Had I not been driving around in Jetsons vehicles the last few days over in the Meanwhile, I might actually be impressed. Instead all I can think of is how much gas its guzzling as we’re cruising down the 564 towards downtown D.C.
Our good friend “SUV” is behind the wheel.
Big Teeth is riding shotgun.
I’m in the back with a couple of rando thugs and Chevko, who up close smells like cigarettes and department store cologne from twenty years ago.
He’s talking on his cell phone with what I gather through context clues is one of the motorcyclists he sent into the city before us.
I learn at the same time he does that there are no less than eighteen dry cleaning operations in the D.C. metropolitan area. I get a little self-satisfied grin at that statistic, because I know it means we could be driving around all night trying to find the right one, and that means more time for me to figure out a plan.
Chevko is displeased, and I imagine he’s not used to having things be very difficult for him.
The driver, who I learn is named Mario, but I choose to continue calling SUV, tells us he’s heading to a location in Alexandia, on the south side. Chevko nods approval, and then looks sharply at me.
“You’d better be telling the truth, Burke. If we don’t find those shoes before the night is out, young Mr. Hanson will not be the only one facing his demise. Don’t forget we know where you live now.”
I just spread my hands out. “You’re guess is as good as mine, Chevy.”
His eye twitches when I drop the nickname on him. On the outside I’m laughing, but inside I’m trying to formulate a plan for when we stop in Alexandria. The store will be closed, which means they’re probably planning to just break through the back door and get out before the police show up.
If I can delay their escape, somehow...
But how?
Assuming I’m left in the car, it won’t be possible. I’d have to get out of the car.
The I-know-how-to-use-it trick seemed to work on them back in the thrift store, but there’s no guarantee that they’d fall for it again. If they were smart, it wouldn’t.
I look around. We’re nearing Alexandria. Time is getting short.
I look at the goon squeezed in next to me, down at his lap. There’s a gun there. He’s got a hand on it, but it’s only resting there, and he’s not even really paying attention.
I can feel it, that feeling of a plan starting to come together. Of pieces coming into place, possibilities become probabilities, generalities becoming specifics.
As we pull off the freeway, I start to breath quicker, but I work hard to make it imperceptible to my co-passengers.
Steady, Donovan.
Stay calm.
Survive.
“It’s up here,” SUV says, turning onto a four lane surface street.
I can see a little strip mall up ahead.
Here it comes.
We pull into the parking lot, and everyone is looking at the store fronts for the one that says “dry cleaning.” But not me. I’m looking straight ahead at the parking lot.
At the speed bump that nobody else is noticing.
The SUV hits it, bounces, and in that fraction of a second, that weightless moment in between the up and the down, that’s when I move.
I reach over my lap with my right hand and grab the gun while his hand is floating a millimeter above it. As soon as I do, he tries to grab it back, obviously, put I pull my hand back across my lap and block him with my left arm.
The whole move is done and over in the time it takes us to cross the speed bump, but it only takes that long to gain the upper-hand again.
I stick the gun straight up into the gullet of fat, chain-smoking Chevko, who freezes stiff as a board.
The SUV stops. I push the barrel harder up into his jaw.
I know there are at least three other guns trained on me right now, but the car is perfectly quiet. Even the engine is off.
Chevko looks down his cheek at me.
“And what is your plan now, little man?”
“The plan is, you let Hanson go. You let me go. And you never come around my house again.”
“And the Meanwhile? What of that? You think you can convince us not to invade?”
“Invade, huh?”
He chuckles. “You have no idea the size of the board you are playing on.”
I can feel sweat running down the back of my neck now.
“Are you familiar with Sparta?”
I grit my teeth. “I saw the movie.”
“It is one of the only nations in all of recorded history to be ruled by diarchy. Two thrones, with two kings, ruling side-by-side for nearly a millennia. Brothers in arms, keeping the balance, maintaining the peace. Nobody has repeated the great Spartan experiment in more than two-thousand years.”
“That oughta tell you something, I think.”
His face breaks into a grin. “They say all the kings were descended from two celestial twins, born from the heavens. Two perfect twins who ruled in harmony.”
“And you see you and the other Chevko as modern manifestations of them.”
He just shrugs. “If the shoe fits.”
Woop woop.
Police sirens, somewhere close. The driver looks around nervously.
“Go!” Chevko says.
I lift the gun further, pointing his chin towards the ceiling.
“Don’t go or I shoot you.”
“You won’t shoot me,” he says through his teeth. “Go!”
“Don’t go or I shoot you!”
“My boy if you shot me from this angle you’d do little more than force me to wear dentures for the rest of my life. Mario, ih-tee! Now!”
SUV starts the engine and throws the car in gear, and as he’s beginning to pull away the roof of the SUV collapses above us with a thunderous crunch. Something landed on us.
He stops, and Big Teeth gets out of the passenger seat to see what’s above us.
Rattatat!
A burst of gunfire from the roof drops him to the ground in a pool of blood.
