It took John several long moments to identify the woman standing before him. It had been nearly a decade since he'd seen his estranged sister.
"Kathy?" he gasped. "When -- where -- what -- why are you here?"
"JOHN!" she cried, flinging her arms around her older brother. "I was going to call you! I mean, I've been trying all week to work up the nerve. And now you're here! And so am I!" Karen's enthusiasm was punctured by occasional squawks from her remaining rubber ducks, which were being squished between her and the sibling she had entrapped in a vise-like hug.
John was still struggling to make sense of the scene before him. Joe, meanwhile, was trying to decide on his best course of action: Dash inside to check on his sister's condition, or wait to find out the identity of the stranger flinging herself at his lover?
"Kathy. We need to go inside," John finally managed to force out. "Sue -- my wife, Sue -- there's been a car accident. Sue is hurt."
"Oh no! How terrible!" Kathy seemed to deflate, but the setback was momentary. "That's so awful, but maybe I can help. Here, I'll help you find her room. Is she in the ER? I've been working here for a week. Well, not working, of course I can't actually work, but volunteering. Ever since I got back to town. Oh, here, watch the swinging doors -- great. I'll just hop over to the main desk and find out where they've put her. I can't believe it, an accident! What horrible circumstances and timing, and -- oh! Hello? Who are you?"
Kathy, turning to walk over to the admissions desk, finally noticed Joe tailing along.
"Kathy, this is my -- brother-in-law. Sue's brother. Joe, this is Kathy. My sister."
Joe shot John a quizzical look, clearly commenting, You never told me about any siblings.
"Kathy moved away several years ago. Without quite telling any of us where she was moving to," John added.
"Oh, right, I need to fill you in on all that, don't I? I'm much better now, by the way," Kathy chirped. "But, first things first. Let me go find out about Sue."
As Kathy set off for the desk, Joe stepped closer to question John about this very odd rendezvous. Before he had time to even frame an opening question, though, Kathy was back, with a doctor in tow.
"Mr. Hasselbeck?"
John nodded as he heard his name.
"We've got your wife's condition stabilized, and we're working to assess the extent of her injuries. She's comatose at the moment. We're also checking on the baby, but she didn't lose it in the crash. We have some paperwork we'll need you to sign, but you can go see her first." The doctor looked at Kathy and Joe. "Immediate family only, I'm afraid."
"I'm family! I'm her brother," Joe interjected.
"Well, she can only have one visitor at a time, for now. If you two would like to wait here, we can take Mr. Hasselbeck up and fill him in further on her condition."
Joe grudgingly sat in one of the waiting room's bizarrely contoured plastic chairs. Kathy sank into a chair next to his and reached out to pat his hand.
"Thank you, doctor. We'll wait here," she said.
After John and the doctor disappeared, Kathy turned to Joe, her blue eyes visibly filling with tears.
"I feel so bad about these terrible circumstances," she said. "John laughs at me, but I've always thought our family must be cursed. It's why I left Hillglen seven years ago. I'd left town before, for -- well, for other reasons, when I was a young girl. But Daddy sent for me, and I came back, only to have our parents perish later that year in the terrible molasses flood at the factory. So I left, and went to work on an alpaca farm in Montana. But then something started beckoning me back. I just had this feeling that I was needed here. But John -- poor John. I abandoned him after our parents' death, and left him to deal with settling the estate. And now I don't know if he'll ever speak to me again!"
A sudden flood of tears interrupted Kathy's monologue, but before Joe could offer words of consolation, or a tissue, Kathy abruptly regained control of her emotions.
"But he did speak to me! Just now, outside the hospital when we met! So maybe he'll find it in his heart to forgive me. And things seemed to be going so well. I'd found a purpose. When I arrived in town, I went out to the old factory. I read in the newspapers that it was shut down after the molasses tragedy, and I stopped following news about Hillglen after that, so I never read that it reopened. Until I got there! And saw the bustling new plant! Consolidated Duck of Hillglen. At first I was worried it was some sort of horrible animal farming operation, but I steeled myself and went into the lobby, and I was so relieved and delighted when I saw the display. Rubber ducks! What a wonderfully cheering industry for the town to rally around! And so much safer than molasses. So I had a long talk with the secretary at the plant, and she mentioned that the plant was helping the hospital recruit volunteers to distribute ducks and help cheer sick patients. And since I know just how those patients feel, I thought it was some sort of sign. So here I am! But oh, that my work should lead me to reunite with my brother and meet his relatives in such circumstances --"
Once again, the tears threatened. Several clouds of emotion vied for dominance in the azure expanse of Kathy's eyes. Belated confusion won out.
"Baby? What baby?"
"Sue is pregnant," Joe said. After a moment, when Kathy was still, surprisingly, silent, he added, "It's their first."
"Wow," Kathy breathed. "Perhaps it was the baby that beckoned me here."
--
"The baby?" TR524 made a noise most closely translated into English as sarcastic snort. "Even in their maturity this species demonstrates paltry communication skills. The woman must be feebleminded to think a larval human could summon her."
