Roll with the Punches

by Gettinger, Amy

  "God. Me, too! Colors and sports and writing. Except I'm miserable about journals." I breathed in the smell of salt water and confided, "But all my R's and 6's are red."

  "Really?" she laughed. "Mine do dance steps: R does the rumba, T the tango, F the funky chicken."

  "Does B do ballet?" I laughed. "Sometimes I just wish I were color blind. Other people's colors can really annoy me. Do your color-letter associations drive you crazy?"

  "Nah," she said. "Hey, we're here."

  We came to a split in the paved trail. The right fork curved up by our restaurant, but Nadja pointed us toward the lower fork that was carved into the cliff face under some very lush hanging ice plant and aloe, which made it invisible from the path above. The spectacular, secluded view of silvery ocean from this path had inspired its romantic reputation all over the county.

  "Lover's Lair. They've taped it off," I said.

  "Oh, it's fine, as far as we need to go for the view. I was here just a few days ago. Let's go see the view. It's my favorite." Nadja lifted the yellow caution tape and motioned me to go under first.

  We skated under dense growths of succulents and ferns that hung from the overhang on the left, muffling sounds from above. Eighty feet below us, dramatic black rocks jutted up through swirling water at low tide. The panoramic view on our right was indeed fantastic, and as I skated, the huge yacht moved into view. But looking out at the water became hazardous when I ran into a narrowed place where recent mudslides below had undercut half the asphalt path. The normally four-foot wide path was now less than three, leaving a substantial gap between the path and the steel railing, which hung in the breeze.

  "Watch out," I said. My hands and feet tingled as I stepped past the gap with a too-clear view of churning water and rocks below.

  I was gliding along happily again when suddenly, a big chunk of the path in front of me was just gone. Less than a foot of ledge remained. I braked fast right before it and grabbed the railing, which still stretched the six or seven feet across the chasm between the two skatable sections of asphalt, though it sagged some in the middle. Breathless, I stopped inches from the ragged asphalt edge.

  "Whoa!" I yelled, looking dozens of feet down. Those rocks looked black and jagged. My hand went to the flash drive at my neck. Still safe. My little security blanket.

  Nadja buzzed up behind me fast, too fast.

  "Hey!" I yelled, as she slammed her bulk into me, pushing me off balance, knocking me right into the gaping hole. I somehow kept hold of the railing with one hand, sliding a couple feet down the sagging section of steel, but the rest of me swung crazily in mid-air for a harrowing second before I caught the railing with the other hand.

  A leaf fluttered down toward the foamy water. My tummy followed it. Okay. Not to panic. The rail where I dangled was just a couple feet from the cliff edge.

  "Whoa! Here, help me." I reached out toward Nadja.

  She was on the phone. Chatting.

  "Nadja! Help!" I swung around toward the cliff face and found I could easily touch the slope with my toe stops. "Nadja!" With great effort, I managed to shift my hand positions and scrabble my toe stops up the rockslide area to rest my skates on that leftover foot of asphalt ledge next to the cliff. It would barely accommodate my giant skates, but I balanced there, hands clinging to the rails, feet on the little sill, thanking my morning pull-ups. Then, with a huge burst of energy, I flipped over and hoisted myself up to a jackknife position with my butt in the air over a broad expanse of nothing, both hands still gripping the railing over the mudslide area. Whoa, I was awesome.

  Until I looked down. Spiky black rocks and roiling ocean waves. Fear snaked up from my belly. I edged right and held a hand out to Nadja. "Nadja. Grab my hand."

  She put away her cell phone and stepped back. "Shit. You're a gymnast."

  "What? Nadja! Help!" I said, panic blooming. I kicked a foot out towards the path she stood on, and she kicked it back towards me. Oh, man. The horizon had gone leaden.

  Then someone sauntered up in a dark wig and sunglasses on the other side of my temporary perch. "Hi, Rhonda.”

  "James?" I kicked out at him and yelled, "What the—?"

  "Don't move, Rhonda." A gun clicked in his hand. "Shut up."

  I could see where this was going. I'd soon get tired and lose my grip on the sagging rail or lose my balance and end up—no, I wouldn't think about tumbling down the rocky cliff face like a heavy load of dirty laundry, leaving grated shreds of myself behind with each excruciating bump. There just had to be another way out.

