The Bikini Break
II - Absurd Expectations
The twin-rotor helicopter touched down in the concealed hanger of the Nest Egg, the well camouflaged home base of the Two Scruffy Guys. After being easily recognized by Solomon Gorsky, Gadget felt the desire to be a bit incognito, and she felt any change from her lavender jumpsuit would be an effective disguise. She excused herself to the room they kept reserved for her and dressed in a crisp white cotton shirt and blue jeans. She laced on a pair of white sneakers as well, relenting to her friend’s protective insistence that she wear shoes while on their assignments. She looped her goggles over her hair as usual and went to find the her colleagues.
Gadget found Gary in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar, trying to make a fine adjustment to the smallest Geiger counter she had ever seen. From the utility room behind the kitchen, she could hear Gordon’s voice rising. He was in mortal combat with some inanimate object and was clearly losing the fight.
“Do you need a hand?” she called.
“No!” he answered sharply.
Gary beckoned to Gadget. “He had the blender jam up on him in the middle of making a fruit smoothie. He wanted it to be a surprise for you.”
Heated but inarticulate language issued from the utility room. “He’s done it. I’m surprised,” Gadget said.
They heard a tool clatter away and Gordon bellowed, “AAARRRRGHHH! Bloody dammit to...!”
“Watch your language!” Gadget snapped.
Gordon appeared at the door of the kitchen, his right knuckle stuck in his mouth. “Sorry, Gadget,” he huffed.
“Oh, golly!” she said, going quickly to his side. “Are you hurt? Can I get you something?”
“I just barked my knuckle on the blender blades. It’s okay. I’ll get a bandage.” He departed for his bedroom, his ears angrily flattened, his tail switching in frustration.
“Maybe I should finish that blender for him,” she said.
“Don’t,” Gary advised. “That’ll hurt his pride worse than his hand. Come have some cocoa. He’ll get that thing fixed in no time once he calms down.”
Gadget joined him at the breakfast bar as he popped a cinnamon stick in each of their cups. She took a careful sip and craned her neck to watch his progress on the Geiger counter. Gary glanced at Gadget and, his curiosity awakened, set a little trap for her.
“I’m not having much better luck than Gordo tonight,” he groused, appearing to struggle with the adjustment. “Oh, this dang...” He purposefully let the screwdriver squirt from his fingers. “Oh, borscht!”
“Watch your...” Too late she realized that he hadn’t said what she thought he said. Gary just smiled.
“Gotcha,” he said. “Why do you say ‘watch your language’ whenever someone swears?”
“I got it from my Dad,” she said, a bit embarrassed at being caught out. “We used to travel in some pretty rough company. He got upset whenever anyone used bad language within earshot of me. He’d bark ‘watch your language’ before they could even finish the word. One day someone said something bad and I said ‘watch your language.’ Everyone else looked surprised, but my Dad just grinned. I got in the habit after that.”
“From your reaction, I take it you don’t hear much coarse talk at home.”
“Chip and Dale are always very careful with their language,” she said with a touch of pride. “Even Monterey Jack is, and he knows a hat full of nasty words. One afternoon, he was trying to cook up something special and it must have gone terribly wrong. He didn’t know I was outside the kitchen window, and he just swore a streak.”
“Turned the air blue?”
“Golly, you’re not kidding! He shouted and roared and carried on...”
Gary leaned close to her. “...And you listened to every word.”
She almost denied it, then smiled wryly, realizing she was caught again. “Okay. I listened. He was so colorful and inventive. He cussed for almost fifteen minutes and never repeated himself.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Gary said setting aside the Geiger counter. “You’re all grown up now and you don’t need to be protected. And it’s not as if anyone’s talking over your head.”
“Gar-eee! Just because I know what the words mean... well, most of them... doesn’t mean I want to hear them tossed around.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But, I guess you’re right about being grown up. I don’t have any business telling you what you should say. Freedom of expression, and all.”
“Well, I think we can manage to do our jobs without language that peels the paint off the walls. You go right ahead and keep us honest.”
“Honest?” she said, looking a bit wounded. “You two haven’t been completely honest with me.”
“I haven’t lied to you, Gadget, and I won’t. If there’s something I’m not allowed to talk about, I’ll tell you so. How have I not been honest with you?”
“A girl hears things about guys,” she said, avoiding his eyes and stirring her cocoa. “‘Specially when she spends time with a different species.”
“What? What’d you hear?”
She looked shyly into her cup. “Something about why male squirrels wear pants.”
“Oh, not that stuff again!” Gary complained. “Of all the things to be listening to. There must a hundred obscene ‘squirrels and pants’ stories.”
“G.G. was telling me about it.”
“G.G.? Oh, just wonderful. She probably invented some brand new lurid slander just for you. Something guaranteed to make you blush. C’mon, what’d she tell you?”
“She wouldn’t tell me why, exactly.”
That puzzled Gary. “G.G. with an attack of conscience? Maybe the world is changing.”
Gadget kept looking down at her cup, watching Gary from the corner of her eye. She waited until he took a large swallow.