"Ssssh!" hissed his companion, GK2219. The sound wasn't actually much like 'sssh,' or like a hiss, but the curt wave of GK2219's tentacle made his meaning clear. "I'm trying to pay attention. Cease chattering about your unimportant pawns."
GK2219 peered more closely at his scrying screen. Events were unfolding in an unexpected fashion at the human temple of adolescent indoctrination.
--
His classroom empty at last, Jay sank in exhaustion into a chair at his desk. The brats were finally cleared out for their last period of the day. Gym, for most. If he was lucky one or two would maim themselves playing badminton the class and thin his class ranks a bit.
First, he returned to Tim Jenkins' math test. Championship be damned, his honor was at stake. Jay scrawled "F" in vivid red at the top of the paper.
Then he reached for the pile of clipped up newspaper pages. A few larger headlines yielded a simple note. A short, sharp warning. PAY UP.
Online auctions had become an addiction. Now, someone would have to pay for the HP 15C. And the vintage bronze slide rule. And the 1783 edition of Newton's Principia. Oh yes, they would be paying, alright.
--
Will GK2219 ever be rid of the pesky TR524?
Can Sue recover in time to introduce her baby to her hitherto unknown sister in law and her brother who used to be a sister and her gay husband who is not the child's father??
Will Jay be able to avoid negative feedback on eBay???
The answers to these questions, and a free demo CD, will be inserted in the package with your purchase of the next section of… CLIFFHANGER.
While Bob was awake, Sue dreamed. She dreamed the vivid, insane dreams of someone whose body cannot decide whether to give up on life just yet, or carry on long enough to give a baby a fighting chance.
She dreamed of teaching her class.
"I want to talk to you about your most recent essays, before I return them to you. At first I was impressed with the apparent bulk of writing. I wondered if some of you had not genuinely learnt to be more creative than 'On my vacation we went to the beach, the end.'"
The students, who had been quite normal as she began that sentence, were gradually evolving into something else before her eyes. She could not quite tell what, but she was determined to finish her thoughts before they became squids and swam away, or dissolved in flames, or flew south for the... wait, were they turning into ducks?
Was she?
"Quack. Quack quack."
Sue concentrated a little harder, although the essays were by now tucked under a wing rather than held in her hand.
"By that I mean, quack, I did have high hopes. But, quack, those hopes were rudely dashed. Don't peck while I am talking to you, Bill Duckworth!"
The unusual shock of Sue losing her cool appeared to settle the children back into a more human form, at least for the moment. "Right, to get to the point, and not beat around the bush, it seems that the only way many of you reached an acceptable number of words in this particular essay was by means of unnecessary puffery."
"You mean we used a lot of words without them much advancing the plot, Miss?"
"Yes, exactly. That is correct. Quite so. It is poor technique to simply run up your word count without the text actually going anywhere useful. And each and every one of you... stop turning into a fish, Paul Salmon, or I shall send you home breadcrumbed and fried!"
"Yes Miss. Sorry Miss."
"So I want to mention some ways you used to merely expand the length of these essays without making a meaningful contribution to the content. Firstly, repetition."
"Saying the same thing over and over again, Miss?"
"Precisely. Saying the same thing over and over again. That is poor technique. If you say the same thing over and over again in future, I shall strike out the repetitive parts and count only the original words. Is that clear?"
"Yes Miss. Sorry Miss."
Several of the more ashamed beetles crawled towards the back of the room.
"Another thing that several of you did, other than repetitively saying the same thing over and over again, was to have the characters recite something at length which someone else already wrote. Case in point, Terry Daniher -- and you can stop turning into a moose right now -- you had someone recite a lengthy passage originally written by John Wyndham."
She handed him the essay. "Would you care to read the relevant passage so we all get the idea?"
Terry uncomfortably shifted his horns, and began. "Edward sat down with his book, and began to read. This is what he read. 'When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else--'"
"That will do, Terry. I think we've heard quite enough of someone else's work for today. But it gets worse. Jane, would you care to read from your essay, starting where I put a large, angry, red X?"
"So this was it. The World Championship of Pi Digit Recital. Augustus knew he could win. He waited six and a half hours for his turn, for he was to compete second. Then he began. 'Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six two six four three three eight three two seven nine five zero two eight eight four one nine seven one six nine three nine nine three seven five one zero five eight two zero nine seven--'"
"Thank you, Jane. That will do. Jane, are you alright? You look a funny color."
For that matter, Sue could not remember a Jane in her class at all.
And the walls began to glow, an eerie green.
--
Would Sue wake up?
Would Sue wake up sane??
Is a dream sequence the very worst way to run up the word count???
These questions, and one inscribed in code and carried on gold plates by the Pioneer spacecraft, will be answered in the next excruciating portion of... CLIFFHANGER.
Oh, thank God, I must have been a good boy after all.
