Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Greetings!
I have good news and bad news... The bad news is, I forgot about the bit with Edge in chapter 10 when I left my hints, and the way I'd originally split it, chapter 10 missed out on the kidnappy action.
The good news is, I'm just going to smush the next two chapters together into one big super bonus sized chapter 10, cos I can't promise kidnappings and not deliver.
As always, this is just the product of my fevered imagination, and should not be taken seriously.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 10
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After three days of trying to backtrack the path Bono's car had taken to the airport (or the car Bono had been in, at least), Natasha got fed up and tried the direct approach. More or less.
"Hey, Bono, good to see you again." Tasha smiled warmly at him as he got out of the car. He looked at her oddly, wondering if he was supposed to know her, and held up a finger while he finished his phone call.
When he hung up, he smiled, ever so slightly uncertain. "Have we met?"
"Oh yes, but I don't expect you to remember. It's Tasha, we talked a few times before, about books and theology and philosophy and boring things like that."
Bono was peering at her carefully. "Yes, I remember now, of course. How are you?"
Natasha was 90% sure he was just saying that to make a fan feel better, but let it go. "Can't complain. How about you, having a busy day? What have you been up to lately?" She fell into step beside him as he walked.
"Every day's busier than the last," he smiled. "I just came from Edge's place, it's his daughter's birthday today. And I'll probably be back here tonight after the press conference, we've recorded a lot of material in Morocco recently and there's a lot of work to be done on it."
Bingo. "You don't say? Did you get Edge's daughter anything?"
"Yeah, I found a first edition of Jame's Joyce's Collected Poems. It's not very cool for a twenty-four-year-old, but I think she liked it." Bono smiled fondly.
"That sounds like a great present. She's not much younger than me," Natasha said.
Bono turned on the charm. "Come on, you can't be a day over twenty-two," he said, giving every appearance of sincerity.
"Hah! You're smooth, I'll give you that."
"Well, I need to get on this plane," Bono said, as they arrived at the security area. "Good to see you again, Tasha." He shook her hand.
Tasha wished he really did remember her. "One last thing... you don't have a heart condition or anything, do you? Asthma?" It wouldn't do to accidentally kill him after saving him from a plane crash.
The question earned her a very odd look indeed. "Not that I'm aware of," Bono replied, and then disappeared through the door.
*****
Compared to laboriously figuring out the car's route, it was easy finding where the abode of The Edge was. And it was one hell of an abode, Tasha thought. How could one family possibly need such a gigantic house? Were all those rooms filled with guitars and effects pedals?
Just on the off-chance that she would be able to convince The Edge, who in turn could convince Bono, she pressed on the buzzer on Edge's gate one morning. Obviously Bono was never going to believe a stranger, but if the same warning came from a close friend and bandmate...
"Yes?"
Natasha jumped, hardly expecting a response. "Ehm, hi. I was wondering if Mr The Edge was at home? My name is Natasha Coleman, I was hoping to discuss theories of temporal recurrence with him." She made the term up on the spot, wondering if there actually were any theories on what was happening to her.
There was a long pause, and unbelievably, the gate clanked slowly open.
Tasha slipped inside, more than willing to take advantage of the opportunity. She came to the imposing front doors and rang the doorbell, but one door opened while she had her finger on the button. A middle-aged woman looked her up and down, and Tasha wished that she'd worn something more professional. Still, at least it wasn't her Bono-seducing outfit.
"Is Mr Evans expecting you?"
It took Tasha a moment to remember that The Edge's surname was Evans. "No, no he's not. But I heard he was interested in science and I have some rather unique, ehm, experience in the field, and I wondered if he might be interested in discussing it."
The housekeeper sniffed, and said, "Wait here."
Tasha waited.
A few minutes later, The Edge himself appeared, descending an impressive staircase, dressed in torn jeans and a weird t-shirt and his beanie. It was quite the juxtaposition.
"And here was me expecting a smoking jacket and a pipe," Tasha blurted, then clapped a hand to her mouth. After all her chummy chats with Bono, she was getting too familiar.
The Edge smiled. "I save those for weekends. Natasha Coleman, is it? You're a scientist?"
"Not as such," Tasha said after a pause. "Do you know much about the field?"
"Which field, exactly?" The Edge showed her into a lounge room, and they both sat down on separate couches.
Natasha was way out of her depth, and she suspected The Edge knew it. He was watching her calmly enough, as if waiting for her to make a slip. Or maybe that was just her paranoia speaking.
"Well, you know, temporal anomalies and the like," she said, frantically borrowing terms from Star Trek. "Quantum theory... relativity...?"
"I don't know much about theoretical temporal mechanics, but I've watched as much Star Trek as you probably have," he said with a small smile.
"Well, from a theoretical point of view then, do you think it's theoretically possible for time to be stuck in a loop, and for the same day to be repeated over and over again?"
"It's hard to take such a theory seriously," The Edge said. "Would it be a localised phenomenon, or is the whole universe stuck in this loop? What could cause something like that to happen?"
"I'm more interested in what could stop it," Tasha said.
The Edge shrugged. "That's just as impossible to answer. I know a little bit about relativity, but that really doesn't cover the possibility of repeating time loops. It's a good plot for science-fiction, but that's about it, I'd say."
"Well, I have some personal experience which is at odds with that viewpoint," Tasha said, affecting an academic air to cover her frustration. "What would you say if I told you that I've lost count of the number of times I've lived this day, the fourth of July? It's months worth, at least. I can't give you any physical proof because at the end of each day, I wake up again this morning and everything is exactly as it was, and no one else remembers except for me. How is that possible, Mr The Edge? If this day is repeating endlessly, how is it that I'm the only person who realises it?"
The Edge's eyebrows had crept up his forehead. His fingers steepled. "Well, that's interesting. Are you sure you're the only one?"
"I've not been able to put out an ad in the paper; 'Call this number if you're stuck in a time loop'," Natasha said testily. "Everyone I've spoken to seems oblivious, the only sign I've seen of someone remembering even a little is your friend Bono. I've met him in the airport over a dozen times this afternoon, told him my name, got his autograph. But one time I didn't tell him my name, and he signed it on the paper anyway. I was so sure he was starting to remember... but he got on the plane anyway, and then he didn't remember me the next day, and got on it again, and again and again. And he died, The Edge. Bono has died every time I've lived through this day; that plane has crashed every time. Bob Geldof said that I can stop him dying because I know what's going to happen, but it's not working, he won't believe me!"
Once again, Tasha was struggling to keep hold of herself. She had no one to talk to about this, she realised, unless she started having bizarre conversations with random people. Or rock stars. Or Ted the barman again.
The Edge was watching her, his eyebrows together now.
