that?”
“Not yet, but when he reads about the woman who can fly, he's going to want to meet me and learn how I do that. Then I'll have him. I know it.”
I am probably the last guy who should criticize anyone for having insane thoughts, but it just came out: “That's crazy.”
“That is what they told the guys who invented Post-It notes,” she answered.
I couldn't argue with that so pursued her idea farther. “So when you fly, do you flap your arms really fast?”
“No, silly. I use my mind.”
“Like levitation?”
“Kind of.”
“And it has worked before?”
“I haven't physically tried it yet, but I have it figured out in my mind.”
“So you've just envisioned it.”
Yes. And it works.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Then she did something I really wish she hadn't done. Wendy dived back into that damn pack of hers and pulled out a fifth of Jim Beam and took two deep pulls of it. Her eyes didn't even water, but my taste buds did – would have made Pavlov's dog proud.
She offered me the bottle. I nodded “no” and looked away. My personal preference for poison had been Heineken and tequila shots, but when they were not handy Jim Bean ran a close second.
Over the next hour or so the whiskey scent ravaged my nostrils and sent the neurons in my brain bouncing like ping pong balls. She nursed a dozen shots out of that bottle before finally capping it and dozing off for another trip into Neverland.
She awoke near Kansas City but didn't talk, maybe sensing a little discomfort in the air, but I probably give her senses more credit than due.
As we drove past Royals stadium, she said: “Aren't you stopping?”
“First, tell me something, seriously,” I said. “You aren't really going to jump off the Arch, are you?”
“No,” she said, and I was relieved that I wouldn't have to miss my game. But she continued: “I'm going to fly off it.”
“Oh come on,” I said, getting a bit agitated at her craziness. “You know damn well you aren't going to fly. You're gonna jump, fall and splat!”
“You're wrong. My mind is very powerful. Most people only tap a tiny part of theirs. I can channel all my brain into an object and make it fly. I've done it with other objects.”
“Oh, really.”
“Really.”
“Like what?”
“Like bottles, a chair, a cat.”
“You don't have a cat in that backpack, do you?”
“No.”
“Darn. I was going to ask him to verify your story.”
“So are you going to stop for your game?” she asked again.
“No. I'm going to take you to St. Louis and watch you fly.”
“So you believe me?” she squealed.
“No. Actually I don't. I hope to talk you out of it, because if I don't I will have to scrape you off the sidewalk.”
“You are such a negative person,” she said and took a turn staring out her window for a long, uncomfortable while.
A full hour of silence started getting on my nerves. I don't mind a talkative passenger. Heck, I don't mind a quiet one either. But a schizoid one who is alternately a motor mouth and then a mute gives a guy too much time to think during those long down times.
As such, I pondered many questions like: Why should I miss my game for this gal? If she wanted to kill herself, and even if I did stop her today, wouldn't she just do it tomorrow or next week? And why should I care? How could she be so sure of her flying ability? Was she just playing with me? Was she just downright crazy? Could there possibly be something to this mind-control levitation thing? What else was in that bag of hers? Are those boobs real?
Deep thoughts like that can keep a guy busy and make him hungry.
“Hey, Wendy.”
“What?”
“Can I buy you lunch?”
“I'm not a free-loader. I have money.”
“I didn't mean to imply you were,” I said. “Just being nice.”
“That I guess you are,” she admitted. “But still a negative Nelly.”
“Maybe so. Walk a mile in my shoes and you might be too.”
“And I'm not crazy.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“It crossed my mind.”
“And they are real,” she said.
“What are?” I played dumb.
“My boobs. You were thinking about that too.”
“How'd you know?”
“I told you. My mind goes places others don't.”
I wasn't about to argue that, and now was hesitant to even think to myself. Have you ever tried to purposefully not think? It is not easy.
So I pulled through a Burger King drive-thru off the next exit near Columbia.
I had a Number Four Value Meal. She had a medium drink, half iced tea and half lemonade, which I though was weird, and then ordered a Whopper “hold the meat.” The pimply-faced teenager must've called the rest of his co-workers to the pick-up window to see what odd-balls ordered that, because there were a half dozen BK employees crammed into the window area trying to peer into my car as he handed us our food.
I smiled and said: “We're from South Dakota.”
That seemed to explain everything well enough as he nodded his head and said: “Oh.”
Still an hour and a half out of St. Louis, I decided to try to talk some sense into her, which proved to be about as effective as trying to convince my dog not to eat grass. They both gave me the same look.
“How about if you started with something smaller?”
“A smaller what?” she asked.
“Something smaller to jump off, like a step ladder or even a garage.”
“I like to think big,” she replied.
“But with big risk often comes big loss – like your life. If you start small, and it works like you expect, you can gradually move up to larger buildings. Evil Knievel didn't start out by jumping the Grand Canyon.”
“Who is Evil Knievel?”
“A motorcycle stunt man. He started by jumping over a car, then a bunch of cars, then busses and then the Snake River.”
“I'm not doing it as a stunt. I'm doing it one time, big, and then moving on to more dangerous things.”
“More dangerous than jumping off the Arch? Like what?”
“Like eating a Whopper with meat.” And she smiled a normal smile for once.
I was running out of arguments as she reached into her backpack again, this time pulling out a magazine with New York Times crossword puzzles. Oh, and a small bottle of Jose Quervo.
“So you won't eat meat,” I began my sermon, “but you'll swig a bottle of whiskey and tequila in an afternoon, plus whatever you were on this morning when I picked you up?” If I could've “tisk, tisked” I would have but couldn't.
“I wasn't ON anything this morning,” she said. “And I just drink to help me relax and focus.”
“That's a new one,” I said. “To help you focus?”
“Yes. What's a three-letter word for 'annoy'?”
“Nag,” I answered.
“Figures you would know that one,” she chirped.
I saw her write down a few other words she figured out on her own as we approached St. Louis.
I finally interrupted her focus with a question with a purposefully positive spin: “On the off chance you do fly, who would be the relative you would most like to tell first?”
“You want to know who to call if I die, don't you?”
“Here I was trying to be an optimistic person and you go and ruin it,” I said sarcastically.
“I have no family to call, no friends, no pets,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” was my one-word answer tinged with some sadness. “Well, you have one friend anyway.”
She looked at me, smiled and went back to her crossword puzzle before finally sa
ying: “That's nice to know, Lincoln. Nobody should fly alone.”
###
If you have a longer attention span and wish to read an exciting adventure-romance novel by Mark Haugen, try: Joshua’s Ladder
Connect with me online at: markhaugen.com
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