That was Bob's first thought as consciousness clawed its way in through the catflap of Bob's mind. Amidst a haze of light -- a sort of fluorescent haze, a pesky part of his brain noted in puzzlement -- he could see an angel. A resplendent vision in white, with a billowing mist of golden hair. She smiled at him, radiating tranquility, and all he could think was that heaven was better than he'd ever dared hope.
"Oh good, Mr. Gillis, you're awake. We'll be needing some blood now. And there's some coppers that are eager to talk to you."
Blood? Had he landed in some twisted Anne Rice version of the afterlife? And, coppers? Why should antique coins want to talk to him?
The angle came at him with a needle that felt like a piece of industrial tubing. The sudden shock of pain brought back unwelcome memories -- of Marisa, and the tattooed trucker at the end of the bar that had turned out to be her boyfriend, and a possessive one at that. Bob had only learned of the 7-foot-tall sociopath's status after he'd downed several fifths of nitroglycerin-strength vodka and belligerently attempted to prove to Marisa that he wasn't using his flashy Mercedes to compensate for anything.
After that, it all went sort of hazy. He had a vague feeling he might have done something ill-advised. Like drive home.
"Mr. Gillis -- if I were you, I wouldn't say anything till I called a good lawyer."
"A lawyer?" Bob asked faintly, wondering when his angel had turned into such an agent of pain and darkness.
"Mm." The angel -- who looked to be pushing 60 and had hair more bleached than golden, Bob noted with growing awareness and dismay -- patted his shoulder sympathetically. "On the plus side, I'm going to go tell Dr. O'Brian you're awake, and maybe he'll let you have something nice, like a morphine drip."
---
Both Joe and John ignored the phone for the first dozen rings. John finally broke the frozen silence.
"Don’t you have an answering machine?"
"Don't we have more important things to talk about?"
John didn't respond. The phone kept trilling. Finally, Joe snatched it up in exasperation.
"I don't want any!" he barked, slamming the receiver back down.
Almost instantly, it started up again.
"For God's sake --"
John pulled the receiver away before Joe could bash anything with it.
"What? He's unavailable, just give me a message to pass on... Sue? She's -- what the hell happened? Yes, I know her, I'm her -- I mean, I know her. What the hell do you mean no further details are available? Ok, look, we'll be -- he'll be right there. Yes, I'll pass the message on."
John was on his feet before the phone landed back in the cradle.
"There's been an accident. We need to get to the hospital, now."
--
Kathy hummed to herself as she rifled through her bag. One, two -- three duckies left, each inscribed A Gift From Consolidated Duck of Hillglen. She'd been to seven rooms so far, not bad for an afternoon.
"Where to next?" she called Mita, the desk nurse, as she sailed past.
"Let's see ... how about pediatrics? There's a few new arrivals you could check in on. The desk can point you toward the rooms."
"Sounds good. I might need some more ducks, though." It would be terrible to arrive in the ward, intent on distributing rubber ducks and good cheer, only to run out of duckies. That would upset people, and when people got upset, Kathy got upset, and Kathy being upset tended to set off terrible domino-like chains unpleasantness.
Past tense, she firmly reminded herself, trying to shut down the worrying train of thought before it built up too much steam. This had been a good day, and a good week, and she was determined to keep her upbeat mood intact.
"Sorry, I'm fresh out," Mita answered. "You can restock at the supply room near the ER, though. I think they just stashed a batch there yesterday."
"Off I go, then." Still drifting along in an off-key reverie, Kathy went down the corridor and decided to head out of the hospital, then back in through the main ER entrance. It would be faster than winding through the snaking interior corridors.
Outside, the weather was crisp but clear, with just a few fluffy clouds drifting lazily around. It was the kind of Midwestern day she'd missed in Oregon; really, the first perfect weather break since she'd returned to Hillglen.
Kathy smiled. The day seemed a good omen for new beginnings. Perhaps she'd even make that phone call later she'd been working up to. It would be nice to have progress like that to report to Dr. Baxter on Thursday.
As Kathy turned to head into the ER, her bag of ducks flew from her hand -- launched into the air by the man tearing past.
"Hey!" she called in outrage. Ok, people heading for the ER were probably in a distressed state, but they didn't have to be rude about it, right? "You knocked over my ducks!"
A second man came hurrying by. He started on an apology as the first man turned back around. As the person who had knocked aside her ducks spun, Kathy lost track of the second man altogether, staring ahead in shocked amazement.
"It's you," she cried out.
--
Who is it?
Is this whole duck theme going anywhere??
Never mind the accident victims, what about the big football game???
These questions, and one we blatantly stole from Soap, will be answered in the next drug enhanced chapter of... CLIFFHANGER.
"Due respect, sir, this not a salvageable exam situation. His solution for x squared was 'Old Hickory,' for Christ's sake!"
Principal Jones worried about the unnatural shade of red that Jay Terry, his math department head, was turning. If Jay had a heart attack in his office, there'd be trouble. The shrinking budget had forced them to lay off the school nurse last month.
