Homemade Sin (22 page)

“Fill 'er up again,” said Rebel Buford to Roland, as he pushed his shot glass across the bar, “and pour me a beer too. I was playing poker on the casino boat last night and I won big … couple of thousand.”

“Lucky you,” said Cutter. He'd followed Dee Dee into the bar and taken a seat between Tony and the famous race car driver.

“Fill me up too,” said Tony, “I'm as dry as an Egyptian mummy eating saltine crackers and chasing them with chalk dust. By the way, did you know you have a whole bunch of cats fucking like crazy out by your dumpster?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Roland, “they've been going at it all night. I couldn't sleep because of all the pussy cat mating calls. They have to get tired sooner or later.”

“You got my money?” Cutter said to Tony, as he settled in to the bar stool.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Tony passed an envelope along the bar to Cutter. “Damndest thing I ever saw. That dog never won a race in his life and now the fleabag can't lose. How did you know?”

“Just some inside information.” Cutter smiled, flipping through the bills in the envelope as Hussey strode into the bar. He quickly shoved the envelope into his back pocket.

“If you're going to work here, you need to stay in the kitchen,” Hussey said to Cutter, as she passed him. “The sight of you makes me sick.”

“It's a public bar. I have every right to be here. I'm just having a beer with my old friend Tony. Isn't that right, Tony?”

“I ain't getting involved in this,” Tony said, taking a large gulp from his glass.

“And you're awful high and mighty for a girl who had a little fling last night,” Cutter said. He enjoyed delivering the snide remark and hoped to embarrass Hussey.

Roland and Hussey exchanged glances. Hussey raised an accusatory eyebrow at Roland who answered with a shrug.

“Look asshole,” Hussey said, turning her attention back to Cutter. “First, I happen to know you were with Dee Dee last night and second it's none of your damned business what I do. We are not together anymore.”

Rebel Buford, old number 13 on the NASCAR circuit, was sipping his beer, studying the drink menu and ignoring the conversation. “What is this Special Bufo tequila shot?” he said to Roland. “I've never heard of that brand.”

Roland smiled and reached for bottle of tequila, filled a shot glass and placed it in front of Rebel. Rebel started to pick up the shot glass but Roland raised a finger stopping him. Reaching under the bar Roland produced a little wire mesh cage with a large toad inside and placed it beside Rebel's shot.

“What am I supposed to do with the frog?” Rebel said.

“That's a Bufo toad. You do a shot of tequila and then you lick the back of the toad.”

“I've heard of body shots but never toad shots.” Rebel grinned. “What the hell, I'll try it.”

“So you won big, huh?” Roland said.

“Shhhheeet,” Rebel said, around a tongueful of toad. “If I had this kind of luck on the track, I'd win every race. What is this toad licking supposed to do? My tongue tastes like swamp water.”

“Wait for it.” Roland smiled, then he added, “You're a NASCAR driver, right?

Rebel chased the taste of toad from his mouth with more tequila and watched as Roland slowly turned into a huge rat with a baseball hat and a blue T-shirt with a picture of a cartoon rat on the front.

“Oh Jesus.” Rebel was now gasping with horror “It's him!”

The Roland rat, smiling widely, with two large, yellow rat teeth sticking out in front, reached out and picked up the empty shot glass from the bar. Rebel rubbed his eyes, looked again and Roland was back to normal. At least he was back to being Roland.  

“That was a hell of a shot,” said Rebel. “I think I'm starting to hallucinate.”

“It's the toad,” said Roland. “It makes you see all kinds of things. You were saying you're a NASCAR driver?”

“Well, I drive, I just don't win,” Rebel said, looking at Roland's face expectantly, waiting for it to become something else. “I'm a little claustrophobic, and when I'm packed into that little driver's cockpit I tend to have anxiety attacks. When I have those attacks I have to pull over, get out and walk around a bit; take a few deep cleansing breaths like my doctor told me to do. I'm usually in the lead until I have an attack.”