"Come on, just imagine for a moment that this was you," Tasha pleaded. "What if this was happening to you, and you had to convince someone it was true? I could tell you that Bono's going to be wearing red sunglasses today, and a black jacket with red trim, except he probably wears that a lot, and one time it was different. I told you that he's going to die today, but if you won't believe me until that happens, it'll be too late to prevent it and everything will repeat again. I can tell you that Bono's going to get your daughter a first-edition copy of James Joyce's collected poems for her birthday today...?" She looked at the guitarist hopefully.
"He already told me," The Edge said. "I would like to know how you found that out, however." He didn't seem impressed, not once she'd mentioned Bono's death.
"He told me himself, either this afternoon or two days ago, depending on your point of view. He thinks it's not very cool for a twenty-four-year-old, but he thought she liked it."
"And how does Bob Geldof come into all this?"
Natasha sighed. It was no use, but she answered him anyway. "After the crash, Bob Geldof is going to go ahead and do the press conference on his own. All the journalists will want to ask him about is Bono, but he just wanted to talk about the summit and Africa. Then this blonde woman from some tabloid is going to push him too far, and he'll go completely mental and rant and rave and give them all a serve. And then he stormed off and I was there once, I followed him, and he came out into an alleyway, and threw his phone at the wall. And we said a few words, but he was almost mad with grief, and I told him what I just told you, more or less, and he said that if I knew what was happening, I could stop it. And I've been trying. You have a stubborn frontman, there." Her tenses were getting very confused.
"You have to learn how to stick to your guns in our business, and how to spot liars and con-artists, too." The Edge was looking unfriendly.
"What, you want the lotto numbers too? Fine. Seven, fourteen, two, eight, and nineteen. Supplementaries twelve and five. The winner of the steeplechase in Galway today is Joyful Banter, at odds of eleven to one. The weatherman on RTE 2 is away sick tonight and will be replaced by a red-haired woman whose name I can't remember. But that won't do any good now, will it? I can't tell you about anything that's going to happen in the next five minutes, especially since I've never been here before. Give me a few days and I might, but I need to try Plan B first."
"And what was Plan A?" The Edge seemed curious despite himself.
"Plan A was trying to convince Bono in ten minutes not to get on the plane he was about to catch. It wasn't enough time, and I don't think it'll work even if I spend a year's worth of days trying again and again." Natasha sighed. "You don't believe me now, but tonight you will. And then you'll wake up this morning again and you won't remember any of this at all.
"I don't want anything from you," she added. "I'm not trying to con you out of anything, I don't want money or fame, I don't have a CD of awful songs I want you to hear. I just want you to ask Bono to take a different plane today, that's all. I don't care which one, he can go earlier or later, it makes no difference. Just not the four o'clock chartered flight."
"It's going to crash, is it?" If you'd looked up 'sceptical' in a dictionary, there would be a picture of The Edge's face at that moment.
"Yes. I don't know why, exactly, but I was on it once. Just for a laugh, you know. We were climbing after take-off, and the right-hand engine failed and started burning, and then the nose dropped suddenly and we went down." The memory of those screams came back to her suddenly, and Natasha shivered. "Even though I knew I wasn't going to die, not permanently, it was still horrible."
"How did you know that? Perhaps your death would have stopped all these time loops." He was definitely humouring her.
"I know because I tried to kill myself, many times, earlier on. Jumping off a building didn't work. Slitting my wrists didn't work." Natasha counted them off on her fingers. "Shooting myself in the head didn't work. Taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills didn't work. Getting run over by a freight train didn't work. And being victim number twenty-six in Ireland's worst air disaster in decades didn't work, either. I'm stuck with this day forever, unless I can make it stop somehow."
"And you think saving Bono's life from this plane crash will do that? Because Bob Geldof said so?"
"He never said it would make it stop. But I have to have something to do or I'll go insane. Again." She stared flatly at The Edge, who stared back.
Finally, he stood, and Natasha followed suit. "Ms Coleman, you have obviously spent a lot of time preparing your story. I would like you to consider how completely outlandish it sounds to someone who, to the best of their knowledge, is living a normal day for the first time. Your ideas are interesting, your concern appears genuine, and your intentions may be benign, but I'm afraid I don't believe you." He was ushering her towards the door.
"I know, I suppose it was too much to hope for. Will you at least ask Bono to take a different flight? Please? I swear, you'll never see me again. I just had to try..." Natasha met The Edge's eyes, willing him to see the sincerity in hers.
"I'm not making any promises," was all The Edge said.
Back on the road outside the enormous abode, Natasha wondered if rock stars got so bored that they randomly let crazy fans into their houses for a chat, just for the entertainment value.
---
In the studio, Adam had been watching Edge and Larry's verbal sparring like a tennis match, back and forth, but finally could stand no more. "It doesn't matter WHAT he said," the bassist declared in a loud voice, referring to some unintelligible Bongolese on the tape, "because he's going to change it twenty times, and it'll probably never be finished anyway."
Edge and Larry looked at him.
Sam burst into the room, shock all over his face. The others turned to look at him, but he couldn't seem to speak.
"...Bono," he managed.
"What about 'im?" Larry said, scowling at the interruption. But Edge and Adam went still.
"What is it, Sam?" Adam asked quietly.
A radio could be heard faintly through the door Sam had opened. The security guard pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"The news said there's been a crash... at the airport..."
"What? It's not..." Larry began, but then lost his own ability to speak. Edge had gone suddenly white, but no one noticed.
"They said Bono was on board. They said there was a fireball..."
Phones began to ring and chaos erupted, but it all swirled around Edge in a wordless roar. He realised he was sitting on the floor, his phone buzzing urgently in a pocket. He fumbled it out with numb fingers, and saw Gavin's name on the caller ID. The phone clattered to the floor. Edge's insides had become a tight knot, even while the bottom seemed to have fallen out of his stomach. His brain felt swamped with static.
That girl. That crazy fan. Her and her temporal recurrence. She knew. She warned me, and I did nothing.
His phone rang out while The Edge was staring into space and time. He knew he would blame himself for the rest of his life.
*****
Natasha did have to figure out where the car had come from to get to The Edge's Enormous Abode, and that took several days of loitering on roadsides, making note of which direction it had come from each time and then moving back to the intersection before. Rinse, repeat.
Finally, she found a suitable place, and worked out the timing exactly. She'd even done a dress-rehearsal, but had stopped short of enacting the whole plan that first time.
At 2:37pm, holding a book and wearing her earphones, Natasha stepped across a quiet, hedge-lined road in Dalkey. There was a screech of brakes as a sleek black car came around a corner, the driver seeing her too late. The car collided with her, but she was careful to turn so the rucksack on her back took most of the impact as she fell down. It was still a hell of a bump, and this being only her second non-fatal accident, Natasha was stunned for a moment.
"Jaysus, are ye all right, miss?" The driver rushed over to her, torn between helping her up and not wanting to move her in case she was badly injured.
