Jump the Gun

by Zoe Burke

We got into the elevator, Goober and I—one of his hands gripping my arm and the other, I was sure, gripping the gun in his pocket—along with an old woman who had punched the down button just as we arrived. She was wearing one of the greatest hats I had ever seen. I could never wear it, slanted over to the side like it was; my left ear would have stood out like a stop sign. The elevator speakers sang out with Frank’s jaunty “Love and Marriage.” I quickly scoped out our other company: a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and white loafers—he was humming along with Frank—and a fifty-ish woman who looked and smelled as though she had been drinking far more than I had over the last twelve hours. I focused on the old woman. Something about her was familiar, but the fleeting feeling was probably due her kind face. I was desperate for an ally.

  “Great hat!” I said, as my hand went up to my head, missing my red cloche.

  “Thank you, honey. It’s a Tarcelloni.”

  “No kidding? God, I’d love to own a Tarcelloni.” To tell you the truth, I thought Tarcelloni was a kind of pasta, but I needed to come up with a plan, and maybe talking would help. “Where did you get it?”

  “Oh, dear, I bought this so long ago I’m not sure I remember. Let me see, was it at Lord & Taylor’s in Chicago? Or B. Altman’s in Philadelphia? I hope it stays on because I can’t find my hatpin.”

  “Well, it looks fantastic on you. Especially the color, that pale green, it really suits your…”

  “Put a lid on it,” Goober growled, nudging me with the gun in his pocket.

  I smiled at the old woman when she sniffed at Goober. “Well! Aren’t we a little touchy!” Then I knew just what to do. I already had this woman’s sympathies, and I had to play them for all I could. I started to sob. I wailed. I snorted and sniveled. I blew my nose on Goober’s sleeve. Everyone on the elevator looked for Kleenexes and handkerchiefs, and the old woman said, “There, there.”

  When the elevator doors opened onto the floor of the main casino, my sobbing graduated to roaring. Mr. Hawaii, Mrs. Jim Beam, and Granny Mae gathered around, trying to calm me down. Goober kept hold of my arm while watching my every move. I was doing my best to channel Holly Hunter’s Oscar-worthy cry-fests from Broadcast News.

  “Why’re you cryin’ like this?” asked Mr. Hawaii.

  Before I could answer, Big Goob started to lead me away from my new family of friends, telling them, “It’s her kid. She misses him. We hafta go now.”

  “Wait just a minute, big fella, something’s fishy here and I want to know what’s going on,” slurred Mrs. Beam.

  Hawaii nodded. “Yeah, wha’s goin’ on?”

  “He has a gun!” I blurted out.

  Goober sighed and squeezed my arm tighter. With his other hand he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a badge and flashed it. “Police work, awright? Don’t let this little lady fool ya, awright? Now why doncha just go on now and enjoy yours evenins.”

  “Well, you be nice to her, you hear?” shouted Granny Mae. She and the others stood there while we walked into the casino.

  Now I was truly scared. This guy could not be a cop. Cops show you their badges first thing and don’t threaten you with guns. Goobs pushed his hidden gun into my side, and his grip was bruising my arm. The longer I was in his clutches the less chance I had of surviving. And I still had no idea what was going on.

  “Where are we going? Look, you kidnap me from my room at gunpoint. The least you can do is tell me what’s going on.” Brave words when my legs were about to crumple in fear.

  “Ya see that door over there, behind the blackjack tables? That’s where we’re goin. And no more noise, girlie.”

  Girlie. It’s one of those words that throws me into a fit of rage, not because I’m a blazing feminist (even though I’m sure I should be) but because the kid who lived next door when I was growing up called me that in a little rhyme he recited over and over whenever I played outside and no one else was around:

  Girlie, Girlie, Girlie Goo

  Ears as big as Timbuktu

  Brain is smaller than an ant’s

  Wears her grandma’s underpants.

