Roll with the Punches (38 page)

When Cathy took a turn jamming, Cleo sidled up to me on the bench, a sweaty mess in her black helmet with the gold Cleopatra asp coiled around it. She sipped a Coke.

"Not bad.”

I looked around. Was she speaking to me?

"But not good,” she went on. You're petrified, candyass."

"Huh?"

"You're scared to fall. I've seen it a million times." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "So you're hanging back. Look. Face it. You're gonna fall. It's part of the game. So just suck it up and do it some. Get over it. Then you can relax. Maybe.”

My mouth opened and shut. Wisdom from the cheap seats.

Getting up and stuffing her limp hair back inside her helmet, she said, "It’d help the rest of your life, too. Can't fall means you can't fall in love, can't have orgasms, can't go flat out for your dream. If you have one." And she took off, a gaping hole in her fishnets.

I mumbled, "I can too go flat out for my dream. I can too handle Dad and I can too get back my reputation. And orgasms? Excuse me?"

A crusty biker dude behind me tapped my shoulder. I looked around, into a gap-toothed smile reeking of tobacco. "Yer cute." He waggled craggy eyebrows at me.

I moved myself down two rows.

Irvine was up four points when our girls pulled a corral on the other team. Normally graceful Yvette fell hard, allowing Cleo to tie the score. Yvette got up, looking pained, and the crowd cheered. She hobbled to the stands, holding her wrist. Farouz, her coach, checked the wrist and handed her an ice pack. She sat down just behind me, breathless, and removed her helmet.

Slugging back water, she said, "Rhonda, listen. Jackson's—"

"Yvette, save your breath. Pinching? Goading? That was such a dirty ploy to get past me. The thing is, I know where Jackson lives. I was there today. In St—never mind. But I'll have proof of his identity tomorrow."

"What? That's not where … " She frowned as James appeared at her elbow.

"Yvette, my dear. Let me see that." He grabbed her arm.

"Sod it." She flinched and tried to pull her arm back. "It's fine, James. Let me go."

"It's not fine," he insisted. "It needs an X-ray right now. It may be broken." He yanked her to her feet by the offended arm, and she yelped. Several people turned.

Leading her out of the rink like a father wagging a toddler home, he said, "See? You need medical attention. I know these things.”

She half turned. "Rhonda, please." But he had her out the door in seconds.

By the time I'd processed her wide-eyed look of—was that fear?—at his touch and sprinted out to the parking lot, they were gone.

We won by a landslide. The Irvine girls waddled off home with ice packs on their butts. The Amazons, showing off fresh rink rashes on their knees and elbows, took me to a cowboy bar. A perfect place for me to recruit a crew to break into Jackson's house for evidence.

Cowboy Heaven was dark and sweaty, and guys swarmed us the minute we entered. With the air of a newly awakened grizzly bear, Harley parked herself in a big, horseshoe-shaped booth. She sat, nursing a fishnet burn on her thigh and a beer. I wanted to tell her about my exciting day, but the other girls dragged me off to the dance floor and clapped a cowboy hat on my head. Guys circled us and tried to join in, and the girls teased them by dancing suggestively with each other. Largot got out her lasso and did a round of tricks for the guys while dancing. One tall guy with long sideburns and a black cowboy hat eyed me. Once upon a time, I would have flirted with him, but now, his nose was too small.

I came back and sat by Harley, who looked away. "Harley, I know where Reynard Jackson lives. In Stanton, in a condo full of Maxfield Parrish posters."

She wrinkled her nose. "No way. He’s rich."

The girls were coming back to the booth, all sweaty and giddy. Cathy pointed over her shoulder. "Can you believe that guy?"

Largot, playing with her lariat, plopped down by me. "Guy said …" She mimicked a deep male voice. "'Darlin', you ever take a skate to the crotch?'"

"Well, I have," Kween Viktorious said, across the table. "I got a 'giner shiner' right in the middle of blood and thunder, on Largot's skate last week. Ow. I swear she sharpens 'em.”

Largot grinned and lassoed the chandelier hanging over the next booth.

I started, "Hey, guys, today I found Jackson's house." But all my words were drowned out by an explosion of laughter from the neighboring booth with the shaking chandelier above it.

Cathy yelled at Largot, "Sure the guy wasn't talking about Mr. Tube Steak? You've sat on plenty of them. I know."

"Now I only sit on bald-headed hermits," Largot said, retrieving her rope plus a cowboy hat from the next table, creating another roar of laughter.

