In the Unlikely Event... (9 page)

“Are you partial to that hand?” Chase said, wiggling her fingers suggestively.

Gitana smiled. “Well, yes.”

“I mean, I could probably live without it,” Chase teased.

“This is not the time to get flirty, you two,” Donna said, giving them disapproving looks. “We need to get her free before the Pink Mafia arrives and we all end up being handcuffed to library chairs. This is the Republik of Lesbekistan.”

“Don’t remind me—the country where anything goes,” Chase said.

“But how are we going to get her hand out of the cuff?” Gitana said.

“Once we remove it from the chair, Chase can go on a hunger strike until her hand shrinks enough to slip out,” Gloria said.

Chase looked alarmed.

“I’m kidding,” Gloria said. “We’ll figure something out.” She handed Bud a pair of safety glasses and put on her own. “I’ll need you to supervise and tap my forearm as the signal that I am getting too close to her hand. I’d hate to be responsible for adversely affecting her career.” She glanced over at Gitana.

“She’s right-handed and that’s her left,” Bud pointed out.

“I meant as a lesbian,” Gloria said.

“Oh.”

Chase wondered if Bud used “oh” in the sense she did—a monosyllabic way of acknowledging that something had been said, but that one was unable to come up with an acceptable response to an awkward situation.

Gloria turned the reciprocating saw on, and Chase watched as Gitana winced and Donna bit her lip. John Irving’s book
The Fourth Hand
came to mind. In the novel, the loss of the hand served as a metaphor as well as a prop. What would the metaphor in her case be? Don’t cross a crazy lesbian dictator or you’ll lose a hand and ruin a perfectly good library chair. The chair vibrated with the motion of the saw, and Chase hoped it wouldn’t take long, but when Gloria turned off the saw and she was not released, Chase became concerned. “It’s not working?” she said in a panic.

“Yes, it’s working. The saw got hot and we need to let it cool down,” Gloria said.

Bud put her hand on Chase’s shoulder and said, “We will get you out of this.”

Chase made a gallant effort not to be overwhelmed as well as claustrophobic. “Maybe we could take me home and unweld me or something.”

“We’d more than likely light you on fire in the process,” Gloria said.

Bud nodded. “It would take an acetylene torch to do it and that is dangerous,” Bud said.

“How do you know so much about tools?” Gloria asked.

“I study the
Northern Tools
catalog and then cross-reference the tools I am interested in and that might prove useful in my life and then I learn how to use them, even if only in a theoretical sense…” Bud was saying.

“Get me out of this fucking chair!” Chase bellowed.

Donna clapped a hand over her mouth. “Keep it down or the Pink Mafia will get wise and you’ll be living in this chair.”

Chase muttered about sixteen expletive deletives before Donna removed her hand. It wasn’t apparent whether she let go out of pity or because Chase licked the palm of her hand. She knew that would gross Donna out.

Donna wiped her hand on a Kleenex, and Bud handed her a dollop of antibacterial gel from the small container she always kept in her pocket for such emergencies.

“That was disgusting,” Donna said.

“It was an extreme measure,” Chase admitted. “I hope your hand was clean.”

Donna pursed her lips. “I sanitized them after I entered the building—door handles are a germ convention in the making, especially in a high-traffic environment.”

“I think we’d better get going on that chair again,” Gitana suggested.

“Right,” Gloria said. She appeared to be contemplating heavy traffic germ factories also. Bud must have sensed this and gave her a dollop of gel. Gloria looked relieved. “Thanks, kid.” She rubbed her hands clean, waited for the alcohol to dry and then changed out the saw blade.

“Good thing we have four more,” Bud said, examining the discarded one.

“Two for the top and two for the bottom?” Donna said. “I mean, can’t we just make one cut and bend it?”

“Have you felt the metal? This is heavy-duty stuff,” Gloria said.

“Do you think Lacey has done this before?” Gitana said, leaning down to inspect the chair back.

Chase consided this. “Perhaps. When I was first taken, Lacey told Chino and Dixon to take me to the library. I thought she was being somewhat conciliatory by putting me in a place where I’d be comfortable. Of course, I didn’t imagine being handcuffed to a library chair with only the
Norton Anthology
to keep me company. I mean, that was cruel. Of course, if I’d figured out that I could walk with the chair…” she said, looking at Bud embarrassed.

“It’s not a big deal. There’s always a learning curve when one is presented with a new situation,” Bud said.

Gitana studied the chair ruefully. Bud took her hand. “We’ll get her out of this, don’t worry.”

“The problem is that the chair back rails are solid metal. I figured on them being hollow,” Gloria said, sucking in her bottom lip.

“What are you saying—that you can’t get me out of here?” Chase said, her voice getting high and squeaky.

“Shhh…someone will hear you,” Donna said.

“We’re the only ones in here,” Chase retorted. “Which is sad when you think about it. Does this mean that Isabel has gone to all this trouble to essentially create the Library of Alexandria for lesbian writings and no one is interested?”

“Chase, I don’t think now is the time to discuss library politics,” Gitana said.

“I know, but it is a depressing commentary on the state of lesbian literary affairs.”

“Chase, right now we need to get you out of this chair—we can work on library science issues later,” Gitana said.

“Actually, I think everyone is busy attending seminars. Today is packed with three of the most sought-after ones,” Gloria said.

“Which are?” Chase inquired.

