Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the team has returned from their little visit to the ruins and are currently arguing over whether or not some man named Arturo is a vampire and how to get into the demolished bank. I am so very happy that Jack is running this mission.
Anyway, we decide to all go back to the ruins the next day to check out the bank situation.
The next morning, I awaken to the smell of breakfast. I am a little put out that Black decided to cook, but the food is okay. However, I want to pack a lunch to take on our trip. Black decides to help and makes himself a finger (print) sandwich and a really big mess. His cleaning is less than satisfactory, so I make a note to come back after our trip and do it right.
The team piles into Black’s camper and Jack and I get into my car. As we are driving there, we notice Clusine and le Couer following us. It’s all right, though, they will stop at the Italian border so we pay no attention to them.
Once we reach the village, we split up. Jack, Daniel, Black and I head to the bank and Claire, Karin and Rossi attempt to come up to the bank from the rear.
When Jack, Daniel, Black and I arrive, Black bends down and starts scooping dirt into a bag from the location where Arturo summoned the rats.
We hear some people approaching and Black quickly puts the bag in his pocket as a woman, who is also putting something in her pocket, and a man come around the corner. We engage them in pleasant conversation. Jack and Black leave to walk around the building. The woman is speaking French to the man (who is actually the owner of the French race team), but I know she isn’t European. When I speak to her, she attempts to pretend that she is German, but since Germany is in Europe, I am not buying it. I trick her into revealing that she at least knows Russian and she seems less than pleased with me, especially when I tell her my name is Sheila.
Since these boneheads don’t seem inclined to leave, I decide to set out our picnic lunch. Of course, we offer some to our visitors. The man looks at Black’s hand print in the bread and refuses the sandwich so I give him one of the others. These idiots are actually making faces as they eat! What the fuck? I ask if they were expecting red wine and caviar? I mean, this is a picnic lunch. What a bunch of pretentious assholes! I may have shared my personal observations loud enough for them to hear.
Meanwhile, Karin, Claire and Rossi are walking up some less traveled paths to get to the bank. They see two men emerge from a narrow passageway. Karin’s Russian sonar is active, as always, even though they are pretending to be German. The two men tell the group they didn’t find anything interesting, so naturally, when the men are out of sight, the group enters the passage. They find that it leads to the back wall of the bank, which is intact despite the destruction to the front of the building.
They return to the main path and head to the bank. As they are nearing, they hear the sound of approaching footsteps. Karin makes them hide, because that’s what she does. Everyone is startled as Jack and Black come around the corner and see the team, who sees Jack and Black.
Claire tells Jack they met some Germans. Karin chimes in, "zey ver Russian." Jack seems confused. "The Germans were rushing?" "Nein, zey ver Russian." "Rushing to what?" "Nein, not Germans, zey ver Russian." "Oh."
They all head back to the front of the bank. Jack asks where the red wine is. I give him the this-is-a-picnic-lunch-and-if-you-ask-for-red-wine-one-more-time-you-may-not-make-it-to-the-wedding look.
Black is relieved to see his hand print sandwich is still uneaten and grabs it.
After our meal, we leave the ruins. Clusine and le Couer are sitting in their car outside the villa.
We discuss the possibility of using demolitions to get into the bank. Goodie, I love to blow things up. Black and I make a list of the items we will need and give it to Claire who adds it to her shopping list: duct tape, drop cloth, glycerine, fuses, detonators.
That evening, Rossi and Karin decide to go to another club, but wisely avoid the Goth club where they had beaten up the German race team a few nights ago.
Claire and Daniel go back to the ruins, as Daniel has decided he needs to ask the permission of the vampire Arturo before we do anything to the bank building.
They find Eve in one of the shops. Two members of the British team are there – well one member and a groupie, or team slut as Karin would say. Claire occupies the Brits in conversation while Daniel talks to Eve. Arturo shows up and gets Daniel to tell him the plan. Eve and Arturo express concern about the possibility of disturbing a fault line as well as the Italian authorities. Daniel keeps insinuating that Arturo can help us, but Arturo seems to want Daniel to ask for what he wants directly. Since the man’s name is Forth(w)right, one would think this wouldn’t be a problem, correct? However, Daniel is reluctant to ask Arturo outright if he’ll simply turn himself to mist and get the stuff out of the bank for us. Pardon my laughter but wouldn’t you be, as well? I can hear the conversation now: Excuse me sir, would you mind vaporizing yourself, entering a pile of precarious stones in the ruins of a demolished bank, retrieving some priceless works of art and then re-materializing in order to give them to us? We would really appreciate it. And the response: Why yes, my good man. I shall defy all of the laws of nature, transform myself into mist, waft in between the precarious rubble, find all of the gold and artworks, turn them into mist as well, return, and re-materialize in order to hand over all of the treasure to you. Nothing would make me happier.
