Twiggy stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of the next town.
“Did you find a new one to look for?”
“Yeah! But it’s very different from any we’ve found yet. It’s a five/one.”
“Ahh, a challenge!”
“Is the one terrain too easy?”
“No, any challenging cache is worth adding to the count.”
“One thing I don’t like about it, people complain that it’s muggly.”
“That probably contributes to the difficulty level. You have to retrieve it without people noticing.”
“I don’t know if I want to do that.”
“Aw come on, we can at least go look at it.”
“We can look at it but I’m not exactly miss invisibility.”
“You don’t have to be invisible. You just have to be inconspicuous.”
“Did the station let you fill up this time?” I asked.
“No, it shut off at seventy-five dollars again, but it will get us to the cache.”
We took a complicated route to find the area the cache was hidden in. We ended up circling around and around a small downtown area.
“It appears to be in front of that building,” I said.
“Yeah, looks that way to me.”
“The logs are right. People everywhere.”
“Where can we park? It’s all metered and I don’t even see any open spaces.”
Three blocks outside the downtown area we found a parking spot in front of somebody’s house. We wouldn’t be gone long so we left the van there.
“These little towns are getting cuter and cuter,” I said. “The sidewalk is brick. The police station looks like a house. The post office only has one counter. The mailman walks his route.”
“When you grow up, would you rather live in a little town or a city?”
“I don’t know. I’m used to the conveniences of cities. I don’t know how I’d shop in a town with one small grocery store and a mom and pop dress shop. But cities don’t do things like this,” I said as we walked under hanging planters of flowers.
“I think the cache was to the right and then down a block and a half.”
“I think so, too.”
We turned the corner and found wide bricked sidewalks and open fronted restaurants. I scanned the street and saw that the next block, too, had a row of restaurants. Tables lined the sidewalk and it appeared the area was a social gathering place. We made one pass with Twiggy holding the GPS. We passed the cache and kept going, found a bench and I took the GPS.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “And there’s so many folks walking around I don’t want to take the time to search.”
“And it’s a five. How many times can we walk past a spot without making people suspicious?”
“I don’t know. It depends on if it’s the same people or different ones.”
We walked back down the street while I watched the GPS.
“Oh shoot,” I said as we walked past ground zero. “The only thing over there is a bank machine!”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“Well, if there’s one thing people do at an ATM it’s stand there for a minute and figure out banking problems. I need money. I’ll use the machine while you search.”
“But one thing ATMs have is security cameras.”
“Ooo, you’re right. Maybe small town ATMs are not as secure. Cameras cost money and they might not want to monitor every ATM in town. I’ll use the ATM and you tie your shoe so you can look around.”
We walked over to the machine and I took my time finding my bank card. I looked at the machine for a slot to slide my card into but it was taped over.
“This is one weird machine,” I said. “I thought it was out of order but it’s just plain weird.”
“Why?”
“Well, look at this. The slot has tape over it. If it was out of order it should display it on the screen. But even the screen is blank.”
Twiggy tapped the screen. It didn’t do anything but the machine rocked as if it was too light.
“It isn’t real,” he said. This seemed to give him a little confidence and he looked around for security cameras. “The only problem is we can’t claim a find without signing the log.”
“You mean this machine is the cache?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said casting a glance back at the sidewalk. A woman was standing there watching us. “Come on. We need to think about this. We’ll come back later.”
As we walked back to the busy sidewalk Twiggy told the woman, “It didn’t work for us, but it’s your turn.”
Unfortunately the whole time we were in the downtown area the restaurants got busier and busier. As the sun set and music began drifting over the shoppers and diners, the area took on more of a party atmosphere.
“Hey, I can blend in here,” Twiggy said. “I’ll buy. Let’s go join the crowd!”
“We’re here on business,” I said.
“Relax. We’re doing great. What do you want for dinner? I like the looks of that microbrewery. Have you ever tried local beers? They’re distinctive and it’s fun tasting different brews.”
“I’ve had a martini. Once.”
“Oh yeah. You do have your ID, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
“And you’re legal drinking age.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Are you afraid of what one beer might do to you?”
“No, but, maybe I should be.”
“They usually have good food too. Let’s go!”
We went to the microbrewery and waited in line for a table.
“How many in your party?” a woman asked. She was wearing shorts and a tight t-shirt that advertised the restaurant. The picture on the front showed a mountain man on a hilltop holding up a bottle of beer. There were snow capped mountains right across her own.
“Two,” Twiggy answered.
