Roll with the Punches

by Gettinger, Amy

  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.”

  CHAPTER 35

  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.

  "What's wrong?" he said, a hand stroking my arm.

  "Nothing."

  The front door opened and Music Man poked his head out. "Don't you two stay out there too long and get pneumonia."

  We couldn't help giggling at Dad, still humming, patrolling the house and checking the plugs again.

  "I sang that hymn with my mother as a kid." Dal stretched long arms to the porch roof and yawned.

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. Minnesota is full of Catholics and Lutherans. They know how to work a reservation."

  "Oh." I stroked his warm arm. "Did you farm back there with your mother? That's hard to picture."

  He cleared his throat. "We just had a vegetable plot, two cows, and a field or two of wheat then. Of course, now things are way different. "

  "How?"

  "No one farms much anymore."
/>   Big question: "What did you do for a living?"

  "I was a social worker for a while."

  "You got a BA?"

  "Yeah, but …"

  Somewhere in the depths of my body, a tight knot let loose.

  He went on, "Then I decided travel. Ate my way through Europe and Asia. Started on Africa. But in Ethiopia, things were so bad with the droughts and the in-fighting that I ended up working for the Red Cross."

  "Did you run out of money?"

  He was staring at some memory far away. "Huh? No. I wanted to help."

  "When was this?"

  He rubbed his face with a hand. "Let's see. I started traveling in 1999. I started at the Red Cross in 2001 and chased famines and tsunamis all over the globe. Reconstruction in Africa, India, Thailand, China. Last year, Hurricane Katrina. This summer, mudflows from earthquakes in Java." He looked ten years older, discussing this.

  "Oh. You really are noble. And here I thought—"

  "I was a bum? Well, yeah. Using all that gambling money.”

  No way. Not another gambler. I felt sick. Test question number six: Are you a gambler? Tanked.

  "I didn't earn it," he said. "And I've spent all this time running around the world, trying to matter, working, working, working, until I wore myself down and got sick. And now I'm home … with a direction chosen by my father and little ambition."

  I wanted to say, You must be some gambler to win all that. But instead, I said, "Your family might help." Or they might be pretty resentful of his habit.

  "Pushy snots in their fancy houses with their perfect kids. I feel like such an idiot trying to catch up, become an architect this late in the game, even with their support. I mean it just feels like I've had this very long adolescence. I want to be an adult now, come home and use what I already have. Which is what?"

  Test question number seven: Satisfying profession? D-. No means of support.

  He squeezed me, and I felt like a thick blanket had been peeled off him so I could finally see his face. Test question number five, about settling down, now looked pretty good. I wanted to ask questions 6A: How serious of a gambler are you? And number 8: Why don't you have a girlfriend? But who was I kidding? Cleo was probably right. My precious test questions were just another way to insist on unattainable perfection. No guy could ever measure up. Was I really that afraid of falling in love?

  I said, "Why'd you spend all that time overseas?"

  "Well, I didn't originally plan to. But after a while, it seemed childish to walk by these people and not try to help them. Exploitative. Me, the tourist, eating way better than they were in their own homes. I'm Christian raised, complete with the guilt. And the Indian in me figures I owe the earth back for …"

  I smiled and gave him ten bonus points on the quiz.

  He raked his fingers through his long, loose black hair. I could get lost in that hair. Black hair, like ninety percent of the world had.

  "So you did good," I whispered, stroking his arm again.

  He winced. "I don't know. I'm still trying to decide what to be when I grow up. I'm a horrible salesman, I'm not into technology, and I'm not really into my classes. But just sculpting metal seems so selfish. I don't know." He turned away.

  "Gee. And living here at Insanity Central isn't helping you a bit, is it?" I slumped again.

  "It's fine. It's really fine. You're more than fine." He nuzzled my neck. "Okay, I told you mine. Now you tell me yours."

  "Mine's silly next to yours, Mr. Gandhi."

  "I'm not nearly as saintly as you think." Eyebrow wiggle. "Sometimes I watch cartoons and play poker."

  Gambling again. Minus ten points. "Okay. I thought I'd found Reynard Jackson's house, but I hadn't. And I lost my superpower.”

  His eyebrows raised.

  I blurted out, "I can't tell what people want just by looking at them anymore."

  "You could before? What did I want the first time you saw me?"

  "Sleep?"

  "Gee, maybe you did have something. What do I want now? Look deep into my eyes." His hand took mine.

  Lust, lust, lust was all I saw. "Yep. Everyone wants the same thing. I tell you it's broken."

  "No. What do I really want?" The steely blues drew me into a deep, dark, velvety space I could get lost in.

  I licked my lips and swallowed. "Wow."

  "What?" The depths held me achingly close.

  I looked away, gasping. "God.”

  "Not quite." His fingers grazed lightly up my arm, sending little bolts of electricity whizzing up it. Suddenly I couldn't seem to remember a time when Dal hadn't been there needling me and taking care of Music Man and getting under my skin one way or another.