"Well, let's look at this from a different angle," Jones suggested. "We're always encouraging students to treat all their subjects creatively, including math. Perhaps 'Old Hickory' was Tim's way of, er, expressing variables. What are some of his other answers?"
"The entire proof on page two apparently boils down to 'The Emancipation Proclamation.' "
"Hmm. That is fairly -- unusual. Anything at all in the ballpark?"
"I think the key to the matter lies at the top of the test, where he wrote 'American History B' under 'Subject.'"
Principal Jones winced. Nearly every student on the school football team could bench press about twice his own IQ, but only Tim Jenkins was too dumb to even cheat effectively.
"Jay, I know we pride ourselves on our academic integrity, our unimpeachable standards, our top-notch educational offerings and our district-leading 67% graduation rate. But this is the first time in decades the Rubber Ducks are going to the district championship, and I won't have them competing without their star running back. Think of the town! Think of our higher moral obligations! Think of partial credit! Isn't there anything on that test that shows young Timmy has soaked up some of your pearls of wisdom?"
"On question 7, he wrote '1776.' The correct answer is '17.'"
"Excellent! Here, let me see the test."
Jay held the paper out between two fingers. He'd considered donning gloves before handling it.
Principal Jones peered intently at the test, then beamed beautifully. "Take a look at this. Here -- see this speck, between the two sevens? Clearly a decimal point."
"Sir, I think that's a crushed mosquito. I've been putting in requisition forms for months to try to get the missing screen on my classroom window replaced."
"Nonsense, it's a decimal. Tim's answer was 17.76, which is somewhat akin to the correct answer. Surely you can award some points for that. And, with a generous curve -- since, let's be frank here, Jay, despite your absolutely sterling efforts, it's not like any of those kids of yours are going to be Nobel prizewinning mathematicians -- "
"They don't give Nobels for mathematics --"
" -- so I'm sure you'll be curving the test a bit. And our little problem will be taken care of."
Jay considered protesting, but doing so would mean sticking around into his about-to-start free period, and that would mean missing his chance to snipe an eBay auction for a vintage HP 15C calculator. Mint condition, in the box, with the manual.
A man had to have his priorities.
Wordlessly, Jay snatched back the paper and stomped out of the office.
Principal Jones sighed. He'd have to have a word with Tim's tutor, preferably before the boy tried to explain on a history exam that Andrew Jackson's nickname was '9.'
Jones reached into his desk and pulled out the good bourbon. He had a lot riding on this game. A whole lot more than a paltry district championship.
---
Sue, normally the epitome of caution on the road, raced toward home at four miles above the speed limit. She didn't know how she would explain the situation to John, but she knew she had to be home before him in case one of the dreadful missives had arrived at their domicile. Mandy, equipped with the school's emergency copy of "Stand and Deliver," had agreed to cover her afternoon classes.
Stifling a sob, Sue wondered how she could have enmeshed herself in such a dreadful tangle of secrets. Who would have thought Hillglen could contain such treacherous villains as her apparent blackmailer? That it could harbor such darkness? Such terror? Such an expensive Mercedes?
A Mercedes?
Just as realization penetrated the fog of Sue's brain, Bob's coupé penetrated her windscreen.
--
Is this the tragic end for Sue and her unborn child of dubious paternity?
What else was at stake for Principal Jones, beyond glory for the Rubber Ducks??
Will David continue to reduce our word count by replacing Stacy's lengthy passages of purple prose with cheap in-jokes for his friends from back home???
These questions, and a free bonus question for lucky reader #37562 of Peoria, Illinois, will be answered in the next electro-shock therapy inducing installment of... CLIFFHANGER.
Some months earlier...
Three in the morning on a rural highway, somewhere in the Midwest. Special delivery, Chicago to Hillglen. Jane had been driving that Mack truck of hers close to twenty hours solid when it happened, so she never was too clear on the details.
Not that she ever told anyone. So they never asked about the details. And that suited Jane just fine. Folks in the trucking business like to tell an exaggerated tale of the trade, but this one would have gone beyond impressive to Jane, you need help.
It was a long, straight, dull section of the highway. Fields of corn as far as the eye could see. That wasn't too far, though -- no moon was out.
Hillglen was still a few hours away, then there would be a full load of rubber ducks to bring back. But first, a single, small package to deliver. Urgent. Very important.
Jane barely dodged a deer on the road and sideswiped an ear of corn or two. That woke her up just enough to pop another pill -- no, four hours ago had been the last of the batch. Jane needed some more light to work with, or dozing her way into the middle of a cornfield was a serious possibility.
"Let there be light," she said, amused at her own sleep-deprived jocularity.
And there was light. A sudden, eerie green glow, with no obvious source.
Jane drove into the glow.
--
Would Jane live not to tell her tale?
Would the package arrive on time??
What the hell was that all about, anyway???
These questions, and one from the very first Australian edition of Trivial Pursuit, will be tackled head-on in the next hurriedly composed episode of... CLIFFHANGER.
