More Than a Kiss (13 page)

Operation Meltdown, Final Phase

As
the audience quieted and took their seats, the theme song from
Jaws
blared
from off stage right.  Petronella looked offstage and made slashing motions
across her neck.  The music continued.  Petronella looked out at the audience
and put her finger up as if to say “Wait, I, the Ice Queen, Mistress of the
Universe, will take care of this.”  She strode toward the offending music.

Petronella
stopped.

She
froze with eyes wide open, horror-struck.

She
took a step backward.

Edison’s
remote control tanker car wheeled onstage.  Edison had built another car like
the prototype that had caused the Mr. Pip-falling-out-the-window accident. 
Only this car had a tank on its back.  A tank filled with blue, red, green, and
yellow paint. The paint nozzle was attached to a retractable arm that could be
raised or lowered from the remote control that Edison was now pointing at the
stage.

Petronella
took another step backward.

The
audience clapped, mistakenly thinking this was a part of the show.

The
car braked.  The paint nozzle raised and pointed at Petronella who was too
confused to move.

Edison
punched a button on the remote.  Irma shrieked.  She threw her body at Edison,
shouting, “Do not shoot!”

But
Irma was too late.  The tiny car shot a stream of paint out of its nozzle.  The
red paint arced high in the air and splattered Petronella right in her angry
vagina.

Jordan
threw her body on top of Irma’s body who was on top of Edison’s body and they
all three rolled around the floor.  Edison’s glasses flew off and her remote
control skidded down the aisle and out of sight.

Chaos
erupted.  Petronella shrieked.  The audience screamed.  Claire and Lillian
stood on their chairs so they could see all the action.  Amy covered her face.

The
house lights flickered on and off like a strobe light.

Jordan
climbed to her feet and chased after the remote.  She ran from person to person
as it was kicked around the audience like Charlie Chaplin’s hat.

The
car obeyed each command from the remote as it was kicked.  The car shot paint
left and right, up and down; red and blue and orange and yellow paint spewed
from its nozzle, splattering Petronella and the audience.  The car whizzed back
and forth across the stage, in elaborate figure eights, gushing paint like a
rabid, demon-possessed lawn sprinkler.

Petronella,
now wearing a rainbow-colored tux and tails, picked up her stool and chased
after the car, shouting Dutch obscenities.

The
audience was a swirling mass of hysteria and color.  The people bumped, banged
and barged into each other, smearing the paint into one swirling mass of brown.

Petronella
cornered the car against the proscenium arch and brought the stool down,
hammering it, over and over and over, until the car was smashed to smithereens
and nothing more than a giant rainbow puddle.

Once
the car was demolished, the audience quieted down except for a few intermittent
sobs.  Everyone stared at the stage.  Before them was a striking
tableaux
vivant
:  Petronella, legs spread, arms akimbo,
a la
Rambo Warrior,
Victorious Vagina Woolf.  The Ice Queen brought her hands up over her head in a
victory gesture.

Claire
and Lillian began clapping.  The audience joined in, whooping and hollering
their approval.

Petronella
bowed deeply.  The audience went wild, stamping their feet and chanting her
name.

Jordan
dejectedly walked back to Amy and collapsed in a chair.  Edison fell into the
chair next to her.

“Operation
Meltdown failed,” Jordan said.  Amy sat down beside her and patted her shoulder
sympathetically.

Irma
sat next to Edison.  “What the hell were you doing?” Edison said.

Irma
gestured helplessly.  “Irma does not know.  Irma was overwhelmed by feelings 
here,” she pointed to her heart, “and here,” she pointed to her lap.  “So
sorry.  Irma hear rousing poem and lose control.”

Jordan
stood and pointed a finger at Irma, saying, “You owe me.  Big time.”

Irma
nodded.  “Irma will make good.  You will see.”

Claire
and Lillian joined the trio, grinning broadly.  Lillian said, “So what do
lesbians do for fun next?”

Ambushed

Amy
was humming an Indigo Girls tune as she entered the ER to start her shift. It
was a damn fine day.  The sun was shining.  Mount Hood with its spectacular
white cap seemed to substantiate the awesome beauty of nature.  And Amy was on
her third cup of coffee for the morning and flying high on caffeine and
infatuation.  She was certain she was falling in love for the first time in her
life.  None of her other relationships compared.  Not that there were that many
to compare to, but she knew she’d never felt like this before.

Chad
snuck up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and whispered into her
ear, “Good morning, my little love button.”

