So Many Stars

Words...feelings...countless days, endless nights, so many hearts, so many smiles...so many stars...

I held my mother's hand as our last dance played out, and I refused to let her go -- until it was time to leave again, to walk out into the night and run again -- far, far away.

Linda was in the hallway, waiting for me, but I was lost now, far from home and all alone. I walked from the shadows and fell into her arms...wondering not just where I was, not only who I had become -- but how I'd arrived at this naked, hollow place -- where nothing made sense. And where, suddenly -- as if in blinding absolution -- everything did.

+++++

I felt a hand on mine.

"Jim?"

"Hmm?"

"I think we'd better get him up to the room"

André's voice. Full of -- what? Concern?

They are helping me stand -- Sam on one side, André on the other -- then walking me from the lounge. I am aware the goons are staring at me, laughing under their breath, then I see the elevator. Door opening, a couple of nicely dressed women walk out, pause, stare at me then dart into the shadows. We step inside and I see the goons following now, see their reflection in the polished brass wall. The door shuts and I stand up.

"Okay, they're following," I say. "Let's stick with the plan."

Sam gets off on the third floor and walks to a far exit, takes the stairs down to the basement garage; André slips off on the fourth, and Andy is waiting for him there. They backtrack to the same stairway, then Andy heads to the garage while I go to my room. I turn on the shower and the television, close the bathroom door then lay down on the bed, though I have conveniently forgotten to close the room door completely.

It doesn't take long.

Like sharks coming out of blue gloom, the goons walk by once, circle back and pass by again.

On their third pass they stop outside my door; with guns drawn they step silently into the room.

One listens through the bathroom door while I 'sleep'; he hears someone in the bathroom, takes one steps back and kicks the door open. And his face disappears in a pulpy red mist, and as his companion meets the threat with his pistol -- his face too disappears.

André steps out of the bathroom, a silenced Walther firmly in hand, and he wraps the goons' heads in towels. He steps into the hallway, looks both ways, goes for the a soiled linen cart he'd stashed earlier and rolls it into the room. We get the two bodies stuffed into the cart and André rolls it down to a utility room by the service elevator, then we head for the main elevator.

"Did you get all the cameras?" I ask.

"Oui."

Andy has the car by the elevator lobby in the garage and we slip inside; Sam is in the trunk as we head for the airport. Forty minutes later we are airborne with a flight plan logged for Perth; ten minutes after takeoff Andy changes the flight plan to Quito, Ecuador. Climbing over France, Andy declares a medical emergency, EuroControl advises Lyon is the closest facility that can handle a 744, and Geneva is our 'stand-by' alternate.

Twenty minutes later we are on the ground, an ambulance on the tarmac ready to take me to the nearest medical facility. There are only two of us onboard the empty aircraft, so customs isn't a problem, and minutes later I'm in the ambulance, on my way to a hospital to be treated for presumed gall stones, but what will ultimately be regarded as a case of severe belly pain accompanied by extreme flatulence.

+++++

André sits comfortably close to the old lady by his side, taking his grandmother to Paris -- if anyone cares to ask. The woman sitting by his side does indeed appear very old, yet not at all frail... Indeed, she has very nice legs for someone so well on in years, and he helps her off the train in Paris, hails a taxi and takes her to a safe house south of Orly. He turns Sam over to handlers who will conduct a thorough debriefing, learn all she knows about the influence of radical Islamist groups in the Kingdom which, it turns out, is considerable.

André considers this last operation a success, and though he will miss flying he has a small house on his family's farm out the Rue de 8 Mai 1945, near the village of Sissonne. He wants to do little more now than paint little toy soldiers on their miniature battlefields, and perhaps, from time to time, to play with interesting new eyeliners -- but he has trouble letting go of things, trouble turning away from friends.

+++++

I was inside an operating room at St David's Hospital in Austin, Texas, looking on as the anesthesiologist started his spinal. Linda had decided to have not one child -- no, she instead opted for two. A pair of girls, or so I'm told, about to come into this world by Caesarian. I watch the scalpel trace a scarlet line down her swollen belly, look on with an odd sense of becoming drifting around my eyes, then...

...the first girl's head appears, and the obstetrician looks up at me, then at Linda.

