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August 29, 2008

The End of Cheyenne

Perdida had been missing for a week when Margo finally said, “You should look for her.”

“Maybe we should look for her together,” I said, trying to trick her by pretending to be open and honest.

It worked: “No, Girth… If I see her, I’m bound to stab her in the throat. You should do this alone.”

I nodded, gave her an awkward kiss, and drove up to North Hollywood to look for clues in Perdida’s apartment. I didn’t find any suggestion of her whereabouts—just a lot of vibrators and faux-vintage knickknacks. As I prepared to give up and leave, my foot kicked something small across the polished wood floor. I went over to the baseboard and picked it up—a matchbook, bearing the logo and address for the Lunaria Jazz Bar, a club Jam used to frequent before moving in with a number of other disheveled musicians/hobos. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t have anything else I could consider a lead.

The drive into Santa Monica took forever, even though I stuck to the Boulevard. When I got to the Lunaria, I was shocked to discover it had been completely abandoned. I’d only been there a few months ago, and it had looked somewhat dilapidated but it still swung with all the authority squatting jazz musicians could muster. Now, the streetlights shining through the darkened entrance doors revealed little more than a few dusty, upended seats and the pathetic shape of a once-lively bandstand.

Why would Perdida have a matchbook from a place like this? It had to hold some answers. I entered quietly, looking around the darkness for some sort of sign. I didn’t find much in the club itself, but I did locate a door leading to a back office, which in turn had a door leading into a damp, cramped basement lit with a hurricane lantern.

The lantern revealed the shapely, fit body of Perdida Cheyenne, who had been bound and gagged in one corner. I walked past an ancient, rusty water heater and bent down to remove the gag.

“Girth!” she gasped, tears forming on the rims of her eyes. “What the fuck took you so long?”

“Margo,” I sighed.

“You need to call the police,” Perdida said. “Quickly, before he comes back!”

“Who’s keeping you here? What happened?”

“Oh, Girth, don’t you see?” she sobbed. “Colby. It was always Colby!”

The information shattered me. Colby, Abysmal’s #1 fan and a decent if troubled guy, had escalated his behavior this far? I stopped and thought about it, and the pieces started to add up—his unkempt appearance, bizarre behavior, and predilection for tranny hookers… Maybe he was the type to have a psychotic break and kidnap a woman who had held his obsession for months.

“Girth, look out!” Perdida exclaimed.

But it was too late, and I was too lost in thought. I felt a heavy, warm sensation in the back of my head before the world became a gray swirl.

Neither of us know how much time passed between Colby striking me into unconsciousness and me waking up, gagged and bound next to Perdida, but it must have been hours. Colby was long gone, and Perdida was bored out of her mind.

I spit out the gag and wiggled my face to get it away from my mouth. I asked Perdida, “How long will he be gone?”

Perdida shrugged.

“Thanks for the help,” I groaned.

I looked around and spotted a twisted hunk of rebar protruding from the drywall. It didn’t make a lot of sense architecturally, but I was glad to see it. I hopped over to it and swatted my bound wrists against it until the foil tape he had tied me with gave. With my hands free, I yanked the gag completely off and pulled the tape off my feet, then did the same for Perdida.

“How are we gonna get out of here?” Perdida asked.

I rolled my eyes. “The door, maybe?”

I went up the rotting wooden steps to the door and discovered the cast-iron door had been locked from the outside.

“Fuck,” I sighed.

When I returned, Perdida greeted me with a condescending smile. “Any other bright ideas?”

I shrugged, sitting back down on the concrete floor as I surveyed the room. Things added up: a hurricane lantern, an old water heater, a damp and rotten wood ceiling, a blood-encrusted ball-peen hammer, and about 35 rolls of foil tape…

“I’ve got it!” I yelped.

“Already?”

“If we hammer the water heater’s relief valve, the gas pressure will build up to an enormous degree,” I said. “Then, we’ll use the lantern to ignite the gas, which will make the heater take off like a rocket. We’ll braid up some of this tape to make a super-strong, super-long rope so the water heater will carry us up to the main floor.”

“That sounds like it’ll kill us,” Perdida said.

“Better than dying at Colby’s hammer-toting hands.”

Perdida nodded frantically, so we got to work.

I hammered the relief valve into submission immediately. It took more than two hours to braid enough tape to give us clearance from what I presumed would be the length of the rocket heater’s flame. I figured this would be more than enough time for the pressure to build sufficiently. I tied mine and Perdida’s ankles to the tape-rope, then set the hurricane lantern next to the gas valve. We waited.

“This is taking forever,” Perdida said after about five minutes.

“I guess the gas valve still works,” I laughed. I hurled the hammer at the hurricane lantern, knocking it over as it shadowed, engulfing the gas valve in flames.

Ten seconds later, a massive explosion threw both Perdida and I into the concrete wall of the basement. The braided tape melted and snapped immediately as the water heater rose, bursting through the ceiling and falling to its side just after clearing the ceiling, blocking us from climbing up after it.

“I can’t believe that came close to working.”

“I watch a lot of Mythbusters,” I said sheepishly.

“What are we gonna do now?” Perdida asked.

A noisy whooshing from above suggested to both of us that the flaming water heater had ignited the upstairs level.

“Fuck,” I said. “We’re trapped in a basement, and the building’s on fire. If the smoke doesn’t suffocate us, the fire eating up all our oxygen will.”

“You retard!” Perdida shrieked. “I had more stories to tell!”

“Oh, bullshit,” I sniped. “More retarded crap about crackbabies getting second chances at life?”

“How dare you! A meth-addicted teen in 1985 Austin who finds redemption as a stripper is a sound, fairy-tale story.”

“It’s crap!”

“You’re crap!”

“Fuck off!”

We continued shouting at each other until firefighters burst into the basement. They later told us they never would have thought to look if they hadn’t heard us verbally abusing each other.

After medics checked us out and gave the all-clear, we stood on the Santa Monica Boulevard sidewalk, unsure of what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “Speed Punk is a good idea. It’s just a horrible script.”

“I know,” Perdida agreed. “It needs a polish.”

“Or two.”

”HEY, MOTHERFUCKERS!” a familiar voice roared above the din of the rescue workers.

Perdida and I turned in time to watch Colby—aiming twin .357 Magnums at us, with a pair of M16s slung around his shoulders—burst through the police cordon and get shot no fewer than 87 times by the SMPD. We watched his bloody body collapse on the street, stared at it for a stunned beat, then looked back at each other.

“Anyway…” Perdida said. “Thanks for saving me, sort of.”

“Thanks for the help with Fuck Machines,” I said.

“Any time.” She smiled sunnily.

“Not any time,” I said. “You get that I can’t see you again, right?”

“What if Margo is on The State of the Union Is Bonkers?”

“We’ll cross that road when we get to it.”

She nodded.

I gently swept one of my hands (still sticky from all the work with the tape) against hear tear-streaked cheek, then turned away. I strolled through the array of police, fire, and rescue vehicles on my way to the hearse, which they had mistakenly loaded Colby’s bullet-ridden body in.

I didn’t mind.

Written by Girth McDürchstein on August 29, 2008 4:05 PM
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