Bubble in the Bathtub (13 page)

The other sheep blinked his eyes sleepily. “Baaa, why? It makes the bike even heavier when you're going uphill. Besides, they're dead last.”

“That's not the point,” the one sheep said. “Is it
allowed
?”

The other chewed his cud for a bit while he contemplated this.

“No idea,” he finally said. “I'm a sheep, you know? We don't know that kind of thing.”

* * *

EDDY STOOD ON his pedals and pushed as hard as he could. Not just because standing on the pedals helped him go faster, but because his seat was occupied by a red-haired little guy with a nose clip who was screaming into his ear:

“Come on, Eddy! Faster, Eddy! You're the best, Eddy!”

And when Eddy tried to ease up on the pace a little:

“Pull yourself together, Eddy! Do you want a licking, Eddy? Do you want this to be your Waterloo, Eddy? Do you want to be a full-time tire-patcher, Eddy? You can do more! It feels gooood to be tired!”

And, truth be told, it was helping. Soon they started overtaking cyclists who stared openmouthed at the strange two-man team with the little boy screaming:

“Push, Eddy! The other cyclists are even tireder! Think about the girls waiting at the top, Eddy. They have soft lips. Soooooft lips, Eddy. Faster, faster,
otherwise I'm going to give you a noogie! And we're not talking about a little love noogie, we're talking about a massive, sasquatch noogie!”

Eddy, who wasn't really sure what a noogie was, but didn't particularly want to find out either, pushed. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his breath had started making a strange, rasping sound. But they were still passing cyclist after cyclist and had made it quite a ways up the mountain, to where there were still patches of snow in the shadows. Even though Nilly's clothes had dried in the sunshine, he was now so cold that his teeth chattered as he chanted his mixture of encouragement and threats. Until a wheezing Eddy interrupted him:

“I can't do it….”

“What?” Nilly yelled through his chattering teeth. “Do you want a n-n-noogie, you B-B-Belgian waffle!”

“The finish line is too close …,” wheezed Eddy. “We won't be able to pass everyone.”

“Nonsense,” Nilly said. “I said we would fart up this mountain, and when Nilly says we'll fart up a mountain, you'd darn well better—”

“Fart all you want …,” Eddy groaned. His tongue was hanging down to the handlebars, and the bike had started wobbling ominously. “Look at how steep this is.”

Nilly looked. The road was so steep that it looked like a wall. And way, way up ahead, high, high above them he saw the yellow jersey of the guy in front.

“Hm,” Nilly said.

“Hm what?” Eddy wheezed.

“I'm going to fart.” Nilly stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out a plastic sack, which he resolutely opened, and then poured the contents into his mouth.

“What was that?” Eddy asked.

“That was a little carry-on item starting with
P
,” Nilly said, and burped. “Hold on tight. Six—five—four—three—two …”

“Hold on …?”

Eddy didn't have a chance to say anything else. There was a bang so loud that it felt like the earwax was being pushed into his ears and his eyes bulged out of his head. And then there was a roar, like from a speeding rocket engine. The reason he thought of a rocket engine specifically was that they were rushing up the mountain sort of like—well actually, exactly like—a rocket!

“Yippee!” Nilly cheered in his ear.

“Yippee!” Eddy cheered as they passed the cyclists ahead of them and had only the one in the yellow jersey left to overtake. But there was the finish line! And the guy in the yellow jersey had only a few yards to go.

“Give it all you got, Nilly!” Eddy yelled, steering the bike as best he could so they wouldn't run right off the side of the mountain. “Full fart steam ahead! Otherwise it's noogie-time for you!”

“I'm trying,” groaned Nilly, who was very red in the face.

“Faster, Nilly, we're not going to make it! Think about those soooooft lips!”

And Nilly thought. He thought that if they didn't manage this, he would probably never get to see Lisa or Doctor Proctor again. This thought made his intestines give one final effort, and he pressed out a little more gas so they shot ahead with a little more speed. The spectators watching would talk about it for years afterward—that they had been witness to the fantastic sprint in the Provence mountains at the 1969 Tour de France, when the legendary Eddy and his strange red-haired passenger, whose name no one could remember, had flown toward the finish line as if they had a jet engine on their bike. Some even claimed that the bicycle had lifted off from the ground. Yes, a few even imagined that a strange white smoke had trailed from the seat of the pants of the little boy on the bike seat. Even so, it had appeared hopeless, up until the final yards when they had managed to increase their speed a tiny bit more and
at the finish line they had beaten the yellow jersey by a gumillionth of a millimeter. It was the first victory for Eddy, who would go on to became the world famous Eddy who would win bike races around the world, but who in his memoirs would say that it had been that win in Provence that had made him believe in himself and stick with cycling.

But all that was in the future (or the past, depending on how you looked at it). Right now (or then) Eddy and Nilly were reveling in their win. They were both lifted off the bike and carried by the cheering crowd over to the winner's platform, where they were given a medal and each given a teddy bear and kissed on the cheek by soooft lips. Then someone thrust a microphone in their faces, and Nilly immediately pushed his way forward.

“Hello,” he said. “Is this TV?”

“Yes,” said the woman behind the microphone. “Can you tell the French people who you are, actually?”

“Certainly,” Nilly said. “Where's the camera?”

“Over there,” the woman said, and pointed toward an enormous camera set up in the back of a nearby truck behind her.

Nilly looked directly into the camera and stood up straight.

