= Velkommen Til Solvang
  by Patricia Alameda


The first gunshot sent two Steller's Jays arcing over the top of the building, flapping their wings into the pink air. There was a second shot, and a third. A man stumbled out from behind the building. He made his wobbly way to a black sedan a few yards away. Fumbling in his pocket, he finally brought out a set of keys. After a moment of leaning heavily against the car, panting, he managed to get the car door open and get inside.

The engine started with a roar. The car moved forward jerkily, stopped, reversed, went forward again. It slid behind the building and out of sight.

An exhaust plume billowed out from around the corner, steaming in the cold evening air. The engine idled quietly. A door opened and shut. There was another gunshot, and the cadence of the dogs' barking increased. After a half-minute the car door opened and shut again. The engine roared, and the car came out from behind the building, slid to a halt in the gravel and dirt, then started forward, the back tires spitting out a small cloud of shrapnel as it turned onto the frontage road and accelerated away.

The two Steller's Jays came back and circled overhead, passing over the building's roof, its crumbling sign that read "CAFE ... DINING CARS." They flew in a wide arc over the boarded up cafe 's parking lot, and the single car at its far end, fluttering their wings as they passed around the back of the place and over the body that lay behind it, slumped against the wall and staring, its gray pin-striped suit growing a dark burgundy bloom below the lapels. The birds decided that all was safe and landed skillfully atop the old sign.

HE drove blurry-eyed, with one hand stuck inside his coat and the other on the wheel. Shot. He'd been shot. He was bleeding. It wouldn't register-it seemed like someone else had been shot. Whoever the other guy was, he wasn't doing so great. He needed to get some help. No, no. He needed money. Getaway money. That was first. Cash, because he wouldn't be able to fence the stuff. Not quickly, anyway, and he had to be going now.

The car swerved dangerously close to the raised median strip, and he jerked the wheel, sending a bolt of pain through his chest. It wasn't so bad. Not like he had imagined. Where was he? He was on an overpass, crossing the freeway, heading up into some hills. He passed some fast food joints, right off to the side of the road. No good-too many lights, too close to the freeway, too easy for a highway patrolman to stop for a cup of coffee at just the wrong moment. He had to go further. See, he thought, I'm thinking straight. I'm closing the deal. We're practically safe already. He pushed on the gas pedal, and the car sped up into the hills.

SHE should have closed the shop hours ago. But then what? Get in her car and go home and listen to her father complain about his day. Why not just wait for the one or two customers that would come straggling in after dark, searching for just the right knick-knack to put on their shelf-a porcelain windmill with SOLVANG, CALIFORNIA written on it, a plate with a pastoral Danish scene hand-painted in blue. Some cheap thing to remember this quaint little tourist trap of a town.

She looked around the lonely shop. Everything was in order, everything bright and cheery. The cuckoo clocks ticked on the wall, their clicks and whirrs washing over each other in weird rhythms that would for a moment seem almost musical, then would dissolve into chaos.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored back of a shelf-a neatly-made up blonde dressed to look like a milkmaid, a scarlet curve of mouth, overlarge blue eyes.

"I look like some pedophile's dipshit fantasy," she said aloud.

There was a certain joy to saying nasty things in the clean, bright little gift shop.

"I hate stupid fucking lame-assed windmills."

The door chimes tinkled. She jumped, snapping her head around toward the door, the color rising in her cheeks.

The man came through the door unsteadily. He was pale, with blond hair that fell in a curl across one side of his forehead. His eyes had a funny gleam in them, and his cheeks were flushed. Like the red circles painted on a nutcracker's cheeks, she thought, and the association made her think for a moment that the gun in his hand was a toy. Then he raised it with a stiff, wooden arm, pointing it at her face. His mouth opened wide, as if he were going to scream at her, but the word that came out was small, and his voice had an almost childlike break in it.

"Money."

She backed around the glass counter, as if it could protect her. She felt strange-giddy, almost-the way you might feel if on a hot day you were suddenly struck by a water balloon. She was not afraid-they didn't usually shoot you, did they? And anyhow, she intended to give him the money. It wasn't hers, after all. But surely you were supposed to be afraid when someone stuck a gun in your face, weren't you?

