A half-hour later, Scarlett decided that of all her bad ideas, returning to the Good Time Chinese restaurant had won the door prize. Bruno could have driven back from Leeville by now, and that weird dog lady already has her eye on me—and so does her dog. What was I thinking? Too nervous to look at a menu, she drank two of the glasses of water at her table while she looked around at the dining room’s distinctly non-Chinese décor: dark gray indoor-outdoor carpeting, acoustical ceiling tiles, and dark wood paneling on which was hung amateurish watercolors of old castles, European knights in armor, rustic cottages, Bavarian farmers, and—for some reason—a bland picture of a nude blonde on a sofa. One could not imagine a place less Asian in accent.
“Ohmigaaawd!” breathed Woot as she stared at a menu in the booth behind Scarlett. “There’s like no meat in any of these dishes! They don’t even have like chicken or shrimp or baloney or anything!”
“No way,” grumbled Mahna Mahna, also behind Scarlett and peering at her own menu. “Tofu? What the hell is tofu?”
“It’s bean curd,” said Scarlett, just before drinking yet another glass of water.
“Bean what?” cried Taryn, sitting at another table.
“She said curd,” clarified Angel, “not . . . forget it.” She leaned back in her seat in the booth across from Scarlett, watching her drink disappear down Scarlett’s throat, and shook her head.
“They use flavored tofu for meat,” said Tananda, sitting next to Angel. “What’s that all about? I mean, that’s just gross.”
“If Kevo were here,” Taryn muttered, “he’d know what to do with bean tur—”
“Are you all ready to order, or are you still waitin’ for your parole officers to arrive?” asked a tall, twenty-something waitress. Tattoos of broken hearts and crossed battleaxes stood out on her forearms.
“My P.O. quit last month on account of job stress,” said Angel. “Hey, what kind of Chinese restaurant is this, with the tofu thing going on?”
The waitress tucked her chewing gum in one cheek. “Vee-gan,” she said. “This is a vegan kinda Chinese restaurant.”
“Okay,” Tananda broke in, “can you go cut up a vegan and serve him or her in place of the pork that’s supposed to go on the pork fried rice?”
“Prob’ly could. I’ll ask the manager.” The waitress snapped her gum. “I’ll bring s’more water while you’re thinkin’, if that’s what it is you’re doin’.”
“You’ve got quite a mouth on you,” said Angel. “Wanna dump being a waitress and join our hockey team? We need a new assistant coach. Ours hasn’t gotten out of the county lockup yet.”
“Nah, I don’t need the trouble,” said the waitress. “Already did time in Kinsington, got out when my appeal went through, and now I’m tryin’ to go straight.” She turned and walked away. “I gotta go help with the cookin’. Break somethin’ when you’re ready to order.”
“She’s got a real attitude,” said Tananda admiringly as the waitress disappeared into the kitchen. “I hope I grow up to be just like her.”
“Hey,” said Angel, snapping her fingers in front of Scarlett’s glazed eyes. “Enterprise, this is Earth, over.”
Scarlett came back to reality and pushed away the empty glass of water. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m . . . just out of it. Kind of nervous.”
“Why?” asked Tananda. “You’re here with us. What could possibly go wrong?” She turned to Angel. “Don’t say it.”
Angel grinned and looked away. “I didn’t say anything!” she responded.
There was movement in the booth behind Angel and Tananda. A moment later, Kristen and a girl nicknamed Darkwing appeared, looking at Angel. “We’re, uh, going for a walk, around outside somewhere,” said Kristen. “We’ll be back in about—”
“Go look in the dumpster already and talk to me when you get back,” said Angel. “And make sure you wash your hands before you eat afterward. Or not, whatever.” She looked at the menu again. “Wish we could have brought our hockey sticks tonight. Damn social workers.”
“Kristen’s got a switchblade in her boot,” said Tananda, “and Darkwing said she knows karate. They’ll be fine.”
“I still miss my stick. Don’t feel right without it. I feel . . .”
“Naked?” offered Tananda.
