Always You Part 8
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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5.
This is the part of the chapter where I’d stall for time and the audience saunters in like a pack of drunken apes. I’d say some horrible anecdote reflecting on the events on the plot, remark about the overall ridiculousness of the format on our good ‘ole blog here, and then I’d get down to business. Once we’re all chummy, I settle down and tell the sordid tale for this week.
…Yeah, not this time around.
Why, you ask?
You obviously aren’t up to date with the plot, then.
There’s two damn Hummers in the pizza parlor with some pissed-off-looking Tides getting out. They don’t look hungry for pizza. They look hungry for, you know, me and the Jack.
Anyway.
You’ve seen these kinds of fellows before. Big muscles, one guy with a white beanie and looking overall like something out of a bad CW show, and the rest looking like generic mooks.
Ten mooks to the four of us (technically the two of us if you discount the brainiac and the mental cripple) weren’t what I’d call good odds. Personally, I’d call those ‘boned in the behind’ odds.
Bystanders scattered like flies swatted away from rotting fruit, running in every direction away from the cars. One little girl crawled under the car in an attempt to get away. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if that old guy in the corner disappeared into another plane of reality. He’s an old dude. Of course he has that kind of command over reality. He’s an old guy.
Aren’t all old guys, like, professors or something? There should be a law demanding that.
“Henry!”
Carina brought me out of the monologue and back to reality. “What?” I called back over the screaming.
“Why are they attacking us?!”
“I dunno!”
“Honestly?! You don’t know?!”
“Well, it might have something to do with a knife I pulled off of one of them!” Oh, that Rodney and his narrative relevance.
“Whaaaaaat?!” Could she really not hear me over the crumbling walls, waiters shouting into phones for the police—and getting soundly beaten down—and babies crying? Sheesh, the girl needed her hearing checked.
“I said, I think I might have something to do with—”
“Watch out!”
Watch out, I did.
Right in front of me: two of the Tides with muscles and facial hair to match. The first one came at me with a right hook; his friend settled for tackling me like a warthog. My jawbone met chiseled-yet-youthful fist and I flew back into the booth. Wood splintered outward and cut into my jacket. Carina’s hand shot up over her face as shards of restaurant booth narrowly missed her. Otherwise would have been a definitive tragedy rivaling the Challenger Explosion.
I socked the guy on top of me and kicked out, to no avail. His hands went to my throat, my air suddenly cut out—
He flew back with a fistful of playing card to the chin. The Jack held his hand out to me; I took it like a practiced dance step and propelled myself off the ground, Sparta-kicking the second Tide into kingdom come.
Well, more like back against the car and unconscious.
The other three from the first car (sheesh!) bolted for the two of us as though we were the opening night to Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II and they were college girls with unhealthy obsessions. I took the closest thing I had to a fighting stance. One leg back and crouched, hands open and at chest level, hair blowing like a kite. It worked on television all the time.
“Henry, take the girls and go.”
Is he mental? There’s all kinds of bad news coming.
“I know, but it’s me and Paloma they want, not you.”
So I’m supposed to magically get brain-dead beauty and our lanky but luscious Operator out on my own?
“I’ll cover for you. Go.”
“Jack, I—”
“Go!”
…Since when did the Jack know kung-fu?
Such is the only appropriate reaction to seeing him run against the three Tides and windmill-kick straight into a spinning-heel kick, then start trading blows with two different dudes. I made a note to ask Paloma if they were part Asian, part Leo DiCaprio.
Admit it; it makes a disturbing amount of sense.
On that note, so did running like a chicken. I took Carina’s arm and ran for the exit, which was admittedly everything around us.
Before I could ask for Paloma, I saw her safely outside, hands over her ears and crouched low to the ground. Dead-silent and thoughtful; teach her a few menacing phrases and Paloma could give Alan Rickman a run for his money.
I pulled Paloma with us. Together, we ran down the street, back to Jeanette. I whipped the keys out my pocket and stuffed them in Carina’s shaky palms.
Thin, keyboard-efficient hands gripped my collar and hair as I tried running back. “No, you don’t,” the emphasis went beyond simple italics.
“Jack’s in there, Carry,” I said quickly. “I have to help him—”
“So what? The first act of Animal House is you getting beaten up?”
“The ‘first act’ is not me leaving my housemate!”
Before she could get a word in edgewise, I went on: “Get in the car, go to my parents’ place. It’s still a safe house, right? Stay there for an hour, then call Evangeline. Ask her how many hours are left until—”
…I have never before been tasked with expressing through words the sensation of being slapped across the face. Let me tell you, it’s not a terribly pleasurable sensation. A ringing, stinging pain sears your left cheek, you feel like a complete jackass, and you get sapped of all adrenaline.
The world stopped.
In that instant, it wasn’t Animal House and the Tides, and it wasn’t the larger conflict of Animal House and the Alchemists, or even Henry Collins (that’s me) and Zack Forest.
It was Henry Collins and Carina Guerrin, her outstretched hand having swung straight against my stubbly face, inhabiting an empty Miranda Cove universe.
That world felt quiet.
Carina herself pressed the ‘play’ button on reality by shoving Jeanette’s keys back in my hand. “Get in the car,” she ordered, “I’ll direct you to Kenneth, and you’re telling me everything. Paloma, get in the back seat.”
Yes, ma’am.
We pulled away as red and blue lights sounded in the distance. My hand gripped the steering wheel like a brace.