He had stepped forward, and he bent toward her at the waist oddly for a moment, then straightened again, quickly, his eyes widening, the gun again coming level with her face. The arm that was not holding the gun was stuck inside his jacket, Napoleon-like. He was right across the counter from her now, and the gun wasn't more than a foot away from her nose. It swayed slightly in the air.

"Of course. Money. Here." She punched the "NO SALE" button on the register, and the drawer crashed open. At the same time, one of the cuckoo clocks started a blast of chirping, and she saw the man's arm swing toward it, puppet-like. There was a pop, and when she looked up, wood splinters were tumbling through the air. The shingled roof of the clock bounced off the counter and hit the floor. Her head jerked back to the man. He was blinking, not seeming to comprehend-and then a small smile crept into his eyes and crept its way down his face to the corners of his mouth. They were frozen-her mouth a softly compressed 'o', he with an odd, self-amused look on his face. Then, from the ruins of the clock a spring let go with a cartoonish "boiiing!" and bounced off a display of teacups. She started laughing, leaning against the wall and holding her stomach. He laughed too-his a small, whispered huffing sound, barely more than a whisper. Something between them had been shattered by the spring. She felt almost close to him.

She stopped laughing when his hand slid out from his jacket and came to rest on the counter, smearing the glass with blood.

Impulsively, she reached out and touched his hand. He pulled back from her, swaying unsteadily, swinging the pistol around toward her face again. Her fingers were stained with his blood.

HAD someone heard the shot? Would someone be coming? He hadn't been thinking when he'd done it. His thinking kept getting hazy. He bit the inside of his lip until it bled, and that helped-it brought the girl behind the counter into focus. Veronica. She looked like Veronica. Veronica standing in the doorway. Veronica laying on the couch, asleep from waiting, a glass ready to fall from her hand and shatter, Veronica. Why had she touched him? Why wasn't she scared? She stood there, looking at his blood on her fingers. And then-no, she couldn't have done that.

"Give me the money," he growled. Talking made little stabbing pains in his side.

She took her fingers out of her mouth and swallowed luxuriously. "You won't hurt me, will you?"

He wanted to cry. Why was she taking so long? Where was he? Coming in, he had glimpsed a shadowy windmill on the side of the road. There were Christmas lights in the trees along the streets. The buildings were strange and foreign. For a moment, getting out of the car, he had felt weightless, and had thought, illogically, that he was already dead. And now this-this milkmaid wouldn't just give him the fucking money. Yes, he wanted to say, yes I am going to hurt you. I am going to-but what was he going to do? He had a sudden vision of himself biting into the soft, white flesh of her neck, just below the jawline, but he didn't have the strength. Even the thought of it exhausted him.

He decided to shoot her, but the moment had passed. She was taking the money out, and putting it on the counter. What was she doing now? She was counting it.

"Put it in a bag."

She reached down and got a bag and started stuffing the money into it. He liked the way that her blonde hair fell across her eye and she brushed it away with her hand, automatically. Wasn't that a good sign? That he liked that? It seemed to mean that he wasn't dying. He wanted to push her down on the floor and prove to her that he wasn't dying.

The thought slid over him, black and ugly, that he didn't have the strength to drive the car out of here. He was feeling lightheaded-tired, terribly tired-it took everything out of him just to keep the gun leveled at the milkmaid's face. And he wasn't even sure how to get out of the place. And if someone had heard the shot-if someone had heard, then there would be police already on their way here. Some nosy county sheriff would poke his head in the door, maybe right now, or five minutes from now. Soon. Nervously, he glanced out the window. The street was empty. It was a weekday. It was very late. Perhaps nobody was close enough to have heard. But even the quaint, thatch-roofed building across the street seemed menacing. There could be someone within its walls on the phone with the cops even now, or maybe they had already called. Maybe they were watching him from the black behind the glass, waiting for the show of the sheriff shooting him dead and rescuing the girl. The cuckoo clocks on the walls were loud. He wanted silence, so that he could hear the sound of a car approaching.

SHE finished stuffing the money in the bag-a little more than four hundred dollars. The money seemed different now that it was out of the register. Inside the register, it hadn't seemed like real money at all-not like money that could be stolen, could be pushed into a pocket and walked out with. It had seemed like just paper in the register. Now it seemed like money again-anyone's money. Her heart had sped up, a little, looking at it. She wanted it for herself. But she picked up the bag and held it out to him.

