Grundish & Askew (11 page)

“We have three days left here. That should give us some time to figure out what to do next,” says Grundish to Askew. “Right now just sit back, relax, and clear your mind. We’ll figure out what we’re gonna do.”

“I can’t help but to worry,” says Askew. A bowl of stew sloughs off steam in front of him on the coffee table. Between his big and second toes he grips a soup spoon and, with determination etched on his battered face, he scoops a spoonful and twists his foot up toward his face, slopping a warm helping of the stew into his mouth. “Ungggh,” he drops the spoon and groans as a trickle of salty broth dribbles down his chin. The lip reattachment surgery makes it almost unbearable to eat the soup. But the thought of passing up a bowl of Turleen’s stew seems even worse. In a pleasure versus pain evaluation, the stew wins out. He wipes his face on his shoulder. “I’m just a little freaked out. I don’t know what happened with Bumpy D.” The foot-spoon slops another load of stew into his crusted maw and more broth dribbles onto his shirt, “I just don’t know. I kind of went crazy on him. I think I killed him...”

“I know you killed that sick fuck...”

“...and if I did kill him, I’m fucked. What am I saying,
if
? I know I killed him. The whole neighborhood saw it. And I just don’t think beating somebody to death for cumming on your face qualifies as self-defense. I really shit the bed on this one.”

Grundish sets his spoon in his empty bowl, picks at his teeth with a fingernail and says, “Listen, I don’t know about self-defense. Actually, I do. And, that wasn’t self-defense. Maybe temporary insanity. But not self-defense. The point is, we need to lay low for a little while and figure out our options. Let’s not make any decisions about what to do just yet. We’ll go see if there’s anything on the local news about us and then reevaluate our situation. Right?”

•  •  •

The theater-style leather seats gently hum as they lean Grundish and Askew back into the optimal television viewing positions. Five different remote controls are laid out on the table between the chairs. Askew’s drawn-on eyebrows furrow and his gnarled sneer intensifies as he shifts in his chair, kicks the controllers onto the floor, and punches at buttons on them with his toes, trying to turn on the Buttwynn’s 50-inch rear projection television. “Fuck, I hate trying to turn on other people’s TV’s these days!” he gripes as his toes fumble with the buttons on the various remote controls. “It’s different in everybody’s house. It used to be you had a clicker with one button on it that said
On
and you pushed that fucking button and the fucking TV came on. Fuck!” A frenzy of toes pushing buttons, kicking controls about the room, and ripping and roaring about the good old days when there was an on/off button on the TV commences and endures for the next five minutes. Askew, entirely consumed by the need to turn on the television, is oblivious to Grundish or anything else around him. Grundish sits back and watches the fit with equal parts amusement and concern. With the completely random and fortuitous pressing of a series of buttons on the one remaining remote control, the boob tube powers up. And then Askew’s storm passes.

“There we go,” Grundish says in a mellow, rational tone. He shrugs his shoulders at his friend and smiles. “I don’t know what you’re getting all upset about. Let’s just put on the BayNews Channel and see if they have anything about what happened.”

“How about we put on some pay-per-view porn instead?” suggests Askew, his inked-in eyebrows wiggling suggestively.

Grundish shakes his head from side to side. “I don’t want to sit here with you watching people fuck.”

“What? Don’t you like seeing
baginas
? You queer or something, Boy?” Askew taunts his friend.

“Nah. I’ll tell you what’s queer. A couple of guys sitting around alone in a room together getting all hot and bothered over a movie. I don’t even want you sitting this close to me if you’re gonna be sprouting a stiffy. Porn’s for jacking off. I ain’t gonna sit here burpin’ the worm in front of you. And if you feel the need to do that, you sure as hell better excuse yourself to a private area of the house. I mean, gee whiz, just the thought of it makes me feel like a creep, Wally.”

“Why you calling me Wally, Grundish?”

“It’s a Leave it to Beaver thing,” says Grundish. Askew’s mangled face registers nothing akin to understanding. “Didn’t you ever watch that shit when you was a kid? You know, Beaver, Wally, Eddie Haskell? Ah, never mind. Let’s just check out the news.”

“All right, fine. But I was really hoping to watch Fistfuckers 5. The first four of them were masterpieces and I have no reason to expect anything less out of number 5.”

Grundish shakes his head and says nothing.

