Chapter 18
Hey, I'm back! Here's the moment you've been waiting for – hope it meets your expectations.
Hyde frowned in annoyance as he heard Fez descending the wooden stairs of the basement with great haste and volume. He held up a silencing hand before Fez could unload whatever tidbit had his eyes bugging out of his head.
"Fez, shut the hell up. We've been sticking with this Agatha Christie movie for the last two hours waiting for this moment and we don't need it drowned out by whatever new candy catastrophe has you all a-twitter."
"I'm with Hyde on this one, buddy," Kelso agreed. "I can't wait to find out who killed the old rich guy. The little French detective just had his Eureka moment so any moment he'll be getting the suspects together and laying down the law."
"Ooh, this is a Hercule Poirot mystery," Fez said, his twenty second attention span easily diverted. "I like seeing a foreigner telling all those stuck-up Brits what to do. Make fun of my accent? Well, you can just laugh it off in prison, limey bastard!"
"What part of don't talk do you dillholes not understand?" Hyde said in exasperation.
"Relax, it's gone to commercial," Kelso soothed.
"So what is the Eureka moment?" Fez asked Kelso.
"Oh, that's the moment when the dumb sidekick says something completely irrelevant that makes all the little details of the case come together so Poirot has like this blinding moment of clarity and he knows who the villain is," Kelso explained.
"Do not speak to me of villains," Fez moaned, remembering the terrible sight that had brought him to the basement. "There can be no greater villain that Eric, that treacherous casanova!"
"Forman's a casanova? Did you hit your head recently, Fez?" Hyde quizzed.
"Everyone knows it was my turn to win Jackie," Fez complained. "Eric wasn't supposed to be a contender. He already has a girlfriend, damn it. Why are you Americans so greedy?"
Hyde and Kelso looked at each other blankly and then turned to Fez. "What?" they shouted, unified in horror.
"Have you not been listening? Eric and Jackie are lovers!"
"Aaaah, don't ever say that," Kelso cried. "The mental image makes my brain bleed."
"Fez, where the hell did you ever come up with such a whackadoodle notion?" Hyde interrogated, his interest in the movie completely forgotten.
"From the witness of my own traumatised eyes! I just saw them making out in Eric's car."
"Oh my God," Kelso shrieked. "How could he do this to me? He knew Jackie was just about to come back to me. I can't believe he would pull such a slimy move – damn it, I never should have taught him my ways!"
"Calm down, Michelle," Hyde said. "There's no way Fez has got the story straight. Eric and Jackie? Come on, those two hate each other."
"Oh Hyde, my innocent friend," Kelso said pityingly. "I think it's time we had 'the talk'. You see, when a boy and a girl are always burning each other and act like they can't stand each other, that's just a cover-up for a volcano of sexual attraction." Hyde looked at Kelso in disbelief. "What? Don't you ever watch romantic comedies?"
Hyde turned away from his moronic friend towards… well, his other moronic friend. "Okay, Fez, what exactly did you see?"
"Jackie and Eric in each other's arms. It looked like she was planting a hickey on his neck." Fez sighed sadly. "Oh, what I would give to have her sweet little teeth gnaw a hematoma onto me."
Kelso started pacing, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. "This all makes sense now! I thought it was weird Eric offering Jackie a ride. And did you see the way she sent Donna off so that she and Eric could be alone?"
"I can't believe this," Hyde said, but he said it with less conviction than before.
"Open your eyes, Hyde! You yourself said that Eric was looking at Jackie funny. Now we know why."
Hyde was starting to feel nauseous as he remembered the feeling he had had lately that Jackie was keeping a secret from the group. Wouldn't an affair with her best friend's boyfriend explain her suspicious behaviour over the last few months?
…………………………………………
After Jackie had entered Trevor's garage, Eric had spent an hour and a half hanging outside the open garage window, enjoying the music and marvelling at who was making it. But when he heard Donna's voice saying she had to get going, he was spooked, remembering that it would be better for his life expectancy if she did not find him there. Little did he know that returning to the basement was not the soft option he had thought.
"Hey guys, what's on the box?" Eric said cheerfully as he strode through the basement door. He was taken aback by the accusing looks that came his way. "What's up?"
