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Authors: Layce Gardner,Saxon Bennett

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BOOK: Crazy Little Thing
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And on and on Scarlet droned while Claire pasted a
smile firmly on her face and listened. Or pretended to anyway.

Brain Freeze

 

The Furries were everywhere in the hotel. In fact,
one might say it was a flurry of Furries. They were in the hallway, the
elevator, the casino, the lobby, the bar. Just the sight of all that fur made
Claire’s butt begin to itch. She looped her finger through Ollie’s belt loop so
she wouldn’t lose her. She allowed Ollie to guide her through the sea of fur
like she was a blind person. Ollie weaved her way to the bar where,
miraculously, G-Ray had secured a table.

Ollie deposited Claire next to G-Ray and sat on the
other side of her. Claire fanned herself with a cocktail napkin. The Furries
closed in and Claire was sweating. It was so close and hot it was next to
impossible to draw a complete breath. It was like wearing a fur coat only the
coat took up most of the room.

G-Ray normally would have stuck out like a sore
thumb wearing his helmet cam, but here nobody even glanced at him twice. “I
took the liberty of ordering a pitcher of margaritas. It’s difficult getting an
order filled,” G-Ray said. “But I would brave it for you ladies if need be.”

Right on cue, a waitress wearing pink bunny ears and
a white puffy bunny tail dropped off a pitcher and three glasses. Claire didn’t
know if the waitress was trying to be a Furrie bunny or a Playboy bunny. Or if
it even mattered.

“Margaritas! How fun!” Claire said
over-enthusiastically. She wasn’t normally a big drinker. She had spent most of
her twenties as the designated driver. But tonight she felt like getting her
loop on. Wasn’t that what people said? Maybe it was getting her buzz looped.
Either way, she wanted a drink and she wanted it bad. After all, a person could
only handle so much Scarlet before wanting to get her plaster buzzed.

Claire watched G-Ray pour the cold slushy drinks
into the glasses. She wanted to grab the pitcher and pour its contents directly
into her mouth. She managed to resist the urge, but only narrowly. Instead, she
tipped her glass and downed the whole thing in one long gulp.

Ollie and G-Ray gaped at her. Claire thunked her
empty glass down on the table, took a long breath and then scrunched her nose.
“Oh my,” she said. “Oh my…” She held her hands on either side of her head and
closed her eyes. “I have a frozen brain.”

“Suck on your thumb,” Ollie said. “That always works
for me.”

Claire stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked
baby-style. After a moment, she took it out. “Hey. That really does work.” She
could already feel the margarita working, too. Her butt had almost stopped
itching and twitching and her pulse had slowed to a normal rhythm. “Hit me
again,” Claire said, sliding her empty glass over to G-Ray.

Claire didn’t notice Ollie gesturing to G-Ray to try
to slow down Claire’s conspicuous consumption. G-Ray pushed Claire’s glass back
over in front of her.

Claire looked at the glass and wrinkled her nose.
“You didn’t fill it up. It’s half empty.”

G-Ray smiled benevolently and said, “I prefer to
think of it as half full.”

Ollie quickly changed the subject. “Did you have a
good talk with Scarlet?”

Just the mere mention of Scarlet’s name made Claire
tip back the entire half-full glass. She put down the glass and quickly stuck
her thumb in her mouth.

“I think that’s a no,” G-Ray said.

Claire didn’t know if it was the margaritas or the
brain freezes but she suddenly felt better. Well, maybe better was the wrong
word. She felt looser. Not as rigid. Her muscles were relax-ier and her butt
wasn’t as scratchy. Itchy. Or was it scratchy? She was always mixing up those
words.

When Claire looked up, Ollie’s mouth was moving. She
was talking to her. She said something about Scart-let. Claire giggled.
Scart-let.
She had meant to say Scarlet. “Scart-let, Start-let, Fart-let.” Claire giggled.

“I think you need some fresh air,” Ollie said.

“I’m allergic to fresh air,” Claire said. “Didn’t
you read Fart-let’s list?”

“How strong are these margarita’s?” Ollie asked. 
She put the pitcher up to her nose and sniffed.

“I ordered high octane,” G-Ray said, “but not that
high.”

Ollie grabbed Claire’s drooping chin and forced her
eyes to look into hers. “Claire, did you take something? Did you take any type
of pill or anything?”

Claire hiccupped. “Yope.”

“What does
yope
mean?” Ollie asked.

“Yope is the new maybe,” Claire said.

“So you maybe took a pill?”

