“If the impulse strikes you while you’re crossing, don’t hesitate for an instant,” I advised her. “There are only enemies below.”
She started across. Suddenly a flashlight beam shot up again and caught her. Shots rang out. Nature took over and Consuela relieved herself. Just before I fired and knocked out the second flashlight, I heard the disgusted cries of “Caramba!”--and some stronger curses which defy translation-—from the courtyard below. And then she was safely on the other side.
Now it was my turn. I tied the tommygun to my ankle so I’d have both hands free, and started across. But I was much heavier than either of the two women. Halfway across, the rope suddenly gave, and abruptly tore loose from its mooring on the roof I’d left. I went hurtling into space.
Raoul must have grabbed the other end and braced it solidly. Holding onto the rope for dear life, I was caught up short before I’d plummeted more than one story. I dangled there for a moment, too surprised at still being alive to think of what to do next.
Then I felt the rope being tugged from above, and I realized that the three of them must be trying to pull me up. I began climbing as they pulled. I might have made it, too, if a window hadn’t suddenly opened in the house I’d just left and a rebel hadn’t started spraying bullets at me. I kicked out at the wall, and with the momentum the movement gave me I swung around in a wide arc, thus presenting a moving target which would be harder for him to hit.
The maneuver worked. It threw his aim off, all right. But, unfortunately, it had another result. It put an additional strain on the rope where it pressed against the edge of the roof. Just as I hit the widest point of the arc, the rope parted—and once again I plunged into blackness.
This time there was nothing to hold on to. There was nothing but air between me and the ground below. The daring young man on the flying trapeze had lost his trapeze. So now there was nothing to do but fly through the air with the greatest of ease and wait for the ground to come up and hit me. I knew I wouldn’t have long to wait!
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT ARC I’d swung myself into was all that saved me. Instead of falling straight down, it gave me just enough momentum so that my plunge was angled toward the side of the building I’d been trying to reach. Even so, if Fate hadn’t branded a four-leaf clover on my rump, I would have bounced off the brick wall and kept falling. The fall might not have killed me, but it sure would have snapped too many wishbones for me to put up much of a fight against the rebels below.
However, that four-leaf clover was still stamped valid. Instead of brick, the arc propelled me through a window. I crashed through the glass in an unintentional swan dive, picking up enough slivers of glass in my naked torso to make me look like a china porcupine, and sprawled neatly atop the covers of a large double bed. Dazed, I stayed put. For the umptieth time in the past couple of hours, I wished I’d had enough sense to grab some clothes before I’d fled Dovita’s room. These gymnastics were getting to be damned uncomfortable with my bare bun so vulnerable.
I had no time to dwell on it. The covers beneath me were alive with vigorous and outraged movement. Up near the pillow a head popped out and a man began screaming at me in a torrent of Spanish rage. A second later another man’s head worked itself free of the covers at the foot of the bed and joined in the refrain of curses raining down on me.
“Sorry. Sorry.” I kept repeating in Spanish.
Finally they calmed down a little. The first fellow-— the one whose head was up near the pillows—was demanding an explanation. What, he wanted to know, was the big idea of crashing in on them in this way? Why hadn’t I used the door? And where were my clothes?
I tried to explain to him that there was a revolution going on.
He became very excited again. They knew about the revolution, he told me. But they were not involved. They were non-political. Strictly non-political. They took no sides. All they wanted was to be left alone. They didn’t want to get involved.
There was a lot more of this, and while it was going on, I took stock of my two unwilling hosts. The one up by the pillows sported a pomaded hairdo that might well have started a style with the suburban housewives of Westchester County. The one at the foot of the bed gave off an aura of perfume worthy of a French courtesan. Both of them talked from the wrist. And, since their wrists were exceedingly limp, I wasn’t surprised that their Spanish was marked with the most effeminate of lisps.
No doubt about it. I’d leaped straight into a little fairy hutch. The two of them were fruitier than twin nutcakes. And judging from certain telltale bulges under the sheets, I’d interrupted them in the process of gathering their rosebuds. Well, being the man from O.R.G.Y., I’m more tolerant than most when it comes to the gay sex. But I still had a qualm or two about finding myself naked in bed with a pair of lusting homos. I only hoped that the slivers of glass protruding from my rear would keep them from getting any ideas about persuading me to join their little tête-à-tête.
There was a sudden loud knocking at the door to the room. Hastily, I dived under the covers and found myself between the two Dominican pansies. I ducked my head as the door was flung open.
“Where is the man who came through this window?” a voice shouted in Spanish from the doorway.
Quickly, my hands groped under the twin tents erected by my hosts’ lust. I took a firm grip on the balloons at the base of the center-poles and squeezed gently by way of warning. They got the message.
“He ran right out the door,” one of them told the rebel. “He was in a great hurry.”
“After him!” the rebel shouted. The door slammed behind him and there was the clatter of boots fading away down the hallway.
“They’re gone. You can come out now.”
I relinquished my groiny holds and came out from under the covers.
“Oh, damn!” one of them said. “Why did you let go?”
“Now stop that!” the other said jealously. “You’re flirting with him.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t want to come between you two gentlemen.”
“It’s not your fault,” the pomaded one assured me. “It’s just that he’s an alley cat. He simply can’t help making passes at any man he meets.”
“Look who’s calling who an alley cat!” his aromatic bedmate retorted. “You hypocrite! I saw the way you were looking at him before. You were all but licking your lips! It was disgusting!”
“How dare you? You bitch!”
“You just watch out who you’re calling names! I’ll scratch your eyes out!”
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! So there!”
“Oo-oo-oh! You make me so mad I could—!”
“Go ahead! Just you try it! I don’t know what I ever saw in a shrew like you anyway!”
“Shrew! That did it!”
Long nails reached across me and raked the cheek under the pomaded pompadour. There was a squeal as the hand was grabbed and bitten. A moment later I felt as if I’d been thrown into a cage of screeching, scratching pussycats.
Somehow I managed to separate them. “Now look, girls—uh, fellows -- I don’t want to be a party-poop, but I’m afraid I can’t hang around for the main event. There’s this revolution going on out there, and I have things to attend to. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now.”
“Well, go ahead,” the sweet-smelling one said nastily. “We didn’t ask you to drop by in the first place. You just intruded yourself in here and caused a lot of trouble. I know your type!”
“Oh, don’t mind him,” Curlylocks told me. “He’s insecure, but he’ll just have to learn to get over it. You don’t really have to leave. Stay a while and he’ll calm down, and then the three of us can have a real party.” He batted his long eyelashes at me.