Worst. Person. Ever. (22 page)

“There’s a racquetball court next door? A yacht has a racquetball court?”

“That’s just the start of it. Anyway, your close personal friend, Stuart—what on earth did you do to him to make him so nasty about you? Anyway, Stuart demanded it be dealt with, so here I am.” He rinsed his scrub brush into a plastic bucket.

“Jesus, stop touching me, Billy.”

“You’ll notice that when I absolutely have to make contact with my hands, I’m touching you with the outsides of my fingers, not the insides.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Science has shown that it is impossible to be sexually aroused by outside-finger stimulus. Homeland Security requires all their airport security inspectors to use only the outsides.”

I couldn’t believe the mess my body had made. “Christ, can’t they have a slave or a poor person do the shit jobs like this?”

I got a face from Billy. “Darling, we are now in a place with neither law nor order. And with the global nuclear kerfuffle, all the local help have jumped ship and are headed back to Bonriki, though heaven only knows why. My theory is that in a life or death crisis, one must find
one’s local tribal chief, whoever he may be, and make him happy. In my case, this means Stuart, so to please
him
, I am cleaning up
you.
Truly marvellous—except for this room, here: seventeen. Not the best room, really.”

I looked down at myself.
Christ.

Billy said, “What did you eat, Raymond Gunt? Iron filings? Superglue? Higgs bosons? Nineteenth-century German furniture?”

“Do you have to be such a ripping cumfart about my situation? I’m not the one on hands and knees in Hampstead Heath baying for boy cherry.”

Billy looked insulted. “First of all,
ick
, and second of all, I’ll have you know I am a bear and prefer people who are age-appropriate, and third, if
anyone
around here is into age-inappropriate nookie, it would be
you.
It must be awful knowing that you’re breaking all human taboos every time you get a hard-on.”

“A bear? What’s a bear?”

Billy lost his temper. “Raymond, enough! Let me finish up here and we’ll go our separate ways.”

I could feel flakes of peeling skin on my sunburned face. “Christ. Hand me a mirror.”

Billy rummaged in his aubergine murse and pulled out a compact. “Take one look and you’ll see that in your current state you’d be lucky to bang a goat, let alone a human being, Raymond.”

A goat?
Uh-oh
 … “Have you been spending time with Neal?”

“Neal? No, but I can dream.” He lifted my leg. “Just let me do a final bit of mopping up here.” He scrubbed me until I stung, then vigorously rinsed his brush. “But Neal’s people did leave you a note. Here it is.”

Neal’s
people?

Billy handed me page 6 of the daily shooting script, on the back of which Neal had written:

I was desperate. “Billy, how do I get myself over to this Thong Kong place?”

“Oh. So you want a favour now, do you?” He performed a Dita Von Teese move while removing his rubber gloves. “I think not.”

“Oh, come on, Billy, you know we’re pals.”

Billy turned his back on me and started bagging all of his cleansing equipment in a black bin liner. He then paused to inspect the IV drip in my right hand.

“Come on, Billy, we’ve known each other such a long time. Take me to the North Island.”

“You’re barely out of your coma. And I have to think about my image. I can’t be seen to be hanging out with the uncool kid.” With this, he finished bagging his gear. “Ciao, darling. Wiping up after you even once is more
than enough for a lifetime.” He closed the door, taking with him the bag filled with my toxic waste.

I climbed off the gurney, feeling a bit wobbly, and looked around the room. Private single bunk on the port side. A small window with a pleasant tropical view. In the sky above were clouds reminiscent of exquisite, flawless, snow-drivenly pure, fluffy white peekaboo panties.

Ahhh … the South Pacific.

Thumps on the other side of the wall above me snapped me out of my reverie. The racquetball court? I removed my IV and took a quick shower in a bathroom roughly the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, and then chugged a gallon of warm water from the tap. Fortunately, the chap who’d inhabited my room before me had left behind a trove of garments of reasonable enough taste. Unfortunately, he was twenty-five percent larger than me, so that once togged up I resembled a sort of serial killer version of the Scarecrow from
The Wizard of Oz.

