“Popcorn? Thought of everything, didn’t they?”
“See? It’s the kind you cook in a pan.” I put the pan on the stove and began to tear open the foil wrapper to expose a block of golden corn fused together by butter. “Great stuff, this. When I was ten I nearly lost an eye making it. A piece of corn shot from the pan and hit me. Red-hot it was, too. I had to sit for an hour with a wet sponge pressed to my eye.”
Michaela laughed, bemused. “But popcorn at this time of the morning, Greg?”
“We’re on vacation, aren’t we? C’mon, break some rules. Let’s make popcorn and watch a movie.”
“Are you sure you aren’t crazy?”
I grinned and yattered away in a lighthearted way. But there was method to my madness. “Look at this, Michaela.” I showed her that the pan had a glass lid. “Now we can see the corn popping before our very eyes.”
She grinned. “You are mad, Valdiva. Now I’m going back to bed.”
“You can’t miss this. Marvel at how these little seeds become puffs of snowy white corn. Be amazed at how a block the size of a cigarette carton grows miraculously to fill the pan.”
“You’re nuts. I’m going back to sleep.”
“You’ll miss the popcorn!”
“Well, my loss.”
“Wonderful popcorn.”
“I don’t even like popcorn.”
“Of course you do. Everyone loves popcorn.”
“There are always pieces of corn that don’t get popped and you wind up cracking a tooth on it.”
“Michaela, my love-”
“You been drinking, Greg?”
“You lay on the couch, my darling. I’ll pop one piece through your red-rose lips one delicious morsel at a time.”
Her grin faded. “Greg, you’re starting to make me nervous.”
“Help me make popcorn, my love.”
“No, really… stop this, Greg.”
“I’ll stop on one condition?”
“What’s that?” She looked uneasy.
“Help me make the popcorn.”
“Greg-”
She looked ready to storm out of the kitchen. Could I blame her? I was acting weird.
“Michaela, listen, it used to be a big thing at home. Saturday evenings Mom would put up her feet after working all day. Chelle-that’s my sister-and I would wash up the supper things, then make popcorn together. It was a… a ritual, I guess you’d call it. We made the popcorn year in, year out. I must have made hundreds of pansful… Of course, I was always so curious to see the corn popping I’d take a little peak into the pan and bang! Hot corn would come flying out like machine-gun bullets.”
“Your mom must have loved popcorn.”
“As a matter of fact she didn’t. She always complained that there’d be an unpopped piece of corn that would chip a tooth.” I smiled. “But it was our ritual.”
“So making the stuff was the best part of it.”
“Absolutely.”
She gave a good-natured sigh. “OK, then. Let’s make popcorn.” She dug me in the ribs with her finger. “But no more weird stuff, right?”
“Right.”
“OK, start cooking.”
“Come close… closer, right up close to me.”
“Greg, I warned you.”
“You want to see the corn pop, don’t you?”
“No funny stuff, OK?”
I turned up the heat, then dropped the block of buttered corn into the pan.
“Don’t forget the lid, Greg. I’ve got two eyes and I want to keep it that way.”
She did stand close to me, but she kept shooting me looks that said loud and clear that she was suspicious of me. Maybe wondering what I’d do next. “See, the butter’s starting to melt.”
“Thrilling.”
“It’s bubbling now.”
“Exciting.”
“Are you humoring me, Michaela Ford?”
“I am, Valdiva. I could be in bed sleeping instead of watching-”
“Whoa, I think we have lift off. No… false alarm.”
“You have been drinking.”
“Hear it, hissing? Should be any second now that we… No. It needs to be hotter. I’ll give it more gas.” The first piece of corn popped. Through the glass I saw fluffy white erupt from the shell of the corn. “Don’t miss any of this, Michaela.”
“Greg?”
I put my arm around her waist and pulled her close to me so she could look into the pan through the glass lid.
“Greg, maybe we should talk about personal bound-aries. I don’t think-”
“Whoa, here it comes. Sounds like firecrackers, doesn’t it?”
“You are nuts. And you’re making me nervous, so-”
“Wow, here it comes.” As the clatter of popping corn swelled I still kept the fascinated look on my face as I gazed through the lid, but I whispered low enough to keep my voice beneath the sound of frying corn, “Michaela, humor me. Do you get the feeling Phoenix is listening to every word we say?”
To her credit she didn’t react. She fixed her eyes on the popcorn pan. “You thought it, too?”
“And watches us.”
“I don’t see any cameras.”
“Neither do I,” I whispered, still standing with my arm ’round her while grinning like a loon at the popping corn. “But think back to the decontamination procedure. The way he told us to move from one part of the room to the other suggested he could see us. Hey, there go a whole bunch of corn. How do they expand like that?”
“Search me.”
The popping of corn came in sporadic bursts like machine gun fire. We had to synch our conversation to the clatter of exploding corn to make sure Phoenix didn’t hear us over microphones that must be concealed nearby.
As the bang of corn grew louder again I said, “When we went through decontamination Phoenix was watching us.”
“And probably juicing himself watching our reactions as we stood there, scared half to death.”
“He didn’t warn us about the disinfectant spray or the cold water shower… There should be some more corn in there to pop.”
“There always is. Remember what I said about our teeth?” Once more the clatter of exploding kernels filled the kitchen. “Something isn’t right here, is it?”
“I feel like a peep show.”
“Those guys have been isolated in here for months. We might be their favorite TV show.”
“Possibly… You want salt on the popcorn… or they want something else from us.”
“Like what?”
“Who knows, but I’ll tell you something…” The popping paused for a second before restarting. “We’re unarmed; we depend on these bunker people for food and protection. I’m starting to feel we’re at their mercy.”
“So what do you propose?”
“Last night I found something written on a sheet of paper that could be useful.”
