I was leaning up against the wall of the beach hut, my arm wrapped around Bethany and my thoughts a million miles away. It was my phone ringing again, but I didn’t want to answer it. I didn’t want anything to disturb this moment of serenity. It was stolen, sure, it didn’t belong to me, it didn’t belong to either of us, but somehow we had found it and made it real. I closed my eyes and tried to will the phone to be silent.
On the third ring, Bethany, whose ear was a lot closer to the noise than mine was, fished a slender hand into my pants pocket and used her nimble fingers to extract it from its cotton cocoon. I felt her probing in places she may not have intended and it sent a shiver up my spine.
Bethany held the phone up for us both to see, its tiny screen glowing brightly in the dark night.
“It’s Caroline,” she said aloud.
“Who?” I asked, my mind still not willing to connect the dots of my actual existence.
“Caroline Abernathy,” Bethany said, and began moving as if she meant to answer the phone, but held it higher for me to take instead.
“Hello?” I said sleepily, pressing the phone against my ear.
“Alan?!”
There was a frantic tone in Caroline’s voice, and she was shouting to make herself heard over some pulsating dance music.
“Yes?”
“Oh my god, Alan! Where are you? I need you to come get me. Will you please come get me?”
Now there was more than frenzy in her voice, there was fear, and it snapped me back to reality. I sat quickly forward, withdrawing my arm from around Bethany’s waist, and pushing her unconsciously aside.
“Where are you?” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know where I am!” Caroline screamed in my ear. “At some club, they dragged me here, I didn’t want to come, and now I want to go home!”
Caroline was incoherent, her voice loud enough for Bethany to hear it, and now she looked at me with great worry and concern.
“Caroline,” I said as calmly as I could. “Slow down. Where are you?”
“I tell you...I don’t know...where I am!”
She was crying now, full throated sobs punctuating her speech.
“Ask someone,” I said insistently, fearing that she was in trouble, and feeling, surreally, like it was Jacob that I needed to rescue.
“What?!”
No, not Jacob. Crazy Horse. My unborn daughter. But she wasn’t in any danger, was she? She was still safe in her mother’s womb.
“Isn’t there someone you can ask? A bartender? Find out where you are and we’ll come get you.”
“Oh!” Caroline said long before I finished, probably missing my slanted reference to Bethany being with me. “Right! Hold on!”
The club noise got louder as the phone fell away from her face, and I could faintly hear her screaming her question to someone nearby.
“Is she all right?” Bethany asked me during the pause.
“I don’t know,” I replied, not having time for anything else before Caroline was back on the line, her voice hot, desperate, and lost.
“It’s called Club NOW. Club NOW! Do you know where that is?”
“I’ll find it,” I said, being sure to use the right pronoun this time. “Just stay put until I get there.” I quickly calculated the time it would take us to get off the beach, flag down a cab, and get to the place where all the nightclubs were. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“Can you hurry? Please, Alan?”
“Are you all right?” I asked her pointedly, worried about the abject tone in her voice.
“Just hurry, please. I really need to get out of here.”
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/
No comments:
Post a Comment