Stalker
"Hi, Roberta," Mindy said to Annie's stylist wife as she entered Annie's office. "Where's Der Fuhrer?" she asked as she laid her garment bag across a chair.
The door to attached bathroom opened. "Have I said fuck you today?" Annie said as she exited.
Mindy laughed. "Not yet."
"Okay, fuck you," Annie said. Roberta and Mindy both laughed. "Now that that's over with," Annie continued. "I read what you wrote me last night and the police report this morning. Let's go over what you're going to tell the mooks in the press room."
"Okay."
Annie nodded. "Well, the world has guessed that you're sleeping together, but you two have never confirmed it. We need to have a joke ready for the barrage that'll come with the beginning of the story, much less that fucking fairy tale the bitch is telling now."
Mindy grinned and snorted, Annie turned to her with a suspicious expression. "It's not true, is it?"
Mindy smiled slyly. "Let Roberta get to work on me, and I'll tell you the story."
(*)
"As you now know, Mark Watney and Mindy Park were accosted last night in Mindy's apartment," Annie said to the packed room. "Ms. Maryanne Holcombe broke into Mindy's apartment at around two in the morning. Mindy awoke to an intruder in her bedroom and proceeded to defend herself and Mark." Annie suppressed a laugh, but she couldn't help the smile as she thought about what Mindy had told her. "The police report is an accurate description of the scene as they found it, but is light on details that I'm sure you want to know. To that end we have decided to make Mark and Mindy available for a few questions."
The door to the media ready room opened, and Mark preceded Mindy out onto the raised platform amid a flurry of flashes.
"Mark! Mark!"
"Mindy, over here!"
"Mindy!"
"Mark!"
The shouts stopped when Annie glared at the reporters. She smirked. They knew the rules, and they also knew that if they broke them in any serious way Annie would bounce whoever did it like a three o clock drunk. "We'll start with… Leon, CNN," Annie said.
The tall black man stood. "Good afternoon, Mark, Mindy. Leon Thomas, CNN. Let's start at the beginning. When did you first become aware you had a visitor?"
Mark looked to his side and smiled. He had warned Mindy that she was going to do most of the talking, as it really was her story. "This ones yours, babe," he said and squeezed her hand.
Imagine you're telling it to the crew, Mark had told her. Okay, she thought. Here we go. "The beginning goes back a long time," she said. "I'm an only child, so my dad was really into making sure I could take care of myself. It's part of why I'm an engineer. He taught me about cars and computers, treehouses and dogs, and he taught me about self-defense. I have an intruder alarm he got me years ago, it just makes these little chimes, very subtle, but that sound is enough to wake me." She took a sip of water and Mark squeezed her hand again.
"I woke to the chimes as the bedroom door opened."
"What about you, Mark?" A reported yelled out.
Mark sniggered. "I was sleeping the sleep of the happy astronaut back on Earth next to his girlfriend."
There was a round of chuckles and they all looked at Mindy. "I could see a medium height woman framed in the doorway. I had on one of those super soft snug fit pajama sets that look like the Ares mission suits, they sell them down in the gift shop. Anyway, I jumped out of bed and confronted her."
"And, Mark?" Leon from CNN asked.
"I wasn't wearing anything," Mark said, and the room exploded in laughter. He winked at Annie, the joke had played perfectly. "Oh, yeah, well I woke up to my bad ass girlfriend in 'I'm gonna whoop up on a bitch' mode." The room roared in laughter again.
When they quieted Leon asked, "What'd she do?"
"She whooped up on a bitch."
Mindy kissed his cheek as the reporters laughed, and a thousand flashes went off. Anytime she kissed him in public it made the media. "I gave her a Sajo Jirugi to the sternum and bounced her off the wall. Then I did it again. That took her by surprise," she said.
"Sajo Jirugi?" someone asked. Annie smirked. When Mindy had related this part of the tale to her she had been thoroughly impressed.
"Sajo Jirugi is a style of Taekwondo punch. I've studied martial arts for almost twenty years."
Annie actually did smile. That shut them up.
Mark leaned forward. "I did say 'bad ass girlfriend' didn't I?" He snickered. "I was coming awake. I had great view as Mindy punched her twice more, and then she side kicked the idiot out the bedroom door."
Annie was now openly laughing at the stunned faces looking at Mindy.
