Part 11 (1/2)
”Lousy ratfinkmotorcyclist,” the woman said.
My hands slapped her arms, beating out a coded plea for mercy. The thought of slugging her in the face crossed my mind, but I didn't have the strength. If I had, and I had actually tried it, she probably would have killed me.
”You want to say something, lizard p.i.s.s?” she asked, loosening her grip on my throat enough for me to breathe.
”Please get off,” I wheezed.
”Why? You got me mixed up with a guy with a gun, didn't you? You ride a motorcycle, don't you?”
”Well, yes,” I said, answering the second question.
”All right, then,” the woman said. ”Ihate motorcycles. I hate men whoride motorcycles. My ex-boyfriend rode a motorcycle. At least, the ancient Mongolian ent.i.ty he channeled for did.”
”I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. I was sorry to hear anything that made her want to kill me. ”Whenever I come across a motorcycle under five hundred cc,” she said, ”I throw it against a wall.
Whenever I come across a motorcycle bigger than that, I kick it over. I should have kicked yours over last night when it was in my way, but now I've made up for it. I've kicked it over in the mud.”
That fired up my adrenals. I sat up, and the muscular woman tumbled onto the floor between the bed and the wall, landing beside her backpack. ”You kicked over Peggy Sue?” I yelled. ”What'd she ever do to you? If you've got a problem, it's with me! Leave my bike out of it!”
The woman rubbed the back of her head. ”Take it easy, groutbreath,” she said, sounding less angry. ”It landed soft.”
I struggled out of my coc.o.o.n of blankets and rolled away to stand on the opposite side of the bed.
”You're going to clean it up!” I shouted. ”That motorcycle's like a dog to me!”
She stared. ”You guys are all bughouse nuts,” she said. ”It's a machine, for G.o.d's sake. It's not like I kicked over your mother or something.”
”A lot you know!”
She stood. ”You act like I'm the one who's the criminal here.You're the one who wouldn't move your motorcycle from the pump.You're the one the guy with the gun is after.You're the one who fixed things so I'd have to steal his car.”
The unfairness of these accusations p.i.s.sed me off. I was having a tough enough time without being held responsible for this woman's problems. ”I didn't make you do anything,” I said. ”If you weren't such a hothead, you wouldn't have tried to move his car and he wouldn't have pulled his gun.”
Her face took on a thoughtful expression. ”Maybe,” she said. ”Who is the Bald Avenger, anyway? A cop?”
”I don't know,” I said, rubbing my throat to let her know that it hurt. ”He could be, I guess. But cops are supposed to identify themselves, and he didn't.”
”I noticed. That's why I have to give you to him.”
I tensed. ”How do you figure?”
”Simple. If he's not a cop, he's something worse. And if he's something worse, he's the kind of guy who won't go crying to the real cops that his car's been stolen. He'll just find me and shoot me. But if I return you and his Jag, maybe he'll leave me alone.”
”And maybe he won't,” I said, estimating my chances of getting to my contact lenses, the Moonsuit, my shoes, and my helmet and then das.h.i.+ng out before the woman caught me and beat me senseless. I estimated that I had no chance at all. ”Maybe he'll just shoot you because he feels like it.”
The woman took a few steps and leaned against the door. ”Yeah. It's a problem.” She smiled humorlessly. ”Thought you'd lose me with that cross-country trick, didn't you? But here I am, and you've got to tell me what the deal is with you and the Avenger. You've also got to convince me that you're not lying. Once I know what's up, I can decide what to do.”
I realized then that she didn't have any idea of who I was. ”Have you watched any TV recently?” I asked. ”Since, say, Thursday night?”
She scowled. ”I've been on the road since Thursday morning. I was trying to get my worthless GMC to take me from Minneapolis to Houston. Just my luck that the tags are expired. If they weren't, I could've stuck to I-35 and I wouldn't have been anywhere near you.”
”Truck have a radio?”
”Broken. You're not trying to be evasive, are you, crudball?” She looked as if she might be thinking of clamping her hands around my throat again.
In most Life Situations, the truth is irrelevant. Once in a great while, however, it's the only things you've got. I sat on the floor and told the woman my name and everything that had happened to me, and because of me, since 1:00 A.M. Friday morning. I also threw in some stuff about Mother, UFOs, Ready Teddy, and my job at Cowboy Carl's Computer and Component Corral to provide color and verisimilitude.
The woman stood against the door with her arms crossed. Her face was as impa.s.sive as an anvil.
I stopped the story at the point where I met her in the convenience store. She was looking at the floor now, and her tongue began moving around inside her cheeks. I guessed that she was trapped in a limbo between belief and disbelief, so I got onto the waterbed and crawled down its length,thud-slosh thud-slosh, so that I could turn on the television set.
Buddy fuzzed into existence. He wasn't singing, but was strolling around and strumming his guitar idly.
Occasionally, he stopped short as if he had b.u.mped into a transparent wall, then changed direction and continued walking. He was exploring the parameters of his bubble, which was proving to be about the size of the inflated Moonwalks you can still see at small-town carnivals. The camera was at the center of the circle, and it tracked Buddy all the way around. Jupiter came in and out of view like an enormous striped UFO.
The woman had stepped away from the door to come closer to the TV. I flipped around the channels to show her that the same scene was on all of them.
”This is just a tape the motel is playing,” the woman said. ”It's a sci-fi s.m.u.t flick, and any second now a naked s.p.a.ce bimbo is going to show up.”
As she spoke, Buddy approached the camera and read my name and address again. Then he started singing ”Dearest.”
I crawled off the bed, fetched my wallet from the Moonsuit, and showed the woman my driver's license.
She looked at it for a few seconds. ”Glad to meet you, Ollie,” she said in a faraway voice. ”I'm Gretchen Laird.”
”Glad to meet you too, Gretch.”
Her back stiffened, and she glared at me. ”I hate being called 'Gretch,' ” she said.
”I hate being called 'Ollie,' ” I said. She looked back at the TV and turned down the sound. ”The way I figure it,” she said after a minute or so, ”the Bald Avenger must be a foreign agent-say Russia or Poland. If he were American, he'd be driving a Ford or GM product, right? Besides, I took a look in the Jag's trunk and there are about thirty different license plates.” She paused. ”Guess I might as well keep it. n.o.body's going to care that I swiped a car from a Communist.”
”What would Russia or Poland want with me?” I asked.
”Well, you're obviously a valuable guy if this stuff is coming from another planet,” Gretchen said, gesturing at the TV. ”If I were a president or a dictator or whatever, I'd sure want to be the first to get hold of you and dissect you. It'd be a real feather in my cap.”
For the first time, it occurred to me that I might have more than domestic Authorities to worry about. I grabbed the Moonsuit and began pulling it on.
Gretchen frowned. ”What are you doing?”
”If you found me, he can too,” I said as I struggled with the Moonsuit's flapping arms. ”He probably took your truck when you took his car.”
She grinned. ”If he did, he didn't get more than twenty miles. The radiator leaks like a rhinoceros p.i.s.ses.
I've had to stop and refill it every forty miles ever since Kansas City. I was gonna take care of it right after getting gas, but the Jag showed up. Right about now, the Bald Avenger is stranded with no idea of where we are.”
I stopped struggling with the Moonsuit. ”So what was all that c.r.a.p about turning me over to him?”
”That's still an option,” she said. ”And that's why I'm not letting you out of my sight for a while. See, I'm a capitalist, and capitalists are realists. I'll do whatever's necessary for my own best interests.”