It Goes Without Saying — a collaborative adventure in dubious prose

Alice tried to duck behind the cucumber stand, but it was too late. They had seen her. "Drat," she muttered. There were two of them, but she knew there would be more nearby.

"Hello!" one of them called out with false good humor. "Fancy meeting you here!"

“Fancy this!” Damien returned, following the words with an overripe tomato. The produce projectile met its target with a splat that would have been far more satisfying had the target been dressed head to toe in white rather than black, but some days you had to take what you could get. “Quick!” he urged, grabbing Alice by the arm.

“How did they find me so quickly?” she wondered aloud as they ran. “Actually, how did you find me?” she questioned suspiciously.

“Never mind how,” Damien barked as he threw her into the passenger’s seat from the driver’s side, quickly following and starting the engine before the door was even closed behind him. “They did, and I did, and you should consider yourself lucky that I did.”

“You’re right,” she admitted reluctantly. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that you finding me counted as good luck.”

“But today it is,” Damien grinned. “Now,” he demanded, almost managing to hide the desperation in his voice, “do you still have the napkin?”

"Napkin?" She stared at him blankly. "What napkin?"

"The napkin," he ground. "The one with the formula."

Napkin. Napkin. Things were a little fuzzy, but she was pretty sure that between shots of Patrón somebody had been drawing on a cocktail napkin. It had seemed so important at the time... The motion of the DeSoto as it dodged and wove through the Denver suburbs was working magic to rekindle her hangover. Tequila. Napkins. A secret. She remembered a pair of brown eyes, framed by dark bangs. Red lips, sexy, forming the words, "Don't tell anyone."

"I'm not telling anyone," Alice obfuscated.

"Crap on a cracker," Damien spat. "I'm on your side.

"And what side is that?"

Damien hunkered over the steering wheel and squinted at the rear view mirror. "I'm on the side that's being followed," he grimaced.

"What!" "Who?" Alice fought the seatbelt, trying to turn and look.

"Stop!" Damien warned. "Use the vanity mirror," he seethed, "we don't want whoever it is to know we know."

At the last instant he eased the car in front of another in a left turn bay. The following car, some kind of SUV, was forced to stop in the straight ahead lane. Damien drummed his fingers nervously on the wheel. "Damn," he profaned, "I want to lose these idiots and yet I don't want to lose them."

Alice glanced at his reflection in the vanity mirror as she put on a fifth coat of lipstick - she needed to look above suspicion as she stared at the dark SUV through the mirror. "We need to know who what why and if they know about the napkin," She reflected, assuming his thoughts.

"So now you admit the napkin, huh?" he challenged. A green arrow displayed and Damien reluctantly turned onto the crossroad, wanting to know who the followers were but also wnating to get far away from danger. If that was what the SUV represented. He got his wish, sort of. A blaring horn - several horns in fact - and much blinking of lights, and the dark SUV was muscling its way into the left turn bay. "A double portion of crap on a cracker!" Damien sprayed into the windshield. He pressed the accelerator, giving up any pretense they didn't know they were being followed, and roared down Cedars of Lebanon Avenue.

~~

Sascha put the receiver down slowly, her face expressionless, a mask of good training and better Lancóme. She turned away from the desk and looked over at Fred, trying as always to make allowances for genius by ignoring the untucked shirt, uncombed hair and cloud of orange Cheetos dust that seemed to settle on everything he touched. “We may have a problem,” she murmured.

“What?! We can’t have a problem, we don’t have time to have a problem! Our problem is time, we don’t have other time for other problems!” he blathered.

“Calm yourself, Fred,” she purred as she turned back to her desk. “It’s only a small problem, and it may prove to not be a problem at all. Our little friend has just picked up some company.”

“Company? Company?!” he shrieked, knocking over an empty soda can, a jar of pencils and the Styrofoam Buddha he insisted he couldn’t work without. “Company is bad, Sascha, do you really need me to remind you of that? I knew this would happen, this or something just like this,” he prattled. “I knew it. You said it yourself, never trust a redhead, and then what do you do?”

“I trust a redhead?” she needled playfully.

“You trust a redhead!” he bellowed. “This isn’t funny, stop pretending that this is funny or even anything like funny!”

