Chapter 36: Having Miraculously Escaped

In a hail of tranquillizer darts, I leapt from the fence surrounding Harrison Ford’s mansion, free at last. On landing, I twisted my ankle, and rolled three times before thudding to a halt against a tree. In the musky darkness, part of the tree trunk disengaged and bent over me. I bunched my fists, but then I recognised the soulful eyes burning behind the camouflage make-up, and I relaxed. ‘Hi,’ I said, as casually as I could, my heart thrashing.

‘Mary Sue?’ said Johnny Depp. ‘I can’t believe it’s you! How did you escape?

‘You don’t want to know,’ I replied, thinking of the brave dog who had died protecting me at one point, and the amazing way I had managed to pretend to be one of the demons in the darkness, knock out one guard and steal his gun, and then shoot three other guards, and that was only part of what had happened. Johnny Depp just nodded, and we rushed into the forest. He swept me onto the pillion of a big black motorbike, and we roared into the forest, helmetless. I’ve always never wanted to go on a motorbike, but I didn’t mind.

‘It’s lucky I was here,’ Johnny shouted as we raced away from two motorbikes who were now pursuing us. ‘I was expecting you tomorrow. I’m only here a day early because… Because I need to be alone at the moment.’

‘Oh God, yes,’ I yelled. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to Vanessa.’

Johnny Depp grunted, shouted ‘Hold on tight,’ and skidded the bike sideways and to a halt between two trees. We watched the two other bikes roar past through the forest. I was clinging to Johnny, my breath coming in ragged gasps. He was not breathing more heavily than if he were sleeping, not that I would know. Through his camouflage shirt, he did not exactly feel hard, but there was no give anywhere on his body. He felt smooth. As I looked around him, straining to hear the bad guys, I saw that he’d cut a V into the back of his wrist. I touched it. I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t move his hand. ‘It is what it is,’ Johnny said tonelessly. ‘This is a war for the end of the world. There’ll be casualties.’

‘Johnny…’

‘Not now,’ he said, throttled the engine, and the bike reared out of its hiding place and back the way we came for a hundred yards before doing another scary-but-exciting skiddy turn and racing up the hill through a soft carpet of pine needles.

Fifteen minutes later, Johnny was handing me a cup of tea in a place he called the batcave. It was literally a cave, hidden behind a cascade of foliage, and the small low door was fitted flush to the rough stone wall. Even with Johnny’s torch, I hadn’t seen the edges until it opened in response to a voice command. ‘Sorry, Mary Sue,’ he said. ‘But my house obviously isn’t secure. I…’ he stopped.

‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

‘I should have been there.’ He spoke quietly, he wasn’t tearful, but he looked into his tea as if it were a thousand miles away. Then he noticed me staring, and smiled bleakly. ‘I’ll see her again, Mary Sue. I always see her again, but it doesn’t make losing her any easier.’

‘But you’re out of sync now. When she reincarnates, you’ll be forty years older than her. How does that work?’

‘Badly. But she’s my one true love, and there it is.’ Then he said, ‘Don’t worry about me, princess. I’ll be fine.’

‘But… Really? Do you really just wait until you align again? What if it takes a hundred years?’

‘A hundred years is just one day at a time.’

‘So you won’t have sex for a hundred years.’

‘Er… I imagine I will. Sex is just sex. It will be for fun, and it teaches you things about people you never learn any other way. If I survive, I’ll live with someone again. Vanessa wouldn’t want me to be alone, and she knows that the others. Whatever happens when we are out of alignment, it’s never the same.’

‘But if she’s the one…’

‘She’s dead, Mary Sue. I’ve got to move on. Just because something isn’t perfect, that doesn’t make it bad. I’ve nearly loved hundreds of girls who weren’t my one true love.’ I presume I was gaping at him. ‘I’ve had sixty million years to get my head round this. I’m not cold, I just know what I’m talking about. That’s why losing Vanessa isn’t so terrible for me. It isn’t so bad.’ He stood abruptly and walked to the back of the main room, where he stared at a picture I’d never seen of JFK and Marilyn on a bench together, holding hands. ‘It isn’t so bad,’ he repeated.

‘If that’s true,’ I said, ‘Why did you carve that V into your hand?’

‘I was drunk,’ he said. He didn’t face me, and he wasn’t convincing.

‘But…’

‘Stop it, princess. She’s dead,’ said Johnny, turning back with the grin he does when he’s acting like he’s not totally in control. ‘Vanessa’s dead, and life is about the next thing, so we don’t talk about her, ok. It’s better that way.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to…’

‘Hey, babe,’ said Johnny Depp, wiping a tear from my cheek. ‘Don’t feel guilty. That never did anybody any good.’ He took me in his arms and held me tightly, to comfort me, my face against the slab of muscle or whatever it is that joins the chest to the shoulder. From there, I could hear his heart beat, and it was beating a hundred miles faster than it had on the motorbike, and his arms and chest muscles were taught and hard, not fluid and smooth as they had been, as if he was making them into a cage, as if he were trying to keep something in. ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ he said. ‘It’ll be ok.’ As we stood there, I felt him relax, and I realised that he was the one who needed this, not me, but he hadn’t been able to ask. I held him tighter.

I really didn’t mean to kiss him.