Calamity Jayne And The Trouble With Tandems Part 45

"I told you! I can do it myself!" Kenny grabbed the case from my hand. The top flap came loose. Papers spilled out onto the pavement.

Eyes. Sketch after sketch of eyes.

Tiara's eyes.

Tiara's face.

Tiara period.

Picture after picture of Tiara Fordham stared up at me. Tiara in a baseball cap. Tiara in a Stetson. Laughing Tiara. Crying Tiara. Angry, pouting...sleeping?...Tiara. Creepee!

Kenny looked at me. I looked at him.

And before I could say, "Surrender, Klingon!" the amazing intergalactic race was on.

"Stop! Kenny! Stop! Don't run!"

He kept running.

I took off after him. Two strides and my Yeoman Rand 'do' didn't. I felt a whoosh and a sudden weight disappeared from my head.

"Kenny! Hold on! Stop! We can fix this!" I yelled.

"Stop that Klingon!" I heard Keelie yell from behind me.

For being weighed down with Klingon garb, Kenny could book. It was all I could do not to lose sight of him among the throngs of fellow Klingon warriors.

"Stop!" I yelled. "Hold up!"

"Get a load of baldie there. I wonder what character she is. Yeoman Chrome Dome?" I heard, hoofing it past a group of Romulans.

"Vulcan wannabes," I wheezed.

"Catch that Klingon!" Keelie called out again.

"Fanatics! Some people take this role-playing way too seriously."

Yet another editorial comment. I would've responded, but I needed all my air to stay in the foot race.

We entered the carnival area. To the left was the rock-o-plane. To the right, the flying saucer ride. And straight ahead? A yellow and red enclosure surrounded on all four sides by big blue rocket s.h.i.+ps, U.S.A. in big white letters on each rocket. The inflatable rocket bounce!

He wouldn't.

He couldn't.

He did.

With a gargantuan leap, Kenny the Klingon planted both feet on the red and blue air-filled rocket bounce welcome mat, propelling himself through the s.p.a.ce and time continuum, and into the out-of-this-world carnival attraction.

I plodded after him, surveying the air-filled launch pad with some misgivings.

Do I?

Or don't I?

Oh, h.e.l.l, yeah.

I hit the canvas cus.h.i.+on of air off balance and dove towards the opening, face-first, succeeding in executing an ugly belly flop that got me only half way through the entrance. Face down, I bounced half a dozen times before I came to rest and was able to pull the rest of Yeoman Rand inside. It took me several more attempts to push myself to a standing position, my boots sinking into the springy canvas like they did in a muddy barnyard.

Across from me, the Klingon warrior wheezed.

"Kenny. Bud. Listen," I said, doing some heavy breathing of my own. "You gotta give up man."

"Why?"

I blinked.

"What?"

"Why do I have to give up?"

I blinked again.

"Because it's the right thing to do. The only thing to do. You're trapped."

"Am I?" he said and bounced to his left.

Bounce. Bounce.

"What are you doing, Kenny?" I asked and counter-bounced, thinking boots might be made for walking and riding. But bouncing? Not so much.

Bounce. Bounce.

"Bouncing," he said and bounced to his right.

Bounce. Bounce.

"Not a good move," I said, and meeting his bounce and raising it.

Bounce. Bounce. Bounce!

"Maybe this should be my next move then," Kenny said, and pulled out a pencil.

"On the count of three we draw?" I said, confused.

"On the count of three I start poking holes," he said.

"In...me?" Gulp.

"In the inflatable," he said.

Thank the interplanetary G.o.ds! I didn't think the pencil could puncture canvas, but I knew it could puncture flesh.

"You don't want to do that, Kenny. Think of all the disappointed little kids who came here to bounce." Think about the d.a.m.ned thing collapsing in on both of us and smothering us to death. "Just put the pencil down and bounce away from it, nice and easy."

"No."

I blinked.

"No?"

"You want it? Come and get it." Kenny said, holding the pencil out.

