17
Rupert and Jesus drove to another Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing) location to drop off Golden Ticket monies with Bill—the branch store in which they met changed from day to day in rotation, so Rupert didn’t always have to worry about running into Tommy Bananas, who was pretty obvious and easily avoidable regardless.
“We spend a lot of time in this car, Jesus,” Rupert said as they drove past a small gas station where a few emergency responders pulled another shirtless man out of a vending machine. The man ate a candy bar with his free hand while a uniformed woman with a sour look beneath her protective face gear used some sort of industrial saw to free him. He didn’t look too put out.
“Name of the game,” Jesus said, stopping at a light. “Hey, Fulva’s been asking about you. She wants to know where you are and why she never sees you. And she’s not asking in a way like she misses you. I think she’s onto you.”
“Come on,” Rupert said and shuddered a little at the thought of this woman and her demon lover. “So, I’m moonlighting a little. It’s not like we have an exclusive contract or anything.” He was both perplexed and pleased with his new-found nonchalance in the face of potential otherworldly retribution.
The light turned green and the Lincoln lurched forward.
“Besides, why would they care? They’re making more money on Golden Tickets than they ever have.”
“Yeah, and that’s good, but you have to understand these people, pana,” Jesus said, eyeing Rupert sideways.
“They can be understood?” Rupert laughed, but Jesus didn’t. They pulled into the plaza, which housed The Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing) #3 in their scheduled rotation, and parked. Jesus turned off the engine and looked at Rupert.
“Every one of these crooks thinks they’re big time. So, they like to act big time. If you’re not careful, big time might fuck you up.”
“But they’re buffoons, Jesus,” Rupert argued, creeping doubt notwithstanding. Fulva was menacing even if you didn’t know she fucked Derek Peterson. The Peterson fucking only changed the quality—like splatter movies are gross and scary, but body horror is gross, scary, and deeply unsettling.
“That, mi hermano, is what makes them more threatening—the buffoonility,” Jesus said, satisfied with his coinage. He got out of the car.
This did make a certain amount of sense to Rupert and he followed Jesus into the Florida heat.
As they prepared to go in, Bill walked out, followed by Osceola. No one said anything as Bill and Osceola climbed into the back of Jesus’s car. Jesus shrugged at Rupert and they got back in.
“Drive,” Osceola said, sliding down into the seat to assume a super-relaxed position.
Jesus picked at his thumbnail, then chewed it a little. Rupert stared at a window mannequin wearing a sharp suit that no one in their right mind would wear in this heat.
“Drive,” Osceola said again, this time agitated by Jesus’s insubordinance.
“Where are we going, Bill?” Jesus asked, looking at Bill in the rearview. Bill had simply been distracted by some routine MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick maintenance.
“Oh, Fulva’s,” he said, looking up. He then returned to his massaging.
Jesus turned the engine over and soon they were on their way to Segue-La. Rupert reached a long arm back past Osceola and handed Bill a wad of cash, which Bill took without moving any attention from his massive pink dildo.
None of this struck Rupert as weird anymore.
* * *
When they arrived at Segue-La, Fulva sat cross-legged on her mat-throne reading a book by Derek Peterson called Bareback Militia. Steve Perry sat on the raised platform beside her—sporting a cowhide vest and a small cowboy hat—carefully pulling part his own old, desiccated feces, picking undigested seeds out of it, and popping them into his disgusting little monkey mouth. As soon as he saw Rupert, he ran, climbed up Rupert’s body, perched on his shoulder, and sniffed the side of his head. Rupert grimaced. He disliked this monkey.
As they approached, Fulva looked up from her book and smiled at Rupert, ignoring Jesus, which Jesus was used to and preferred.
“You read Peterson, Rupie?” she asked as if she referred to John Stuart Mill.
Until he came to Florida, Rupert had never heard of him. He wasn’t sure Peterson existed outside of Florida.
“I don’t think I have, no.” He knew absolutely that he’d have known if he had.
“Do. He’s incredible. Hands down, the best erotic/horror-young-adult-self-help writer of the genre.”
“She just wants to fuck him,” Bill spat as he and Osceola walked in. He slid down into the beanbag chair in front of his VMS4. Rupert wondered if Bill had made his weekly 911 call yet, or maybe the VMS4 system is back up and running to Bill’s satisfaction. Then, a little late to the game, his thought was interrupted by a vision of Peterson’s rubbery, distorted face laboring exhaustively over Fulva as she grunted her old man moans of greasy-gross pleasure, perhaps opening a pestilential rift in the Universal Source.
