Echoes of a passage not taken

Footfalls echo in the memory,
Down the passage which we did not take,
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
T. S. Eliot

Thunk. 

Mart jumped.  The square of light from the trap door above them disappeared, and the cellar was plunged into darkness as the trap door closed above them. A faint metallic click told him the bolt had been shot.  They were locked in the cellar. 

“Dammit, Mart!  I should never have let that painting out of my sight.”  There was a harsh note in Diana’s voice that Mart had never heard before.  He had been easing the zipper of her left boot down in order to examine her injured ankle while they waited for Natasha and Max to bring back the first-aid kit stashed in the rental car.

“Di, you were – are – hurt.  I thought it was best to let Max and Natasha fetch the first-aid kit so I could strap it up for you,” Mart tried to defend himself.

“I knew that bitch was going to betray us,” Diana hissed. 

Mart’s mind was still trying to process what had happened.  “Natasha?  You think she betrayed us?  Why?”

“Yes, Natasha.  She’s after the painting and always has been.  I need my flashlight.”  Diana began to crawl away, reaching out and sweeping her hand across the floor to locate the flashlight she’d dropped when she tripped on the steps.  “Go see if you can find a light switch,” she directed Mart.

“I’m not doing a damned thing until you tell me what’s going on.”  Mart was firm.  “There’s something going on here that I don’t know.  And you’ve got to tell me.”

“It’s my job, Mart.”  Diana was unyielding.  “I can’t talk about it.”

“Maybe if you’d told me about it when this all started, we wouldn’t be in this fix right now.”  Mart was getting angry himself.

“Because you could have saved the day for poor little helpless Di, like a knight in shining armor – just because you’re a man?”

“Stop it, Di!  You know – you should know – that’s not what I’m about.”  Mart had found the light switch, and he flipped it up just as Diana pressed the button on her flashlight and shone it directly at him.   He put a hand in front of his face to shield it from the light.  “Look, it’s perfectly obvious you’re more than just an art forgery expert.  You don’t have to tell me what your real role is, but we need to work together if we want to get out of here.”

“I wish I’d never allowed Jean-Luc to talk me into letting you go along with this search,” Diana said.  “As annoying as you’ve been sometimes, I hate to think I might be responsible for your death.  I’d rather have my memories of the good times we shared, and have you safely away from here.” 

“Look.”  Mart squatted down next to her.  “Neither of us is going to die today, not this close to the ten-year anniversary of our breakup.”  Forcing his lips into a confident grin, he continued, “We’re going to find a way to get out of here – together.”  He touched her ankle, causing her to shudder and gasp with pain.  “The first thing we’ve got to do is to splint up that ankle.  Luckily, I took a Wilderness Survival class a couple of years ago.”  He removed his coat, heavy sweater, and oxford-cloth shirt, and began to tear the shirt into strips.

“See if you can see any corrugated cardboard boxes, heavy blankets, or anything else we can use to pad up the ankle,” he directed, tying some of the strips together.

“Mart, there’s not a thing down here.  Not even a box with dead bugs in it.”  Diana thought for a moment.  “Here.”  She unwound the lavender wool muffler around her neck, and folded it into a thick rectangle.  Carefully, Mart zipped the boot up and arranged the thick pad of folded muffler around her ankle, making an S-shape with some of the tied strips of cloth across the front of it.

Muffled voices above them attracted Mart’s and Diana’s attention.  One voice was definitely Natasha’s, and she sounded angry.  The other was a male voice Mart didn’t recognize.  He didn’t hear Max’s voice, which was at once a relief and a source of anxiety.  If Natasha was really trying to steal the Rembrandt, she might have been prepared to … eliminate … Max, as well as to leave him and Di to die in the cellar.  Quickly, he created the stirrup that would support Diana’s foot from the S-shaped strips, and then began to wind more strips around her foot and ankle, over the folded muffler, in a figure-of eight fashion.  As he tied the last strip, Mart sat back.  “See if you can stand up now,” he suggested.    