Cathy's crossed eyes blazed. "Don't you mean one-eyed wonder worms? Muscled masses of manly meat? Purple-headed love darts?" She sang, "Love darts. Love darts. Love darts," to the tune of
Love Shack
.

This was rich. I took out my notebook and pencil, eager for more fun phraseology. "How about a dangling participle?"

Frowns.

“I guess you can’t really sit on that.” I was tanking bigtime.

"The hooded lizard." Harley said laconically, glugging beer. She had harpy hair and mascara running down one cheek.

Cathy sang, "I like Long Dong Silver! Away!" And she galloped off on an imaginary pony toward some cowboys.

Kween Viktorious's eyebrows wiggled, "I only know Jolly Roger."

"Jolly who?" Hippo, our own Jolly White Giantess, joined us in a baseball jersey, pulling up a chair at the end of the booth.

I hid my notebook behind Harley.

But Hippo grinned. "For jollies, we Renaissance wenches prefer Master Longstaff or Old Hornington, the Pillicock."

Cathy was back. She mimed a six-foot long shaft with her hands. "My sister calls it a heat-forged shaft of hammered steel. Orgasmaspasmatic.”

The girls howled. I scribbled gleefully in Harley's shadow.

Hippo ordered a beer. "I’d take Jack Hammer over Jolly Roger any day. Or a good old beef injection.”

E. Lizard Butt said, "I like a nice love rocket, myself." She licked a drip of beer all the way up her glass, slowly and suggestively.

Kween Viktorious whined, "My boyfriend's fifty-four. His damned rocket's always turning into a wiggly piece of pork!"

"Oh, who needs real ones anyway?” Harley intoned balefully. “Electric ones never betray you.”

Hippo wandered off, and I relaxed. "Hey, if you like love rockets, you should try a bona fide Native American totem po—"

Harley turned on me with a glare that would have cracked granite. "Do you want to live? If so, shut up now."

Mean looks all around. E. Lizard Butt frowned.

Largot jabbed me. "What did you do, Rhonda?"

Panic rose in my gut. Oh, God. I couldn't outrun these girls. "Hey! It's not my fault!"

Lucky for me, the barroom erupted right then in a cheer for the Chargers on TV and our order of margaritas showed up. The girls forgot me and raised their glasses. "Kick it, trip it, slam it, block it! Blood and thunder!" Then they all drank and yipped like coyotes.

Cathy went off to dance, dragging Kween Viktorious and E. Lizard Butt. That left just Harley and me again. I was just bursting to discuss Reynard Jackson's abode, Hippo's manuscript and Yvette’s weirdness with someone, pretty much anyone but Harley, but they all kept running off.

Finally, I said, "Sorry, Harley." No response. Okay. Leave the painful subject alone. Go for some us-against-them mojo. "Hey, didn't Yvette seem strange to you tonight?"

Now on her fourth beer, Harley just belched. A good sign, really.

"I mean like abused or something," I pressed. "James …"

"Who gives a shit? I'm freaking pissed at you." Harley nodded at the bar, where a short, stocky guy and a taller one, the guy with the sideburns and black hat, were watching her. "Rhonda, those guys were at the rink earlier. What do they want?"

Relieved that she was speaking to me, I tuned into my Spidey sense, but all I saw was both guys kissing every girl in the place. In fact, every person I saw wanted the same thing.

I whispered, "My super power's not working. Everybody's all amorous. Never mind. Listen. Yvette says she knows who Jackson is, and she may just be lying or nuts, but the minute we got alone at the bout, James came and yanked her away, hard, by her injured wrist, like he didn't want her talking to me. Something’s wrong there." I breathed. "And I really need you to come with me to Reynard Jackson's house in Stanton tonight."

Over the noise, Harley said, "Enough already. You're over-dramatizing everything, like back when we were twelve. Jeez. You got Dal. Your dad’s fine. Aren’t you happy? So cut the fricking superpower crap, and the obsession with Yvette and James. Do you really think Jackson would live in Stanton?"

Hippo boomed, "Stanton? Who said Stanton?"

The other girls had rejoined us and plopped into the booth, all sweaty from dancing. I looked down at my notes, and Harley pointed disgustedly at me.

Hippo glared at me. "What about Stanton? It's a small place, and I know pretty much everything going on there.”

Black Hat and Short Guy strode up. Short Guy said under a cool gaze, "Good evening girls. I'm Karl Amstel and this is Henry Dantzig. Is one of you Harley Jameson, aka Wonder Woman?"

