[fiction] Eve's Commitment (one possible ending)

Snow: This suite has been booked for three weeks.  There's two thousand in cash in the dresser, and a credit card with a really, really high limit.

Eve:  This is a little...I can't accept all this.

Snow shrugs.

Snow:  It's Dave's money.  Spend as much as you can.

Eve:  I can't just sit here mooching off of someone

Snow:  Yeah I know its not like the best plan, or whatever.  But everyone is coming together for this.  Everyone had their own job.  Dave's was funding this whole operation.  Lawrence tracked the final book to this city--he'd stake his life (and mine) on it--and Jason...well Jason's too pussywhipped to really do anything useful.

Eve:  Oh?  And what was your "job" ?

Snow:  Finding you.

Eve gets a knowing look on her face.

Eve:  Because my job is...

Snow:  Finding Biff.  You're the only one who can.

Eve:  What?  I've never even been here.  What the hell am I supposed to do?

Snow:  I don't know.  Use that magic girl intuition of yours.  Or post flyers.  Or go to every shitty bar in the city, every night.  Whatever it takes.  You know Biff needs to regularly hang around smoky dive bars so he can sip lite beer and be a sad panda about Christine.

Eve:  Takes a lot of nerve for you to bring her up again.

Snow:  Hey, she's dead but she's not going away.

Eve: And I don't want to just be sloppy seconds!  To have him constantly comparing me to her...oh God why did I come here?

Snow:  Let me let you in on a little secret about Christine.  Christine was an average, ordinary, scared little girl hiding behind the shadow of her legend.  That's not an insult.  She was a friend.  Like I wasn't even trying to fuck her--that's how much friends we were.

Eve rolls her eyes.

Snow:  But all that shit about the pink rider...sure she mostly did some version of most of those things, but when we were sitting around talking shit about what we'd do, she was the first one to roll her eyes.  The fact that she played hard to get on that motorcycle and accidentally had Biff out there searching for her like a horny dog is really what got the legend going.  But that wasn't her.  She wasn't made of steel.  She was just a normal girl that liked to ride a little and was infatuated with Biff.  You, though....

Snow looks her up and down.

Snow:  I don't know what happened you, but something made you the badass road witch that people thought she was.  And I'm 90% sure that you're in love with Biff.  So you are going to find him, even if you spend every waking moment searching.

Eve looks out the window.

Snow:  Ok good talk.

Snow gets up to leave

Eve:  How do you know?

Snow:  Hmm?

Eve:  That I love him?

Snow:  Cause you're still wearing that suit.




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Jason follows Lawrence into Wilson's Tire and Garage.

Lawrence:  This.

Jason:  Holy fuck!

There are hats everywhere.  Silly or otherwise unusual hats of every kind.  Pirate hats, pope hats, pimp hats, tircolour hats, cowboy hats, costume hats, helmets,  fedoras, sombreros, bowlers....

Jason:  This is like his entire collection.

Lawrence:  And its in my garage!

Jason:  I'm going to try calling him again.

Jason dials.

Moments later a phone rings.

Lawrence:  I hear ringing.

Jason:  His phone's here.

Together they move through the garage, listening, converging on a hat in the middle.  Its a red and yellow "jester" hat that looks like it was pulled from a medieval cartoon.

Jason lifts the jester hat.  Lawrence grabs the phone.

Lawrence:  there's nothing in here.  His phone is like empty.  No contacts, to texts, no history, nothing.

Jason:  Well....I guess he's sending a message?

Lawrence:  I guess....

Jason:  Well I gotta be getting back.  Tonight is movie night...

Lawrence:  I know, I know.  I think I'll take the night off.

Lawrence switches off the light as they leave.

Jason's little brother meets them in the parking lot.

Little bro:  You guys aren't hanging out?

Jason:  Not tonight.

Lawrence:  Hey

Lawrence tosses little bro the keys to the shop.

Lawrence:  take some cars out and get into trouble.

