Litz raised her head in extreme confusion and saw that Jason had wrapped his legs around the steel cable to keep them from falling. He was hanging upside down with his arms wrapped around her torso, using the joints of her underarms for leverage. If he were to release his legs, they would both plummet to the concrete fifty feet below the catwalk.
“You should let me go,” Litz pleaded with the astronaut when she saw how much he was risking to save her. “Jason, you should just let me go; it’s too heavy for both of us.”
“Just climb my damn legs! Now!” Jason shouted in a throaty and masculine voice. “We can do this if you hurry!”
Litz reached between his legs and used the back of his right thigh to pull herself up. Fortunately, the fabric of his dress pants absorbed most of the grease, and she was able to pull herself high enough to reach the cable. The cautious woman paused to wipe her free hand on his pants before grabbing the lowest cable. She then gripped the next cable up with her other hand and climbed steadily until her body was balanced above the third cable.
Several rescue workers from NASA arrived on the catwalk and knelt down to assist Jason up from his dangerous position. A bearded man in his late thirties stepped over to Litz and helped her down from the top cable. The young woman began to cry when she felt her bare feet touch the cold steel.
Jason got to his feet with the help of his comrades and wiped some sweat from his brow. He then let his colleagues walk past him single file so that he could be close to Litz.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” Litz admitted in a moment of vulnerable innocence as tears ran down her cheeks. “I had some kind of panic attack and wound up out here. Thank you for saving me! Thank you so much!”
Jason embraced his younger lover with unabated affection. He kissed her passionately and ran his fingers all over her body as if to confirm that she was real. Litz felt the power of his arms around her and gazed down at the darkness beneath them. She was trembling at the sight of the cavernous concrete channel into which they almost fell.
“This is the flame trench,” Jason said as he led her by the hand off of the walkway. “It’s used to keep the heat away from the space shuttle so that it can lift off without blowing itself up.”
“I don’t care what you call it. I hate it!” She said in a manner that was half joking and somewhat truthful.
As the couple stepped across the last few feet of walkway, Litz glimpsed a flashlight from someone who was moving through the bottom of the trench. Her eyes glazed over with renewed fear when she understood the scale of the massive structure.
“How did you wind up out here?” Jason asked once they made it to the safety of the solid concrete pads. “Everyone was worried that you’d been abducted. Why did you leave your shoes behind?”
“Something horrible happened to my mother when I was younger,” Litz confessed with reluctance. “If I have enough to drink, it causes me to have an episode. I hope you don’t think I’m crazy.”
“No, I’m just glad that you’re okay,” he answered with a suave smile. “But the police are going to have some questions for you. It should only take a few hours.”
Ellington Airport – Houston, Texas
Litz stood atop the tarmac on the private side of Ellington Airport, waiting for Jason to show up and say goodbye. After the police had finished questioning her, the couple had stayed up all night talking and caressing one another in her hotel room. She recalled looking down at the pool seven floors below, and the railing from which they had rappelled. There were many magical moments and all of them had ended too soon.
The pensive woman pushed a pair of dark sunglasses firmly against the bridge of her nose. She licked her lips as a dry breeze kicked up and whisked past, leaving her feeling ridiculous in a sexy white dress.
“Five more minutes, Litz,” Mike Farr shouted from the steps near their private jet.
Jazzy shook her head in defiance as she took in the spectacle that had become Mike and Jennifer. The director and producer seemed pale and strung out, like two teenagers that had been partying for two weeks. Their hair was stringy, and they wore wrinkled clothing, which contrasted with everyone else that worked for the show. She saw Mike wince several times and grab at the back of his head as if he had a hangover. Jennifer had similar tics but was able to keep them under better control. The comedian wondered where Mike and Jennifer had gone during their whole trip. They didn’t bother to do more than a meet and greet with the NASA people. Their behavior aroused further suspicion when they didn’t show up to help find Litz; nor did they seem to care about her near-death experience.