Tasha groaned convincingly, and struggled to sit up. The driver almost dragged her to her feet. He was a kindly-looking, nearly bald, middle-aged man. She almost wished he didn't seem like such a nice guy.
"Oh god, I'm gonna be sick..." she dashed over to the hedge, sliding the rucksack from her shoulders, and retched noisily. She also slid a sturdy two-by-four from the rucksack. There was a cloth tied around one end, to blunt the sharp corners.
"Miss?" The driver had followed at a discreet distance.
"I'm sorry," Tasha said.
"Ye jus' came outta nowhere, I never saw ye... Are ye sure you're not hurt?"
"I'm sorry," she said again, and swung the piece of wood with all her strength. It cracked against the man's head, and he dropped like a stone. She checked his pulse and breathing, and was relieved to find them both steady. He was bleeding, though... If she got this right, time might resume its normal path, and she didn't want to kill some innocent chauffeur while saving Bono's life.
Natasha applied a compression bandage to the wound on the driver's head, trying not to be alarmed by the amount of blood. At least it wasn't as bad as it had been the day before, when she didn't have the cloth tied around the two-by-four.
Luckily the man's uniform was dark blue, and the blood that had dripped on it hardly showed. Natasha relieved him of his jacket, hoping it matched well enough with her own dark-blue pants. She left the cap on the front seat where she found it, as it was several sizes too large for her.
Tasha laboriously dragged the unconscious man onto the verge, concealing him under the hedge. If he hadn't been discovered by the evening, she would raise the alarm somehow, but she had other priorities for now.
Her heart in her mouth, she got behind the wheel of the car. This was where her rehearsal had ended, the previous day. She couldn't believe she was doing this... if it didn't work, she could do it again, but this was a lot harder than pouncing on Bono in an airport.
Natasha took some long, deep breaths until she was relatively calm. She had to play this cool. She checked the rucksack under the passenger seat, and drove off towards The Edge's mansion.
---
"That'll be the car now," Edge said, glancing at the television monitor that gave him a view of the area outside his gate. A black car had just pulled up, and the female driver had confirmed her purpose over the intercom.
"We'll be right out, come through," Edge said, holding down the button. He pressed another button to open the gate.
He and Bono stepped outside, into the summer sun. "Have a safe flight," Edge said.
"I will, I'll see you tomorrow." Bono descended the stairs as the driver leapt out of the car and opened the back door for him.
"You must be new, I thought we'd trained everyone out of that," he chuckled. "I can open a door for myself."
"Sorry sir," the driver said, noticeably flustered. She hurriedly got in the driver's door, buckled herself in, and tried to drive off while it was in Park. "Shite."
Bono smiled to himself from the back seat. "Is Allen not working today?"
"Ehm, he had to go home. Not sure why," the driver said, successfully driving out the gate and into the road.
"What's your name?"
"Natasha."
"Do you mind if I make some phone calls, Natasha?"
"No, that's fine."
---
So, that call to Australia had been one of many, Natasha thought as she drove. It was a blessing that Bono was so occupied on the phone, as he didn't notice they were driving westwards out of Dublin and nowhere near the airport at all.
She was just thinking about turning south when she heard a familiar bit of one-sided conversation.
"... Zero-point-seven percent. It's a tiny fraction of the GDP, but it means the difference between life and death for thousands of Africans. Yes that's right. Yes... I'm confident that they'll make the right decision, because their voters won't let them do otherwise. ... All right... No, thank you. And I'm sorry I forgot the time there... Haha, yes. Goodbye."
Tasha checked the clock. 3:33. She made sure all the doors were locked and almost held her breath.
"Hey, where are we?"
"So, was that The Age?" Natasha asked, instead of answering. "The Sydney Morning Herald? Or maybe The Australian?"
A glance in the rear view mirror showed Bono to be staring at the back of Natasha's head, obviously working out that he had been abducted. He tried the door, but Natasha kept her finger on the lock button.
"Who are you?" he asked next, controlled but tense.
"How did Edge's daughter... Hollie, isn't it? How did she like her first-edition copy of Joyce's Collected Poems?"
"How did you know about that?"
"How's the material from Fez sounding?" Natasha went on. "You think that track, 'Moment of Surrender' is promising, don't you? I believe the others are in the studio today, right?"
"Where are you taking me?"
It was as if they were both shooting at each other, and kept missing. "I don't actually know yet," Natasha admitted. She braked suddenly and turned down a south-bound road, accelerating again in case Bono managed to get the door open. Green fields and stone walls whizzed by. Cows were the only witnesses. She glanced at the petrol gauge... that would be a problem, but not just yet.
"Why are you doing this?" Bono asked, perhaps encouraged by her answering one question.
She checked the mirror again. "Black jacket, I see. Do you not like that one with the patches very much? And by the way, hand over your phone, please." She held her hand out over her shoulder, and drifted over to the wrong side of the road.
"Natasha... there's a truck coming..."
"I know. I've been killed before and it hasn't stopped me, nor you either. If I have to do this again tomorrow, so be it. The phone, please." She didn't want him calling for help before she was ready.
Reluctantly, he gave her the phone, and she returned to the correct side of the road. The truck roared past, horn blaring.
"Who are you?" Bono asked again.
Natasha turned around briefly, looking at her captive before turning her eyes back to the road. "You tell me, Bono. We've talked at least a dozen times now. Theology, literature, music, philosophy, peanuts and melons, Achtung Baby and sexy Psalms in the Bible. I interviewed you for the Irish Independent several times, although you kept saying the same things. I tried to seduce you twice, I asked you what I would have to do to stop you from getting on the plane this afternoon. You said I'd probably have to tie you up, so here we are."
"Take me back to the airport, Natasha," Bono said, the tone of his voice saying 'You don't want to do this'.
"It's too late, Bono. You'll never make it onto that plane now." A sudden sense of giddy euphoria hit Natasha, and she grinned, and laughed, and thumped the steering wheel. "I actually did it! I had to kidnap you, but I did it!" She laughed again.
Bono looked at her as if he was trapped in a car with a raving lunatic. Which was quite a reasonable conclusion, under the circumstances. "What have you done?" he asked carefully.
"I've saved your life, Bono Vox," Tasha said, still grinning. She honked the horn, startling some pigeons on the roadside.
"You might want to watch your driving, if you're interested in saving my life," Bono said as Tasha had to swerve back to the correct side of the road.
"Sorry about that."
And she told him, again, about everything that had happened, and would happen.
---
Bono had known, from the moment he'd woken up, that this was going to be an unusual day. First he'd had a very odd dream, which he was sure he'd had before, even though he couldn't remember it. Then he'd tried to work on a song he thought he'd already started, but he couldn't find the notes or the tape he'd made. Bono couldn't remember exactly when he'd made the tape, but the melody in his head had felt so familiar... Then he'd had to google his own lyrics to make sure it hadn't been someone else's song.
