The Bodyguard ("Sugar" story #99)

SUGAR
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother is on the lamb. Or she will be soon. It’s why she’s trying to focus. Unfortunately, her mind keeps leaping. This morning’s newspaper had an article about a lingerie museum built atop a dormant Hawaiian volcano. Although her imagination has toyed with ideas, she can’t let herself consider what would be in the museum or who would climb a volcano to see such things. She must focus. She must decide what to bring along on her getaway. Jesus is already in the trunk of her car—bound head-to-toe in her Victoria’s Secret silk panties—squeezed in right between a not-quite-red hat and her ancient Ouji board. Although well over a decade old, the Ouija board remains pristine and untouched inside its original plastic wrapper. Despite this fact, she’s binging it just the same, because she knows, if she ever were going to use it, now would definitely be the time.

Speaking of which, she isn’t sure how much is left. Five minutes? The warning phone call was, at best, cryptic. But she knew it was true. Her cigar has friends at the police station. It made things easier. Not that this is easy. She’s never been on the lamb before so the stress of deciding what to take is making her teeth buzz. She can’t believe it’s come down to this. Those horrible detectives, she can always smell ketchup on their breath. Its stench follows them around like a cloud or a jealous lover. She certainly wouldn’t mind hearing they were trapped atop of a not-so-dormant volcano. Maybe her Eternal Redeemer should be up there as well for all His smugness of late? No. Despite the awful trouble He’s perpetrated recently, she decided (unlike Him) to be benevolent. It’s why she liberated Him from his tinfoil purgatory and cocooned Him instead in the gentler restraint of Victoria Secrecy. Her lips arc into a smile at how bedeviled He must be trying to inch Himself back from what His thoughts must not touch. After this, it’s certain she’ll be retroactively absolved of her few petty and fleeting transgressions. However, just to be on the safe side, she thinks it a reasonable idea (and probably in her Savior’s better interest) to let Him languish a bit longer. Obviously she doesn’t want Him suffering too much—still—she thinks it only appropriate that He be brought down a peg or two for acting like such a big shot all the time up on His crucifix. Plus, to be honest, she thinks she’d have to say Jesus isn’t her only candidate for a too-big-for-his-britches trophy. The Archbishop is also a front-runner. To not let her wedding be the way it had to be? What in Satan’s toenails was the man thinking? He should be damn glad he’s not shackled in Victorian splendor in her car trunk beside the Ouija board! Who could be so high-faluting almighty important that he couldn’t return even one of her twelve calls this afternoon regarding the need to reschedule his presence at her wedding to a tad bit earlier? Okay, yes, a whole two months earlier... Yes, tomorrow is already now to be the BIG DAY... Yes, it’s inconvenient... And, yes, it’s not at all what she wanted—but none of that is her fault. She didn’t create this brash new urgency. For it, the three detectives and their cloud of ketchup are entirely to blame. Those damn detectives! It had never been part of her plan to let them retain custody of her ring. So what if the ring played a role in some international crime? That had nothing to do with her. Who were they kidding? But she knew if she didn’t act fast, the mess would just escalate even further. And she wasn’t about to let some pencil-pushers and judicial red tape interfere with her perfect ceremony. Now it would just have to happen sooner than planned. Much sooner.

That’s why, tonight, at exactly five PM, she walked into the police station and informed its clerk she was fetching the ring for one of the young lawyers at her firm, who needed to re-examine it again for evidentuary purposes. Needless to say, she didn’t use her real name on the forest of paperwork they made her sign. Yet, quite miraculously, the ketchup detectives had somehow already (in two hours) divined her true identity. She’s pretty sure she knows who their damned snitch is, because only her parish priest knew her secret. No other soul had a clue. Not even her Hindu. Yes, with the many awkward and unusual turns her life has taken lately, she hadn’t wanted her beloved to get the wrong impression. In fact this morning when he asked about the abrupt swap in their ceremony’s date, she’d looped her arm through his, smiled over and tenderly kissed his cheek. That’s when she noticed his eyes had the same glint as those of the dead fish she’d just seen hanging on a spear in the newspaper photo of the lingerie museum. She didn’t like her Hindu’s eyes looking sad like that. So she told him how much she cared for him. She didn’t want him to worry himself unnecessarily. She knew most men are really little boys and, if you’re ever to give them the truth, it can only be in the tiniest of portions with lots of sugar on top.