Chapter 14 #5
Okay. Here it is. No more excuses or be-my-best-self therapeutic reinforcement.
My feet had taken over, gliding with a strange, unexpected vigor toward the end of the board.
How had the other divers proceeded from this point?
I focused myself, as if in serene, macho prayer, like a bullfighter in the arena, or a boxer telling himself whatever boxers tell themselves, aside from inwardly screaming, “Not my face! Don’t hit my face!
” I bounced lightly, although I had no concept of why.
I put my hands high over my head, my palms facing each other, which I suspected made me look less like an athlete than a prima ballerina in Swan Lake.
I was Tom Cruise, signaling to the director that I’d be leaping off the cliff, without a safety harness.
I was Ben Affleck’s stunt double, signaling that I’d be skydiving out of the chopper while Ben was at his five-star hotel, meeting with his publicist. I was Taylor Swift, about to tackle her first serious acting role as an Appalachian waitress battling corporate frackers in a low-budget indie.
I was me, after I’d heard Travolta mangle my name from the Oscar envelope (“And the winner is—Anton Birnbutt!”).
I was mounting the stairs to the Academy stage while the world cheered or asked, “Who is he? Was he in like, some foreign movie?”
I bounced even higher and, without meaning to, before I’d consciously made the decision, I was off the board, pausing for a hummingbird microsecond in midair, and then dropping as gravity proved itself.
I arched my back and targeted the blue rectangle, which was looming ever larger, a cackling, deceptively smooth shimmer waiting to rip me to pieces.
I plunged faster and faster, and while instructing myself to be graceful, a strong, silvery arrow of intent, this wasn’t happening.
My arms and legs were pinwheeling like Bugs Bunny after he’s been pushed off a cliff, the blue rectangle was still expanding, the crowd was making every sort of confused and appalled noise, and I’d be smashing into the water with random parts of my body within a heartbeat, when all of this was offset by a gunshot, cracking and echoing throughout the cavernous enclosed space, causing the crowd to scream, with everyone piling on top of each other in a furious hunt for the exits.
I was submerged within a blinding swarm of bubbles.
Was I hurt? Had I been targeted? Had my concussion returned?
Which sections of me had fractured? I pushed with my legs, and my head burst through the churning surface as I gasped for air and flung the water out of my eyes to see what was going on, and if my blood was seeping around me.
It wasn’t, and as I paddled toward the side of the pool, I saw Reggie, kneeling and reaching for me with both arms.
“Come on,” he said, “we have to get out of here.”
Reggie wrapped me in a large towel, tossed my tracksuit at me, and took me by the elbow, shoving me along as I struggled to stay upright. While I hadn’t been conspicuously injured, I wasn’t steady, and the stadium was emptying out as sirens wailed and people yelled.
“Henrik’s dead,” Reggie told me as we hurried down the back hallway.
“I saw Stangler get near him with a briefcase that he opened, and Henrik seemed satisfied. Henrik forwarded the payment on his phone, but just as he was taking the briefcase Stangler shot him at point-blank range. Elki was a few feet away and saw everything.”
“Oh my God…”
“Then Stangler takes back the briefcase so he can keep the money and the ruby, and starts to run out, but I body-slam him and he takes a header while the briefcase goes flying, and I catch it. He gets up and comes after me, but I bash the case into his head and he’s out like a light.
I’ve got the ruby, so we’re good to go. But we’re not safe here, because I’m not sure whose side anyone’s on. ”
We reached the American dorm and ran into my room, and as I jammed stuff into my duffel bag Reggie urged me to go faster.
Once we’d left and were almost through the lounge, there were two guys in black hooded warm-up suits, black woolen beanies, and black Covid-style masks pointing assault rifles at us.
“We know who you are,” said one of these guys, in accented English, maybe something Slavic.
“We know you have the Atropos Emerald.”
The emerald? Reggie still had the diamond, and now the ruby, but I hadn’t heard anything about the emerald.
“We don’t have it,” said Reggie.
“Of course you do. You retrieved the other two stones. All we want is the emerald. Right now.”
Whoever these guys were working for, their information was faulty. But if Reggie and I walked them through the convolutions, I doubted these armed mercenaries would shrug and admit, “Well, in that case, no hard feelings, be on your way.”
“Fuck you,” said Reggie, who was toting my rolled-up yoga mat.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and reached inside for the power bars Edwin had engineered.
They were gone, but on a nearby table I saw a red-white-and-blue basket brimming with identical power bars, and I guessed that someone had unknowingly added my bars to the mix.
I lunged for the basket, grabbed a power bar, and hurled it at the approaching gunmen, only for it to hit one of their arms and bounce to the ground.
“Healthy snacks?” said the guy. “These are your American weapons?”
I picked up another two power bars and aimed them, but the raw-oats-and-honey variety along with the smoked-almonds-and-coconut bar weren’t the desired ammunition, except against late-morning hunger pangs.
“Give us the emerald,” repeated one of the deluded guys, just a few feet away.
The only reason Reggie and I weren’t dead was because these goons intended to torture us, steal the nonexistent gem, and then kill us.
I wasn’t sure where Reggie was concealing the other jewels; he’d maintained a secrecy in order to protect me.
There were only two power bars left in the basket, but they were my favorite: cashew halves and carob chips.
I almost didn’t throw them because I was starving, but Edwin had probably analyzed my taste buds to guide me, and as these bars sailed through the air, the two thugs laughed until the bars exploded in their faces, with a strong enough blast to send them reeling backward and blow the door to my room off its hinges.
The guys tried to stand and began firing, but Reggie positioned the yoga mat and strafed them, their bodies twisting like marionettes with the strings slashed.
Smoke and geysering blood filled the lounge.
“Come on,” said Reggie, indicating the way out.
I thought to myself, Reggie is a trained marksman, but I’d hobbled those international scumbags with high-fiber chewy ’n’ crunchy energy treats.
I was a Trader Joe’s hit man, and maybe next time Edwin could arm me with a nitroglycerin-filled bag of pita chips and a deadly slice of carrot cake.