She led us to a tall table. I had to climb up onto the stool. The inside of the restaurant was decorated in used brick and there were posters of bottles of beer all over the walls. Flags were stapled to the ceiling. There was an elk head over the fireplace and a jackalope over the bar. As I looked around I discovered more stuffed animals. There was an armadillo on a shelf with the liquor bottles and an antelope trophy hanging above the other end of the bar. It wasn’t until I went to the restrooms to freshen up a bit that I noticed a bear climbing a telephone pole in a back corner of the brewery. When I got back to the table the waitress was just leaving.
“Water,” Twiggy pointed out. “And a taster tray on the way.”
“A taster tray of what?”
“Beer!”
“Twig…”
“Don’t worry! They are all only three ounces each. A sip is not going to kill you.”
“What if it turns out I don’t like beer?”
“Then there’s more for me! I recommend starting with the lighter colored ones.”
“Why?”
“The darker ones are richer, and they can be more bitter.” When the tray was set down on our table he chose one of the little glasses, held it up, and swished it a little. He set it down. He picked up another, swished it, smelled it. He picked up a third one and swished it, held it up to eye level and gazed through it watching the bubbles move. He set it down and picked up the second one. “Try this one.”
I took the little, round glass from him, gave him a questioning look and took a sip. It tasted… like I don’t know what. I hope I didn’t make a face at it, but I think I did based on his smile. I took another sip. It was a little better, but still not something I could think about enjoying.
“You’re funny, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What do you think of it?”
“What’s it supposed to taste like?”
“Beer! Here try this one. You’ll see why I started you out with the lighter one.”
I sipped it and this time I did make a face.
“You don’t like it?”
“Ugh, no, not that one.”
He took the little glass from me and drank it down.
“Ahhhhh, it’s been a while.”
“How much is too much?” I asked.
“Six three ounce glasses? I could drink all of them and not get a buzz.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I didn’t want him to drink all those and then drive. So I decided it was my moral responsibility to give it my best try. I picked up the first one I had tried and took a bigger sip. I was definitely not a natural born beer drinker. I decided maybe sipping wasn’t the way beer was meant to be drunk. I took a bigger swallow. Ugh! Why did people drink this stuff?
The waitress came back to take our order and I hadn’t even had a chance to think about food.
“You go first,” I told Twiggy. “I haven’t found a menu yet.”
“It’s written on the blackboard over the bar,” he said.
“Okay, order slow, and I’ll find something.”
It took him about twenty seconds to give the waitress his order which included a larger beer. I threw a mental dart at the menu and it landed a few inches from the blackened salmon, so I ordered that.
“Wow, you’re going all out,” Twiggy said.
“Why? What did I do?”
“Nothing. I’m glad to see you getting something you like.”
I looked back at the menu and realized I’d ordered a twenty-five dollar dinner. I was shocked and I almost apologized but knew Twiggy wouldn’t want me to. I made a mental note to read the menu very carefully before the waitress could show up next time. I went back to the beer. If Twiggy had his own beer I didn’t want him to drink all these, too. Maybe if I held my breath.
When the first sample was gone and I reached for the second Twiggy said, “So you like it?”
“Not yet,” I said. “What is it?”
“Hops. I like this one,” he said. “It’s smoother but it still has a nice hoppy taste to it. It’s not as bitter as some dark beers are. Want to try it?”
“I’ll save that one for you, since you like it.”
“I’ve got another one coming,” he said.
“We need to start thinking about this geocache,” I reminded him. “Before we are unable to walk to it. We left the van in front of those people’s house thinking we’d be gone ten minutes and now it’s been nearly an hour. We still need to eat, find the cache and walk back.”
I managed to drink two of the little glasses of beer and didn’t want to think about trying to drink the darker ones.
“Don’t they have anything to drink that tastes like normal food?” I asked.
“Okay, so you’re not into beer. If you like sweet I suggest a hurricane. That’s a nice tame drink. If you like sour maybe you’d like a margarita. They’re mixed drinks. A hurricane usually has pineapple, maybe a little mango or orange juice and a touch of rum. A margarita has a lemon or lime base and tequila.”
When the waitress came back he ordered me a hurricane and I had to admit it was very good. A nice starter drink, I think is what Twiggy called it. The salmon was good. I’d never had salmon before. I wasn’t sure I’d ever have it again at twenty-five dollars a plate.
“So if that machine over there is not a real bank machine how do we get the geocache out of it?” I asked.
“Well, first we have to wait for a lot of people to clear out. And they aren’t going to do that any time soon. I suggest after we eat we find a place to stay, then come back and see if things are winding down.”
