The Numbers Game (27 page)

            “If you
look down,” the pointy woman said and many of the Japanese tourists did look and
nearly fainted,” you will note that the valley is a 3200 foot drop below. To
your left Vernal and Nevada Falls are clearly visible, along the course of
Little Yosemite Valley.” (Though clearly there was nothing little about it.)
“And just opposite are Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls which cascade 2400 feet
down the sheer cliffs. If you look a bit closer, you can actually see far
beneath cars and even people, moving slowly along.”

Oh
so that’s what all those ant-like looking things were.

Serena
leant forward and stuck her head out past the railing, letting the wind play
pick-me-up games with her hair. So this was why Jasper became an artist, she
thought to herself. The sight before her made her want to rush out and buy her
own canvas and large selection of oil paints. She wasn’t sure how well she
could capture the depth and contour of the valley but she would sure as hell like
to try.

            “Do you
like it?” Jasper asked her, circling his strong arms around Serena’s waist.
“Was it worth the three hour round trip in the car?”

            “Yes it
certainly was,” Serena smiled.

            For only
now did she know and recognize beauty in all forms.

From the way their
trip at Yosemite started – as an array of beauty, sweat, wonder and bliss – not
even the tabloids could’ve predicted the ending that was to come. Serena sure
as hell didn’t see it coming.

            Their
Saturday continued just as one would expect from a pair of young lovers – a
delicious dinner at a nice restaurant (far, far away from the all you can eat
buffet because NOTHING in this world came for free). Serena feasted on
delicious, exotic fruit like paw paw and melons which melted like syrup in her
mouth, while Jasper took the traditional fettuccine boscaiola. Serena didn’t even
mind; she actually enjoyed the whiff of fatty bacon and mushrooms while
munching on rations because it reminded her of how much control she had.

Afterwards
they retreated back to their cabin for some energy-burning and because Serena
was so keen to burn off some more calories after the horrendous binge she had
endured the night before Serena suggested going for a quick bike ride too.

“Come on,
we’re leaving tomorrow so who knows when we’ll get another chance.”

So Serena
and Jasper wandered over to Yosemite Falls Rent-A-Bike section and immediately
hired out two red bikes for an hour, despite the coming nightfall. It had been
years since Serena had rode a bike but she managed well, avoiding pedestrians
on the tracks as successfully as when driving bumper cars. In her bike’s basket
she also wisely placed a bottle of pre-corked white wine just in case she got
thirsty and on the rare occasions Serena got tired, she would simply stop
mid-track, lean the cycle against a fat tree and take a long slug of wine. That
seemed to do the trick.

            By the
time they made it back to base, Serena and Jasper were ready to collapse. But
as fate would have it, they bumped into some Yosemite happy-happy-joy-joy
employee who encouraged them to visit the Nature Centre.

            “If you’re
leaving tonight, you have it see it now,” the man insisted, adjusting his
bifocals. “Come with me, I’m going that way.”

            “Okay,”
the two shrugged, because when one is on a holiday they are up for anything.

            Serena
held this same man fully responsible for what followed next.

            Inside the
Nature Centre, there were plenty of informative exhibits on displays. Some, the
ones Serena focused on, were coincidentally to do with how different animals
such as bears identified their “turf” and how it was not wise to follow the
trail of a fresh pile of “dung” as it meant that the bear was very near. Serena
wasn’t sure what sort of lunatic would go and follow sloppy poo so she left
Jasper to his own devices and visited the attached gift shop.

            She hadn’t
as yet bought any souvenirs seeing as she wasn’t a souvenir sort of girl but
she did ask the salesgirl where she could get some lip-gloss because her lips
were completely dried out from the dehydrating wind. It hurt just to rub her
parched lips together and if they didn’t get a generous dose of moisture soon,
she’d have no choice but to pull the hard bits off and start growing new lips
all over again.

            “The
convenience store isn’t too far and it doesn’t close for another half hour,”
the sales girl informed her and upon getting directions, she went that way,
purchased a fresh pot of strawberry gloss and then waited outside the Nature
Centre for Jasper to get over his fascination. By the time he finally got out,
it was late and her brand new pot of lip gloss was almost empty.

            “I cannot
wait to get into bed tonight,” Serena sighed on the walk back to the cabin.

            They’d
dropped the bikes off and she’d stopped at the car to pull out the latest issue
of Cosmopolitan…the only thing that bothered her was that she’d left her new
gloss pot on the dashboard but that given her lips were swimming in shine maybe
they would be okay until tomorrow.

            If only
she knew what was coming…

            They warn
you a lot about the bears here at Yosemite. When you arrive at the park you
receive a flyer and when you stay the night the advice they give you is even
more thorough. There were even signs in the accommodation to get through to
those more thick-headed. Of course Serena had ignored most of this advice when
she discovered on day one that black bears didn’t walk about in the car park
like she expected them to. Sure, she refrained from going on walkabouts late at
night: the distant unfamiliar sounds coming from the mountains were definitely
of wild foxes, coyotes and bears going to an Animal Discothèque. But distant
was the key word here, to Serena her immediate surroundings were safe, the
chances of something going wrong impossible.

            That is,
those were her thoughts until she heard Jasper’s screams on Sunday morning.

            “Oh feck.
Oh feck feck feck.” These were the shrieks Serena awoke to, of someone who had
surely encountered a few problems on the way to buying the newspaper.