  That goddamn rhyme always made me so mad, I’d shout at him to stop, but he never would, and I’d end up running inside. But one weekend when I was about ten, I watched a video of Gone With the Wind, and I kept rewinding it to study Scarlett O’Hara slapping Ashley Wilkes hard across his face, over and over again. I had never seen anything so beautiful. So the next time this kid started the rhyme, he only got through the first line and a half before I was all over him, fists flying. Mom and Dad had to peel me off of him.

  He never called me Girlie again.

  When Nana, my grandmother, heard my parents scold me about my attack, she secretly gave me a wink. That wink has stayed with me ever since.

  Glaring at Goobs, I felt a burst of adrenaline in my legs. I stomped on his foot as hard as I could. “Fuck!” he yelled, letting me go. I took off running.

  It’s hard to run out of a Las Vegas casino. The exits are hidden among mazes of huge rooms of gambling machines and tables. I was running, but I didn’t know where. Through the rows of slot machines, through the craps tables, through a couple of bars, past the lounge singer—he was warbling a Captain and Tenille song, if you can believe it—but I couldn’t find the exit, and I didn’t know how far behind me galloped the Goober. I yelled to a waiter, “How do I get out of here?”

  “Everyone asks me that,” he beamed. “Go down that staircase, turn left at the bottom, and after you see the betting screens for the horse races, turn right. You can’t miss it.” What a comedian.

  I skidded down those stairs at top speed, turned left, saw the screens, turned right, and kept going. Sure enough, I saw the double doors leading to the outside. I shoved through them.

  Right in front of me stood Mickey. With Goobs. Whose gun was now pointed at Mickey’s head. Trying to catch my breath, I focused on Mickey’s get-lost-here eyes.

  He gave a weak smile. “Hi.”

  “Mickey.”

  “Look, you’d better come with me and Jake here. Otherwise, we’ll both be dead very soon.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The three of us turned around and walked back into the casino. I probably could have gotten away. By the time Jake plugged Mickey I could have jumped into a cab for the airport and caught the next plane to Uzbekistan or Papua New Guinea. I was imagining how to do this, while Mickey was looking at me and I was looking back. Yet he seemed in control, even with the gun to his head—kind of like Bruce Willis in the death-defying Die Hard. In that moment, Mickey was impossible to resist.

  Chapter Three

  “Jesus. What a lovely getaway this is turning out to be.” Mickey was scowling at me.

  “Don’t you talk to me, Mickey. I mean it. Don’t you dare speak until I have told you exactly what I think of you and your Las Vegas pal.”

  I didn’t find him as irresistible, now that we were locked in a big meeting room and he wasn’t doing a damn thing about it. I’d been banging on the door and the walls and screaming “Help!” for the past five minutes while Mickey watched. Sure that no one could hear us, he kept telling me to sit down. I ignored him and I wore myself out screaming instead. Now I was reduced to pacing, scared out of my mind. I didn’t know if I would end up dead or sold into slavery. Then I thought, okay, okay. I’m over thirty and usually they go for younger women. Dead seemed more likely.

  Jake had brought us to this windowless room behind the blackjack tables and left, locking the door. Mickey was sitting at a conference table with six leather swivel chairs positioned around it and a bunch of red flowers in a vase in the middle. Cocktail napkins were stacked next to the vase, a Sony plasma TV sat on the buffet, and a full bar with a small refrigerator could serve a decent party. Big men in expensive suits had probably gathered in that room, flashing diamonds with enough carats to be a girl’s holy savior, let alone her best friend.
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  Mickey finally yelled. “Damn it! Sit down! You might even consider telling me what the hell’s going on!”

  I spun around to glare at him. “WHAT? Are you KIDDING ME? What’s going on is that I’ve been trying to get out of here!”

  “How’s that working out for you?” He glared back at me.

  I grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge and started slugging it down. I didn’t want Mickey to say anything or interrupt my train of thought, because I knew the effect he could have on me, and I didn’t want to lose track of how angry I was. I gripped the Coke can and pointed at him over the table. “I did not come here with you to get involved in your petty criminal schemes, and I sure hope they are petty, Bub, because I am not going to jail for your sake just because your eyes could outshine Robert Downey Junior’s.”