Two of the restaurants had live bands playing and it was confusing having oldies rock coming in one ear and light jazz in the other. We were closer to the rock band so I tried to focus on the rock music. However, the night was just heating up. It might be a while before we could approach the ATM again.
Unfortunately, a hurricane tastes so much like juice that it’s easy to drink one fast. When the waitress asked me if I wanted another one Twiggy said yes.
“Maybe the keypad is electronically rigged so when you put in the right pin number it opens up.”
“That would be one high tech cache, but I suppose it is possible.”
“Maybe it’s a magnetic hide-a-key placed just out of sight.”
“Then why use a fake ATM? They could just use a real one.”
“Maybe… it’s not the machine at all. Maybe the machine is a decoy.”
“A red herring.”
“I thought a herring was a fish.”
“It is, and it’s a decoy geocache.”
“Why would anybody have a decoy geocache?”
“To make it more frustrating.”
“They don’t need to make geocaching more frustrating. It’s already frustrating. It’s just that finally finding the cache overcomes the frustration.”
The salmon had some kind of Cajun seasoning on it and I ended up drinking the second hurricane to help calm down the spiciness of the dish. I wished I knew what seasonings were on the vegetables because someday I might have to learn how to cook. My mother had tried to teach me a time or two and I could make a grilled cheese sandwich and fry an omelet, but I had a lot to learn.
“How long do you think it’ll take before we can even get close to the machine?” I asked.
“Hours. Last call is 2 a.m.”
“Then we have time to try something new!” I said.
Twiggy looked kind of leery of me trying something new after two little beers and two hurricanes, but he was willing to go along and see what it was. We paid for our dinner and drinks and walked out into the street.
“Have you ever done the twist?” I asked him.
“Leave it to you to know how to twist,” he said. “When was that dance popular?”
“I don’t know. My parents taught me.”
“I suppose you swing dance, too.”
“Only to big band music. But you can twist to anything.”
“You really want to pay the cover charge to go in there?” he asked.
“Why go in? We can hear the music perfectly fine a block away.”
He gazed up and down the street. Young people were walking and chatting and stopping to talk to people eating on the patios.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ll never see these people again in my life. Who cares what they think?”
We found a spot near the restaurant with the band playing and I showed him how to twist. He had seen it on old movies, of course, but he was still amused to see it in this day and age in the middle of a sidewalk while we were trying to geocache. He hesitantly tried to copy me and we were soon laughing at each other. I wasn’t good at Twisting even when I was sober. I didn’t feel drunk but I sure couldn’t balance as well as I did when my parents taught me the dance. Twiggy looked absolutely silly doing the Twist. His knees and elbows went this way and that as he tried to keep time with the music. I lost track of the music in an effort to remain upright. It didn’t take long for other people to start staring. After we began laughing at each other people thought it looked like fun and they tried it, too. Those who just liked dancing chose other dances, some of which my parents definitely would not have approved of, and people were dancing all over the sidewalks. Pedestrians had to cross the street to continue walking to their destinations.
“How long until 2 a.m.?” I asked.
“Three more hours.”
“We can’t stay here that long. I’ll pass out.”
“Let’s find a nearby motel and take a nap. We can set an alarm and come back later.”
“Okay.”
We left all the dancing people behind and walked to the van, but by the time we found it I was feeling very fuzzy headed and I had developed a headache that was trying to take over any logical thinking.
“Let’s just sleep here,” I said. “My head is going to explode. I don’t think we should be driving and we have the mattress in back. I know I’ll miss my shower but right now I don’t care.”
“If you’re feeling that bad you might need a bathroom real quick,” he said. “We won’t go far.”
He seemed to be experienced at finding motels. Each town appeared to have an area near the city limits sign that had motels right off the first exit. Older motels could be found around town but the town limits was a good place to look for a room at most hours of the day or night.
I waited in the van while he booked a room.
“Okay, easy does it,” he said when he opened the van door and helped me down. He threw a few things into one of my boxes and carried it upstairs. I followed him willing the lights to suddenly go out. He opened the door and I flopped down on the bed, curled up on my side, and covered my eyes.
“No, no, not yet,” he said. He put down the box, rummaged around in it and then went to the rest room. I heard the water running and he came back with some pain relievers and a plastic cup of water.
“Up,” he said. “Take this.”
“Why do I have to stand up to do this?” I asked as he began pulling the covers back. When the bed was open he took the glass, sat me back down and took off my shoes. “Sleep on this side. The bathroom is right there,” he said pointing.