Fulva eeked out a wispy, revolted noise, much milder than Rupert wanted to express.
“Bildo’s just jealous.”
Rupert said nothing. Fulva flipped the book aside and looked at Rupert.
“Where’ve ya been, Rupie?”
“Oh, around. Selling tickets. Seeing the sights. Never been to Florida before.”
“Yeah? Where’ve you been?”
You know . . . around,” Rupert hadn’t been anywhere that he could point to as a “sight.”
“Yeah, but where?”
“I’ve been,” Rupert began slowly, “down to the marina.”
“Which one?”
Shit.
“Hey, you know, before we continue this conversation, and speaking of water, would you mind if I, um . . . ?” Rupert indicated his need to urinate by loosely grabbing his junk and plonking his knees together.
Fulva, annoyed, waved him away. Jesus pointed over his shoulder to a large pink door with gold trim.
Rupert really did have to go, though he hoped he could buy enough time to think of the marina’s name. Any marina’s name.
The bathroom is, of course, pink. Persian Rose, to be exact. Rupert did not recall ever having taken a color-theory class. It was clear Fulva preferred unnatural colors, but this was one of the more toned-down pinks. And everything matched. Whoever put this together nailed it. The floor, walls, toilet, shower and curtain, sink, counter, soap dish, soap, everything was the exact same shade of Persian Rose. Furthermore, it was immaculate, as opposed to the rest of Segue-La. Rupert was impressed, despite that it gave him vertigo.
The only thing here not Persian Rose was a massive, bigger-than-Rupert-sized aloe plant gone biologically haywire. Its leaves didn’t just grow up from the container in a single inflorescence, but branched off to create countless little aloe plantlets, like a spider plant, which was strange for an aloe. It sat in a pink pot atop a Persian Rose wardrobe with slatted doors, and branched off in all directions, twisting and turning, hanging down to the floor. He wasn’t even sure it was an aloe plant, though its leaves were aloe-shaped and fleshy, green with pointed ridges along the sides. More like tentacles, really. The ridges were black, though, and he’d never seen an aloe plant like that. Perhaps some special species of Aloe. Florida did contain some prehistoric monster-looking vegetation. Fucking Florida.
As Rupert drained his bladder, he heard a faint whisper from behind: “Help me.”
He figured it was just the sound of his whiz hitting the water and echoing around the Persian Rose walls and tiles. Or maybe Bill and Fulva were fighting out there. Whatever.
But as he finished up, shook off, and had his hand on the handle to flush, it came again.
“Help me.”
Nope, he thought. I gotta get some kind of ventilation mask when I’m around the cooking fumes. This is some bullshit.
He flushed, pivoted to the sink and washed his hands, which turned pink from the soap. Rupert wondered what the soap was made of to get that kind of toxic-looking lather. He rinsed and as the filling toilet and running faucet stopped at the same time, it came again, distinct.
“Help me.”
Rupert swung around to his left, toward the wardrobe, and opened the doors. It was full of Derek Peterson Little Girl brand yoga pants—Rupert’s throat constricted. Did he feel a presence in the room? Please don’t be Peterson. As he shut the doors, his eyes fell on the freakazoid aloe plant, and then he heard: “Yessss . . . ”
It was the plant.
A knock at the door almost made Rupert scream.
“You fall in?” Osceola’s voice came muted through the door. Rupert found this ironic; he was too large to ever “fall in,” whereas Osceola was small enough to do that very thing.
Without thinking, Rupert snapped a plantlet off its stem and threw it into his cross-body bag. Osceola banged on the door and started to rap, Rupert supposed, to pass the time during the three seconds between now and the evacuation of the bathroom. Rupert opened the door and walked around Osceola without a word.
Once more before the court of Fulva, Rupert looked at his watch.
“Whoa, Jesus, the time,” he said. “We gotta go to the place to do that thing with the selling.”
Jesus looked up, startled as he had been ignoring the proceedings, but he caught on quickly and said: “Ah, yeah, the thing. Tickets. Over to the place. We’re gonna be late.” He fished his keys out of his pocket. “Gotta sell them tickets. They’re knocking the door down for them.”