“Hell, no, I just feel like I don’t have my hockey stick.”
Scarlett shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. “Do you see that dog anywhere?” she whispered.
“Nah,” said Tananda after a look around. “Why?”
“I gotta go to the bathroom.” Scarlett scooted across her seat. “Can someone go with me?”
“That’s what you get for drinking your water and mine and Angel’s, too,” said Tananda. “You don’t need anybody to hold your hand. We’ve got everything covered. Just go. In there, I mean, not here.”
“How come every time I see you, you’re going to the bathroom?” said Angel. “You have a chipmunk’s bladder?”
“No, I just drank too much,” said Scarlett, standing up and wincing. “Too nervous.”
“Yell if you see anything.” Angel shook her head again. “Yell even if you don’t see anything. We need some excitement.”
Scarlett almost made it to the restroom without incident. No German shepherds or trashy blondes blocked her way this time, but she did run into the waitress once more. The waitress wore a chef’s apron splattered with a red fluid Scarlett hoped was runny ketchup, holding a similarly stained meat cleaver while she searched through a group of order slips hanging from clips above a counter. The waitress noticed Scarlett and waved to her briefly before looking through the orders again.
“Rhonda!” called someone from the kitchen. “The tofu’s burning!”
“I’ll be there inna freakin’ minute!” the waitress shouted back, then gripped the cleaver tighter and muttered, “This damn place gets on my last freakin’ nerve.”
Scarlett hastily locked herself in the one-toilet restroom, her appetite gone. She considered staying in the tiny room until the police or fire department got her out, but she knew that would never work. Bruno would tear down the door and get her first. The best thing to do was leave and tell the other girls there had been a mistake, nothing was worth seeing here, and they should go home before they were killed. It was a great plan, and Scarlett promised herself she would get right on it—after she used the facilities, of course. She had to go so badly she thought she would burst.
She was washing her hands before leaving when she heard a man in the dining room shout, “FREEZE!” Then a number of heavy footsteps ran past the restroom door against a background of wild shouts and cries, mostly from teenage girls. It was impossible to tell what was going on, except that Angel appeared to have gotten a solid response to her wish for some excitement. Scarlett was paralyzed with indecision. Now what? Is Bruno here? Am I going to die? Why can’t I be brave like my father was? This was such a bad idea!
Screwing up her remaining courage, Scarlett turned off the light, then carefully unlocked the restroom door and peeked out. A tremendous amount of noise—teenage girls and adult men shouting, yelling, arguing, and possibly fighting—came from the direction of the restaurant entrance and foyer, beyond the dining room to the left. What had become of the other dining patrons could only be imagined, though if they were smart, they were hiding under the tables. Across the hall from the ladies’ room was a broom closet and the men’s room, with two swinging kitchen doors to the right. The doors were still moving on their hinges.
Maybe I can sneak out and escape with the other girls, Scarlett thought. She eased out into the hall and pulled the restroom door shut behind her. Stepping to one side, she then peered into the now-empty dining room, wondering where everyone had gone.
Shouts suddenly broke out from the kitchen behind her. “Come out with your hands up, Rhonda!” cried a male voice. “This is the police! Don’t make us come in after you!”
“You’re surrounded!” shouted another man. “Throw down the hatchet and surrender!”
Scarlett’s mind instantly filled up with urgent messages from her autonomic nervous system to cut out the heroism and run for it. She started for the dining hall, but the rooms’ overhead lights went out at that moment. She scrambled back and started to go for the kitchen, only to hear a crashing noise and two gunshots behind the swinging doors. She was closest to the door marked “JANITOR ONLY,” and that was the door whose knob she grasped and flung open, diving inside the broom closet a moment later and slamming the door shut behind her.
It was dark in the closet except for fluorescent light coming under the door. The air smelled like moldy rags and oil; the floor had an odd metallic ring under her boots. She had gotten a momentary glimpse of a couple of buckets and a dry mop against the far wall before the door closed, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not daring to open the door for fear of being shot (or worse), she instead felt along the wall to the side of the door for a light switch, hoping to find a way to lock the door after she could see her surroundings. A round object like a button came to hand instead. She pushed it.