He gestured with his gun. "You're coming with me."

She stared at him, still holding the bag out dumbly.

He gestured with the gun again. "You're going to drive my car."

She shook her head. "No."

His eyes rolled up into his head for a moment, and when they came back down, he screamed at her. "I will shoot you! Do you understand? I will shoot you in the face! I'll blow your goddamned brains out! Do you hear me? You are coming with me, and you will drive my car!" His entire body shook. She could see a small bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. A dark blue, angry vein showed itself at the side of his neck, like a worm under the skin. His eyes were wide and terrifying. She felt fear, then, for the first time. But it passed. And something else took its place.

"Okay," she said. "All right. Just don't hurt me."

He jerked his head toward the door and she started walking, slowly, holding the bag in her hands. She could see herself bolting with the money-see him shooting her dead, her falling forward onto the cobblestones, trying to breathe with a bullet in her lung. She pushed the glass doors open. The outside air was cool. She felt the barrel of the gun at the small of her back. His voice came from over her shoulder. "The black car-over there."

She nodded. She heard the sound of a passing car, blocks away, on the main street. She felt him tense up, pushing the gun harder into her back. They stopped. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. The sound of the car died away. Of course. It wouldn't be coming this way-and she realized that she didn't want it to. She wanted to see what would happen. The street was empty and silent, the little shops with their simulated thatch roofs, their bindingsvaerk walls, were all closed. There was no one around to stop it from happening.

HE waited for the sound of the car to die away and then shoved her forward. She did not protest. If she screams, he thought, I will shoot her. And then what? He looked down at his hand. It shook visibly. He was terrified. It's this place, he thought. He looked at the cobblestone sidewalk. There was no trash anywhere. Everything was perfectly clean, as if nobody lived here, as if nobody ever walked the streets. It wasn't right. He didn't want to die in this place. If I die here, he thought, I will never leave. He imagined himself as a phantom, trapped among the strange buildings, and shuddered.

They were at the car now. He jabbed at the milkmaid with the barrel of his pistol, and she opened the door and got in. She didn't seem to care what was happening to her. She didn't look at him. She slid behind the wheel and waited there, almost politely, until he had struggled into the passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition. He had learned to leave them there-you leave the keys in the ignition, the doors unlocked. He had known a man-it seemed like a thousand years ago-who had been shot to death during a robbery, because he had fumbled with his keys, trying to get his car unlocked.

Nervously, he glanced into the back seat. The bag was still there, of course.

When he turned back, he found her looking at him patiently.

"Where should I drive you?"

Was there even the tiniest quiver of fear in her voice? He could not be sure. He leaned back heavily in his seat. The pain was not bad, but he felt weak. So weak. He rested the gun in his lap, its little black hole of a barrel pointing at her. He wanted very much to go to sleep, but he knew that he should not.

"The freeway," he said, trying to put some strength into it.

She nodded, very businesslike, and started the engine.

SHE turned onto the main street and went west, toward the freeway. The town, for some reason, seemed unreal to her now. It looked so small and fragile from the car. It was like a scene inside a snow-globe, that could be destroyed simply by throwing it down on the ground. She wondered if she would ever see the town again. They shot past the Kronborg Inn. Someone had forgotten to take the Dannebrog down from its pole, and it fluttered limply in the night breeze. She found herself really seeing its red-and white cross for the first time in she didn't know how long. She had stopped really seeing the flag, because it had become so familiar. Now it practically burnt itself onto her eyes.

They were almost at the town's edge.

"Don't speed."

She looked at the speedometer. They were going sixty miles an hour. She let her foot off the gas. An odd twinge of guilt came over her; she was endangering him, and he was sick and hurt. She looked at him. His pale face was covered with tiny beads of sweat, like dew. He stared at her with bloodshot, exhausted eyes. The gun lay limp in his lap, not even pointing at her, seeming almost forgotten.

"Sorry," she said.