After that, he'd been suddenly seized by a fear that wouldn't see his family again, and had almost refused to let Ali leave the house. He'd clung to her, terrified, while his sons had stared and Ali had laughed and told him to stop being such a fool.
And here he was, abducted by an oddly familiar woman who thought she'd been living this day over and over... Bono tried to convince himself that it was all a co-incidence, but there was a worm of panic in his guts that was growing steadily. That dream had unnerved him enough to make him panic about his family, and now this... it all seemed to be coming true, no matter what Natasha was saying about saving his life.
What if that was true, too? What if what she said was real, and this day was repeating? It seemed like science-fiction, but Bono's instincts were telling him otherwise. His head was spinning.
"Have you had much déjà vu today?" she was asking him.
"How did you know that?!" he shot back, his nerves taut. All day, especially since Ali had gone out, nearly everything he'd seen, heard, done and said had echoed in his head with the eerie certainty that he'd not only been there and said that exact thing before, but had done so while experiencing the same feeling of déjà vu. It only served to heighten his unease, and it had been driving him mad.
"Are you having any now?"
"No..." That was odd, and almost a relief. But wasn't it more odd to have been plagued with it almost all day?
"That's because this is the very first time I've done this. Not bad for my first try, eh?" She tossed a jaunty grin over her shoulder.
Bono didn't feel like grinning at all. He didn't know what was going on, he didn't know what any of this meant, or if it meant anything at all.
"Do you remember me?" Natasha asked, yanking Bono's attention back inside the car. She was meeting his eyes in the rear view mirror, and he saw something desperate there.
"You do seem familiar..." He should probably keep her talking, he thought. "I've probably seen you at a gig, or somewhere else? At HQ?"
"I've never seen a U2 concert, Bono," Natasha replied. "I've never been to Hanover Quay, I haven't even called myself a fan for ten years. The first time I met you was at Dublin airport, on the fourth of July, 2008. Today. About this time, in fact. But I've lived through months of fourths of July since then, I told you."
"That's impossible," Bono said again, trying to convince himself as much as her. "Time doesn't work like that..."
"How do you know how time works? How does anybody?"
A lyric popped into Bono's head, along with the melody he'd remembered this morning. He sang under his breath, making sure he remembered it later. "Time is irrelevant, it's not linear..."
Suddenly, it seemed to Bono that the inside of the car seemed a lot like the inside of a plane, and he was trapped, and the plane was burning and falling from the sky. The niggling worm of panic grew and engulfed him, and he shouted and clawed at the window and tried to undo the seat belt but it wouldn't work and he was falling and he was going to die and he should never have let Ali go...
"...BONO! Jaysus, I really will have to tie you up...YOU'RE NOT ON THE PLANE, BONO!"
A slap, and his sunglasses flew from his face. He stared up at a woman, who was leaning over him at an odd angle.
Natasha. I know her, but I don't.
"Sorry," Natasha said, and handed his glasses back. She was leaning over the back of the driver's seat, and he was twisted up in the seat belt, lying across the back seat. "Had a bit of a turn?"
Bono sat up slowly, wincing at a twinge in his back. "I ... I thought I was on a plane, and it was about to crash..." He eyed her suspiciously. After what she'd been telling him, he'd had this hallucination, but how could she have been responsible for that?
Natasha's reaction was not what he might have expected. She spun back around and turned on the car's radio, switching quickly through the stations until she found what she wanted. It was a talk show about over-fishing cod. Bono realised that the car was stopped on the side of the road, and he reflexively tried the door, but it was locked. So was the window control.
"Just wait," Natasha said. "I know you think I'm mad, but just listen to this. Mind you, I'm not the one who just had a panic attack, but I'll let you think about that."
Bono waited, trying to slow his breathing down and control his jumpy nerves. He'd been able to see the people on that plane, see their faces contorted by fear, hear the screams and smell the smoke...
The talk show was interrupted by some breaking news.
"I've just been handed a report," the female newsreader said, professional over her surprise. "A chartered passenger jet has crashed just after take-off from Dublin airport, a few minutes ago. Eye-witnesses report seeing a large explosion after the plane seemed to drop from the sky as it was climbing. There are conflicting and unconfirmed reports that rock star Bono was booked on this flight, but that he didn't check in..."
The newsreader repeated the headline, and the talk show resumed, but Bono didn't hear the rest. There was a sort of lightness in his head, weighed down by incredulity. He'd just heard something impossible, but it fit perfectly with the rest of his very strange day.
Natasha was watching him, and he closed his mouth, aware that he looked like a fish out of water.
"But... how..."
"I told you," she said, rolling her eyes. "You would have been on that plane if I hadn't... eh, diverted you. Every other day, you'd be dead by now." Natasha grinned at him again. "I can't believe I finally did it. Life goes on again! Fancy that, tomorrow will be the fifth of July..."
She started the car again, but stopped. "Shite. I'm going to have to explain to John why I wasn't at work today..."
"It's okay, I'll write you a note," Bono said shakily.
"Would you? And you're not going to press charges about this?" She waved at the inside of the car.
"No, no, I think I can forgive you." He leaned forward. "Natasha... I should be thanking you. Your methods are unorthodox, but you were right, you saved my life."
Just then, Bono's phone rang. Natasha handed it to him, then turned the car around and headed back towards Dublin.
---
The only thing that effectively contained Natasha's elation as she drove, was listening to Bono assuring his family and friends that he wasn't dead, and trying to explain why.
As she pulled up outside his imposing gates, having followed his distracted directions, he scribbled a note to Tasha's boss about her absence from work, and signed it with a flourish. A moment later, two security guards and Bono's family poured out of the gates, and practically pulled him from the back of the car. Tasha stayed put, trying to ignore the tearful reunion. She started the engine once everyone was clear, feeling rather pleased with herself for a job well done, keen to be on her way and thinking of the delights of a brand new, fresh day tomorrow.
There was a tap on the window, and she rolled it down. Bono was smiling at her. "You won't stay for dinner?"
Natasha glanced at Bono's wife and sons, and shook her head. "No, thank you. I don't want to intrude."
"I owe you my life, Natasha," the rock star said seriously. "I don't know how to repay you…"
"Don't get yourself killed again," Tasha replied. "And a series of exclusive interviews might be nice," she added, thinking of her career.
"Done," Bono smiled, and she laughed, not having expected him to take her seriously.
Finally Tasha drove off. She checked the hedge where she had left the real driver, but he was gone. She parked the stolen car in Dalkey and retrieved her own, and drove around Dublin until she found a really nice hotel. Tasha was determined to celebrate the fifth of July by not waking up in her own flat, for starters.
*****
((Stay tuned ... there are quite a few chapters left.
))
I have good news and bad news... The bad news is, I forgot about the bit with Edge in chapter 10 when I left my hints, and the way I'd originally split it, chapter 10 missed out on the kidnappy action.
