15. You Betta Work B!^&$ #2
All eyes turned to Japheth. He flushed immediately, colour rising like a sunrise from his collar up to the tips of his ears.
“It was… good,” he said. “Fine. Normal. Regular.
You know, how normal and regular dates go.
Totally what anyone who's been on lots of dates would anticipate and expect? I have no idea. It was my first date. I think it was good. Great? Interstellar?”
“Start at the beginning,” Carrington instructed, folding their arms. “We need details. We need to know if we’re in danger.
We need to know what you discovered. I have very little joy in my life right now.
Not only is all of this happening,” they waved their arms around at the apocalyptic environs, “but my curling team is not advancing so once again, I’ll be sniffling and watching the Scotties Tournament of Hearts from home instead of being on the ice where I belong.
Please tell me there was a little fun friction on your date so I can live vicariously through you. ”
Japheth glanced down, kicking at an extinguished cinder. “Rino picked me up under the bridge by the Napanee River,” he said. “You know, the… slightly murdery one.”
“Romantic,” Suwarna deadpanned.
“I thought I was going to die and also throw up,” Japheth admitted.
“Not on my outfit! You didn’t, did you?” Carrington clutched their cameo clasp.
Japheth shook his head, “And then he rolled up in a Maserati.”
“A Maserati?” Ronald cut in dreamily.
“Metallic black, this year’s model, I think?
” Japheth nodded. “The engine did this… purring thing. I don’t really care about cars, but it was actually pretty sexy.
” He went on, eyes glazing slightly as memory pulled him back, “The seats were this soft, dark leather. And he was wearing this cologne that was making my stomach flip, in that excited, kinda dangerous way you were telling me about Ronald.”
Ronald let out a tiny, involuntary whimper. “I want a Maserati,” he whined.
Rebekkah shot him a look as she pulled down her sunglasses and levelled a cool, assessing gaze at him. “You want a Maserati? You betta work, bitch.”
Everyone looked at her and she shrugged. “The station’s gone. Emma-Lou has possibly departed or at least disappeared. I think we can safely retire the forbidden words and phrases list.”
“I am working!” Ronald whined again. “Emotionally. On myself!”
“Unfortunately, I think the Ferraris only accept payments in cash, or good credit, not payments in personal growth,” Carrington said. “Continue, Japheth, you were under the murdery-bridge, in the Maserati steeped in sexy cologne.”
“He had Savage Garden playing,” Japheth remembered.
“Just nice and low so we could still chat, but I could feel the bass rolling through me and he… he kept one hand on the wheel and one on my knee. Casual but so, so cool. The whole time he just felt very…” he gestured helplessly like a mime trying to convey what falling in love feels like and appearing to his friends to be pinching pierogi in the air, “Very power steering meets power gay.”
Rebekkah made a small keening sound, “Oh my, oh my… damn, that’s right fucking sexy.”
Again, everyone clocked her.
She gave a little shrug, “I’m trying out all the words I was never allowed to say. And you know what? It feels fucking fantastic you fuckety lucky loves of mine.”
“When his hand was on your knee,” Ronald cut in before things got too colourful. “How did you not just spontaneously combust?”
“I was sweating buckets bro, making a slip ‘n’ slide of his leather seats,” Japheth admitted. “And once we had parked to go to dinner, he leaned over and kissed me. And, honestly, I don’t have words. It was kinda everything.”
Everyone cooed together, “Ahhh!”
“Anyway, we went to his parent’s house. Well, villa? Mansion? Chateau? Vatican satellite office? There was marble. There were columns. There were topiary turkeys. There were more religious statues and icons than the Christian bookstore in Kingston.”
“And they loved you,” Ronald said, because of course they had. Who wouldn’t fall for Japheth?
“Who trims the bushes? You need some experience to carve a turkey,” Carrington wondered.
“They were… a lot,” Japheth said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite it all.
“Mamma Ferrari kept implying we should take a test drive before buying. His sister Eva did… things with forks that were illuminating. Papà Ferrari interrogated Rino about the station fire like he was running the Napanee chapter of the FBI. But they were kind. All of them. They cared about WWJD. They were shocked about Emma-Lou.”
He sobered, the smile fading, as he continued, “I told them she was missing, of course. Rino’s father looked like someone had punched him in the gut.
They knew about the fire already; apparently the whole town thinks God was offended by our Enrique Iglesias cover, but they didn’t know that we haven’t been able to find Emma-Lou.