“Okay, whatever. Let’s watch the news. Maybe we can get
appraised
of what the cops are doing about Bumpy D right now.”

A pack of Blue Llamas and a Zippo lighter sit on the table. Grundish watches in awe as Askew grips the pack with the toes of his right foot, bumps it on the left ankle, taps out a smoke, grips it with the left-foot toes, and twists his leg up to bring the cigarette to his mouth. With the smoke wedged between his front teeth, Askew grabs the lighter with his right foot and flips the lid on the Zippo. The flint wheel drags against Askew’s ankle and throws a shower of sparks at the wick, which smokes a little but fails to ignite. He drags it across his ankle again. This time a small orange flame fires up. Askew twists the foot and the lighter up to his face and finally lights the cigarette. The sweat beads on his brow as he lies back in the reclining chair to catch his breath from the whole effort.

“Hey, buddy,” says Grundish, “do you think you could get me a smoke?” He sips on his scotch, smiling innocently at Askew.

“Go fuck yourself, ya rat bastard,” says Askew and sucks at his smoke. His lips, unable to fully close over the cigarette make a faint, wet, sucking sound as he drags in air through the left side of his mouth along with the vapor from the burning leaves.

“All right, be that way,” laughs Grundish. “I’ll just have one of Buttwynn’s Cubanos.” He snips off the end of a ringless cigar and torches it up with Askew’s lighter. They sit and smoke and wait for the day’s top news stories.

•  •  •

“Good evening. I’m Sallest Holeinback,” says the corpulent female news anchor of the BayNews Channel.

“And I’m Orlando Montenegro,” says the co-anchor in a voice so deep and mellow that he could be hawking fine Corinthian leather.

“And we’re BayNews 10 with your evening report,” they both say simultaneously through blindingly white dental veneers that mask years-worth of coffee stains, tartar, and rot. A bright sparkle briefly flickers off of Sallest’s cosmetically contoured front tooth facade and, almost imperceptibly, the sharp high-pitched chime of a tiny bell dings somewhere in the vicinity of her teeth.

Holeinback’s face, a pool of soft, oozing, fishbelly-white skin with close-set eyes, a fleshy wide nose, and lips recently enhanced with collagen treatments, stares at the camera with utmost seriousness and breaks into the top stories: “Stay tuned later, after our break, for a truly disturbing story. Our local investigator has uncovered information which may make you never want to eat in a restaurant ever again. The scenes which we will show you will be so shocking that you may vomit and possibly even have to call in sick to work tomorrow. Please make sure that children and the elderly are out of the room for this portion of our broadcast.”

“But, first,” says Orlando Montenegro, “our top stories. Police are seeking a pair of local men in connection with a murder which occurred in plain daylight as residents of the Knothole Mobile Home Park watched on in horror. A be-on-the-lookout-for order has been issued for these men, Leroy Jenkem Askew and a Mr. Grundish, first name currently unknown.” The driver’s license picture of Askew and a poorly-done and inaccurate artist’s rendering of Grundish appear on the screen. “If you encounter either of these men, do not try to apprehend them. Find a safe place and call the police immediately.”

“In other news,” says Sallest Holeinback, “a rash of burglaries has occurred recently in Riverview and Brandon neighborhoods. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office believes the burglaries are all the work of one man and say that the burglar has a unique calling card.”

The video cuts to a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office who explains: “In each one of these cases, the families were gone from the home for several days and returned to find they had been burglarized. In each case, there does not appear to be any broken locks or windows. This man is clearly a professional. The perpetrator seems to like to take alcohol and frozen meats, among other things, from the houses. Finally, the person who is doing this leaves a distinctive calling card. We have dubbed the perpetrator the Turd Burglar because he defecates in the toilets of his victims and neglects to flush it.”

The picture returns to Sallest Holeinback’s grimacing fat face. “Oh my, what an animal,” she gasps. “What is wrong with people, Orlando?”

“I don’t know, Sallest. That is a pretty shitty story,” laughs Orlando.

“Orlando, you can’t say that. We’re on live television,” Sallest gasps again.

“Sure, I can,” teases Orlando. “We’re just fictional characters in some lame novel. I can say whatever I want. Watch this: Cuntlip, dogfucker, suck my balls and lick my asshole. Fistfuck. Bloody buttplug. And now watch this,” Orlando looks straight at the camera and makes a peace sign with his fingers, places it up to his mouth, and wiggles his tongue around between the fingers in a vulgar simulation of cunnilingus.

