Bundt Weapon
There’s a knife on the table about the size of a scimitar, a cleaver on the counter that could cut through brick, and even a gnarly bread knife in the sink. So naturally, my body spontaneously grabs hold of Moxie’s bundt cake to defend itself. I would tear a strip off myself, except I have no doubt I would rake myself over some very nasty coals in retaliation.
Bobby doesn’t have time to react before the bundt cake slams into his face like a… a block of fairly dense cake.
Interestingly, it bounces straight back at me. The bonus of this is that I get to throw it again. The downside is that bundt cake is obviously a fucking useless weapon.
I reach around for something else, and come back with a cutting board.
Honestly. I need to sit myself down and work these issues out.
“Hold on a second,” I gasp as Bobby wipes chocolate off his face. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Too bad! Y’can’t sleep with another man’s wife an’ expect t’get away with it!”
“This again? Listen, I’ve never seen your wife before. And if I had, you have my word she is the last person on Earth I would want to sleep with. Well, her and Ruth. Oh, and Jackson too. But she’s a close third.”
Moxie makes an indignant gasp.
“Lady, only a special subset of idiot can manifest a June Cleaver fetish. Get over yourself.”
“Did you just insult my Moxie?” Bobby bellows.
“Mostly you, actually.”
Bobby tosses the table across the room like it’s made of a flimsy kind of tissue paper that made him very, very angry. I back up towards Moxie, keeping the cutting board loose in case I need to do something ineffectual with it.
“Enough games,” Bobby says, cracking his knuckles.
“Don’t do this, Bobby…” I warn, and swing the board back over my shoulder like a baseball bat. Straight into Moxie’s nose.
“Mother of pearl!” she curses, and stumbles back, blood gushing everywhere.
In that brief moment I’m formulating a witty remark, Bobby grabs me by the jacket, throws me into the wall, and then drags me towards the door he just came out of.
“Fix yer nose, Moxie,” he growls. “Yer boyfriend an’ me have some talkin’ to do.”
He opens the door and throws me in, which would normally be an unpleasant experience in and of itself, except this door leads down a long flight of steps to a concrete floor, which adds several dimensions to the unpleasantness… to the extent that I feel like there may only be two bones in my body that aren’t shattered, and they’re laying low to avoid any more conflict. Pansies.
The room is dark and blood-stained, with chains hanging from the ceiling and a pair of flickering light bulbs on chains hanging from cross-beams. There are two chairs there, one strewn with loose rope, and on the other is a petite woman with a potato sack over her head. All told, a much better motif than the kitchen. Ruth would feel at home here. I should really send her by, see if she disappears forever.
“All right,” says Bobby, standing over me, wrapping chains around his fist. “No more games.” He puts a heavy boot on my chest, pushes down with his quite significant weight. “You’re gonna tell me the truth now,” he says.
“You’re way too portly to pull off the biker schtick.”
He stomps on me, and my ribs go clickity-clack like so many disposable chopsticks snapped in half by a 900-pound cross-eyed klutz itchin’ for a massive bowl of ramen. Or something.
“Wrong answer!” Bobby yells.
“Didn’t… catch… the question.”
“How long has it been going on?”
I have myself a predicament here. On the one hand, if I give him a number of some kind, like “six weeks”, then I’m essentially confirming his suspicions, and he’s obviously going to beat the living shit out of me. On the other hand, if I continue to claim ignorance (honestly or not), he’s going to beat the everliving shit out of me. I have never given much thought to the subtleties separating living and everliving shit, but at this moment in time, I’m inclined to say:
“Why’s it matter?”
This confuses him, and he eases up.
“What?” he spits. “What didja say?”
“I asked why it matters. I mean, are you going to be happier if it was just one time, or if it’s been going on the last five years? ‘Cause I’ll veer towards whichever will make you happier, if you don’t mind.”
He picks me up and slams me down in the second chair, pulls my head back so I’m looking straight up his big hairy nostrils.
“Who’s the daddy?”
“Please say this isn’t kinky sex talk.”
“Moxie’s preggers, shitface!” he snarls. “I wanna know if I’m the daddy!”
Mrs Potato-sack-head looks in our direction very suddenly. She wants to know if he’s the daddy too. I think we’re just one verbally-abusive talk show host away from a trailer trash wet dream right here.
“I really don’t know if you’re the daddy,” I sigh. “If I had to guess, I’d say your sperm is probably too freakish to impregnate anything, but stranger things have happened. Like Jackson. But no, I really don’t know.”
He hits me hard on the side of the face, and though my eyes roll back in my head, I am sadly unable to slip into the next life, as if the Grim Reaper is sitting behind me, nudging me back into the game. He’s a real bastard, that one.
“Don’t know?” Bobby screams, backing up suddenly. “Don’t know? Well how about this? You tell me how long, or you get t’see yer little spy over here all cut up!”
He pulls the potato sack off, and a very scared Asian chick is making a face that says “holy shit this is not the bathroom at all please let me go”, with a just a little bit of “who the fuck are you?” I, on the other hand, have something of a bleary-eyed epiphany.
“Pei Pong?” I gasp.
She frowns at me urgently. This inflames Bobby.
“So you do know her!”
Awwwwww shit.
“No,” I try and explain. “If I knew her, I’d remember her name. Obviously.”
Dammit, the smart part of my brain must have been damaged in the fall.