“Hi there, people of France,” he said. “I'm Nilly, and I think you should make a note of that name. Especially if there's anyone out there named Lisa or Doctor Proctor, I think they should pay attention now. I—Nilly, that is—am coming to you live from the top of a mountain named—”

“We know the name of the mountain,” the woman with the microphone said impatiently. “You entered the world of cycle racing like a comet,
Muhsyuh
Nilly, but have you come to stay?”

“No,” Nilly said. “Actually, I would like to get out of here as soon as possible, so if Lisa and Doctor Proctor
could come and pick me up, I'll be waiting at the top of … What mountain is this, actually?”

“Moe Bla,”
Eddy whispered into his ear.

“Moe Bla!” Nilly shouted. “To be precise, I'll be at the …”

“Hôtel Moe Bla,”
Eddy whispered.

“Hôtel Moe Bla!” Nilly yelled.

“My buddy and I will be staying in the tower suite,” Eddy told the camera. “The winner always gets the tower suite. Hurry, Lisa and Doctor Proctor!”

AFTER THE INTERVIEW was over, they were whisked off for massages and a wonderful hot bath in the tower suite. A tailor came up to the room, took Nilly's measurements, and shook his head, laughing, before disappearing again. When he returned a few hours later, he brought a suit and shirt and shoes that Nilly was told to wear to the victory dinner.

“Cool!” Nilly cried as he looked at himself in the
mirror. “Will there be cancan dancing?”

Eddy laughed and shook his head exactly the way the tailor had. “The next stage starts tomorrow at eight a.m. sharp. I'm going to eat four French fries and then turn in for the night.”

“Party pooper!” Nilly complained, tap-dancing in his new patent leather shoes so they clicked on the marble floor. “Let's get this party started!”

The victory dinner was being held in the restaurant of the Hôtel Moe Bla. There were lots of people in fancy party clothes who wanted to shake Nilly's hand, but there was no cancan content as far as he could tell. Some of the other cyclists came over to Nilly and asked him in a whisper about the powder they'd seen him take, wondering if they could buy some from him. They snarled “cheater!” when Nilly shook his head. Actually the whole thing was pretty boring. Nilly's head was already nodding as he started dozing off during the appetizer course. He eventually slid down in his seat,
unnoticed, and disappeared out of sight under the edge of the table. Eddy discovered the sleeping Nilly. After three attempts to wake him, he slung Nilly over his shoulder and carried him up the stairs to the tower suite. There he placed Nilly in the bigger of the two beds and crawled into the smaller one himself. Then he yawned twice and turned off the lights.

NILLY WOKE UP and opened his eyes. A strip of sunlight was coming in through a gap in the curtains in the tower suite and shining right on his freckled face. He stretched and discovered that someone had put a teeny tiny yellow jersey on his nightstand. It said
TOUR DE FRANCE
1969 on it, and next to it there was a note that said:

Good morning, Nilly! Thanks for your help. I didn't want to wake you, so by the time you read this we'll already be out riding the next stage. I hope Lisa and Doctor Proctor come soon.

Your friend always,
Eddy

Nilly stretched, feeling fit, like he was in great shape, but also, truth be told, like he could do with a little more sleep. He thought about it a little, yawned, and closed his eyes again. And then he thought about breakfast. The second he thought about that, he heard the door open quietly and smelled the familiar scent of food. He smiled and dreamed of what types of delicious dishes were being wheeled in to him now. Yes, he didn't even need to open his eyes to tell that it was a wheeled cart. He could hear the wheels squeaking.

The squeaking wheels …

Nilly's eyes shot open and he stared at the ceiling.
He inhaled the scent of food again. It wasn't bacon and eggs. It was … rotten meat and stinky socks.

He jumped in bed as the door slammed shut and the key turned. There, right in front of him, stood a tall person in a long, black trench coat with a wooden leg sticking out the bottom.

The person's red made-up lips were stretched into an unusually big grin that revealed those sharp, chalk-white teeth. In her hand she was holding a long-barreled pistol that looked like it had been stolen from a museum. The person's voice was as hoarse as a desert wind:

“Good morning, Nilly. Where is he? Where's Doctor Proctor?”

“R-r-r …,” Nilly said. “Ra-ra-ra …”

There was no doubt about it. His stutter was back.

LISA STOOD THERE in the bathtub with water dripping from her clothes, blinking the soap bubbles out of her eyelashes. She looked around. The first thing she discovered was that she was surrounded by tall, gloomy mountains that blocked out the sun. The second was that the bathtub was on a grassy ledge. The
third was that right in front of her was a bridge, a gray steel bridge that was sooty and gray from age. The fourth was that she was completely alone. In other words, Nilly was nowhere to be seen.

“Nilly!” Lisa yelled.

“Nilly!” the echo replied, first from the side of one mountain, then another, and then another.

She hopped out of the bathtub and walked over to the edge of the rocky ledge. A deep chasm plunged down between mountains, below her and the bridge.

“Nilly!”

“Nilly! Nilly! Nilly …” The echoes faded away.

“Hi!”

The “hi” had come from the bridge. Lisa shaded her eyes and felt a sense of hope well up in her when she glimpsed someone standing on the road by the end of the bridge waving to her. Maybe that was Nilly? Or Doctor Proctor?

“Hi!” Lisa yelled, waving back and starting to wade
through grass down the hillside, heading over toward the road. As she walked, she heard something, the drone of an engine approaching. And she heard that the voice up ahead yelled something back. She stopped so she could hear better: