Chapter 16: Daydream Believer

he Rock Monster Eagle circled the point Monkeeheads warily, all senses shredded to a razor edge. It was clear that the Eagle was aging and out of shape, yet it somehow moved with the cunning and agility that one would expect of a creature born and raised in the bayou; Brad, Randi and the others knew that this could well be the end of their Chautauqua. They began to back up.

The Eagle clearly held the advantage, and held onto it tenaciously. Keeping its back to the sun that now lay flattened and distorted on the horizon, it was using the glare to remain horrendously difficult for the Monkeeheads to see. They, in turn, had the advantage of numbers; but the current circumstances prevented any sort of concurrence on team action. Clearly, a miracle was needed.

Lurking briefly behind a small sandstone outcrop, Eric frantically scrabbled through his backpack for something -- anything -- that might be of use. Empty Twinkies bags, research papers, a trout (see note 1), an old 5-1/4-inch floppy... and a still-new box of violet Reynolds Plastic Wrap!

Carefully pulling the zip strip and fumbling with the box, Eric found the end of the wrap and positioned it outside the cutter. He closed the box and checked that the plastic wrap rolled out smoothly; satisfied, he began to crawl along the base of the outcrop, making sure that he was not visible to the Eagle. With the Monkeeheads backing up and the Eagle closing the gap, there was a possibility -- a small one, granted -- that if Eric could somehow creep up behind the Eagle unnoticed, he could whip the Reynolds Wrap around its face and disorient it. If this could be accomplished, it would be a simple matter to push the Eagle to its doom...

For long minutes he crept along, darting silently between outcrops as he made his way behind their tormentor. At one point the outcrops were about twenty feet apart, and as he sprinted, exposed, he saw with horror that some of the Monkeeheads caught sight of him. Expecting that the Eagle noticed the turn of their heads, he dived behind the sandstone and froze there, his back to the rock, heart pounding, listening for the footfalls of the Eagle as it approached.

It hadn't seen him. Eric began to move again.

Among those that spotted him was Eva, the Recycle Babe. Something different was happening here, she thought, something unexpected. In the long years that she had been here she had seen many attempts to defeat the Rock Monster Eagle; most involved brute force and these were always doomed to failure. Some involved a small amount of skill, and these were only marginally more successful. But what Eric was attempting here... well, this she would have to see. She began to mimic his moves in the opposite direction, circling counterclockwise.

Slowly, Eric kept on for what seemed to him like hours. When at last he was in position behind the Eagle he uttered a silent prayer, sprung from his hiding spot and, running headlong at the Eagle, whipped out an arms-length span of Reynolds Wrap.

Which, as Reynolds Wrap is wont to do, promptly clung to itself and became a hopeless, tangled, violet mess.

The Eagle spun around and roared in anger. With a deft swing of its pelvis it knocked Eric to the ground, inches away from the edge. As Eric frantically tried to crabwalk out of the way, the Eagle roared again, and flamed him.

Eric pitched over the rim and was gone, leaving only a dark, smoking contrail.

Eva gasped; she had seen flaming only a few times before, and it was never pretty, but this was ...tragic. She had truly believed that Eric had been the long-prophesied reincarnation of Monster Slayer, and at the sight of his defeat she lost her self-control. The gasp drew the attention of the Eagle, who snapped his head up and saw her exposed at the brim of Shiprock about twenty feet from where Eric had met his doom. The Eagle smirked, and with a sarcastic "Thank kew, thank kew very much," leapt at Eva.

Eva, terrified, promptly unsubscribed.

The Eagle was in midair and had already committed to its trajectory, and now with nothing there to stop it, arced uncontrolled over the edge and out of sight. At its current speed and pitch, it seemed destined to crash and burn in Las Vegas.

The Monkeeheads were silent, as much in stunned witness to the dabacle as in quiet tribute to their fallen comrades. Yes, they were victorious, but it came at a price (see note 3).

At length, Brad said simply "C'mon," as he led the Monkeeheads solemnly to the pyramid.

The Cour Napoleon was surprisingly empty of visitors; only a few stood near the glass Pei pyramid, and they were moving without direction or purpose. Micky checked his watch, which showed still an hour until closing; perhaps, he thought, that blue Saran wrap had something to do with it. Funny, the concierge at Le Grand didn't mention anything about this...

