Tagged: tune in next time

The Helicopter Ride

  • k-avatar“This is church! No kissing allowed here!”
  • be glad you’re not me
  • the Rhode Island coastline
  • unlimited plenty and moon colonies
  • to enhance its size

Tune In Next Time Part 41                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

The helicopter ride was as bumpy as promised, despite Lyudmila’s piloting expertise. Time and Trouble wouldn’t stay out of my lap, jumping to lick my face. She laughed, but she still looked sad over the mess she was in with the Alliance. Seeing me studying her eyes, she said, “Be glad you’re not me.”

Distracted by the rambunctious pinschers, I didn’t even notice how long we were flying until the Rhode Island coastline came into view below us. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“Jason has made contact with a splinter cell of ninja pirates, who long for a more progressive world, a world of unlimited plenty and moon colonies. They are a small group now, but our arrival will help to enhance its size.”

We had landed in a parking lot about a block from the shoreline, and hurried into the quaint building before the rotors had even come to rest. Once inside and out of sight, Lyudmila’s heavy breathing in the dim space overwhelmed me and I swept her into my arms. As our faces converged, we were accosted by a man wearing a velour cassock and a broad hat with a peacock feather plume.

Jason lisped, “This is church! No kissing allowed here!”

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Despite Jason’s Protestations

  • by jenunder the influence of a magnetic force
  • spasmodic efforts to smile
  • all alone — at night
  • the jury convicted Kelly
  • We passed upon the stairs

Tune In Next Time Part 42                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Despite Jason’s protestations, Lyudmila and I were under the influence of a magnetic force that drew our lips together again and again. Some might call it love, but I knew better. We made out in the entryway of the little church while my brother glared at us and made spasmodic efforts to smile, trying to look like he didn’t really mind, but he and I are twins and I could tell just what he was thinking. He was plotting to get me away from Lyudmila, and everyone else. He wanted me all alone — at night preferably, when the darkness would cloak him more effectively than his ostentatious stage garb ever could, and in that darkness he would make me pay for what had happened with Tessa, and what was happening now with Lyudmila, and most of all for everything that befell Kelly, the love of his life. It wasn’t my fault the jury convicted Kelly and not me, but Jason would never listen to me about that. We passed upon the stairs in the courthouse after my testimony, and that’s the last I saw him before today.

When finally I had reviewed all of the details of that sordid event, and when I was done kissing Lyudmila, I turned to him and said, “Jason.”

His lips twitched into a twisted grin. “Who are you calling Jason, Jason?”

Lyudmila gasped and took a step away from me. Her eyes flitted between me and my duplicitous twin, not knowing which of us was really Jason and which of us was really me.

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“You’re Not Going to Fall For That, Are You?”

  • k-avatarwith a purposeful grimace
  • going off one after the other
  • played some all-night poker games
  • also called “blood sugar”
  • if the plane crash hadn’t killed him

Tune In Next Time Part 43                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“You’re not going to fall for that, are you?” I asked Lyudmila. She kept glancing back and forth between us, her initial shock and confusion replaced with a purposeful grimace. “Come on,” I said, “listen to him. He’s the one lisping.”

“That proovthe nothing,” Jason retorted. “We’re twinnth! We both lithp!”

“I’m not lisping now,” I pointed out. That Lyudmila was still struggling with the situation had alarm bells in my head going off one after the other. In sunnier times I’d played some all-night poker games with her, so I knew it was hopeless trying to read her expressions. Jason knew it too, which was why he still wore his malevolent grin.

Maybe those card games held the key to convincing her, though. Jason knew about the games, and had probably memorized a tally of who’d won every pot, but perhaps his sources hadn’t explained to him the peculiar house rule of jacks-over-queens, also called “blood sugar” or “sang-sucre,” that had wrecked so many of her full houses through the years. Still, she was always the winningest player at the table.

Before I could offer a poker-related anecdote that would confirm my identity, we were interrupted by a shadowy figure. “All of you, into the basement. There’s no time to waste,” said the familiar, grizzled voice. In silhouette, he could clearly be seen to be missing his left arm. Things were more confusing than ever. It was our great-uncle Jinx Damocles, whose presence in a church would have been surprising even if the plane crash hadn’t killed him.

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I Lost a Lot of Sleep

  • by jenI lost a lot of sleep
  • save for spasmodic jumping
  • sing and rejoice
  • According to your own statistics
  • already shedding clothes

Tune In Next Time Part 44                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I lost a lot of sleep a decade ago when I heard that my beloved Great Uncle Jinx’s plane went down in the Andes. I don’t remember much about what I did with all those hours of insomnia, save for spasmodic jumping back and forth between the two twin mattresses, my cell being too small for effective pacing. Seeing him alive now should make me want to sing and rejoice, but instead it filled me with questions.