Had
Amy been taller, more muscular and trained in martial arts she would’ve kicked
his ass right there.  He’d be lying on the floor gasping and holding his nutsack
as pain coursed throughout his entire body.  As it was all she could do was
wiggle away from him.  “What the hell are you doing?” Amy said, disgustedly
rubbing at the wet spot on her neck.

“I
saw you come in,” Chad said.  “Whistling and smiling.  Looking like a woman in
love.”

“So
what if I am,” Amy said.

“Maybe
I am, too,” Chad said with an icky smile.  He reached out and stroked her cheek
with one finger.  Amy swatted his hand away like it was an annoying fly.

“I
made lunch plans for us,” Chad said.  “I know how you love Italian.”

“I
have plans without you forever,” Amy said.  “And I’ll be eating in the
cafeteria today.”

“I
know,” Chad replied, tapping his cleft with a forefinger.  “I know.”

Amy
watched him saunter off down the hall, wondering what that weird exchange
meant.  That was when she noticed his shoes.  He was wearing pink Converse high-tops. 
She looked down at her own blue high-tops.  That fucker!  He was trying to do
that thing where couples in love start dressing alike.

She
turned to the two nurses at the nurses’ station.  “How long has he had those
shoes?”

Meet
Veronica and Valerie.
 
Identical twin sisters.  Beehive wearing, bubble gum popping, sisters.  The
only way to tell them apart was by their nametags.

“Since
yesterday,” Valerie said while Veronica blew a bubble.

“He
says the pink makes him more manly because only real men can wear pink.  It
means they are secure in their manliness. Those were his exact words,” Veronica
said while Valerie blew a bubble.

“He
told us that he hopes you two can bond over your joint love of high-tops,”
Valerie said.

Amy
recoiled.

“It’s
disturbing, we know,” they both said.

Usually
Amy found their ability to speak simultaneously amusing or at least
interesting. But today she found it annoying, more annoying than it should be
because she was angry at Chad.  Angry might be a poor word choice.  She was
livid.

Valerie
and Veronica must have seen the smoke coming out her ears.  They both said, “We
can do something about those shoes.”

“Oh,
yeah.  How?” Amy snapped, studying her day’s roster.

“We
can make those shoes disappear,” Veronica said, snapping her gum for emphasis.

“Disappear?”
Amy said.  She felt like she was in an episode of the
Sopranos.

“With
this,” Valerie said, pulling a bobby pin out of her piled high elaborate
beehive hairdo.

Amy
didn’t get it.  “You’re going stab him with a bobby pin?”

They
sighed simultaneously.  “No,” Valerie said.

“We
are going to pick the lock on his locker and steal his shoes because he is an
absolute fucker and we hate him,” Veronica said.

Amy
finally connected the dots.  “Aha.  You both slept with him too?”

They
nodded.

“At
the same time?” Amy asked.  She quickly used her hand as an eraser on an
imaginary chalkboard.  “Erase that.  Don’t answer, I don’t want to know.”

“Let’s
just say he’ll get what he deserves,” Veronica said.

Valerie
popped a bubble.

Amy
smiled.  She felt a strange symbiosis with the twins.  “You’d do that for me?”

“No. 
Not just you.  We’ll do it for all the women of this hospital,” Valerie said.

“You
will be our mascot.  The anti-Chad.  We’ve named you Amy the Banana Slayer,”
Veronica said.

Amy
didn’t really want to be the Banana Slayer but if the twins could make the
shoes disappear they could call her anything they liked.  “What do I have to
do?”

“Act
like nothing happened,” Veronica said.

“This
conversation never happened,” Valerie added.

Amy
nodded.  “What conversation?”

Valerie
knitted her eyebrows.  “This one.  The one we just had.”

Amy
smiled and lightly punched her in the arm.  “I know.  I was pretending it never
happened.”

“Oh,”
Veronica said.  “You’re good.”

“Really
good,” Valerie said.  She handed Amy a manila folder, saying, “Mr. Bolster is
back.  He’s in room three.  It’s his testicle again.  If I were you I’d get
that one over with first.”

“Right,”
Amy said, and went to exam Mr. Bolster’s man tackle.  Again.  He showed up at
least once a week asking specifically for her.  All the other doctors figured
he had a crush on Amy, which was alarming because he was eighty-six and only
had one testicle.  There wasn’t anything technically wrong with his testicle. 
He insisted it didn’t fire properly.  Amy tried and tried to explain that age
did things to one’s manhood equipment.

