Bananapants: A Bonkers Romantic Comedy

[Watching people zip-lining] “That’s some white boy shit right there.”

— Girls Trip (2017)

Ibraced myself, crouching into a defensive fighting stance and frantically searching the office for a weapon. I wouldn’t be able to call the police, not with him so close, so there was no reason to try dialing 911 on my phone. He’d knock it out of my grip and be on me before dispatch answered the call.

The shelves were full of books, no sharp-looking awards or statues or random rocks. Behind the man in black was the crystal decanter full of alcohol, but nothing else struck me as weapon-worthy. Henri’s desk was completely clear, not even a letter opener.

All those action movies had lied to me!

A curse word slipped past my lips as the man began to slowly stand. His hands out and toward me, he’d spread the fingers on one hand while the other was closed around something he’d extracted from the safe.

He was big. Tall. Very tall. Very, very tall. My stomach dropped. Other than being tall and lean and big, I couldn’t tell anything else about him, but my brain told me this was a good thing. If I couldn’t identify him, maybe he’d let me go.

“So, uh—” I cleared my throat because my voice was shaking. “What will it take for you to—uh—pretend you didn’t see me?” While I spoke, I inched toward the office doors and debated whether to make a run for it and scream at the top of my lungs for help.

Considering the doors are locked and no one came when you made a fuss about peeing in the potted plant, chances are you’re on your own, kid.

Now facing me, he slowly returned his arms to his sides and his shoulders seemed to rise and fall with a deep breath, like he was tired or irritated by my presence.

I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so scared. You can fight, Ava. You know how to fight!

This was true. I did know how to fight. But subduing someone gym-fit like Henri Wickford was one thing, taking down this hardened and muscled, yet lean and tough, guy in black would be something else entirely.

Silence stretched between the masked man and me, my heart growing progressively louder with each passing second and my vision seeming to tilt to the right a little, which made me realize I’d been holding my breath. Don’t faint! You are not a baby. You’re a grown-ass woman.

Finally, the masked man moved, seeming to shuffle a step back, but then in the next second, all hell broke loose. And by that I mean the office doors burst open and many, many men—none in masks—rushed in.

I inhaled sharply, not screaming, because in one extremely fluid movement, the masked man sprinted toward me, covered my mouth with his hand, turned me away from the room, and shoved me into the bathroom. The bathroom door slammed shut. I spun around, again in fighting stance, expecting him to be inside the bathroom with me. He wasn’t.

I was alone.

I didn’t get a chance to process what it meant that I was alone before the sound of gunshots beyond the door forced a short, shocked scream from my throat, and I fell to the floor. Pressed flat, hugging the tile, I covered the back of my head with my hands. It took me more than a minute to realize my phone was no longer in my grip, and only after the sound of gunshots completely ceased did I try to look for it. Not finding it on the floor of the bathroom, I didn’t dare get up for another two or three minutes after that, not until I didn’t hear any sounds beyond the door at all.

Releasing a trembling breath, I pushed myself to a sitting position and swiped at my eyes, my vision blurry. Unsurprisingly, my eyes were leaking water without me being consciously aware of crying. I sniffled and covered my mouth with a hand. Well, well, well. My therapist and I were going to have a very full hour next week.

Now is not the time to cry. I had to get out of here. Get it together, Ava.

Sparing one more moment to search for my phone, I paused when I found a black thumb drive about the length of my pinky finger. Is this what the masked man took out of the safe?

On impulse, I grabbed it and shoved it inside my bra, but then thought better of it and stored it in the pocket inside the front of my underwear.

That’s right, ladies and gents, my underwear has a pocket in the front, about four inches beneath my belly button. The pocket even has a soft plastic zipper. My mother had given several pairs to me and my sister. I’d never asked where she’d found them. Probably a retirement gift from the CIA.

She insisted we carry a credit card, a key to our house, and an ID on us at all times inside the secret pocket. Before right this minute, I’d considered her request to be controlling, overprotective blither blather. Currently, I had a credit card and an ID card inside, but no key. I’d grown lazy and stopped doing that years ago.

After today, I would never question my mother’s overprotectiveness, or lack thereof.

If the masked man in black or Henri’s goons wanted this thumb drive, maybe—if I encountered a dangerous situation later—I could use it for leverage.

Other than the thumb drive, I found only the perfectly intact and exceedingly well-decorated bathroom. No phone. Standing and almost twisting my ankle, I grabbed the counter for balance. My limbs were uncoordinated and shaking. This was adrenaline—not the confusing kind and definitely not the fun kind—flooding my system. But I couldn’t think about that now.

Not giving the impulse too much thought, I took off my shoes, deciding the spiked heels would do fine as a weapon if it came to that. Pressing my ear to the door, I waited and listened. I couldn’t hear anything, no movement, no voices on the other side.

“Okay, okay. Here we go,” I whispered, psyching myself up. “I can do this. I can do this.”

Gathering a deep breath for courage, I opened the door as quietly as possible and peeked through the sliver of an opening. The room appeared empty. Even so, I scanned the room for another minute before swinging the door outward enough for me to slip through.

Some morbid part of me searched the room for dead bodies or severed body parts. I had a recurring dream after watching Saving Private Ryan as a teenager of tripping over someone’s arm during the storming of the beach at Normandy and, more than anything, it was a dream I didn’t wish to live out in reality.

