The Altonevers (47 page)

They love birds stand out
from the others embrace, taking a bow to a clapping applause with
whistles and calls for more, the 3 a.m. crowd clamoring for an
encore, spoil the enlivened duo with praise, who are practically
walking on air off the makeshift dance floor. Sweating and heaving,
having heavenly expressions as their faces. Gloating, nearly
floating on air with an air of inexpressible elation. Ping a-ping!
rings the bell of the starlit Daylight diner's entryway doors
opening. It's floors and walls return to the linoleum tiles, grease
stains and the Americana decor as the glass door close behind the
four. The four return to their blood blemished leather seats and
valentine's day countdown, presently playing a song about a garden
rose.
Dirt road driving under a blinking
eclipse as the sun slips behind the moon and they revolve around
each other as a pair swing dancers would.

“
There's always a dance
somewhere Anna,” Popper says.

“
Everything is dancing,
it's all a dance,” adds Harley laying back in her seat, with laces
lapping in the wind. They make a beeline for the airport, where
Anna and Cider can take a bus that’ll take them to the bridge and
over it, to Central, closer to home, her home. Along the way, each
blade of grass seems to be dancing to the beat of the breeze.
Easily swaying along with the green yellow blades of grass next to
them. Every sensation through her senses amplifies feeling of her
being immersed in an ever present sense of déjà vu that's forever
present when in the sparrow's presence. Accompanied by a feeling
that everything is aligning in an unseen way, that she's seeing the
scene from the car before though knows she hasn’t. As unrelated
ideas and objects alike are transforming into streams of symbolized
thought, acting as emblems recognized by her subconscious rising to
the conscious to be understood by Anna as synchronicity.

Throwing stones

“
Right on time,” Harley
says looking under her shoe to see a set of headlights trailing
them from a thousand feet back, though moving no closer. Following
them all the way to a bustling seven a.m. airport parking lot
filled with taxis and limousines fighting between rows and rows of
parked cars. They park the car near the bus terminals to watch a
clock above the ticket booth tick down. Sitting in silence next to
a tall lamp light, waiting as the planes taking off and landing
punctuate the passing of time and the rising tension with their
turbine engines flying and falling from the sky.

The four are Idle in the car and in
their heads, dreading the approaching moment of farewell between
good friends. Popper’s wrapping his nails to a tune onto the
dashboard, and Harley's tapping her feet to the gas pedal, revving
the engine to a beat of her own.

“
You two should really be
going,” Popper says.

“
What time does our bus
come?” Anna asks, reluctant to leave the duo to the fate they've
accepted a long, long time ago, and looking for an excuse to stay a
minute longer.

“
Soon, but our ride’s
coming a minute earlier,” Harley replies.

“
But there not after us,”
she says.

“
Anna, they will be when
there done with them,” Cider says, “happened to me a couple times
already. Besides they’re already pouring into the parking lot. See
that,” he says pointing the exit they came, “that's them setting up
roadblocks at the entrance's, so.”

“
It was nice meeting you
two,” Anna says slowly.

“
Don't be silly, there's no
need to be sad, we'll see you again, most likely,” Popper says
assuredly.

“
Though maybe not,” says
Harley.

“
Oh that's right,
well...safe travels home, Anna,” Popper says.

“
Yeah and take care of this
one will ya, he's a little rough around the edges, but a real
softy,” Harley says.

“
Well, till next time,”
Cider says. Knowing he has all of eternity to see his friends
again. He taps both the heads of his friends then hops out of the
bullet riddled convertible's back seat. Anna leans forward to shake
Harley’s hand and peck Popper on his blush covered
cheek.

“
Now I don't want your last
kiss to be a friendly one from me,” Anna jokes.

“
Ha, neither do I,” Harley
laughs. Anna peels herself from the sweaty leather like a person
peels a band-aid from their skin.

“
I'm sorry we have to leave
you like this,” Anna says.

“
Don't worry about us, I
mean we're still here, right?” Popper says.

“
Besides, it's all more or
less choreographed anyway,” Harley says.

“
It's what must be done,
Carrots...of the juice box gang,” Popper laughs, and Cider
smiles.

“
It must be a terrible fate
to watch your lover die with your own eyes,” she says. not saying,
over and over annually until the end of time.

“
Que sera, like the song
says,” says Harley.

“
Again someday,” Cider says
tipping an invisible hat.

“
Someday soon,” Popper
replies, and waves off his friend, and Harley nods.

“
Now go, the two of you
don't wanna get caught up in this shit close to home do ya.” Popper
says while shooing her with his free hand. Anna hesitates in what
is supposed to be a hasty escape, so Harley rolls up a travel
brochure and starts swatting at her like she's a stray bee buzzing
about them. Popper tosses roasted nuts at her one at a time until
she resigns to flee for her life, following Cider as he crouches
down, weaving between parked cars toward where the buses are
bustling most.
Leaving the synchronous duo
passionately kissing in the front seat. Popper’s hands race through
her hair and over her thigh, as Harley's leaden foot red lines the
engine with the car in park. She, the greatest drug the pretty boy
former skin popping junkie has ever experienced, and he the warmest
pillow and blanket she will ever know.

Anna's head pops up over the edge of
the driver's side door to say, “Hey I th-” Scaring the daylights
out of the duo, who jump out of their tangling tongues and out of
their seats, reaching instinctively for the radio dial.

“
What the hell are you
still doing here?” Harley snarls.

“
I just thought you should
know there's some guys behind the two vans on the curb in the very
front of the airport,” she says with only her eyes over the side of
the car.

“
Thank you,” Popper says
angrily.

“
And some more about twenty
yards on either side behind me.”

