The War of All Wars Page 38

  After the chorus line was over, amidst the beat that slowly faded away, E stayed right where he was crouched on the floor, and said, “I’m going to slow down the tempo for this next song, for all you rock-and-roll lovers out there, and also so I can catch my breath. Trust me, any and all true fans of mine out there will not only love this song, yet have it committed to heart. Whooooooo!”

  “Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” the crowds called out.

  In the end, E performed all eight songs, in which all of them were “unbelievably amazing” in Baltor’s opinion. Suffice it to say that it felt like “a blur” in how quick the night seemed to go…especially after Baltor had taken off his shirt, and spun the prismatic lights during E’s second-to-final song, “Beneath it all.”

  As E performed his final song, still another rap group joined him in the chorus lines…once over, amidst all the cheering and whooping, he introduced, “Let’s put it up for Crucial Bones!”

  Just as ballistic, the crowds cheered as the new rappers began with their latest song, in which E of course jubilantly joined in with the ad-libs and the chorus line. Once his part in the show was over, which was when the very next song began, he again waved to everyone on the stage, exited and watched from the sidelines as the new group of rappers commenced.

  Once the show was over, nearly an hour later, and nearly five-dozen people (including the entertainers) were ready—all VIP—they all followed James and E to the large backstage area, designated as “the after show.”

  There, they “whooped it up with the other rappers” to the early morning hours.

  Unfortunately for Baltor, however, he never really got another chance to talk to E alone as the man was busy all night long chatting with his fans and fellow rappers—finally, the time came when Nadia said, “We’re so tired. Can we go real soon?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Baltor said. “Let me say bye to E.”

  “Us too,” Reva cooed—the three walked up to where E sat amongst two dozen people, relaying some type of humorous story, as all were laughing hysterically.

  “Hey, guys,” E said while still laughing a bit. “Having a great time?”

  “Yeah,” the three answered—Baltor added a second later, “but we got to get going…the girls are tired.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad. So do you still want those books?”

  “Yeah,” Baltor said. “Is there any way I can just get your phone number, and get a hold of you tomorrow with my address? I’m in between homes right now.”

  “Umm, yeah, sure,” E said.

  Immediately Reva was “on the ball” as she pulled her phone out—before revealing his number, E added, “now I have one of the new ‘universal phones,’ so all you have to do is dial 0-1-327-2734. And that’s it. Cool?”

  “Cool…” Baltor said. Reva shut her phone a second later.

  “Well, man,” E said, while walking over and extending his hand out. “Have a safe trip home tonight.”

  “Thanks, bro,” Baltor said just before he shook his hand. Once over a second later, the girls next gave E a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Following, Baltor and the girls made their way for the exit.

  Only seconds after stepping outside—still revealing the night skies—Reva opened up her phone, and began dialing a number.

  Baltor asked, “Who are you calling?”

  “A cab to get us to the apartment. Do you just want to sleep over at our place tonight?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Baltor said. “That’s cool.”

  “Great!” Nadia said.

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived back at the girls’ apartment—not surprising to Baltor, five minutes earlier, the girls had already fallen asleep.

  While lightly shaking the both of them, Baltor said, “We’re home, guys…time to get up now so you can go to bed.”

  “What?” Reva sleepily asked.

  “You’re home now…listen, I changed my mind. I’m going to go to my room. Just call my room right after you guys wake up…okay? I really need to talk to you right as soon as you first wake up, as I got another great idea for fun…but I will leave that ‘a surprise.’ Okay?”

  “Okay,” Nadia answered. “Wait. I don’t have the number of the penthouse suite, and it will really sound suspicious if I am calling and asking for the number, especially since everyone there knows my voice. So that is not such a good idea…here’s a good idea. Take my phone for now…we’ll call you on it through Reva’s phone. Okay?”

  With that, the girls gave him a tight hug and kiss, before they handed over sixty rubles to the cabdriver, and exited the cab.