  "Intense." I cleared my throat. "Er—Donuts?"

  He laughed.

  "Hey, I've learned their value in the last two weeks."

  "Yeah, I'm proud of you." The ponytail was sagging and there were circles under his eyes, but his cheeks were creased with humor and his lips looked wolfish. "And your desire is—" His hand strayed under my shirt.

  "Adventures on horseback.”

  His lips landed softly on my neck. The kitchen phone rang.

  I let it ring until the message machine picked up and Marian said, "Rhonda? Jackie's been hurt and my car's not here. Can you come and give me a ride over to UCI Med Center?" Pause. "And by the way, it was me. I stole your book.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Jackie had been a victim of a hit and run and was in surgery for internal injuries. Marian and I waited a long time in the rose-colored ER waiting room chairs, nodding off and drooling on our jackets.

  "Go on home, Rhonda. I'll be fine," Marian finally said in the wee hours. "But—can you take my place at the RING-SCREW conference this weekend?"

  "Sure, no problem," I said, squeezing her hand.

  Her gray eyes looked sharply at me, her mouth curled up at the corner. "Aren't you mad at me for stealing your book? You haven't said a word."

  "Marian. You're a terrible actress. So you think Jackie did it?"

  Marian blushed. "Oh, honey, maybe. I just—she's been spending money like a crazy woman. Or a secret bestselling author. I'm so worried there's something fishy going on, and now somebody's hit her … And I'm terrified she's in trouble." She dabbed her eye.

  "But why would she steal my book? Why not yours or George's?"

  "Well, you and James talked so much about sending your full manuscript everywhere. I'm guessing she thought that with that many people reading it, how could anyone trace the theft back to her?"

  I nodded. "That's possible. But didn't I tell the group I was only sending out partial packets, not full manuscripts?"

  Marian shook her head. "We thought you and James had decided on only sending fulls."

  Could Jackie really be Reynard Jackson? Had she stolen enough books from other writers for one of them to figure it out and hurt her for it? Maybe the mysterious F. H. from her letters? I said, "Marian, did you ever find that copy of Memory Serves on CD that I gave you? I really need it for the lawsuit."

  "No, honey. I'll look for it."

  * * *

  I tried the doors of the Acorn Street house at 3:20 a.m. and was not amused that they were bolted again. I threw stones at Dal's window. No answer. Then I heard something behind me.

  "Rhonda! Psst!" Dal was peeking out of the back of the van with an evil grin.

  I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, and we ended up giggling on the futon inside, kicking fake fur covers willy-nilly, so glad were we to be there together. I told him about Jackie and he hugged me tight. After some wild, crazy, jungle sex, we spooned and he asked me lazily in my ear, "What were the initials on that letter you got from Jackie's house?"

  "F. H. Some editor at Haverton Masters Press, you think? Isn't that her publisher?"

  "Nah. Probably Freddie Hamilton, your long lost evil cousin."

  We slept tangled together in the van until 8:00
in the morning, when my bladder called and the van interior started warming up from the rising sun. Wrapped in a sheet, I ran into the now open house to pee. Then, careful to avoid Music Man, I got a robe, looked both ways across the yard, and sprinted back out to the van. Even though we had been together a very short time and our conversations had not gone very deep, Dal's arms were my magnet, my home, my joy. I had never felt this alive with a man before. We dozed a while, knowing that far from burning the house down, Music Man would be guarding the plugs and eating cold cereal. Of course, he might also be emptying the fridge onto the table.

  What finally woke me was a pressure, no a sort of wiggling animal, against the side of my hip. Then a possessive hand on my breast and a mouth searching for mine among the red faux fur on the futon and the real black stuff on Mr. Mustang's wild mane. It seemed the right thing to do to just open my robe, part my legs, slide onto the fine, fierce coup stick he offered and ride away.

  So ride I did, latching onto his neck and his mouth and wiggling all over in pure excitement. In no time, the van was bucking and tossing up and down like a crazy bronco in heat. Dal's wicked grin and teasing fingers made me yell way too loud for the time of day and the street we lived on. Arlene would just have to get her own pony.

  I took off my gold necklace and twirled it overhead for my lasso. "Yeeeeehaaa!"

  "Let her rip, Cowgirl.”

  So I did. Riding the range on my Sioux pony, I war whooped at each fresh wave of glowing sensation. I savored pulse after pulse of heat, emanating from the fire pit in my magic subterranean kiva to flood my engorged teepee and bolt straight to the tips of all four of my sacred directions and beyond. Great Mother in Heaven.

  Of course there was traffic on the street, but its noise just didn't make it through to this wild bareback rider. I shook and gasped and clutched my sexy Indian mount, our love flowering into awesome vibrating rainbows that flooded every cell and molecule of life for miles around. Finally, I groaned a giant, monstrous gush of satisfied ecstasy, followed by Dal's baritone shudder of release.

  "Rhonda!" my mother's voice bellowed from about a foot away.