Bobby grabs one of Pei’s fingers and bends it up. She starts to cry, the whiny little turd. She’s not even bruised. Grow a pair, will ya?
“Tell me how long, or I’m playin’ ‘this little piggy’ with my pruning shears!”
“Wee-wee-wee all the way home.”
“Please!” Pei weeps. “I do not know this man! I am not a spy! I am a simple girl in the wrong place! Please let me go!”
Bobby gives me a maniacal look, reaches into the back of his fugly leather pants, and pulls out a flathead screwdriver. Obviously, not what he was going for. He drops it on the ground, grunts.
“Shit,” he mutters. “Left the sharp stuff in the shop. You two stay put. I’ll be right back.”
He lets go of Pei Pong and lumbers up the stairs, scratching his ass as if he’s just off to take a leak, and not planning to violently dismember one or both of us. It’s really off-putting, having to see your killer’s crack like that. He should consider our feelings at times like these. One day, when I become a lunatic serial killer, I’m going to punctuate my killing sprees by performing musical numbers from Broadway shows for my victims. Sure, I’ll be a monster… but I’m a monster with class. Ooo, and sequins.
Where was I?
The door closes, and I snap back to the present. It’s a bleak present, but at least there aren’t any bikers in it at the moment. I take a long sigh of relief. It’s probably my last one, ever. I want to enjoy it.
“Hey!” Pei hisses. “Untie me!”
I look over lazily.
“Whuzzat?” I slur.
“Untie me! We’ve got to get out of here, fast!”
I have to admit, I’m not actually tied to the chair. Bobby figured (and rightly so) that I’m far too beat-up to get very far, so he just flopped me on top of the ropes. On the other hand, I think the odds of my getting anywhere fast right now are about a million and a half to no-fucking-way.
“Listen, Pei—”
“It’s Jei!” she snaps. “Now hurry up!”
“Jei as in Jei Chow, as in the missing intern girl, as in Mr Owl’s plaything, as in the thirty thousand dollars?”
“Whatever,” he sighs, rolling her eyes.
It occurs to me that if I save Jei now, and we somehow escape, and we make it back to my office, and I can somehow summon Mr Owl before noon… then he can pay me my cash, and I can pay Jimmy Scaz, and there’s a good chance I can end this day with my two remaining bones somewhat intact. I mean, it’s not the kind of prize you tend to dream about when you’re setting goals for the week, but all things considered, it’s better than actually dying. Possibly.
I kind of slither out of the chair and crawl across the floor, reaching the ropes around her feet. I start to untie them, fully expecting she’ll kick me in the face the second she’s free.
“So how the hell did you end up here?” I ask. “Mr Owl’s worried sick.”
“It’s a long story,” she sighs. “Bobby thinks I’m the lookout for Moxie’s lover.”
“Oh,” I nod, finishing the feet and stumbling to untie the rest of her. “So are you?”
He shakes her head solemnly.
“So what’ve you been doing here? You just like 1950s kitsch? Linoleum turns you on?”
She shifts her gaze.
“I’d rather not say.”
“I’m not untying you till you do.”
“You’re barely untying me anyway.”
“I’m having a very bad day.”
“It shows. Now hurry up before he gets back!”
“Hey!” I snap. “I made an ultimatum, and for once in my life I’m in a position of undeniable power! I am irrationally intrigued by this issue, and you will tell me what I want to know or so help me, I will… well… probably get killed by Bobby.”
She looks at me seriously.
“You’re insane, aren’t you?”
“Insane is quaint next to me. Now spill it!”
Jei grits her teeth, looks like she’s debating giving up the secret to the JFK assassination. And wow, what a secret that would be. I mean, screw this P.I. gig… I could make a fortune selling conspiracy theory books to tinfoil-toppers and retire to Maui!
“M…” she stutters. “Moxie isn’t sleeping with another man.”
Unless she’s sleeping with JFK, and JFK isn’t actually a man, I don’t see this ending with enough fireworks for retirement.
“She’s sleeping with me. Moxie and I… we’re lovers.”
“Ahh,” I nod. “The lookout and the look-in all at the same time.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ll say.”
I tug at the ropes as best I can, and they finally drop, and she gets up so fast the chair falls over on top of me. I don’t even care anymore, I’m too tired.
“Help,” I whine.
She throws the chair off me, grabs my hand, pulls me up. She’d be a good foot shorter than me, if I could stand straight anymore. Still, she has an air of superiority about her. Almost like she’s some kind of genius or something. Fucking rocket scientists.
“Hey Pei—”
“Jei.”
“Whatever. Shorty. When he comes back down, I need you to kick his ass for me.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Do that kung fu stuff you guys do.”
“You guys?”
“Japanese or whatever.”
“Chinese.”
“Same diff.”
“Oh my god, I’m so going to kick your ass.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Listen, jerkoff: I don’t know kung fu. I’m from Calgary.”
“Oh. So maybe make a lasso and rope him or something.”
“You’re a dipshit.”
“I can’t deny that. But seriously, I’m as dangerous as an unfrozen popsicle right now. Also, generally. If you want to get out of here with all your digits intact, you’re going to have to discover a new lethal talent. It’s all on you.”
Just then, the door creaks open, and we hear the sound of heavy boots stomping down, and thick metal blades slicing against each other.
“This little piggy went to market…” Bobby cackles, and I am forced to wonder if I can make a noose and hang myself before he gets downstairs.