“Drive!” Chevko yells, pulling his face away from my gun. I’m too distracted by the action, myself, to continue my threat.
SUV hits throws us in reverse and speeds backwards, and I see a motorcycle roll down the hood and onto the ground. The black leather-clad rider turns and aims his gun at us.
Fake Matt!
He fires off a few shots into the engine, stalling the car. The driver ducks down behind the dash. The goon next to me grabs the gun back from me and jumps out to take a few shots, but Fake Matt strides toward him confidently with his gun straight ahead and takes him out with two pops.
Now he’s at the open door next to me, and he reaches in for me, keeping his gun trained on Chevko.
“He’s with me, now.” His voice is muffled through the helmet.
I run with him back to his bike and we take off into the night. Chevko, too late, climbs out of the SUV and fires a few wild shots after us.
Back on the freeway, Fake Matt yells so I can hear him. “Take my helmet!”
I reach up and pull it off his head, and place it on my own. “You’re so thoughtful! I thought I heard the police back there.”
He hits that button on the bike, and I hear the same siren noise I heard earlier. I just shake my head.
“We need to get the shoes!”
“Where are they?”
I tell him the location. See, my mom always, always uses the same dry cleaners, because it’s convenient when she’s on her way to work.
It’s not near our house in Crystal City; It’s by her office in Woodbridge, almost 30 minutes south.
We take the 95 all the way down, doing 95 the whole way, silently slipping between the traffic.
After a while of being on the highway, you get accustomed to the noise level and it becomes easier to talk and listen, for some reason.
“How did you know I needed your help? Are you just watching me constantly?”
He takes a moment to answer. At first I think he didn’t hear me.
“A friend told me,” he says cryptically.
“Uh, ok...”
We slow down and exit into Woodbridge, and I help direct Fake Matt to the strip mall that has the dry cleaners in it.
When we get there, it’s on fire, and there’s a red motorcycle parked in back.
“No way.”
Fake Matt’s about to jump off the bike, but then we see a man come running out the back door. It’s one of Chevko’s men, and he’s got something tucked under his arm.
He spots us just before he climbs on the bike, and he smirks as he holds up the shoes.
“Shit!”
The Russian drops the shoes into the compartment on the back of his bike, and takes off out of the parking lot.
Fake Matt kicks his bike into gear. “Hang on.”
We’re matching the Russian’s speed in under three seconds, and I’m holding on for dear life. Chevko’s man weaves through traffic, but Fake Matt is on his tail the whole time like we’re tied together.
The fleeing rider shoots up an embankment at an intersection and launches up onto an overpass that’s inaccessible any other way, so Fake Matt once again tells me to hold on and he takes the same ramp.
We make it up safely, but we’ve lost time and put more distance between us and the Russian.
Heading up the 123, a split-lane elevated highway, the Russian takes another daring leap and lands on the opposite side, driving against traffic. We stay with him on our side, matching his movements. He’s dodging oncoming cars while we’re sweeping through the flow of traffic, and we end up parallel to him.
But the lanes diverge, and suddenly he’s heading off westward and we’re stuck going north, with no way of getting across to him as the divide grows wider and wider.
Fake Matt stops.
“He’s gone.”
We can only sit and watch Chevko’s man—and the Meanwhile shoes—disappear into the distant traffic.
I’m in shock for the next hour.
Fake Matt is charging up the bike at one of the few filling stations in the area with electric fueling pumps and watching the meter carefully, while I pace back and forth on the asphalt.
“We’re screwed. We’re utterly and completely screwed.”
“We’re not screwed,” he says.
“How can you be so casual about this? We just lost the only way we have to get back to the Meanwhile, Fake Matt!”
He takes his eyes off the meter to look at me. “Is that what you call me? So rude.”
Chevko, and Chevko, are planning some kind of coup or something, recreating the rule of Sparta, and the last thing they needed was those shoes. And now they have them. And now, we’re screwed! Everyone in the Meanwhile is going to die. Hanson’s going to die—“
“Hanson,” Fake Matt says while he’s hooking the power plug back onto its rack. “Why did you say Hanson first?”
“What?”
He puts on his riding gloves in the most smug way I’ve ever seen someone put on a pair of riding gloves. “I mean, what about Bellamy, or Cephas, or, I don’t know, even Dweeble? Why’d you say Hanson first?”
I’m rubbing my temples. “I don’t know, I—No reason. It’s just the first name that came to my head. And who the heck is Cephas? I don’t even know that name.”
“Huh.” His eyes go to the side like he’s updating a mental rolodex.
“So you know all these people, too? What happened to you guys? They don’t seem to like you anymore or something.”
He climbs on the bike, and holds the helmet out for me to take. I do, but reluctantly.
“Yeah, they probably wouldn’t. Climb on.”
I do, but reluctantly. I put the helmet on, and he punches-on the quiet electric engine.
I throw my hands in the air. “Where are we even going?”
“To get you back to the Meanwhile.”
My hands still outstretched, I shake them. “How?”
He just sighs. “I know a guy.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Have you ever been on a private jet?
