Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

I repeat the code back to her and she nods. I’ve covered her up with a shawl, because she’s so cold. I lay her head down on a pillow, brush her hair back.

She says, “You loved her better than you loved me. It isn’t fair. Nobody ever loved me best.”

“What makes you think I loved her?” I say. “You think this was all about love? Really, ? This was just me being dumb again. And you, saving the day.”

She closes her eyes. Gives me a horrible, blind smile.

I go over to the door and enter the code.

The door doesn’t open. I try again and it still doesn’t open.

“ ? Give me the code again?”

She doesn’t say anything. I go over and shake her gently. “Tell me the code one more time. Come on. One more time.”

Her eyes stay closed. Her mouth falls open. Her tongue sticks out.

“ .” I pinch her arm. Say her name over and over again. Then I go nuts. I make kind of a mess. It’s a good thing isn’t around to see.

And now it’s a little bit later, and is still dead, and I’m still trapped down here with a dead hero and a dead cat and a bunch of broken shabti s. No food. No good music. Just a small canister of something nasty cooked up by my good friend Nikolay, and a department store’s worth of size four jeans and the dregs of a bottle of very expensive champagne.

The Egyptians believed that every night the spirit of the person buried in a pyramid rose up through the false doors to go out into the world. The Ba. The Ba can’t be imprisoned in a small dark room at the bottom of a deep shaft hidden under some pile of stones. Maybe I’ll fly out some night, some part of me. The best part. The part of me that was good. I keep trying combinations, but I don’t know how many numbers used, what combination. It’s a Sisyphean task. It’s something to do. There’s not much oil left to light the lamps. The lamps that are left. I broke most of them.

Some air comes in through the bottom of the door, but not much. It smells bad in here. I wrapped up in her shawls and hid her in the closet. She’s in there with . I put in her arms. Every once in a while I fall asleep and when I wake up I realize I don’t know which numbers I’ve tried, which I haven’t.

The Olds must wonder what happened. They’ll think it had something to do with that video. Their people will be doing damage control. I wonder what will happen to my Face. What will happen to her. Maybe one night I’ll fly out. My Ba will fly right to her, like a bird.

One day someone will open the door that I can’t. I’ll be alive or else I won’t. I can open the canister or I can leave it closed. What would you do? I talk about it with , down here in the dark. Sometimes I decide one thing, sometimes I decide another.

Dying of thirst is a hard way to die.

I don’t really want to drink my own urine.

If I open the canister, I die faster. It will be my curse on you, the one who opens the tomb. Why should you go on living when she and I are dead? When no one remembers our names?

.

Tara.

I don’t want you to know my name. It was his name, really.

“Dorothy Gale,” she said.

“I guess so.” He said it grudgingly. Maybe he wished that he’d thought of it first. Maybe he didn’t think going home again was all that heroic.

They were sitting on the side of a mountain. Above them, visitors to the Land of Oz theme park had once sailed in molded plastic balloon gondolas over the Yellow Brick Road. Some of the support pylons tilted back against scrawny little opportunistic pines. There was something majestic about the pylons now that their work was done. Fallen giants. Moth-eaten blue ferns grew over the peeling yellow bricks.

The house of Dorothy Gale’s aunt and uncle had been cunningly designed. You came up the path, went into the front parlor, and looked around. You were led through the kitchen. There were dishes in the kitchen cabinets. Daisies in a vase. Pictures on the wall. Follow your Dorothy down into the cellar with the rest of your group, watch the movie tornado swirl around on the dirty dark wall, and when everyone tramped up the other, identical set of steps through the other, identical cellar door, it was the same house, same rooms, but tornado-tipped. The parlor floor now slanted and when you went out through the (back) front door, there was a pair of stockinged plaster legs sticking out from under the house. A pair of ruby slippers. A yellow brick road. You weren’t in North Carolina anymore.

The whole house was a ruin now. None of the pictures hung straight. There were salamanders in the walls and poison ivy coming up in the kitchen sink. Mushrooms in the cellar, and an old mattress someone had dragged down the stairs. You had to hope Dorothy Gale had moved on.

It was four in the afternoon and they were both slightly drunk. Her name was Bunnatine Powderfinger. She called him Biscuit.

She said, “Come on, of course she is. The ruby slippers, those are like her special power. It’s all about how she was a superhero the whole time, only she didn’t know it. And she comes to Oz from another world. Like Superman in reverse. And she has lots of sidekicks.” She pictured them skipping down the road, arm in arm. Facing down evil. Dropping houses on it, throwing buckets of water at it. Singing stupid songs and not even caring if anyone was listening.

He grunted. She knew what he thought. Sidekicks were for people who were too lazy to write personal ads. “The Wizard of Oz. He even has a secret identity. And he wants everything to be green, all of his stuff is green, just like Green Lantern.”

The thing about green was true, but so beside the point that she could hardly stand it. The Wizard of Oz was a humbug. She said, “But he’s not great and powerful. He just pretends to be great and powerful. The Wicked Witch of the West is greater and more powerfuller. She’s got flying monkeys. She’s like a mad scientist. She even has a secret weakness. Water is like Kryptonite to her.” She’d always thought the actress Margaret Hamilton was damn sexy. The way she rode that bicycle and the wind that picked her up and carried her off like an invisible lover; that funny, mocking, shrill little piece of music coming out of nowhere. That nose.