It takes my hand a while to click into action to take whatever it is he’s holding.
“It’s a treasure map”, he says, answering my question for him. “You look like you’re looking for treasure.”
I nod. “Treasure”, I say, and even that ridiculously short and largely nonsensical response I’m proud of.
“It’s impossible to find the treasure if you don’t have the map”, he says, and then before disappearing as mysteriously as he appeared, “Just let me know when you’re ready, I can see now probably isn’t a good time.”
Wait I want to say. Hold on, come here, take me with you, now is a perfect time, but I can barely string enough words together to say instalove either. I watch my treasure hunter disappear into the shadows of the bar and then out of sight altogether, as though without the piece of paper I’m holding, he might not have existed at all.
“Are you alright?” Alice asks me when I finally emerge. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Better than that”, I say, the cell number burning a hole in my pocket, “I’ve just met the man of my dreams.”
Chapter Five
Atop the largest tower in the western hemisphere, a turret that stands so high on its foundations the peak pushes through the clouds like a periscope through water, I sit incarcerated, destined to spend the rest of my life in this one room, two-mile high prison without a single brave soul to save me, my only crime my desire to be loved.
Okay, that and scrawling all over the walls at the King’s palace with rags soaked in cochineal. On reflection, an orgy scene the size of the bayeux tapestry probably wasn’t the best way to get my point across, but there was no need to send me up here for two hundred years so I’d learn my lesson. People in this town can be so prudish, it’s like they’ve never seen double anal before.
They can take away my freedom, they can lock me up and throw away the key, they can destroy all of my art materials, but the one thing they can’t do is take away my imagination. The fat king with his sixteen fat wives can go on burning sculptures and portraits until every single last piece of artwork has been decimated, but they’ll never win. As soon as one gets incinerated, two more will pop up in its place. For every imaginative thought they attempt to suppress, a whole army of them will rise up in their wake. And for every erection they try to conceal, every orgasm they try to blame on the work of the devil, every single incredible sexual position they try and deny exists, I’ll be here, in my tiny turret, looking at the moon replace the sun over and over again, working out exactly how I plan to escape.
They are probably still painting over the cocks at the palace, scrubbing the vaginas out with white spirit, daubing over the tits with pail after pail of new ink. I can almost hear them go at it. A rasping sound of metal on stone, as though the point of a sword might be the only thing powerful enough to defeat obscenity.
It’s getting louder too. There must be hundreds of the king’s soldiers down there, each tasked with scraping away their own specific section of the wall, so eager to please their eminence with their compliance they don’t dare take a single breath. In fact, the sound is so clear, if I weren’t trapped up here, impossibly high up in this ridiculous tower, I might think the sound was coming from outside.
I go to the window just to check, peering out as far as I can with the angle it offers me, worried briefly upon seeing nothing that so much solitude might be beginning to affect my brain.
It’s then that I hear a tap at the door. A tap. A tappity tap. A polite, postman like tap with the knuckle of a curved index finger on the rough wooden face of a meter thick door two miles up into the air.
Nobody gets past the moat, the crocodiles, the dragons, the oil slicked walls, the spikes, the broken glass, the booby traps, the fire, the jagged edges and the ledge, and nobody taps.
I’m left with little option. Either I’m going mad or someone really has just got past the moat, killed the crocodiles, tamed the dragons, climbed the oil slicked walls, avoided the spikes, rounded the broken glass, outsmarted the booby traps, jumped the fire, tiptoed around the jagged edges, vaulted the ledge and stood outside the door, raised their hand and tapped politely.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“Penny?”
A voice! A man! A manly voice! My heart leaps into my mouth. It can’t be, it’s impossible, surely not.
“I’ve come to rescue you”, he says. “I’m sorry I took so long.”
I don’t know what to say. It’s too impossible for me to comprehend it. “But the moat, the crocodiles-” I begin.
“Stand away from the door”, he says commandingly.
I stand as far away from the door as I can, perched up on the window ledge, waiting anxiously to see my prince.
There is the briefest of pauses before an almighty crunch of wood sends the door exploding into the room. It comes to rest, hanging on it’s hinges like a huge leaf trying its best to weather a storm, while sawdust and sunlight momentarily obscure his form.
I jump to my feet and prepare myself, while little by little he comes into focus. Strong legs, thick torso, arms like tree trunks and Alice’s face? What the fuck?
“You’re late”, she says.
I rub my eyes.
“Your alarm”, she says.
I still don’t get it.
“Work.” she says, as though it’s obvious. “You need to be there like, now.”
Fuck, shit, dream prince, Alice, work. I need to work. The words come to me as my brain shakes away a subpar six hours of sleep and forces my body into action. I practically leap out of the makeshift bed Alice has made up for me on the floor of her room, something I have vague memories of her doing last night, and move from one side of the room to the other in unorganized panic.
“I’m going to be late”, I say. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You were drooling”, Alice says. “Making funny noises.” Her eyes go narrow. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Nothing”, I lie.
A second away from seeing my prince and the real world comes crashing down around me like a demolition ball through a sexy house. That’s typical of my luck.
“I’ve got to go”, I say.
“Call in sick”, Alice offers, as though the evident solution to my problem.
I don’t even bother responding to her while I pull my work clothes out of my overnight bag, which I must have had the presence of mind to collect from my car before coming here, and move quickly to get them on me.
“You going to call him then?” Alice says languidly, one arm hanging over the side of the bed to touch the floor with the tips of her fingers.
“I’m not going to call in sick”, I remonstrate.
“Not your disgusting boss”, Alice says. “Your Prince Valiant. You know, if you didn’t make that story up.”
The memory comes rushing back to me. My treasure hunter and the map to his treasure. I pat my pockets, search my bag, check my other clothes in panic. I can’t find it.
“Pens”, Alice says lazily.
I dig my art materials bag out of my purse, my stomach turning over anxiously, and I’m more relieved then I can express when I find it safely stored there.
“It’s here”, I say excitedly.
“Go”, Alice orders me. “And then tell me when you’re meeting up with Channing Tatum, I want to know if he’s real or not.”
I drop the number back into my sharpie bag, drop that bag into my purse, take one look at myself in the mirror, kiss Alice on the forehead and leave. I get half way down the stairs before I have to go back to check under the bed, inside the covers for the pillows, around the bedside cabinet and anywhere else I can’t avoid leaving alone. Finally, I check three times that the number is where it should be.
“You want me to call them?” Alice says. “To say you’re on your way.”
I shake my head. “I’ve got to go”, I say, already half way out of the door again, desperate to leave now before I have to return again.