6
On the way to Fulva Siki’s McMansion—the official name of which, Jesus informed him as they got into the car, was Segue-La—Rupert watched a large man in a Boy Scout’s uniform in the parking lot of a different FFG location being arrested. They had stopped at a light, so he had time to consider what might have been going on, though he drew no conclusions. That’s a big Boy Scout, was his first thought. His second was not much of anything, as the light had turned green and Rupert realized the man’s scout shorts were down and his party pack flopped about like a tiny, fleshy windsock kept in place by two small, dried apricots.
Rupert looked ahead and said nothing for a few minutes, making a conscious effort to burn the image from his mind, though he feared it would visit him in the night, dangling and unwanted.
“Segue-La,” he finally said.
“Yeah.”
“Like the two-wheeled ‘personal transporter.’” Rupert made finger quotes around “personal transporter.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there an explanation for that?”
“Oh yeah,” Jesus said, and Rupert wasn’t sure he’d continued, but he did. “Remember those old Segue commercials?”
“Sure.” Rupert hummed: “Hmm hmm hm-hm, hmm hmm hmmm . . . ”
Jesus joined: “Hmm hmm hm-hm, hmm, hmm hm—wait.”
“Hmm—what?”
“That’s the ‘Rooto Rooter’ jingle.”
Rupert sang: “Roto-Rooter, baba, trouble shooter . . . ”
“ . . . and away goes troubles, down . . . ”
“ . . . the drain . . . wait, no . . . ”
“ . . . the drain . . . what?”
“That’s ‘Roto-Rooter’ by Bootsy’s Rubber Band—different song, different company,” Rupert re-corrected.
“That doesn’t sound anything like the ‘Rooto Rooter’ jingle.”
“Neither sound anything like the Segue jingle.”
They drove in silence for a moment.
“I don’t remember the Segue jingle,” Rupert finally admitted.
“Me neither.”
“Well, remember the girl in the commercials?” Jesus made a left.
“Oh wow, yeah,” Rupert said. “She had that accident . . . ”
The girl’s name was Lovely Gluptkowski. She’d been the brand face and voice of the Segue for a couple of years before the accident. The story goes, her mother had been drunk and riding the filming Segue on set of the latest commercial. Lovely had been lying on her back with her voice trainer standing on her chest—which, in hindsight, seemed like a odd technique—doing her voice exercises, when vroom. Rupert didn’t remember the medical details. Severed vocal cords, squashed larynx, something. Pretty brutal. No one had noticed at first because everyone was busy, her voice trainer had his eyes closed, and the sounds she’d been making hadn’t really changed.
“Yeah. I guess her mom pushed her into show business at a pretty young age,” Jesus explained. “She’d done some local commercials before she got the Segue gig. I think she was about twelve by then. But it was a big deal. Well, after the accident, her mother sued the shit out of Segue saying the wheels on the thing made it a death trap.”
“But . . . it doesn’t work without wheels,” Rupert said.
“Yep. Segue caved and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, but I can tell you . . . it was a lot. And then her mother died a year later—rode a Segue off a cliff-side hiking path.”
“Drunk?”
“Drunk.”
“Wow.”
“Well, that’s her. The little girl,” Jesus said, making a right.
“Who?”
“Fulva.”
“But her name was Lovely Glupt—”
“She changed it to Fulva Siki, and don’t ever call her Lovely.” Jesus glanced at Rupert, quite serious.
“Good to know. Fulva Siki. What does that mean?”
Jesus stopped at a light.
“I didn’t know for the longest time, but then a few months ago I tried to find out.”
“And?”
“‘Fulva’ is Latin for ‘tawny yellow.’”
“‘Siki?’”
“Polish for ‘urine.’”
The light turned green. It was quiet for a minute or two.
“Does she know what—?”
“I don’t know, güey, but we should not bring it up. Honestly, she might know.”
Five more minutes of silence. Rupert was afraid to look at the passing scenery, leery of flopping Boy Scouts.
“Sure takes a long time to get anywhere around here,” he said. Hey, he thought. Look at me. Regular small talk.
“Yeah, everything’s pretty spread out.”
“Jesus, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who sells drugs,” Rupert said, looking at the license plate of the Lexus in front of them, which read: NOT SEE. Rupert got it as it started to pull away and frowned.
“I don’t sell drugs,” Jesus said, matter-of-fact. “Man, do I look like a drug dealer to you?”
“I just said you didn’t.”
“Oh yeah. No, man, I sell tickets. Golden Tickets to—”
“Crack Planet,” Rupert finished with him. “So, you’re more like a travel agent of sorts.”
Jesus lit up. “Yeah, man! That’s what I am.” And he smiled the rest of the way to Segue-La.
7.1
Segue-La is a cookie-cutter mansion on Bird Key, south of the Ringling Causeway and home to various celebrities such as trashy daytime talk show host Gary Springenhoffer and vocalist for the hard rock band, Inny-Outy, John Brianson. And a lot of birds, hence the name of the key. The house itself—its size morally indefensible, even to Rupert—had a Spanish-Mediterranean caramel-cream-colored stucco exterior, featuring a long, wide buffed terra-cotta walkway culminating in a crescent-shaped courtyard. Arches and the occasional portico lined both wings of the building until they met in the middle with a massive turret that acted as the front door, indicating a pretty incredible foyer. Red tile, wrought iron, and wooden beams. In the center of the courtyard stood a thirty-foot, very well cared for Nikau palm. This was a beautiful house.
