after that.”

Puzzled by his apparent glee, I didn't leave a message, but instead called back immediately to listen again, this time jotting down what he said on some toilet paper. Just as I finished, a sharp rap came at the door, followed by the sharper voice of General Kiljoy.

“Hey Fountain! Shit or get off the pot, you know?”

Startled but not panicked, I coughed loudly, simultaneously disconnecting the phone and shutting off the water in the sink. “Just a minute,” I answered delicately, echoing the standard alibi of toilet tête-à-tête.

“Did you fall in?” General Kiljoy tossed another bathroom banality at me.

“No,” I called out needlessly, pocketing the phone, pen, and
paper, and scanning around for any other evidence. Satisfied, I boldly opened the door to greet him.

“False alarm?” he asked, a demented grin on his face.

“Excuse me?”

“This bathroom affords little privacy, I'm afraid. The pipes run past the lounge, and they carry sound very well, so we can hear toilet sounds through them. Miss Mary refuses to even use the bathroom, and was going to have the plumbing rerouted next week, but who knows now, right?”

I nodded noncommittally, and he continued: “You've been to the bathroom twice since we got back down here.”

“Alcohol,” I reminded him, feeling my eyelid twitch in panicky guilt.

“Doubtful.” His hands strayed to his pockets. “And you don't have any prostrate problems. I've read your file.”

“I don't understand,” I replied, surprised that one of my glands had turned up in conversation.

“That was a powerfully pathetic excuse for a piss just now, wasn't it? We all heard it. Who do you think you're kidding?”

“I didn't realize I had an audience.”

“The Armed Forces Code of Conduct requires that you begin planning an escape the moment you are captured.” Deranged dimples collapsed into his cheeks like sinkholes over a landfill. “This situation is not interested in the sound of your urination.” He drew close to me, his breath smelling like a recent shot of whiskey. “This situation is only concerned about your safety. This situation can't take any chances with you.” He paused and leaned in closer. “You've got the look, Fountain. I've seen it before.”

“You think I'm trying to escape in the bathroom?”

“Suicide.” He stood upright and cracked his knuckles. “I told you I read faces. If you try it, I guarantee I'll save your life, just so I can cut off every one of your fingers and toes.”

“I'm not suicidal,” I assured him and my digits.

“Maybe not, but something's suspicious.” He eyed me and winked, then slapped me on the shoulder. “You jackin' off in there?”

“What?” I recoiled, then thought better of it and pushed past him.

He laughed loudly from the bathroom behind me. “I'd rather you jack yourself off than off yourself, Jack!”

 

105
In my absence, Tynee had located emergency food rations consisting of peanut butter that tasted like sawdust paste and cheese product that looked like frozen phlegm. The provisions were several years old, I was informed after I'd tasted some peanut butter. Hungry as I was, I declined a sample of the cheese.

“Doctor, do you have any cigarettes?” Miss Mary addressed me from the sofa, where she sat rummaging through her handbag.

“Sorry,” I replied. This agitated her greatly, and she dumped the contents of her bag on the cushions next to her.

“Tibor, are there cigarettes in the emergency supplies?” she asked as she picked through her possessions.

“Not likely,” he responded. Before Miss Mary could react, the crash of General Kiljoy flinging open the bathroom door echoed from the side hallway.

“Fountain!” he snarled as he stormed into the room. “The hand dryer!”

I faced him in silence, figuring it was best to keep my mouth shut until I knew what was happening. Tynee, Miss Mary, and the dogs looked back and forth from him to me in bewilderment.

General Kiljoy forced my hand. “Tell me about the hand dryer.”

“I didn't vandalize it,” I answered, feeling like I was bluffing.

“That's not the issue.” General Kiljoy poured himself another shot.

“What's happened to the hand dryer?” Tynee asked.

“Not the point,” he croaked after taking his shot. “You never used the hand dryer. I never heard it. I heard the faucet running, I heard it running a long time, but no hand dryer. Don't you think that's a little curious?” He put his hands in his pockets, satisfied with his detective work, and began twirling his tamale.

“I wiped my hands on my pants,” I attempted.

“Maybe.” He crossed the room in one stride and before I knew what was happening he was manhandling the front of my trousers, giving me monkey bites all over my thighs and causing Meeko to bark at him. “Doesn't feel like it, though.” He spoke over Meeko's show of ferocity, standing square in front of me. “Why were you running the faucet so long?”

I backed away and massaged my smarting quadriceps. I felt Miss Mary's remote control in my pocket, and could not believe General Kiljoy hadn't noticed it.

“What the hell is going on, General?” Tynee demanded.

“Our good doctor was whackin' off in the bathroom, isn't that right?”

“No,” I responded instinctively as I tried to calm Meeko.

“I didn't think so.” General Kiljoy paused, eyeing me malevolently as he wandered over to the sofa where the contents of Miss Mary's handbag were strewn about. “Where's your remote control?” he asked her offhandedly while flipping his flounder.

Miss Mary looked over her belongings. She let loose a belligerent cry like the cork off a bottle of cheap champagne, unsealing my secret and flinging it about the room like a tipsy bridesmaid at a rowdy wedding, splashing it all over the ears of everyone present. “My remote is gone!” A drunken best man hijacked my destiny for a beer run, and was now swerving across the double yellow line on a mountain highway. Anything bad became possible, anything bad and nothing good. Further forks in my fate could only be choices between rancid and rotten.

“Say, Fountain.” General Kiljoy turned to me, plucking his pecker all the while. “Is that a remote control in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

 

106
Thus it came to pass that I became known as a threat to national security. General Kiljoy pronounced me this as soon as he reached into my hip pocket and pulled out Miss Mary's remote control.

“Congratulations.” He pulled his handgun out of his shoulder holster and leveled it at my head. “You're now a threat to national security. That means I have the authority to kill you.”

Since this was a considerable threat to
my
security, I was quite upset with the matter. I was somewhat comforted by the fact that I was not the only one. Tynee hollered at General Kiljoy
in my defense, but only insofar as I existed as “an asset to the situation.”

General Kiljoy lowered his pistol, then clicked on the phone. “Let's see who our threat was calling, shall we?” He hit the redial button, dialing Blip's voice mail.

“Who is it?” Tynee and Miss Mary asked in unison.

General Kiljoy frowned, raising his gun to my head once again. He clicked off the phone. “Error message. ‘The number you have dialed cannot be reached.' Who were you calling?”

“I didn't call anyone,” I lied without hesitation.

Tynee interrupted. “I'm getting the same response on my phone.” He dialed another number and put the receiver to his ear. “Same thing.”