"Louvre looks closed, guys," he said. "Pete? Sorry about that. We'll try it again tomorrow. Who's up for some coffee? We can hit that place back on..."

"Ouch!"

They turned to look at Davy, who was somewhat comically jumping up and down, holding one foot. "Tha' rat, or chipmunk, or wha'ever it was. The sonofabitch just bit me in th' ankle!" A small animal was faintly visible scurrying in the direction of the pyramid.

"GET 'IM!!"

The three of them broke into a run, zigzagging across the courtyard and barely keeping pace with the chipmunk (see note 4), with Davy trailing in a syncopated lope that gradually eased as he forgot about his ankle and concentrated on the problem at hand. The blue-wrapped entrance pyramid began to loom large as they approached it, out of breath and dimly aware that the few people that they'd seen milling about before had disappeared. The chipmunk veered to the left mere inches in front of the pyramid's base, and scurried up onto the sloping side of the pyramid and around the corner. Peter, in the lead, skidded to avoid the sloping wall, then planted his right foot away on the ground to effect a hard left turn; the other two were enough of a distance behind him to more gradually change their path to continue the chase.

As they rounded the corner, the concourse lights within the glass structure suddenly strobed brightly, and then -- along with the courtyard's illumination --flashed off, leaving the three men in darkness.

They slowed to a stop, winded.

Micky chuckled, "I don't <pant> think <pant> we're twenty <pant> anymore, guys."

There was a rustling noise overhead. Davy ignored Mickey's comment. "Where'd it go? <pant> Where'd the sonofabitch go?" They tried to make out forms in the darkness, which was becoming less severe as their eyes dark-adapted to the moonlight high in the east.

The rustling noise continued, finally penetrating into their consciousnesses. They looked up.

The lower half of the eastern side of the pyramid was bare glass, with the blue Saran Wrap covering the upper triangle from a height of about twenty feet from the ground. At the lower edge of this plastic, dead center, struggled the chipmunk. From where they stood it appeared that it was tangled in the Saran, unable to free itself.

"We've got to get him, man. How do we know he hasn't got one of those Deathy Mouse diseases?" Davy tried unsuccessfully to scale the glass, never climbing more than two steps before sliding back. Peter and Micky paced around the immediate area in search of anything that could vaguely be used to help. After a time they gave up and rejoined Davy, who was attempting to retrieve the chipmunk by yelling at it.

Peter brightened. "Dave, Mick, how about we climb on each others' shoulders? If we lean against the glass, most of our weight will be against the pyramid, so we won't be very heavy on each other. Davy, you're the lightest, so you can go on top. Take off your jacket; you can grab the chipmunk in it."

"I'm up for it," add Micky.

Davy considered for a moment, and deciding that there didn't appear to be any alternatives agreed, "yeah, a'right." They conferred for a minute, and then Davy took off his blue leather jacket, hung it around the back of his neck, and leaned forward against the glass. Peter crouched down behind him and as Davy grabbed for any traction that he could find he placed one foot on Peter's shoulder. Peter slowly straightened up against the glass while Davy hand-walked along on the glass, and after a few seconds the the two were in position. The process continued on a slower scale as Micky struggled to attain a spot as the new base of the column.

"Can you get it?" Peter shouted.

"No, it's still too high. It's about four, five feet over me. I can't reach."

"Hey, don't get excited, man, just 'cause you're short," came a voice in a thick Texan accent.

Michael came running across the moonlit Cour Napoleon, boots clicking loudly on the cobblestone and echoing off the walls of the old palace. "What in hell are you guys trying to do? I could hear you clear back on Rivoli."

They shouted Michael their thanks at seeing him again and quickly filled him in on the details, and seeing that they were going to need all four of them to pull this off, Mike agreed to be bottom man. With a great effort Davy, Peter and Micky crabbed up the 45-degree pitch of the glass as Michael pushed them up on his shoulders. Davy now at the same level as the chipmunk, carefully grabbed at his jacket; he brought his arm back, and with a swift movement slapped it over the animal.

And with a horrible sound the glass shattered and smashed in, pane after pane, crash after crash, Monkee after Monkee.

Notes:

1. So nobody would steal the backpack.
2. Naked, but without the trout.
3. Roughly $11.00 for Eric; slightly more for Eva, since she was, after all, a Babe.
4. I was just kidding before. There was no reference to Note 2.