Ciao Y'all!

Prologue: The Handoff

“Con. Con? Con!”

At the last shout from the heavily armored Soldier in the front passenger seat – a shout flavored with more than a hint of panic – the similarly armored driver shook himself to life and slammed on the brakes. That brought the Humvee to a gut-wrenching halt about an eyelash from the grubby little girl playing in the pockmarked street. In the side view mirrors, it was evident how the lead vehicle’s sudden stop had brought the whole military convoy to a shuddering halt.

The dusty village around them shimmered in the brutal heat. Trash blew through streets and alleys, laundry billowed from clotheslines stretched between battered buildings, and humble dwellings exposed sun-brick in the spots where the mud plaster had failed. Aside from the lone child in the middle of the road, there were no locals in sight; the place seemed eerily deserted.

Soldiers in the Humvee all sweated under helmets and bulky armored vests worn over their US Army fatgues. The big, brawny, Black man in the front passenger seat wore a yellow Second Lieutenant’s bar, and the nameplate on his breast read “ADAMSON”.

“Sergeant Con Rồng!” he shouted at the driver. “You taking a snooze on us, Soldier? ‘Cuz you almost hit that kid!”

“Sorry Lieutenant,” Con muttered, “Lot on my mind lately. Sir.”

“Told you Chinamen can’t drive, EL Tee,” sneered another Soldier, one of the two in the back seat.

“And I told you I’m not Chinese, you racist pig,” the driver snapped. “It’s Vietnamese. Vietnamese American if you care, and if I hear any more disrespect from you, I’m shoving this steering wheel straight down your redneck hillbilly throat!”

The now red-faced Soldier who’d insulted Con opened his mouth for a retort, but the Lieutenant cut him off.

“Jackson! I warned you. You, me, and the Commander are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting after this mission. Con, what’s going on? This ain’t you, man.”

“It’s my daughter, sir,” Con groaned, his voice strained by frustration. “Back home, they just snagged my wife for her third DUI. Our baby girl was in the car, so they... they just took her. They jacked my kid!”

“Surely your parents…”

“Come on El Tee, you know my old man hates my wife cuz she’s Hmong. And that means he hates our daughter, too. There’s no way my father is going to let Mom take our baby to live with them. As for my wife’s family, they’re all in Laos. My baby girl is a ward of the state!”

“Wow Con that’s… terrible!” gasped Adamson, “God knows we need you here, badly. But surely the Army won’t deny you Emergency Leave to take care of that situation.”

“It’s just…” Con began, but the Soldier in the back seat next to Jackson cut him off.

“With all due respect sir,” he warned, “We’ve stopped dead in the middle of the street with the whole column stacked behind us. Can we do this later? Or at least talk and drive?”

“Sure thing, Private,” Lieutenant Adamson sniffed, shrugging off the tactful rebuke, “But we can’t have grand theft auto here running over peoples’ kids. Jackson, get up here and relieve Con Rồng as driver.”

“Hell yeah,” Jackson crowed, opening his bulky door with a metallic squeal.

“Sorry sir,” muttered Con and sighed as he noisily unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the thick, heavily armored door. As the driver stepped out of the vehicle, scarlet gore exploded from his thigh. Lieutenant Adamson remembered hearing the shot and the hideous buzz of the sniper’s bullet ending in a wet, fleshy smack! only after it had done its terrible work.

“Con--!” cried Adamson, horrified as the shrieking young Soldier collapsed into the dust, staining it reddish-brown with his gushing life.

Popping gunshots mixed with the chatter of automatic fire broke out from both sides of the column. Pings and ricochet whines splashed sparks from armored vehicles. A huge geyser of earth fountained out of the road in front of Adamson's Humvee with a thunderous roar – the girl had missed her mark, as the improvised explosive device was obviously meant to go off under and not in front of the lead vehcile. Speaking of the girl... well, she was gone.

“Contact... everywhere!" shouted Adamson into the radio handset, "Return fire!"

Menwhile Jackson, scorning the bulletstorm raging about him, picked up Con and heaved him bodily into the back seat, slamming the door shut after him.