Forcing myself to swallow, I decided I would never forgive Henri Quail Wickford for this, if that was his real name. If I ever saw that creepy, angelic face again, I would punch it. And I would be sending him the bill for my next six months of therapy.

Spotting no dead bodies or body parts, I took a few seconds to search for my phone before giving up and rushing to the couch. Taking my shoes off had been both a good and bad decision. Good because I likely would’ve twisted my ankle in my current state if I’d left them on, but bad because there was glass all over the floor. I did my best to avoid it but winced as I stepped on an unseen shard in my haste.

Hurriedly, I lifted my foot to inspect it. The piece was big and lodged deep, but I wasn’t bleeding too badly. I didn’t have time to try to pick it out because then it would bleed profusely and wrapping it was out of the question. No matter. I’d deal with it later.

Grabbing my bag and jacket, I clutched both to my chest along with my shoes and carefully walked to the door, now hanging open, not putting any weight on my heel where the glass was embedded. Peeking outside the office and seeing no one, I sprinted on tiptoes out of the office, through the secretarial area and to the hallway, but then came up short. The masked man was fighting four guys all at the same time, the same guys who’d rushed into the office earlier.

My brain told me he must be a martial arts master in several disciplines. Despite his height and impressive shoulder width, he flew around the hall like an acrobat, attacking his foes without mercy, laying two flat out with crunching, devastating, direct blows to their faces and disarming one by aggressively breaking the man’s arm.

I felt like throwing up. And I would!

But first I needed to back out of the hallway before I was noticed by him.

“Hey!” a deep, angry voice called from behind me.

I froze, my shoulders bunching higher, my adrenaline spiking anew as my stomach plummeted. Again.

“What are you doing?” the angry voice at my back shouted and I turned, finding three men with their guns drawn and pointed. At me.

Why hadn’t I seen them? Where the hell had they been hiding?!

I lifted my hands, my belongings dropping to the floor, and was about to say “Don’t shoot!” when I felt someone grab me by the waist and pull me around the door opening. A second later, a hailstorm of bullets rained horizontally from inside the secretarial area and into the hallway where I found myself being held against a wall by the masked man, his face in profile directly in front and above mine, his tall, imposing form caging me in.

The bullets stopped just as suddenly as they’d begun and the masked man wasted no time. Grabbing my arm, he took off at a run, yanking me down the hall after him. Stupefied, I ran for several steps on the balls of my feet before my brain caught up with the action. Was he taking me as a hostage? No way was I going to be a hostage!

In the next step, I hiked up my skirt, used my weight to knock him off-balance, and then spun around to deliver a kick to his face with my good foot. His reflexes were no joke. Before I’d made the complete 360 revolution, he slid past me, completely avoiding my foot, and caught me around the waist, knocking the wind from my lungs.

Lifting me off my feet, the guy side-carried me down the hall, around a corner, and then halted abruptly.

Dizzy and scared out of my wits, I had kicked and elbowed him the whole time as much as I could, all my black-belt badassery flying out my brain window. But when he went still, I stopped struggling and glanced over my shoulder. In front of us was another hallway, and strewn around the hallway were several bodies. Most of them were stirring, and some were groaning, as though someone had beaten the shit out of them a moment ago and they hadn’t yet recovered.

Is there another ninja in the building? Does the masked man have a partner? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???

I thought I heard someone faraway but also close by say something like, “Not that hallway! I said to the left! The second one!”

Still holding me to his side, the masked man backed up and turned, taking the hallway to the left, but then jerked to a stop and ducked, taking me with him. Another security guard in a suit had appeared out of nowhere. At least, I hadn’t seen the guy’s approach.

Unceremoniously, I was plopped on my feet, pressed against a wall, and gruffly told “Stay here!”

It only took the masked man twenty seconds—tops—to beat the crap out of the suit guy. While the masked man was distracted, his back to me, I noticed a baton or something like it on the floor at my feet, and I was faced with a split-second choice.

I didn’t want to be someone’s hostage. I didn’t want to get shot by careless security guards. I wanted to get the hell out of here. So I picked up the baton, whacked the masked dude on the back of the head, and ran past him toward the elevators and—hopefully—to the stairwell door beyond. I hadn’t seen the man in the mask use a gun yet, so my brain told me I wouldn’t be shot by him in the back. Or probably not. Hopefully not.

I’d made it past the elevators, the alcove for what I thought might be the stairwell in sight, when I was yanked back again and forced to put weight on the heel of my foot. Crying out sharply as the glass shard sent a spike of white-hot pain up my foot, ankle, and the back of my calf, I nearly crumpled. But, you guessed it, I was lifted off my feet, carried around the alcove’s corner, set back down, and pressed against a wall next to the stairwell’s door.

This time, the masked man placed his hand between the back of my head and the wall before my crown could connect with the hard surface. He used his other hand to steal the baton from my fingers and toss it away. His hand then returned to slide over my body, the movements searching and perfunctory.

“Are you okay? Where are you hurt?” his voice, muffled by the mask yet sounding frantic, asked. “Are you shot?”

I barely heard him but I shook my head, the pain in my foot slowly subsiding as darkness pressed at the edges of my vision, clouding it. I felt impossibly dizzy.

Don’t, Ava. Don’t faint!

I couldn’t seem to inhale enough air. I was going to faint.

“Fuck!” He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled my front against his chest, barking, “Sue. Get us the fuck out of here. Now!”

And that was the last thing I heard. Or saw. Because I fainted.