  I stopped here to regroup; the Diet Coke helped. “First, you ditch me in the hotel room—just had to get to the gaming tables, right? I don’t know what the hell happened to you. Then I get kidnapped by the potatohead guy, but I almost get away, until I run into him holding a gun to your head. Your head. Then it’s up to me to save your ass, and now, here I am, with you, whom I barely know, and my life is clearly in danger, and I may never pitch another book again, let alone do all the other things I want to do with my life, like go to Paris. Boy, I must have been out of my mind to have come here with you.”

  At this point my throat was getting tight. As the words spilled out of me, I got more scared than angry, and I did not want to lose whatever little control I still had. I sat down across from him and shut up. Took another swallow. Took a deep breath.

  “Stop.”

  “Don’t say ‘stop,’ Mickey. Don’t you dare tell me to stop.” But I did stop because if I didn’t, I was going to cry. I hate it that when you cry, men think that they no longer have to debate you, or listen to you. No, when you start crying they try to take care of you. Weak little you. So I didn’t cry. I sat and breathed and stared at an imaginary spot on the wall behind Mickey, just to the right of his perfectly shaped left ear.

  “Do you want to hear my side of the story?” Mickey punctuated his words like little drum beats. “Or, do you want to rant and rave at me until Jake gets back and we both end up getting killed?”

  Now, I really did not like his tone. It had a little bit of Meryl Streep’s nun in Doubt layered over my father’s voice when he was telling me that I couldn’t play football in junior high. “Now, Bea, there are no girls on the football team. If I have something to say about it there never will be girls on the football team, and I damn sure won’t have my daughter be a linebacker for the Detroit Lions!” I was secretly pleased back then that he thought I had that kind of potential. But Mickey’s condescension got me back into my rage.

  “Ooohh. Give me one good reason why I should listen to a goddamn thing you have to say. One goddamn good reason.”

  He leaned toward me. “How about this: I have never seen this guy Jake before. I do not know who he is. I do not know why we are here. I do not know anything about what is going on here. Maybe you’re the one who should be doing some explaining.”

  This was rich. The dumb ploy. But I wasn’t falling for it.

  “Oh pleeeeease. Please please please. Give me some credit. Assume I maintain a peapod of intelligence. This trip was your idea. I have never even been to Las Vegas before. And you’ve been acting all Johnny Depp on me. Now I’m supposed to explain to you what the hell is going on?”

  “That’s right! You know why?” His voice was getting really loud.

  “Why!” I made sure mine was louder than his.

  “Because I never knew your name was Beatrice!”

  “Excuusse me?” I screamed.

  “Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice!” He vocally snapped my name like rapid fire out of an Uzi, while standing and slamming his fist on the table with each word. “Listen to me!” He sat back down and inhaled. “I left our suite to pick up a little gift for you at one of the hotel shops. I came out of the store to suddenly feel a very real gun stuck in my back. It was Jake—whom I have never seen before in my life—and he said to come with him, because ‘my friend’ was in trouble. I said, ‘What friend is that?’ He didn’t say any more until he brought me to this room. He frisked me, took my phone, and told me to shut up and sit down. I was locked in here until he came and got me and paraded me in front of you as you were making your ill-timed escape.”

  Mickey was tense, so I forgave his put-down of my courageous escape attempt.

  Mickey took a breath. “I asked again, when he came to get me, ‘What friend is in trouble?’ This time he laughed. ‘Beatrice Starkey, your Las Vegas date, man. Like you don’t know that.’ Okay? Beatrice? So you tell me what the fuck is going on here, Annabelle! Or, excuse me, I mean Beatrice! Jake seems to know you, but apparently, I don’t!”

  This stopped me cold. I was as confused as Jane Eyre when she’s about to marry Mr. Rochester and his brother-in-law stops the wedding. I stared at Mickey. I think my mouth was open.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Beatrice is my first name and Annabelle is my middle name. But I have no idea how Jake knows my first name. He did call me Bea when he kidnapped me, now that I think about it.” I inhaled. “I go by Annabelle Starkey and hardly anyone calls me Bea, except my parents. I prefer Annabelle over Beatrice. Annabelle conjures up visions of a Southern beauty, with hoop skirts and lots of mysteries underneath them, but Beatrice sounds like a jolly fat aunt who puts happy faces made out of chocolate chips on her oatmeal cookies.”