After
the testicle debacle, Amy went on to set a broken finger, stitch two
lacerations
– one a two-year-old who ran into
the corner of the wall while being chased by her brother, and another by a prep
cook who was having an argument with his girlfriend while cutting up carrots
julienne style.

She
advised the cook to not text and chop as he could have lost his finger.  At eleven
forty-five things slowed down
enough that Amy could actually catch her breath.  She told the Veronica-Valerie
duo that she was headed to grab a bite at the cafeteria.  They nodded and went
back to charting.

That’s Amore

In
the cafeteria there was an ominous silence when Amy walked in.  It was
reminiscent of the banana-peel incident.  She glanced around but saw nothing
out of the ordinary until Jeremy took her by the arm.

“If
you would just follow me this way, Madame,” he said.

“What’s
going on?” she asked, stumbling along beside him.  “What’s this about?”

“You’ll
see,” Jeremy answered.

She
allowed herself to be led her to a table where Chad was sitting with his dimple
on display.  The cafeteria table was covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth.
 A lit candle sat in the middle along with a vase containing a single red rose.

She
looked at Jeremy and tried to telepathically send him a thought message: 
Help. 
Get me out of here.

But
Jeremy only smiled and gestured elegantly at the empty chair.

It
occurred to Amy at this moment that she’d been leaving her roommates out of the
loop. Jeremy hadn’t a clue that Amy was in love with Jordan.  She hadn’t told
Isabel either.  She liked to think it was an oversight on her part but perhaps
not.  After coming out to her mother and being in the newspaper kissing another
woman, Amy had figured it was now
de rigueur
that she was gay and
everyone knew it.  Wrong.  It figured that the people closest to her were the
ones she was going to have to spell it out for.

“Jeremy,
what’s going on here?”

“Only
the biggest, baddest booty call ever.  Chad is major courting you.  The dude’s
got a bad case of the ‘love me tenders.’” Jeremy said.  He cocked his head and
his Adam’s apple twitched.  He appeared to be moved.

Amy
felt certain she was going puke.  “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”

Chad
stood, put his hand over his heart and began to sing in an off-key baritone
about the moon and pizza pie and amore.

When
he finished, Jeremy pulled out a chair for her to sit.  Chad whipped the lid
off a serving dish, exclaiming, “As the Italians say,
mangiare mangiare,
amore
.”        

“Pizza,”
Jeremy said.  Like she couldn’t see that for herself.  “How do you say pizza in
Italian?”

“I
think it’s pizza,” Chad answered.

“I
am not doing this,” Amy said.

“Just
sit and we’ll have a nice meal,” Chad said, beginning to get nervous.  The
whole cafeteria watched - everyone painfully aware of a man pleading his case
for the woman he loved.

Amy
sat.  But only because she didn’t want to cause a big scene in the middle of
the cafeteria.

“You
can go now, Jeremy.  Thanks,” Amy said, giving him the
I-will-deal-with-you-later look.

Jeremy
fist-bumped Chad.  “Good luck, dude.”

Amy
smiled at their audience who now went back to stuffing their mouths, trying not
to look like they weren’t engaged in group-stare.

Chad
reached across the table and took her hand.  In return, she grasped his pinky
and bent it backwards.  He squeaked.

“Listen
to me you ignorant fuck,” Amy said harshly, “if you ever pull a stunt like this
again I will personally castrate you.  You will have one less ball than Mr.
Bolster.  I don’t want to have any sort of a relationship with you ever.  Do
you understand?”

Chad’s
red face bobbed up and down.  Amy got up and slammed her chair back under the
table.  She turned to leave and that was when she saw Jordan.  She was standing
in the middle of the cafeteria watching the scene with Chad.  Confusion and
hurt were etched across her face.

Amy
grabbed Jordan’s hand and dragged her out of the cafeteria.  She threw open the
first door she saw, a linen supply closet, and stepped inside.  She turned on
the light and faced Jordan.

Amy
said, “Take me to lunch.  I have to get out of here.”

“That’s
why I dropped by.  To apologize for the fiasco last night.  For threatening to
beat up your mother.  For the lesbian on stilts not being funny.  I wanted to
make it up to you by taking you out to lunch.  I should’ve called first.  I
wasn’t stalking you.  It probably looks like I was, but in reality I wasn’t.”

“Stop
talking,” Amy said.

“Why?”

“So
I can kiss you.”

Amy
threw her arms around Jordan’s neck and kissed her.  And when an orderly opened
the door, goggled at them a full minute before grabbing a stack of linens and
then shutting the door, neither woman noticed.