Rupert nodded.
“Rupie,” Fulva called.
He turned and looked at her.
“Don’t be a stranger.” Fulva smiled.
Rupert nodded again, smiled, and gave a weak wave. Christ, stranger than what?
“And hey,” she added. “You should stop by Mote Marine. They have manatees.”
Rupert thought of the floating manatee meth lab of putrefaction.
“I will. Thanks for the tip.” Does she know something?
Rupert and Jesus left and walked to the car more hurried than usual.
“Do you think she knows?” Rupert asked Jesus.
“What, now you’re worried?”
“She is kind of menacing.”
“I tried to tell you.”
They got into the car and Rupert erupted into a nervous sweat.
“So, where are we going?” Jesus asked.
“Anywhere.”
As they drove, Rupert looked around for whatever bizarre, drug-addled event might be taking place around him, but for once found nothing. He relaxed a little. Then he remembered the aloe plantlet in his cross-body bag.
“Can you drop me off at the Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet?”
“Sure.”
“Hey Jesus,” Rupert started. “That plant in the bathroom.”
Jesus’s face got serious.
“The Plant with No Name,” he replied, cryptic.
“Seriously?”
Jesus looked at Rupert like, what do you expect at this point?
Rupert silently conceded, then: “What do you know about it? Like, what kind of plant is it?” He could identify every possible shade of pink that ever existed, natural or manmade, but he couldn’t identify a houseplant.
“Ever heard of something called ‘Wet’?” Jesus asked.
Rupert shook his head.
“Fry? Illy?”
Still no. “Wait, is that Ebonics? I told you, I’m not fluent . . . ”
“No. Okay. Pharmaceutical pop culture lesson. A handful of years ago, this was all the rage on the street. Basically, it’s marijuana soaked in PCP, or you just dip a joint in it. That’s all well and good, but the trouble came because, in fact, a nickname for PCP in the community is—
* * *
“Oh, I remember Wet,” Shit Pail chimes in, again ruining Rupert’s storytelling groove.
“You seem like you might. Fond memories, I presume.”
“If by ‘fond memories’ you mean no memories—”
“That doesn’t sound like you remember it.” Rupert, irritated by another interruption, bated Shit Pail with no luck, then was relieved when she didn’t notice.
“I remember it as a thing that existed in the world—whether I existed when I used it is a matter of debate.” She seemed to pick something out of a tooth hole.
“I guess that’s what you get from smoking something called—”
* * *
“—Embalming Fluid.”
“Hmm.”
“Real original, I know. So, Fulva and Bill, in all their glorious wisdom, wanted in on the act ‘cause it was makin’ bank. So, they sent Osceola off to get them some ‘embalming fluid.’ And you’ve met Osceola.”
“This can’t be good.”
“Pendejo comes back, not with PCP, but actual embalming fluid. Now, evidently, that can get you high—you can dip a cigarette, marijuana or otherwise, into some PCP-laced actual embalming fluid, and folks call that Fry, but we’re getting into some complicated substance sub-genres here . . . anyway, it can get you high, though it can also give you seizures and put your ass in a coma. So, when that all went south, Fulva told Bill to get rid of it, and he poured it into her plant in the bathroom.”
“Is that an aloe plant?”
“Um, yeah, I think it is. That shit you break off and put on burns?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Hmm.”
“Shit yes, and it got wild. Keeps trying to escape. But she can’t part with it. Gift from Derek Peterson.”
“Thee Derek Peterson?”
“The very one.”
“Where’d he get it?”
“Regular ol’ aloe plant—I dunno. Plant shop.”
After a moment of silence: “That’s, uh . . . that’s a crazy story.” Rupert gazed down at his cross-body bag lying across his lap.
“You expected something more plausible?”
“Yes,” Rupert admitted. “Yes, I did. I hoped . . .”
“Okay, how about this? It’s not a plant at all. It’s an alien from Crack Planet.”
“Embalming fluid it is, then.”
“Hey,” Jesus said, looking between Rupert and the road. “You leave that plant alone.”
They eyed each other, suspicious. Rupert thought Jesus knew something more about the Plant with No Name, but he himself was reluctant to tell the only half-sane person he knew here that he’d heard a plant request his assistance.
“Okay.” Rupert went back to scanning the plazas for crazy, shirtless Florida men.
Sock it to me...