The button lit up, bright red. The hum of machinery came from all about. Another door slid over the first door, throwing the room into complete blackness except for the red button. The floor lurched, then it slowly dropped under her feet. She gave a brief shriek, but the floor continued to descend, taking her with it. After a panicked moment, she realized she had gotten into an elevator, not a closet. She pushed herself back against a rumbling wall, wondering what in the world she had done and how she was ever going to get out of there.
The elevator ran for about a thousand years before grinding to a jerky halt some distance below the main floor of the restaurant. The door slid open, and dim light poured in from the room beyond. Scarcely daring to breathe, Scarlett leaned away from the wall to look out.
The elevator had taken her to what appeared to be a basement used for storage. A single ceiling light fixture with a small bulb was the only illumination, leaving the far walls in darkness. Everywhere she looked to either side of an aisle in front of the elevator door were cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, boxes of every size. Several were open, and inside them she could see . . . books.
Her curiosity overcame her fright once she was convinced she was alone. As the only other place to go was back to the main floor (to be shot, perhaps), Scarlett left the elevator and made her way over to the nearest open box of books. She looked down and read the title of the uppermost volume: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with a black swastika below the title on a bright red cover. After a pause, she reached down and moved the book over to see, below it, A History of the S.S., with Invasion: Operation Sea Lion, 1940 at its side.
Someone was clearly into history of the World War Two kind. Puzzled, she looked in other open boxes and found more of the same: Defeat in the West. Roosevelt’s Secret War. The Gathering Storm. Nazi Secret Weapons, 1939-1945. The Luftwaffe War Diaries. The Battle of Britain. The Enigma Code. Panzer Battles on the Eastern Front. Stalin and the Great Patriotic War. The Siege of Leningrad.
She turned to another box and found a different sort of topic on the books inside: The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The Manhattan Project. Day of Trinity. Oppenheimer. Allied Secret Weapons of World War II. The Inside Story of the ICBM. Heisenberg’s War. The Los Alamos Primer. Hiroshima.
She picked up the small paperback copy of Hiroshima, with the towering mushroom cloud on the cover in black and white, but she did not thumb through it. The subject matter did not appeal to Scarlett, who liked less depressing fare. It looked as if someone was storing a considerable library in the basement—but why was all of this here, below a pseudo-Chinese restaurant? Who owned this stuff?
She looked back at the elevator and noticed a light switch. When she reached over and flipped it on, the entire basement was illuminated. It was then she discovered the whole forty-by-forty-foot basement was filled with boxes, crates, cartons, mailing tubes, and more—and the walls were decorated with flags and portraits. Most of the flags were red and had black swastikas on them. Most of the portraits were of the same person: a pale, dark-haired man with a comb-over, a small mustache, and dark, penetrating eyes. She recognized him at once from her history books. Her skin began to crawl.
“Ohhh-kaaay,” she whispered, thoroughly creeped out. “I think it’s time for me to head back up and get the hell out of this—”
“Nice likeness, eh?” said a voice right behind her.
Scarlett shrieked halfway through the word “likeness,” accidentally flinging Hiroshima into the air as she turned around in an instant, still shrieking.
Ten feet away from her was a German shepherd, sitting on its haunches as it watched her. She recognized it immediately as Hermione, the dog that had followed her the other day after growling at her outside the restroom upstairs.
“Ouch!” said the dog, a pained look on its face. “No need for all the racket, all right? My hearing’s much more sensitive than yours. Watch it, okay?”
Scarlett backed up into a massive stack of book-filled boxes, knocking some over and almost falling down with them. She struggled to keep her balance as the large dog watched, its head tilted in interest at her antics.
“Are you all right?” asked the dog. Its voice was deep, and it had a tendency to roll its r’s, sounding a bit like Astro from The Jetsons. After waiting for an answer but getting none, the dog tried again. “Are you hurt? You almost fell down there.”