  The cabdriver henceforth drove Baltor back to his hotel—there, he exited the car and entered the front doors. Though it was nearly three in the morning, a large group of nine beautiful women sat around on the lounge seats, and looking bored—already most of them had begun to look admiringly at Baltor.

  Deciding he was done with people for now, he ignored them all as he made his way to the elevator, slid the card in, waited for the elevator to go down, and entered when it did open—the mirror revealed that all of the women were staring hardcore right at him.

  One second before the door closed, Baltor threw up a friendly wave of his hand. Before that second had ended, eight hands were waving back. After making it back into the suite, and looking through all the common areas, he saw that Trendon was nowhere to be seen—he opened the door and peeked just his head inside. His body could be seen breathing up and down under the blankets in the nearly pitch-black room.

  After silently shutting the door, Baltor went into his bedroom—even though he wasn’t physically tired, he wanted to escape from this reality and meditate all he had learned since arriving to Earth…a whole lot. So that is exactly what he did, lying in his own bed with the lights out…before he knew it, he had zonked out.

  Upon awaking at 12:18 in the afternoon, per the alarm clock, Baltor abruptly sat up in bed, pulled out the phone that was now slightly vibrating every thirty seconds in his pants pocket, and gazed at out—on the top screen, it revealed, “3 missed calls.”

  As he had witnessed Nadia use the phone a few times the night prior, he opened the lid and gazed at the very same message on the inside of the lid—underneath that message read a much smaller message, “See missed calls.”

  He pushed the appropriate button, which instantly revealed that two of the missed calls had come from Nadia’s phone, of which both had voicemails—the earliest phone call had come from someone named “Rudolph” at 8:04 a.m., and had no voicemail.

  Baltor clicked the voicemail button—a second later, Reva’s voice said gleefully, “Hey Baltor—it’s Reva!” In the background he heard Nadia’s voice interrupt, “And Nadia—just calling you like you told us too. Give us a call whenever you’re up and get this message…bye!”

  After the electronic voice operator had given him a small list of options of that to do with the voicemail, Baltor pushed “one,” which deleted it from the phone’s memory banks. The second message then began, also from Reva, “Hey Baltor—it’s us again…it’s noon and we haven’t heard from you yet…you must be passed the hell out, yes? Well, give us a call as soon as you’re up, please—oh, one more thing, Nadia and I are on the schedule tonight, so if we meet up, it will only be able to be for a couple hours tops, as we have to work at seven tonight…okay? Give me a call…muah!”

  Again, Baltor pushed the one button, in order to delete the message—once deleted, he pushed the callback button, which instantly caused the phone to begin to ring.

  Two rings later, the phone was picked up, and Nadia greeted, “Hey Baltor—how are you today?” She sounded wide awake and chipper.

  “Great…I passed out a little longer than I thought I was going too…just woke up about five minutes ago.”

  “No problem. So what was your surprise? I got Reva with me right now…she’s listening too.”

  Nadia greeted, “Hey Baltor—muah!”

  “Okay, muah back,” Baltor said, “I know it’s r
eally-really-really short notice and all, but I was wondering if you girls could perhaps get the rest of the week off until next Monday night?”

  “I honestly don’t think so—why?” Nadia was the first to ask.

  “Because I want to travel and explore the world until then—with you two girls at my side—it’ll be tons of fun! My mentor called me earlier and said that we won’t be able to start business off until next Tuesday, so that means I’m free to do whatever until then. And what I really want to do is to explore the histories of this world—I want to go see the Mayan ruins near Cancun, Mexico for sure.”

  “Well,” Reva answered with a whole lot of doubt in her voice. “It does sound like a ton of fun, but I really don’t know if we’re going to be able to make that happen…two girls getting off work from the hotel during the same week is going to be very-very-very difficult to say the least.”

  Baltor suggested, “Listen…try bribing a couple of your co-workers with a thousand rubles each, as well your boss, to let you go. Furthermore, I will help pay this next month’s rent.”

