Chapter Thirty

By Chris Fulmer

There was a knock on the door of Neal's room. He got up cautiously and glanced through the peephole on the door. He couldn't quite make out who was standing there.

"Who is it?" he asked, hoping it wasn't Del sleepwalking again.

"It's Nancy. Could I have a few words with you?" was the answer.

"Sure. Give me a minute," Neal rushed over to the dresser and put on his pants, which he'd left neatly on top, followed by his shirt from its hanger in the closet. Once reasonably dressed, he turned on the lights, rolled away the desk he'd barracaded the door with as a precaution against Del sleepwalking in, and let his former love in.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"It's yuor friend," Nancy told him. She looked overly frustrated.

"Well what about Del?"

"He totally wrecked the bathroom; it's beyond cleaning. And now I can't sleep because he's doing something strange in his room.

Neal listened down the hall. He could hear familiar snorting coming from Del's room. 'Oh, he's just, um, clearing his sinuses," he told her. "It's all for the better, actually; he'll snore all night if he doesn't, or at least that's what he told me."

"And you actually believe that clown?" Nancy raised her eyebrows. "Honestly Neal, he is just hte complete opposite of you. How can you even stand him?"

"Well to be perfectly honest Nancy, at first I couldn't," Neal admitted. "I blew my stack and screamed at him that he was irritating to be with and that I'd rather be at an insurance seminar than spend another minute with him. But the thing with Del is, he may be a slob but he's got a heart of gold underneath. I think if you'd get to know him better, you'd see that. And plus, screaming at him doesn't help, he's very sensitive."

"Whatever," Nancy wasn't too interested in looking at it from this way. She looked him in the eye. "Tell me, honestly, how happy are you in your marriage?"

"Why?" Neal was confused. Then his face lit up with realization of what she was getting at. "I-I couldn't," he said, holding up a hand, "I love Susan more. I always have. I mean, you're still as beautiful as you were twenty years ago, but the fact is I'm a married man, and it just wouldn't be right."

"You wouldn't have to..." Nancy began, but Neal was already ahead of her.

"Sure, she wouldn't know, but I would, and I couldn't live with that, not as a father," he told her.

"Oh," Nancy seemed a little disappointed by his stance. "So, how did you meet Susan?" she asked, still somewhat curious about his marriage.

"Well, it was basically a matter of two lonely souls hooking up," Neal explained.

"What do you mean by that?" "Well, it was my freshman year at Illinois Wesleyan, and I was working as Coach Bridges' administrative assistant during the basketball season, and I was feeling rather homesick, as freshmen tend to do. Well, one day during preseason I was setting up the balls by the side of the court and I was thinking about how much I wanted to be back in Chicago and about to cry when I heard someone else crying behind the bleachers. I went over to see what was going on and I saw Susan against the wall with her face in her hands. I asked what was bugging her, and she said she'd give anything to be back with her friends in St. Cloud, except they were all over the Midwest. I was kind of moved by the fact I wasn't the only one on campus who was homesick, so I told her how I felt and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner with me. She accepted, and to make a long story short, we've now got three kids."

"And when we were together, I thought it was going to be either me or Amanda Hinkel that you'd end up with," Nancy said, not impressed.

"I kind of grew away from Amanda after our sophomore year; her narcolepsy wasn't quite up my alley," Neal said. "And don't take this the wrong way, but you were just not the perfect match for me. Susan is."

He got up and paced over to the window. "Funny isn't it?" he commented, taking a peak out it, "The people you think you're going to love--you and Amanda, for example--turn out to be all wrong for you, and you end up with someone you'd never think of. If you'd told me in freshman year of high school that you'd end up with a nobody like Jack, I'd have died laughing."

"I was dying on my wedding day from the shock of it," Nancy said dismally. She got up off the bed. "I want to fill out a report for room service about their availability of drink flavors, but they didn't leave any forms out there. Do you have any scrap paper?"

"Yeah, I got a couple of pieces in my briefcase," Neal crossed the room. He opened the briefcase on the counter and frowned. "Wait a minute, this isn't my briefcase."

"What do you mean it's not your briefcase, Neal?"

"This isn't my stuff," Neal grabbed out fistfuls of the launch codes and stared them over. "What the hell is this supposed to mean, absolute range 1,600 miles?" he asked out loud. Then his face cloudened. "This must be what those nuts are after. They crashed my luggage rack into another one back in New York; I'll bet anything that we switched..."

Just then there came a loud crash from out in the main hotel room. Both Neal and Nancy jumped a few feet in the air. "What was that!?" she exclaimed.

"Stay here; I'll go find out," Neal closed up the briefcase and raised it into a striking position. It wasn't the most effective up weapons, but it was the best he could come up with in a short notice. He crept along the wall of the hall, breathing heavily.

Reaching the end, he closed his eyes and jumped around the corner, yelling, "Drop it, buddy!" at the top of his lungs. The sound of snoring made him open his eyes and breathe a big sigh of relief; it was only Del sleepwalking again. The salesman had knocked over a lamp and was in the corner, walking into the wall over and over again with apparently no ill effects. "It's okay," Neal called back down to Nancy, "it's only..."