“Weeeelllllll, just a teeny tiny weeny winy wittle
bittle pill,” Claire said in baby-talk. “Will you scratch my bottom for me? I
can’t reach it when I’m sitting down and it’s scratchy. Or is it itchy?”

“Claire? Look at me. Focus.”

Claire jerked her head back to Ollie and squinted
her eyes. “Stop moving. You keep moving. Sit still.”

“I am sitting still. Claire, tell me… what kind of
pill did you take?”

“Blue.”

“It was blue, okay. Do you know what it was called?”

“It didn’t tell me its name,” Claire slurred. “But I
called it Bruce.”

“Uh huh,” Ollie said. “Where did Bruce come from?”

Claire laughed. “Do you know how funny you look when
your lips move?”

“My lips move when I talk. Now focus a moment. Where
did you get the blue pill?”

“My purse. Bruce was playing hide and seek in the
bottom of my purse.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Do you know
where Bruce originally came from?”

Claire nodded her head.

Ollie smiled. “Okay. Can you tell me where Bruce
came from?”

Claire nodded her head.

Ollie’s smile tightened. “Good. Tell me.”

“Bruce was the last of the blue pills that helped
Fartlet with her pain when she had her second liposuction,” Claire said. “I
stole some Bruces out of her medicine cabinet. When Fartlet gets mad at me I
sometimes take one. It helps me not be such an ol’ fuddy duddy.” Claire’s eyes
opened wide and she put her hand over her mouth, saying, “Whoopsy. That was a
secret.” She leaned in close to Ollie. “Wanna know another secret?” She
hiccupped before continuing, “When Scartlet the Fartlet yells at me I can see
her uvula vibrate. It’s not pretty.”

“I’m taking you outside,” Ollie said. “We’re going
to walk this off.”

“Okay, wait a sec,” Claire said. She quickly reached
across the table, grabbed the margarita pitcher, yelled, “Chug it!” threw her
head back and tipped it over her opened mouth.

“My God!” Ollie yelped. She grabbed the pitcher away
from Claire and thrust it into G-Ray’s hands. Ice-cold margarita slush spilled
down the front of Claire’s shirt.

Claire’s eyes widened. “Woooooo… that’s cold.” She
looked down at her sopping wet shirt. “Look how hard my nippy wippies are.”

Ollie grabbed Claire and dragged her toward the
door. Claire was still talking about her nipples, “They’re so hard they could
cut glass.” She yelled at the people in front of her that were blocking the door,
“Make way! Make way for lady with pokey nippy wippies!” She erupted into
laughter and Ollie shoved her out the door and onto the hotel’s pool grounds.

The Fur Flies

 

Outside wasn’t much better than inside. Ollie looked
around and saw the Furries were thronged around the pool. Where were they all
coming from? It was if they were procreating exponentially. Maybe Furries were
like Gremlins - you couldn’t let them near water or feed them after midnight.

Oh, no. Where was Claire? Ollie had lost her in the
all the fur. She found an empty chair poolside - thank God the Furries’ tails
prohibited them from sitting - dragged it out from under the umbrella and stood
on it. She shielded her eyes with her hand like a pirate looking for land and
scoured the waves of fur. She saw a head of brown hair bob up and down. Claire,
ahoy!

Ollie watched in horror as Claire grabbed a drink
out of a purple horse’s hoof and gulped it before handing the empty glass back.

“Claire!” Ollie yelled. “Claire!”

Claire moved deeper into the sea of fur and Ollie lost
sight of her.

Oh, wait a minute, there she was. Claire’s head
bobbed up and down, up and down, over the sea of fur, under the sea, over and
under, over and under. “Claire! Look up!”

Claire must have heard Ollie because she stopped and
looked right at her. She smiled brightly and waved. Ollie waved back. “Claire
come back over here right this minute!” My God, she sounded just like Scarlet.

Claire shook her head. “How did you get to be so
tall? Did you grow like Alice in Wonderland?”

“I’m standing on a chair!”

“You’re funny!” Claire bellowed. She drunkenly
tapped a Skunk on the shoulder and said, “See that extremely tall woman over
there? That’s my wife!”

“How very nice for you,” Skunk drawled.

“No,” Claire retorted, “it’s not nice. We’re getting
divorced.”

Claire stumbled backwards and for a moment Ollie
couldn’t see her. When Claire reappeared she was walking backwards out onto the
diving board. She stopped halfway out and wobbled. She stuck her arms straight
out to her sides and made tiny clockwise circles in the air to keep her
balance. “I’m walking on a tightrope! Look at me!” Claire yelled joyfully.

“Claire! Don’t move!” Ollie yelled. “I’ll be right
there.”

