“You need to come with me to get rescheduled.”
Bollo palmed an apple. “No.”
“If you hit me with that apple, I‘m going to let Lula shoot you,” I said.
Bollo looked past me. “I don‘t see no Lula.”
I turned and scanned the aisle. He was right. No Lula.
“She was here a minute ago,” I said.
“Well, she ain‘t here now.”
I shouted her name, and she rounded a stack of crated oranges at the end of the aisle.
“You looking for me?” Lula said, her arms filled with fruit and vegetables.
“Yes, I‘m looking for you. You‘re supposed to be my backup. What are you doing?”
“I‘m shopping. This place got really good produce. I got some grapefruit and a eggplant, and look at these red pears. And I got a dozen eggs. They even got fresh eggs here.”
“We don’t sell produce here, fatso,” Bollo said. “We only distribute to stores. Put them back.”
Lula’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Did you just call me fatso? Did I hear that right?”
“Yeah,” Bollo said. “What of it?”
“That’s a mean thing to say. And it isn’t even true. I’m just a big and beautiful woman. I got more of all the good stuff than most other women. And people who have heads like bowling balls should watch what they say about other people. You’re lucky I’m not a vicious person, because if I was vicious, I’d call you Coconut Head. Or Gordo Gourdhead.”
And then Lula bounced a grapefruit off Coconut Head’s forehead. And Coconut Head tagged her with the apple he’d been holding. And what happened after that was a blur of flying fruit and eggs. I had my stun gun in my hand, but it was hard to get to Bollo and dodge the fruit at the same time. I finally managed to get the prongs on him, I hit the go button, and nothing happened. No juice.
Bollo shoved me away, and I lost my footing, sliding on fruit slime. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and took him down with me. I was hanging on to him, and he was trying to get away, and Lula fired off a shot to the ceiling.
“Next bullet’s gonna be up your ass,” Lula said to Bollo.
Bollo paused to consider that, and a rat dropped from an overhead rafter and landed inches from Lula in her red patent-?leather stilettos.
“Damn rats are all over the place,” Bollo said.
Lula just about went white. “I hate rats,” she said. “I hate rats more than I hate monkeys.”
The rat twitched, its beady black eyes blinked open, and it got to its feet.
“You just stunned him,” Bollo said to Lula. “Shoot him again.”
Lula took aim and the rat charged at her. Personally, I think the rat didn’t know what the heck it was doing, but Lula freaked.
“Eeeeeeee,” Lula shrieked, dancing around in her heels, arms in the air, completely apeshit.
The rat scurried across Lula’s foot and kept going past boxes of potatoes and beans. It took a left and headed for Pennyslvania. Bollo did the same. By the time I got to my feet, and Lula stopped freaking, Bollo was long gone.
A bunch of guys had gathered around us. They were throwing out comments in Spanish and laughing.
“What are they saying?” Lula wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t speak Spanish. The only thing I could pick out was loco.”
“What are you looking at?” Lula said to the men. “Don’t you have anything better to do? This place should be shut down. I’m calling the health inspector. I’m gonna report this place to the fruit police.” Lula turned to me. “And what’s with you and the dud stun gun? Let me take a look at that thing.”