“It isn’t funny,” she agreed. “But, if Damien is still even half the driver he’s proven to be in the past, he should be able to lose them at the car wash, that’s always been one of his favorite tricks. I suppose,” she mused, “all we can do at the moment is wait and see what happens.”

~~~
Damien jinked the DeSoto around a slower vehicle, the SUV hung onto their path. "Any ideas?" he queried.

Alice gave up trying to be sneaky and twisted in her seat to stare at the pursuers. She frowned with experience, "Sometimes when that greasy guy at the bar just won't take the hint of a cold shoulder, you have to confront." Her visage became firm, "Stop the car."

Damien hesitated, "I don't know..."

Alice was busy rifling the glove box for anything that looked weapon-ish. "Come on manly man, " she sarcastigated, "Let's show our friends our balls." Damien's eyebrows lifted. He strained to not let his eyes slide towards her crotch. He starred straigh ahead. "Besides," she continued, "what better place then a crowded suburban street?"

Damien became resolute and skidded the car to a stop; well before the next traffic light. The horns of traffic were just starting but Alice was already out of the car, standing in front of her open door, a voice far larger than a five foot two pixie oughta possess, yelling, "What! What are YOU doing! Why are you following us!"

Damien shrugged out of his side of the car, and glanced embarrassedly at a passing car, the occupants smiling at the sudden street show. Then he put on his game face and glared determinedly at the SUV stopped on their bumper. Damien drew himself up tall and tried to roll his shoulders like a gangster. He stared as best he could through the glare of the SUV's windshield. He couldn't help feeling that Alice, hands on hips, was more effective.

The passenger door of the SUV eased open. Something broad, something in a stylish, but taut, light gray suit, smoothed out of the SUV. Like a giant BM on oily laxatives. One of the biggest men Damien had ever seen righted hisself onto the roadway. Traffic seemd to stagger as it took in what Damien was taking in. Alice, on the other hand just set her mouth even harder than it already was, and glared even more mighty-mightish.

The gigantor cracked a surprisingly endearing smile, and gloated, "Hey there little lady. I believe you dropped this back at the cucumber stand."

Alice dropped her right hand to her left wrist, with the hope of finding evidence contrary to what her eyes were insisting was true. “No,” she gasped, as her hand found only bare skin.

“What?” Damien hissed.

“That’s my charm bracelet,” she bemoaned. “I felt it catch when we ran past the eggplant, I didn’t realize it had come off.”

“So what?” he fumed, “what does that have to do with anything?”

“You don’t understand,” Alice wailed. “The key to the locker is on that bracelet.”

“The key…” Damien gurgled. “Oh no, don’t tell me…”

“Yes. The medallion is in the locker. The key to the locker is on the bracelet. And the napkin is…” she trailed off hopelessly.

“Useless without the medallion,” Damien completed.

“Figured that out all on your own, did you, big guy?” the mountain Armani never meant to dress smirked as he walked slowly toward them. “So it would seem,” he conversated lightly, “that we have something to talk about after all. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think this is the best place to do that sort of talking. Let’s take a little drive, shall we?”

 

Damien was having difficulty seeing the road in front of the car. Visibility was never that good in the old car, but Mount Armani was filling the entire back seat, compressing the rear suspension so that the DeSoto's massive nose poked up in the air, obliterating the horizon. He adjusted the side mirror to get a good view of the SUV still following them. "Turn left up here," Mt. Armani instructed.

"Right," Damien acknowledged.

"No, left."

"What?"

"Turn left!" Mt. Armani roared. "Right now!"

"Right, now?" Damien clarified.

Mt. Armani responded by pulling a chrome-plated pistol from beneath his vast silk jacket and holding it against Damien's head. "I grow weary of your humor," he rumbled with a voice like an alpine avalanche.

"Right," Damien acquiesced, and turned left. There was a sound of squealing brakes from somewhere in front of them, and horns blaring. In all the excitement, the light had changed. From somewhere behind he heard the sound of a siren. "Umm.." he began, "I think we have a problem."
~~~
"Umm.." Fred simultaneolyzed, "I think we have a problem." He was staring at an enhanced Blackberry; it was tracking Damien with GPS enabled coat button. "We..errr...they... are nowhere near the car wash and now there's authorities involved." He glumly watched a computer screen logging EMS radio traffic.

Sascha peered over his shoulder. "Perhaps this is not a bad thing." She pondered. "I am fairly certain they are under duress."

"If we lose that cocktail napkin, our goose is cooked!" Fred bleated.

