Battleship (Movie Tie-in Edition) (3 page)

“Twenty-fifth,” Hopper corrected him.

Stone lowered the paper and stared at his brother incredulously. They were going to argue about
this
now? Was there anything the kid
wouldn’t
argue about? “Twenty-sixth,” said Stone.

“I’m twenty-five.”

God, give me strength
. Speaking very slowly, as if to
an idiot, Stone said, “You were born on March 11, 1980.”

“I know when I was born.”

“You’re just on a power trip,” the girl’s voice came from the bar. She was dripping with sarcasm. “The keeper of the food. Power trip. Would it
really
crush your little world to break the big rule and fire me up a burrito?”

Hopper was starting to lose focus on his brother, something that Stone was determined to avert, because there was no way that any involvement between Hopper and that particular girl could end in anything but disaster. “You are twenty-six years old,” Stone said with determination. “It’s March 11, 2006. So, 1980 to 2006. Twenty-six-year difference. Makes you twenty-six years old. I’m twenty-nine. You are twenty-six. That’s never changed. Impossible to change.”

The fact that Stone was right shouldn’t have deterred Hopper in the least. All that was required for him to become intransigent was for Stone to make an assertion, and Hopper would promptly dig in to a contrary position. He was perfectly capable of claiming that it was, in fact, 2005, just to keep the argument going.

In this instance, Hopper quickly said, “Okay.” Stone should have been pleased that his brother was willing to drop it. Instead he was concerned that the only reason Hopper conceded the point was because he wanted to go back to looking at the girl. Determined to make certain that Hopps didn’t do something stupid like follow the impulse, Stone raised his glass to keep the celebration on track.

“From John Wooden,” he said with great solemnity. “ ‘Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.’ ”

Hopper stared at him blankly. “What’s your point with that one?”

“My point is: happy birthday. I love you, and I’m wishing you growth and success. May this be a great year for you.”

They both downed the shots. It wasn’t the world’s greatest whiskey, or even the tenth greatest whiskey. But it still caused a pleasant heat as it went down, and Stone briefly allowed it to dull his brain and take some of the edge off his normally edgy personality. Then he saw that, once again, he might as well not have been there insofar as his brother was concerned. Hopper was watching the damned girl, who was still locked in battle with Akau. At least
she
was locked in battle. Akau was ignoring her, so it was more or less a one-way fight.

“Don’t you dare,” said Stone, knowing what was going through his brother’s mind.

“What?” Hopper gazed at him with that patented look of disingenuous innocence.

Stone pointed at the candle, indicating the flickering flame. “You actually need some wishes to come true. Some
real
wishes, big life wishes.”

“It’s my wish,” he said defensively.

“Don’t you waste it.”

Hopper was smiling at the girl. “My wish.”

“Do not waste your wish on a girl,” Stone warned him. “Not now. Especially not on a girl who is way, way above your pay grade. Wish for a job. A family, children. A job.”

“You already said a job.”

Stone wasn’t going to be distracted from the central theme of his premise. “Don’t waste it.”

Hopper blew out the candle, never once removing his gaze from the girl.

His brother sighed heavily. “You wasted your wish, didn’t you.”

“Let’s find out.”

Hopper slid off his seat … and nearly kept going,
heading to an inevitable date with the floor. As far as Stone was concerned, that would have been far preferable. Having Hopper sprawled unconscious on the floor was definitely a better outcome than the certain train wreck that was going to result from him hitting on the blonde.

Unfortunately Hopper managed to catch himself at the last moment and keep his feet. Very carefully, he stood up to his full height and began to half saunter, half stagger toward the bar.

Stop him. For God’s sake, stop him
. Stone began to rise from his seat and then, with a resigned sigh, sank back down. His brother was twenty-six (not, as rumored, twenty-five). Sooner or later, Stone had to stop working overtime to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps if Hopper got his nose good and bloodied, he might wind up listening to Stone instead of disregarding his counsel.

Besides, he was sitting in a run-down bar at just past midnight. One had to find entertainment where one could.

“Policy change,” said Akau in his same, flat, disinterested voice.

“Policy?
Really?
” The calmer the bartender got, the more agitated she became. “A policy is something that you have on immigration, education, invading a country.”