“Well, Orlando,” Sallest says, “if this is a novel, it seems to me that the author has just speckled it with bizarre characters, footnotes and profanity, hoping that the shock value will be enough to carry the story. But, the book’s most painful flaw is its lack of any thoughtfully crafted deeper meaning or unifying theme. The characters are outright unlikable and the author fails to provide us with a point as to what, exactly, he is trying to accomplish. To be fair, it also cannot be said that this book is completely without any talent or redemption. The editing is not awful. But...”

“Would you shut your fat cake-hole, you morbidly obese bucket of diarrhea,” shouts Orlando as he smashes his closed fist into the side of her head. “You are a pretentious, bloated, pompous bitch-hole and I’ve had enough of you. I should murder you!”

Before Orlando can do any further damage to Sallest’s hideously bloated head, a man appears behind the rotund woman. The man, a rather tall, attractive fellow with a shaved head and goatee, slinks behind Sallest without a sound. In each of his hands is a wooden handle. A thin wire runs from one handle to the other. The tall fellow quickly wraps the wire of the garrote around Sallest’s neck and pulls it tight, compressing the carotid arteries and jugular veins, while at the same time compressing Sallest’s airways. Orlando Montenegro does nothing to stop the man as Sallest thrashes violently about, air-hunger making her oversized corpus flail and fight for her life. The tall man stands firm, holding the wire tight around her neck until her floppy hulking corpse collapses on the anchor desk. The television screen abruptly cuts to black and a
technical difficulties
sign appears onscreen.
^[23]

•  •  •

“Holy Shit,” says Grundish. “Did you just see that shit?”

“Yeah, we’re fucked. The police have a pick up order for us.”

“No. I’m talking about the other story. How in the fuck can they call me the Turd Burglar? Why not something cool like The Nightstalker? I would have been okay with that. Or even just not naming me. But the fucking Turd Burglar? Man!” Grundish chugs the rest of his drink and groans at the indignity.

“Yeah,” laughs Askew, “it does sound kind of gay. Maybe you could call the Sheriff’s Office and get them to give you a new nickname. Maybe something tough sounding like The Rump-Ranger or The Ass Pirate.”

“Fuck you.” Grundish grins at Askew.

“Fuck you, too, Buddy,” answers Askew.

“You know we’re fucked, don’t you?” asks Grundish.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. We’re fucked. Definitely. But then again, maybe it’s a blessing
in the skies
,” says Askew.

“How so?”

“Well,” says Askew, stroking his chin with his foot, “we trudge along through everyday, just trying to get by. We take everything for
granite
. Maybe all of this is a wake up call. Maybe it’s time that we look at our lives and ask, ‘what is it that we need to do to distinguish ourselves?’ Maybe now we’re truly free. I’ve been living my whole life doing everything I can to avoid going to prison. My heart has not always been my guide. I just made a promise to myself to break the family curse. And now I know that if we get caught, you know, we’re both going to prison, probably for life. That is if they take me alive. But you already made me a promise about that. So, now none of society’s laws apply to us. We’ve got nothing to lose. If I wanna rape somebody, I’ll just go out and do it.”

“You wanna go start raping people?”

“No. But you’re missing the point. If I wanted to, I could. I’m fucking free, man. If I wanted to go out raping, I could. I could rape somebody’s dog, so long as my heart says it’s okay. If somebody pisses me off, I can kill them. Like old Mr. Buttwynn. If he were here, and he gave me a twenty-five cent tip, I would bust his head wide open. And he’d deserve it.”

A look of concern settles on Grundish’s scruffy face. “Bro, let me stop you. I’m seeing a different side of you that don’t seem quite right. All this violence, it ain’t you. It kinda’ worries me.”

“You’re being
hypocratical
, man. You just went and attacked an entire community of people with frozen meat and you’re worried about me being violent. Come on, Bro.”

“You know I can be a nutcase,” says Grundish. He puts his cigar in the ashtray and turns it with his fingers to knock the ashes off to a tapered burning tip. “But, I ain’t never seen you talk the way you’re talkin’ about busting heads. It don’t sit right with me. And, tell me,” Grundish looks Askew in the eyes and holds the stare, “what happened when you got your face all messed up?”