"We need to be in contingency mode," Sascha planned. "What can we do if the police get involved and how do we take advantage? Think think." Her brow furrowed. Fred ripped open a new bag of cheetos. Stress was high. But Fred was - sometimes - sheer genius when stress was high and junk food plentiful.
~~~
Damien looked at Mt. Armani, and baited a hook: "Look, we both want that napkin, neither of us wants the fuzz involved and I know a quaint little carwash..."

Two blank stares being a much more positive response than he had actually been expecting, Damien went on. “If we can get to the car wash, I can lose the cops. And if we can get around the school bus, I can get to the car wash. We just need to distract them, we need a distraction.”

“We are the distraction, you moron!” Alice cracked.

“Not we, Alice,” Damien retaliated, “you.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“Yes, you. Have you forgotten,” Damien chided, “that your kid is supposed to be on that bus? Your kid that isn’t on that bus because your crazy ex-husband took him out of school without your knowledge? Doesn’t that upset you, enrage you, in fact? Aren’t you just about mad enough to kill at this point?” he improvised.

“Oh! Yes! That kid on that bus,” Alice elucidated.

“She gets out of the car?” Mt. Armani incertitized.

“Yes. She gets out, we move on. We meet up later. A missing kid is going to be more of a concern than an almost accident,” Damien asserted.

“But she has the napkin,” Mt. Armani balked.

“But you’ll still have me,” Damien offered.

“I hardly think that’s a fair exchange” Mt. Armani dubiositated, “but we don’t have a lot of choices here. All right, Alice,” he settled, “out of the car.”

~~~

“The broad’s getting out of the car,” Don bewilderated.

“What?” Blake started, barely avoiding spilling his coffee.

“The broad’s getting out of the car,” Don recapitulated.

“I heard you the first time,” Blake rebuked.

“Then why’d you say ‘what’?” Don muddled.

“Does your mother know you’re an idiot?” Blake jeered.

“NO,” Don scoffed.

Blake drummed his fingers on the lid of his coffee cup, trying to think through this latest turn of events.

“So, if she’s out of the car, then, you know, she’s not in the car anymore,” Don obviousated.

“What?” Blake disbeliefed.

“If she’s out of the ca- ”

“I HEARD YOU!”

“Ok, but you said ‘what’.” Don grumbled.

“Don, something you have to understand. Sometimes, when people say ‘what’, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t hear you. They’re merely expressing their astonishment at the fact that anyone, not just you but anyone, usually you but not always you, could be quite as stupid as you are being when you say whatever thing it is that they can’t believe you just said. Do you get that?” Blake inquisitated.

“Ok…” Don accepted. “But I’m just saying, if we’re in a car and she isn’t, she’s easier to follow, that’s all.”

“All right,” Blake allowed, “I’ll give you partial credit for that. The only catch is, we can’t be sure that she’s the one we need to be following. Harold could have gotten the napkin from her by now, we don’t know.”

“But Sascha said stay with the girl,” Don insisted.

“Because the girl had the napkin. Sascha meant stay with the napkin,” Blake interpreted.

“Ok… but she said stay with the girl. I think she meant stay with the girl, that’s what she said, she wouldn’t have said ‘stay with the girl’ if she didn’t want us to stay with the girl, so I think we should stay with the girl,” Don circumlocuted.

“Don, you don’t think anything. Because you don’t think. I think. You drive, I think. You see how that works? We have clearly defined roles here, chosen for us based on our abilities. We’re staying with the car,” Blake decided.

“But-” Don interjected.

“Shh… Hush, Don. Shut up. Right now. No more ‘buts’, no more anything. We stay with the car.” Blake reiterated.

“You really think so?” Don doubtified.

“Yes, Don, I really think so. And do you know what else I think?” Blake added.

“What?”

“I think by now, your mother probably knows.”

~~~
Alice watched Damien pull away, then turned and watched the approaching police car, its sirens blaring.
Make or break time. She could tell the police car was not slowing, its engine still revved, lights flashing, its objective still clearly the departing DeSoto. She needed to make a scene - and fast! The police had (had!) to be distracted. The school bus was grinding its gears. Alice only had a moment to run up to the bus and start screaming a scene. Her hand in her skirt pocket, Alice caressed the napkin safely tucked in said pocket. Then she looked again at the school bus, contemplating. Damien had been nicely creative: thinking up the hysterical, "my baby is missing from that bus, and my ex is a louse, and ohhhh help me help me;" his idea replayed in her thoughts. She stuck her tongue in her cheek and made her monkey face. Then she quietly turned away from the ensuing debacle and lost herself in the crowd of rubberneckers. The police raced past the school bus stopped the DeSoto. Boy was Damien ( if that was truly his name) going to be mad. Now to skedaddle down this sidestreet and call a cab company.

The door chimed as Alice entered the flower shop. "May I borrow your phone?" she addressesd the clerk. Ten minutes later she banged open the taxi door and commanded "Denver International, and make it fast!" She was fairly confident that Damien, and the mystery SUV, and whoever else was in on this pickle circus, would be tied up for a long time with the police. And she had one of them thar ace-up-the-sleeve: everyone assumed locker equals bus station; too many film noirs (nwarrrrrres her mind derisively rolled). But that medallion was in an airport locker. At the airport. Along with airplanes, and flights. And ESCAPE! Alice settled back into the bench seat and pondered how she would get a locker open without a key. Time for some playacting she mused as she watched the Denver skyline through the taxi window.
~~~
"Sir, I'm not going to tell you again, Step... Away... From... THE CAR," exasped the cop.