“According to your own statistics, Uncle Jinxy,” I said, very carefully not lisping, “we stand a better chance outside, where we have room to scatter.” I knew damn well that Jinx Damocles believed no such thing. This was a test to smoke out yet another potential impostor in a week already too full of them.

Jinx Damocles stared at me with his one good eye. “If that were your plan, you’d be already shedding clothes.”

I grinned. It was really him!

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We Accompanied Uncle Jinx

  • k-avatarin harrowing detail
  • it would have caused bleeding
  • an avid gambler
  • (Perhaps typewriters
  • But if she told Mrs. Dunne about the toothbrush

Tune In Next Time Part 45                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

We accompanied Uncle Jinx to the church basement, where it seemed he was now living. Jason had been installed as a priest in order to keep a lookout for enemies who might infiltrate the congregation. Lyudmila tried to ask him about the ninja pirate splinter cell, but he hung his head and made no reply. At least now she knew which of us was which.

Sitting on the aquamarine faux-leather sectional, we sipped green tea while Jinx Damocles explained in harrowing detail how he lived through the plane crash and made his way out of the remote mountains, forced to barter his left arm for a ride in a cannibal’s canoe. Then his months of “rehabilitation” in the care of Ophelia Dunne, wife of a notorious dental hygienist and an avid gambler. Mr. Dunne provided him with floss and a toothbrush, of course, but the brush had brass bristles. Had he used it, it would have caused bleeding gums. Jinx confided in Stacy, the hygienist’s housekeeper, about his torments. But if she told Mrs. Dunne about the toothbrush, it came to nothing.

The hygienist used a label maker to punch out long, cryptic messages to his overseers. (Perhaps typewriters were deemed a security risk.) From a shelf on the wall, Jinx Damocles took down a bin labeled “kittens and spiders.” Removing the lid, he showed us that it contained a series of ever-smaller bins, nested like dolls. The second was labeled “musical turtles of electromagnetism.”

“Now that you’re here,” he summed up, “we can crack the code.”

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Lyudmila Beckoned To Me

  • by jengirlfriend and your sister
  • more involved than he was willing to admit
  • only has one birthday a year
  • casting frightened glances back over their shoulders
  • took them to a nearby orange grove

Tune In Next Time Part 46                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Lyudmila beckoned to me with her crooked index finger. While my uncle Jinx Damocles continued unpacking the nesting boxes, she and I quietly moved from the sofa and into the shadowy corner of the basement room.

I felt her warm breath on my ear as she whispered, “I always wanted to be your girlfriend, and your ‘sister‘ over there,” she indicated Jason with a roll of her eyes, “was always in the way. Not to mention Tessa of course.”

“Jason is bad news,” I whispered back. “Where trouble’s concerned, he’s always more involved than he was willing to admit. We need to watch our backs.”

I tried to imagine how we looked to Jason from his seat beside Uncle Jinx. Probably like two fools casting frightened glances back over their shoulders.

Jinx Damocles’s voice rang through the basement, “Here is the message we must decode: What do you call a man who only has one birthday a year?”

“That’s easy,” I said, moving back to rejoin him, hoping Lyudmila remembered enough of our pillow talk to catch my hidden meaning. “That means that Jorgensen has the coordinates and the jewels. He took them to a nearby orange grove, the one the coordinates referenced, and buried them.”

Lyudmila looked at me with wide, wide eyes. There were no orange groves in Rhode Island where we currently were, of course. I nodded almost imperceptibly, directing her to make her move.

She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a look that said, “if you insist.” I waited for her to use her contortionist skills to befuddle Jason enough that I could overpower him, but instead she moved closer to Jinx Damocles. Before I could say anything to stop her, she reached down his pants and took hold of the Sword of Damocles.

The rest of us froze, stunned.

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It Wasn’t The Plan I Thought We Were Going With

  • k-avatardenied having the dumpsters emptied
  • muffled in a dark cloak
  • they fled incontinently
  • step out of the queue
  • felt a fleeting pang of regret

Tune In Next Time Part 47                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

It wasn’t the plan I thought we were going with, but suddenly it was the plan we had.

While Lyudmila kept Jinx Damocles hanging by a thread, I pulled bins down from the shelves, looking for one containing something other than more bins. I ignored Jason’s sibilant protests and searched as quickly as I could.

“Wait! I have it!” Jason hissed. “Don’t wreck the place.”

He waved for me to follow him. I felt a fleeting pang of regret for abandoning Lyudmila, but she had her hands full. Upstairs was a peg-legged man muffled in a dark cloak, and two diminutive people in black bodysuits. “Splinter cell representatives,” Jason lisped. From a cabinet he took a small black book. “Logbook,” he explained.