  “Okay,” Nadia said most-excitedly in the background, “We will make some calls. And when we get our answer, hopefully yes, we will call you!”

  Baltor replied with an ear-to-ear smile, “Perfect—call me when you do get an answer, but I am willing to go as high as three thousand rubles for each person you try, though start off with one thousand. Also, let me get E’s number from you right away—I want to talk to him.”

  “Okay, hold on,” Reva said. A second later, she asked, “do you have a pen?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “The number is 0-1-327-2734.”

  “Thanks,” Baltor said. He repeated back the numbers, for verification, and then asked, “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” both girls said simultaneously.

  “Oh, one more thing to let you know before I go, and that is that I’ll be calling E from the hotel’s phone, as I heard you say you don’t have free daytime service.”

  “Thanks again,” Reva said, “Bye.”

  “Bye…”

  After clicking off the phone and setting it on the bed next to him, Baltor pulled out his driver’s license and looked at it for the very first time. Fortunately, it revealed his name to be his own, yet surprisingly, right under his name it read, “123 Broadway St., Jackson, Mississippi, 39201”.

  After doing “a double-take” to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, and seeing that all the info still read exactly the same, Baltor sighed aloud in wonderment, “Huh…I wonder if maybe this address is an additional place I should check out sometime this week? Maybe for an additional reason than just getting my new books from E?”

  Just then, his sleuthing thoughts were interrupted as the phone began to ring—looking over the phone’s screen, he saw it was Reva or Nadia calling.

  Right away, he opened the lid, clicked the green button, and asked, “Yes?”

  With quite a bit of excitement, Reva said, “Well, we’re one-third of the way there! I just got done talking to my boss, and for three thousand rubles, she will—this one time—let us slip. That is, if we can get two people to fill our shift…call you back!”

  Without even giving him a chance to say “bye,” she hung up the phone—Baltor couldn’t help but laugh to himself one single time.

  Realizing that he was still feeling a bit grimy from last night, he rose out of bed, headed for the bathroom, and entered—right away he began to take a nice hot shower. Once done with that, five minutes later, he wrapped a towel around himself before he began to groom his hair with a comb.

  For the first time in a very long time, he began to examine himself closely, especially his hair that had grown very long yet hung about. Perhaps a minute later, Baltor made the decision to shave off the goatee, so he picked up the packaged set of razorblades, opened the package, took out a blade and began to shave off his all his facial hair, while only using running water as a lather.

  A minute later, Baltor looked amongst the box of other goodies that all sat next to the sink—stuffed inside the box were cans of hairspray, bottles of skin lotions and hair gels, scissors, black rubber bands, barrettes, etc.

  After applying the entire small bottle of skin lotion all over his face and body, he next combed out his hair—following, he tightened it all into a ponytail on the back of his head, and laced the gold hoop around it.

  Once everything looked perfect about his hair and face, he next headed back for his bedroom, and opened up his largest suitcase. Lying on the very top, wrapped in a very thin plastic, rested a white shirt that contained all these other qualities: made of a very thin cotton, V-neck in the front and hoodie in the back, in which this hoodie had two shoestrings handing from the borders, and finally and most importantly to Baltor, it looked quite sporty!

  After picking it up and ripping off the plastic that covered it, he simultaneously checked for any loose threads…when none were found, ten seconds later, he put it on. Once so, he looked back down into the suitcase, observing a pair of light gray pants, also wrapped in plastic. These pants had been neatly folded in half and hung on a hanger—ten seconds later, those pants were on his body, which fit perfectly as did the shirt.

  Stacked to the side of the suitcase were seven pairs of brand-new socks, and four pairs of shoes for different occasions, as some were formal and some were sporty. After donning a pair of white-colored sandals that even had elegantly designed peepholes here and there, and walking back and forth for a few feet, he realized that these shoes fit perfectly and proved to be very comfortable.

