The Weapon - Exodus - part 4
By Diana the Valkyrie
A date with Felicity


I woke up alone. I'm used to waking up alone, but I felt more alone this
morning than usual, and it was obvious why. It wasn't just the sex, she was
fun to be around. Even just sitting quietly with her was good, and that wasn't
something she seemed to do much of. So, I got out of bed, showered, shaved,
slouched downstairs and fried myself a kipper. In butter. Who wants to live
for ever? I felt I deserved a kipper after the events of yesterday. I sorted
out the edible bits from the bones, worked my way through the newspaper, got
ready for work, cursed when I remembered that my car was a wreck, got the bus
in to the City, and made my way carefully to my desk. Carefully, because it
turns out that a couple of cracked ribs may not be life-threatening, but it
sure as hell hurts when you breath, when you walk, when you laugh, when you do
anything except sit very still with your arms resting on something solid.

Felicity was bright and cheerful this morning. I think it's a compulsory
attribute of marketroids, that even when the sky is grey, your car is a
write-off and your ribs aren't what they ought to be, that you smile through
the pain and pretend that everything is tickety-boo. So I did. Hell, it's no
harder to smile than to frown, plus people like the look. "What's up with you,
Grouchy?" she asked. So much for the brave smile. "Oh, I just busted a couple
of ribs, wrecked my car and I think I have a kipper bone stick between my
teeth." "Wow. Wild weekend, huh?" "Yeah. Still, I got laid. How about you?"
She made a face. "No luck. I hung out at the Snails and Spice on Saturday,
but, George, do you think I'd have more luck if I went blonde?" I looked at
her. "Fliss, maybe if you ditched those god-awful Goth clothes, stopped
wearing black lipstick, and took that idiotic nappy-pin out of your ear,
ordinary decent lads wouldn't take one look at you and wonder where to get a
bottle of holy water." She looked down at herself. "What's wrong with black?"
"Well, it's. It's. Fliss, tell you what, pick a day when you're free, dress
like an ordinary human being, meaning not all in black, and I'll take you to a
nightclub, and you can dance round your handbag." She raised one eyebrow, a
trick that I'd been trying to imitate by practising with a mirror, to no avail
so far. "Thursday." "Done."

And thus it was that on Thursday evening, I caught the bus home, changed into
something relatively seemly, and got a taxi round to Fliss's place. I rang the
bell, she let me in, and I got my first sight of her. The good news was, she
wasn't dressed all in black. The bad news was, she was dressed all in white,
and with the scarlet lipstick, carmine fingernails and heavily cascara'ed
eyes, she looked like the Bride of Dracula.

"Uh, Fliss?" "Yes?" "Uh. You look. Uh. Great." "Thank you, she said, "let's
go, I'm going to knock them dead." Yes, probably. I just worried about what
she had planned for the corpses.

In her car on the way to the nightclub, she asked me again about what I'd been
up to to get my ribs busted. I'd been a bit evasive about this; I told her I'd
buggered up my car, and that in doing do, I'd buggered up my ribs, but I
couldn't think of any way to tell anyone about meeting The Weapon without
sounding like a mouthy bastard. It was like saying, "I was in the supermarket
for a loaf of bread, and stone me, there was Princess Mary at the checkout, so
we talked about the price of apples, and we went back to her place and
she fucked my brains out ..." No. That's followed by "I don't believe you" and
either you look a complete prat by insisting it's true, or else you back down
and say "Only kidding." So it wasn't that I was keeping it secret, it's just
that there's some things a guy doesn't talk about.

I was, however, perfectly serious about her dancing round her handbag.

See, it's like this. When you have a couple of busted ribs, walking is
painful, standing up and moving your arms about a little is just about
possible, but dancing? Forget it. So I sat by the bar, watching the ice in my
drink melt. OK, she wasn't actually dancing round her handbag; she started off
that way, but after a pretty short time, some bloke with no dress sense at all
came along and asked her to dance. I could tell they were dancing together,
because although they were several yards apart, they were actually glancing at
each other from time to time. And then they were only a couple of yards apart.
And then you couldn't put a fag paper between them, they were that close. And
then she came over to the bar and explained that she was going on to a party
together with Keith, and did I mind awfully terribly, and no of course I
didn't, you go ahead and have a great time Fliss and you can tell me about it
if you get lucky, and it was at that point that I realised, Oh fuck, it's her
car, how am I getting home? Because by then it was one in the morning, and all
the cabs had faded away like the dew on the roses in the morning. And the
tubes don't run after midnight, and we all know what happens to buses in
London after midnight, they all turn into pumpkins. Or something.