“She told me you’d demonstrate it for me.”
SSPHUUURRRRTTT! Gary made a handsome spray of his cocoa and fell to a fit of strangled coughing. Gadget fiercely suppressed the urge to bust out laughing, and forced an innocent expression back on her face. She was determined to play this moment for all it was worth.
But she forgot that two could play.
Gary finally cleared his windpipe, nose and ears. “Demonstrate? In the kitchen?” He sighed deeply. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.” He stood up, right next to Gadget, and began to unbuckle his pants.
She goggled in utter shock, her eyes locked on what his hands were busy with. “Gary! What’er you doing!? Wait a minute!!”
The belt parted and he began to unzip.
“Hold it! Stop! Gary, No, no, no, no!!!” She drew her knees up nearly alongside her head, huddling on the bar stool, and threw her hands over her eyes, eyes now so large her palms barely covered them. Cowered, cringing and self-blindfolded, she could only think, What if G.G. wasn’t kidding? What if it’s all true! Omigosh, what do I do?
Gary leaned very close to her ear and softly said, “Call or fold?”
“FOLD!!” Gadget hollered desperately. She heard a soft sound, very close, but didn’t dare look.
“Okay,” he said jauntily, “it’s safe. You can come out now.”
She gingerly uncovered her eyes and peeked. Gary was leaning against the counter across from her, properly attired and grinning wickedly.
“Ohhhh, that was a dirty trick,” she hissed. “What did you think you were doing undressing in front of me like that!?”
“You suggested it. And don’t blame me. G.G.’s the one who set you up, and you went for it whole hog. She’s the one who wanted you to stop being such a stick-in-the-mud.”
“Don’t blame her for you nearly... dropping your pants!”
“She knows me well enough to guess how I’d react. You know, you don’t have to sit there like a lump. If I’m pretending to unzip, why don’t you go to the ‘fridge and get out the mayonnaise?”
Gadget gasped at the implication. “I’m a good girl! I’ve always been a good girl! I would never do such a thing even as a joke!”
“You prefer raspberry jam?”
“STOP that! You have no business trying to tempt me into some kind of rude charade!”
“I’m not the one who implied there’s some vicious secret as to why squirrels wear pants!” He regarded her a moment. “Maybe G.G.’s right. You are too uptight. You could stand to loosen up.”
“I’m not like you,” she said defensively. “I’m not going to loosen my standards or my clothes!”
“This was a prank, Gadget,” Gary said sternly, “and you started it. You don’t have to behave like the existence of the opposite sex is a surprise to you!”
“Gary, you... don’t you... Ohhh, watch your language!”
Gadget stalked out of the kitchen and into the spacious front room. She glanced up at the high ceiling and took a handful of little cloth sandbags out of her pocket. Her hands spun up in swift, circular movement and in an instant she was juggling five of the bags.
“Pretty good,” Gordon observed as he came in from the communications room. “Don’t you use those little balls to juggle?”
“Not for practice,” she answered. She made a stab for her pocket, shifted her rhythm and added another sandbag to the pattern. “A sandbag won’t roll away when you drop it.”
“When? That’s not positive thinking.”
“It’s accepting the inevitable.” She got a seventh bag in the pattern for a second, then two fell as she caught the rest. “Oops. Darn it.”
She picked up the bags and began again just as Gary came from the kitchen. He caught her eye, shrugged broadly and said, “Sorry.”
Gadget tried to keep a stern expression but couldn’t manage to keep her contrite friend twisting in the wind. She allowed a little smile. “That’s okay. I guess I was asking for it.”
“Did I miss something good?” Gordon asked.
Gary sighed “A retelling of a very old story.”
Gadget mouthed a silent “Thank you” to Gary for sparing her any further embarrassment. She spun the juggling bags ever faster, then lost them at seven again.
“Let me help,” Gary scooped up a couple of the bags.
“I can do it,” Gadget replied testily.
“Let him pass them in,” Gordon said. “Gary’s also a juggler. He won’t mess up your timing.”
“Well, okay. Pass them in when I call.”
She got her pattern established and called “Hup!” for the next bag. And the next. Gary tossed the bags into the exact spot in the pattern to keep her on the rhythm. She made it to eight before one got a little too far out of reach to save.
“That’s really good,” Gary said, regarding the single sandbag remaining in his hand. “Just what are you trying for?”
“I have a bet with Chip,” she answered. “I bet him I could keep nine in the air at once. I’m sure I can do nine with a little practice.”
She began again, Gary tossing in the bags on cue. Her hands were nearly a blur as she got the eighth bag going for a few seconds before the whole pattern collapsed in a shower of colored fabric.
“Well,” Gordon said merrily, “I hope you didn’t bet too much. This has enormous potential if you slip up.”
“So does kissing a capacitor,” Gadget said, frustration beginning to show in her voice. “I’m not going to do that either.”
“Did you bet Chip a kiss?” Gordon asked slyly.
“Never mind what I bet!” she said angrily.
Again she tried. Again the pattern fell apart.