“I think I can find the bathroom,” I said as if it should be obvious finding a bathroom wasn’t the most difficult feat in the world.
“You might need it faster than you think. Try to get to sleep.”
“No problem,” I said as I flopped down on the bed again.
I would have been out like a light, except that something wouldn’t let me. Twiggy wasn’t sleeping. He undressed except for a t-shirt and underwear. Then he snuggled up to me, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was intentionally staying awake and occasionally he would run his hand up and down my arm. It was distracting.
“Relax,” he said quietly. “I’m right here.”
“I know, but you’re not sleeping. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I…” he thought for a moment. “I’m sorry, Gabby, that I did this to you.”
“No worries. Just go to sleep. When is the alarm set for?”
“Two-thirty.”
“Arg, okay. Sleep.”
“If you feel too bad at two-thirty we can skip it.”
“Okay, now get a little sleep.”
He was quiet but his hand continued to occasionally caress my arm. Right before I fell asleep his arm wrapped around me and his fingers fiddled with the buttons on my shirt.
Like Twiggy expected it didn’t take me long to need a bathroom and I stumbled bleary eyed into the room, did my business in the dark and stumbled back. I noticed that Twiggy was not in bed, or anywhere else in the room. My head was still pounding so I went back to bed and fell asleep. He gently woke me up at two-thirty.
“Gabby? Gabby? Do you want to go give it a try?”
“Ooohh man. Why two-thirty?”
“Never mind. I’ll let you sleep.”
“No, it’s okay. The mission comes first, right?”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“Whatsa mission worth if you don’t have a little misery invested in it?” I asked as I rolled out of bed.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“I’ll survive.”
“I’ve got a flashlight but hopefully we won’t have to use it. If the cops question us don’t slur.”
“Okay. Am I slurring now?”
“Not as much as I expected. How’s your head?”
“It still hurts but it’s better than it was two hours ago.”
“Good. Here, shoes.”
I put my shoes on, but any movement at all caused my head to throb. Hopefully this find would be quicker than I thought it would.
“Read the whole description before we leave. All the hints, logs, everything. It might be hard to do when we get there.”
“Right.”
It was easy to drive downtown and all the parking places were empty. Twiggy pulled in and put the van in park. He grinned. “Ready for a cache withdrawal?”
“Ready.”
I tried to move as little as possible as I followed Twiggy over to the ATM. We had to turn on the flashlight to get our bearings.
“Do you think a PIN will open it?”
“Remember the description said to look around and we’d find everything we needed.”
“Great, so we get to look like bank robbers sneaking around a bank machine.”
First we looked at the machine itself. It was obviously the geocache because on the back side of it was a big green sticker proclaiming it to be a geocache.
“Well, we’re in the right spot. Now to open it.”
We began punching in random PINs and hitting enter, but it was obvious the electronics in the machine were not working. Next we found a door with a fancy combination lock on it.
“Ever broken into a safe before?” Twiggy asked.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“We need numbers.”
“They said look around and we’d find what we needed.”
“Okay so look around for any one or two digit numbers that stand out to you.”
We had to turn on the flashlight to look for clues and when we did we heard human voices. They sounded like they were down the street so we continued searching for numbers.
“There’s an 8!” I said.
“Good find. I wonder if the letters mean anything.”
“I don’t know but the 8 is different than the letters.”
“This is the 2050 block of Stater Street. Maybe the fact that it is stating something means the 20 and 50 are in the combination.”
We ended up finding more numbers than we needed. In the end we had 08, 20, 50, XI, XLV, and VII.
“The roman numerals are just plain foreign in this setting. I’m ruling out the 20 and 50 as part of the natural surroundings.” Then he started mumbling to himself. “Just think geocaching, forget about computer languages. No octal or hexadecimal or binary or twinary.”
“What’s twinary?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just made it up. Okay, let’s try 07, 11, and 45. The Roman numerals are bound to be the right ones.”
He tried 07, 11, 45, then 11, 07, 45, then 45, 07, 11.
“If this is a real combination lock from a real bank it might have four numbers,” I said.
“I can’t even get three to work.”
“Of course not, if four are needed. Hold on, I’m trying online.”
“Now who’s the geek?”
It was slow going but we finally found a video that showed how to open a bank vault and it did indeed require four numbers.
“But before you pull out all your hair worried about the nearly infinite number of combinations that are possible I’m wondering if there was a clue in the description. Didn’t it say something about the little ones following the big ones? If that’s true then we have to follow the instructions in the video but use the numbers in reverse order.”
