Over And Out

It took me a minute. Doing an inventory of other beds, other rooms, forgotten mornings but I finally got things straight in my head; or so I thought.

I’m on a train … must be.

There was much rattling, like metal wheels bumping along over iron rails and wooden ties. As consciousness surfaced, I realized I wasn’t in a pullman car. This rumbling and shaking wasn’t a railway. It wasn’t confined so narrowly. It was everywhere.

“My god, an earthquake,” I said in a shaky croak I barely recognized as mine.

A body stirred next to me.

“Huh?” A woman’s voice, but unfamiliar.

I was in a strange room, in bed with a strange woman, and we were having an earthquake. My hand went to my head. A sharp, stabbing pain there. I found the lump and a memory. I’d been clubbed, with something blunt and heavy.

Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick; the nonsensical thought flitted across my mind.

“Roger?”

“Are you addressing me?”

“Don’t be silly, who else is in here,” she said, “Are we having an earthquake?”

No panic in the voice. That’s good I thought, though I still couldn’t place it. I felt a need to respond.

“It certainly would seem so,” I said, “But tell me, who is Roger, and who are you?”

“Ah, we’re still playing that game, are we?”

I felt her warm body cuddle up to my backside and two hands reach around to cover my eyes.

“Guess who?” The feminine voice was playful and pleasantly pitched, reminiscent of an actress remembered from where? TV? Movies? And now, warm flesh pressed into my backside.

“Seriously,” the voice grew slightly petulant, “Guess who?”

The whole thing the entire scene took on a surreal quality. I honestly could not get grounded. The throbbing pain wasn’t going away, though this warm female presence was beginning to cause a stir in my crotch. And the bed vibrating, like one of those coin-operated jobs in some fleabag, rent-it-by-the-hour motel, was erotic in its way.

“I think we need to take cover.” I raised my hands up and took her wrists, removed her hands from my eyes and rolled up onto my elbow. I got my first look at her face. A flash of a scene in a crowded night club. Now I remember.

“Doris?”

“Arrgh!”

She hit me. With both fists, pounding, swinging wildly, as bits of paint and plaster began to dislodge themselves from the ceiling.

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

Another memory stirred. The back of a car. Two men in front, she and I in back.

“Debbie!”

“Yeah,” she stopped slugging and her angry expression softened, “Debbie. The girl who saved your ass, Roger. The least you could is thank me.”

“Thank you.”

She reached a hand up to gently caress my jaw. I relaxed. Then she pulled back, smiling, and let me have it. A slap that made my head explode.

“Bastard!” With that, she threw off the bed covers and ran to a door, opened it, stepped through, and slammed it behind her.

I drug myself up from the bed and surveyed the room. Sparsely furnished, a double bed, a nightstand with a cheap porcelain lamp and ratty shade, a three-drawer dresser and two doors. The one Debbie had taken, and another on the opposite side. A lone window was covered by washed-out, drab green, ceiling to floor curtains.

I stood and nearly fell. The floor was shifting, moving underfoot. I stumbled two steps and fell into the wall, near the window. I placed a hand against the faded wallpaper to steady myself. I drew open the curtains.

The scene through the window gave little clue. The glass was grimy, coated with grease or soot, but looking closer I wasn’t sure if it was the window or the air. A streetlight was on across the way and the way the light filtered through, it made me think of snowy nights from a time long since passed. Only the falling particles were a dingy gray, not virgin white. I looked down at the street and guessed the room to be on maybe the second or third floor of the hotel, or apartment building or whatever this was. I searched my memory but had no recollection of anything past the car ride. Nothing as to how I got here. Wherever “here” was. The street was deserted, as far as I could see. Across the way from where I stood looking, sat another building, separated by the narrow avenue. Lights shone behind other curtains and shades, maybe a half dozen, but I saw no faces looking out. I guessed the time to be just before dawn. There was a dim glow in the distance I took to be the coming sunrise.

“See anything familiar out there?”

Startled, I quickly turned in the direction of this new voice. A man in a trench coat stood in the other doorway. He must have entered while I was looking out the window and I’d failed to hear the door open. I recognized the pale, fleshy face as one of the men from the night before. Not the driver but the passenger. He gently pulled the door closed behind him.

“Have you thought over my proposition?”

My puzzled expression brought a smile to his lips, though his gray eyes remained cold.

“Maybe you’d like some more time,” he took a seat on the edge of the mattress, “But that is a luxury I’m afraid we cannot afford you.”

I suddenly realized I was naked, in a strange room, with a man I didn’t know.