  Mickey wrinkled his forehead. “So now I am someone without any peapods of intelligence, who is supposed to believe that Jake knows you, but you don’t know him.”

  “Mickey, I really don’t know.” I managed a little smile. “But I think you probably have lots of peapods.”

  “You do, do you.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you really don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I really don’t. I’ve never seen this guy before.”

  Mickey got up from the table and started pacing around the room. He opened the refrigerator and slammed it shut again. He rattled the doorknob, even though he knew it was locked. He muttered something that sounded like “Beatrice Annabelle Starkey, Beatrice Annabelle Starkey, Beatrice Annabelle…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I sat and wondered if I ever had seen Jake anywhere before, if I had ever seen a gun before, if I had ever done something so horrendous that people would kill me for it, if I had ever dated someone who had used my social security number to order arms for Al Qaeda, if I really shouldn’t have gotten snippy with the woman at the grocery store check-out counter three Tuesdays before when she was talking to her friend instead of checking my groceries —maybe she was married to Jake—if my employer was a front for the mob (after all, I never was privy to sales figures and it was a privately owned company, and my boss always wore really expensive Italian-made shoes), if my father had finally and secretly realized his childhood dream of becoming an international spy and his enemies were trying to get at him through his family members, if government agents had intercepted that email I sent to Mom a few years ago when I proposed that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be exiled to a remote island and forced to watch “Judge Judy” reruns for the rest of their miserable lives.

  “Mickey, did he say anything else? Was he with anyone?”

  “When he took me he was alone. The gun had a silencer. He said Beatrice was in trouble. He brought me here. I said, wait a minute, who was he, why were we in this room, I just got to Las Vegas, and I started for the door. He grabbed me and conked me on the back of the head with his gun.”

  Mickey had stopped pacing. It wasn’t until then that I realized he had been rubbing his head off and on. �
��Oh, god. That’s…horrible…are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I woke up with a big headache.” He rubbed his head again.

  I still had my purse with me—it’s pretty big but has a long strap that fits over my head and the opposite shoulder, and it’s a good style to have if you ever find yourself trying to run away from thugs in a casino—and I put it on the table and pulled out my bottle of aspirin. “Here, take about seventeen.”

  Mickey took the bottle and dumped four into his hand. “Thanks.” He filled a glass with water at the sink at the end of the room, tossed all four pills at once in his mouth, and swallowed them with a few gulps. I’m always impressed with no-nonsense pill takers. Me, I take my daily vitamins one at a time, with about a half glass of water for each.

  “Do you have a big lump?”

  “Yes.” Mickey sat back down at the table, folded his arms on it, and put his forehead on top of his arms.

  “None of this makes sense. I know you know that already, but listen: if Jake wanted me, if he was really after me, why didn’t he come up to the suite and get me, instead of taking you first and knocking you out? He could have kidnapped me easily enough without involving you at all, and, well, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s right, An-na-belle! None of this makes a-ny sense!” Mickey kept his head down.

  I’m pretty good when it comes to reading people, and I could tell that Mickey didn’t want to hear squat from me. I shut up and tried to come up with more theories—did my next-door neighbor finally figure out that I was the one who picked a few of her prize tulips? God, I only took about three, and she must have had at least twenty in her garden. Her last name is O’Malley—some IRA connection? I walked over to the TV and turned it on and right off again: a Cialis commercial. I picked up the phone that was on the conference table; dead. I sat back down.

  After a very long few minutes, Mickey raised his head and looked at me. I held his gaze until he shifted his eyes to the right of my bigger-than-life Dumbo left ear. My hands shot up to smooth down my hair, which was a good thing, because it was sticking out. I probably looked like Alfalfa of The Little Rascals. Finally, Mickey spoke. “Okay.”