Roll with the Punches (31 page)

"Move it, scumbag hags. You're late," she said, and herded us to the edge of the rink, where the strong odor of beer, sweat and pot smoke didn't help my stomach much.

"They got our music," Harley smirked.

On stage, a group of sparkly witches in variously hued micro-mini-skirts, capes, and hats struggled stiffly with sinuous Egyptian pop rhythms that didn't match their choreography. And smack in the middle of them, and most horrified, was the green witch, Yvette Winkler. But the crowd clapped wildly for two Iranian-looking girls in blue who had scrapped the old plan and were now showing off fairly decent belly dancing skills.

"No way am I going out to do a bad belly dance right after those two little experts," I said, turning to go. "See ya."

Cleo's voice came from nowhere. Her mascara-ed eyes gleamed. "Put on that skate and veil. You're nearly up."

Oh, happy day.

Tying my skate, I saw James, dressed as a Musketeer, waving and blowing kisses at me from the stands. I waved, but Cleo shoved me hard onto the rink stage, where I nearly fell into a fuming Yvette, as she threw her sparkly jacket to the crowd on her way out.

Harley led me to the spotlight in the middle of the rink. It was eerily quiet out there. I felt naked as mole rat with the rowdy audience looming up around us, all in dark, salacious, malevolent masks. Well, the feel was malevolent. It was. Adult male Bugs Bunnys and Power Rangers and Yodas seated right on the rink in the suicide seats cat-called, "Hey, Fatimeh!" and lobbed tiny Mars and Snickers bars at us.

Then our music came on and I froze. Shrieks of drunken laughter added to Harley's and my horror at the suckiest possible song choice for two giant harem girls.

" … a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater …"

I gulped.

But steaming with purpose, Harley pulled me in a couple of circles around the rink. As I followed, something hit my thigh. Something thrown. What? I looked back. A big, fat, ripe tomato sat there on the rink surface. Never daunted, Harley gamely tried a few undulating hip motions with waving hands, like the Irvine twins, but she was more hula girl than harem girl, and more tomatoes were coming our way.

Hey, why were we the only ones getting veggie-bombed? I looked toward the source and saw Hippo distributing Beefsteaks among the crowd from her shopping bags.

"Rhonda. Dance!" Harley hissed, as I tripped on a big, fat, squishy, brown one.

Okay. This was war. Hippo wasn't going to best me, even if I was sick.

I tried a hip wiggle, then another, much bigger, and got some friendly laughs. I did some snaky stuff with my hands, and was getting into the boozy spirit of the room when Harley spun around, took my hand, faced the sea of masks, and started kicking like a Rockette in time with the music, dragging me down the middle of the rink with her, singing under her breath, "
It was a one-kick, one-kick, flying-kickle, people-kick.”

The audience clapped in time with us as she kicked and I stumbled along through splattered tomatoes, feeling woozier and woozier all the time. Cleo lobbed a handful of Romas at my back. I kicked higher. And then I fell straight on my butt in a lake of tomato slime.

Big laugh from the crowd.

Unfortunately, I had kept hold of Harley's hand and dragged her down with me, right onto a big, red, juicy beefsteak. On her way back up, I started up, too, and grabbed her arm to steady my wobbly cold-medicine-laden legs. Then
thunk
! We landed in another juicy red heap. A little garlic, and we'd be pizza.

The crowd went wild. "Cat fight! Get her! Kick her! Pull her down!"

Good old Harley struggled up and skated off without a backward look. The last straw. I had no Dal, no book, and now I was out here in this damned tight jingly getup, sprawled in the spotlight covered in marinara. I yanked the sodden veil off my face and tossed it away.

But in a second, Harley was back, pulling me up for another Rockette parade, and this time, to my relief, I executed three pretty good kicks before falling again. Well, not exactly falling. Trying to skirt the slime, we'd gotten pretty close to the audience by that time, and I lost my balance and my grip on Harley, so I sort of slid right into the lap of a husky Darth Maul with an evil red-and-black-horned mask.

A gravelly voice said, "Hot damn! I got me a prize!" and before you could say "lawsuit," hairy hands undid the clasp of my velvet bra and whipped it off me to wave it jangling high above us.

And there I was, bare-boobed to the hooting world. Big hands pulled me roughly onto the laps of a Grim Reaper and an evil alien with acid green eyes and sour breath. More hands grabbed for my skirt, and some fondled my most prime flesh.

