29.2
At the IHOB, everyone was stuffed and buttered up.
“Man, I love the IHOB,” Tommy said, rubbing his belly with one hand and holding the front sock in place with the other. A little bit of blood started to seep through his shirt. “I don’t know why I don’t come here more often.”
Efunibi now sat on Osceola’s former chair and watched everyone finish up their meals. Osceola himself had disappeared—he had excused himself to the restroom and had never returned.
“Okay,” Merideth said. “Where is that fucker?”
Efunibi stood up.
“Efunibi know where.” He paused for full dramatic effect. “He at Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet.”
“Is that across from the salad place?” Tommy asked.
“Sweet M’tatoes. That place is good, too,” Fulva interjected.
“No,” Joe said. “You’re thinking about the Regency Courtyard Royal-Clarion Inn.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Tommy agreed.
“Osceola use to scam breakfast at that Regency Courtyard Royal-Clarion Inn until he was banned for punching a manager. He didn’t believe that Teddy Roosevelt was Osceola’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather,” Bill interjected.
“That’s pretty great,” Tommy said wryly.
Fulva snorted, then said: “He didn’t punch the manager. He just yelled. Also, I didn’t know Roosevelt was an Injun.”
Everyone contemplated that for a moment, except Efunibi, who only stared.
“Wait, you mean the Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet by the Consolation Zone sex shop?” Fulva asked.
Everyone looked to Efunibi, all knowing exactly what Fulva was talking about, but Efunibi shook his head and they all looked somewhat disappointed.
“Is it on Tamiami?” Bucket asked.
“East? West?” Bill added, and Fulva hit him because west goes straight into the Gulf.
“Is it on Siesta Key?” Merideth asked.
Fed up, Efunibi interrupted the question-fest: “Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s three blocks away. Three fucking blocks away. Jesus Christ.” No one noticed his British accent.
With that, Efunibi got up and walked out.
As he did, Joe’s ass rang quietly. Angel’s voice answered: “Thank you for calling the Royal Courtyard Econo—” But Joe shoved his hand into his back pocket and clicked it off before his mother noticed.
There was a lull for a moment and then:
“That’s not Tamiami, that’s 72,” Tommy said.
“Yeah, if you were coming from Tamiami, you could take that slight right onto South Beneva . . . ” Joe added.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tommy said. “Little short cut.”
“Okay, but it’s three blocks away,” Fulva said. “Which way?”
“It’s right next to the FFG. They share a parking lot,” Bill said without looking up from his dildo.
Fulva hit him again.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said, and they all got up from the table, but then spent fifteen minutes organizing their checks, doing the tip math, and getting everything paid for. When they made it out into the parking lot, they all dispersed to their various vehicles and hit their pipes in order to achieve optimum battle-worthiness, then they drove the three blocks over to the Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet.
* * *
Rupert and Jesus exchanged small talk on the way to the motel, about what chemicals needed to show up and when, how to get a hold of this or that and in what quantities. Rupert was giddy at the anticipation of seeing Leenda, whom it felt like years since he last saw.
They pulled in back of the Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet, the rest of the lot being hidden behind the building itself. Rupert would have to walk around it to get to the entrance and see the FFG’s menacing glow in the coming twilight. Jesus pulled away after agreeing to pick Rupert up the following morning.
As Rupert walked around the corner, he saw the seething, half-vacant, half-rabid crowd of simpletons twacked out on jibber-jabber in the lobby talking to Angel, who looked irate, which sort of made Rupert happy. He was also terrified. Though they hadn’t noticed him yet, Bill had MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick out and was brandishing it threateningly. Bucket, Freeze!, and Hands Up!—both dogs barking and tearing around the lobby—wore Boho dread wigs fashioned from Bucket’s unsold black market weave inventory. Steve Perry jumped up and down on the clerk’s counter, screeching. Fulva and Tommy yelled at Angel, demanding to know where Rupert was while Tommy bled more profusely and physically battled a panic attack. Merideth tried to get the lobby television to work; Joe thumbed his cell and may have ordered a pizza or a prostitute by mistake. And then, as if he’d just returned from a quick dash around the Royal Courtyard Econo-Regency Chalet’s short corridors, Osceola, sat astride the massive aroused ostrich, burst from the dark hallway down which Rupert’s room was located. Everyone screamed, muted through the thick lobby glass.
Holy. Shit.
As Rupert had that one, brief coherent thought, he saw Bucket turn and catch sight of him.
“There he is!” Bucket yelled over the din. And then to Freeze! and Hands Up!: “Boys! Get him! Get that Oreo motherfucker!”
Damn. Rupert had .02 seconds to be offended before he took off like a shot.
* * *
“That was not cool.” Shit Pail smoked another of what seemed to be an endless supply of cigarettes.
“What? I mean, presumably the most whacked-out contingent of Methheads Sarasota County had to offer . . .”
“Not likely,” she countered.
“Yeah, probably not. But they were crazy and they were after me. But, you’re right. ‘Oreo motherfucker’ was probably a bit mu—”
She let out an exasperated wheeze. “No! What about poor Angel there? She didn’t deserve that—she’s just trying to do her job.”
“Fuck poor Angel,” Rupert said, flatly.
“You are a mean man.”
“Whatever.”