            She jumped
up, and raced outside, without even thinking to fling something over her flimsy
nightdress. Jasper’s cries had struck that indefinable chord within that made
her focus laser-sharp. Find out what’s wrong with Jasper; find out what’s wrong
with Jasper: like a mother tuned to her baby’s tears, a hundred of the worst
possibilities rushed through Serena’s mind. He’s been hit by a car, some madman
has shot him, or maybe the happy-happy-joy-joy employee was trying to drag him
away on a deadly-boring hike. After running through all the nastiest scenarios,
Serena was surprised to find Jasper outside in one piece.

            But his
car was in a thousand.

            “What in
the world happened?” Serena squealed, once she made it to the car. Or what used
to be the car. The windscreen was completely smashed and the passenger door
looked as if someone with big claws had been trying to tear it off.

            “Someone
with big claws was trying to tear off your door Serena. Do you have any reason
why?”

            Jasper
looked at her with disappointed questioning eyes.

            “No,”
Serena replied, shocked that he could even ask such a question. What made
Jasper think she was in some way responsible for this mess?

            “Well
young lady,” a ranger said, stepping forward. He was holding a spiral notebook
and pen with tricolors in his hand. “As you may or may not be aware there have
been sixty seven cars wrecked so far this year at Yosemite and all were due to
people not listening to the advice given to them.”

            “Advice?
What are you talking about?” Serena said. As far as she could tell, she’d done
nothing wrong. She had used all the special lockers in the park to store her
luggage, however inconvenient. She kept the car and cabin as food-free as
possible.

            “Macie
over at the Nature Centre said you bought some lip gloss yesterday. Is that
true?”

            “Yes…”
Serena replied slowly. Not that anyone could really tell, her lips still
resembled snowflakes.

            “Would you
mind telling me where that tube of lip gloss is now, young lady?”

            “Look it
wasn’t a tube,” Serena bit back. She was getting quickly pissed off at this
young lady routine seeing as she was almost thirty. And what was the story with
Macie dibbing behind her back?

            Serena
went into the cabin and returned outside with no replacement gloss but Jasper’s
black knitted sweater covering her hopelessly shrugged shoulders. “I’m sorry; I
don’t know where it is. I must have left it in the car or something.”

            “Aha!” The
ranger bellowed, rapping the notebook across his palm. “Just what I thought;
once again carelessness has lured a black bear into an incident. What were you
thinking, young lady?”

            “Hang on,”
Serena said, interrupting the ranger’s chuckling, “Lip gloss? You’re trying to
tell me that a bear broke into Jasper’s car because it smelt lip gloss?”

            Um…that
was strawberry lip-gloss to be more specific but Serena didn’t want to go into
specifics now.

            “Listen
dear,” the ranger sighed,” if you took the time to read our guide you would
have learnt that bears are attracted to anything sweet smelling. This includes
sunscreen, cosmetics and lip gloss.” He stressed the last word.

     It was all sounding
vaguely familiar.

            “Oh.”
Serena bowed her head. She was in deep trouble.

            “What do
we do now?” she asked, looking at the car wreck. There was no way they could
possibly drive all the way home in that hunk-of-junk. Jasper was going to kill
her.

            “For now
young lady you’ve caused enough trouble. Just go back inside and keep yourself
warm while me and your boy sort through the details.”

            After
firing his order, the ranger turned to Jasper.

            “There’s a
local repair shop that takes care of messes like this and home-delivers it for
a nice fee. Plus they can organize a replacement car for you on the spot;
nothing to worry your pretty girlfriend’s head about.”

            Pretty
empty head, Serena mumbled to herself. Without waiting for Jasper, she went
back inside, slid herself under the covers and curled up into a ball. Why, oh
why did these things happen only ever to her, she asked God and upon getting no
response, she politely requested that the world at least obediently swallow her
up.

Chapter
18

There is always calm
before a storm.

            Markie
remembered reading this once in a prominent business magazine and at the time
took it to mean that some things are never what they seem. When things seem
smooth, they may really be rougher and such was the life of a tycoon. Oh and
anyone privileged enough to work with Lola.

            Or make
that ABOVE Lola. Since the “fiasco” with his secretary, she (remember, a woman
with no real people skills) had competently mastered the art of being
honey-sweet to everyone except Markie and Rick. If Markie didn’t know better he
would say Lola hated him, except of course he did know better. It was more like
abhorrence.

            “What’s
the deal with the staff?” Rick asked after the fourth day in a row of silent
treatment. You see, it wasn’t only a matter of Lola acting weird; the rest of
the crew had also begun to catch her disease.

            It had
come to the point where Rick and Markie felt like wrestlers walking into the
arena and suddenly discovering, thanks to the booing, that they were now the
baddies. And if it happened to the beloved Hulk Hogan once upon a time who’s to
say they were immune?

            “No idea,”
Markie shrugged. He was playing the part of a nonchalant MD so well, not even
Rick could pick out his reservations. But he had them anyway. Lola was
definitely up to something. She wasn’t the sort of girl who liked to take
things standing up (or lying down either for that matter).

            “Something’s
not right. For starters everyone looks at me as if I just had sex with their
cat and no one laughs at my Knock Knock jokes anymore,” Rick frowned.

            “That’s
because they’re not funny.”

            “So?
Whether they’re funny or not is beside the point. People used to laugh at them,
people used to treat me like I was a human being. Is a bit of courtesy and
respect too much to ask for? ”

            “Don’t
think so,” Markie replied, thinking secretly to himself:
well at least
people talk to you.
The staff had been ignoring him, turning their heads in
the hallways to conceal what: their pity? Their smirks? What silly crap had
Lola being planting in their heads lately?”