Mt. Armani, aka Daro the Belarus, just stared at the cop. He was standing in the open door of the DeSoto, the bulge of the Sig Saur 9mm pressed away from view. Damien shrugged embarrassedly at the two cops and shifted his upraised arms up even higher. "Come on man. Just do as he says," Damien implored at Daro, then looked at the officers, "He and I just met," he explained nervously. "Please, we just want to help," he helped, and looked back at the big Belarus, "Right?"

Damien would've been spread eagled over the car, suffering a pat down, except that all-eyes-were-on-big-man. His helpful comments were like dust in the wind; nobody was listening. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny, angry voice was screaming, "Where the f--- is Alice. I had a plan. She didn't do the plan. The ALL IMPORTANT plan. This is bad. Very very bad."

"Station, this is car 54 again," cop number two miked into his radio, "we will need that back-up after all," he looked uncertainly at the giant, "We've got a 10-23 on our hands. Over."

The underhood loudspeaker in the cruiser squawked back, "Ten-four, 54, units 48 and 31 are in route. Over."

Cop number two stared hard at the "10-23" with his raybans, one hand on his still holstered .45, the other hand pointing at Mt. Armani, "Sir, you've been advised to step away from the car. Please step away from the car, or we WILL arrest you." Daro the Belarus did not budge.

A street away, the sirens squawk-stuttered in that way police do. The cavalry was close.

"Come on man. Let's just do like the nice poh-leeze man says, okay?" Damien repeated. Now what, he thought. Alice was MIA, and Mt. Armanis was fixin' to get them both thrown in the hoosegow. The car wash might-as-well've been a million miles away.

Les Gendarmes arreevayed. Damien's eyes bobbled from side to side as he tried to take in all of the players. A sweat broke out on the sweat already on his head. Four police ran up. With teh newly arrived backup, cop number one tried again, "Sir. Put your arms up. Step away from the car. Or we WILL restrain you and place you under arrest." One of the new cops raised a Taser, and stepped into postion. The tableau was frozen in place, micro-seconds passed like an eternity.

"Hit 'im" decreed cop number one, and number five fired the Taser. Daro the Belarus quivered oh so slightly, and the 6 cops started forward, confident in their technology. But they quickly stuttered to a stop as Mt. Armani didn't fall to the ground like he was supposed to. Dismayed, number five rearmed the Taser, and fired a second set of darts. Daro spazzed a bit more this time, and then methodically reached up a bear paw, and ripped the wired little darts out of his $1000.00 suit.