“
Thank you, Anna,” Harley
says impatiently.

“
And some swat trucks
pulled in a few seconds ago.”

“
Thank you…but really you
should be going. Now! we only have three tracks left, okay,” Harley
says with salt, though worried for her life, and not for her own or
her sparrow’s.

“
I was just worried, okay
I'll go, take care you two,” Anna says.

“
That's sweet of you Anna.
I can see why he's so taken with you,” Popper says.

“
That idiot really needs a
woman like you to balance him out,” Harley says.

“
More than you know, take
good care of him will you,” Popper says waving her off.

“
While you can, at least.
Take care Carrots,” Harley waves goodbye.

“
Wait,” she
says.

“
What is it?” Popper
asks.

“
What's it like, seeing
your one true love die in front of you?” she asks.

“
It's the most horrific
thing I've ever known in all my lives, there is nothing that even
compares,” Popper says.

“
Maybe a baby dying in its
mother's arms,” Harley says, and the duo shrug in agreement and say
together, “Gooodbye Carrots!”

“
Goodbye,” she bites her
lip in leaving, weaving back to an incised Cider impatiently
wrapping his fingers on two yellow bus tickets. Tapping his foot to
the ground, standing at the open door of the gray bus that's
waiting just for her. He’s a bit perturbed, fighting the thought
that with the next few steps up the bus stairs they're that much
closer to being separated, uncountable Alto’s away from each other
the minute they part paths. She scurries up the steps, dodging a
doubtful look from him that she's grown used to ducking.

The duo delve back to their other’s
lips until the song changes to an upbeat doo wop ditty, the next to
last of the countdown, one that the couple could dance to. They hop
out of their seats and walk over the trunk. Popping it open and
unzipping two old canvas bags, his and hers. Each filled with guns,
money, colorful jewels, jewelry and munitions. Rummaging through
the trunk, and passing each other the weapon of the others choice,
then throwing the bags over their shoulders. She ties a white
neckerchief slowly around her neck to feel it wrap tightly around
her skin, with a sniffle pulls it until she can barely
breath.

“
Not Gonna change your tie
my sparrow?”

“
Not this time, it's got a
bit of oil on it. Ready,” Popper says locking eyes with his lover,
and she pulls him in for a final flashing embrace, lasting until
she nibbles his tongue. They cock their weapons, an unpolished gold
plated AK 47 for him and a sub-machine gun with an extended clip
for her. The Ribbits are set up at all the entries and exits, and
in battle positions behind cars throughout the sprawling airport
parking lot. Local swat teams and the spinning lights of squad cars
are spreading a pulsing red and blue over everything in view. The
local sheriff starts talking confidently, with practically as
squadron behind him, at the duo through a loudspeaker.

“
The Ribbits didn't tell
em,” Popper laughs.

“
Guess not, they never do
tell the locals.”

As the bus pulls out of its place Anna
sees the backs of Harley and Popper, seeming the same sight as they
pass her view, standing against hundreds of authorities minions
seeing them down the barrel and staying steady to their beat on the
defiant duo. All but the few pencil pushers are unknowingly
participants to the sparrow’s annually celebrated ritual of death
and renewal. Canisters are thrown by the swat teams, trailing tear
gas toward them, and a line of smoke shot from a grenade launcher
on Harley's hip, arches into the air as her reply. The bus starts
speeding then turns sharply, pulling the scene out of Anna’s sight,
but she hears the metal twisting explosion of the grenade landing,
then the gas tanks of parked cars popping like heated corn
kernel.

The loudspeaker button clicks for a
second, but when the sheriff is about to yell, Popper shoots it
right out of his hand and him in the mouth. The standoff erupts
into a shootout lead spreading lead like pollen through the winds
of spring. Harley and Popper are dancing out of the strafing
bullets and bad aim of the attacking officers and pencil pushers,
Knowing they have one more song to go they move fearlessly and
shoot flawlessly as they swing smoothly as one through their deadly
dancing. Having the time of their lives for the last minutes of
them, before their song ends and their number is up. Gloatingly
floating freely over the spent shells falling from their weapons,
and taking trick shots behind their backs and over their heads.
Popper strums his rifle like a guitar while shooting wildly at
empty cars to jar and suppress the Ribbits and their local
flunkies. In the heat battle they jive, skip, duck and hop like
excited birds with clipped wings. Their open gym bags spill and
splash jewels, and money, and bullets to the ground while they're
slowly being flanked by authorities crawling up on either
side.

Two more grenades explode, ravaging
glass and metal to wreckage. One takes out an empty swat truck, the
other a group of rental cars and setting hundreds of car alarms off
simultaneously, serenading the whole parking lot with asynchronous
electric beeps. Masking the pings of ricochets and crunching glass
around them, but not their music. Down to the last song of the
Valentine’s day, songs for everlasting lovers countdown. The lot is
spotted with flames and sprinkled with shattered glass and downed
law enforcement.

The duo start feeling the pressure
closing in, fighting to focus through their fight or flight
instincts, sweating like they’re in sweltering desert heat. They
jump behind their tattered cream convertible. Harley picks off two
who are shooting from behind Popper and he pops his head up to
spray suppressive fire with sweeping motions of his rifle. The duo
are crouching up like hiding children, looking into each others
fear filled, wily eyes. Every emotion they possess is surging at
once, no matter how many times they relive this moment, the depths
of heart wrenching pain and crippling anguish resurface, while
soaring from their adrenaline dumped for their last few seconds of
survival, primal savages knowing nothing but the breath of the
other until their inevitable end.

“
Think of happy thoughts my
sparrow,” she says, stroking his cheek and taking his blush onto
her thumb.