The little baby's skin is as black as night, certainly blacker than my blond haired lily white chromosomes might have had a part in making, and I look at the doc, then at Linda. She is not looking at me just then, only at the little girl the nurse has held up for her to see. Then, I don't know, maybe she does the math -- then -- looks-at-me.

And in perhaps the most eloquent statement in the history of such moments, she says, hopefully, something that sounds a little bit like "Oops?"

I think I'm smiling, but I know my eyes are blinking like semaphores, sending out clear signals of existential distress into the room.

"Oops?" I end up saying. Then, as implications spread around the room like a cancer: "Well, ain't you something?"

I walked out of the operating room, pulled off the scrubs I'd been obliged to wear, tossed the mask and booties and little paper hat into a bin and drifted out electric doors that parted before my anger like Moses before the Red Sea. My place in Minneapolis rented out, our old home just down Highway 71 now a memory, I suddenly felt well and truly homeless -- and the feeling left me breathless, unsure of myself. I'd been staying at Linda's place in Round Rock the two weeks since my return from Lyon, had even drifted to a Ford dealer and bought a pickup truck, a mammoth thing that weighed at least twice as much as a fully-laden 744.

I got behind the wheel of the beast and turned the motor on, set the air-conditioning to MAX and let the frigid air flow over my steaming anger. Taking a deep breath, I headed for I-35 -- lost in the idea I had no place to go. No time to be somewhere, anywhere. No one to go home to. I looked over the immediate options, saw sweltering heat to the right and somewhere, somehow, cool mountain air to the left. I turned north, towards Waco and Dallas, and on the outskirts of town I saw an RV store on a frontage road and turned back. A couple of hours later there was a recklessly huge camper strapped on the back of the Ford and, after I pulled back onto the interstate, and I resumed my northward trek.

Something about all this was comforting, this seeing a problem and fixing it, striking out on my own, drifting down my own little Moon River. Still, there was something missing.

If I was going to travel the backroads I was going to need a companion, and now convinced that women were the anti-Christ I pulled into a rest area and pulled out my phone while I looked over a roadmap. A little town, maybe ten miles away...

I called their animal shelter, asked if they had any dogs in need of a home. They did, but they were closing soon. Could I be there within a half hour?

I said I could, and set off down a lonesome highway in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, and ended up in a little village called Maypearl. I found the shelter with minutes to spare and went in.

There were a couple of puppies in cages, and an old girl sitting off by herself. Maybe she had been a retriever once, perhaps a Golden, but she was old now, her eyes milky cataracts, her muzzle white with cares not of her own making.

"What's her story?" I asked the town's Animal Control Officer.

"Her owner passed away last week, no one to take her. Her ten days are up, too."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm putting her down as soon as you leave. I would have already if you hadn't called."

"What's her name?"

"Holly," the guy said. "Holly Golightly, if you can believe that..."

"As a matter of fact, I can."

The guy gave me a simple rope leash and I helped Holly out to the truck, opened the door and waited. She sniffed my legs, looked at the seat and hopped up, circled once and sat as she looked at me. The she sighed, kind of a thoughtful, well considered sigh. I went around and got in, looking at her looking at me...

"We're going to be alright, Miss Golightly. It's just you and me now, off to see the world. Where would you like to go first?"

She sat up, looked out the windshield, then at me.

"I don't know either. I was thinking north, if that's okay with you? Maybe New Mexico, Arizona -- someplace like that."

I backtracked to the interstate, got back on my little moving river and...

The phone chirped.

I looked at the display. An international number -- France?

"Hello?"

"Jim?"

"André?"

"Where are you now?"

"Somewhere just south of I Don't Know."

"I have you just south of a place called Desoto. I'm at DFW, the American concourse outside of Gate 21. You should make it in a half hour."

The line went dead.

"Well, Holly, I think there's a fly in our soup. What'll it be?"

She starting scratching behind the left side of her face, then shook her head roughly and I felt her ear. Warm. A little too warm. Too late to call a vet now, I set the GPS for DFW and followed the prompts, pulled up to the terminal forty minutes later. I pointed to the back seat and André hopped in.

"Another woman, I take it," he look, looking at Holly.