* * *
Since the antler episode, Tommy Bananas had emptied his car of some of his nostalgic garbage (into the brown bushes of the Gorge [Fine Men’s Clothing] parking lot), so Bucket and the dogs piled in. He had also re-attached the guilty antler to the head of the offending animal that tried to kill him and mounted it to the front of his car. The McEejits climbed aboard their Hodaka Combat Wombat motocross dirt bike. Joe was on the back and struggled with his helmet while his mother told him “we’re not moving until the helmet is on.” Fulva, Bill, and Steve Perry climbed, literally and with great difficulty, into a 1976 Fuchsia Mercury Grand Marquis—its large-displacement engine and 35-inch open-turbine rims terrified Rupert, which made him run faster.
What the fuck? That was not the Geo Tracker he knew from the Spotted Canned Dick times.
It took everyone long enough to get into their vehicles that Rupert had a bit of a head start getting down McIntosh Road, making a quick left down another smaller road that lead around some large industrial building, but by that time, Bananas had turned onto the road and was about forty feet away, screeching to a halt. Rupert heard “Oreo, Freeze! Oreo, Hands Up! Get him!” and the two dogs flopped out of the car, their boho dreads bouncing. They ran toward Rupert, who let out a strangled panic-scream, turned and ran.
He left the road heading into some urban brush that forced him through a swampy area slowing him down. He reasoned; this will make them lose my scent, but then he thought, idiot, they can see you. But it slowed the dogs down, too, and Tommy and Bucket couldn’t follow him in there with the Cutlass.
Rupert made it to the other side, which opened onto another small road, the other side of which was a suburban housing development. Rupert was now muddy up to his knees with two dreaded dogs chasing him and barking. He ran through the neighborhood, trying to stick to backyards in case his pursuers roamed the lanes of the complex. Rupert hopped a fence and landed in the middle of a family BBQ. He heard the dogs barking a couple houses over.
The yard got quiet—even the radio got turned off—all staring at him. Rupert couldn’t speak, panting. A large, exceptionally dark man with a tall, imposing box fade walked up to him, looked him up and down and said:
“Cops?”
“Methheads,” Rupert wheezed.
“I think we can help a brother out.”
By now the dogs had found a way under the fence. The kids, and some adults, ran screaming, but when Freeze! and Hands Up! got to Rupert, who cringed, expecting the sinking of teeth into his soft flesh, they only jumped up and licked him, tails wagging.
The kids returned from their hiding places and started playing with the dogs.
“Daddy! They’ve got hair like mine!” a little girl squealed with delight. And it was true.
“These your dogs?” the man asked Rupert.
“No. A Methhead’s.” Still catching his breath.
“Can we keep them?” a little boy asked.
The man looked at his wife. The dogs bounced and licked, rolled over onto their backs for belly rubs and scritches.
The kids begged now and the wife pursed her lips and shook her head, which translated to a bewildering yes, Rupert surmised based of the squealing glee of the kids.
“I guess they’re ours now,” the man said. He looked at Rupert. “We were gonna get one anyway. Might as well be two. Names?”
“Freeze! and Hands Up!,” Rupert answered, coming back around to some sense of respiratory normalcy.
A woman in the back put her hand up and shouted: “Oh hell naw!”
“Hell with that,” the wife said. “Their names are Toots and Maytal.”
Everyone clapped, whooped, and the radio came back on.
“How can we help you out, man?”
“I need to get to Spanish Point.”
“Well, my wife needs the car in the morning but . . . ” He leaned over to his son and asked: “How about letting this nice man who gave you these here dogs use your bike?”
The boy thought about it for a second before exploding into an enthusiastic yes! while Rupert imagined Bucket trying to get his dogs back from these good people.
Rupert didn’t care what kind of bike it was, as long as he had some transport. He’d forgotten that he was six foot ten and had never learned to ride a bike.
* * *
Rupert dwarfed the bike. His knees forced out instead of up, so his ankles bent at an awkward angle. He waited until the man went back inside his house before he attempted to launch off from the curb. After falling over twice, Rupert began to get the hang of it, agonizing as it was. He wondered if this was much better than running, but he found that sometimes he could coast dow on an incline with his legs out, so that was a plus. That was definitely faster than running and easier on his knees.
He made it to South Beneva and coasted as far as he could, looking over his shoulder until he saw the beast-headed Cutlass closing in behind him. The horned fiend had a look that denoted its recent penchant for human blood. It got too close—close enough to poke Rupert in the ass, but he made a quick left out of desperation onto Torrey Pines Blvd and narrowly avoided wiping out. Torrey Pines Blvd wasn’t so much a boulevard as a short strip of asphalt from Tamiami straight into the Country Club of Sarasota.
Rupert slinked on in through the open gate behind a Lexus, but the Cutlass wasn’t so lucky and the gate came down on its hood, knocking the recently glued-on antler off the mounted head.
The main landscaping features of the country club were a number of manmade ponds throughout, with and without fountains. Rupert made a right at one and headed for the racket club. The Cutlass, having escaped the gate, sped up behind him again.
Huge stands of bamboo grew up here and there, one of which Rupert crashed through, and the Cutlass followed. The bamboo turned out to be concealing yet another huge pond. Thankfully, though painfully, Rupert and the bike fell straight down onto the bank, but the Cutlass flew over him and into the water. It took out a rainbow-lit spray fountain fixture before settling and starting to sink. Rupert wasted no time grabbing the bike, dragging it up the embankment, and getting the hell out of there. Wet and muddy, and the bike a little wobblier than before, Rupert kept working toward Spanish Point.