  It was then that he remembered that Reva’s phone was in his other pants pocket.

  After pulling out the phone and throwing the pants into a laundry hamper nearby, he gazed at the external lid of the phone—no phone calls had come in. Not even a second later, as he was standing in the bathroom with the large mirror in it, he decided to give himself “one final inspection.”

  A minute later, he came to his final decision, which was “yes.”

  With that, he exited the bathroom before he made his way to the phone. Once there, he picked it up and dialed the numbers “0-1-327-2734.”

  Right away, the phone began to ring…five seconds and four rings later, E’s voice greeted, “Hey, this is E Main. I can’t get to the phone right now, but please be sure to leave a message and I will get a hold of you as soon possible. Thanks and have a great day—beep!”

  “Hey E, this is B—from yesterday. I know you’re busy and all, so I’ll just make this message brief. Here’s my full name and address to send your books: Baltor Elysian. 123 Broadway St., Jackson, Mississippi, 39201. If I like it, which I’m sure I will based off the fact that I’m now a huge musical fan of yours, I will be sure to contact you, perhaps even as an investor, if possible…after all, I have a lot of—”

  Just then, the electronic operator on the other line, revealed, “You have run out of time on your message. Press one if you want to hear your message. Press two if you want to send your message. Press three if you want to leave a numeric message. Or press four if you want to re-record your verbal message. Thank you for using universal.”

  Baltor pressed “one.”

  He heard his electronic voice play back the entire message. Following that, the electronic operator said, “Press one if you want to hear your message. Press two if you want to send your message. Press three if you want to leave a numeric message. Or press four if you want to re-record your verbal message. Thank you for using universal.”

  This time, Baltor pressed two—a second later, the operator confirmed, “Message sent—thank you for using un—”

  The operator did not get to finish as he had already hung up the phone. Only a second later after this phone call was over, the phone began to ring—the lid read, “Nadia.”

  He opened the lid, and after putting the phone next to his ear, he asked, “Hello?”

  With a whole lot of excitement, even more than he had heard earlier, Reva declared
, “Hey, Baltor…we’ve got one girl so far who has agreed to the deal—for one thousand, five hundred rubles! Talk to you later…bye.”

  Again, before he could respond, she had hung up—and again, he laughed out while shaking his head from side to side.

  After breathing out a smile, he took a seat at the game chair, flipped on the machine, and put on the headgear—once everything felt comfortable, he again chose the same game he had played yesterday, “Forgotten soldiers…”

  Twenty minutes into the action-packed game, now fighting in the country of Iraq, Reva’s phone began to ring—without any delay, he hit pause on the joystick, took off the headgear, picked up the phone, and greeted, “Hello?”

  Screaming into the phone, both girls squealed, “Guess what…we’ve got our second girl—whooo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

  “Whooooooooo hooooo,” he responded back with as much enthusiasm. “So when can you girls be packed and over here?”

  Nadia answered, “In two hours we will be at your room, camouflaged of course, as we didn’t say we were going with our penthouse guest…so where are we going first, and how are we getting there?”

  “I saw a commercial for a plane…the fastest way to travel. Is there an airport in this city?”

  “Of course there is, silly…it’s called Pulkovo Airport.”

  “Awesome,” Baltor replied, “So where we’re going to first is Cancun, Mexico. Besides going to the beach, which I heard has crystal-clear blue waters, I want to see the Mayan pyramids, and their historical monuments and artifacts. After that, I haven’t yet decided, but we’ll figure it out. By the time you guys get in here in two hours, I should have our first flight booked. Okay?”

  Nadia said, “Okay—see you soon.”

  “Okay, bye,” he said.

  “Bye.”

  After hanging up the phone and putting it into his front pocket, he walked back for the hotel’s phone, picked it up, and pushed “0” for the operator—after four rings, a woman’s voice said, “Saints’ Hotel Operator, this is Shezna, how may I help you?”