The Lieutenant’s order to return fire had proved unnecessary – at first contact, his Soldiers spewed automatic rifle and heavy machinegun rounds at any telltale flashes of enemy fire. Jackson, grunting from a bullet loudly smacking his armor, landed heavily in the driver’s seat as he slammed shut the door.

“Sarge!” Adamson yelled. “Get us the hell out of here!”

“Yeah, no kidding!” hollered Jackson, and the Humvee lurched forward, allowing the rest of the lumbering convoy to follow them out of the kill zone.

“Dave!” Con mewled from the back seat, his plaintive cry audible over the pinging and buzzing incoming fire. “Davy!”

“What is it, Phuoc?” asked Dave Adamson desperately, twisting around to look the young Soldier in the eye.

“Take care of her,” Phuoc Con Rồng begged. “My little girl has no one. Take care of her, Davy. Please.”

“You’ll take care of her yourself, Phuoc; we’re getting you to a medic! We’ll have you back home and taking care of your daughter in no time. Just hang on, man. You’re going to be fine!”

Chapter I: The Mountain of Doom

(17 years later)

“Wake up, Lye.”

Delilah awoke with a cry, flailing her arms. She grabbed her cotton-stuffed head with both hands, groaning as she leaned forward against a gently yielding seatbelt. The deep, idling rumble of a powerful sports car engine threatened to lull her back to sleep.

“’Quit being such a downer’ they said,” she moaned from the front passenger’s seat. “’Try at least one beer, Lilah. Don't be afraid to try new things. Come on church girl, one beer won’t hurt ya.’”

“Well, you definitely had more than one,” spoke the huge, strapping jock seated next to her behind the steering wheel. “And if you want another beer, I got more in the back.”

“Thanks for driving me home, Sam,” Delilah sighed. “But please don’t tell my Dad...”

Her speech stopped dead as she awoke fully.

“This isn’t my house!” she shouted, glancing about. “Where are we?”

“Top of Mount Doom baby!” crowed Sam from the driver’s seat, barely visible in the darkened car, “At Fluke’s Point!” except that’s not quite what he said.

Delilah looked through the windshield, past the warning sign and guardrail and then far down to where, ‘neath the star-pricked dome of night, the town glittered like diamonds spilled out onto black velvet. They were at Fluke’s Point alright, but many of the locals, especially the teenagers, had altered the official name of the place to a far more carnal phrase.

“Sam, I don’t want to be here. Not with you, not with anyone.”

“Lilah…” Sam protested, reaching for her, but she shrank away.

“You won't get anywhere with me by lying, Sam,” Delilah insisted. “If there’s going to be any future for us, you need to take me home like you promised. Now!”

“Oh, don’t be like that, China doll…”

“I’m not a doll, and I’m not Chinese. I’m Vietnamese. Half Hmong, if you care.”

“Girl, what difference does it make? Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Philipese…”

“Filipino.”

“Come on, baby!” Sam purred, and his right hand began to caress the girl in a very presumptive manner. “What’s the rush? You look super-hot tonight…”

Seizing the offending hand in an eagle’s claw, Delilah dug her fingernails into the jock’s muscular flesh as she pried it away.

“Give it up, Sam!” she snarled. “It’s almost midnight; my Dad’s gonna kill us as it is. That reminds me – Daddy can't see me dressed like this. So don’t try to drop me off at the front door. Take me about a block from my house and let me walk home, okay?”

“Come on Lye, you can’t lead me on all night and not deliver. Play fair or you’ll be walking all the way home, not just a block.”

If looks could kill, Delilah’s venomous glare would have incinerated Sam.

“We are so totally over," she seethed. "Do not ever speak to me again!”

With that, she flung open the passenger’s side door and departed in a huff.

She returned shortly to the driver’s side window and asked, “Where’s my phone, Sam?”

“Walking home means walking home, not calling somebody for a lift,” Sam gloated, and held up the stolen device as he smirked in triumph. “You know what you have to do to get your phone back.”

