FLIPKA

Chapter Ten

Why is it that young men always drive around with their dirty laundry piled in the back of their cars waiting to get lucky (and not in the way you’re thinking): lucky to stumble upon a motherly type who’ll happily bleach their dingy tees white again, while cooking them homemade macaroni and cheese? From the look of things in the truck, Cal and Luke hadn’t gotten lucky in quite some time. Dirty tee shirts, socks, and empty fast-food containers littered the cramped cab.

“You gents ever hear of a laundry basket?” I complained as they wrapped an old rag around my head (my blindfold) and stuffed me in back with the debris.

“Just shove Luke’s skivvies on the floor, lady—hey, what’s your name?” Cal asked.

“Lady Annabella DuPont La Rosa,” I said, “and I don’t touch men’s dirty skivvies.”

“Really?”

“Really.” 

“I don’t suppose you have any identification.”

“Nope. As I told you, I didn’t intentionally drop into your bat cave. My wallet and my car are back at Enev. If you’d like to drive me over there, I can show you my ID, and then we can go to your headquarters where for a cheese sandwich I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

“Nice try, Lady La Rosa, but no way.” 

“Think we should go ’cross the desert?” Luke asked. “Or the highway? Highway’s faster.”

“Highway,” I pleaded.

“We got a woman with a blindfold on in the back seat—what do think Einstein?”

“Desert.”

“Yup.”

“Can she take it?”

“Seems like a tough broad to me.”

“A tough broad with glass kidneys!” I interjected. “So I hope you brought along something for me to pee in, ’cause I’m not squatting behind a sagebrush.”

Cal was silent for a moment and then ordered: “Easy on the four-wheeling, Luke.” But that command either fell to deaf ears or was impossible considering the terrain we were crossing. Indeed, after a few miles of jolting bumps and turns, I felt exceedingly grateful to be pillowed by the sweaty rankness of young men’s dirty clothing. So grateful that I lay my head against a wadded towel, closed my eyes, and tried to assuage the irritation I felt at being waylaid by these two ignoramuses with a bit of deep-breathing and Transcendental Meditation. I tried to conjure a calming scene—a tranquil mountain lake or the endless sky. But alas, the only image offered by sleep-deprived cranial synapses was Bob Hope, mouthing “The world must never know” into the camera. Like a song you hate, spinning in an endless loop, a case of mental hiccups that can’t be relieved by any measure, “The world must never know.” Of course, the constant gibberish over the cowboy’s two-way radio did not help my attempts at oneness with the universe.

“Sebbeth odremin nalla far, emos—correctess?” 

Quiet. Then again: “Sebbeth odremin nalla far, emos—correctess?” 

“Hell, what’s he saying now, Cal?”

“Why ask me? I don’t even know what he’s saying when he’s talkin’ normal and not in the stupid code.”

The radio cackled on again: “Wholeo lefnear?”

“Christ Almighty. What do we say?”

“Let me handle this, Luke,” Cal replied. “Artemis: Fox and Birddog are coming in for a landing and they’re carrying trout.”