“He’ll be fine,” Carina’s voice went soothing and calming. “Jack’s been in worse situations.”
“Name one.”
“…What did you mean, ask Evangeline how many hours are left?”
Dramatic pause to dodge the obvious answer. Way to play a trope, Carina.
I took a deep breath and recapped the day like a marathon of ‘24’ (hopefully I’m more attractive than that homeless bear Kiefer Sutherland). I started with breaking Paloma out from the Tides’ grasp, then us driving to Evangeline’s, and a brief mention to what being partially baked in a dark room feels like.
Carina didn’t approve.
Then I went into the metaphysical bullshit. Evangeline being a Familiar with the ability to know the time the world has until it ends—whatever she meant by that—and how I had to find the other Familiars before Forest. Then there was how I wasn’t necessarily some great chosen one, no matter how awesome that might be. I had to get my team back together, or at least get a team back together.
“And because me and Kenneth are the only people that didn’t leave town after graduation, we’re the only ones you can find in forty-eight hours,” Carina concluded. Though she didn’t say it—she would never admit to being wrong over something she got mad about—she understood why I had to find him.
I happily omitted the part about how her house was more than likely being ransacked by Tides as she spoke. What you don’t know can’t necessarily hurt you, right?
After a silence, a “turn left” from the passenger seat, and more silence, I spoke up.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What for?”
“For not asking if I think the Familiar thing is insane.”
More silence. If Paloma hadn’t tried rolling down the back windows and finding out that Jeanette wasn’t exactly in her prime, then I would have forgotten her yet again.
“Paloma?” Carina turned around in her seat, “Your brother will be fine. We’ll go help him as soon as we pick up a friend here. Okay?”
Hell, I wouldn’t have seen that as okay. Talk about variable overload.
We passed into and straight through the decent parts of town. Tall office buildings turned into abandoned parking structures, smaller mom-and-pop businesses turned into strip joints, and with the sun starting to wane, not-traffic gave way to traffic.
I didn’t want to ask where we were going. Instead: “Are you and Kenneth still talking?”
“We write emails once a month, so not really.”
Translation: she had researched this location, and my guess on us getting stabbed was as good as mine.
“It’s right here,” she pointed to an office building lost to foreclosure and reclaimed by youth during the critically priced housing market. Twenty stories, straight black on all sides, and a lobby obscured by tinted window could make any guy excited.
I parked across the street. My heart raced (anticipation of being run through, after all) so fast that I didn’t notice Paloma getting out with us.
“That’s not a good idea,” I told her. “There’s going to be trouble inside. We can’t protect you. Hell, I probably can’t protect myself.”
“Henry’s right,” Carina said all of that in two words. “It’s safer for you in the car.”
“It’s not.”
…Paloma didn’t take herself away to happy world land?
“I have to stay with Henry Collins,” she recited like something off of a laundry list. “It’s what my brother would want.”
“Your brother’s not here,” I said.
Awkward silence. Way to go, Henry. Way to go.
“I have to stay,” she repeated. I looked to Carina for some form of back-up, and got a menacing grimace for my prior statement. Sheesh. Note to self; if kids ever get in the picture, don’t try reprimanding them with Carina as good-cop. For that matter, don’t make her bad-cop. She can be Commissioner Gordon or something.
We crossed the street and walked into the Tinted Lobby of Ultimate Doom.
At least, with the five guys my age in black button-downs and with hair slicked back like the sixties staring at me, that’s what it felt like. Carina and Paloma stood behind me, the former’s pulse quickening for likely the same reason mine was.
“What do you morons want?” The one with an acne problem asked. “You lost or something?”
I swallowed hard. Time to play hard or go home. Time to stand and deliver. Like that movie with the Calculus kids.
I remember the AP Calculus test. If I got a movie about my experience in comparison to the movie, it would be called ‘Sit Down and Shut Up’.
“I’m looking for Kenneth Broderick.”
“Broderick? Never heard of him.”
The other four guys started converging on us, slowly enough to be intimidating, yet quickly enough to be even more intimidating. Funny how that works, doesn’t it?
Carina’s hand tugged at my sleeve as she pressed against me. Wasn’t she supposed to be commandeering this misadventure?
Take two: “I know he works here. Tell him it’s important.”
“Look, buddy. If you’re looking for trouble—”
“Look, buddy, this is insane. Tell Kenneth that Henry Collins is in the lobby asking for him.”
The goons froze in their footsteps. The air hung in that phase between ‘head for the hills’ and ‘mission success’. I took slow breaths. Let them guess how impossibly eager I am to run back to Jeanette and call it a day.
The guard lowered his glasses a bit and gave me a longer once-over. Any longer and I would have felt violated.
“…Henry Collins.”
I nodded.
“…You do know what he’s gonna do to you, right?”
Another nod.
The guard shrugged and tossed his hands up in the air. It looked a lot like my reaction to the AP Calculus test. “It’s your funeral,” he said. “Third elevator on the right. Top floor.”
Of course Kenneth would take the dramatic room. Hell, I was surprised he wasn’t on the thirteenth floor.
I moved past the guards via my impersonation of The Flash, making damn sure that my legs didn’t come out from under me. Carina held on to my arm like crazy glue, and Paloma hovered enough to actually give her a presence.
If we made it out of here, this might actually be considered a bonding experience.
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Read the next installment here.