The good news is, I'm just going to smush the next two chapters together into one big super bonus sized chapter 10, cos I can't promise kidnappings and not deliver.
As always, this is just the product of my fevered imagination, and should not be taken seriously.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 10
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After three days of trying to backtrack the path Bono's car had taken to the airport (or the car Bono had been in, at least), Natasha got fed up and tried the direct approach. More or less.
"Hey, Bono, good to see you again." Tasha smiled warmly at him as he got out of the car. He looked at her oddly, wondering if he was supposed to know her, and held up a finger while he finished his phone call.
When he hung up, he smiled, ever so slightly uncertain. "Have we met?"
"Oh yes, but I don't expect you to remember. It's Tasha, we talked a few times before, about books and theology and philosophy and boring things like that."
Bono was peering at her carefully. "Yes, I remember now, of course. How are you?"
Natasha was 90% sure he was just saying that to make a fan feel better, but let it go. "Can't complain. How about you, having a busy day? What have you been up to lately?" She fell into step beside him as he walked.
"Every day's busier than the last," he smiled. "I just came from Edge's place, it's his daughter's birthday today. And I'll probably be back here tonight after the press conference, we've recorded a lot of material in Morocco recently and there's a lot of work to be done on it."
Bingo. "You don't say? Did you get Edge's daughter anything?"
"Yeah, I found a first edition of Jame's Joyce's Collected Poems. It's not very cool for a twenty-four-year-old, but I think she liked it." Bono smiled fondly.
"That sounds like a great present. She's not much younger than me," Natasha said.
Bono turned on the charm. "Come on, you can't be a day over twenty-two," he said, giving every appearance of sincerity.
"Hah! You're smooth, I'll give you that."
"Well, I need to get on this plane," Bono said, as they arrived at the security area. "Good to see you again, Tasha." He shook her hand.
Tasha wished he really did remember her. "One last thing... you don't have a heart condition or anything, do you? Asthma?" It wouldn't do to accidentally kill him after saving him from a plane crash.
The question earned her a very odd look indeed. "Not that I'm aware of," Bono replied, and then disappeared through the door.
*****
Compared to laboriously figuring out the car's route, it was easy finding where the abode of The Edge was. And it was one hell of an abode, Tasha thought. How could one family possibly need such a gigantic house? Were all those rooms filled with guitars and effects pedals?
Just on the off-chance that she would be able to convince The Edge, who in turn could convince Bono, she pressed on the buzzer on Edge's gate one morning. Obviously Bono was never going to believe a stranger, but if the same warning came from a close friend and bandmate...
"Yes?"
Natasha jumped, hardly expecting a response. "Ehm, hi. I was wondering if Mr The Edge was at home? My name is Natasha Coleman, I was hoping to discuss theories of temporal recurrence with him." She made the term up on the spot, wondering if there actually were any theories on what was happening to her.
There was a long pause, and unbelievably, the gate clanked slowly open.
Tasha slipped inside, more than willing to take advantage of the opportunity. She came to the imposing front doors and rang the doorbell, but one door opened while she had her finger on the button. A middle-aged woman looked her up and down, and Tasha wished that she'd worn something more professional. Still, at least it wasn't her Bono-seducing outfit.
"Is Mr Evans expecting you?"
It took Tasha a moment to remember that The Edge's surname was Evans. "No, no he's not. But I heard he was interested in science and I have some rather unique, ehm, experience in the field, and I wondered if he might be interested in discussing it."
The housekeeper sniffed, and said, "Wait here."
Tasha waited.
A few minutes later, The Edge himself appeared, descending an impressive staircase, dressed in torn jeans and a weird t-shirt and his beanie. It was quite the juxtaposition.
"And here was me expecting a smoking jacket and a pipe," Tasha blurted, then clapped a hand to her mouth. After all her chummy chats with Bono, she was getting too familiar.
The Edge smiled. "I save those for weekends. Natasha Coleman, is it? You're a scientist?"
"Not as such," Tasha said after a pause. "Do you know much about the field?"
"Which field, exactly?" The Edge showed her into a lounge room, and they both sat down on separate couches.
Natasha was way out of her depth, and she suspected The Edge knew it. He was watching her calmly enough, as if waiting for her to make a slip. Or maybe that was just her paranoia speaking.
"Well, you know, temporal anomalies and the like," she said, frantically borrowing terms from Star Trek. "Quantum theory... relativity...?"
"I don't know much about theoretical temporal mechanics, but I've watched as much Star Trek as you probably have," he said with a small smile.
"Well, from a theoretical point of view then, do you think it's theoretically possible for time to be stuck in a loop, and for the same day to be repeated over and over again?"
"It's hard to take such a theory seriously," The Edge said. "Would it be a localised phenomenon, or is the whole universe stuck in this loop? What could cause something like that to happen?"
"I'm more interested in what could stop it," Tasha said.
The Edge shrugged. "That's just as impossible to answer. I know a little bit about relativity, but that really doesn't cover the possibility of repeating time loops. It's a good plot for science-fiction, but that's about it, I'd say."
"Well, I have some personal experience which is at odds with that viewpoint," Tasha said, affecting an academic air to cover her frustration. "What would you say if I told you that I've lost count of the number of times I've lived this day, the fourth of July? It's months worth, at least. I can't give you any physical proof because at the end of each day, I wake up again this morning and everything is exactly as it was, and no one else remembers except for me. How is that possible, Mr The Edge? If this day is repeating endlessly, how is it that I'm the only person who realises it?"
The Edge's eyebrows had crept up his forehead. His fingers steepled. "Well, that's interesting. Are you sure you're the only one?"
"I've not been able to put out an ad in the paper; 'Call this number if you're stuck in a time loop'," Natasha said testily. "Everyone I've spoken to seems oblivious, the only sign I've seen of someone remembering even a little is your friend Bono. I've met him in the airport over a dozen times this afternoon, told him my name, got his autograph. But one time I didn't tell him my name, and he signed it on the paper anyway. I was so sure he was starting to remember... but he got on the plane anyway, and then he didn't remember me the next day, and got on it again, and again and again. And he died, The Edge. Bono has died every time I've lived through this day; that plane has crashed every time. Bob Geldof said that I can stop him dying because I know what's going to happen, but it's not working, he won't believe me!"
Once again, Tasha was struggling to keep hold of herself. She had no one to talk to about this, she realised, unless she started having bizarre conversations with random people. Or rock stars. Or Ted the barman again.
The Edge was watching her, his eyebrows together now.