Bob Gillis glanced in irritation at his watch as he looked around his empty office -- the office that should have been filled with a furry client and her paying owner. He'd tried to convince Joe Michaels of the need for stability in his dog's life, if Cotton Gin was ever going to conquer her anxiety issues. This absentee showing wasn’t a reassuring response.
Still, the unexpectedly free hour meant he could end the day early and sneak in an extra round or two at the bar. He'd been working for weeks on picking up Marisa, the new weekday-afternoons barmaid. She was a tough one. His gradually increasingly tips were only thawing her flirtatious-but-brisk demeanor by incremental degrees. At this rate, he'd be into triple-digit payouts before he could lure her out for even a lunch, let alone dinner. Maybe if he showed enough persistence she'd take pity on him and let him cut straight to dessert.
Bob rifled through his office closet in search of a sports jacket -- one of the nice ones, like the one that made him resemble Tom Selleck in his Magnum PI days. Or so he'd been told. Once. And, ok, she was a little tipsy... but that didn't invalidate the observation, right? Bob personally considered himself at his most perceptive after a few pints, bottles, shots, belts, chasers, or some combination thereof.
On his way out the door, he paused then doubled back to his desk to retrieve a charm he'd been holding in readiness since spotting the lovely Marisa: a special mix CD of his favorite Sinatra. It was almost an unfair advantage, he knew -- what lady could resist Ol' Blue Eyes? He'd been waiting to bring the disc home until the moment felt right, like the starts were aligned for a bit of luck. The no-show client should have been a downer, but instead, it intensified the irrationally gleeful mood Bob had felt building for hours.
Today felt like a good day. Perhaps a magical day. As Bob headed out the door toward his Mercedes, he played catch with his keys and mentally replayed a highlight reel of his greatest conquests. Definitely time to bring on the Sinatra, put his seductive powers to the test, and see if Miss Marisa could be lured back to his chateau for an evening of crooning.
--
"I don't even know where to begin," John managed faintly before sinking into a sitting position on Joe's bed. His eyes remained glued to the photograph. "What did you do with them?"
"What them?" Joe asked, craning over to study the image.
"Those them!" John bellowed, jabbing at a tastefully covered but nonetheless impressive display of cleavage. They were the kind of dazzlingly natural bounty onto which most male eyes studying this and similar photos quickly latch.
The photograph was a prom portrait. One of the participants, the one in a strapless evening gown and elbow-length gloves, was clearly a younger Joe.
The first explanation that raced through John's mind was that his lover's awful secret was a past drag-queen phase. A few seconds longer staring at the image, though, derailed that train of thought. The wrists -- one of which was circled by a lovely corsage of orchids. The waist-length hair. The heels -- not drag-queen stilettos, but sensible low, square ones like those Sue preferred. The breasts.
And then, the clinching realization: Who the hell is brave or crazy enough to go to their high-school prom in drag?
"It's true," Joe said, his voice once again thick with barely restrained tears. "What I haven't told you is -- my name used to be Joanne."
--
Sue's first lucid thought was that she was about to faint. Her next was that if she did, she might fall and injure the baby. She willed herself to remain alert. Instead of swooning, she settled for gasping audibly and lifting a hand to cover her mouth, in a melodramatic manner worthy of the Victorian heroines she'd studied for her college thesis.
As Sue startled and broadcast her distress, he friend and colleague Mandy breezed into the lounge.
"Sue, did you hear? One of the running backs is flunking pre-algebra, and they're pressuring Jay to find some way of pulling up his scores so he'll stay eligible. Jay is over in the math office dithering about it."
Sue stayed frozen, staring at the paper still clutched in her hands. Noticing her friend's troubled state, Mandy broke off her commentary. "Hey, Sue. What's going on?"
Wordlessly, Sue handed over the offending document. Mandy, her closest friend, was the only one in whom she'd confided the horror of her darkest and most desperate action.
Mandy, always pale to start with because of her Scottish ancestry, noticeably whitened a further tone or two.
The two women knew of Sue's secret shame: Her baby wasn't John's. The child's father was a baggie of genetic material, #4421, shipped in from a sperm bank in Chicago.
The decision hadn't been easy. She'd been though months of anguished discussions with Mandy, and written dozens of pages in the journal she kept hidden in the very back of her closet, trying to sort her tangled psyche. It wasn't that she didn't love John. She did, wholeheartedly, with a passion that could make Catherine's ardor for Heathcliff look like adolescent puppy love. She just wasn't sure she wanted her offspring sharing his genetic material.
There was that unholy love of football, for a start. More troublingly, what did it say about one's intellectual prowess when one's few analytical moments were devoted to hashing over the actions of millionaires grappling with a ball? There was also John's tendency to overindulge in drink, and his lack of any athletic talent despite his admiration for it in others. And his temper. And his eyes -- a very nondescript pale brown, like his hair. Surely she wanted better for her child. Was that so wrong?
"Oh, Sue. Whatever are you going to do?" Mandy whispered.
Sue briefly considered her options -- and envisioned John's response to learning the truth about her baby. Overwhelmed, she opted for the path of least resistance. Ignoring her earlier reservations, Sue fainted.