So I set out to walk the nine miles back to my home, which normally would be
no great problem, and I'd probably get back at 4 am, in time for a nice
restful two hour's sleep before the morning wake-up. Except that you do *not*
walk fast with a couple of broken ribs. Like I said, no big deal, not life
threatening, but bugger me they FUCKING HURT. And at my current rate of
stagger, I was looking at getting home after the milkman delivered, which
would leave me just enough time to shave, splash my face, put on some sad rags
and get to work a couple of hours late. Yuck. George, how the hell do you get
yourself into these pickles?

And then I had a class A idea. Phone Wendy! She had said that if I was ever in
trouble, and although this probably wasn't in the same class as 400 square
miles of forest fire, it was surely upscale of getting kittens out of trees?
Yes!

Oh. Wait. The airhead commonly known as George had left Duncan's phone number
at home, and I didn't remember it. I tried directory enquiries, but do you
know how many people there are called D Macrae? And I didn't know the address,
because I was substantially out of it when we'd arrived there, and flying out
through a bedroom window isn't a good way to see street names.

Still, I have a pretty good memory, except for anything actually important,
and I did remember one thing. She hadn't said "phone me", she'd said "call
me". For ordinary people "call me" can only mean "phone me", but, you know,
she was not what you'd call ordinary. And I knew that she didn't actually
sleep. And I wondered if ... maybe ... well, you know, sometimes you wonder
about things, and sometimes you just count the teeth in the goddam horse's
mouth.

And that is how come I was standing next to the Peter Pan statue in Kensington
Gardens, hollering "Wendy" up at the sky, as loud as I could.

This isn't actually illegal.

But neither is it approved decorous behaviour such as is expected from a sober
and upright citizen at one in the morning.

It isn't that it's likely to wake anyone up, being as how it's in the middle
of the park and by the time you get to inhabited parts, the roar of the
traffic down Kensington Gore would drown out the sound of a ten ton bomb going
off. And I wasn't drunk, so "drunk and disorderly" wasn't a possible charge
that could be brought against me. But the on-the-beat copper who was walking
towards me didn't look like he was about to add his voice in chorus with mine,
he looked more like someone who knew that something wicked was happening, but
hadn't quite worked out exactly what devilment I was up to.

And I feel sure that the proximity of the Peter Pan statue didn't help.

"Excuse me sir," he began, "are you calling your dog?". "It's alright," said a
voice behind me. "We had an escape from the Coney Hatch lunatic asylum, but I
have him restrained now, and I'll just take him back with me. Come on, you
..." I closed my eyes, leaned back, and said "Wendy, be careful the ribs." "If
you're sure miss?" "I'm sure," she said, reassuringly, "I can handle it now,
thank you officer." I, very wisely, kept my mouth shut and tried to look
insane but calm. The policeman nodded, and proceeded on his beat.

"George," said Wendy. "Er," I replied, informatively. She put her arms round
me, I turned towards her. "Thank god you came, Wendy." "What happened?" "I
went to a nightclub with Fliss" "Nightclub ..." "And I couldn't dance, because
of my ribs ..." "Dance ..." "And she got off with some guy and she had the car
so I couldn't get home." "Nightclub. Dance." said Wendy. I looked into her
eyes. "What?" "Nightclub," she said. "Dance," she said. "That sounds like
fun," she said, "and Duncan isn't about to take me to something like that."
Well, he isn't exactly a spring chicken, I thought, but I didn't say so out
loud, because I knew that Wendy loved him dearly. I looked at my watch, half
past one, and hey, who needs sleep? And I looked at Wendy, and said, "Wey hey,
they're still open, let's boogie!"

So, Wendy flew me back to the club, and I explained to the bouncer at the door
that I'd already paid once, so please let me in, and when that didn't work,
Wendy explained to the bouncer at the door that he had two choices, of which
the second involved him getting hurt, and would he take a good look at the
costume she was wearing before he made up his mind, and we were inside.

The sound level was, of course, deafening. You communicate by mouthing at each
other; if you can't lip read, don't go clubbing. I explained to Wendy that the
point was to move to the music, and the more vigorously and energetically you
could move, the more it demonstrated your suitability as a sexual partner. She
nodded, and we danced.