“Nice,” Rupert said as they got out of the Lincoln.
“You’ve heard about not judging a book by its cover, right?” Jesus cautioned him.
“That’s a pretty mundane expression, Jesus.”
“Shut up.”
“But I was paying a compliment,” Rupert explained. “It’s a nice house.”
“I know. You’ll see.”
Rupert followed Jesus up the path and through the courtyard, past the palm, and to the turret-style front entrance. The door was bigger than your average door, which Rupert appreciated, but the large brass knocker in the middle of it—which Jesus now utilized—was in the shape of a Segue.
“Be prepared for, I don’t know . . . anything,” Jesus warned.
What? Rupert was about to say when the door swung open with a Capuchin monkey hanging from the inside doorknob. It wore a fitted, zebra-striped spandex muscle shirt, and it screeched at Rupert before swinging itself off the handle into God knows where.
“Its name is Steve Perry,” Jesus said, heaved a deep sigh, and stepped inside.
Rupert stood in the open doorway for a moment, unable to move forward. He tried to recap his day so far since landing. He remembered a precise thought that morning in DC that the worst part of the day must be the flight. The entropy was thick here—he thought he could actually smell it.
This must end, he thought. I want to go home.
On a good day if Rupert were to have left his apartment in DC, he would barely have had to interact with three people, tops. Most days. And even that would have drained him, requiring at least a few hours of wine-sipping (in moderation), and maybe a hot bath to decompress. And the three people he’d meet were, by most cultures’ social standards, pretty ordinary. There was not enough wine in Florida to . . . well, upon thinking, there was more than enough wine and anything else with which he’d want to anesthetize himself.
He didn’t even know what time it was. It felt like three years since his ill-fated visit to the FFG.
“Come in,” Jesus said, having returned for him.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Rupert said, face and mind blank.
“Come on, it’s fine.”
“No, it was fun for a . . . no, that’s not true. It was never fun. This hasn’t been fun at all. Strange, off-putting, but in no sense fun,” Rupert stared into the void of the house’s interior. “I want a Xanax. No, I need one. They are back at my room and I would appreciate it—”
“We can take care of that right here,” Jesus said. “You want a Z-bar, Cousin Jesus will find you a Z-bar.”
“Cousin?” Rupert forced his stupefied gaze to Jesus who shrugged, eased his way behind Rupert, and gave him a gentle nudge through the door.
Almost everything in the house—and by “almost,” Rupert judged it to be approximately 98%—was some shade of pink, dominated by (say 90% of that 98%) a dark fuchsia, which Rupert believed it was officially named “Fandango.” He feared he was going to have a seizure.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, that’s not true, that was the worst of it, but the worst was not improved by the dirty dishes strewn about, some with cigarette butts sticking suck-side up to their caked surfaces. All meals here at Segue-La looked to include some form of cheese. Where there was carpet, it hadn’t been vacuumed in many months, perhaps years. The hardwood floors were dull, scratched, and the corners and edges had accumulated enough dust to create miles of itsy-bitsy Mesa Verde-like dwellings for millions of flea-sized Pueblo peoples.
Where did that image even come from? Rupert thought. He started to sweat, thinking he had acquired an involuntary contact high from The Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing) stall.
Many corners were heaped with crunchy-looking piles of Capuchin monkey shit that Rupert didn’t want to think about, but was forced to as Steve Perry ran this way and that. Rupert couldn’t tell if it was excited that there was a new person in the house, like a dog might be, or if it harbored some brain-eating virus.
So, this is what entropy smells likes—rotting food, cigarette butts, and monkey shit.
They walked through the foyer, which was stunning in a corkscrew-your-eyeballs sort of way, and moved down an equally appalling hallway, then made a right turn through an open doorway into a massive room of indiscernible purpose. It was, like all else, pink. The floor was not bare wood, nor carpet, but soft—about the size of a high school gymnasium and covered with hundreds of various-sized, loose pink cushions.
I’m going to die here, Rupert thought. Having to walk across the sea of firm-but-floppy, bean-filled, foam-filled, who-the-hell-knows-filled cushions with the legs of a man pushing seven feet in height—without tripping and falling and dying—made his throat constrict, but slowly, as if it was a warning to him: If you do not leave this place now, I will kill you myself.
“Jesus, have I mentioned to you that I suffer from a very severe case of general social anxiety—?” Rupert began.
“Bróder, you didn’t have to. Look at you, man,” Jesus said.
Rupert was awash with sweat.
“Not to mention that dance you did back at The Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing),” Jesus continued.
“That was not a dance—”
“Better not tell Bill that. He loves him some B-boy action,” Jesus said, but added with his hands up. “Not in a homo way, ese, no worries.”
“That’s so offensive.”
“Homo?”
“Leave me alone,” Rupert said, about to turn, but then a voice called from the other end of the room.
It sounded like Mickey, Rocky Balboa’s coach in the first film, but it issued from a petite pink-haired woman who sat in a lotus position atop a meditation mat, which sat atop a short stand, which sat atop a much larger stand, way at the other end of the room on what looked like an elevated stage, across the social-lava of the Cushion Death Sea.
“You can kick them out of the way, man,” Jesus said. “That’s what I do.”
With that, Jesus shuffled his feet under the first few cushions and flipped them up as he plowed his way forward. Rupert tried to follow his path, keeping the soles of his shoes in constant contact with the—oh God, is that? Yes—with the pink shag carpet that lay beneath.
Sock it to me...