Luck Always Had It With Mon Gusto

MON GUSTO SAILED down the rumbling hallway with his back against the wall and his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. His feet tangoed across the dimly lit tiles, his fingertips tapping him forward in that Thelonious Monk staccato way, never quite sure what note he’d be playing next. Mon Gusto was alone in the hallway, but his mind mooned elsewhere: elsewhere to fall-apple pie, to pussy, and to the warm day mists of San Francisco. He had not fled to the underground with the rest of them but he could hear their scrambled echoes bouncing around between the booms and blasts. Instead, Mon Gusto took his chance to see what hid behind the big gray bunker doors across the compound. He had a sense about those doors, a single character subjective in the first person kind of sense. His sense told him that what he’d find inside–he was hoping for gold bars–would surely get him back to America. Back to his apple pie and pussy mist. In time were his fingers and feet as he two-stepped closer and closer to the bunker. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, together, pivot. He’d remembered his way like a tango routine. And as the blasts kept on blasting he kept on tangoing toward those hopeful gold bars. The voices and fleeing footsteps had all disappeared as everyone in their right mind had made their way to the temporary safety of the underground shelter. Mon Gusto didn’t know who the attackers were; he doubted they were American, but it didn’t matter because he, Mon Gusto, who has never been in his right mind, decided at the onset of the blasting that it was time to end his Russian ruse. Like any good spy Mon Gusto managed to skip across the compound un-blasted and unnoticed, arriving at the bunker doors just in time. As luck would have it, and luck always has it with Mon Gusto, one of the attacker’s aimless booms, or maybe it was a blast, had landed near enough to the bunker that the doors were slightly jarred open. Mon Gusto slipped in.

To his surprise, a handsome woman wearing tight gray pants tucked into tall black boots sat at a steel table with her hand on a pistol and a big furry hat on her head. Mon Gusto remained calm.

“Remain calm. I am Mstislav. We must to get you to safety.” He said hurriedly in impeccable Russian.

She stood up and slurred a response. The leg of her chair knocked over a half-empty bottle of Vodka. Mon Gusto barely made sense of her garble. She’s about as far from pronouncing a sensible syllable as we are from Sao Paulo, he silently mused. Her posture and balance were equally unpronounced, but her Slavic jaw line was as pronounced as one could be. When the attack began she had decided, much like Mon Gusto, to throw in the towel. Only, her version of towel throwing was to find the best stash of Vodka on the compound and drink it until she couldn’t see straight. Mon Gusto felt at ease by her drunkenness. That, and she had left her pistol as she stumbled from the table. He surveyed the bunker. It was long with tall shelving on either side. Some of the trunks and boxes had fallen off in the blast and he could see a couple of hatches in the floor. Gold bars! He thought to himself. The woman wasn’t thinking at all. Not in Russian, or any language for that matter. Vodka had blasted her brainpan. Right foot, left foot, feet together, back. She did a drunken do-si-do toward Mon Gusto and like a perfect gentleman he put out his hand to guide her. She took it and tried to look into his shifting eyes. He scanned the bunker from ceiling to floor and eventually past her wobbling head to the back wall where he noticed a bulky door that had been jarred open by the blasts and booms. Still standing amiss fallen trunks, bust open boxes, and half-empty bottles, he looked at the woman. From under her cocked down furry hat her brow bent and her heavy lidded eyes squinted toward the door. Away they went, Mon Gusto leading on an eight-step tango. Gold bars! As they approached the opening she spoke again, this time into Mon Gusto’s ear. And although he had a black belt in Russian, he still couldn’t understand her dizzy-talk in the least bit. But, he did notice a sense of urgency and relation about her that wasn’t there before. They stepped into the room–forward, side, feet together–and there at the back of the room was Mon Gusto’s gold bar. A dust-covered coffin had slid off of the dust-covered shelving and lay opened on the dusty floor. It occurred to both Mon Gusto and the woman that the room had been closed for some time. In front of the unlikely duo and inside the coffin there was a wrapped up body, equally dustified and utterly unexpected. On the front of the coffin there was a nameplate, which Mon Gusto had to dust off of course, that read, even more unexpectedly, the following:

ADOLF HITLER 1945

Mon Gusto looked at his partner and she at him, this time with sobering eyes. She spoke again, and so did he.

“Finders keepers.” He said in English. She unwittingly nodded.

Another boom rumbled the bunker and Mon Gusto thought quickly. He thought about his boxing days in Mexico City and how easy it would be to knock out the woman and put her clothes on the corpse, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he twirled around the bunker checking for alternatives. Then, to Mon Gusto’s surprise, in mid twirl, the woman waved her arms and pointed to a musty trunk. He rushed over to it, opened it, and in it, found some old German army fatigues.

“Perfect!” He said, in Russian of course.

He dressed the corpse in boots, helmet, and all. And when he was done, Mon Gusto, or was it Mstislav, kissed the woman’s hand and looked at the doorway as to suggest she come with him. Another series of booms and blasts rattled the bunker. The woman looked down at the dressed up corpse then over to her bottle of vodka, then at her hand in Mon Gusto’s, and finally she looked into his eyes. They wasted no time. He gingerly lifted up the corpse, grabbed the gun and the vodka, and together they blasted off from bunker.

“This ought to get me home.” He said to himself, tangoing across the compound with the handsome Russian woman by his side and the corpse over his shoulder.

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