As suddenly as an earthquake, the most gut-snarlingly terrifying engine kicked into gear above my head. What the fuck?

Wait—room seventeen. Maybe this was why nobody wanted it. Well, I was going to put a stop to whatever maniac was using an industrial gravel crusher directly above my room. I headed out. As my door clicked shut, I realized I had no key.
Crap.

I inspected my new neighbourhood, and it was like a hotel, really: creamy wool carpeting, light coming from sources recessed into walls, and framed photographs of TV network plutocrats holding up jumbo marlins. My room was alone on the port side. The other rooms, to
starboard, were luxurious and spacious to judge from the generous gaps between the doors.

The noise from the gravel smasher above me grew in its anger. Fucking hell. I found a staircase and climbed it. Pushing open a door, I saw a row of industrial-sized washing machines—huge honkers that could easily accommodate your next-door neighbour’s Fiat, let alone a boatload of beshatted sheets. I wasn’t in there for five seconds before a Samoan cheerfully passed me, headed out the door; he threw me a fob with several keys as he went. “This laundry room now be your shit job, not mine. You have a happy and gracious apocalypse.”

“Thank you very much.”

The door closed behind him. This was my chance to find clothes that might fit me better. I pushed an
OFF
button and opened the door to what turned out to be a dryer holding a load of laundry mixed in with kitchen trays, cafeteria-sized cans of Heinz ketchup and beans and, well, just about anything one might find unbolted on a glamorous TV network yacht. Good on my Samoan friend for getting a bit of fun out of his sack-of-shit life situation.

What now? I went back down to my floor. None of the keys worked in my door, so I embarked on a fishing expedition along the hallways to see if any of the keys worked in any of the doors, and I was richly rewarded. At the front of the boat, I entered a stunningly designed glassed-in area that stopped me with its beauty: perhaps Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might live in a place like this. Rare woods and sleek crystal light fixtures, exotic potted ferns and expensive-looking canvases on every wall. A tray rested on a polished marble side table, and
on it sat several bottles of chilled Sauvignon Blanc and six glasses.
Time for a toast to myself
, I quite reasonably thought, for having navigated yet another level of the TV network lifestyle.

Raymond, you’re a survivor, you are.

Why, thank you, Raymond, I was just thinking that myself.

Delicious wine, isn’t it, Raymond?

Why, yes it is, Raymond, yes it is.

I think we all need quiet little moments like this to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come in life. The moment didn’t last long, however. An American male voice came from beyond a set of glass doors to a patio area on the deck, intruding on my almost religious state of bliss.

“Oh, fuck me ragged!” A squash racquet narrowly missed my wineglass. “Herry Fuckbuddy Potter, what the
hell
are
you
doing in my suite? And dressed like the Hillside Strangler. Get out
now
, before I call security. How did you get in here?”

“Stuart, calm down. The door over there was open,” I lied. “I’m just doing some reconnaissance. A mutinous Samoan has just trashed the ship’s laundry. I wanted to make sure he didn’t go further.”

“He
what
?”

“Stuart? Stuart, honey? Who’s that?” Sarah’s voice.

I called out, “It’s just me, making sure the ship is all shipshape.”

Sarah came in through the glass doors, magnificent in a knit bikini, her limbs glistening from a recent application of tanning oil. “You’re on your legs again! I’m so glad. Have a glass of wine with us.”

“Sarah, what do you possibly see in this pathetic English gimp?”

Sarah stared sternly at her loathsome boyfriend.
“Raymond has rescued me twice from dangerous situations with highly menacing men. You should give him a handshake, Stuart, not your scary outdoor shoo-the-raccoons-away voice.”

Stuart could only acquiesce to his goddess. “Right. Pour yourself a fucking drink and then leave.” He stalked out, vibrating with rage. My wineglass became a goblet filled with my enemy’s tears.

“Just ignore him,” Sarah said soothingly. “He’s in a state because so many of the locals have abandoned ship and the production. We’ll never get the series shot at this rate. But at least the cast arrived, although your ex-wife had to go back and find some replacements.”

