Lick Your Neighbor (6 page)

“And what did you tell her?” Ainsworth asked.

“I said money’s kind of tight right now.”

“Too tight to help a local hero fight his battle with cancer, Dale?” Truax asked.

“I’m not paying a turkey’s chemotherapy bills.”

Truax spat on the ground. “You heartless swine.”

“Are you sure you didn’t tell Judy to, and I quote,” Ainsworth said as he flipped open a notepad and read, “‘Get away from me Judy before I stuff that damn bird up your ass and roast you both in the oven.’”

Dale laughed nervously. “Ha, ha. Okay
maybe
I did say that. But you’re taking it out of context. I had a really long day at work yesterday, and I was dead tired. I had a pounding headache, I was starving, and my lower back felt like it had a knife in it. You know how it is. Life is hard, okay, and sometimes,
sometimes
, I feel like murdering everyone I see. Including my dear sweet family. So yes, I snapped at Judy. Big whoop. What are you going to do about it? Arrest me? For being in a foul mood and wanting to murder everyone?
Wanting
, mind you. Not doing. Is that a
crime
? I think not. Wait, is it?”

* * *

As Dale sat in the backseat of the police cruiser, a troubling thought entered his mind. The last thing that Andie said to him before the cops took him away was, “I’ll call a lawyer.” She didn’t say which lawyer, and that’s what had Dale worried.

She’s going to call Randy,
he thought.
I’m toast
.

Dale closed his eyes and tried to send a telepathic haiku to Andie.

Your dumb drunk brother

If he is my only hope

My pants I will shit

5
The Great Hashbrowns Debacle

W
ITH BLOODSHOT EYES,
R
ANDY
T
INKER LOOKED
up from his desk into the gum smacking face of his secretary. “Bring me coffee. Black. Two soft-boiled eggs. Runny. White toast. Slightly burnt. And hashbrowns. Burnt. Once that’s done, you can deal with these bills.” Randy squinted at the three-foot high stack of papers on his desk. “I swear I just heard them growl at me.”

Randy’s secretary Donna, dressed in a pastel uniform dress and an apron, started her morning the way she always did.

“I’m a waitress, Randy. Not your goddamn secretary.”

Randy’s “office” was the small back supply closet of the Duxbury Diner. A gleaming black and gold sign on the grease-stained door read “Tinker, Goldberg, and Slaughter, LLP.”

“It’s called multitasking,” Randy said. “In this day and age there is no more noble an ability to aspire to.”

“I can multitask,” Donna said. “Right now I’m thinking you’re a drunk, a slob, and a stupid son-of-a-bitch. All at the exact same time.”

“Thinking isn’t a task. It’s a shortcoming.”

Donna scoffed and shook her head as she turned to leave the room. She stopped to check her reflection in the sign on the door.

“What’s with this sign?” Donna asked as she puffed up her hair.

Randy laid his head down on the desk and was trying to fall asleep. “It’s the name of my firm.”

“Oh yeah? So where’s Goldberg and Slaughter?”

“How should I know? I am not my Goldberg and Slaughter’s keeper.”

“They’re not real are they, Randy? You made them up to make your pathetic little law firm sound important, didn’t you?”

“What is
real
anyway?” Randy picked up a dusty multicolored koosh ball from his desk. “Is this
real
? I mean, look at it, Donna. I’m touching it. Feeling it. But I have no idea what the hell it is. Is it a hat?” Randy put the koosh on his head. “Is it an armpit scrubber?” He rubbed the koosh on his sweat-stained pits. “Or am I supposed to dip it in lemon juice and shove it up my ass? And if so, then what? What happens next? Enlightenment? Perhaps, but who can say for sure? So we know that this, this
thing
, exists. But is it
real
? You tell me!”

With this, Randy threw the koosh at Judy, who caught it and threw it right back at him, nailing him in the face.

“Well?” Donna asked.

“It’s real all right.”

“I’ll get your breakfast, idiot. Oh, almost forgot. We don’t have hashbrowns today.”

Randy slammed his fist on the desk.

“That does it.”

He walked over to an unused floor lamp in the corner, ripped the cord out from it, threw one end over a pipe overhead, and then began to wrap the other end around his neck.

“Randy.”