Jazzy breathed out a sigh of frustration. She felt alone in her thoughts, but then CKB signaled with the middle and index fingers of his right hand that he was also watching the mysterious duo. The comedian smiled at ebony Hercules for his incredible gesture and was feeling grateful to have supportive friends in her life.
Richard watched Litz waiting on the runway with a mixture of relief and distress. After what she described of her ordeal during the night, he decided to let Jason have his secret. It seemed to him that the lie needed to remain intact to keep the fragile woman from having another episode.
A black Lincoln Navigator pulled up on the visitor side of the fence, and Litz began walking towards it with a grin. However, she stopped after ten feet, noticing that a brunette woman was in the passenger seat next to Jason. Her center went cold as she saw a little boy leaning between the two front seats from the middle seat. Jason took a moment to rub the boy’s hair with his right hand and gave the woman a loving kiss.
Litz rediscovered the penetrating sting of romantic betrayal. Thoughts were racing through her mind, but the anger that she wanted to express was somehow blocked. When Jason got out of the vehicle and said hello, her brain seemed to short circuit. She stared at the woman and looked away, repeating this process every few seconds. The television star couldn’t imagine what her colleagues felt as they witnessed this revelation from the jet.
Her hands began to shake with an involuntary rush of rage that refused to come forth from her lips. The forlorn beauty thought about all the intimate time she had spent with Jason and realized that he was just having fun. Litz closed her eyes and tipped her face toward the ground. She had prepared a small speech to ask the man not to go on his mission, but that was before he turned her world upside down. The slighted woman opened her eyes and breathed out a slow, steady stream of air. Litz then gathered strength from within and tightened her stomach muscles as she spoke.
“Goodbye, Jason,” the television star said with deep sadness and turned to walk away without waiting for him to respond.
Litz kept from hanging her head as she moved and smiled at Jazzy when approaching the private jet. Never in her life had she been more ready to return to New York.
XI. Selfie in Stripes
“Did you know that people who eat leftovers from the garbage are happier than most of their Homo sapien cousins?” Oslo Norway mused as he swung in a heavy green canvas hammock beneath a bustling New York City overpass.
“That’s so totally true,” Litz replied with a smile from another army green hammock just a few feet away. “You get more nutrients from the surprises in every trash can. Do you know what they should do, Oslo?”
“Yeah, but they don’t,” the homeless man offered while thoughtfully stroking his beard.
“They should come out with a new line of garbage cuisines,” she professed with a smile of relaxation.
“But then what will they do with the leftover garbage cuisine?” He posited in an urgent tone. “They can’t mix garbage cuisine in with new garbage; that would create dark matter garbage.” The middle-aged man sat up in his hammock with excitement like a child getting ready to tell a bedtime story. “Hey, Litz, I have a great idea!”
“Oh, really?” The
thoughtful woman prodded with a coy expression.
“Why don’t we go cut up some wolves and try to feed them to sheep?” Oslo proposed with a broad smile, showing that he had only three molars remaining in his lower jaw. “We’d turn them into wolf juice and let the sheep slurp it up instead of water. Do you know what that would eventually create?”
“Wolf-sheep?” The television star asked and turned her head to witness his theatrics. “Ouch!” Litz complained after one of Oslo’s shoes hit her in the forehead, indicating that he disliked her response.
“No, you idiot,” he lamented with a smirk of enjoyment. “They’d be sheep-wolves. Then we’d get a big white piece of wool and wrap it around a sheep-wolf, which would make a…” Oslo paused and held his hands high in a grand gesture, waiting for her to finish his sentence.
“A sheep-wolf in sheep’s clothing?” Litz suggested with vigorous laughter.
Oslo didn’t respond but turned his head to the right as if her answer offended him. He then spun around and dropped his hands to his sides, which allowed him to recline in the hammock and pull the loose fabric around his body.
“Are we pouting now?” The vivacious woman pried with an innocent chuckle. “You know, Oslo, I think I just met a sheep-wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said with a bittersweet sigh.