"Hey, she's slimy," said the Reaper.

"You got money inside that belt?" growled the alien.

The spotlight had followed Harley, but was back on me now. Everyone was hooting and jeering like crazy. Hey, I'd have laughed too, at the big, awkward, tomatoey, Pillsbury-dough-white belly dancer flailing like a six-year-old in the hands of silly monsters. But these were my breasts, my girls, all white and shy, meeting a few too many lecherous eyes. And wiggling fingers. Stunned by all the medicine and the nudity, especially my own, I just clutched at my skirt like—well, a girl.

Until I saw Hippo and Cleo doubled over with laughter.

"Off, you creeps!" I shoved away those sinister hands tugging at my flesh and my skirt and my pride. Then I got an arm loose and hauled off and elbowed the Reaper's face hard and kicked Darth Maul with my skate.

Harley had skated off to finish the song, but now she saw my predicament and bore down on the guys, 175 pounds of blazing man-hater, fast and furious. She barreled right into them, knocking the whole row of stooges off their chairs like so many bowling pins and swinging wildly at every man she could reach.

Struggling off their laps, I aimed some decent kicks at my assailants, but the outraged cartoons swung back, and pretty soon, everybody joined in for a good old trucker fight at the rink. All around me, tattooed knuckles met painted cheeks with sickening crunches. Elbows bloodied cartoon noses. Masks and tassels flew off. Boot tips struck scrawny butts and pants ripped. Grim Reaper staffs crashed down on Viking-horned heads.

As the sounds of the big brawl escalated and blue-inked body parts flew by higgledy-piggledy, a skull-ringed fist grazed my cheek and I ended up on the floor. Hoping for escape, I started tunneling on my elbows through a hole I'd spotted under the melee. I scooted right by some kick-ass biker boots, narrowly missing a falling bald head that made a ripe melon
thud
on the floor.

Then, just as I scrambled up free of the wild, flailing crush, my eye on the door, I got grabbed from behind, my head and body enveloped in black satin. Dazed and petrified, I got whisked off my feet and trundled past angry taunts and punching fists out into the cool October night air.

Rising panic made my stomach rebel. "Let me go!" The Darth Maul attack had been embarrassing, but a girl, especially a nearly-naked girl, could get raped in a dark parking lot. My captor grunted and plunked me down on my skates.

Dumb move. I yanked the cape off my head and opened my mouth to scream again, but a hand clamped down on it. Though we weren't that far from the building, fear shot through my stomach, which roiled even more. I bit down really hard and stomped the guy's foot with my skate and elbowed his groin and face in a one-two move, whirling to bring the guy to his ass with a last well-placed kick.

"Ah! Shit! Jesus Christ, Rhonda!" It was Dal.

Yep, there he was under a V-shaped black wig, a scowling vampire clutching his stomach, with real blood on his nose and mouth.

I bent over him. "Oh, my God. Why didn't you say something? Need ice?"

His eyes were glazed over and he couldn't straighten up. "No. Call 9-1-1."

I reflexively went for the phone in my purse. Oops. No purse. Just my naked chest. His cape was on the asphalt. I scrambled for it and stood, wrapping it around me, just in time to see James's musketeer hat disappear back into the building.

"James! Help!" Great. He'd come to check on me, seen me half naked with Dal and left.

Then Music Man shuffled out of the rink with a grin. Jesus. Dad was here? I was barely dressed. My stomach clenched one more time, but this time, the stress and the medicine won out, and I threw up on Dal’s black vampire pants and shiny black shoes.

Leaving Dal to Harley, I drove Music Man back to my parents' house in Dal's van through a hard rain, unusual for November. The street gutters were rivers, the drains clogged with leaves. In my cold-medicine haze, I only weaved over the shimmering center line twice.

Music Man said, "Wow, those roller girls dance real good. And you were so funny, Rhonda. Let's come back again next year.”

"Yeah," I said. "When Hippo flies."

*
      
*
      
*

Later, awake in the wee hours on the sofa in Dal's old shirt, I tossed and coughed and replayed the whole melodrama over and over until it seemed like a movie instead of real life. Man, my Amazon research had been a complete bust. And worse, the men in my life had both disappeared. Would Dal ever forgive me? Where had James gone?