“Uh . . . uh . . . I’m . . . f-f-fine,” Scarlett gasped, her eyes big as moons.
“Good,” said the German shepherd. “What’s going on upstairs, anyway? Sounds like a police raid.”
“I . . . I . . . I don’t know!”
“Probably had to do with Rhonda. She was always bragging that the penitentiary released her by mistake. Doesn’t matter. I never liked her anyway. Any cook who won’t throw meat scraps to a dog isn’t worth her salt. Get it?” The dog actually smiled. “That’s been my philosophy for the last year or so, since I became a dog. Speaking of which, how is Roger these days?”
Her brain seized up again. “R-R-R-R-R-R-Roger?”
“Y-y-y-yes, y-y-y-your mouse,” said the dog, rolling its eyes. “I can smell him all over you from here. His real name is Roger LaSouris, right? He was a friend of mine. Did he tell you what happened to get him in his current, um, condition?”
Scarlett looked at the elevator, considering a run for freedom—only to discover the elevator door had closed and the elevator was gently rumbling again, heading back up. The question of escape was academic anyway, as she knew the dog would get her long before she reached the door.
“You’re not really listening to me, are you?” asked the dog, leaning toward her.
“Uh, ah, no! I mean, yes, yes, I am!”
“I would think after having a talking mouse around, you’d be a little more forthcoming. Roger does talk to you, right?”
Some of Scarlett’s presence of mind returned to her. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said, her throat dry from fear, “and I don’t know how you think you know so much about me, but I need to find out what’s happened to my friends upstairs, so if you don’t mind, I’m—”
Hermione jumped to her feet and barked once. A German shepherd’s bark drowns out all other sounds in a snap. Scarlett shrieked again and pressed her back to the closed elevator door, ninety percent terrified and ten percent angry with herself for being so dreadfully afraid.
“I do mind,” said Hermione, walking in Scarlett’s direction. “Move away from the door.” When Scarlett didn’t respond, Hermione pulled back black lips from enormous yellow-white fangs and growled a warning that could not be mistaken.
“Wait a minute!” Scarlett cried. “Okay, okay!” She immediately left the elevator door, but did not dare approach the dog. Boxes blocked her way to either side, so she hastily climbed over the nearest stack, not caring how clumsy she looked. Hermione, calm again, came around the stack and nodded approval. “Have a seat,” said the dog. “Pick a box. Doesn’t matter which one. Take a load off.”
Scarlett found a suitable spot and sat down, knees together, arms wrapped around her in a fearful hug. She took in more of the room as she did. She had never seen a place with so much Nazi memorabilia in it. In fact, she had never seen any Nazi memorabilia at all, except in encyclopedias. The basement was covered with the stuff. She thought that not even a museum would have so complete a collection.
Hermione sat down about ten feet from her and nipped at an itchy spot on her rump before turning back to the red-haired girl. “I still hear footsteps upstairs,” said the dog. “Police haven’t left yet. The elevator’s gone, so we’ve got time to kill.”
“I wish you hadn’t put it that way,” said Scarlett.
“Ah, there you go,” said Hermione, smiling. “Good one. The boss lady said you were smart and gutsy, but I was beginning to wonder.”
“I’m not feeling very brave, but I am confused. What is all this stuff?”
“Oh, this garbage?” said the dog with a disdainful toss of its head. “This is the boss lady’s. She’s kind of a collector. I should warn you, before she gets here, that she’s a little strange in the head. For an older babe she’s built like a brick you-know-what, but her attic’s a mess, if you get my meaning.”
“No,” said Scarlett, her courage returning. “I don’t think I do get your meaning. Are you saying she’s crazy?”
“Crazy is as crazy does,” said the dog, “so yeah, she’s pretty crazy. Don’t call her that, though. She’ll be pretty angry about it, and you won’t like her when she’s angry. Trust me, I know.”
“Why would you put up with her, if she’s crazy?” asked Scarlett. “And why are you even here?”