I say "we danced". Actually, I jiggled slightly, severely restrained by the
pain in my ribs. Wendy, of course, was under no such constraints. She was in
her full The Weapon outfit, her cape flaring out dramatically behind her as
she hovered twelve inches from the floor and demonstrated what was possible
when gravity wasn't an issue. And as she danced and spun, her short skirt
flared out around her, giving even less coverage than usual, while being a
major attention-getter, as all the guys gathered round to watch a superheroine
dancing to a fast pounding rhythm.

Her feet didn't touch the ground. You say that about Fred Astaire or Ginger
Rogers, and what you mean is that they dance very gracefully. In Wendy's case,
she danced very gracefully, and also her feet didn't touch the ground. At any
moment, I was expecting her to soar off to the ceiling, or start doing
aerobatics, but she didn't - just as the beauty of the sonnet is in the
restriction to the fourteen lines of iambic pentameters, so also is the beauty
of the dance in the restriction to the horizontal plane and the rhythm of the
beat. And she whirled, spun, leaped and dived, but all in the same way that a
human being would - only more so, and without touching the floor. Before long,
she was the only dancer, all the other people on the floor were gathered
round, laughing and clapping to the beat, audience to a spectacle they would
probably never see again as long as they lived.

Of course, it couldn't last for ever. Suddenly, she stopped. Looked round. Saw
that everyone was watching her. And she grabbed me and we rocketed out of the
dance hall, a blur of white and gold. She flew so fast, the ground was a blur,
and I swear we covered the nine miles to my home in under a minute. She flew
non-stop through an upstairs window that I hadn't realised was open, dropped
me onto my bed and then threw herself down next to me.

And she was crying.

Naturally I put my arms round here and said "There there", but I really
couldn't understand what had gotten into her. "Wendy, lovely Wendy, what's the
matter, why are you crying?" I dabbed at her face with a handkerchief, while
part of me wondered where the water was coming from, and how she made tears
work. But now wasn't the time to ask about that.

I'd seen her cry before, and I still wasn't used to it. Like Duncan told me,
it rips you apart to watch the most powerful female in the world sobbing her
heart out. Why is this? I don't know. Maybe it's the contrast. But I wanted to
make her smile again, so I did the only thing I could think of. I kissed her.
Then I kissed her again. By the third time, she was starting to kiss me back,
and I felt that I was getting somewhere. Within a few minutes, she was
snuffling rather than crying, and she'd calmed down enough for me to ask her
what the matter was. "Oh, George. All those people. Laughing at me. I looked
up, and they were all laughing at me, and I felt so totally humiliated, I'm
never going to try to dance again."

"Never gonna dance?"

She shook her head.

"Wendy, they weren't laughing at you." "No?" "No! They was watching you dance,
you were fantastic, you looked so graceful, so light, so great, they'd never
seen anything like it, and they were clapping, and they were happy, and they
were laughing." "So why were they laughing?" "Because people do laugh when
they're happy." "And they weren't laughing at me?" "No!"

"Oh."

"George, I've been a bit silly, haven't I?" I thought, wow, this is like
walking through a minefield, if I agree with that she'll start crying again.
"No, love, you haven't been silly. You just don't fully understand people,
which isn't surprising, since you've only been around for a couple of weeks."
"Hmmm."

"Wendy, now that you're here, do you have to rush back?" "No, no hurry." "So,
you want to spend the night here?" "Well, since I'm here ... but I'll have to
leave at dawn, I want to get Duncan out of bed and make his breakfast."
"Humph, the Goddess of the Kitchen." "What?" "Domestic bliss." "George, I
don't know what you're talking about, but how about I just ... " "Oh! Ow!"

She wrung me out limp and dripping, and as I dozed off, she murmured "If you
wake up and I'm not here, don't worry, I'll be back before dawn." "Where are
you going?" "There's some things I want to think about, George, and I'm going
to my Special Place where it's nice and clean and peaceful." "zzzz"

I didn't wake up until after she'd gotten back from the center of the sun. She
woke me at dawn, as promised, and kissed me goodbye. Just before she left, I
asked her "Wendy, I have an idea I'd like to talk over with you some time
soon." She looked at me, full in the face, and I wondered if there was any way
she could tell what I was thinking. Surely not? "Come round this evening, you
can tell Duncan at the same time. I'm making a liver and bacon risotto, you
can join us for dinner."

All that and she could cook, too.

. . .