“Hey Sofia, baby,” he says, arms wide. “It’s me, your darling Carmine, back from the wars where I’ve been for the past coupla decades. They had me in a stockade, baby. Did stuff with bamboos and shit. All that kept me from spilling my guts was the thought of your sweet ass.”
Someone should write a book about Zeb and the series of shenanigans that his life so far is composed of. A book would be good, but not a movie because movies gotta have story arcs and through lines. And what kinda through line is “guy does dumb shit daily”? Not much of one. Not a whole lot of character development there.
Sofia glares at me like I’m responsible for this douche. “You got guns, Dan. Why don’t you shoot this guy and do the world a favor?”
Zeb brushes past her. “Nice. That’s what I get for trying to be a gentleman.”
I wish Zeb wouldn’t screw with Sofia, especially when she’s in a hammer-swinging mood. One of these days he’s gonna greet Sofia with one of his casual misogynisms and she’s gonna crack his skull like an egg. And when that happens all the king’s horses will not give a rat’s ass.
Zeb squats beside me.
“Yo, movie star,” he says, dropping a Gladstone bag between his feet. “What do we got here? Live flesh or dead meat?”
It worries me that the doctor doesn’t notice his patient is breathing. I decide to defer the usual banter until Evelyn is patched up.
“Head wound,” I say tersely, not giving him much to work with. “Couple of sutures, I’d say.”
Zeb leans in close and pokes Evelyn’s injury with a grubby fingertip. “I agree with your prognosis, Dr. Paddy. Of course the patient’s skull could be fractured in which case her brain fluid is leaking right now. She spasming at all? Or speaking in tongues? You now, Exorcist shit?”
“No. Just lying there. And could you take your finger out of my aunt’s head?”
Zeb retracts the digit and examines the clotted blood on its tip. “Aunt? So she’s available?”
I am not sure what kind of low self-esteem issues Zeb has going on that make him want to screw anything that does not currently have a dick. Maybe he’s just depraved. I vaguely remember that I once found his unrelenting horniness funny but right now, with all the stress factors I have on my shoulders, I am a hair’s breadth from punching Zeb in the temple, even though he’s the only one who can patch up Evelyn.
“Zeb. You are on my shit list at the moment because of the whole Mike thing, but if you do this for me, if you fix this lady, we’re square, got it? You should take that deal, it’s a good one.”
Zeb hums “Tainted Love,” which is one of his thinking songs, then pulls a huge hunting knife from the bag at his feet.
“Nice knife,” says Sofia, drawn in by the glint.
Zeb attempts to twirl the blade but only succeeds in fumbling the knife and almost cutting off his toes. “Yeah, thanks, my little goyish princess. This beauty is a genuine reproduction of John Rambo’s blade from Firstblood. A collector’s item.”
I am a little worried that Zeb is going too far with his movie-star obsession but more worried that he’s gonna excise half of Evelyn’s scalp when all we need is a little stitching.
“Zeb, no cutting. She’s been cut enough.”
Zeb sighs. “Cutting? I thought you were a movies man, Dan. Don’t you remember that scene? They’re all doing it now, it’s kind of a staple, but at the time Stallone was breaking new ground.”
I do remember it. The screw-top knife.
“Classic.” I have to admit it.
“Firstblood was a movie?” asks Sofia. “I could have sworn that was real.”
Zeb screws off the compass on the hilt of his knife and inside the handle is a needle and thread, sealed in a SteriPack.
“Sly didn’t have a sealed packet,” says Zeb casually, like he and Stallone are bowling buddies. “But then he didn’t have to worry about his license.”
Zeb is still at the honeymoon phase with his medical license, having recently acquired it through some outrageous wheeler dealing involving a fat envelope, two members of the state board and the mother of crazy weekends in Atlantic City. Zeb hinted that at least three of Tiger Woods’s mistresses were involved but more specific information would no doubt be eked out over the coming years.
“You got any anesthetic?”
Zeb snorts and raps on Evelyn’s forehead. “Are you kidding? I could amputate this chick’s arm and she wouldn’t flinch.”