What the fuck is that boy smoking???
Claire has managed to get the Brits to leave the shop, mostly because the team slut, I mean groupie, is shooting mascara-lined daggers at Claire because of all the attention the driver is paying her.
Arturo gets Daniel to buy a crystal ball and says that he’ll contact him soon.
Jack and I decide to take Clusine and le Couer on a scenic tour of the area, hoping that they will get bored and simply leave. Eventually, they do and we start driving back to the villa.
Back at the club, Karin has spotted gemologist David McCarthy. You may not remember him very well. That’s okay, neither does Karin. She was with him in a New York bar, when she passed out in a drunken stupor. She later awakened to find herself in bed with him in an unfamiliar hotel room.
Karin and Rossi seat themselves where they can watch David and the woman he is with. It is apparent that he is somehow subordinate to the woman. Karin is trying hard to remember what happened in New York. Rossi asks if she was wearing her socks when she awoke. She tells him no, and he shakes his head and sighs. Since curiosity is now getting the better of her, they move to a table where David can see them.
David is startled to see Karin and tells his companion. The woman tells him that they have been there for a half-hour. David approaches them and Karin was going to introduce him to Rossi, but he apparently already knows who Rossi is, even though they’ve never met. Karin tells him to bring his friend over.
Rossi, whose diligent study of the best-selling book The Art of Making Passes at Women while Wearing Sunglasses is finally paying off, hits it off with the woman, whose name is Dominique. Since it becomes apparent that Rossi will be spending the night in Dominique’s room, which leaves David with no place to stay, and Karin feels guilty about telling David that she doesn’t remember what happened that night in New York, Karin takes him back to the villa. David drives, since Karin and Rossi had come on Black’s motorcycle, due to the diminishing number of cars available to the team.
Claire and Daniel return to the villa to find Black playing with a mixture of rocks and cheese on the table while smoking tasteless European cigarettes. This is especially odd since Black doesn’t smoke – that is, unless he’s doing a special effect on some movie set.
Black seems at a loss as to how Arturo summoned the rats with the items that he retrieved from the bank at the ruins. Claire suggests that is a Pavlovian response to the sound of the falling rocks. Despite Daniel’s reluctance to attribute the whole rat phenomenon to anything other than the supernatural, he has to admit that the theory has some merit.
They see headlights in the driveway and assume that Jack and I are back. Instead, Karin enters with David. She introduces him to the group. Claire remembers reading about Karin’s encounter with David in New York in a mission report. Karin and David sit and join in the conversation about Pavlov.
Black has tried to make a batch of Martikis. Claire is no Martiki expert, but she is fairly certain that they should be blue, not green. She politely takes a sip and makes a face.
At this point, Jack and I arrive back at the villa. We enter to find a disgustingly green mixed drink on the table and a strange man sitting next to Karin. Black is defending his drink mixing by explaining that he substituted the vanilla ice cream with Pistachio and the Blue Curacao with Midori. Claire pulls out her shopping list: duct tape, drop cloth, glycerine, fuses, detonators, vanilla ice cream, Blue Curacao.
Jack and Daniel go upstairs to argue, I mean discuss Daniel’s visit with Arturo. Daniel is sharing Arturo’s concerns about the authorities, to which Jack tells him that he doesn’t care about the authorities.
David seems very uncomfortable at our arrival and is inclined to leave. I tell him to go upstairs with Karin. I may have been a little cranky, due to the horrible abomination of a Martiki I had just tasted, and he seems a little intimidated as he heads upstairs with Karin. Once they are in the room, Karin asks him what is wrong. He tells her that Jack the Terrorist is here. She laughs and tells him Jack is dead, but he is not convinced.
Meanwhile, Daniel is regaling Jack with more tales of vampires and mysticism. Jack has finally had enough and tells Daniel to be out of the room before Jack finishes loading his gun. Daniel hurries downstairs.