“This is a national forest!” Delilah complained. “You would make me walk home all the way from Fuh – Fluke’s Point? It’s at least a mile from here to the nearest house!”

“Actually, it’s 1.4 miles to the nearest house. I know. I checked. And it’s not even a real house, Lilah; it’s a seasonal vacation cabin. You’ll have to walk 5.2 miles from here to the nearest inhabited neighborhood, and with all the break-ins and robberies they’ve had lately, I don’t think they’ll like some drunk chick banging on their door after midnight. You could catch a bullet to the face Lye, and neither of us wants that.”

“It’s the woods, Sam,” Delilah pouted. “It’s dark, and cold, and the middle of nowhere. And last year a jogger got killed by a freakin’ mountain lion up here.”

“Everyone says you're waiting for the One Ring,” chided Sam, “So I'll tell you what, Miss Doom. If you’re so worried about your precious virginity, keep it. We’ll just see if you can use that big mouth of yours for something other than preaching at people.”

Delilah inhaled sharply and stood up straight, feeling herself fulminate with rage. But then she coolly, calmly walked around and opened the sleek, 2-door sportscar on the passenger side.

“Alright baby,” crowed Sam in anticipation. “That’s more like it!”

The girl reached into the car, grabbed a six pack of beer from the floor of the back seat, and then sprinted away.

Sam swore loudly as he threw open the driver’s side door and gave chase. Delilah was trying to run on a gravel dirt road in stilleto heels, so the football jock in sneakers easily gained on her. With a cry, the girl slung the sloshing cans away with a mighty softball pitcher’s underhand throw. Sam ran past to collect his prize.

“Crazy gook witch!” the boy brayed, picking up the dented cans, “I paid for these, you…”

Sam's voice trailed off as he turned to see Delilah racing back to his still running car. He charged after her again. She, hearing the noise of his approach, shouted wordlessly, kicked off her high heels, and then picked up speed, heedless of the pain of a gravel road on her tender bare feet. Knowing how to drive stick, she leapt behind the wheel of Sam’s vintage muscle car and zoomed back out of the parking space till the front end pointed down the road. Now she gunned the engine, popped the clutch, and, tires spinning against the paved parking lot, she burned sick rubber with a harrowing squeal. The wheels were still spinning when she reached the dirt road, throwing a spray of gravel into the face of her pursuer as she saluted him with the middle finger.

“God, please forgive me for flipping off Sam,” Delilah muttered as she roared down the road. “Oh, and for stealing his car. I’ll give it back, Lord. I promise. I just want to go home.”

*

“Carol baby, you look hot in that swimsuit,” the large, middle-aged Black man in swimming trunks purred, grinning at an overweight woman in a one-piece bathing suit as she stood in their bedroom, trying to stuff even more clothes into a transparent plastic bag that was already full.

The woman grinned sheepishly, answering, “You’re such a liar, Dave. I wouldn't look good to you unless I spoke with a crazy Italian accent and walked around spamming 'Ciao y'all!' at every opportunity."

“Oh, come on Carol, I’m serious,” Dave protested. “I’ve loved you since the first day we met in elementary school. You know I want you more now than the day we married."

“You want Mommy to do what?” asked a small child who toddled into the room. When the little girl saw how her parents were dressed, her eyes flew open wide.

“Mommy and Daddy are in their swimming clothes!” she shouted, squealing with glee. “Dave and Carol are coming! Dave and Carol are coming!”

The girl rushed back out of the master bedroom, repeating the good news as she scampered down the hall. Squeals and shouts of delight answered her joyful report.

“We’ve been planning this for weeks,” smiled Carol. “We do this every year.”

“They don’t listen,” Dave added, and he walked up behind his wife and began to caress her arms as he planted tender kisses on her neck and shoulders. “Those three are too excited about eating whatever they please and staying up as late as they want for the next two weeks.”

“Yes,” Carol groaned, moaning softly as her husband nuzzled her neck. “Dave and Carol are worse than grandparents when it comes to spoiling the children. Oh, Lilah! Have you...”