Ollie jumped down and shoved her way through the
mosh pit of fur. “Out of my way, out of my way,” she said, pushing her way
through the mob. She ran out onto the diving board but when she got there,
Claire was nowhere to be seen.

“Claire?” Ollie turned in a circle but still no
Claire. She looked down at the water.

“Up here!”

Ollie looked straight up.

“No, silly, over here!”

Ollie followed the sound of Claire’s voice and saw
her standing on the same chair that Ollie had been standing on. Good God, they
had switched positions. “What are you doing over there?”

Ollie noticed that Claire had yet another drink in
her hand. She had probably snatched it from some poor unsuspecting soul.

“Know what this reminds me of, Ollie? The last time
I saw you in a pool! Remember that?” Claire shouted over the tops of the fur
throng.

“How could I forget?” Ollie shouted back. Uh oh,
Ollie thought, she didn’t like that look on Claire’s face. It was the same look
she had worn when she had thrown Ollie’s stuff out the door and into the
driveway.

“Well, I haven’t forgotten it either!” Claire
responded in a peevish drunk voice that Ollie had never heard her use before.
There were some people that should never Bruce and drink. Obviously Claire was
one of them.

“Claire, you’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re
saying,” Ollie said. “You’re making a fool of yourself!” She was trying to
sound reasonable and self-assured, but instead her words came out sounding
whiny. She was sounding more and more like Scarlet every day.

By now the Furries were all quiet and watching the
drama unfold. “I love lesbian drama!” Ollie heard somebody say. The Furries
swiveled their heads back and forth in unison between Ollie and Claire like
they were the crowd at Wimbeldon.

“You know what she did?” Claire shouted at the
crowd.

The crowd shook their heads.

Claire continued, “She drained my pool. I paid
twenty grand to have a liver-shaped pool put in my backyard and she drained all
the water out of it!”

“In my defense,” Ollie shouted from her position on
the diving board, “It was winter. Nobody was swimming including you because you
can’t swim. And I needed a place to skateboard.”

“I came home from work and found her and her
homies
skateboarding in a dry pool! But you want to know the worst part?”

“Claire, don’t do this, please!” Ollie shouted.
“Don’t air our dirty laundry in public!”

Claire ignored Ollie and asked the crowd again, “You
want to know the worst part?”

“Yes, we do!” a big polka-dotted blue dog yelled.
“We are totally invested in the story.”

“The worst part was that she not only drained the
pool, but she siphoned all the water into the basement of my 1929 Arts and
Crafts bungalow, which I had lovingly restored to its original pristine
condition!”

“No!” the shaggy dog yelled.

“Yes! Can you believe it?” Claire said. “She
overflowed the basement and flooded the entire house.”

“I was trying to
conserve water! I was going to put the water back!” Ollie yelled.

“It completely
knocked my house off its foundation! It was ruined!” Claire continued.

Ollie had had enough. It was one thing to berate her
privately, but to do it public? There was a part of her that knew Claire was
drunk and Bruced-up, but that didn’t mean it excused her from making a
spectacle of their relationship. It pissed her off. And that’s why she shouted,
“That’s not why you kicked me out and you know it!”

Claire squinted at Ollie. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah!” Ollie retorted. “That was an excuse. The
real reason you kicked me out of your house and your life was because you were
too… too… frigid!”

The crowd collectively gasped.

Ollie continued, “You hated me because I could have
fun. You’ve never had fun in your life! You couldn’t even have fun in
Disneyland! And that’s the happiest place on earth!”

The crowd gasped again.

“I hate Disneyland! The lines are too long! And just
when you think you’re at the front of the line, you find out it curves again
and you have two more hours to wait!” Claire exclaimed.

“See, what did I tell you? You are the most unhappy,
bitchiest, most controlling person in the world!” Ollie said. “And to tell you
the truth, I flooded your house so you would kick me out and I wouldn’t have to
live with you any longer!”

The crowd gasped yet again.

Claire’s eyes were wide and unblinking. The stare
down between Ollie and Claire was broken by the Skunk shouting, “You are kind
of bitchy, Claire.”

“Fuck you!” Claire said, directing all her pent-up
anger, anxiety and allergies at the Skunk. “What do you know? You just lift
your tail and spray stink all over everyone! Nobody likes you! Nobody!”

“Take that back!” the Skunk yelled, pointing a paw
at Claire.

Claire jumped off the chair. The crowd parted giving
Claire a three-foot aisle leading directly to the skunk. Claire marched
straight up him and threw her drink in his face.

The crowd gasped.

