*** What might have been ***
Inspired by "Tunnel of Love", written by Mark Knopfler (Intro: "The Carousel Waltz", by Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II).
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"Skipper's log."
Skipper made a pause to think what to start with. It had been a very complicated day for not having danced with danger. Not much worse than others, but disasters had gathered. To begin with, Rico had been ill and hadn't been able to supply anything for the team. Later, Kowalski had blown up the whole lab because he had forgotten to carry the two (and they had been fifty-three times). To top it all, the TV had broken down the very same day that the Lunacorns' season four was released and Private was really upset. Well, carefully considered... that was good.
Something grabbed his attention and distracted him. A penny, flattened and with an oval shape, with the image of a Ferris wheel etched on its surface. He was keeping it since that day. That female penguin had put it in his flipper right before giving him a goodbye kiss. It had been a wonderful, perfect day, and he had stayed staring, while she left and got lost in darkness, and him with an idiot face squeezing the coin in his flipper as if it was what was worth it. He hadn't run away after her, maybe he should have.
He didn't use to think about her.
But that day... what the hell. He wouldn't be hurt if he rode on the ghost train of memories.
.
Skipper was at that age when all the penguins protest and make a fuss if someone calls them fledglings. He didn't know yet what his life would be. He sometimes ran away from the zoo, and that day he had gone alone. He was eager for adventure and had heard some kids talking about an amusement park not far from there. In... Rockaway Beach, could it be? He'd manage to arrive there. If they could go there, why not him? He could sneak where he wanted, get on all the rides for free. Who would notice it?
It wasn't an ordinary day, it was Carnival. More people, more ruckus, easier to go unnoticed. A lot of people were disguised, he wasn't the only penguin... but he was the most realistic one, certainly. Lights and music at full volume attracted him like a damned slot machine. A bit of brief happiness here and a bit there, a skipped heartbeat and a shot of adrenaline. For a moment, he thought that it was the life he had chosen... the zoo could go to hell! He wanted to be among colorful lightbulbs, the smell of cotton candy and impossible neons. He remembered the stories about Buck Rockgut and thought: if a penguin can be a secret agent... why couldn't he work in an amusement park? To go to all the parks in New York State, the adjacent states and the whole country. And to cross all the borders. Even to go to that country that Private named so much and that he found so boring. Even the English should have fun from time to time... shouldn't they?
When he arrived, it was still daylight. He filled his young lungs with the sea breeze on the beach. He paid attention to the humans, they went there to do nothing. It was a good place to catch good fish, but they missed it. Apparently, being there looking at the horizon with your partner was a much better plan.
Partner? Skipper shivered.
While people had to queue to buy the tickets for the rides and queue again to get on them, he sneaked on the other side. When the seat was already taken, he got into the remaining gap. He might get airborne, he might end up smashed... but all that didn't care. It was risk, danger, speed. Emotion. He felt he became one with the ruckus, the rush and the vertigo.
He tried several rides, repeated some and then he saw it: the big rollercoaster. There were more, but none like that. It looked like it had been designed by a team of mentally deranged people. The noise made by the train passing at full speed make think that it'd derail at each lap... when it was heard louder than the screams. When he got on it for the first time, while the others seemed to beg for their lives, he was just singing. He was just moving at another level.
The train stopped at the peak of madness. From there, all the park was seen. That really was imposing! To see everything from upwards, to feel like a bird who flies. The rides didn't cover all what eyesight could glance, but it was near. Upside he felt nearer the sky than the Earth.
Some seconds later, the train plummeted. Skipper raised his flippers. It was reckless, suicidal to do that if one wasn't fastened. It didn't matter, he was ready to accept that risk. And after reaching the bottom, while the security bars were raising and people were leaving, he saw that someone was staring at him. Skipper smiled: standing, lit by a spotlight that looked like placed there on purpose, there was a female penguin. And a small rollercoaster emulated the true one inside his heart. So that was what happened when meeting someone... that someone.