He was not remotely persuaded. “Policy change,” he repeated monotonously.

Hopper had a self-image of being smooth and charming. The reality would not remotely have matched up with what was in his head, had he been able to see it. Fortunately for the tattered remains of his self-esteem, he couldn’t. He slid in next to the blonde and said, in his best imitation of the guy from
Friends
, “How
you
doing?”

“Hungry. Starving.” She wasn’t addressing her comments
to him. Instead she was lobbing them like poison spears at the bartender. Akau continued not to react in the slightest.

“I’ve got a cupcake. It’s my birthday cupcake.”

She still wasn’t even deigning to look at him. Instead she closed her eyes in annoyance, as if wishing she could open them and find herself someplace else, where eats were plentiful and available in an inverse proportion to the availability of drunken idiots. “I don’t want a cupcake. I want food.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

With a sigh she finally turned and looked at him with those gorgeous blue eyes that a man could just get lost in. She didn’t seem to be losing herself in his, however. Instead she looked vaguely bored. “What’s your name?”

“Hopper,” he said eagerly.

With overstated, weary patience, she informed him, “I don’t want a drink, Hopper. I don’t want a cupcake. I want a chicken burrito. That’s
all
I want. A chicken burrito, and this jackass won’t give me one. You want to buy me a drink? Get me some food.”

It was obvious that she wasn’t expecting him to do anything of the kind. It was just the simplest and most expedient means of getting rid of him. That, however, did not deter Hopper. If anything, it only provided him with incentive. “Done. I give you my word. Two minutes. Will you give me two minutes?”

In spite of herself, she smiled ever so slightly. He was amusing to her. “You’re on the clock,” she warned.

Hopper quickly headed out, his total focus on his quest burning away some of the haze that had settled in his brain. As he passed Stone he said hurriedly, by way of explanation, “Girl’s hungry.”

His brother moaned when he heard that, shaking his head. “It’s like a factory fire. You know you’re witnessing a disaster, but you can’t look away.”

Hopper wasn’t listening. Instead his mind was racing and his body was hurrying to catch up.

The fortunate thing was that Hopper knew the area very well. He’d hung out around there enough that at this point he could be leaning against a lamppost, going nowhere and doing nothing. If the cops should happen to cruise past—instead of rousting him and telling him to move along—they’d wave, greet him by name and keep going.

Best of all, he knew that there was a convenience store less than thirty seconds away. He would be able to beat the two-minute deadline with time to spare.

He sprinted out the back of the hotel, across the block, toward the convenience store. But as he approached, he was dismayed to see the proprietor, an Asian woman of indeterminate age—somewhere between forty and a hundred and forty, as near as he could tell—was pulling a rattling gate across the door. There was a heavy padlock on it. Before she could reach for it, he ran up to her. The world was spinning around him as he tried to shake away the buzzing in his head. “Excuse me, ma’am …”

“Closed,” she said brusquely. She reached for the padlock.

“No, wait!” He gestured toward the padlock desperately, trying his best to sound charming … or at least as charming as he could considering he was fighting to remain conscious. “Don’t lock it. You’re not closed until you lock it.”

This seemed to him to be irrefutable logic. Unfortunately she managed to refute it through the simple means of snapping the padlock shut. “Closed.”

“Yeah, yeah, but this is important. I need a chicken burrito.”

“No chicken burrito.” The woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and yet she loomed like a colossus in the path of true happiness.

“Yes, chicken burrito. I see them right there.” He pointed toward the darkened window.

“Chicken burrito, 9 a.m.”

There seemed to be no arguing with her. Yet that didn’t deter him from doing so all the same. “That sign in there says chicken burrito, $2.99. I’ll give you …” He shoved his hands into his pockets and yanked out the first bill he found. It was a ten, all wadded up, and he smoothed it as best he could. “Ten dollars if you let me in.”

She maintained her indifferent attitude. “Closed. Go away.”

“Twenty.” He was pulling more money out of his pockets, trying to figure out how much he had on him. All the bills were crumpled. It was like carrying an assortment of spitballs in his pockets. He pulled them apart frantically.