“Leave me be, Donna. I’ve had enough of this. You hear that, God? First you kick us out of Paradise and now this! No hashbrowns? Seriously? Have you no compassion?”

“Would you relax? It’s just for today. The potato shredder is missing.”

Randy stopped wrapping.

“Missing?” he asked. “Was there a break in? Did someone steal it? Or did it just
disappear
?”

“It just sort of disappeared. Why?”

“Ah ha!”

Randy unwrapped the cord and plopped back down behind his desk.

“Ah ha what?”

“Things don’t just disappear, Donna. When something in our world suddenly changes without explanation, when the things we take for granted are no longer there to protect us, it usually means only one thing.
Chaos
.”

“Chaos? Really, Randy? Because of a potato shredder?”

Randy rummaged through his desk drawer until he found what he was looking for. A dirty tennis ball. He picked it up, along with the koosh again, and went over to Donna.

“See this?” Randy held out the tennis ball, inches from Donna’s face. “What is it?”

“Is it the ball your daddy used to play fetch with you?”

“Wrong! It’s the world we
think
we live in. Dirty, and worn out, yes, but also perfectly round. Easy to grasp, easy to control. Now what about this?” Randy held out the koosh. “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” Donna said. “Your asshole scrubber?”

“Wrong again! It’s how the world, how the universe, truly is. One big crazy mess!” Randy made the koosh dance in Donna’s face. “Oh sure, everything is connected, but to what? Who knows! And what happens when one of the strands is disturbed? Does it affect the other strands? Does it affect
all
the other strands? In other words, when God farts, does an old man in Italy suddenly feel a draft?”

Donna tolerated this fussing for only a few seconds before grabbing Randy’s fingers and twisting them into a pretzel. “Now you listen to me, you little turd. I didn’t understand a single word of what you just said. And if I had just one wish in life, it would be that I
never
understand it. Because the only people who understand crap like that are the ones who mumble to themselves in a padded cell. All I want is for you to answer one simple question and then shut your pie hole. Do you, or do you not, want homefries instead of hashbrowns?”

“What the hell are homefries?”

“They’re like hashbrowns, only thicker.”

Even in the darkest of hours, sometimes there’s hope.

“I don’t believe you.”

But we don’t always see it.

“They’re the same goddamn thing,” Donna said, releasing released him.

“Oh really?” Randy tried to shake feeling back into his hand. “Are they cooked in the finest of bacon grease with a handful of the blackest of pepper, a scattering of the most thoroughly chopped onions and multicolored peppers, and way too much garlic? Are they cooked, or dare I say overcooked, so that the crispiness is taken to the point of absurdity? Will they make me feel almost nauseous after eating them? Not nauseous, mind you, but
almost
nauseous?”

“Yes.”

“Well then load me up. But I still think something funny is going on around here.”

Duxbury Diner was jam-packed with its usual weekday breakfast crowd. That is to say, there were four people in the restaurant, and two of them worked there.

Donna wrote “Randy’s usual w/ h.fries” on a ticket and slapped it down on the stainless steel kitchen window ledge. In the kitchen, the cook Salty Peter—so hairy he should have been wearing a full-body hairnet—glanced up from the pancakes bubbling on the grill. Not surprisingly, there was a lone, short black hair dancing around in one of those batter bubbles. No one could know for sure, but it looked like the hair was having the time of its life.

“Morning, Randy.”

Randy, who was trying to tip-toe behind Peter to the coffee pot, shot back an overly cheery, “Hey, hey! Good morning, Salty!”

Salty Peter waved the ticket at Randy. “Is this going on your tab?”

“Well…” Randy pulled his wallet out, peeked into it with one eyed closed, slammed it shut, and then threw it into a corner as if it was on fire.

“Yes it is.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“You know I’m good for it.”

“You do remember that you also put this month’s rent on your tab.”

“One month isn’t going to kill anyone.”

“And last month’s.”

Randy’s eyes bulged. He’d forgotten about that.

“I actually wanted to settle your tab today,” said Salty as he stared deep into the crackling abyss of sizzling sausages on the grill, “But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Randy put his hand on Salty’s shoulder.

“That’s awfully nice of you, Peter. Awfully nice indeed. When I’m lost out there, and I’m all alone, it’s good to know there’s a light waiting to carry me home. That light is you, friend.”