“Yes,” her husband answered. “But I’ll tell her again, just before her friend gets here to pick her up. As a matter of fact, I’ll go do that right now.”

Dave left his wife Carol in the master bedroom and made his way down the hall to knock on a closed door.

“Lilah?” he asked. “We need to talk.”

“I know what you're going to say Dad,” sighed a teenage girl with just the right touch of whiny angst to keep from sounding too disrespectful. “And I’ve already agreed to it.”

“I don’t require your agreement, young lady. Are you decent or not?”

“Whatever, Dad. Come on in.”

The girl’s father opened the door and was pleased to see a packed suitcase on the bed, next to where she was seated.

“Ashley just called,” Delilah told him, “She’s on her way.”

“Excellent,” declared Dave. “But just so we’re absolutely clear, you are to stay where I send you the entire time your mother and I are away. I don’t want you anywhere near this house or Dave till we return. Is that clear?”

“Sure thing, Dad.”

“Really?”

“Yes Dad, I’ll stay away from Dave, I promise. I don’t like him anyway; he looks just like you, duh. That would be like, so gross!”

“I just want to make sure you heard me, because none of what I said sounds remotely like ‘sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to go to a sex party with drugs and alcohol’.”

“Ah!” cried Delilah, groaning aloud, getting up from her bed and rolling her eyes. “Are you still on that? And I want my car back, yeah?”

“No Delilah Rahab Adamson, you absolutely may not have the car back,” David Adamson insisted. “Not when I had to go bail your… butt out of jail at two o’clock in the morning because you chose to sneak out dressed like a hooker to go to some drunken, drug addled orgy I specifically told you not to go to!”

“Oh, awesome performance Dad!" the girl sneered, clapping her hands in mock applause, "You want a freaking tiara?”

“Lilah –! “

“Stop being so dramatic! It was just a plain old normal house party like normal kids have. Seriously, I’m sick to death of all this church stuff twenty-four seven. Why can’t I be a normal kid for once, huh?”

“Lilah…”

“Come on, I need the car, Dad. Please!”

“Lilah, I don’t know if you’ll ever get that car back. And just for the record, your mother and I paid for that car; we just allow you to drive it. Or we did, till you got popped for DUI.”

“Great!” Delilah pouted. “I get grounded while that loser Sampson Hawke walks around free as a bird after practically raping me.”

“I’m afraid there’s no punishment for Practical Rape,” snipped Dave. “But they can definitely lock you up for Grand Theft Auto and Driving Under the Influence. Your mother and I had to spend all our savings on a lawyer and legal fees to keep your snotty little hide out of prison. Really Lye, you should be thanking God for that every day!”

“Sam held me against my will; I escaped. Can’t we charge him for kidnapping?”

“He was charged with Kidnapping! The DA dropped those charges in exchange for you walking away with a slap on the wrist, Lilah. You know this.”

"Dad..."

"In the eyes of the law, you driving a stolen car while drunk was self-evident. Meanwhile, any evidence that the rightful owner almost raped you was rather more nebulous!"

“It’s not fair Daddy,” the girl moaned, deflated. “Sam tried to rape me, and then everybody makes me out to be the bad guy! Like I was asking for it! It's so unfair...”

Here she began to choke up and, hugging herself, she staggered toward the man who’d adopted her, right into his outstretched arms.

“It’s okay baby girl,” Daddy replied, tightly enfolding his beloved daughter. “You got a couple of misdemeanors on your record that will disappear when you turn 18. In exchange, you didn’t hurt anyone while driving drunk, you successfully defended yourself, and you didn't pass out and get... we'll just leave it at that. As far as I’m concerned, we are ahead of the game, Lilah. Way ahead.”

*

"Why'd you even bring this stupid thing?" Dave griped as he followed Carol, hefting his wife's transparent plastic suitcase from the car to a cabin shaded neath the swaying pines of a cool alpine forest. "Everything we could possibly need for the trip is stored here in the vacation cabin."

"Obviously not, or I wouldn't be taking it," Carol retorted.