"Come on, just imagine for a moment that this was you," Tasha pleaded. "What if this was happening to you, and you had to convince someone it was true? I could tell you that Bono's going to be wearing red sunglasses today, and a black jacket with red trim, except he probably wears that a lot, and one time it was different. I told you that he's going to die today, but if you won't believe me until that happens, it'll be too late to prevent it and everything will repeat again. I can tell you that Bono's going to get your daughter a first-edition copy of James Joyce's collected poems for her birthday today...?" She looked at the guitarist hopefully.
"He already told me," The Edge said. "I would like to know how you found that out, however." He didn't seem impressed, not once she'd mentioned Bono's death.
"He told me himself, either this afternoon or two days ago, depending on your point of view. He thinks it's not very cool for a twenty-four-year-old, but he thought she liked it."
"And how does Bob Geldof come into all this?"
Natasha sighed. It was no use, but she answered him anyway. "After the crash, Bob Geldof is going to go ahead and do the press conference on his own. All the journalists will want to ask him about is Bono, but he just wanted to talk about the summit and Africa. Then this blonde woman from some tabloid is going to push him too far, and he'll go completely mental and rant and rave and give them all a serve. And then he stormed off and I was there once, I followed him, and he came out into an alleyway, and threw his phone at the wall. And we said a few words, but he was almost mad with grief, and I told him what I just told you, more or less, and he said that if I knew what was happening, I could stop it. And I've been trying. You have a stubborn frontman, there." Her tenses were getting very confused.
"You have to learn how to stick to your guns in our business, and how to spot liars and con-artists, too." The Edge was looking unfriendly.
"What, you want the lotto numbers too? Fine. Seven, fourteen, two, eight, and nineteen. Supplementaries twelve and five. The winner of the steeplechase in Galway today is Joyful Banter, at odds of eleven to one. The weatherman on RTE 2 is away sick tonight and will be replaced by a red-haired woman whose name I can't remember. But that won't do any good now, will it? I can't tell you about anything that's going to happen in the next five minutes, especially since I've never been here before. Give me a few days and I might, but I need to try Plan B first."
"And what was Plan A?" The Edge seemed curious despite himself.
"Plan A was trying to convince Bono in ten minutes not to get on the plane he was about to catch. It wasn't enough time, and I don't think it'll work even if I spend a year's worth of days trying again and again." Natasha sighed. "You don't believe me now, but tonight you will. And then you'll wake up this morning again and you won't remember any of this at all.
"I don't want anything from you," she added. "I'm not trying to con you out of anything, I don't want money or fame, I don't have a CD of awful songs I want you to hear. I just want you to ask Bono to take a different plane today, that's all. I don't care which one, he can go earlier or later, it makes no difference. Just not the four o'clock chartered flight."
"It's going to crash, is it?" If you'd looked up 'sceptical' in a dictionary, there would be a picture of The Edge's face at that moment.
"Yes. I don't know why, exactly, but I was on it once. Just for a laugh, you know. We were climbing after take-off, and the right-hand engine failed and started burning, and then the nose dropped suddenly and we went down." The memory of those screams came back to her suddenly, and Natasha shivered. "Even though I knew I wasn't going to die, not permanently, it was still horrible."
"How did you know that? Perhaps your death would have stopped all these time loops." He was definitely humouring her.
"I know because I tried to kill myself, many times, earlier on. Jumping off a building didn't work. Slitting my wrists didn't work." Natasha counted them off on her fingers. "Shooting myself in the head didn't work. Taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills didn't work. Getting run over by a freight train didn't work. And being victim number twenty-six in Ireland's worst air disaster in decades didn't work, either. I'm stuck with this day forever, unless I can make it stop somehow."
"And you think saving Bono's life from this plane crash will do that? Because Bob Geldof said so?"
"He never said it would make it stop. But I have to have something to do or I'll go insane. Again." She stared flatly at The Edge, who stared back.
Finally, he stood, and Natasha followed suit. "Ms Coleman, you have obviously spent a lot of time preparing your story. I would like you to consider how completely outlandish it sounds to someone who, to the best of their knowledge, is living a normal day for the first time. Your ideas are interesting, your concern appears genuine, and your intentions may be benign, but I'm afraid I don't believe you." He was ushering her towards the door.
"I know, I suppose it was too much to hope for. Will you at least ask Bono to take a different flight? Please? I swear, you'll never see me again. I just had to try..." Natasha met The Edge's eyes, willing him to see the sincerity in hers.
"I'm not making any promises," was all The Edge said.
Back on the road outside the enormous abode, Natasha wondered if rock stars got so bored that they randomly let crazy fans into their houses for a chat, just for the entertainment value.
---
In the studio, Adam had been watching Edge and Larry's verbal sparring like a tennis match, back and forth, but finally could stand no more. "It doesn't matter WHAT he said," the bassist declared in a loud voice, referring to some unintelligible Bongolese on the tape, "because he's going to change it twenty times, and it'll probably never be finished anyway."
Edge and Larry looked at him.
Sam burst into the room, shock all over his face. The others turned to look at him, but he couldn't seem to speak.
"...Bono," he managed.
"What about 'im?" Larry said, scowling at the interruption. But Edge and Adam went still.
"What is it, Sam?" Adam asked quietly.
A radio could be heard faintly through the door Sam had opened. The security guard pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"The news said there's been a crash... at the airport..."
"What? It's not..." Larry began, but then lost his own ability to speak. Edge had gone suddenly white, but no one noticed.
"They said Bono was on board. They said there was a fireball..."
Phones began to ring and chaos erupted, but it all swirled around Edge in a wordless roar. He realised he was sitting on the floor, his phone buzzing urgently in a pocket. He fumbled it out with numb fingers, and saw Gavin's name on the caller ID. The phone clattered to the floor. Edge's insides had become a tight knot, even while the bottom seemed to have fallen out of his stomach. His brain felt swamped with static.
That girl. That crazy fan. Her and her temporal recurrence. She knew. She warned me, and I did nothing.
His phone rang out while The Edge was staring into space and time. He knew he would blame himself for the rest of his life.
*****
Natasha did have to figure out where the car had come from to get to The Edge's Enormous Abode, and that took several days of loitering on roadsides, making note of which direction it had come from each time and then moving back to the intersection before. Rinse, repeat.
Finally, she found a suitable place, and worked out the timing exactly. She'd even done a dress-rehearsal, but had stopped short of enacting the whole plan that first time.
At 2:37pm, holding a book and wearing her earphones, Natasha stepped across a quiet, hedge-lined road in Dalkey. There was a screech of brakes as a sleek black car came around a corner, the driver seeing her too late. The car collided with her, but she was careful to turn so the rucksack on her back took most of the impact as she fell down. It was still a hell of a bump, and this being only her second non-fatal accident, Natasha was stunned for a moment.
"Jaysus, are ye all right, miss?" The driver rushed over to her, torn between helping her up and not wanting to move her in case she was badly injured.
Tasha groaned convincingly, and struggled to sit up. The driver almost dragged her to her feet. He was a kindly-looking, nearly bald, middle-aged man. She almost wished he didn't seem like such a nice guy.