Little bro grins



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Eve sat at the desk in her hotel room, half ignoring a police scanner.  A projector on the bed was plastering a news station onto the window curtains.  Uneventful.  All of it.

On the table was a map of the city.  Every dive bar was circled in red, every whorehouse in purple.  Eve had no particular reason to think that Biff would hire a hooker, but hell, he was a man.  With Nikka's help she had befriended as many hookers and strippers as she could, but none had seem him.  This motherfucking bastard was a fucking ghost.

But he was still here.  The last book was here, and he would be here until he found it.  And he hadn't found it yet because there had been no breaking news story about a major shootout or a car chase or a "terrorist plot" or some other big nonsense.

The other option was that he was dead.  He could be dead.  He wasn't invincible.

Eve sighed and looked at her bag of weed.  She had only bought it in case she needed some wild, out of the box ideas.  Tried it once hoping that her mind would be opened and think of some super creative, crazy idea for finding him, but instead she had just eaten 2 and a half pizzas and fallen asleep, waking only to the sound of her own farts.

Eve shrugged.  She had no other ideas.  She would try the weed again.

She rolled a fresh joint and went out to the balcony to light it.  That's when she heard it.  That engine.  It was a four-stroke, but too high to be a car.  And it was that four stroke.  She knew the bike that made that sound.  She knew every inch of that bike.

The rational part of her mind suggested that it might not be Biff, but the rational part was not in control...was more of an unwilling passenger to the person who barreled through people in the hallway and ran through the hotel's kitchen knocking several people over before setting off the fire alarm by going through an emergency exit.  It was the quickest way out.

She was on her own bike now, racing through the street.  Her Aprilia had a much deeper roar, but despite the lower pitch it was still drowning out the faint sound of her quarry.  She had to follow a maddening pattern of racing along a street, stopping, and turning her engine off.  On the bright side, she had spent weeks driving all over this fucking city.  She knew the roads.  And when she heard that familiar high pitched wine somewhere near River Drive, she knew exactly where that bike was.

Eve started her bike, gunned it, spun in place, and rocketed off heading south to accelerate so fast that she popped an unintentional wheelie.  When the bike was under control again it was a hard left, some scary shit on the wrong side of the road, then some crazy shit through an active intersection.  Thankfully there were apparently no cops there.

Then she was in a deserted section of town.  It figured he'd have a hideout in a place like that.

Eve saw the other bike when it was a mile away.  She braked hard, then did a hard left and straightened at the last second to pop over the median.  She stopped her bike and got out.

Snow was dead right, but he had missed something.  Yes, she was made of steel.  More importantly, Biff was the scared one.  He wasn't scared of people, or even of dying, but he was scared for everyone, and running around alone trying to fix the world.  And that, really, was the key.

Eve took her helmet off and stood in the road, legs apart, hands on her hips, staring at the oncoming rider, the way a cowboy stares at stampeding cattle.  The rider should have been able to evade her easily but he was riding with one hand.  He shifted his weight to go around her but she stepped just as he went for it.  He braked and skidded to a stop.

The man who got off the bike was the right height and build.  Maybe a bit thinner than she remembered.  His suit was torn and a few pieces of armor were broken, and he was favoring his left leg.  In one arm was a large black book.  He took his helmet off.

It was Biff.

Bleeding and dirty, with a cut lip and messed up hair, but it was him.  He stared at her widly, his eyes partly unfocused, like he was still in battle mode.  Whatever the hell he had just done was probably just hitting the news now.  Adrenaline was probably still in his bloodstream, his heart probably racing, his mind probably still switching gears to figure out how to corral her.  Not this time.

Eve had no adrenaline rush and her heartbeat had barely flinched.   "Biff Becker!"  she said as he stepped forward.  "Is that the last one?" she asked, pointing to the book.

"Yeah," said Biff.

"Then you're mine," snapped Eve.  She lunged forward, grabbed him by the collar, and kissed him.