"Ellen, when was the last time I told you I really, really loved you?" asked Clark suddenly from the darkness. Before Neal could react fully to this, his former friend, also sleepwalking, had taken a strong grip on his hand. "Let me take you on a magic carpet ride of romance," he continued, dragging Neal into the center of the room.

"Sparky, what the hell are you...WHOA!!!" Neal closed his eyes again as Clark began spinning himself and the ad exec around in circles a la Saturday Night Fever. "The hills are alive with the sound of Griswold!!!!!!" he yowled out loud in his sleep.

"SPPAAAARRRRRKYYYYYY!!" Neal yelled. He was feeling a little queasy from the spinning. Clark abruptly looked over his shoulder. "What's that, Russ?" he asked to thin air, releasing Neal so that he spun hard into the wall. "Go get Audrey to do it; I'm busy with your mother!" He stumbled over and picked Neal up from off the floor.

"Sparky, unhand me right now!" Neal's plea went unanswered as Clark tossed him onto the sofa. "Say Ellen, let's rediscover our youth," he said to him, still asleep, and then, letting out a Tarzan yell, began making passionate love to Neal.

"SPARKY, GET THE HELL OFF ME!!!!" Neal shrieked. This was even worse than last night. Clark was now singing like an Italian operetta as he "went for broke."

Neal was considering kicking him to make him stop, but just then there came a massive explosion from downstairs that woke his former friend up. "What was that?" he asked. Looking down at what he'd been doing, he inquired, "What are you doing down there, Neal?"

Neal was speechless. He did however, have enough about him to push Clark up off him. "I thought Del was bad enough,' he ranted, "but YOU, Sparky, you are the biggest menace...!!"

"Shh!" Clark raised a finger. Gunfire could now be heard in the lobby. "I think we'd better get a move on, Neal!"

"For once, I'm in complete agreement with you!" Neal ran to the nearby dresser and grabbed his wallet from among those there. "Nancy, get your stuff and my stuff; we're getting out of here in a hurry!" he called down to his old flame. He ran out the door, briefcase in hand, looking for the fire escape...

"Hold it you!" came Sherman's voice from his left. Neal felt a machine gun against his neck. "Okay, just hand over the codes," the major ordered.

"What codes?" Neal asked him.

"Look, just give then to me!"

"What do you want with them?"

"I don't want to shoot you. Now PLEASE, just...!" Colonel Champlin came running around the corner. "Good work Major," he said emptily to Sherman. He strode up to Neal and put his revolver right against his forehead. "Now we take of you loose ends," he said darkly.

"Hey Marie, come back!" before the colonel could pull the trigger, Del stumbledout of the room into him, making him drop the gun. In a flash, Neal knocked Sherman's gun out of his hands and twisted loose. Clark charged out of the room, picked the machine gun up, and held it to Sherman's head just as the rest of the command ran into view. "Drop your weapons or I fill this guy so full of lead he'll have to use his thing as a pencil!" he ordered them all.

"Huh?" all the soldiers asked, confused.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Sparky!?" Neal whispered in his ear.

"I don't know," Clark whispered back.

"AAAAHHHH!!! Marie, your breasts! They've shrunk!" the still asleep Del gasped, stroking Champlin's midsection.

"Stop that!" Champlin slapped Del in the face, waking him up. The salesman took one look at what was going on around and jumped over to his friends. "Yipe, don't tell me I slept through all this!?" he asked Neal.

"You heard the man, throw down your weapons; Sparky here's crazy enough to shoot him!" Neal yelled at the troops.

"Shoot them anyway!" Champlin yelled at his men.

"Are you out of your damn mind!?" Sherman shrieked at his superior.

"Last time, everybody throw down your weapons!" Neal's last threat proved decisive as everybody began throwing their guns to the floor--including Clark. "Not you, Sparky!" Neal shouted at him.

"Sorry," Clark picked it back up at put it back to Sherman's temple.

"Now everybody lay down and put your hands behind your head!" Neal ordered.

The soldiers reluctantly did this. "Now we're walking out of here with this guy," Neal continued, waving for everyone he knew to follow him to the fire escape down the hall, "and if we catch you following us again, he's dead meat!"

"You're not going to get away, you know!" Colonel Champlin shouted after them. "We can trace you from anywhere on the map. You can't run forever. And human life means very little to us right now, so don't think that human shield ploy'll work!"

"Don't say that!" Sherman yelled at him. "He's right though on the first point!" he told the others sternly as he was dragged down the stairs, "you can't run forever! We've got too firm a lock on you!"

"Cork it, Bilko!" Neal growled at him. He turned to his big friend. "Say Del, do you know a back way out of the city westward that these guys wouldn't have thought of blocking?"

"Now that you bring that up, Neal, I think I do," Del smiled. "I mean, it's not foolproof, especially if these guys are hard planers, but I think we'll be able to outfox them; yeah they'll never figure it out."