Dee Dee, eavesdropping from her sushi table, stopped slicing thin strips of blowfish and sidled up closer to the bar. “Didn't I see you race at the South Boston Speedway once?” she said.

“Yeah, I raced that track. I had an attack in the fourth lap and had to pull over. I don't ever win.”

“I'll say you don't win!” Dee Dee snapped. “I had fifty bucks on you at Talladega. You were in the lead until you freaked out. I saw it on television, you owe me fifty bucks!”

“Sorry,” Rebel said. “I couldn't help it. When the claustrophobia hits, I just gotta get out of that little closed car. I love the speed, and I love racing, but I hate small closed-in spaces.”

Dee Dee sat down beside Rebel at the bar, sandwiching him between her and Cutter. “So you have claustrophobia, huh?”

“Fear of small, closed-in spaces,” said Rebel. “When I was a kid I got locked in a pizza place all night, the kind with all the arcade games. My mom and dad split when I was about six, and my mother started hitting the bottle pretty hard. She'd be passed out by the time I got home from school and there was this pizza place with an arcade down the street near the mall. I would sneak in there just about every day after school. I'm not sure if I snuck in or the folks there felt sorry for me and happened to walk away from the front door about the time I snuck in every day. Anyway, one day some big kid locked me inside the Skeeball game.

“Man, those balls kept coming at me through those little holes and I was screaming my head off but every kid in the place was screaming too and nobody heard me. I guess one kid threw a ball hard enough through the middle hole to knock me out. When I woke up the place was dark and quiet. I figured it must be the middle of the night. I also figured my mom was passed out so she didn't miss me; I was stuck there until they opened the place in the morning. I was scared to death for a while, staring up at the dark through those little holes. Eventually, I got up enough courage to kick open the little door and I wandered around the place. Let me tell you, that place wasn't near as much fun in the dark, all those big characters staring at me …” Rebel shivered.

“Jeez, that's awful,” Dee Dee said.

“Well, it wasn't all bad,” Rebel said, perking up a bit. “I found a whole drawer full of tokens in the manager's desk and I played the NASCAR game all night. That one was always my favorite. Every time I looked around the room I would see those big characters standing there, staring at me, that huge rat, the fat bear, the big, scary bird, so I focused on playing the game, kept my eyes glued on the road, the turns and the other cars. By the time they opened up the place the next morning and let me out I was pretty good at it. That's probably why I went into stock car racing later in life. I'm good at driving, but whenever I'm strapped into the driver's seat of that little race car I start having flashbacks of being locked inside the Skeeball game. And I can still see all those shadowy figures looming over me.”

Rebel shivered again. “Anyway,” he said, snapping out of the terrible memory, “I haven't been able to abide small places ever since.”

As the effects of the Bufu toad began to kick in again, Rebel looked over at Dee Dee. In Rebel's mind Dee Dee had morphed into a talking chicken. Her button nose extended into a beak and her hair took on a straw-mop quality in day-glow yellow. She was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon rat on it like the bartender-rat.

Rebel stifled a scream. “You were there too”, he said, visibly terrified, “one of the shadows in that dark, dark place.”

Dee Dee looked up at Cutter and flashed him a wide grin. “Aah … right,” Dee Dee said, “I heard you say you won some money playing poker last night. Is that true?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Rebel wiping his forehead with a bar napkin. “I won a bundle.”

“I hope you're keeping the money nice and safe,” Dee Dee said. “There are lots of wicked people around.”

“The money is in my hotel room in the safe,” Rebel said, calming down, “nice and safe, maybe that's why those things are called safes. Gee, I never thought of that before.”

Rebel looked to his left and noticed Cutter had turned into an overweight bear playing a very small guitar. “Tequila,” he said, turning to Roland and found Roland had once again turned into the big rat and was baring his yellow teeth at him while he wrapped his long naked tail around the bottle of tequila and poured him another shot.