Seeing the look on his face, Black tries to offer him a Martiki knock-off, and Daniel attempts to knock it back towards Black. Apparently, Daniel trained at the Jack’s Payne-in-my-ass-because-you-hit-me-there-instead-of-hitting-the-target-you-were-aiming-at school of marksmanship and the drink ends up in my lap. I am less than pleased. The only thing available to throw at him is some stupid crystal ball on the table, so I do. As the ball leaves my hand and heads towards Daniel’s abdomen, Black, Daniel and I see the image of a horrified face in the ball (I don’t know who it is, but Daniel and Black insist that it was Arturo). It hits Daniel and drops to the floor without breaking. It suddenly goes dim, like a television that’s been turned off.
Daniel grabs the crystal ball, hugs it to his chest like it was his long-lost childhood teddy bear and goes upstairs.
Claire decides that she needs to get some air and announces that she is going out for the proper ingredients to make Martikis. We tell her it’s too late, but she insists.
Claire opens the door and is surprised to see Arturo standing there, about to knock. She invites him in.
Jack has come down and we all greet Arturo, who says he is here to see Daniel. Claire goes to get Daniel and he comes downstairs. Daniel’s horrified face at the realization that the vampire Arturo has been invited into the villa is remarkably reminiscent of that of (Up)Chuck, when he realized he was on his way for a barium enema in a Parisian hospital.
Karin, disappointed that I have apparently scared the semen out of David, storms out of the room and joins the group. She sits and stares at Arturo in adoration.
Daniel goes into the kitchen to test his theory that vampires are anal and obsessive-compulsive and will have to clean up a mess. He drops a handful of coffee beans on the floor. Yeah, the only flaw in that plan is that, while I am no bloodsucker, I am anal and obsessive-compulsive. I am horrified to hear the sound of the coffee beans hitting the floor, as I had spent the early evening cleaning up after the mess Black had made while preparing sandwiches earlier. With a speed surpassing even that of the supernatural I am in the kitchen with dustpan in hand to clean up the fallen beans.
Claire pulls out her list: duct tape, drop cloth, glycerine, fuses, detonators, vanilla ice cream, Blue Curacao, coffee beans.
Suddenly, several members of the group hear the distinct sound of a window opening upstairs. Karin awakens from her stupor and realizes that David is leaving. Claire goes out to talk to him. She scares the piss out of him (all we need to do now is introduce him to the bloodsucking vampire Arturo and he’ll have no body fluids left at all) and he drops his car keys. Despite her best efforts, David is freaked beyond repair and determined to leave. He gets in his car, throws it into reverse and backs out of the driveway. Unfortunately, my car was behind his, and his car pushes mine all the way out onto the street doing some major front-end damage. Claire jumps in her car to follow him.
Inside, we hear the bang and run for the door. Jack gets there first and sees my damaged car. He does what any man fearing the wrath of his lover who has lost way too many cars to mission damage would do. He opens fire. David’s car blows up. Claire avoids hitting the burning wreck, but her car is damaged by flying debris.
I run out and see my car. Aaaarrrrrgggghhh! It is on fire. We run for the hoses to put out the flames. A plainclothes policeman holding his crotch comes running from across the street to look at David’s burning car. What the hell kind of tactics are they teaching these French cops? Then we see the coffee stain on his abdomen and pants. Ah, I get it.
Karin is babbling on about being spider woman, no wait – a black widow, because every man she spends time with dies. Well, we should set her up with the presumed undead vampire Arturo. What harm could she do him?
Jack hides his gun and runs around picking up the shell casings from the ground.
Arturo, who never agreed to help us in any way and was rather noncommittal as to whether or not he would alert the authorities or anyone else, disappears again after telling Daniel that he is safe because he believes. When Arturo is gone, Daniel carefully takes his glass out to Black, so Ben can lift some fingerprints off of it.
Daniel discusses the fault line concerns with us. Okay, I suggest using some sort of corrosive material on the building to burn a hole in the wall. Claire takes out her list: duct tape, drop cloth, glycerine, fuses, detonators, vanilla ice cream, Blue Curacao, coffee beans, acid.
By the time the emergency services leave, it is very late and we all fall exhausted into bed.
Back at the Hotel Royale, Rossi spends the night with Dominique. He is hopelessly in love. Unfortunately, he has spent too much time reading the book on making passes and has not yet started the sequel, How to Satisfy the Woman that You Picked up while Wearing Sunglasses. Dominique is less than thrilled.
The next morning Clusine and le Couer show up.
