In the Unlikely Event... (29 page)

“I have a feeling we’re going to need it,” Gitana said, giving Chase a quick peck on the cheek.

There was a collective “Aw…” from the audience.

“See, I told you lesbians are suckers for animals and good love affairs,” Bud said.

The dogs followed Gitana to the Land Rover. Annie jumped in the backseat, but not before Jane pulled the rope belt of Annie’s frock and it came off. Jane panted. It looked like she was smirking.

“Damn it, Jane,” Gitana said, dressing Annie again and shutting the rear door.

The audience chuckled.

Chase gripped Bud’s arm. “You made them laugh.”

“Vaudeville gets them every time,” Bud replied.

In the car as they headed down the road, Gitana laid out the rules. “I don’t want excessive barking or butt sniffing, beyond what is polite.” Gitana turned to Annie while she stopped at the stop sign. “That applies to human crotches as well—no TSA cavity sniffing, I mean it.” She pointed at Annie who was looking out the window. “And Jane, you are strictly forbidden to bite any dogs, period. I don’t care if you’re provoked.”

Chase laughed. Jane was notorious for doing a play bow to lure in an unsuspecting dog and making a surgical strike when they came within range. She usually went for an ear or a front leg—she had been known to get a chunk of ass.

Jane smirked at the camera. The audience laughed.

“She’s such a ham,” Addison said.

When they got to the church, Gitana started in again. “I want you to remember this
is
a church.”

Jane panted and Annie did not make eye contact. They got out of the Land Rover.

“Okay, now you are on your best behavior, remember,” Gitana said, as the dogs pulled at their leashes.

There was complete pandemonium at the church door. A monk directed traffic.

“Dogs over here.” He pointed to the right door. “And cats over here,” he said, pointing to the left door.

The camera panned to a parrot sitting atop a short man dressed in all green with an orange beanie, a girl clutching an enormous iguana to her chest like a baby doll, and a boy holding the leash of an armadillo.

“Where did that kid get an armadillo?” Donna said. She appeared truly impressed, as if the child had better procurement skills than her own.

“A rescue case from Oklahoma. The rest of its family was plowed over on Highway 62 outside of Muskogee,” Bud said.

Annie and Jane sniffed the armadillo, which seemed snooty, paying them no mind. Jane went to bite the armadillo’s armored tail, but Gitana yanked the leash just before Jane was about to bite down.

The monk saw the exchange. “All right, now those of you with unusual pets come forward, and we will bless them first as a safety precaution.” He waved them forward.

The next scene showed Annie and Jane sitting in a pew next to Gitana. They appeared to attentively watch the service. The priest held up an enormous black-and-white, floppy-eared rabbit.

Gitana glared at the dogs. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned them. Jane licked her lips.

“It’s a church for God’s sake,” Gitana said. They paid her no mind.

The priest was blessing the rabbit when a Boston terrier got loose and walked up to the priest. The dog sniffed the priest’s robe and clamped onto the priest’s leg in a death grip of copulation. The priest tried to ignore him, shaking his leg in an attempt to dislodge the dog, but the dog was giving it his all. He kept looking side to side as if to say, “Hey, hey look at me, I’m humping the big guy.”

The audience roared with laughter. Chase looked at Bud. “They like it.”

“I knew they would. Everyone, including an angry lesbian, is a sucker for animal antics. It gets better.”

Addison passed Donna and Isabel a packet of Kleenex because they were laughing so hard tears were running down their faces. “Oh, my God, Bud,” Isabel gasped.

What happened next was really the cat’s fault. During the blessing, the cat shrieked and madly clawed out at the priest. In terror, the priest dropped the cat, who went scampering down the aisle to be followed by a slew of dogs chasing it. Annie and Jane took advantage of the chaos. They made their way up front. Gitana tried to grab their leashes but lost hold in the tide of animals and people trying to gain control of their pets. In a sea of fur, two brown frocks made their way to the altar. The first thing Jane did when they got there was bite the Boston terrier in the ass as it had resumed humping the priest. The long-eared rabbit came into view.

Gitana gasped, “Oh, my God, no, not the bunny—this is going to be like Thomas à Becket. Don’t they realize this is a church?”

The frocked girls went to the cage, and Annie tripped the latch with her nose. Jane poked her head into the rabbit cage. No one noticed, not even the owner of the rabbit. Jane picked the bunny up by the scruff of its neck and the creature benignly agreed as if Jane were a fireman carrying it to safety. Then the bunny did the queerest thing—it climbed on top of Jane’s back and balanced herself—it would later be revealed that it was a she-bunny. Jane looked at Annie as if to confer, and they began to move toward the door.

Gitana looked into the camera lens and screamed, “We’ve got to stop this!” Her face loomed large in the camera lens. “Don’t they realize this is a church?”

“You said that before. I don’t think they care,” Bud said. “That’s the beauty of animals, they have a certain amorality when it comes to the instinctual.”

The camera lurched, and it became apparent that Bud had been yanked off the pew and forceably moved down the aisle against the crowd as the pets and their people were resuming their seats.

“We’ve got to save the bunny,” Gitana said.

They rushed outside the church, but Annie, Jane and the bunny were nowhere in sight.

“Oh my, God, they’ve gone and done it. They’re murderers,” Gitana said, wringing her hands.