“Th … th … thanks,” Rebel managed to stutter. He noticed the Bufo toad was smiling at him.

“Pssssst,” Dee Dee whispered toward Cutter.

Rebel watched the chicken woman, strut and cluck over to the sushi table; the fat bear with the little guitar followed. “Can I talk to you in private for a minute?” Dee Dee said.

“I think we found our first zombie candidate,” Dee Dee whispered.

“Who did you have in mind?” Cutter said.

“That race car driver, Rebel Buford. You heard him tell Roland he could win but he's got a bad case of claustrophobia. If we could do a little voodoo on him, fix the claustrophobia, maybe he could win.”

Leaving Cutter to consider it, Dee Dee sashayed back over to Rebel at the bar. “Hey, there's my Mr. Race Car Driver!” Dee Dee squealed. “Are you ready for another drink? How about a little lunch?”

Rebel gulped as he stared at the chicken woman who was standing beside him, her chicken head bobbing forward and backward in a pecking motion. He was hungry. Actually, it was more like his stomach felt hollow and kind of knotty, and his mouth was awful dry. “I guess I could use something to get the taste of this toad out of my mouth,” he managed to say, still staring. He glanced again at Roland behind the bar, and beheld the giant rat polishing bar glasses. Rebel smiled at him. The rat smiled back, baring his huge yellow teeth. Rebel looked down at the toad and it winked at him.

“Good,” Dee Dee said as Cutter returned to his seat at the bar and nodded at her. “Why don't you go over to that table and I'll fix you something good and in the meantime I'll get you another drink.” She gave Cutter a sly wink.

Rebel took one more look at the rat and followed Dee Dee to a table in the corner.

“What can I get you to drink?” Dee Dee said as Rebel took a seat at the table.

“Maybe something sweet. I know, make me a Zombie,” Rebel said.

A wide grin spread across Dee Dee's face as she headed for the bar.

Rebel watched the chicken woman talk to the giant rat at the bar. He watched the rat pour large helpings from different bottles into a cocktail shaker and shake them vigorously. He watched the chicken woman put the concoction on a tray and strut towards him, chicken-like, carrying a tall red-orange drink. About halfway over, he watched her morph back into the beautiful, strawberry-blonde woman in her mid-twenties with a killer body.

Dee Dee set the drink on the table and slipped into the chair beside him. “So if you didn't have your fear of closed places you could win races?”

“Oh sure, I usually lead the pack until the panic sets in,” replied Rebel. “Without the phobia I'd win lots of races. I've tried psychologists, hypnotherapy, tranquilizers, meditation – everything short of a prefrontal lobotomy – but nothing helps.”

“You haven't tried everything.” Dee Dee grinned at him. “I'll go make you some lunch.” She winked and walked over to the sushi bar and started cutting fish. A few moments later she brought a plate of food over to the table and placed it in front of Rebel. “On the house,” she said.

“That's mighty nice of you,” Rebel said. He looked down at the face of the fugu fish looking up at him from his plate. He could swear the fish was smiling at him.

“He's an ugly sucker isn't he,” Rebel said, sipping the Zombie. “Ugliest fish I ever saw. Look at those big blubbery lips, and it's got little ratty eyes. What, is it, part rat?” He looked over at the bartender to make sure he had not offended him. He didn't want to come off as a verminist. He was relieved to see the bartender was human again.

“It's delicious,” Dee Dee said. “You'll like it.”

Rebel tentatively sliced off a hunk of the fish and chewed, chasing it with a gulp of his Zombie. “It's awful,” Rebel said, “tastes like a hen's ass. It's worse than the damned toad.” He looked at Dee Dee to make sure she had not become the chicken woman again. Now he risked being a birdist with his hen's ass remark, but she was still human. Rebel breathed a lo

“My lips feel numb,” said Rebel chewing his lower lip, “and I don't feel very good, I'm kind of dizzy.”