  Nadja said. "That yacht's coming back. James, on three, squirt the rail with olive oil.”

  "I don't have any olive oil," he said irritably.

  "Well, whatever's in your pocket then," she said. At his clueless look, she threw a small bottle at him, which fell short and bounced a few hundred times down the hill before splintering into a million pieces on the sharp black rocks below.

  That would be me in ten minutes.

  "Stop!" I gulped. Damn. I hadn't told anyone I was coming here. White-knuckled, I leaned toward the unstable rail, but the metal just bent down further. I steeled my arms against it, praying for it to hold. "They'll find my backup drive on my lanyard if I …" I felt sick looking down. "Fall."

  Nadja said, "It will only help our case. All twelve of Reynard's books will be discovered on your laptop, well, the one they'll find in your car. We killed your purple one.”

  “Noooo!” I shrieked.

  “It's why we planted all those tabloid stories,” Nadja said. “You'll have the fame and funeral of a nationally bestselling queen."

  Gulp.

  James said, "But Nadja, Reynard's such a good income—"

  Nadja dug in her pocket. "And his, or her, suicide will be mourned worldwide, and sales on Jackson books will skyrocket. And everyone will wonder at Rhonda's acting skills and sympathize with her poor father's ailment that drove her literally over the edge."

  "But James, they'll get you for trying to murder Dad," I squealed, my hand slipping a little more on the rail. I gripped it tighter, arm muscles quaking. The rocky slope swayed below.

  "Murderer? Crazy James? Hardly. We saved your father from you." Nadja smiled.

  "Rhonda, you were Jackson, as well as your dad's jailor." James grinned.

  "But you sank that house!" I said. "You tried to kill Hippo and me!"

  Nadja looked up from her pocket search. "What? James, you told me—"

  "He knocked out the stilts!" I yelled.

  James waved the gun at me. "Quiet. You were the last person out of it, Rhonda. They'll blame you."

  Nadja sighed. "And the roller girls attacked our rescue van. Poor, crazy James and I will sue every last one of them."

  So these two would wiggle out of everything? Of course they would. Fiction was Reynard's gift. "But Hippo saw it all. And you tried to kill her and me.”

  Nadja dug further, tossing lipstick and Kleenex on the path. "She's got a criminal record. We'll buy her off."

  "Yvette—" I tried.

  James sang, "Immigration breathing down her neck.”

  Oh, God.

  Hmm. Nadja or James? Which one could I take on from this position? I tried to wiggle toward Nadja on my right, but the ledge crumbled and my left skate slipped off it, sending a spray of rocks down the cliff face. My muscles screamed. That leg was so tired, I couldn't seem to raise the foot back to the ledge. The slope swayed below me, and the rail bent another inch under my weight.

  I played for time. "But why Dad? Oh, my God. He must have seen you break into my laptop and take my book."

  James grinned. "First Sunday in August. Your mom's house. Key in the watering can."

  Oh, yeah. Dad had been dizzy that day and hadn't gone to Disneyland with us.

  "I thought he was demented," James said, "but he remembered me way too clearly the night your mom broke her hip." He checked his watch. "Nadja, it's not too late for an even
ing visit to Mr. Hamilton in the hospital after this. All hospitals make mistakes. He could get the wrong medicine and die."

  "Damn it, don't you hurt my dad! Help! Help! Heeeeelp!" Slowly, I lifted my left toe stop up to the ledge again. Then I willed my legs to be titanium.

  A bullet whizzed over my head.

  "Shut up, Rhonda," James said, "You stupid girl. If you'd just handed out full manuscripts like I told you, we wouldn't be here now. Scads of people would have had access to your stupid story, and you'd never have known it was me."

  "Just do it, James." Nadja turned to go.

  "Help!" I yelled. No one answered. I inched left. My hands and arms were numb.

  "But Nadja, how did Jeff get them to publish my book so fast?" I yelled at her retreating figure, inching left again. Then my mind flashed on the Jackson book cover and Nadja's signs, both with those damned yellow A's and orange N's.

  "Dammit! Nadja, you're Jackson!" I screamed.

  She came back a few steps, an orange tube in her hand. Her big glasses made her resemble an evil alien, a bulbous Mars bug on skates. How could I have misjudged her so badly?