"Oh, I'm the one taking it," Dave grumped as he dropped the bag at the cabin door. "And I'm the sucker who's going to have to strap this monstrosity on my back and carry it underwater!"

"Speaking of water, look over there by the side of the cabin. I think we have a serious drainage issue, honey."

The man glanced over at the large mud puddle his wife had noticed.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Every time it rains, even a little, we get Lake Superior over there. I know landscaping is not his thing, but maybe Larry can fix that."

In the meantime, Dave opened a zipper closed pocket on his swim trunks and fished out a set of keys, one of which he stuck into the lock.

Husband and wife, both in their swimsuits, looked about furtively as Dave pulled the door open with both hands. They did not want anyone to see that the door was significantly thicker than a normal cabin door, or that it was so heavy a man needed two hands to haul it open.

The couple entered a little living room and pulled the door closed behind them, whereupon Dave locked it. The interior was oppressively hot, even on an early mountain morning, because the closed windows were inch-thick bulletproof glass, and the wooden walls had all been replaced with hardened steel painted and decorated to look like the original wood. The Adamsons began to sweat profusely, but Carol strode over to the air conditioner and turned it on. There was a hum as blessedly cool breezes began to freshen the place.

They opened the door to the cabin's single bedroom, which required a separate key. A small bathroom with a shower was on the right, visible through its opened door. On the left was a sizable closet, which required a third key to open. Four bathrobes hung in the closet, but its floor was covered with shoes. Now Dave got down on his hands and knees, raked all the shoes out into the bedroom, and put his eye to a peephole in the closet floor. There was a loud beep.

"Your turn, honey," Dave announced, stepping back to make room for his wife. Carol got down and presented her eye to the peephole as well.

There was another beep, and then a mechanical grinding sound as a panel in the bottom of the closet slid open, revealing descending stairs. The couple started for the stairs, but another couple met them coming up. Dave and Carol stepped back to allow the newcomers to enter the bedroom.

It was another Dave and Carol, and they were both sopping wet. Other Dave wore swim trunks identical to the pair Dave wore, but Other Carol wore a bikini, not a one-piece like Carol. Other Carol's well-sculpted, atheltic anatomy was considerably thinner than her overweight counterpart. Meanwhile, Other Dave wore an earring, unlike Dave. The Other Dave was also carrying a sealed waterproof transparent bag overstuffed with women’s clothing.

"Ciao y'all!" the Daves hailed in unison.

Everyone had a little laugh at that. After the brief change of pleasantries, Dave asked,

"You got to take the earring out of your ear, man. You'll give me a bad reputation."

"Ah, I forgot how ignorant your church is," smirked Un-Dave, taking the earring out. "Can my girlfriend wear pants, or will she be stoned?"

"Stop it!" snapped Not-Carol, the one in the bikini. "Dave and Carol are our friends. They're doing us a favor."

"I've been working out every day, Dave," Dave reported. "Really hard."

"He's right," Carol added, nodding. "He lost 25 pounds this year and really bulked up."

"Ah, don't sweat it," Un-Dave sniffed dismissively. "As you can see, I let myself go. The lead role for my latest film requires a more 'everyman' body shape rather than the physically fit action hero in most of my other movies. It appears that between your workouts and my laziness, we seem to have met in the middle."

"As usual, we have taken two weeks off from our jobs," Carol explained. "This allows you to take our kids away on vacation, which lets you avoid contact with our friends, family, and coworkers, before they discover you're not actually… us. Of course, the kids already know."

"Yes," Dave added, "And they can't wait for you two to spoil them!"

"Oh!" Not-Carol shouted, quite literally jumping up and down in excitement. "I can't wait to see those precious little children again. They look just like me!"

"The guys in Hollywood are used to me getting religion every now and then," Un-Dave purred with a sly smile, "and no one is surprised when it doesn't last."

"As for you Carol," said Not-Carol, "You have an all-expenses paid trip to the most exclusive spa in upstate New York. That should keep you away from my family and friends, and of course, far from my husband!"

"Don't you worry," Carol assured her, "I have no intention of cheating on my Dave!"