Cautiously, Diana got to her feet and took a couple of steps.  “It’s not too bad,” she admitted.  She walked at a faster pace from one end of the room to the other.  “This is good, Mart.  Really, it gives a lot of support.”  She walked back to Mart and threw her arms around him.  “Thank you, Mart!”

“Now to get us out of here,” Mart said, after returning her hug.  “I heard a sound like a deadbolt being turned, right after the trapdoor slammed shut.”

“The lock was a deadbolt,” Diana recalled.  “And Max has – or had – the key.  Let’s climb up the ladder and examine the lock.”  She began to ascend the ladder, grimacing as she placed her left foot on each rung.  On the fifth step, she situated herself and held the flashlight up close to the trap door, studying the lock from the underside.

Mart held the ladder-like folding steps for her so they wouldn’t wobble.  “Can you see anything?” he asked.       

“I’ve got an idea,” she answered.  “I’m coming back down.”  She started to lower her right foot.

“Wait!” Mart said softly.  “One of the things they taught us in the Wilderness Survival class was to lead with your good foot going up, and with the bad foot coming down.  Try that and see if it helps.”

Diana switched feet and in a moment was back on the floor.  “That did help,” she said.  “Thanks again!”

“I’m surprised you went up that ladder without getting sick,” Mart commented.  “What happened to your fear of heights?”

“You took a Wilderness Survival class; I took a desensitization class for acrophobia.”  Diana smiled, and a dimple flashed in her cheek.  “I had to do a lot of reading for my job, and learned a lot of new words, too.  No more ‘Dumb Ditzy Di’.”  She laughed.

“I never thought of you like that, Di!”  Mart felt his face flush, and he hoped Diana wouldn’t notice in the dim cellar.

“I know you didn’t, Mart.”  Diana sobered.  “But it’s how I thought of myself.  I guess I had to get away from the people who’d known me my whole life before I could see myself differently, as a capable and smart person.” 

“I know what you mean.  As a teenager, I always compared myself with Brian, Jim, and Dan.  And I always came up short – in more ways than one.”  He shook his head.  “I’m a lot more comfortable in my own skin now.”

“And I never thought you came up short, Mart.”  In the dimness of the cellar, Mart could see that Diana’s eyes glittered with emotion.  She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.  Startled for a split second, he responded by wrapping his arms around her and opening his lips to hers.  Time and space went away as the two of them explored each other’s mouths.  Mart wound his fingers into the silk of her ebony hair, and she caressed the crisp blond curls that had superseded the short crew cut of his teen years.  Mart wondered if it was his imagination, but he felt a new sweetness in Diana’s feelings toward him.  Maybe… maybe.   

“Listen!”  Diana jerked away and held a finger to her lips. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”  Mart cocked an eyebrow.  “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s what I mean.  I think they’re gone.  It’s time to put Plan B into action,” she said.  Mart watched, a puzzled frown on his face, as Diana slipped out of her jacket and pulled her arms inside the sweater.  She contorted her body in mystifying ways for a couple of minutes, and then thrust her hands back through her sleeves, waving a purple satin bra over her head.

“Don’t you think it’s the wrong time and place for a … ah … striptease?” Mart asked, his face flushing again. 

“Silly!”  Giggling, Diana pulled a utility knife from her pocket and pressed the release button to unsheathe the blade.  “This is one of my favorite bras, but I’m going to sacrifice it for our lives now.”  She slit the underwire casing and pulled out a curved strip of steel.  Next, she shaved off the plastic coating at one end until bare metal was exposed.

“Watch and be amazed!  The Dynamic Diana will escape from the locked room!” She ascended the ladder again, gesturing for him to stand nearby.  “Hold this flashlight and point it to the lock.”

Mart obeyed, holding the light steady as Diana used the slender strip of metal to pry into the lock’s mechanism, releasing the tumblers of the deadbolt mechanism.  Long minutes passed, and he couldn’t hear or feel whether her efforts were bearing fruit.  Still, he trusted her.  She knew what she was doing.

“Now I know what Victoria’s Secret really is,” he quipped.

With a whispered shout of triumph, Diana pushed the door upward.  Just as she had opened it fully, the crack of a pistol shot shattered the silence.