"That's a good question, Eric," Kelso said loudly, lacing his hands behind his back. "What exactly is up?"
Eric turned to Hyde with a look that said 'what's got him going this time' only to be confronted with his friend's deadly serious face.
"Where have you been, Forman?" he asked quietly.
The vibe in the basement was bringing out Eric's twitchiness. "You know where. I was just giving Jackie a ride."
"Oh yeah? And did you use the Vista Cruiser or your own scrawny body to give Jackie "a ride" you cheating son of a bitch!" Fez stormed.
"Oh man," Eric said in amazement. "Look, I don't know what kind of circle you guys were having but wherever you got the stash, you should get a refund because you're all having some really crazy paranoid delusions."
"We haven't been smoking, Forman," Hyde said. "You say you just gave Jackie a ride in your car."
"That's right," Eric said.
"And you went straight to the mall?"
Eric's left eyelid started to twitch. "Ye…yeah," he stuttered.
"You're lying," Hyde exploded. "What the hell did you do with Jackie, Forman!" Poor Eric was frozen to the spot in terror; he had seen Hyde angry before but never like this. As Hyde grabbed him by his shirt-front, Eric babbled "No, Hyde! You've got it all wrong. There's nothing going on between me and Jackie."
"Then how come Fez saw you two necking in your car in the driveway?"
"What?" Eric choked. "Hyde, loosen the grip man. Can't… breathe…"
"Spill it, Forman," Hyde demanded. "What are you hiding?"
This is it, Eric thought to himself, the moment of truth. Keep my word to Donna or get torn apart by my three best friends. I guess I just have to ask myself, who am I more afraid of? As if in warning, an image of his girlfriend popped into his mind, naked except for the barbed wire surrounding all her fun parts. Hell, bones heal and chicks dig scars.
"Alright, yes, I am hiding something but I can't tell you what it is," Eric confessed. "Donna has sworn me to secrecy and the penalty for blabbing is pretty dire. But I did not nor would I ever in this galaxy or one far, far away neck with Jackie."
Eric's expression of disgust at the concept was too genuine not to make Hyde have doubts about the charges against him. "So what did Fez see?" he asked, but with less fire.
"Jackie was crying on my shoulder, you moron," Eric shouted at Fez. "I was just trying to comfort her to make her stop."
"Ah ha, he confessed," Kelso cried triumphantly. "Everyone knows the way you comfort a girl is to do it with her."
Ignoring Kelso, Hyde examined the water stain on Eric's shoulder. "Wait guys, he's telling the truth." Eric heaved a sigh of relief as Hyde released him from his death grip.
"You're not buying that, are you?" Kelso said. "He could have spit on his shoulder as a clever decoy." Everyone just looked at him. "What? It could happen."
"Kelso, give it up. The whole idea of Eric and Jackie – what were we thinking?"
"Alright, he's pretty handy with the explanations, I'll give him that," Kelso replied. "But how does he explain putting that Bowie record on last Wednesday, just when Jackie was walking past?"
"Huh?"
"Don't play dumb. You know that whenever a song with a real catchy beat is played Jackie's hips go swinging like a kid on monkey bars. Gives her walk a touch of Marilyn Monroe, if you know what I mean."
"What did you say?" Hyde asked in a strange voice. But he could not hear the reply as the noise in the basement sounded like wind rushing in his ears. A hundred fragments were suddenly pulled together into one clear picture.
Blue's hips swaying to Suffragette City
Jackie's voice: "You think you know me, but you don't."
Blue twirling her hair around her finger at the club
"If I don't get my luscious strawberry delight hair treatment soon..."
The smell of strawberries in Blue's hair as he kissed her
"I like to dance…" Blue said, "…disco."
"How about your fake girlfriend?" Jackie baited.
Blue twirling drumsticks the same way he had seen Jackie practice with a baton
"Blue and I actually have a lot in common."
That kiss…
"Hyde! Hyde! Are you alright?" Eric shouted into his ear, breaking through his coma of shock. Hyde sunk to his knees, white-faced, and croaked out one word.
"Eureka."