The Asian woman started moving toward her car, an ancient Toyota with rust spots on the roof. Hopper paced her, counting the money he had on him, hoping that it would be enough.

“Fifty.
Fifty dollars
for a chicken burrito.” He waved the money in her face. “That’s my spending money for the
month
and I’m going to give it to you.” He tried desperately to drive home the importance of his offering, not even mentioning that—for crying out loud—it was nearly twenty times the cost of the damned burrito. She managed a store. Her whole thing was about making money. With this kind of offer in front of her, there was simply no way that she would walk away from it.

She walked away.

He ran around her, interposing himself between her and the car. This finally stopped her and she glared fiercely up at him.

“Ma’am. Ma’am, please.” He spoke rapidly, the subsequent words tumbling over each other, and he had to fight not to slur them. “If it was for me, I’d go away. But
it’s not. There’s this girl over there,” and he pointed in the general direction of the hotel. “She’s incredible.”
Establish human contact. The way that waiters do right before they bring the bill, in order to get a bigger tip. Touch her. But not in a threatening way; do it in a socially acceptable way
. He put a hand on her arm. “You don’t understand. She’s my future. And she’s hungry.” His voice was throbbing with emotion. “My future depends on a chicken burrito.”

Apparently he would have made a lousy waiter, because the woman lifted the small can of Mace dangling from her key chain and assumed a vicious karate stance. “Your future’s gonna be pepper spray.”

Immediately he removed his hand from her arm. Brushing him aside, she climbed into her car. He made no move to stop her because he had finally admitted to himself that this wasn’t going to get him anywhere. It was time for Plan B, and the first part of Plan B was having this obstructionist store manager get out of here as quickly as possible. In this action, at least, she accommodated him, because apparently she couldn’t wait to get away from him. The Toyota peeled out with a screeching of tires.

Time was ticking down for Hopper. He’d already wasted a minute pleading with the useless store manager. In his mind’s eye, he could see Stone sitting at the table, sipping another whiskey or maybe a beer, with that knowing smirk he always had during times when Hopper was embarking on some disastrous course of action. And then there was the girl, sitting at the bar, waiting for her future husband to get the job done.

All this and more went through Hopper’s mind even as he clambered up the side of the building. It wasn’t all that difficult. The windows may have had bars over them, but the bars themselves provided toeholds, and his natural athleticism—not to mention single-minded drive—enabled him to reach the flat roof in no time. It was unconscionably
thin. “How the hell does this thing even keep water out?” he said as he stomped on it. He looked around and, to his dismay, didn’t see any sort of roof access door. Hopper moaned softly. “Now what the hell am I—?”

The roof answered the question before he could finish articulating it, giving way beneath his feet. Hopper crashed through.

Fortunately enough, since he was still pretty drunk, he was also very loose-limbed and didn’t tense up. As a result, he didn’t hurt himself too much when he slammed to the floor. Mostly it just knocked the wind out of him. Pieces of acoustical tile and insulation fell all around him and he threw his arms over his head to shield himself from it. Once the rain of debris had stopped, Hopper staggered to his feet and moved toward the stack of chicken burritos sitting in a refrigerated compartment. They were individually wrapped in red and white paper. Hopper selected one at random, tossed it in the microwave, and pushed “Start.” As the burrito cooked, he moved over toward the register and dropped a few bucks next to it. He briefly considered leaving the fifty he’d originally offered but then decided against it. She’d passed on it. In fact, she’d threatened to pepper spray him.
Fine. Be that way, lady. You get the money for the burrito. Let your insurance company deal with the crappy ceiling. In fact, the whole roof was so shoddily made, I probably did you a favor. Take the insurance money and get a decent roof
.

The microwave dinged and he snatched the burrito out of it. He let out a yelp and tossed it from one hand to the other as he waited for it to become cool enough to handle. As he did so, he glanced around, looking for a means of exit. There was a stepladder propped against the far wall that she probably used for mundane things like changing lightbulbs. He set it under the hole in the roof and quickly clambered up and out. He felt heady with excitement and triumph.
I’m gonna make it
, he
thought deliriously, right before another section of the roof gave way. Seconds later he was back inside the store, lying atop a rack of condiments that had exploded all over him from the impact.