“Yes, we took your clothes, sorry for the inconvenience,” the voice, like the eyes, was flat, no warmth.

“They will be returned shortly,” he stood and opened the top dresser drawer. “I believe you’ll find these are your size.”

He tossed me a white tee-shirt and matching undershorts and sat back on the bed. I raised each foot, gingerly, pulled on the shorts, followed by the painful raising of my arms and tugging on of the tee. The ache in my head had somehow increased, causing my eyesight to blur.

“Who has my clothes? Why am I here?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Who, Debbie?”

“Yes, Debbie,” he said, and gave off an unpleasant laugh, more of a snort, really.

“That is her name, isn’t it?”

“Whatever you say.”

My knees were about to buckle, so I took a seat on the bed, careful to keep as much distance from him as possible. Through all of this, unabated, the rumbling and the shaking continued. We sat in silence for a brief moment. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one. He held out the pack in offering.

“Cigarette?”

“No, I don’t smoke,” I said, and then wondered if it was true.

“Suit yourself.”

I had questions: who was he? why am I here? did he put this lump on my head? Before I could ask, CRACK!! came the report from the other side of the door where Debbie had gone. Gunshot?!? I felt my pulse jump, my jaw tighten. The man barely reacted, turning his head slightly in that direction. I willed my body to move, to escape somehow, but before I could get to my feet, the door opened. Two more figures appeared; a man whom I recognized as the driver of last night’s car, and a woman not Debbie, someone I had no memory of stepped into the room. The driver held a .38 in his hand. The woman was severely dressed in a dark business suit. No sign of Debbie. I considered making a run for it, an escape through the other door, where the first man, the passenger, had entered, but the pistol and the air of the woman froze me.

“Does he know who he is?” The woman’s voice was flat, nearly void of expression, “clinical” was the word that came to mind. She spoke as if I weren’t present, as you might talk of an inanimate object, say the lamp or the curtains.

“Roger,” the passenger answered, “This is what he knows. Though I believe he suspects more.”

How did he know my name? If it is my name …

“Bring his clothes,” the woman commanded. The driver moved a step closer. The passenger stood and walked into the room where Debbie, who I suspected was no longer alive, had gone.

The passenger returned with a bundle of clothes.

“The pants,” she said, “hand him the pants.”

He held a pair of gray wool slacks. I took them and felt the rough fabric. I had no memory of ever wearing them.

“The front pocket,” the woman directed, “what is there?”

I hesitated. Is she addressing me? I looked at all three faces and could see they were expecting something. I reached my fingers into one pocket, found nothing.

“The other one.”

I lifted the pants to gain access to the other pocket and felt a small lump. Reaching my fingers in, I felt something solid. My first thought was a coin, but upon retrieving it, I looked down to see I was holding a fine gold chain, and a heart-shaped locket, also plated in gold. All three faces watched me intently. The room continued to shake, the rumble a low roar.

“Open it,” the woman said, “the locket.”

I turned it over in my fingers, searching for the clasp, but as I did, the room began to shake even more violently. The window rattled in its frame. Glass exploded into the room. I ached from head to toe, but this would be my one chance. I had to take it.

Clutching the locket tightly in my fist, I ran for the door the passenger had entered. I reached for the doorknob, but before I could grab it, the driver fired a warning shot. It struck the wall a foot to the side of the door frame. Splinters flew. I fell to my knees on the hardwood floor, narrowly avoiding the shards of broken glass.

“You can’t escape us,” the woman said, “We have the upper hand now. Get up.”

“But” I said, struggling to my knees, “this place is going to come down on top of us. Is it an earthquake?”

“No need to concern yourself with what’s going on outside,” she said, “open the locket. Tell me what you see.”

I slumped back onto the bed. The clasp was small, my fingers fumbled with it but then it was open.

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “A woman’s picture.”

Another violent shake. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the building a groan erupted.

“Think, you must know her, don’t you?”

I forced myself to concentrate on the face in the locket. A vague stir, maybe, but no, I couldn’t place her.

“Sorry, no.”

“Good,” she said, through a thin, tight-lipped smile. “We’re finished here.”

“Wait,” I said, “What about Debbie?”

“Debbie?”

“Yes.”

“There is no Debbie,” the woman said in that cold, clinical voice. The two men followed her out the door.

I watched them leave, then turned back to the locket. For a moment I was lost in the picture. Who could she be? Am I supposed to know? A voice called out from behind the door.

“Roger?”

An impulse struck me. I blurted out, “Wilco!”

The door swung open. I ran through.

END