"I couldn't resist. How're things in the spy biz?"

"Troubling. The goons are back."

"Surprise, surprise. Still after Sam?"

"No. You, I'm afraid."

"Swell."

"They were at the hospital in Austin, then we lost them."

"Great news all over."

"What happened?"

"With Linda, you mean?"

"Oui."

"Well, when the first cookie popped out of the oven...well, my guess is the father was from Somalia, or perhaps Mali."

"Merde."

"Took the starch out of my knickers, amigo."

"Head for the north exit, take 635 east," he said.

"You put a fucking beacon in my truck?"

"Oui. Last week, when the latest goons were spotted in Paris. Someone in CIA is feeding them information."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"We should not have involved you."

"I seem to recall you didn't have much choice."

"That is true. So, here I am. A debt of honor, I suppose."

Holly was sitting up now, looking over the back of her seat, looking at André.

"How long have you had her?"

"Holly? Oh," I said -- looking at the watch on my wrist, "about seventy five minutes."

"Ah."

"I think she's going to be the love of my life."

"Yes, I can see the possibilities with her."

"Did you say 635 East?"

"Oui."

"You bring high heels and lipstick, or is this trip strictly business?"

"Oh, oui, I always come prepared. Why, do you have something in mind? Something you'd, perhaps, like to try?"

"Feel her left ear, would you? Seems a little warm."

André called Holly -- who obligingly hopped into the back seat -- and he played with her for a minute, then felt each ear.

"Oui, it's infected. I think a dose of flea medication might be useful too."

"Oh, joygasm."

"North on 35, towards Denton." He got on a phone and spoke quietly, rapidly, then rang off and we drove on in silence, the sun slipping down to the horizon now. Almost an hour later he looked up and spoke. "Here. University Drive West, and take a left," and after another mile "Turn left here, on Western." Another mile or so and I saw an airport off to the right, a small municipal field, and I saw a Falcon 8x sitting between hangers, a single rotating beacon beating atop it's fuselage. "Pull up there," André said, "by the airstairs."

He opened his door and got out, walked up into the jet -- and a moment later two men came out and walked around to the back of the truck, then André came back out with a briefcase in hand.

"Some money, in case you run short, and a few toys," he said, passing the case in through the window. "A phone too, with direct access to me. Do not let this fall into the wrong hands, Jim."

"Understood. What are those guys doing back there?"

"A better tracking device, a new identity," André said, shrugging as he handed my another envelope. "You never know, oui?"

I saw her then, and those goddamn legs of hers...gliding down the stairs, coming out into the night, coming to me. I got out and ran to her, held her eyes in mine and I saw real joy there, but then André was beside us.

"I've just learned the goons in Austin had a little accident, something about a fire in their rental car. A pity, no? Anyway, that should buy you some time. That, and this fucking monstrosity..." he said, waving his hand contemptuously at my little camper, "are all the disguise one could possibly need."

Sam had reached down, taken my hand in hers, leaned her head against my shoulder and I put my arm around her.

"Jim, could you keep in mind the 21^st of next month? Chama, New Mexico. There's a campground?"

"Okay, André, we'll be there."

He shook my hand, kissed both Sam's cheeks then turned and bounded up the stairs. We watched them taxi to the end of the runway and depart, then I turned to her.

"I'm sorry, but I need to introduce you to my new girlfriend," I said, walking to the rear door of my truck. I opened it and Holly jumped into my arms, and, I don't know, maybe just then I felt like I'd finally found my place in the world.

We were on 287, driving north again in the middle of the night. I pulled into a rest area and helped Holly down, walked her over to a beckoning patch of grass when I felt her come up behind me. Sam put her arms around me again, and I felt the side of her head against my back...

"What was that song you were playing a while ago? Was that the same one in Stuttgart?"

"Yup. So Many Stars. When I was a kid, I used to watch my mom dance to it."

"I think deep down, you must have loved her very much."

"We had our moments," I said as I turned to her. "But not as much as I love you."

Then Holly was jumping up on us, pulling me back to the truck, leading us on -- into the night.

*

(C) 2016 Adrian Leverkühn | abw | posted 10 November 2016 | this is a work of fiction, and all persons and scenarios contained herein are simply that and nothing more.