He blinked at her. "S'okay. Keep it under the ... the limit." He paused, and she saw him clench his teeth. She heard the squeak of them grinding together. His face twisted, and he bent over, his mouth opening, as if to vomit. But in a moment, he recovered, and, as if the pain had made him remember, he lifted the gun a little, pointing it at her once more. She saw him glance over at something in the rear seat. Suddenly he seemed a little stronger. He straightened a bit in his seat and shook his head from side to side.

There was nothing on either side of them but trees now, and the occasional turnoff to a farmhouse. A car passed them, going the other way. She could feel him tense up beside her, pushing a bit harder against the seat.

She was surprised at her own complete calm. She was not frightened of the gun he was pointing at her. She was not afraid at all of what lay ahead. She drove the car easily and surely. Her mind turned to her father-what would he be doing right now? Had he rung the shop yet? Had he started to worry about her? Probably, he was not even aware that she was late. Certainly he would never dream that she had been kidnapped. Nothing unusual ever happened in their stable, small world. Everything moved ahead, very orderly and neat. Even deaths in the family seemed to happen in order-the older, more distant relatives dropping off unobtrusively, their funerals always conveniently scheduled on a weekend. And they always died in the hospital, rather than being stabbed or shot or hit by a truck. So unlike the man beside her, whose life had led up to a bullet.

She was so lost in her thoughts that it took her minutes to notice the red flashing lights in the rear view mirror. She looked at the speedometer. Eighty-five. She looked over at her kidnapper-had he not noticed them yet? But he was unconscious, slumped against the passenger-side window. Or was he dead? She could not tell whether he was breathing. His pale face looked peaceful and vacant. The gun lay limp in the palm of his hand, which had fallen open. She glanced up at the mirror again. There was what he feared-what he was running from. But why was he running? She peered over her shoulder into the back seat. The bag was black, shaped like a little doctor's satchel in a quaint old movie. It was slightly open. And they glittered up at her from inside.  Hundreds of them-maybe thousands.

She stepped lightly on the brake, and guided the car, with exaggerated caution, toward the shoulder of the road.

THE black car pulled over and came to a halt, idling. The sheriff's car slid up behind it and stopped a few yards away from its bumper. An amplified voice boomed: "Turn off your engine." The engine of the black car shut down, leaving only the steady purr of the sheriff's car. The spotlight on the sheriff's car clicked on, flooding the interior of the black sedan with light, illuminating the head of the blonde driver, who sat very still-but not as still as the passenger, whose head rested against the side window. That one appeared to be asleep. The door of the sheriff's car clicked open, and the deputy got out. He was sharply dressed in polished engineer boots, well-pressed khaki slacks, a tan shirt, and a hat that looked more like a milkman's hat than a policeman's. The red lights atop his car flashed across the silver star over his left pocket.

He took two steps toward the black car, then stopped and returned to his vehicle, retrieving an aluminum clipboard from it, and bending over to read the license plate number of the car into the radio. He jotted the license plate number on the clipboard, and walked toward the black car again, stopping to bend down and pick at something on his boot-a piece of sticky white paper on the toe. He flicked the offending paper away and continued, shaking his head. He was a young man, with a slightly rounded face and a head of curly ash-blonde hair that seemed to be trying to escape from beneath his cap. He tapped the clipboard twice with the end of his pen, and smiled as he reached the driver's side of the car and bent down.

"Do you have any idea..."

His sentence was interrupted by two loud pops. He stumbled back, still bent over, then jerked upright, his hand clamping itself to the grip of the automatic in his belt. His upright jerk carried him away from the car. His hat came off of his head and dropped to the pavement, just across the white line that marked the shoulder. He took two stumbling steps, his weight shifting further and further onto his bootheels, until finally he went over backwards, and his head hit the pavement of the road with a loud "thunk," like a bowling ball dropping onto a lane. One of his booted feet kicked up into the air and cracked back down. He did not move again. A small, dark hole in his throat began to seep red, slowly.

The black car's engine started. It pulled out into the road, sped up to five miles an hour below the speed limit, and continued on its way.


PATRICIA ALAMEDA was born in London, and immigrated at a young age to California. She lives in San Francisco. This is her first published story, and it won't be her last--as long as she doesn't get sucked into an underwater cave and drown in the stupid ocean. She can be contacted at alameda@another.com.

Copyright (c) 2000 Patricia Alameda