A ponderous groaning noise came from the basement, startling the lone pirate and his two ninja companions. They ran outside, meaning to steal Lyudmila’s chopper. But when Time and Trouble snarled at them, they fled incontinently across the street. I laughed and shook my head. Taking the book, I said, “I can take it from here. You have to maintain your cover.” Jason nodded.

Two blocks away, people were lined up at a barber shop. I veered to the opposite sidewalk as I saw three men step out of the queue and head my way. Yet another faction had entered the game: the sanitation workers union. Unless their beef was with me, personally. It was possible. They took the blame for the Pensacola Debacle after I denied having the dumpsters emptied behind the stadium.

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Oscar and the Other Two Sanitation Workers

  • by jen“Tell me, Ludovico,”
  • feeling the wind rush by
  • I met the bastard’s eye
  • very drunk
  • a superbly embossed plated coal-scuttle

Tune In Next Time Part 48                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

Oscar and the two other sanitation workers were upon me more quickly than I’d anticipated.

“Tell me, Ludovico,” Oscar said, spitting out my alias with such malevolent force that his stinking breath ruffled my hair, reminding me of feeling the wind rush by during my recent helicopter trip, “tell me again about the Pensacola dumpsters.”

I met the bastard’s eye and had no doubt that he was very drunk. The blue tinge on his lips told me he’d been drinking Barbicide again. That meant he and his cronies had been holed up in the barber shop for a long time, surveilling the church where Jason and Uncle Jinx thought they were safe. Where Lyudmila was now. I fretted for her safety, but tried not to let it show.

A grin split Oscar’s round face, revealing not teeth, but a detailed grill reminiscent of a superbly embossed plated coal-scuttle, inset with emeralds. Bad news for me, because that grill was a symbol of the highest rank in the sanitation workers union. It meant he had the authority to command every garbage man in the city.

I threw a look back over my shoulder, trying to decide if I could make it to the chopper if I sprinted.

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“You See There Are Three of Us”

  • k-avatarafter tonight there will be four
  • baby, I won’t joke with you
  • check the gun room
  • keeping Enzo from whispering sweet nothings
  • — and those crocodiles

Tune In Next Time Part 49                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“You see there are three of us,” Oscar said, gesturing with his chin at the men flanking me. “After tonight there will be four. You will be called back. Recycled. Pensacola will be remembered.”

“Baby, I won’t joke with you,” I replied. “I can’t come back. Much as I want to.” My only chance was to confuse them. “You know Pensacola couldn’t be helped. Florida dumpsters, man. Alligators.”

“Those were American crocs, you ignoramus!” Oscar hissed.

“I know, sorry. I got confused. You know that’s how I am. Why I forgot to check the gun room before my run that night.”

The other two garbagemen muttered behind me, and I realized I knew them. I had met them in Milan. Oscar glared at Alonzo, keeping Enzo from whispering sweet nothings in his ear. They were becoming distracted, which was what I wanted, but now I had become intrigued. Italian scab sanitation workers posing as union muscle? It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Pensacola debacle was being dredged up after all this time — and those crocodiles…

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I Hesitated Too Long

  • by jensuch a large gang of outlaws
  • dragged him backwards
  • The doctor will see you now.
  • looking furtively at me
  • someone to show her love and compassion

Tune In Next Time Part 50                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I hesitated too long. My chance to bolt for the helicopter disappeared when Oscar took two slinking steps closer and ran his finger along my jaw.

“I’ve never seen such a large gang of outlaws as I saw that night in Pensacola,” he murmured. “The crocodiles ate well.”

His chuckle told me how much he had enjoyed watching those men get eaten. I gulped, wishing I hadn’t let my curiosity get the better of me, wishing I was in the chopper right now, rising high above Oscar and Enzo and Alonzo. The inner workings of the sanitation union were not for the squeamish.

Enzo and Alonzo moved forward on either side of me, and I was sure they were going to pin my arms, but instead they pounced on Oscar and dragged him backwards toward the barber shop, screaming.

Enzo hissed as he passed me, “The doctor will see you now.” He was looking furtively at me as he said it and I had a sinking feeling I knew which doctor he was talking about. “She needs someone to show her love and compassion,” he went on, confirming my suspicion.

As the three of them disappeared into the crowd, Oscar’s cries were suddenly silenced. I shuddered. If there was one person in the world I wanted least to see it was Dr Minka Stiletto, but it seemed I had no choice. That line about love and compassion was the post-hypnotic suggestion she’d implanted during my last “appointment,” and it meant that I was already climbing into the helicopter and charting my flight to Ipswich.

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