Skunk grasped both sides of his face and cried out,
“You ruined my head! Do you have any idea how much these heads cost?”

“No, because I’m not stupid enough to pay to dress
up as an animal and parade around like an idiot!” Claire said. Which, as it
turns out, was completely the wrong thing to say when standing in a crowd
people dressed up like animals and parading around.

“Oh yeah?” Shaggy dog said.

Claire put her hands on her hips and faced him.
“Yeah, Mr. Snoop Snoop Shaggy Dog,” Claire said.

Shaggy Dog wasted no time in picking up Claire and
unceremoniously tossing her, head
first, into
the pool.

The crowd applauded.

Glug, glug, glug
, said Claire.

“Hey!” Ollie said, pointing a finger at Shaggy Dog.
“You can’t throw my wife in the pool!”

“I just did!” Shaggy Dog said. “What’re you going to
do about it?”

Well, that was like waving a red cape in front of
Ollie. She pawed the diving board with one foot, lowered her head and charged
off the board and around the corner of the pool. She ran straight into Shaggy
Dog and head butted him in the belly. He flew backwards and splashed into the
pool.

Glug, glug, glug,
said Shaggy Dog.

“You can’t do that!” said Skunk.

Ollie glared at Skunk. “You stink. You need a bath.”
Then she charged Skunk. She head butted him and he flew high in the air, ass
over teakettle, and did a belly buster into the deep end.

Glug, glug, glug,
said Skunk.

The next thing Ollie knew she was airborne. And
while she was spinning in the air she saw the French Poodle triumphantly
holding her hands above her head and doing a victory dance.

Ollie cannon-balled into the pool and when she stood
up, she was next to Claire. Claire flailed and gasped, “I can’t swim! I can’t
swim!” Claire churned the water with her arms and sunk under. When her chin
lifted back over the water, she yelled, “Somebody help me! I’m drowning!”

Ollie reached over and grabbed Claire by the back of
her shirt. “Stand up, Claire. You’re only in three feet of water.”

“Oh.” Claire stood. “Thanks.”

Splash!

Ollie looked over. The big red dog was treading
water in the pool.

Splash splash!

Two more Furries were thrown in!

Splash splash splash!

Three more Furries were hurled into the pool!

Ollie couldn’t believe her eyes. The entire place
was in mass hysteria and Furries were fighting Furries. Dogs, cats, and every
type of animal in between were being tossed and kicked into the pool.

And standing to the side of it all was G-Ray. His
helmet cam was blinking red and he looked ecstatic to be catching all of the
action on film.

Police sirens wailed over the din of fighting. Ollie
panicked. She grabbed Claire by the hand. “We have to get out of here. The police
are coming!”

But it was too late. The S.W.A.T. team poured
through the hotel doors and quickly surrounded the pool. They were wearing
Kevlar, armor, gas masks, and had big shields and guns. Ollie almost peed her
pants at the sight. Okay, to be truthful, she did pee. But she was in the pool
and everybody peed in a pool so she didn’t think it counted.

Ollie lost Claire’s hand in all the excitement. She
pushed a fat tiger out of the way and found Claire again. Ollie grabbed her by
the hand and pulled in the opposite direction, saying, “Follow me.”

Ollie ducked, dodged and darted all the fists, feet
and flying drinks. She quickly pulled Claire away from the pool and under a
table on the far side of the pool grounds. She pulled an overturned lounge
chair in front of them, partially hiding them from view. She watched the melee
unfold. The police grabbed every wet animal they could find and threw them into
the back of several paddy wagons.

The place was a mess
of
broken glass, overturned chairs and tables. Potted plants were smashed, fences
were ripped out of the ground; even the diving board was broken in half.

“Thanks for saving me,” a voice said.

“You owe me one,” Ollie said. Wait a minute. That
wasn’t Claire’s voice. She looked behind her.

Oh my God! It wasn’t Claire she had pulled from the
pool! She was holding hands with a mouse. A little white mouse.

“Who are you?” Ollie said, beginning to
hyperventilate. “Where’s Claire?”

The white mouse pointed to the other side of the
pool grounds. “There she is.”

Ollie followed the mouse’s finger and saw Claire
being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon by two burly policemen. “Oh, no.
Scarlet is going to freakin’ kill me.”

Claire must have felt Ollie’s gaze because she
looked over her shoulder, spotted Ollie crouched under the table and waved
cheerfully. “Look at me, Ollie! This is an adventure! Who’s frigid now, huh?”
She laughed and a policeman put his hand on her head and pushed her inside the
truck.

BOOK: Crazy Little Thing
9.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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