Skipper got off the rollercoaster dodging the ones getting on at that moment and headed to her.
"Hi, I'm Ski-"
"Schhhhhh..." she told him putting her flipper on his beak. "It's not necessary to ruin the moment with names. It's better this way."
Skipper thought that the best thing was to let himself be carried away by her. He gave her his flipper and both, laughing, ran to the next ride.
When Skipper got on the big rollercoaster again, that time with her, the sensation was totally different. They weren't just upside, they were at the very top of the world. Even in the Ferris wheel, which was much less exciting, he felt the same. The difference was her. Skipper was feeling something totally new. He wanted her to always know where he was.
Both lost track of time, until Skipper started to feel a bit hungry.
"We should eat something," he said.
And he was surprised by the female penguin, who was the only one who knew from where she had taken canned sardines.
"Let's go to a quieter place," she said, and Skipper followed her to the beach.
He had been there a while ago, but at that moment he saw it different: there was no-one, only the Sun on the horizon. Could there be a better plan than sharing canned sardines watching the sunset? Fish tasted better accompanied, undoubtedly.
"I'll have to call you some day to repeat this," Skipper said, caressing the female penguin's flipper.
"You would lose my number," she just replied.
"Surely. I'll better keep this moment."
And he didn't think more. He let her return the caress and let it happen what had to happen.
.
When they went back, with some stars decorating the sky's black fabric, the amusement park had started to get half empty. But there were still light, sound and fun. Was there anything that they hadn't tried?
"There, look," Skipper said, pointing at a ride where the pink color predominated.
She started running, and he had no other option than following her.
"This is for two, don't back out now," she said, winking at him.
The ride was totally opposed to all the other things they had tried (except for the Ferris wheel, of course). It wasn't invaded by the noise from the rest of the park, there weren't trains with loads of security systems. Instead, they were something like small canoes where there could be two people at most, with a top that they could raise and lower at will thanks to a lever. It was funny to handle the lever, Skipper thought... actually, it was funny to fiddle with anything.
"It'll be better to leave it unfold," Skipper said. "I don't feel like two Antarctic birds being discovered here and sent to homeland with a kick."
The female penguin started to laugh.
Under the top, in pastel pink color, light looked really dim. They heard, and so they knew that people took for granted that below there was a couple with a certain hurry for starting the journey. Both laughed at the comments they were hearing.
"Do you imagine them in some years?" the female penguin suddenly said. "Consolidated relationships, marriages, children, getting old together, routine... or with quarrels, with divorces, with worse things... How little I like the idea!"
"The second thing you have said doesn't sound appealing for me, to tell you the truth," Skipper replied.
"For me neither the first nor the second."
Both penguins felt that the canoe started moving.
.
What happened inside for the six minutes that the journey lasted was only known by them: if there were only kisses or if there was something more. Anyway, asking is not nice. Skipper remembered it as the brief sparkle of first love, that both had preferred to leave as a beautiful memory. It's what he was thinking when he saw her getting away, not looking back. He, at the beginning, agreed. Without a name to repeat in dreams, without anything else apart from that little amulet that he had at that moment in his flipper. He looked at the Ferris wheel on the relief of the flattened coin and imagined himself and that female penguin there, that first kiss that gave him wings. To see her leaving had broken them, and he didn't notice it until some time later.
He remembered that he had a recording to make.
"Skipper's log... oh, I'd already said that. Today I've been back at my memories, when I wanted to be a carny. How different everything would be... To assemble and keep up all those rides with the possible reward of seeing her again. But, if I didn't see her at the carousels and the shooting galleries the times I got away again... There many promises are made, we didn't make any. Is it better this way? I don't know. I'm not complaining about my current life, now it's when I'm really dancing with danger and I wouldn't change my team for anything in the world. But sometimes it's unavoidable to ask myself. The Ferris wheel always turns and turns and it doesn't care what we think or the plans we have, the same as the whole planet. And it's one day, and another, and when you realize you are counting years. At least I can dream of what might have been and wasn't."