"Dumb bitch broke my coffee table," Mindy muttered, annoyed. "I told her to stay down, but she still wanted to fight. I… convinced her that was a bad idea."
The reporters chuckled. They had read the police report that detailed the injuries Holcombe had sustained. She wouldn't be leaving the infirmary at the jail for a few days.
"Were either of you hurt?" a woman in the front row asked.
Time for joke two, Mark thought. "Well, she scuffed the hell out of Min's knuckles with her face," he said, and the room howled again. He took her right hand and kissed her knuckles, the flashes exploding in a firestorm. "I was up by then, and I jumped into my shorts. When I got to the living room Min had her… subdued."
"I asked Mark to get me some zip ties I have in my junk drawer. I put one around her ankles, one around her wrists and linked the two with the third behind her back.'
"Hogtied!" a southern accent yelled.
"Yep," Mark said, and he looked to his side proudly. "Bad. Ass. Girlfriend."
Mindy smiled, blushed, and kissed his cheek again. More flashes. Here it was. She looked at Mark and Annie. We just have to keep a straight face through this. She heard Annie's voice say.
Every hand raised. "Quentin?" Annie called.
Red faced, Quentin Arnold rose from his chair. "Um… okay, Quentin Arnold, AP. So the question I guess I get to ask is, Holcombe now says you two had sex on the couch right in front of her before you called the police. Is that true?" There was a smattering of snickers.
"I'll take that one," Mark said. "Now please, really, do any of you folks honestly believe that?"
Annie looked around the room and smiled. Oh yeah, they all believed it, to a person, but they would be reporting something else. Perfect, guys she thought. The story Mindy told her earlier in the day playing in her head.
"This doesn't leave this room," Mindy said, and Roberta and Annie nodded. "The answer is yes." Mindy grinned.
Roberta let go her gusty laugh, and Annie said, "Oh, Christ."
Mindy giggled. "When I kicked her out of the bedroom door she landed on my coffee table. Smashed the shit out of it. Then the stupid bitch decided to talk. She says to me 'you'll never keep him, you ugly little whore'." Annie raised an eyebrow at the incendiary anger on Mindy's face. "That's when I broke her nose and jaw and knocked her out."
Roberta hadn't stopped chuckling. "Where was Mark?" she asked.
"He had just made it up and to the bedroom door." Mindy laughed for several seconds. "I keep a cricket bat that I got on my graduation trip to England behind the nightstand. Mark was standing in the doorway naked with the bat in one hand and…"
"And?" Annie asked.
Mindy's smile would have made a lesser woman blush. "Well I guess watching me kick what's her fucks ass was as stimulating for him as it was for me. He was… obviously ready.
Roberta laughed so hard tears sprung from her eyes.
"We tied her up with some zip ties I keep in the kitchen, and then I sort of jumped him on the couch. We actually didn't know she had come to until we…um…"
"Came too?" Roberta said, and she nearly fell out of her chair.
"Thank you for assembling on such short notice," Annie told the press room as Mindy and Mark exited. "Mindy has sat images coming down in fifteen minutes, and Mark has a class to teach in half an hour, so they're on their way back to work. We'll obviously have more conferences as this plays out, but Mark and Mindy request that you respect their privacy, so I'd ask you to not try and hunt them down for questions outside of this room. Thanks again, and good afternoon.
(*)
Teddy sat the briefing folder on the table. Annie had played the whole incident to NASA's benefit, and he was considering a substantial raise in the Media Director's salary. She'd been killing it for almost two years. In the three weeks since the break-in at Park's apartment the merchandise site had been inundated. They couldn't keep the sleepwear in stock, and the supplies in the gift shop were gone in a day, mostly purchased by employees. This had led to a stroke of genius on the part of the Media Director.
"How'd you talk them into this, Annie?' he asked as she sat at the conference table.
"I can be a silver tonged devil," Annie said. "When it's useful."
Teddy looked at her sideways. "NASA has never done a funding campaign like this, you think it'll actually work?"
"If it buys the clothing for colonists and crew of the Kore we'll be millions ahead," she said.
The door to the conference room opened. Mark, Mindy, Venkat, Taylor Cuevas director of merchandise, and Luna Chambers the logistics director for the Hestia mission entered.
"Thanks for coming, Mark, Mindy," Annie said. "We thought you'd like to see the finished spot."
"Hey, it was fun," Mark said with a grin. "We got to be movie stars for a day."