It still took a few tries because the lock was touchy. We had to spin the dial so many times before we turned it back to the first number and then go around twice before going back to the second number. I don’t know how bankers ever get money out of the safe if it was that hard to figure out. Finally we heard a slight click and Twiggy tried moving the latch and it worked! I clapped enthusiastically for him. Even that hurt my head. Twiggy opened the door and inside were about a dozen spiders.
“Aieeee!” I cried backing away from the ATM.
Twiggy gingerly pulled out the container and tossed it on the ground scattering spiders everywhere. We took the plastic shoe box further along the wall to be more out of sight and farther from the spiders.
“We did it! We got the cache!” I said excitedly. “Wow! Travel Bugs galore!”
“People must think this is a pretty safe cache since you need to be an experienced geocacher to get to the box.”
“We should take a few. I’ll drop them in caches when I go home.”
“Okay, which ones do you want?”
“I’ll take the Drama Queen one. Meredith will like that one. And… the one that has the teddy bear on it. I’ll have to find a big cache to put that one in. Maybe I can get my family interested in finding it.”
We signed the log and traded for some of the trinkets. I ended up with a key chain from the micro brewery. In spite of my joy at finding the cache I really felt like I should go back to the motel and sleep as long as I could. So we closed the box, put it back into its spidery home, closed the door and spun the dial.
“We got the cache! We found it!” I said as we headed back toward the van. As soon as we stepped back onto the street I was yanked backwards and a knife was pressed to my throat.
“Hand over the cash or the girl gets it,” a rough voice said behind me.
“We don’t have any cash!” Twiggy said.
“You think I’m deaf? I heard you plain as day say that you got the cash,” the punk said.
“We really need a better word for cache,” I said.
“Shut up! Don’t make a move! He knows what I want,” the crook growled as he jerked me around.
Twiggy reached into his pocket and brought out a small wad of bills.
“Don’t give it to him!” I said. “We need that!”
My head was pounding and my stomach was roiling with the tension and violence of the situation. I could feel myself turning green.
“Let her go and you can have it all,” Twiggy said.
“Toss it on the ground,” the man ordered.
“Come get it,” Twiggy taunted.
What was he doing?!
“Toss it on the ground or the knife goes in,” the mugger sneered.
Just then the contents of my stomach suddenly reached escape velocity. My head was pounding so painfully that I couldn’t focus and my stomach was roiling.
Twiggy tossed the bills on the ground and the man let me go. He stepped forward just as I lost it and a stream of hurricane, beer, and salmon hit the man in the back as he reached down to pick up the money.
“Ugh!” the thug said in mild shock at the mess all over his backside.
“Gabby! Run!” Twiggy shouted as the man bent to retrieve the money. He hit the mugger over the head with the flashlight and kicked him in the face as he was going down. “Run!”
I staggered away toward the van but I didn’t get far before I retched again. When my stomach was relieved of its contents I felt much better. Even my head settled down a little. It took Twiggy a few minutes to catch up to me but he came running up behind, unlocked the van and made sure I got in before running around to the other side. He started up the van, threw it into gear, and drove down the street punching 911.
“Man down in front of the Bittercreek Steakhouse,” he said. “Police needed quick. He tried to rob two college students.” He hung up and said, “Let them figure it out. If we stick around they’ll want to know what we were doing there.”
“But, we needed that money,” I said.
“Who says he got the money?” He pulled the bills out of his pocket. They looked a bit damp and I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch any of them.
“How did you get them back?” I asked.
“I know a few things about self defense,” he said smugly. “I bet he’s still there when the police arrive.”
He parked at the motel and we slid out of the van. I was wired from the mugging but my head still hurt. I followed Twiggy to the hall and into the elevator. As soon as we were out of the public eye he wrapped me in a hug.
“You cannot imagine how scared I was seeing you held at knife point.”
“I was a little scared, too.”
“Thanks for providing a distraction.”
“Gee, thanks. Actually I felt too rotten to have time to be scared.”
“Thanks for running when I told you to.”
“I was too sick to be of much help.”
“No worries. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, though I think we should get some sleep. We’re going to be useless tomorrow.”
“Gabby, I don’t know what I would have done if that guy had hurt you.”
“Let’s not dwell on that. We need sleep.”
“Okay,” he said as he ran his hands up and down my arms. “Okay, sleep. But first a hug.”
“My hero,” I joked, though I really didn’t know how funny it was. I hadn’t seen what he did after I left.