The rain never let up. I woke on the plaid couch Friday morning with a head full of mucus and a throat seared with a blowtorch. Dal still wasn't there. I left James a message to postpone our date to Monday. I hung up, then did a facepalm and called back to ask for my computer, which I missed terribly, with its cozy habit of sitting on my lap, ready to amuse and assist me at all times.

A vase of mums came at noon, dewy with rain. How thoughtful of James. Who still had my computer and had not come to my rescue at the rink. Later, Music Man and I watched Misty Stream, Channel 7 weather girl, blame our sodden Orange County streets on an early El Niño, the storm-laden baby from Mexico, who usually came in December.

Around two o'clock, I called the rink to see if the Reynard Jackson business card, lost with my innocence in the melee the night before, had turned up. No answer. So I drove over to see for myself, but the rink was close for repairs. On my return, there were two phone messages.

Mom reported that she'd walked farther today and had a pile of Tupperware orders from the staff's relatives.

Monica's message said: "I take it from your silence that all's well and you've gotten Dad medicated by now.
Call me.
And burn this message. Mom will kill me for recommending drugs."

I went back to bed.

*
      
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*

Jobless, bookless, computerless, man-free and sick, I parked my butt on the Acorn Street sofa that weekend. My head propped on pillows, was by turns stuffed up and streaming, like the relentless rain outside. Harley never called me, nor did Dal. I didn't dare call either one in case the other one answered in a chummy way and there was giggling on the line. Then I'd need to kill them both.

Okay, who did I really care about? James or Dal? Tattoos or dibs? The tats were no biggie. In the closet, they hadn't mattered. But that closet scene still stung. It had been more embarrassing and painful than all of junior high, and I’d felt pummeled and groped and used. Tacky. Icky. Gross. Almost as bad as my nightmare in the rink last night. Okay, James had better do better than flowers very soon or I was done with him.

And I actually missed Dal. I really did. Well, I'd find someone else eventually. Maybe. And good for Harley. Really. I meant it. She'd finally found herself a man. One whose nose was the best on the planet for some things. I distracted myself from this morose thought by starting a new book, hand written on a yellow legal pad. But all I could write were brutal rape and murder scenes between thugs and their molls with knives and guns flashing. I ended up sublimating all creativity with a quart of chunky monkey ice cream and a Bette Davis movie full of revenge plots on her unfaithful lover.

Music Man was lucky at hearts Saturday afternoon. Except for his falling twice, he was fine. I really didn't understand why the caregivers had all had so much trouble with him. The worst thing he did was follow me into the bathroom spouting politically incorrect jokes about farmers' daughters. I shooed him out, and he yelled them through the door. So what? Well, some personal items, including my watch and hairbrush, did vanish. And big deal if there was emergency laundry for all six pairs of his pants in one day.

Saturday, I went online and answered nasty blogs and email aimed at my allegedly plagiarist self on MySpace and Blogspot and Facebook and anywhere else I saw it cropping up. But this just tripled the volume of vitriol and spread it wider, like a big, inflamed zit in the webisphere. So I logged off and watched my brothers' old Monty Python collection on video. And I still dreaded a call from Harley saying that she had eloped with Dal to Las Vegas and was now expecting a very large-nosed infant.

*
      
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*

On Sunday morning, Music Man dripped pancake syrup on his frayed blue work shirt, one with holey elbows and missing buttons.

"Dad, your shirt's worn out. Shall we get you a new one?"

"Nah. Two good shirts is plenty. And all those stores make me tired. That store. What's it called? Aww. Come on." His voice rose.

"Target? Mervyn's?"

"Naw. You know."

I tried ten more store names, and he started yelling and stomped off down the hall. Boy, did I miss Dal.

Five minutes later, Music Man was back. "You know, Rhonda, sometimes, my memory plays tricks on me. I used to be able to remember all the U.S. presidents' birthdays and every battle of every war."

"And calculus." I sipped my tea. "Don't worry. Everybody forgets stuff. Listen, let's go to Penney's for some new shirts.”

"No, thanks." His big hand settled on my arm. "But you know what you can do for me?"

I looked up from picking the bacon out of my eggs.

He squeezed my arm. "It's a big thing, I know. Would you promise me if I lose my memory you won't ever put me in one of those places like your mother and I looked at? They're awful. I didn't tell her, but I really belong here, in my own house. Not there. Promise?"