They’re small, which at first kind of put me off. But once I realized that I had plenty of leg room and could order food any time at all, I never wanted to leave. Now I know why those CEOs are so addicted to them.
Fake Matt made a phone call, and this is what happened.
We went to the airport, and there was a private plane just waiting for us.
‘I know a guy,’ he says.
I know guys, too, but none of them can get me a private plane on demand.
The only problem is, nobody will tell me where we’re going.
Fake Matt spends most of the flight on the other side of the plane from me, keeping to himself and looking out the window. I can tell he’s thinking about something, or someone. On two occasions I ask him if everything’s alright. The first time he says “yeah,” and the second time he says “we’ll be there soon,” which I take to mean “stop asking.”
A couple hours later, I’m chowing down on some shrimp linguini that I ordered, he finally comes over and sat in the lounge chair opposite me.
“So, I’m from the Meanwhile.”
I chew a mouthful of food. “Duh.”
“So you can ask me some stuff about it if you want.”
I don’t have to think long. I’ve had a hundred question swirling in my head in the last few days.
“Do you work for MeanWatch?”
He sighed. “Ask me something else.”
I put a pin in that question.
“Who are we going to go see?”
“Someone who has even more answers than I do.”
“Is he your boss?”
“In a way, but not really. It’ll make more sense once we get there.”
“Why don’t you live at home?”
“At the White House? Ugh, Donovan. Ask me something else.”
“Are you going to give me a straight answer to anything?”
“I will when you ask me a question I want to answer. Don’t you want to know about the Meanwhile itself? What’s different there? What’s better, what’s worse?”
I shoved another forkful of linguini into my mouth, chewed it around a while, and washed it down with Cherry Coke.
“Is there a Sasquatch?”
“A what?”
“Does country music exist?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Do the movies suck?”
“Most of them.”
“Doesn’t sound that different to me.”
He leans back in the chair. “That’s all, then? You don’t need to know anything else?”
“You won’t tell me anything else.”
He sighs. “Fine. Ask me.”
“Who was the old man?”
His eyes narrow, now. “What old man?”
“The one in the tent, in the refugee camp. Virginia Highlands Park?”
“Ah.” He clicks his tongue. “I didn’t know it was an old man.”
“You took me to go see him, didn’t you? You gave me the glasses and everything.”
“I took you to a spot I was told to take you. What you found there wasn’t any of my business.”
I shake my head. “But I thought you said you were there to bring me to the Meanwhile?”
“I was there to facilitate the process, yeah. I had to make a deal to get you there. The old man, he told you where to find the shoes, right?”
“He gave me a name of a guy who told me about the shoes. Yuni—“
He holds up his hand to cut me off. “Don’t tell me. I’m not supposed to know where the shoes were, or even that there were shoes. MeanWatch needed you, I knew how to find you. I made a deal with them to get you, but part of the terms was that I wasn’t allowed to know how you would get there. Now, if you’re paying attention, I just answered your first question.”
“So you don’t work for MeanWatch.”
“N
ot anymore.”
“What happened?”
“That’s for another time,” he says wistfully, and peers out the window.
“Does it have to do with Bellamy?” His head snaps around to look at me, then he turns back to the window.
“We’re almost there. Finish up.”
Fake Matt goes back to his original seat and leaves me to finish my shrimp, but I’m not interested in it anymore. The steward retrieves the plate and instructs me to prepare for landing.
We’re coming down at LAX airport. The pilot says it on the radio.
At least I know where we’re going finally, now that we’re there.
It’s a busy mess of people and vehicles outside the plane window as we come down, but we eschew the main terminals for a private hangar.
Have you ever gotten off a private jet before?
It’s so much easier!
No waiting!
The plane stops, the door opens, you step out.
And if I had questions before we landed, once I step out of that plane I had a thousand more. There was another plane of the same kind parked next to us, and a man came walking out of it at the same time we were stepping out of ours.
“Greetings, brother,” he said.
He wasn’t being figurative. It was actually my brother.
Real Matt.
He’s wearing a Three Wolf Moon T-shirt and baggy blue cargo pants, rimless glasses (his favorite kind) and his hair is long and shaggy, falling around his ears in no particular order. At some point in his college years, he stopped making new fashion choices.
He holds out his arms for a hug, but I’m too dumbfounded to respond.
Fake Matt stops next to him and looks at me. Seeing them both side-by-side is a trip I cannot recommend taking.
“Isn’t it, like, dangerous for you guys to be so close together or something?”
Fake Matt looks at his double. “Oh no! Is it?” He punches Real Matt solidly in the arm. “Yep, I guess so.”
My brother massages his shoulder and reaches out with his other hand to shake mine.
“Good to see you, Hobbit,” he says. A favorite nickname of his because my feet are slightly hairy on top.
“No car to meet us?” Fake Matt says, looking around. There’s nothing else in the hangar besides the two planes, two pilots, and one solitary security guard minding his own business by the closed hangar doors.
Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta Page 13