Rino admitted he was the one arguing with her in the office.
It was about money. Promises. He wanted her to find a way to keep the station afloat so his family wouldn’t be the only life support. ”
“Life support. Hmm,” Ronald hummed to himself and Suwarna made a note.
“I just can’t picture Rino being behind this. He said Emma-Lou ran after him when he left the station. He showed up at Weinus, Weinus & Ware. We all saw him there, well the three of us did. Carrington, you and Suwarna were still here and then the station was…” Japheth gestured around them.
“Crispy,” Carrington supplied.
“Overdone,” Ronald added.
“Fucking flambéed,” Rebekkah threw in casually, but she was really starting to get a kick out of throwing around the F bomb whenever it suited her.
“Completely compromised,” Suwarna finished and made another note. “Hopefully the insurance premiums are paid up.”
“And then?” Carrington asked. “What happened after the family dinner?”
“Rino and I took a walk after dinner,” Japheth said.
“We had dessert and coffee with his folks and his sister. And then he drove me back to my bike where I’d left it by the river.
It was dark, and the river was just a slick black snake slipping through the cattails and there was this little halo of light from one broken streetlamp on the bridge, barely enough, but just enough to see where he started and I began.
And he… I mean we… he kissed me. And then I kissed him.
And then for a long while, we just didn’t want to let each other go until it was the only thing we could do.
And I’ve kind of had this feeling like I’m missing something ever since.
I know it’s so silly because we just started…
it was a first date, you know? But it all just went so right. I really like him.”
He swallowed hard, eyes fixed on a point somewhere on the horizon, reliving it all. “It was like someone had finally taken the volume knob on my chest and turned it up from background noise to my favourite jam.”
Rebekkah’s face melted, “Oh, Japheth.”
“Kissing Rino was exactly how I hoped it would be and so, so much more. I just hadn’t realized or even considered how our bodies would feel pressed together,” Japheth said, searching his friends' faces shyly to ensure they understood. “Right before we left each other, he pulled me back for one last kiss and said, ‘I’m not a monster, Polpetto. You have to believe me.’ And I do.”
They all stood there for a second, caught in the fragility of that sentence.
“Well,” Ronald said finally, because someone had to bring down the other boot, “that’s pretty much exactly what a maybe-monster-mobster who didn’t want you to suspect him would say.”
“Ronald,” Rebekkah scolded, but it gave her pause, too.
“I’m just saying,” Ronald replied, “if watching Law & Order Special Victims Unit has taught me anything, it’s that the more that someone loudly defends themselves, the more likely he’s hiding something suspicious in a storage unit somewhere.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Japheth said.
“Of course I don’t want Rino to be… bad.
And I also don’t want to be the idiot who ignores all the signs and ends up taxidermied in a private gallery for one.
I can’t do this on my own. I know I’m biased now, I can’t think straight.
I can’t walk straight when I’m around him.
There’s no way I can be the one with the crystal-clear reasoning we need to solve this.
We need to work together to figure this out.
We need to find Emma-Lou. We need to know who set this…
” he spread his arms to encompass the wreckage and the five of them, “this funeral pyre for our careers and the only Christian radio station West of the St. Lawrence Seaway.”
“I don’t think WWJD was the only one,” Carrington corrected. “I hope we weren’t the only ones. If we were, Christian radio has really bit the bullet.”
Ronald squared his shoulders and put on his game face. “We’ve gotta use what God gave us,” he said.
“Wobbly knees?” Rebekkah guessed. “An internal sense of being destined for greatness?”
“Our five senses,” Ronald clarified. “We were all there, right before it happened. We saw things. Heard things. Tasted, smelled, touched stuff. We’re like a holy Hardy Boys plus Nancy Drew plus that one episode of Matlock my grandma made me watch.
” He shook his head, “She taped over my Saved by the Bell Zack and Kelly forever montage VHS.”
“I prefer to think of us as Miami Vice but with better hair,” Carrington said, and then glanced at Rebekkah in her wide-brimmed hat. “You can still be Nancy Drew under cover.”
“Perfect,” Ronald said, clapping his hands once. “We’re gonna go through everything. Sight. Hearing. Taste. Touch. Smell. We put it all together, maybe we figure out something we missed?”
“Excellent idea, Ronald,” Suwarna said, her pen plucked from behind her ear and at the ready above her clipboard. “Let’s review what was heard first, surveillance is my specialty.”