--
Will John become even more confused about his sexuality now that he's found out his man was a woman?
Will Sue tell John the painful truth about her child??
Will Bob be sober enough to remember which direction first base is???
These questions, and one or two shamelessly ripped from Straight Dope, will be answered in the next bone crunching episode of... CLIFFHANGER.
John glanced in irritation at his watch as he turned onto Dryloch Road. He'd promised Sue he'd deliver the graded tests for her seventh period class during her free fourth period. If he had any hope of getting to the school in time, he'd need to be in and out of Joe's house in less than ten minutes.
Joe's Mastiff, Cotton Gin, nearly knocked him over at the door in her eagerness to cover him with sloppy dog kisses. Another worry: What if he came over with Sue to visit Joe, and she grew suspicious of the dog's obvious familiarity with him? John preferred a football game and a six pack to socializing with families, his or hers. Before he and Joe... got friendly -- he'd never been good at euphemisms -- he'd only seen Sue's family at the holidays, and then he'd come along grudgingly and sullenly. After taking up with Joe, John had gone to even greater pains to avoid the relatives.
"Ginny, down. Get dow -- what? Put the puff down! This is not puffy toy playtime."
Ginny looked like she could repel armies, with sheer bulk alone if necessary. Joe said that's why he'd picked Ginny out nearly 10 years ago -- for protection. What a strong, if a bit short, guy like Joe needed with a threatening-looking dog John had never understood, but people have stranger things for pets, he'd figured.
Trouble was, Ginny was about as interested in aggression as a pacifist chinchilla. She still might have pulled it off if she didn't express unseemly enthusiasm for the wimpiest toys conceivable. Her new favorite was a squeaky stuffed sheep which bore more resemblance to a mutated Q-tip than it did to a barnyard animal. Joe encouraged this disturbing personality perversion by continuing to buy Ginny puffy toys. The time John had shown up with a giant rawhide bone, in an attempt to show both man and dog the error of their ways, Ginny had backed off in fear.
After Ginny finally accepted that John wasn't going to wrestle her puff with her no matter how many times she dropped it at his feet and yipped encouragingly, she collapsed at his feet with a disconsolate sigh.
"C'mon, Ginny, buck up. Where's Joe?" No answer. "Joe!" he called.
Again, no answer -- but John thought he detected a faint keening noise from upstairs. He climbed up the first few steps.
"JOE?"
"I'm -- I'm ..." Any further response was lost in a sniffly wail.
John gritted his teeth and headed toward the upstairs bedroom. There he found Joe, sprawled on the bedspread, still wearing his boots and work flannels.
"Oh thank God!" Joe cried, managing his first full sentence in hours. He flung himself across the room, attempting to throw his arms around John. Instead, he tripped over Ginny, who sensed affection afoot and was eager to partake.
Joe and Ginny ended up in a tangled heap on the floor. Sizing up the situation, the dog nosed around in the tangle and retrieved her sheep, which she optimistically squeaked.
John reached down, extricated Joe from the mess, and kissed him passionately. He hoped that would shock some coherence into his disconsolate lover.
After a long moment, Joe broke off the embrace, sighing and wriggling further into John's arms.
"Oh, John ... it's been such an amazing few months, since you came by in June for Sue's yearbook, and we started talking, and then, to run into each other again just days later in the bar in Ridgefield, and then, finding out we both send away to New York for those special chaps..."
"Joe. You said this was urgent."
Joe stepped back, his eyes downcast. "It is. I'm just so afraid you'll never speak to me again, after you find out how much I've been hiding."
"Joe, I --" John swallowed. He hated this mushy nonsense, but Joe occasionally had these bouts of sensitivity, and seemed to need the reassurance. And, much as John occasionally wondered about Joe's virility -- the guy had poetry books on his shelves, and not manly, hedonistic stuff like Whitman, but flimsy things like Dickinson -- and had sporadic pains about the fallout if Sue ever caught him, the fact remained that Joe touched him in a way no one had in years. Metaphorically speaking.
Well, actually, literally as well, if one wanted to be precise about these things.
"Joe, I can't imagine anything changing my feelings about you." There. Said.
But instead of reassuring Joe, John's words set off a fresh gale of tears. Joe turned away and walked to the bedside table, picking up a sheaf of papers.
"This might," Joe said, waving a sheet. From John's distance, all he could see was a large block of text.
"This was the first. It came last week. In -- in the fax," Joe said, looking like he might dissolve again at the memory. "I tried to see if the number was traceable, but it was blocked."
John crossed the room and took the paper. In chunky, nearly centered letters, it read, "I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW."
John stared at the paper for several moments.
"Well, shit," he finally proclaimed.
He glanced back up at Joe. Strangely, Joe didn't look at all relieved to have finally broken the bad news.
"Why didn’t you tell me when it first arrived?" John asked.
"Because I hoped it was some sort of -- I don't know, some sort of empty threat. I thought about calling you. But it doesn't say anything else, just, 'I know.' So what could we have done? But then -- this. This came the next day." Trembling, Joe handed over another sheet.