Daniel goes out to Black’s camper and knocks. After having a bizarre and inane conversation with Black, Daniel realizes that he is, in fact talking to Black’s automated answering machine. When Black finally answers the door, Daniel wants to know if Black got any fingerprints from the glass. Black tells him it will take some time.
Claire goes to sleep on beach because we are making too much noise for her. While there, she meets a charming man named Peter Jacobson.
Clusine is unhappy about the events of last night. I tell him that it’s not my fault they got bored, went home and missed the show. They both look a little sheepish at that.
Just then my phone rings. It’s Paris. I’m out of cat food and Daphne Noel has eaten my slippers. Fortunately, she didn’t get my Bonnie Prince Charlies and I ask Paris to put them someplace safe, so she puts them in the freezer, a place that she is sure the non-opposable thumb beings cannot gain access to.
When I get off of the phone, le Couer has gone to check all of Jack’s guns, however, Jack hid the offending weapon in the garden, so everything is okay.
Rossi has emerged from his love nest and is having breakfast in the hotel dining room when he spots none other than Alex Architect. "Duuuuuude," the sexually sated Rossi yells out. Alex leaves his architect buddies and joins Rossi. The news is broadcasting something about an explosion at a villa on the French-Italian border and Alex asks Rossi, "you guys?" Rossi sees the picture and gasps. He phones the villa. Jack instructs him to return ASAP. When Rossi mentions that he found Alex Architect, Jack tells Rossi to bring him along.
When the two show up on Black’s bike, Black is beyond relieved. With all the cars blowing up around here and our team’s history with Black’s vehicles in particular, there was cause for concern.
Of course, with that, we realize that we have practically no cars left. Rentals are needed. Well, I won’t be doing it. I have been blacklisted by just about every car rental agency worldwide, especially those in France. I’ll be lucky if any car dealer will even sell a car to me now. How am I going to explain this to my insurance company? My rates are already astronomical. I am unhappy.
Black takes Karin and Daniel to rent cars, and Claire gets a replacement for her damaged car from the rental agency.
We split up the careful and complete list that Claire has prepared and go shopping. Black and Alex go to Rome for some of the more difficult to obtain items on the list (glycerine, etc.), Jack and I are getting the materials to make fuses, Daniel is at the market replacing the spilled coffee beans and getting vanilla ice cream, and Claire is out getting Blue Curacao to make proper Martikis.
When we return, we realize that Black and Alex are not back yet. I call them and find out that they will not be back until tomorrow.
That evening, Claire, Karin, Daniel and Rossi go to Monte Carlo. Clearly, Jack and I do not. We stay at home for a quiet evening of drinks and Martikis.
While at the casino, Claire sees the charming Peter Jacobson. He starts talking to the group. Karin has noticed that two Interpol agents are following Jacobson. Daniel has also spotted the female Interpol agent and is convinced that she wants him. Not wishing to disappoint, Daniel sidles over to her. She seems interested only in his companions. He tells her that Claire’s name is Claire Sheboygen.
Daniel, disappointed that the woman is clearly not interested in him, except in the most professional of manners, rejoins the group.
After some gambling, the team returns to the villa.
The next morning Clusine and le Couer show up again. Okay, now I’m sick of them. Every morning, they come in here and ask stupid questions, knowing full well that we’re up to no good and will probably burn down the countryside or a national monument in a matter or days. So why ask? I tell Clusine in no uncertain terms that I am displeased and he should leave. Interestingly, I think he tries to threaten me. He tells me that he can’t lock me up, but he can lock Jack up. Wait, this job has some interesting perks. This is better than a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I have a ‘don’t go to jail at all’ card. And if anything happens to Jack, I will surely be able to pull strings and get him out. I give Clusine the raspberry, which I have been perfecting with Paris’s help.
His pleasure increases when he sees Black return with Alex Architect.
A very frustrated Clusine wants to know about Claire Sheboygen, the woman named on an Interpol request. I laugh and tell him she doesn’t exist. And, of course, we have no idea as to the identities of the German girl and the Californian male that were with Ms. Sheboygen last night.
I do know that Peter Jacobson is none other than master thief Charles Drasser, so the competition is definitely heating up. Hmm. This is becoming interesting. I may have to stay purely for entertainment purposes. Of course, I do have a vested interest in seeing this mission finished hopefully before this weekend (my bachelorette party), but definitely before next weekend (the wedding).