"Holy Sh--" Damien awed. The cops were thinking the same thing, but remained silent, working their training. Cops four and five pulled out their guvmint-strength-mere-citizens-only-wished-they-could-own Mace, and advanced on the human monster truck. Meanwhile number 5 sent - yet - a third set of darts into the big boy. The burl from the Urals finally emitted something from his mouth. It sounded something like, "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Then armegeddon broke loose.
Damien watched in amazement as Mt. Armani tore the door off of the car and hurled it at the cops. Two went down, while two others began frantically yelling into their radios. Cop number two drew his pistol only to have it batted away by the red-faced bear. The Belrus again calumned, "Arrrrrrrrrrrrr" and grabbed a blue uniformed pipsqueak. The unlucky cop bounced off of the DeSoto and crumpled to the ground. This left three cops standing - all guns drawn - and Mt. Armani drawing his 9mm as well. Damien dropped to the pavement like a sack of rotten, buggy cucumbers. More pops than a chinese new year rattled off as the lead started to fly, and the clink of shell casings rained onto the pavement like brass snow.

~~~

Alice waited until the cab was out of sight, making sure that no one had managed to follow her before ducking into the airport. She didn’t think it likely that she had been followed, but too many unlikely things had occurred in the past 48 hours for her to be willing to take anything for granted.

She almost felt bad about the situation Damien had been left to deal with, but only almost. No one had invited him, no one had held a gun to his head… Ok, someone had, but only after he had shoved his way into something that shouldn’t have been any of his business in the first place. “And that,” she self-righteousated under her breath, “is what you get for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

She hurried toward the lockers, pondering possible destinations. The reasonable thing to do, of course, would be to purchase three or four tickets to different places and then just jump on a plane at random, that’s how they always did it in the movies, but unfortunately Alice didn’t have that kind of plastic at her disposal. Those characters always seemed to have dead rich parents or something equally convenient, they never seemed to have to worry about money when they were trying to dodge bad guys. Alice’s parents were alive and kicking and comfortably well-off, and while she didn’t want that to change any time soon, some options had to be found, and quickly. “Get to the locker first,” she reprimanded herself, “something will figure itself out.”

Something did indeed figure itself out, and while it did happen as quickly as she had hoped something would, it wasn’t quite the option she would have chosen. There between her and the lockers stood a figure dressed head to toe in skin-tight, low-cut, high-heeled black, a figure she had hoped to never see again.

“Hello, Alice,” Sascha cooed. “Did you forget something?”

“Sascha,” Alice deadpanned. “What a surprise.”

Sascha sighed heavily. “I’m so tired of being unederestimated. Really, dear, right now I’m just saving us both the expense of buying plane tickets. You did a nice job getting rid of all those other people, the amateurs, but those little games won’t work with me. Poor Daro.”

“Who?”

“The large gentleman you left to the tender care of the police. He doesn’t respond well to authority. May I buy you a drink?”

Alice was caught offguard by the non sequitur. “Now?” she flubbered.

Sascha closed the distance between them, smiling with blood-red lips. “Why not? When it comes to booze, there’s no time like the present. Besides,” she ammended, “There aren’t any flights to anywhere interesting for quite a while. Let’s just chat for a while. With alcohol.”

“I don’t think I have anything to chat with you about,” Alice catted.

“Aw,” Sascha pouted. “There’s no need to be like that. We can help each other.”

“I don’t need help like that.”

“Don’t you? What if I told you that the Terminal D lockers had been removed? Homeland security.”

“What? Where’d they go?”

Sascha grinned and took Alice’s arm. “Well,” she ironed, “it appears we do have something to talk about after all.” Sascha steered Alice toward a nearby bar, empty at this time of the morning. “Only please, no more of those horrible sweet green drinks.”

“I like those!”

“Alice, Alice, Alice,” Sascha triplicated, “It’s time you learned to drink like a grownup.”

~~~

“This don’t look too good,” Don understated.

Under normal circumstances, Blake would prefer to gargle dead parakeets and flaming razor blades before agreeing with any opinion of Don’s, but these were far from normal circumstances. Nothing about this job was normal. Don told it like it was. This did indeed not look too good. “No, it doesn’t,” he concurred.

“So what now?”

Blake was staring at his cell phone, not wanting to make the only call that was left to be made, praying for a miracle. After a few minutes, he was forced to accept that the miracle elves were obviously busy elsewhere, and dialed. “We lost the girl. It’s a long story. I know. I know. No, we lost him too. That’s also a long story. We’re on our way back,” he closed.

“She was pissed, huh?” Don jabbed.

“Head back, Fred is waiting, Sascha has an idea where the girl is,” Blake briefed.

“She said stay with the girl, huh?”

Blake closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat, waiting for the day and the month and the whole job to be over.

“Whose mom’s an idiot now, huh?” Don smugged.

“Drive the car, Don,” Blake succincted. “Just drive the car.”

~~

Sascha strode through the airport with nothing but her instincts to lead her. They had proven to be right more often than not in the past, and this was the most likely of the few places the girl could have gone, but until she found Alice, and the napkin, they were all in more danger than even she cared to admit.

After twenty minutes of walking and trying to look as though she wasn’t looking for anyone, she finally spotted them. Stifling a sigh of relief and forcing herself to look calm, she walked slowly to the table where Alice was sitting, just barely managing to conceal her amusement at the shocked expression on the poor girl’s face.

“But- you- this- you’re-” Alice garbled.

Sascha threw her an understanding glance before turning her attention to the other woman at the table. “You know, I tolerated you borrowing my clothes, my earrings, even my boyfriends, but borrowing my name and my accomplices is really a bit much, don’t you think, darling?” she scathed.

“There’s two of you?” Alice gawked.

“Unfortunately, yes, but I’m prettier,” Sascha enmitized. “Alice, since she obviously can’t be bothered to do it properly herself, please allow me to introduce Serafina.”