In the same, centered font, this one read, "AND I KNOW ABOUT YOUR PAST. DOES HE?" This sheet, though, had an image in addition to the text. Below the message was a pixilated clip-art graphic of a pair of high-heel shoes.
John glanced quizzically at Joe. "'Your past?' What does that mean?"
Joe ignored him, cutting off the last of John's words with a rush of his own. "I spent the weekend panicking. I dialed your number a dozen times, but I kept hanging up before hitting the last number, since I knew Sue might pick up. I was going to call you this morning. I still didn’t know what to say. But then -- then --this showed up!" With that Joe broke off again into disconsolate wails. John took the last sheet of paper from Joe's unresisting hands.
"IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR SECRETS, BE HOME AND BY THE FAX MACHINE AT 4 PM ON THURSDAY. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW."
John tried to cut through the weeping wreckage of his boyfriend's distress. Ginny, concerned about her master's obvious misery, galumphed across the bedroom to offer her own brand of furry -- and very ungraceful -- consolation.
"Joe. Joe, c'mon man, pull yourself together. You need to tell me what this means. So someone knows about us. Ok. We can find out what they want. But what's this about your past?"
"I -- I -- " Joe gulped for air, and finally managed to latch onto a lungful. "I tried to figure out how to tell you, and I just don't have the words. So I thought of -- this photograph." Joe managed to pick up off the table a face-down photo John hadn't noticed lying there.
John gazed at the print. For a moment, he didn't understand -- his eyes absorbed the image, but his brain couldn't unscramble the signals. Then, the epiphany hit.
John raised his eyes in shock to look afresh at the person he thought he knew.
"Oh my God ..."
---
By a curious happenstance that would doubtlessly interest metaphysical researchers into the nature of time and space -- not to mention smarty-pants literary critics who smugly dismiss coincidence as the crutch of desperate writers -- John's wife (and Joe's sister) Sue was uttering those very same words at that moment, some 10 miles away.
She was standing in the teacher's lounge, which she'd entered in a state of pique at her husband's failure to arrive with the promised papers she'd forgotten that morning. Her annoyance vanished when she spotted a manila envelope poking out of her mailbox cubbyhole.
John must have stopped by earlier, while she'd been in class, and left the papers here. A flicker of guilt passed though her mind over the too-quick assumption that John had not met his obligations. It was followed by a swell of love for her husband, who, of course, she knew, would never fail her.
Love, guilt, and a nagging queasiness from the Twinkie she'd impulsively consumed for breakfast, were all swept away, however, as she opened the packet and gazed upon its contents.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, with bold, neatly centered text: "I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BABY. DOES HE?"
--
What did John see in the photograph?
What about the baby, anyway??
Are we going to mention the Rubber Ducks again, or was that a complete red herring???
These questions, and one we found scrawled in the bathroom at work, will be answered in the next thrill-a-minute episode of... CLIFFHANGER.
It was the red car again. John watched his frog get nailed -- just a bit shy of a high score, too, dammit! -- swore viciously, and reached in his pocket for another quarter to feed into the Frogger machine. He came up empty.
"Hey, Tessa, change me another dollar?" he called toward the teenager working the counter at Coffee Arcade. The retro video arcade/coffee "emporium" was one of the Hillglen Chamber of Commerce's attempts to up property values and the town's image by scattering trendy urban elements throughout Hillglen's small-town environs. Like topping a hamburger with sushi, the attempt rarely worked well.
"Sorry, John, you've just about cleaned out my change drawer. If you wait till Mike shows up in an hour or so, he can open the cabinet and empty the quarters. Meantime, want a latte?"
"What the hell goes into a latte? And when did you hire a Mike? I thought you and Tim could barely keep this place in business on your own."
"It's got espresso -- that's a really concentrated coffee, but we don't have a machine so I just brew it extra strong -- and then milk, steamed and foamed. I tried foaming the milk with this swirly-whisk thing, but it takes forever so I just started using whipped cream. You should try it." Tessa pulled out a mug at shook it at him in what seemed intended to be an enticing fashion.
"And Mike -- yeah, well, we can't afford him, but you know how Tim is about helping out the family. It's Mike Mendell, his sister's kid. He got laid off at the supermarket, so Tim hired him to come do some odds and ends around here until he can find something else. I don't know how we can afford to keep him on the payroll, unless the chamber comes through with another grant like --"
"Mike Mendell?" John unconsciously took a step back away from the counter. "He's Tim's nephew? He's coming here?"
"Yeah, should be in about noon. So, how about that latte?"
Mike Mendell, a six-foot-six specimen of chiseled male humanity and fewer brain cells than God gave sea salt. Which had worked out well for John -- it never occurred to Mike to ask the obvious questions like, "So what does that wedding ring you wear mean?"
Hands shaped by hours of manual labor, heavy-lifting, and other mentally unchallenging jobs can still be remarkably tender, John had discovered. "I moisturize," Mike explained, beaming beatifically. It turned out he moisturized everywhere.