“There is no evidence of that,” Bud said. She panned the church garden.

“There they are,” Bud said, pointing to the corner of the garden dedicated to Saint Francis of Assissi. Annie and Jane lay on the grass, their frocks spread out, intently watching the rabbit eat grass. It looked benignly pastoral.

Gitana went to lunge, Bud put up a restraining arm. “Don’t startle them.”

“But the rabbit is still alive,” Gitana said.

“And if you go at them like that it might not continue to be,” Bud said.

Gitana considered this.

There was such a thing as a “considering face,” Chase thought as the camera captured it. She glanced around at her companions. Everyone was rapt, waiting to see how the drama would play out, to see whether what they thought would happen happened or if the miraculous would occur.

Chase realized she was a doubter when she whispered to Bud, “Is this going to get gory?” The dogs chased rabbits, but they’d never caught one so Chase didn’t know for certain what they would do if they ever did.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Bud replied.

Chase went to chew a cuticle. Bud slapped her hand.

Jane sniffed the bunny. They touched noses, and Jane licked the bunny’s face. Annie did the same and then the three of them sat in companionable silence.

“What the hell?” Chase said.

Donna shushed her. The auditorium was silent. Everyone held their breath.

The whole thing was downright bizarre, Chase thought. She waited for the ugly denouement that seemed certain, but then it didn’t happen. The rabbit hopped over and sat between the dogs and all three ate grass. Gitana, Bud and the camera stopped. The film no longer joggled. Everything in time stopped—a window where a still frame replaced the whirl of activity. Jane must have heard Gitana and Bud. She turned her head slowly and observed. She licked her lips and appeared to study them. Then, instead of mauling the rabbit, she licked it as if to say to the humans, “Do you see? I know you assumed the worst and it didn’t happen—there is love here, not hate.”

The man whose rabbit it was stood next to Gitana and Bud watching the dogs and the rabbit. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he said. He noticed his slip. “Pardon me.”

Gitana smiled at him.

“And when the lion lays down with the lamb,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

That was the end of the film. The auditorium erupted in applause.

Chase hugged Bud while the rest of them clapped. “That was fucking great,” Chase said.

“Wait until you see the next one.”

Donna stared down at the crowd. “Wow. Do you think they got it?”

“Got what?” Chase said, sitting down with relief that the dogs didn’t eat the rabbit.

“That the lesbian nation needs to get out of faction-land and just be together as a community—not all this us-them dichotomy,” Donna said.

“That’s deep,” Chase said, “but I wouldn’t count on a miraculous solution to Lacey’s problem of overseeing a war zone of hegemonies.”

Bud nodded.

“Do you think all the time that Annie and Jane chased rabbits that they were just curious and wanted to know a rabbit?” Addison said. “Maybe there is such a thing as
Wind in the Willows.
”

“I don’t know,” Chase said.

The audience sat back down, and Bud started the next film. “This one is going to warm them up for Dr. Robicheck.”

“What is it about?” Chase said.

Donna looked away. “I am only doing this for the sake of community, and I hope you will all understand that I did my best in a disasterous situation.”

“What?” Chase said.

“Just watch,” Bud said.

The film began with red flashing lights—Bud had worn her Contour HD 1080P helmet camera and set her Panasonic Digital camera in the back window of Donna’s car. In this way she’d been able to catch most of the angles and all of the sound when she combined both videos during the editing process.

“Officer, what exactly have we done?” Gitana asked.

“I was going the speed limit, my tags are current, the taillights are operable and I didn’t have an obstructed windshield,” Donna blurted.

“Ma’am, I need your license and registration. Hand them over slowly and keep your hands in plain sight. Do you understand?” He pulled his trousers up about his hips and wiggled from side to side.

Bud whispered to Gitana, “Chase would have had a heyday with that gesture except that she’s incarcerated as a political prisoner and at this rate the rest of the family might end up in the pokey.”

“No talking,” the officer said, glaring at Gitana and then Bud. He seemed to notice the helmet but went back to studying Donna’s paperwork, which had become crumpled and sweaty from Donna holding it too tightly. “I’m going to run this,” he said, backing away slowly. “No one move.” He eyed them warily. He went to the cruiser door and ran Donna’s information on his computer.

“I have a clean record,” Donna blathered.

“I need you to open the trunk,” he said as he checked out the rest of the car.

“Can I get down from here? It’s getting really hot,” Bud said. She’d used the Contour 1080 to show her hand on the roof and the heat rising from it so the viewers would get a sense of her location as well as her predicament.

The police officer squinted at her as if assessing the threat. “Do it slowly and keep your hands where I can see them, and what is that thing on your head?”

“It’s a bike helmet.”

“She’s fucking six and not overly large for her age. What do you think she is, a miniature Bugsy Malone?” Gitana said.

“Ma’am,” the police officer said in a warning tone.

Bud made the slashing-her-throat motion at her mother, who ignored her. The TM900 caught this gesture on video.

“No, really, what have we done?” Gitana said, her face getting red. “Surely, we are entitled to know.”

“Officer, pay her no mind. She is going through the change of life and you know what that can do to a person,” Donna said.

“Change of life? What the hell does that mean?” he said as he looked under the car.

Bud felt the need to be helpful. She looked under the car with him. He stared at her. “What are you doing?”