Harley raised her hand. "I'm usually more wonderful but someone stole my guy." She whacked me in the chest.

Karl threw business cards on the table as Hippo pulled Largot out of the booth, sat down and leaned on me, breathing hotly in my face. "What about Stanton?"

I pushed Harley sideways around the booth and sidled away from Hippo, who followed with my arm in a vise grip.

Karl said, "We're lawyers for Wonder Bread and Wonder Bras. He's Bras. I'm Bread.”

Black Hat/Bras/Henry looked pained.

Hippo's voice raised. Her fist came up toward my nose. "I live in Stanton. Somebody broke into my house today. Upset the cats and the ferns. I'm gonna find that person, and when I do … "

Oh, crap! I felt a flush going up my neck. After all that work, that was Hippo's house? Not Jackson's? I did my best innocent-as-a-Disney-cartoon shrug while shoving Harley further down the booth, smack into the Amazons on the other side of the U-shaped table.

While the other girls shoved back, Karl continued to Harley, "Ma'am, we've heard you intend to skate under the name Wonder Woman. However, our companies own that name. We take our products seriously and feel that a roller derby queen using our company name could engender the wrong idea about our companies' endorsements of physical violence and lewdness in women's sports."

"Three cheers for lewdness! Yay, Blunder Woman!" The girls on the other side of booth were trying to keep their seats, but failing as Hippo relentlessly shoved me sideways into Harley and our little train of three stooges chugged on sideways around the end of the booth. Finally, Cathy fell out the other end. Unflapped, she got up and sat where we’d just been.

"Was it you that broke into my house?" Hippo bellowed at me.

Harley held up a beer. "Everyone! A moment of silence. Badass Rhonda here has lost her superpowers. She can no longer read people's desires.”

Hippo shoved me so hard that I fell on Harley and E. Lizard Butt fell off the booth bench.

Harley eyed me evilly. "Like how every guy I meet wants the wrong things for me and the right things for her." Boos all around. "Does this make four or five guys you've stolen from me now?"

More boos. Angry boos. Hippo looked ready to punch me.

"But without the superpower excuse, her stories are all just a bunch of sh—" Harley burped. "As, I suspect, is her assertion that Reynard Jackson stole her book and hid it under a Maxfield Parrish poster—in Stanton!"

Stunned silence while Hippo sucked in air and Kween Viktorious, seeing she would be next to get knocked out of the booth, hopped up. Leaving just a sullen Harley between me and freedom. Counting down the last seconds of my life in a stinky cowboy honky-tonk bar, I pushed Harley sideways, almost out of the booth, and used my notebook to swat at the huge Hippo paw clamped on my other arm.

"ARE YOU TAKING NOTES?" Hippo released my arm and took the notebook.

Free at last, I scrambled out of the booth right over Harley. Hippo, angry as a bull, tried to follow, but was too large. So she threw punches at me around Harley’s rising form. I ducked and ran, while Bras and Bread, coming to Harley’s rescue, caught the punches meant for me. Both went down, providing a blessed roadblock for Hippo as I love-rocketed out of the bar.

Later, Harley texted me: "Rhonda,
I
took your stupid Spidey sense. You can have it back in return for Dal.”

I kicked myself the whole way home for believing Hippo's house belonged to Reynard Jackson.

Maria Elena called me on my cell. "Missus?"

"Yep."

"You no given the paper to Missus Gina, right?"

"I'll never tell her where I got it. Promise. But why didn't you tell me that was her house?"

"In July, she send the paper to a lady. The lady send it back with red writing. Missus Gina, she too hungry when she read the paper with red writing.”

Hungry?
"You mean she was
angry
because someone edited it?"

"Si. She hit the wall, make a hole, breaken her hand. So I find it. I hide it so she calm."

"Did you see her write it?"

"Si."

Okay. Not stolen. Just bad writing, hidden to protect the innocent. And my Shiny Zone Conspiracy Theory was scoured away along with my reputation among the Anaheim Amazons.

*
      
*
      
*

I found Dal on Acorn Street, washing dishes and singing a hymn with Music Man. Neither one had a great voice, nor did they know all the words, but they didn't seem to mind. Eventually, my father unplugged every appliance in the house and toddled off to bed. Dal and I plugged everything back in and sat on the front porch for some fresh air. Dal put his arm around me in the porch swing. I slumped against him.