Yes, Mike had made for an entertaining interlude for a few months. Until the unpleasantness. Which, John maintained, really wasn't his fault. It wasn't like he'd indicated to Mike any interest in exclusivity...
Still. Since then, staying out of Mike's path had seemed the better part of valor. He should have paid more attention that first week, when Mike showed off his prized gun collection. John was pretty sure Mike just collected the things and wasn't clever enough to figure out intricacies such as how to load them, but he also wasn't eager to be proved wrong.
"Here ya go!" Tessa had apparently taken John's silence as asset, and prepared for him a gigantic mug of her latte. John glanced at his watch, then at the drink, wondering which was a more worrying possibility: that he might run into Mike, or that he might have to try Tessa's concoction.
"Um, Tess, how about you make this to go? I gotta go meet Sue soon. I said I'd drop off a stack of tests she left at home during her free period."
"Well, if I put it in a to-go cup, all the foam will get smooshed to the bottom. I guess I can just add more on top." Tessa sloshed the drink into one of Coffee Arcade's largest takeaway cups, then topped it with a basketball-sized squirt of Reddi-wip.
"Oh, you want a drink for Sue, too?" she asked, her eyes lighting at the prospect.
"No! I mean, she's avoiding caffeine. Because of her condition," John hastily appended.
"I think we have some herbal tea around, with special leaves and stuff. The expectant-mother blend ..." Tessa ducked down under the counter, but resurfaced a moment later without any teabags. "Or maybe it was coming in our next order. All still going well with Sue? She's due pretty soon, isn't she?"
"About another month. Doctor says all seems normal. And he assured me that her obsessive nursery decorating is also normal. Dr. Spock doesn't warn us fathers-to-be about that part." John picked up the drink, tossed a few dollars on the counter, and headed for the door. "Anyway, I'll let her know about the tea."
"Hey, thanks. See ya soon. And GO RUBBER DUCKS!"
"Yeah, Go Ducks," John echoed as he backed out. Once he hit the parking lot, he hurried his pace. Best to flee the scene before Mike's scheduled arrival, he figured.
A sudden shrill blast startled him into nearly dropping the drink. Instead, the latte merely sloshed across his shoes.
"Dammit!" John yelped as grappled for control of the cup. The trilling rang out again. It took him a moment to identify the source: his cell phone. The one Sue had insisted he start carrying, in case of baby-related emergency.
Giving up on the drink and tossing it in a nearby trash can, John fished the phone out of his pocket.
"Hello?"
From the other end of the line, he could hear only muffled sobbing.
"What? Hello? Who's there?"
"John ..." The voice trailed off again. A man's voice, not Sue's.
"What the hell? Who is this?"
Through the next fit of tears, he caught the phrase "it's Joe." John nearly dropped the phone.
"Joe! Why the hell are you calling me on this line? Sue could find out. Why the hell are you calling me at all? This is a bad time, I can't talk."
"John, there's, there's --" After a gasp for air, Joe seemed to surface long enough to choke out a few coherent words.
"John, I need you to come over here. It's urgent. There's something terrible I haven't told you!"
What will Joe tell John?
Wait, isn't John married to, you know, a woman??
Who or what are the Rubber Ducks???
These questions, and several more we thought up on the subway last night, will be answered in tomorrow's spine tingling second chapter of... CLIFFHANGER.
A great philosopher once said, "It's not easy being green."
How right he was.
Freddy was a frog. Not an exotic, poisonous, strangely striped blue and orange neon frog, but rather a plain green frog. Poor Freddy was quite a bright green, in fact, which was not to his advantage. For Freddy was that most curious of creatures, a frog with an unquenchable wanderlust. In a world dominated by much larger creatures than the humble green frog, wanderlust is a trait best served by the addition of a good suit of armour. Alas, Freddy lacked a good suit of armour.
Yet Freddy persisted. Despite a seemingly endless series of accidents and setbacks, catastrophes and calamities, he kept coming back for more.
This day was no different.
Freddy waited by the freeway, while car after car zoomed by. Red cars. Blue cars. Yellow cars. Each one with tyres as black as the night, and twice as deadly. Each new vehicle seemed faster than the one before. Yet brave, persistent Freddy did not flinch. His eyes remained firmly fixed on the grass verge beyond the wide, forbidding tarmac.
Something told Freddy that now was the time to go. He burst forward into a gap barely wide enough to accommodate a small tadpole. A blue car was closing fast from his right foot side. Hurry! Forward again! Then a red car appeared from the left, looming seemingly from nowhere. No gap lay ahead, and none behind. Freddy froze in his tracks, hoping for some sight of free road ahead before it was too late.
Could this be the end for our hero after only one very short prologue?
Would a gap appear to save poor, brave, persistent Freddy the bright green frog??
Can the authors recover and produce a serious word count in the days to come???
These questions may or may not be answered in tomorrow's first proper chapter of... CLIFFHANGER.