"Oh god, I'm gonna be sick..." she dashed over to the hedge, sliding the rucksack from her shoulders, and retched noisily. She also slid a sturdy two-by-four from the rucksack. There was a cloth tied around one end, to blunt the sharp corners.
"Miss?" The driver had followed at a discreet distance.
"I'm sorry," Tasha said.
"Ye jus' came outta nowhere, I never saw ye... Are ye sure you're not hurt?"
"I'm sorry," she said again, and swung the piece of wood with all her strength. It cracked against the man's head, and he dropped like a stone. She checked his pulse and breathing, and was relieved to find them both steady. He was bleeding, though... If she got this right, time might resume its normal path, and she didn't want to kill some innocent chauffeur while saving Bono's life.
Natasha applied a compression bandage to the wound on the driver's head, trying not to be alarmed by the amount of blood. At least it wasn't as bad as it had been the day before, when she didn't have the cloth tied around the two-by-four.
Luckily the man's uniform was dark blue, and the blood that had dripped on it hardly showed. Natasha relieved him of his jacket, hoping it matched well enough with her own dark-blue pants. She left the cap on the front seat where she found it, as it was several sizes too large for her.
Tasha laboriously dragged the unconscious man onto the verge, concealing him under the hedge. If he hadn't been discovered by the evening, she would raise the alarm somehow, but she had other priorities for now.
Her heart in her mouth, she got behind the wheel of the car. This was where her rehearsal had ended, the previous day. She couldn't believe she was doing this... if it didn't work, she could do it again, but this was a lot harder than pouncing on Bono in an airport.
Natasha took some long, deep breaths until she was relatively calm. She had to play this cool. She checked the rucksack under the passenger seat, and drove off towards The Edge's mansion.
---
"That'll be the car now," Edge said, glancing at the television monitor that gave him a view of the area outside his gate. A black car had just pulled up, and the female driver had confirmed her purpose over the intercom.
"We'll be right out, come through," Edge said, holding down the button. He pressed another button to open the gate.
He and Bono stepped outside, into the summer sun. "Have a safe flight," Edge said.
"I will, I'll see you tomorrow." Bono descended the stairs as the driver leapt out of the car and opened the back door for him.
"You must be new, I thought we'd trained everyone out of that," he chuckled. "I can open a door for myself."
"Sorry sir," the driver said, noticeably flustered. She hurriedly got in the driver's door, buckled herself in, and tried to drive off while it was in Park. "Shite."
Bono smiled to himself from the back seat. "Is Allen not working today?"
"Ehm, he had to go home. Not sure why," the driver said, successfully driving out the gate and into the road.
"What's your name?"
"Natasha."
"Do you mind if I make some phone calls, Natasha?"
"No, that's fine."
---
So, that call to Australia had been one of many, Natasha thought as she drove. It was a blessing that Bono was so occupied on the phone, as he didn't notice they were driving westwards out of Dublin and nowhere near the airport at all.
She was just thinking about turning south when she heard a familiar bit of one-sided conversation.
"... Zero-point-seven percent. It's a tiny fraction of the GDP, but it means the difference between life and death for thousands of Africans. Yes that's right. Yes... I'm confident that they'll make the right decision, because their voters won't let them do otherwise. ... All right... No, thank you. And I'm sorry I forgot the time there... Haha, yes. Goodbye."
Tasha checked the clock. 3:33. She made sure all the doors were locked and almost held her breath.
"Hey, where are we?"
"So, was that The Age?" Natasha asked, instead of answering. "The Sydney Morning Herald? Or maybe The Australian?"
A glance in the rear view mirror showed Bono to be staring at the back of Natasha's head, obviously working out that he had been abducted. He tried the door, but Natasha kept her finger on the lock button.
"Who are you?" he asked next, controlled but tense.
"How did Edge's daughter... Hollie, isn't it? How did she like her first-edition copy of Joyce's Collected Poems?"
"How did you know about that?"
"How's the material from Fez sounding?" Natasha went on. "You think that track, 'Moment of Surrender' is promising, don't you? I believe the others are in the studio today, right?"
"Where are you taking me?"
It was as if they were both shooting at each other, and kept missing. "I don't actually know yet," Natasha admitted. She braked suddenly and turned down a south-bound road, accelerating again in case Bono managed to get the door open. Green fields and stone walls whizzed by. Cows were the only witnesses. She glanced at the petrol gauge... that would be a problem, but not just yet.
"Why are you doing this?" Bono asked, perhaps encouraged by her answering one question.
She checked the mirror again. "Black jacket, I see. Do you not like that one with the patches very much? And by the way, hand over your phone, please." She held her hand out over her shoulder, and drifted over to the wrong side of the road.
"Natasha... there's a truck coming..."
"I know. I've been killed before and it hasn't stopped me, nor you either. If I have to do this again tomorrow, so be it. The phone, please." She didn't want him calling for help before she was ready.
Reluctantly, he gave her the phone, and she returned to the correct side of the road. The truck roared past, horn blaring.
"Who are you?" Bono asked again.
Natasha turned around briefly, looking at her captive before turning her eyes back to the road. "You tell me, Bono. We've talked at least a dozen times now. Theology, literature, music, philosophy, peanuts and melons, Achtung Baby and sexy Psalms in the Bible. I interviewed you for the Irish Independent several times, although you kept saying the same things. I tried to seduce you twice, I asked you what I would have to do to stop you from getting on the plane this afternoon. You said I'd probably have to tie you up, so here we are."
"Take me back to the airport, Natasha," Bono said, the tone of his voice saying 'You don't want to do this'.
"It's too late, Bono. You'll never make it onto that plane now." A sudden sense of giddy euphoria hit Natasha, and she grinned, and laughed, and thumped the steering wheel. "I actually did it! I had to kidnap you, but I did it!" She laughed again.
Bono looked at her as if he was trapped in a car with a raving lunatic. Which was quite a reasonable conclusion, under the circumstances. "What have you done?" he asked carefully.
"I've saved your life, Bono Vox," Tasha said, still grinning. She honked the horn, startling some pigeons on the roadside.
"You might want to watch your driving, if you're interested in saving my life," Bono said as Tasha had to swerve back to the correct side of the road.
"Sorry about that."
And she told him, again, about everything that had happened, and would happen.
---
Bono had known, from the moment he'd woken up, that this was going to be an unusual day. First he'd had a very odd dream, which he was sure he'd had before, even though he couldn't remember it. Then he'd tried to work on a song he thought he'd already started, but he couldn't find the notes or the tape he'd made. Bono couldn't remember exactly when he'd made the tape, but the melody in his head had felt so familiar... Then he'd had to google his own lyrics to make sure it hadn't been someone else's song.