“Maybe you should try it in German,” Gordon suggested. “Go through the motions empty-handed and juggle nein balls.”
“That’s cheating,” she snarled. “I don’t cheat.”
“Wait a second,” Gary said, concerned. “What did you bet?”
“None of your business!”
“I don’t mean the wager. What was the bet, exactly?”
She set aside the sandbags. “I bet him I could keep nine in the air. I just have to get the pattern right.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” she snapped.
“Gadget, Michael Moshen couldn’t do it,” Gary said. “I can see that you could juggle nine, but nine in the air means juggling ten or even eleven. At least one is always in your hand.”
She thought about that a moment, her mind tracing the paths and trajectories against the eternal pull of gravity. Her expression left mere anger behind and twisted into outright rage.
“That conniving chipmunk!” she shouted. “That low-life, double-dealing, back-stabing, acorn-hoarding chiseler! That vile, distasteful, uncivilized, unspeakable, skunk-striped nut cruncher!”
“Weren’t we just discussing watching your language?” Gary asked.
“I begin to see why people think she’s a redhead,” Gordon quipped.
“He cheated me!” Gadget went on, ignoring the comments. “He skizzled me! He led me down the primrose path...!”
“He bet you a big, wet, sloppy kiss,” Gordon said helpfully.
“You stay out of this!” Gadget roared. “I know what I bet him and he’s not gonna get away with this! I’ll hit him with a double or nothing that’ll take the starch right outta his fedora! I’ll invent a whole new category of payback just for him! I’ll... I’ll... Ooooooooh!!”
Gadget stopped shouting but stood tense and seething, her breath hissing like a very small and pretty locomotive. Gordon stepped silently up behind her and scooped his hands under her arms, lifting her up, then gave her a very gentle shake. Gadget flailed her arms and legs in every direction.
“What do you think you’re doing! Put me down!!”
“Ahhhh,” Gordon said with satisfaction. “I thought there was more outrage in there! Just making sure.” He placed her back on her feet and she turned on him in a flash, jabbing him in the chest with her finger.
“I have every right to be angry! I’ve just been played for a sucker by one of my best friends! Don’t you make light of it! Don’t patronize me! And don’t try to make me laugh!!”
Gordon stepped backwards under the assault, but couldn’t keep a smile off his face. Gadget was one of those creatures who really was lovely when she was angry. She abruptly pivoted and squared off on Gary.
“And you, Mister dark eyes! Standing there with that big smirk on your face! Are you going to defend that sneaking, traitorous excuse for a rodent!?”
“Nope,” Gary responded. “I think you’re absolutely right. You might keep in mind Chip probably got the idea for this from television. That alone should be good for a half-dozen lumps.”
“Are you saying you’re happy I’m mad!?”
“I’m happy to see you can get mad. Corking up negative emotions is the worst thing you can do to yourself. At least you don’t throw and break things.”
“What sense would that make!” Gadget hollered. “I’d be the one who has to fix ‘em!”
“Exactly,” Gary assured. “You can express your anger without becoming destructive. You know better than I do how prone to stress-related disease mice are. Keeping emotionally fit reduces your susceptibility.”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Are you just trying to sweet talk me?”
“Of course not” Gary said. “If I were going to sweet talk you, I’d get real close to you,” and he did. “And I’d speak in soft, intimate tones,” and he did. “And I’d take hold of your warm, soft hands,” and he did. “And I’d look deeply into your big, beautiful blue eyes,” and he did. “And I’d tell you how the sun catches in your hair and it turns the sunlight golden. And I’d tell you how your voice makes the nightingale fall silent and listen. And I’d tell you how your smile brings peace and comfort to anyone favored enough to see it. And I’d tell you that you possess the grace and beauty and sweetness that would make Greek goddesses fight each other for second place. Gadget, I’d break open the sky and dump the stars in your cereal bowl if that would make you happy.”
“You’d say all that?” Gadget asked, bedazzled to breathlessness.
“If I were going to sweet talk you I would. And you know what?”
“What?” she whispered, starry eyed.
“I just did.”
“Golly. You did.”
“Watch out, Gadget,” Gordon said softly. “You’ll wake up with a ring on your finger.”
“Gordon!” Gary barked.
“Hmmmm?” she said, as if just noticing him. “What’d you say?”
“Me?” Gordon said with mock innocence. “I didn’t say a thing.”
Gadget took a step back from Gary and blinked as if waking up from a nap. She couldn’t figure out how she could be so angry with him one minute and so happy to be close to him the next. She made up her mind to give it some thought later.
“Don’t give up on that bet just yet,” Gary said. “I have an idea that might give you a way out. We can work on it while were on this assignment.”
“We should all turn in,” Gordon suggested. “We have to load our equipment in the morning and it’s a long flight to the mid-Pacific.”
“Gadget,” Gary queried, “Are you going to forgive Chip? He’s still your friend.”
“I might,” she said, her expression growing sinister at the thought of being cheated. “Then again, I know how to get even, too. Maybe I should.”
* * *
Act 3