Mindy nudged him with her hip. "You were certainly enamored of the craft services table," she said.
"It was great!" he replied, and turned to the others in the room as they sat. "Cara, the woman running craft service for the production division, she had an awesome spread for us."
Mindy smiled and hugged his arm from her chair. "He's still making up for eight months of nothing but potatoes."
Annie shook her head at the stupid grins everyone in the room was wearing. Mark and Mindy were adorable, and she intended to make the most of it. "If you two are finished sending us into diabetic shock, we've got a spot to critique," she said.
"Ready when you are," Mark said with a smile.
Annie rolled her eyes and pressed the button on the room remote that lowered the blinds and dimmed the lights. A second button opened the sliding doors that hid the huge flat screen monitor at one end of the room. She brought up the media file on her computer and linked it to the monitor.
"Alright this is the long form spot, sixty seconds," she said and pressed the space bar.
The screen faded to a white room, a close up shot of Marks face on one side of the screen, and the side of a large blue punching bag on the other. "In space you need to be comfortable," Mark's voice over said. Mindy's arm crossed the frame in a flash, obscuring him, and her fist impacted the bag with a powerful thud. The scene cut to a head to toe full two shot with the 'NASA blue' punching bag hanging between them. Mindy, in the Dwit Bal Sogui tiger stance, was wearing the Ares sleep set, Mark was in the matching shorts.
The voice over continued. "At NASA we've put a lot of thought into this," Mark's voice said as Mindy made the bag sway with a series of heavy punches. "The team that chose the fabrics and styles studied human anatomy and movement in a way only NASA can." Mindy executed another series of kicks and punches. The on-screen Mark leaned against a white pole, crossed his arms, raised an eyebrow, and smirked.
"This sleep wear was one result," The voice over continued. "I can vouch for its durability, two sets saw me through a year and a half on Mars." Mindy punched the bag hard, and then she did a series of elbow, shin, and knee strikes. The scene cut to a full frame of Marks smiling face. "And it's the first choice for B.A.G.s worldwide," his voice said.
B.A.G. had become an almost instantly adopted slang term after Mark had used it to describe Mindy, and there were even hastily made bootleg t-shirts with her picture and the words "Bad Ass Girlfriend" emblazoned across the top. Mindy's mom had several. Mark had even bought Mindy one, but she only wore it around the house, and typically with no other clothing.
The screen cut back to the two shot. Mindy was making the bag shake violently with an unending string of punches, kicks, and knee and elbow strikes.
Marks voice continued. "NASA is making our full line of space ready clothing available for purchase from the web site and gift shops at all NASA locations. They cost a bit more, but they are American made, scientifically designed for maximum comfort and durability, and all the proceeds will be used to clothe the colonists and crew of the Hestia mission portion of the Mars Colonization Project."
The screen cut to a wide shot of the entire white room. Mark stood leaning against the post, and Mindy was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly Mindy cartwheeled into the frame, did a back flip, and performed a flying drop kick on the bag. The scene cut to a close up of the bag chains as they shattered in slow motion, and then it cut to another slow motion shot of the bag slamming against the wall and exploding in a spray of sawdust and straw. The scene faded to black and Mark's voice matched the words on the screen. "Support Space exploration, shop NASA at the spaceshop dot com," he said.
"Took fifteen tries at that last shot," Mindy said in the dark. "I'm not that great of a gymnast."
"Bruce had way to much fun with the air cannon at JPL," Mark said with a laugh. "They set up all their analysis cams and shot the bag out of the cannon at a hundred fifty meters a second."
"How'd they do the chains?" Teddy asked with a smile in his voice.
"They just froze them with liquid nitrogen," Mindy answered. "I only had to kick it once for that."
"Don't ever piss her off," Teddy said to Mark, and everyone chuckled.
"Alright, here's the thirty second version," Annie said, and she played an abbreviated cut of the same material. When it faded she brought the lights up and caught her two principal actors in mid snog. "Really!" she said laughing. "Geeze, when's the wedding?" she asked jokingly."
"May twenty forth next year," Mark answered without a pause.
Mark and Mindy grinned madly at the shocked faces staring back at them. Mindy pulled a chain from her shirt with a ring dangling from it. "We were waiting to announce until the family knew," she said, smiling at the communications director. "You can schedule a press conference whenever you want, Annie."