  She rolled her eyes. "Duh. Reynard A. Jackson is an anagram of Nadja Kay Crosner. And A is yellow!"

  James said, "And, Nadja cons Karrey. Damn it! You owe me money, Nadja! I want my share!"

  I heard something, a low thundering. Crap. Slippery rain on the railing would spell my doom.

  She said, "James. With our care home chain and the book income, you can retire at forty. Screw that asshole Karrey, telling the world I wasn't publishable." Nadja threw the orange tube at James and disappeared.

  "Sunscreen?" James took the lid off.

  If I had been Nancy Drew, I'd have somehow kicked the gun out of James's hand at this point, but my shifting skates and slipping hands and screaming joints marked me as shark bait instead. I inched left toward him, anyway.

  "James, are you serious? After all we did together? The rose tattoo? I thought you were my friend," I kicked out, trying to raise my left foot to James's side of the path.

  "My friend." James mimicked in falsetto, squirting the sunscreen toward my hands. Oh, how embarrassing to be killed by SPF 45 on a railing. But nothing came out of the tube. "You're just a writer with a half-decent plot. One of many needed to create Reynard Jackson." He tried again. This time, the tube made a rude wet fart noise. "Shit, that closet scene with the jacket was rich. Yvette and I laughed all night."

  "Yvette?" My body had spasmed into knots. My left knee buckled and my hand slipped. I recovered painfully and tightened every muscle in my body to screaming point.

  He squirted air again with an even louder blaaaat. "She thought I was Jackson. I let her get just close enough to keep track of her and annoy the hell out of you. Shit! This won't work!" James let the gun hang from a finger to knead the tube with both hands.

  "Roll up the end," I yelled, as I summoned up all my strength and kicked out hard at James with my skate, throwing him off balance, but also losing my precarious purchase on the ledge. Then I was hanging in midair again, this time with exhausted, pain-wracked arms and no strength left to climb back up.

  Time for the inevitable fall. The big one I’d dreaded my whole life. Cleo would be so proud.

  "Charge!" Cathy rolled up where Nadja had just been and said, "Only a .22, James? Gee, from Rhonda's buildup, I expected a ten-gauge!"

  A loop of thick rope fell on my head. I grabbed it and looked up to see Largot, standing next to Cathy.

  "Put it under your arm!" she said.

  The lasso held as I painfully worked an arm through the rough loop, just in time to completely lose my grip on the rail so my body slammed against the cliff side like a giant rag doll. Ow, ow, ow. Pain.

  James cocked the gun. Dangling in space, I squinched my eyes, ready for the blast and the fall. My body banged into the cliff again, bashing my helmet pretty hard.

  There was a blast, but no fall. Above me on James's side were grunts and groans and yells and thunks, like body parts knocking against rock. My stomach bounced wildly as my body swung and banged several more times against the sharp rock slope. Talk about being at the end of my rope.

  Then, miraculously, I was pulled, inch by inch, toward the broken trail. I looked up to see James pushing a curly red head toward the broken railing. Which galvanized my legs to start scrabbling against the rocks again, this time to help the Amazons haul me up the cliff face. For the second time in three days, I applied hands, teeth, and toe stops to a scrabble slope, though this time, my hands and knees were bleeding. Very slowly, Largot, Cathy, and Hippo, sweating and straining with Nazi grips on the other end of my rope, reeled me up to the crumbling path. Finally, with the last push I had in me, I flopped over the lip and beached myself like an orange-helmeted whale amidst a lot of happy shouting from the girls.

  "Good thing you looped it around the railing," Cathy said to Largot. "She’s heavy."

  "No more French fries for you, Rhonda!" Cathy squeezed me in a huge hug.

  As I hugged asphalta firma, and the girls hugged me, I dared a peek across the chasm and saw Kween Viktorious, Yvette, and some Veggie Girls sitting on an inert James. Yvette waved at me as Dal limped up by her and grinned. Then she turned and waved at the passing yacht, where someone waved back from the bow.

  At my elbow, Hippo said, "Rhonda, you sure are high maintenance."

  I turned and looked her in the eye. "You sure are a big help. Thanks. Anything I can do for you, anything. Just say the word."

  Hippo said. "Well, I do have this manuscript I'd like you to read."