He swabs the wound with a very un-Rambo-like baby wipe, then stitches Evelyn up. Two minutes and he’s biting the thread. I gotta give it to him, the little bastard can be efficient when he feels like it.
“Good work, Zeb,” I say, enjoying the fleeting moment of sincere gratitude that Zeb will no doubt screw up by speaking.
“Yeah, well maybe when Aunty wakes up, I’ll get a real thank-you, know what I’m saying, Sarge?”
Reliable as a Swiss banker. Zeb adds fuel to the fire with: “You think the nutjob has anything to drink? I’m parched, movie star.”
Sofia is apparently unperturbed by being referred to as nutjob and walks to the kitchen to fetch us a drink.
I am relieved to find Evelyn’s breathing steady. I concentrate on that for a moment because I have so many urgencies to consider that I can’t engage with any of them.
Something that Zeb said niggles at me, breaking through my funk.
“Hey, Zebulon, why are you calling me ‘movie star’? That’s new.”
Zeb literally jumps to his feet, stumbling backward a few steps, almost colliding with Sofia and her tray.
“Oh fuck! Oh shit, Dan! You don’t know? You genuinely don’t know?”
I groan. This sounds like big news so Zeb won’t give it up easy.
“No. So do me a favor and don’t tell me. I got enough shit on my shovel at the moment, okay?”
I am not playing games here. My crisis dance card is pretty full.
Zeb walks up and down, agitated like he needs to Riverdance but is holding it in.
“Okay, screw it. I’m just gonna show you.” He pulls out his phone and opens a clip.
“This is up on YouTube. Fifty thousand hits and counting.”
My stomach lurches because my subconscious has figured it out. The rest of me needs to look at the screen.
Don’t look.
I gotta look. How can I not look?
I’m warning you. This ain’t gonna be a video of some kid wasted after the dentist.
So I look.
And it isn’t a kid after the dentist. Or a cat punching a dog. Or some be-dreadlocked teen falling off his board.
It’s me. Hitting a cop with an enormous dildo. The porn crew caught the entire episode. Maybe Zeb doesn’t know my victim is a cop.
“You know that’s a cop, don’t you?” says Zeb. “And that guy back there, weeping. Another cop. Detectives Krieger and Fortz. They been tagged about a hundred times, mostly by other cops LOL’ing their cyber assholes off.”
“I thought that dildo was smaller,” I mumble just to take the focus from the video.
Zeb’s focus does not waver. “It’s perspective. Dildos always seem smaller when you’re holding them.”
I am in no position to judge Zebulon right now.
Sofia plucks the phone from Zeb’s hand and retreats to the corner with a bottle of whiskey. After a couple of replays she slugs from the neck and says:
“Nice thong, Dan.” And then: “This is real but Rambo isn’t? I’m confused.”
Me too. Most of the time.
My own phone brrrps and spits out a Tweet. I check it even though screen checking hasn’t been working out so well for me lately.
Life is not a rehearsal. Life is real. No do-overs. So put down that bottle of Grouse and go have safe sex with someone.
No do-overs. No take backs. The genie is out of the bottle.
It’s just a pity the genie is wearing a pink thong and wielding a dildo.
Somehow then I fall asleep, right there standing up. It
comes out of no-where. One second my neck is burning with embarrassment, and it seems like the next that I am blinking away the fog of a power nap.
“Huh?” I say, because it takes a second for the cylinders to fire in my brain.
A bit of advice for you: never answer the phone rising out of a deep sleep. First because your voice sounds like you spent twenty years sinking shots with Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart, and secondly you might say something not strictly relevant to the real world. I learned this the hard way when Tommy Fletcher called me on Irish time and I bolted upright in bed, blurting: Terrorist pigeons, honest to Christ, they’ve trained the pigeons.
Tommy reminds me of this often with great hilarity from his end. So my advice is when you hear that phone ringing, talk to yourself for a few seconds before answering. Gets everything moving.
Apparently I have been talking in my sleep because Zeb is all caught up on the events of my hellish day.