After that, he'd been suddenly seized by a fear that wouldn't see his family again, and had almost refused to let Ali leave the house. He'd clung to her, terrified, while his sons had stared and Ali had laughed and told him to stop being such a fool.
And here he was, abducted by an oddly familiar woman who thought she'd been living this day over and over... Bono tried to convince himself that it was all a co-incidence, but there was a worm of panic in his guts that was growing steadily. That dream had unnerved him enough to make him panic about his family, and now this... it all seemed to be coming true, no matter what Natasha was saying about saving his life.
What if that was true, too? What if what she said was real, and this day was repeating? It seemed like science-fiction, but Bono's instincts were telling him otherwise. His head was spinning.
"Have you had much déjà vu today?" she was asking him.
"How did you know that?!" he shot back, his nerves taut. All day, especially since Ali had gone out, nearly everything he'd seen, heard, done and said had echoed in his head with the eerie certainty that he'd not only been there and said that exact thing before, but had done so while experiencing the same feeling of déjà vu. It only served to heighten his unease, and it had been driving him mad.
"Are you having any now?"
"No..." That was odd, and almost a relief. But wasn't it more odd to have been plagued with it almost all day?
"That's because this is the very first time I've done this. Not bad for my first try, eh?" She tossed a jaunty grin over her shoulder.
Bono didn't feel like grinning at all. He didn't know what was going on, he didn't know what any of this meant, or if it meant anything at all.
"Do you remember me?" Natasha asked, yanking Bono's attention back inside the car. She was meeting his eyes in the rear view mirror, and he saw something desperate there.
"You do seem familiar..." He should probably keep her talking, he thought. "I've probably seen you at a gig, or somewhere else? At HQ?"
"I've never seen a U2 concert, Bono," Natasha replied. "I've never been to Hanover Quay, I haven't even called myself a fan for ten years. The first time I met you was at Dublin airport, on the fourth of July, 2008. Today. About this time, in fact. But I've lived through months of fourths of July since then, I told you."
"That's impossible," Bono said again, trying to convince himself as much as her. "Time doesn't work like that..."
"How do you know how time works? How does anybody?"
A lyric popped into Bono's head, along with the melody he'd remembered this morning. He sang under his breath, making sure he remembered it later. "Time is irrelevant, it's not linear..."
Suddenly, it seemed to Bono that the inside of the car seemed a lot like the inside of a plane, and he was trapped, and the plane was burning and falling from the sky. The niggling worm of panic grew and engulfed him, and he shouted and clawed at the window and tried to undo the seat belt but it wouldn't work and he was falling and he was going to die and he should never have let Ali go...
"...BONO! Jaysus, I really will have to tie you up...YOU'RE NOT ON THE PLANE, BONO!"
A slap, and his sunglasses flew from his face. He stared up at a woman, who was leaning over him at an odd angle.
Natasha. I know her, but I don't.
"Sorry," Natasha said, and handed his glasses back. She was leaning over the back of the driver's seat, and he was twisted up in the seat belt, lying across the back seat. "Had a bit of a turn?"
Bono sat up slowly, wincing at a twinge in his back. "I ... I thought I was on a plane, and it was about to crash..." He eyed her suspiciously. After what she'd been telling him, he'd had this hallucination, but how could she have been responsible for that?
Natasha's reaction was not what he might have expected. She spun back around and turned on the car's radio, switching quickly through the stations until she found what she wanted. It was a talk show about over-fishing cod. Bono realised that the car was stopped on the side of the road, and he reflexively tried the door, but it was locked. So was the window control.
"Just wait," Natasha said. "I know you think I'm mad, but just listen to this. Mind you, I'm not the one who just had a panic attack, but I'll let you think about that."
Bono waited, trying to slow his breathing down and control his jumpy nerves. He'd been able to see the people on that plane, see their faces contorted by fear, hear the screams and smell the smoke...
The talk show was interrupted by some breaking news.
"I've just been handed a report," the female newsreader said, professional over her surprise. "A chartered passenger jet has crashed just after take-off from Dublin airport, a few minutes ago. Eye-witnesses report seeing a large explosion after the plane seemed to drop from the sky as it was climbing. There are conflicting and unconfirmed reports that rock star Bono was booked on this flight, but that he didn't check in..."
The newsreader repeated the headline, and the talk show resumed, but Bono didn't hear the rest. There was a sort of lightness in his head, weighed down by incredulity. He'd just heard something impossible, but it fit perfectly with the rest of his very strange day.
Natasha was watching him, and he closed his mouth, aware that he looked like a fish out of water.
"But... how..."
"I told you," she said, rolling her eyes. "You would have been on that plane if I hadn't... eh, diverted you. Every other day, you'd be dead by now." Natasha grinned at him again. "I can't believe I finally did it. Life goes on again! Fancy that, tomorrow will be the fifth of July..."
She started the car again, but stopped. "Shite. I'm going to have to explain to John why I wasn't at work today..."
"It's okay, I'll write you a note," Bono said shakily.
"Would you? And you're not going to press charges about this?" She waved at the inside of the car.
"No, no, I think I can forgive you." He leaned forward. "Natasha... I should be thanking you. Your methods are unorthodox, but you were right, you saved my life."
Just then, Bono's phone rang. Natasha handed it to him, then turned the car around and headed back towards Dublin.
---
The only thing that effectively contained Natasha's elation as she drove, was listening to Bono assuring his family and friends that he wasn't dead, and trying to explain why.
As she pulled up outside his imposing gates, having followed his distracted directions, he scribbled a note to Tasha's boss about her absence from work, and signed it with a flourish. A moment later, two security guards and Bono's family poured out of the gates, and practically pulled him from the back of the car. Tasha stayed put, trying to ignore the tearful reunion. She started the engine once everyone was clear, feeling rather pleased with herself for a job well done, keen to be on her way and thinking of the delights of a brand new, fresh day tomorrow.
There was a tap on the window, and she rolled it down. Bono was smiling at her. "You won't stay for dinner?"
Natasha glanced at Bono's wife and sons, and shook her head. "No, thank you. I don't want to intrude."
"I owe you my life, Natasha," the rock star said seriously. "I don't know how to repay you…"
"Don't get yourself killed again," Tasha replied. "And a series of exclusive interviews might be nice," she added, thinking of her career.
"Done," Bono smiled, and she laughed, not having expected him to take her seriously.
Finally Tasha drove off. She checked the hedge where she had left the real driver, but he was gone. She parked the stolen car in Dalkey and retrieved her own, and drove around Dublin until she found a really nice hotel. Tasha was determined to celebrate the fifth of July by not waking up in her own flat, for starters.
*****
((Stay tuned ... there are quite a few chapters left.
))
So now everything starts over again? Does the mysterious missing driver have anything to do with it? 
AAaaaa
! This chapter was great. I loved the 'insane' Natasha.
It's still not going to work because of this: 
worthy! 