“That’s kind of an interesting story,” said the dog. “By the way, my dog name is Hermione. I’m a girl dog, I know, but not necessarily a bitch. Little joke there. You’re not laughing, so . . . eh. My name used to be Marcello Lupo, Ph.D., when I was human—and a man—but the boss lady decided to call me Hermione when I came back like this. Who was I to argue? And the reason I put up with her is that the boss lady, crazy or not, is the only person who can change me back into teacher-man Marcello Lupo again. That’s it in a nutshell.”
Scarlett blinked. “She can turn you back into a human? How?”
The dog sighed. “That’s another interesting story, one that I don’t think I should share with you. Suffice to say that I’m convinced she can, so I’m all over it. She wants me to jump, I’ll jump and I won’t even ask how high. My turn to ask a question or two: What are you doing down here?”
Scarlett took a ragged breath, wondering where the Leopards had gone and why weren’t they rescuing her from this mess. “That was an accident,” she said. “When all the shooting and yelling started, I ran over and hid in this closet, and it—”
“Excuse me,” said Hermione. The dog got up and walked over to Scarlett, who pulled back as far as she could. The big dog sat down almost on her booted feet. “Funny thing about being a dog,” said Hermione. “You wouldn’t believe how good my senses of hearing and smelling are. I can sense emotional states in people with one hundred percent accuracy, absolutely. It’s like having a lie detector going all the time inside my head. I can tell instantly when people aren’t truthful. Even better, I can tell when they’re only covering up, avoiding something important that they should have told me. Are you with me so far?”
Scarlett, her arms crossed in front of her face in the hope they might provide some protection if Hermione tried to bite her, nodded once.
“Good, that’s very good,” said the dog. “Now, another thing. I used to be a college professor. I worked at Middleton College, a dump academically but at least I had tenure. My specialty was English literature, but I did some Viking stuff—Beowulf, Njal’s Saga, all that. You know anything about Viking mythology? Anything about the Norse god Tyr? He once made a promise to a wolf monster, and to prove he was telling the truth, he stuck his hand in the wolf’s mouth. As it turned out, he was lying, and the wolf bit off his hand. Bad things happen to people who lie to dogs or wolves, especially to me. Capice?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Great.” Hermione turned and walked back to the spot where she had originally been sitting, then sat there again. “Now,” she said to Scarlett, “what were you doing down here?”
Scarlett found it difficult to lower her arms again. “I was trying to find out why this place is so strange,” she said, trembling.
Hermione looked at the ceiling and tilted her head to one side, considering the response, then looked back at Scarlett. “Yeah, I can buy that. What exactly did you notice was strange about this place? I’m not disagreeing with you, it is pretty strange, but I want to know exactly why you thought it was strange.”
Scarlett swallowed and managed to get her arms down to her lap again, though she was ready at any moment to curl up into a ball to avoid being bitten in the face. “This is where Roger appeared,” she said.
“I knew it!” said the dog in a triumphant voice. “I knew it! Roger was here, too! I was just guessing before, based on some stuff the boss lady said, but I knew he was here, too! That little rat! Literally, too. So, old Roger’s alive. Of the three of us, he was the luckiest, landing on that cow. At least he was more or less intact afterward. Wonder if our other pal came back as well. Whatever. Two good turns out of three on the great wheel of karma—not bad.” Hermione snorted. “Sorry, don’t mind me. I was having a eureka moment. Okay, that’s out of the way, so let’s talk about you again.”
“I’d like to ask a question, if I may,” said Scarlett, steeling herself for the response.
Hermione shook her head no, grinning just enough to reveal her fangs again. “If I was less of a gentleman . . . well, let’s say instead that if I wasn’t so nice a dog, I’d take off your left arm for interrupting me, but I’ll let it pass. I have a few more questions for you before you get a turn . . . if I may.”
“All right.” It’s not like I can refuse you, is it?
“Thank you. So . . . what do you know about this place, other than that this is where Roger and I appeared after our little skydiving accident?”