"I don't have a wife," Un-Dave announced with considerable pride. "I'm Dave 'the Crave' Adamson baby, international superstar! As me, you can be with literally any woman you want, brother!"

"But I already have the woman I want," Dave replied.

"Here's what I don't get Carol," said Carol to the Other Carol, "If your husband Larry is such a cheater, why don't you just divorce him and marry your... that Dave?"

"As you both know, Carol's husband Lawrence Cosmo owns Cosmos," Un-Dave explained, "And Cosmos owns the studio that makes the films I star in. 'King Cosmo' has threatened to destroy my career and the studio I work for if I ever go near his wife again."

"It's worse than that," Not-Carol added, bitterly. "I have a... problem I got from my husband, who in turn got it from one of his numerous affairs. This problem keeps me from having any children of my own. My husband has threatened to tell the world about that problem should I ever try to leave him, and that, more than anything else, would hurt Davy's career."

"Ugh," grunted Dave. "Carol never calls me 'Davy'."

"The Lawrence Cosmo we knew from high school was a total... jerk," Carol noted.

"Ours is still a tool," spat Not-Carol, "a corrupt, disease-ridden, adulterous monster whose legion of sycophants watches my every move. But he’s rich, and my family needed the money. There was a time when I was young and foolish enough to think that money was enough; that I could grow to love Larry Cosmo despite his flaws. How wrong I was."

"My mother died,” Carol admitted, quietly.

"Excuse me?"

"My mother died because we never got the money for that operation. I rejected Larry and insisted on marrying my Dave. That decision cost my mother her life. Then again, it's the decision she told me to make when she begged me to follow my heart."

"Well, my mother's still alive," the Other Carol added. "And she hates me for marrying Larry, the ungrateful slut!"

"Look, we all know why we're here," Un-Dave clarified. "This is the only place Carol and I can be with each other in peace, while you two get to spend two weeks in the lap of luxury. And as much as I like fame -- boy do I love fame -- the truth is, I can use a break from it every now and then. The grocery store, the fast-food place, the gas station on the corner, my kids' school -- you name it, I can't go there. It really is nice to come here and be able to walk down the street without a crowd lurking behind every corner."

"Truth!" Not-Carol proclaimed, "So we'll spend the rest of the day and most of the night comparing journals till we're all up to speed, and in the morning, we'll get to living each other's lives!"

*

A next morning. In the Other World.

Dave and Carol emerged from the cabin fully clothed, careful to lock the heavy faux-wood steel door behind them. An emerald alpine forest almost identical to the one they’d left greeted their eyes. A cool mountain breeze cut through their clothing, pregnant with the scent of earth and pine.

"So," Dave announced, "I've got my ticket to my happenin' Hollywood mansion."

"And I've got my ticket to my top floor penthouse suite in downtown Manhattan,” Carol answered. "See you in two weeks sweetie!"

But Carol noticed that a sudden sadness had come over her husband.

"Honey, what's wrong?" she asked.

"It... it's just... Carol baby, in our world we live here in the town below this mountain, struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. Last year, I tried to get ahead, but then the ice storm hit, and the house needed expensive repairs. This year, I thought we would surely get ahead, but then we had to pay all that money just to keep our little rice burner out of prison. God just won't let me get ahead, no matter how hard I try!"

"Oh Dave!" Carol cried, aghast. "Please sweetie, you can't say that!"

"Yes, I know it’s wrong, it’s just... we married each other right out of high school, and now it seems we're just one disaster or missed paycheck away from living on the street. In this world, we're both super-rich, and the only real difference is… you married another man."

Here, Dave's voice began to quaver.

"I failed you, Carol," he choked, cutting off a sob. "I held you back...!"

"Don't say that!" his wife shouted. "I married the man I loved, and that's worth more to me than all the money in the world!"

For a while they just held each other tightly, luxuriating in the warmth of closeness and love.

"Come now," sniffed Dave, breaking the hug. "The whole point of this adventure is to have our cake and eat it, too."

"Yeah!" cried Carol. "Two solid weeks of fame and fortune!"