It was most unlikely that Fi would screw up on her job, the one thing that meant anything to her. “Were some of the contestants unfu—
inappropriate
?”

“No, she did a great job, but a bunch of them caught a wicked strain of norovirus in the LAX waiting lounge while it was shut down.

I’d forgotten the nuclear war. “Right, right—nuclear war—how’s all that going?”

“Nothing new, just all these countries being childish.”

She topped up my glass.

Ahhhh
 …

I felt statesmanlike discussing important current affairs with Sarah. I wondered how far this magic moment would take us until … fucking hell, I remembered waking up to
LACEY
in the fuck hut beside that ghastly poo-ous lagoon, the woman’s eyes like two drainholes sucking everything good and joyous from the world.

Sarah chose that moment to add to my pain. “You’ll be happy to hear that your
LACEY
is fine. She’s in the
South Island camp. You must be aching to see her.” She sipped her drink. Were her eyes actually filled with regret? She raised a glass. “To you and
LACEY
and a future of perfect sex and happiness together with no one else except just the two of you, forever and ever and ever and ever.”

“Uh, it really wasn’t like that at all, Sarah. In fact, I don’t remember what happened.”

“Just a minute, Raymond. I’m buzzing.” Sarah removed the tiniest and slenderest mobile phone from her lady’s region. “Hmmm. Right. Okay. Not to worry. See you in five.” She hung up. “Raymond, want to come with me to the North Island camp?”

O.

M.

F.

G.

Thong Kong.

“Why, um, yes. Neal’s over there, isn’t he?”

“Indeed he is, poor fellow.”

“Poor fellow?”

“Sprained his ankle. It must hurt like the dickens. Come on. We have to meet the Zodiac right away. Chug the rest of your drink and we’re off.”

I chugged, then grabbed the bottle.

A minute later we were climbing into the Zodiac bound for the North Island—me!—a man of the world on a speedboat, squiring such a glorious humpcrumpet as Sarah to a turquoise lagoon populated by TV industry bigwigs and Neal’s own personal sex ranch.
Yessiree, nothing could possibly go wrong on a beautiful day like today.

And then we landed and … nothing went wrong!

The North Island camp was largely empty. Fiona had delivered the replacement contestants, and shooting had begun on the South Island.

Sarah vanished to do her urgent business, leaving me to search for Neal.

Hmmmm.
If Neal had injured his ankle, he couldn’t be working on the shoot. Wait a second: Neal had no actual
job
here on the island.
I
was the one the network had hired.

I looked up a small hill (elevation: 3 feet above sea level) and noticed a lovely little bungalow in the Bahamian style: solid typhoon-proof construction tastefully camouflaged in turquoise paint with pink storm shutters, graced
by butterfly palms and a zoo of flowering plants. A chill ran down my spine:
That fucker.

I stormed up the rise and banged on the door. “Neal, I know you’re in there. Don’t try to pretend you aren’t. This is me, Raymond.”

The door was opened by some lopsided gronk who I could tell immediately was a cameraman.

“Yes?” The gronk’s burliness shielded the house from my entry.

“I’m Raymond Gunt. Tell Neal I want to speak with him.”

The cameraman called over his shoulder. “Some guy here says his name is Raymond Cunt. He wants to talk to you.” There came a muffled reply, and he turned back to me. “Right. You can come in.”

I entered the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. Cut flowers, sofas upholstered with the hides of near-extinct animals, marble floors. The walls dripped with paintings of Tahitian birds offering you their melon breasts on a plate along with hibiscuses and mango wedges. But by far the most overwhelmingly desirable aspect of this house was the utterly silent and stunningly effective air conditioning. Fuck me. This was heaven.

I headed off in the direction from which I’d heard Neal’s voice. I found him in a room at the back. The sunproof shades on the windows were drawn, and the room was rather dark. Neal was in striped pajamas adrift on a duvet surrounded by massive pillows while a muted TV set displayed a compilation of Australian rugby brawls. On his bedside were magnums of undrunk champagne and platters of sliced cold cuts and French cheeses.

“Raymond. You finally made it.”