  "Uh," I was saved from responding to this new terror by a wild-eyed photographer running out of the shadows and shooting our group hug.

  He cried, "Great! Reynard Jackson Has Cliffside Lesbian Orgy. Front page stuff!"

  CHAPTER 42

  "God. I wasted a year on that guy." Back in safe old Besker Park, I sat numb on a wooden bench. Dal sat with an arm around me, scowling at the photographers lurking nearby. The police had just taken James and Nadja away. I moaned. "Geez. Joane's Crank Yard? Nadja Kay Crosner? Nadja Kay's Corner? Kandajay's Corner? The whole time, it was right there in front of my—"

  "Nose?" Dal asked, showing me his profile.

  "Yes. They're all anagrams of Reynard A. Jackson. Arrrgh!"

  "Oh. Nadja spells her name with a—"

  "J."

  He squeezed me hard enough to make me squeal. "She's cracked. She was out here yelling about how Karrey asked her to edit and rework a book in 2003, claiming it was his. Then, as an editor, he published it very quickly under Reynard's name as a lark, just to see if he could create a fictional bestselling author. Then he publicized the hell out of it and got it selling fast. She claims he told her afterwards how he'd taken it from the slush pile. She swears that was her total involvement until James found out about it and started stealing first drafts of manuscripts from various writing groups and blackmailed her and Jeff into buffing up and publishing these at lightning speed so Reynard could keep his national audience. It was a cash cow, and she needed money to start her care home empire. So Nadja claims she was their writing slave."

  "My Aunt Fannie." I laughed. "More like their puppeteer. I think she had way more power in that trio than she admits."

  Dal said, "I guess I understand why they wanted you to swing—"

  "Hey!"

  "—when you found your backup flash drive tonight, but why did they go after your dad?"

  "He caught James in the act of messing with my computer at home a couple times. He told me about it, but I thought he was dreaming things up with his odd new brain.”

  "So James put the pressure on your mom to place Harold, but why didn't they just drug him up once they had him? Why try to kill him?"

  "I don't know. Oh, wait. I do. They pushed harder to get Dad after I told James that Dad might not have Alzheimer's, that he might get better and remember everything. Then all hell broke loos
e.”

  I was dozing off on his shoulder. "Hey, Dal," I mumbled. "How did you know I'd be here today?"

  Dal paused. "Your mother knows you love the beach like your dad. She told me when you disappeared this evening.”

  "I wasn't gone that long."

  He looked patient. "Rhonda, I just had this nasty feeling—"

  "You stole my superpower?"

  The paparazzi were taking notes. Headlines would read: Reynard Jackson's Superpower Stolen by Indian Lover.

  He grinned. "Maybe. Along with your backup floppy disk."

  Cathy came up. "What's floppy? Oh, so soon? I'm sorry. There are pills for that now." Her crossed eyes flared. "Rhonda! That douchebag James told everybody in Besker Park this evening that like Paris Hilton was on the beach, so they all ran down there and nobody heard you yelling. A bunch of us had gotten off the yacht for like, a little free derby show on the beach basketball court. Oh, my God, Rhonda. The hunks down there were orgasmatronic, and there was like this huge crowd like watching us and cat calling and everything. It was awesome. Then E. Lizard Butt was looking through the yacht telescope and saw your orange helmet dangling under the path, and she called us."

  "Uh, thanks," I said weakly, and she high-fived me. I sank back, eyes closed, into Dal's chest.

  Dal whispered. "Rhonda, never mind. You know your real gift is …"

  You, I thought. But for how long, rolling stone gambler man?

  Hippo brought me my cell phone. "You know a Marian?"

  Marian gushed down the line, "Hon, George and Jackie and I have discussed it and we think Homeland Security took your book. Could we sue them?"

  "Marian," I said, signing a police clipboard. "There is no Reynard Jackson. It was Nadja and James. He was the legs, she the writer. Her ex-husband, the editor, pushed the books through publication super-fast."

  "Oh."

  "How's Jackie?" I asked.

  "Better. I thought sure she'd done it, but it turns out she was blackmailing that councilman guy, Farley Hampton, into stopping development in the wetlands. She threatened to expose an affair he had with her co-worker. I think she kind of let the power get to her head and er—blackmailed some money out of him, as well."