After reviewing all she knew, Scarlett decided to go for broke. “This is where Bruno Nagy appeared, too,” she said.
The effect her words had was electric. Hermione sat up straighter, her mouth open slightly and her ears turned right at Scarlett. The dog was speechless with shock.
Scarlett risked a smile of her own. “I was just guessing, based on an intuition I had. I’m having a little eureka moment, too.”
“Bruno Nagy,” said Hermione in a flat tone, “is not a name you should ever throw about in a careless way. You were a very unwise little girl to say what you did about him on top of that. He hates for people to know his business. My boss lady may be as nutty as a king-size Payday bar, but Bruno is something else altogether, and he will not be pleased to hear this.”
Scarlett knew then that she was as good as dead. Oddly, the knowledge did not bother her greatly. She had figured this was going to happen, sooner or later. In a way, the knowledge emboldened her. She sat up straighter herself. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she said on impulse.
“Like hell I won’t,” said Hermione, her voice full of promise.
Scarlett felt a rush of quiet anger. She got to her feet and looked down on Hermione, who got to her feet as well. Hermione’s ears flattened back, and she lowered her muzzle and growled.
“You don’t dare touch me until your master comes back,” said Scarlett, feeling in her bones that she was speaking the truth. “I’m too important for you to even scratch. Knock off the act.”
“I would dearly love to tear out your throat,” snarled the German shepherd. “I love that idea right now more than anything else in the world, even turning back into a human again.” Slowly, the dog’s hackles fell. Her head lifted, her teeth vanished behind her lips, and her ears rose again. She sat down facing Scarlett, almost calm as she continued. “What I will do instead, as soon as the opportunity presents itself, is to tear your precious Roger apart with my bare teeth and eat him right in front of you, and I will take my time about it so you don’t miss a single precious moment of that three-ring event. You will listen to his screams for as long as I can make them last, and with any luck you will regret that you ever pulled that little stunt on me. That would satisfy me almost as much as killing you.”
Scarlett was really afraid this time, but she did not show it. That won’t happen, she told herself. Nothing bad will ever happen to Roger. I will make sure of that.
It was then she noticed that something in the air was not quite right. Oh, no! Now what?
Hermione tilted her head and looked at something behind Scarlett. “As for your fate,” the dog added, “I’ll leave that to my mistress.”
Scarlett hesitated, unsure if this was a trick, but she read in the dog’s manner that Hermione was not going to attack. There was no need for her to do so, now that someone else had arrived.
But who?
Scarlett swallowed and turned around.
Standing a short distance behind her, next to a flag, a wall map, and other Nazi-era items, was a tall, curvaceous blonde whose pale blue eyes were much older than the rest of her looked. It was the restaurant’s owner. She wore a red tank top and matching miniskirt with a slit up one side for a mildly slutty effect. Tattoos were visible on her arms, and she wore sandals and an incongruous Nazi officer’s cap. She had literally appeared out of nowhere, unless she had previously been hiding behind some of the boxes, which Scarlett doubted was the case.
“Meet Adele Wolff,” said Hermione, “my alpha mistress . . . and the future ruler of the world. Or destroyer, as the case may be.”
Scarlett just stared. The blonde stared back, shaking her head slightly from side to side as if inspecting a difficult stain on a favorite blouse.
“She’s your what?” said Scarlett, at a loss for clever comebacks.
“You don’t get it, do you?” asked Hermione. “Easy enough for me, being a former professor and all, but . . . here goes. Adele Wolff. Old High German for ‘noble wolf.’ Usually shortened to ‘Adolf’ as a man’s name. Get it now?” The dog sighed again. “Adele was born the last day of April, nineteen forty-five, right outside this very building. Light bulb finally turn on? No? All this talk about reincarnation and the great wheel of karma doesn’t . . . I give up.”
The dog then lowered its head in an unmistakable bow to the silent blonde in the trashy red outfit. “Scarlett is yours, Mein Fuehrer,” Hermione said.
Last updated 12/23/06