I moonwalked in his direction. He moonwalked away. Around the sides of the rocket launch we performed our own lunar leaps.

"This is getting us nowhere, Kenny." Literally. "Just tell me where Tiara is. Please."

It was then I started to feel that telltale slippage in the, er, crotchal area.

Oh no! They're going down! They're going down! They're going down!

I put a leg out to leap after Kenny and found my movement restricted by constricting-and confining-control tops at knee level.

Kenny must've sensed his opponent's sudden vulnerability. In one ginormous leap for Klingon-kind, Kenny was out the rocker bounce door, leaving me with my knees together, bouncing up and down as I yanked my panty hose back up.

Holy Moses. It was true-all that pride-cometh-before-a-fall-stuff. Pride be d.a.m.nedth! I should've gone with hairy legs.

I tumbled out of the bounce seconds after Kenny, trampolining to my feet.

Meanwhile, my quarry had widened his lead. We were now outside Riverside proper and heading into areas dotted with food and drink stands and various outdoors activities.

"Stop. That. Klingon!" I managed to get out, finding it as hard to breathe as it was to run in boots I'd thought so cute an hour earlier.

I lost sight of Kenny for a moment, until an accommodating group of folks wearing swimsuit trunks pointed off to their left.

"He went that way! Toward the naked slide!"

The naked what?

I shook it off. That was Stan's idea of a sick joke. Stan was a sick, sick man. That's all.

"Kenny! Stop!" I yelled.

"Tressa! I'm coming!" I heard Keelie yell. "I'm coming!"

Through a grove of trees, around a wooden glen, and into a small county park we ran, Kenny the Klingon and Barbie the bald yeoman.

Kenny suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

I did the same.

And then I saw it.

"It does exist!" I whispered, amazed and...disturbed.

There it was-good old Midwest innovation at its scariest! Constructed from plastic sheeting, tarps, Styrofoam pool noodles, and PVC pipe sat two homemade water slides, side-by-side. Surrounded by trees on two sides-for modesty's sake I supposed-the slide's take-off point was at the top of a long, steep hill, its landing spot near the modest pond at the bottom. The design and construction were impressive. It was the in-your-face execution that had me wanting to gouge my eyes out.

"Eww, what is that?" Gasping for her own next breath, Keelie stood beside me, witnessing vistas so not included in any Iowa travel guide I knew of.

"A TribRide tradition," I said, bending to catch my breath.

"Where's Kenny?"

I pointed at the only other being, humanoid or otherwise, with clothes on.

"What's he doing?" Keelie asked, as we watched Kenny run to the top of the gi-normous water slide, stop, and just stand there, looking down the hill at the twin slides.

"Debating the lesser of two evils, I imagine," I said. I blinked. "What is he doing here?"

"Who?"

"My biking partner. Drew Van Vleet. Down there." I pointed to the bottom of the slide where Drew Van Vleet stood, next to a tree, camera in hand.

Keelie gasped. "That...that sicko! He's filming people on the slide! The perv! What a rotten thing to do!"

I winced. Talk about journalism hitting below the belt.

"Wait! Look! Your biking partner is moving out of the tree line to film Kenny!"

I shook my head. Somehow I didn't think Kenny was gonna be one for the limelight.

"What's Kenny doing now?" Keelie asked.

Our Deep s.p.a.ce Nine wannabe looked at us and down at the scary-a.s.s (oopsie!) slides in all their gross-me-out splendor.

"I think he's almost decided what the lesser evil is!" I said. "Come on! Let's go!"

We shot off like a blast from a photon torpedo, running up the gra.s.sy hill, getting to the top of the slide in time to make a wild grab for Kenny the Klingon as he left the launch pad, headfirst torpedoing down the Naked Slide.

"What do we do now?" I asked.

"We go after him," Keelie said, stripping off her mini dress and down to her skivvies.

"Wait! What? What are you doing?" I asked.

"We'll go faster this way," she said. "Less friction."

About to politely, yet firmly, decline, I finally noticed two other people-one tall, one squatty-near the top of the slide.