“I couldn’t do it,” said Salty, “because I don’t know the advanced multivariable calculus, algebraic topology, and knot theory required to add it up.”

“Ah, well then, who does really?”

“My daughter. She’ll be home from MIT for the holiday tomorrow. I told her to bring a graphing calculator, pencil sharpener, and Stephen Hawking’s cell phone number. I think she might be able to use your tab for her thesis.”

“Ah the younger generation. They really are our greatest treasure.”

Silently cursing the goddamned younger generation, Randy slowly turned and headed back to the relative sanctuary of his office/storage closet.

He barely had time to complete his morning ritual of looking over from his rickety perch behind the desk at the dirty mop in the corner and sighing before the phone rang. Randy pinched his nose and answered, “Tinker, Goldberg, and Slaughter, we tinker with the law and slaughter your enemies to get you the gold you deserve, how may I direct your call?”

“Randy, it’s Andie. Dale’s been arres—”

“One moment please, I’ll see if Mr. Tinker is in.”

Randy unpinched his nose.

“Randolph Tinker, Esquire here.”

Andie sighed.
“Randy, Dale’s in jail. They think he murdered Gobbling Gus.”

Randy hung up.

“A bit early for practical jokes, Andie.”

Randy stared at the leaning tower of papers in his inbox, on the bottom of which was an unpaid bill for the inbox itself.

“Time to get some work done.”

Randy cracked his knuckles, took a deep breath, and then got down to business.

He peeled off two post-it notes, stuck them together back to back, and began to staple them together around the perimeter.

The phone rang again.

“Tinker, Goldberg, and Slaughter, we tinker with the law and slaughter your enemies to get you the gold you deserve, how may I direct your call?”

“Randy, I’m serious! Dale is in jail for hanging Gobbling Gus.”

“One moment please, I’ll see if Mr. Tinker is in.”

“Jesus Christ, Randy.”

“Randolph Tinker here.”

“Randy, listen to me. Listen very carefully. Dale is in jail and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there, Andie. Something incredibly important was just brought to my attention.”

“What? What is it?”

“My breakfast is here.”

“Dammit, Randy!”

Donna brushed aside a stack of unopened letters to make room for Randy’s breakfast. The homefries were, as advertised, pretty much just thick hashbrowns.

Taking in a big whiff of garlic, Randy said, “There is a God. And while he might not be watching over me, at least he’s not purposely trying to fuck with me. Any mail this morning, Donna?”

“Yes, quite a few bills. I tried to put them on top of the pile but it was too much. It would have toppled over. So I filed them in the usual place.”

“The trash can?”

“Yep.”

“Whatever I’m paying you, double it.”

Donna, now getting paid double zero dollars as a secretary and a 5% tip from Randy as a waitress, walked out giving Randy the finger. Randy didn’t notice because he was staring lovingly into his cup of coffee.

“Coffee, you dark, rich whore. You are the bitter nectar that sustains me. Now where was I? Oh yes, the phone.” Randy clicked the speaker phone button on. “Hello? Andie?”

“Randy, you piece of shit, listen to me! I’m not joking. The cops think Dale hung Gobbling Gus in our backyard.”

“Andie, calm down. Why in the world would anyone think something as ridiculous as that?”

“Because this morning they found Gus hanging in our backyard.”

Randy spit a chunk of potato clear across the room. “Dear God! You mean he’s guilty?”

“No! It was probably some kids playing a prank. Or maybe he was framed, who knows.”

“You know what I think?” Randy leaned back in his chair. “I think this whole thing sounds fishy. Maybe I should head downtown this afternoon. See what the word is on the street.”

“You’re talking about going downtown to that shithole bar and getting plastered aren’t you?”

“I’ll have you know,” Randy said, “that The Thirsty Pilgrim is a veritable goldmine of tips, clues, leads, and—”

“And booze, Randy.”

“Did you say boobs? The only boobs there at this time of day would be mine.” Randy poked his flabby chest. “Hmmmm. Perhaps some push-ups are in order.”

“Booze, Randy! I said booze!”

“Oh booze! Boooooze. My God, it’s relaxing just to say it sometimes. Say it with me, Sis. Booooooooo.”