“The first one is ‘Contrarian Minimalism,’ followed by ‘Working through Coffee Crash Burnout,’ and finally ‘Lesbian Mannerial Proclivities,’” Gloria said.

“Wow,” Gitana said. “What does all that mean?”

“Contrarian Minimalism is about narrowing down your focus of the things that bother a person prone to curmudgery. Coffee Crash Burnout is like an AA meeting where everyone sits around and tells stories about their caffeine addiction and what led to it and how they are handling a caffeine-free life. Lesbian Mannerial Proclivities is kind of complicated, and it involves a lot of role-playing activities,” Gloria said.

“Yikes,” Gitana said.

Chase hoped that Lacey wouldn’t put her in any of those classes as a punishment for insurrection.

“It probably helped that I put a sign up that said the library is closed for dusting,” Bud informed them as she dug around in her backpack.

“Dusting?” Chase said. “And people believed that?”

“I’ve discovered that most people believe most of what they are told—giving very little thought to the actual problem or incident. The media and the powers-that-be tell them something is one way or another and they believe it. You’d be surprised at how much disinformation is taken as absolute truth, especially by the talk radio crowd. No one really spends any time reflecting on a subject—it’s absolutely reprehensible,” Bud said.

Gloria stood wide-eyed. “Is she like a genius or something?”

Chase gave Bud an I-told-you-so look.

Bud shrugged and pulled out her TM900 camcorder. She started filming.

Gitana confessed. “She is extremely advanced for her age.”

Donna, normally the sane, well-mannered one, hissed, “Yes, Bud is a genius, and yes, the state of the world is essentially an idiocracy in the making, and yes, library usage is statistically in decline, but right now the only thing that is of any FUCKING importance is getting Chase out of that chair.”

As if on cue, Bud zoomed in on Chase and the chair and then moved behind her so she got the handcuff in view.

“She’s right,” Gitana said, checking her watch. “It’s eleven thirty. I’m sure no matter how angry Lacey is, she will send you lunch.”

“What exactly are you doing?” Chase asked, watching as Bud panned the group.

“I’m creating a docudrama of our lives,” Bud said, setting the camcorder on the edge of a carrel and coming to Gloria’s side.

Gloria and Bud simultaneously put their hands on their hips and studied the chair. If Bud had had on a dark blue Dickies uniform with her name on the pocket, she’d have looked just like Gloria’s maintenance apprentice.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Gloria said to Bud, who shook her head resignedly.

“Not with our current time constraints,” Bud agreed.

Chase whirled around as best she could. “What does that mean? I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a chair. How am I going to pee?”

She shouldn’t have brought that up because her bladder took the hint.

“Stop it!” Gitana said.

“Stop what?” Chase said.

“The panic attack you are about to have,” Gitana replied.

“Oh, that.” Chase took some deep breaths like Dr. Robicheck had instructed her to in an effort to stave off the impending panic attack. She inhaled, held it for five seconds and then tried to visualize her lungs pushing the air out. This usually made her dizzy, which stopped the panic attack because she focused on not fainting instead of panicking—a classic diversionary tactic.

“I think we need to remove her from the premises and then work on the chair,” Donna said.

As if to accentuate Donna’s point, the oversized wood doors of the library opened and they heard Lacey’s voice. “I think we’ve given her enough time to reconsider her errant behavior.”

One thing Chase could say for Lacey was that ever since she’d become a dictator her vocabulary had improved.

“I wouldn’t be certain about that. She’s a loose cannon,” Chino said.

“You don’t know how much she hates the
Norton Anthology of Early American Literature,
” Lacey said.

Gitana, Donna and Gloria stood frozen. It was Bud, who, with the quick reflexes of a child, took action. “Grab the chair. We’ve got to move, now.” She pointed to the rear exit that opened into the old observatory-turned-meditation room.

Gloria and Donna each grabbed a side of the chair and tiptoed toward the door. Chase didn’t think carrying a person in a chair while tiptoeing was a good idea, but under the circumstances she held her tongue. Gitana pushed on the exit door slowly to avoid making noise. They all held their breath as she eased it open. Donna backed out the door, looking over her shoulder so she could see where she was going. Gloria followed her lead. Bud lingered to listen to what was transpiring in the center of the library.

“What the fuck?” Lacey said.

“She’s escaped,” Chino said.

“In a chair?” Lacey said.

“That woman is capable of anything. You go that way and I’ll go this way.”

Gitana grabbed Bud’s hand. “We’ve got to go,” she whispered.

They went through the door to find themselves in the middle of a meditation class. The “ooommms” from the class masked the clattering of their footfalls across the hardwood floor. Good thing the meditators had mats, Chase thought, or they’d have hemorrhoids from sitting on a hard surface for hours on end—it was a medically documented fact that too much sitting caused the condition.

“Excuse me, pardon us,” Donna said, as they shuffled their way through the classroom and to the exit on the east wall of the room, which opened onto a Zen garden. The garden was artfully arranged with several smooth, round, granite stones and a stunted juniper tree trimmed to resemble a bonsai. The even strokes of a rake had carved rows across the surface of the sand. Their footprints destroyed the serenity of the garden. Bud dragged a rake behind them.

“Bud, do you really think this is the time for being persnickety?” Gitana said.

“I’m covering our tracks,” Bud said.

Chase turned around in her chair. “Don’t talk to your mother in that tone of voice.”