“Dude,” Flotsam said, “sometimes it just seems like God takes a day off to go to the track or something.”
“Anyways, when I think it can’t get no bleaker, the squid manages to stand halfway up on a mini-bump and he starts screaming, ‘Cowabunga! Cowabunga!’ ”
“I’m speechless, dude!” Flotsam said. “Were you soooooo tempted to throw a choke hold on him?”
“Bro, I was, like, half a heartbeat from C-clamping his scrawny neck and letting him drift on down to San Pedro. But I see this pair of water monkeys paddling their boards right at us and I’m all, like, ‘Okay, crusher, you and me’re about to get spiked by a pair of seriously ugly sado creeps, so let’s push the off button.’ ”
“You are truly lucky to be alive, dude,” Flotsam said. “Bobbing on the briny unarmed with some spazzed-out hodad yelling, ‘Cowabunga.’ Next time get a Navy SEALs killing knife and Velcro it to your ankle.”
“There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Jetsam said, “After we cruised on back to the IHOP honey, we find her all stretched out on these humongous beach towels under a big umbrella. But now she’s all stripped down from her shorts and jersey into a sort of, like, old-school bikini.”
“What, no thong?” Flotsam said. “That ain’t right, dude.”
“The retro bikini ain’t the half of it,” Jetsam said. “So we, like, sit there, and the cousin’s all fired because he thinks he’s ready now to star in The Endless Summer, Part Four, and then I catch a break, or so I think. The cousin says he’s gotta be bumping on home, and I almost stand up and cheer. Turns out they came in two cars, and after, like, another eternity of surf questions, he bounces. The last thing he yells at me is, ‘Farewell, O great wave rider! Farewell!’ And at last I’m alone with my bodacious babelini.”
“Oh, man!” Flotsam said. “This is the good part!”
“Just wait,” Jetsam said. “She like, knew she owed me big time for what she put me through with cousin Horace, or whatever the fuck his name is, and she could see I’m all stoked from looking at her voluptuaries. And my inner slut is now totally in charge. And pretty soon I’m all sprawled there on the towel under the umbrella kissing her shoulder like somebody on the Lifetime channel.”
“Wooka, dude!” Flotsam said. “Now you’re rockin’!”
“So by and by I’m sort of eager for, like, harmless foreplay, given that our GPS location is not totally secluded. And then I find out why no thong bikini.”
“Why is that?”
“She just had butt implants, and the incisions ain’t healed up enough.”
Flabbergasted, Flotsam said, “You mean that booty ain’t the babe’s?”
“No, it belongs to Dr. Strangelove or whoever the fuck gave it to her,” Jetsam said.
“Then what?” Flotsam said, fearing the worst.
“I’m all heading upstairs on those magnificent mammaries, and she goes, ‘Cease and desist, surfer boy!’ ”
“Don’t tell me the bimbo decided to play Our Lady of Malibu?”
“No, the problem was, her saline or silicone or whatever they used to construct her implants was all leaking. And she’s suing the plastic surgeon and can’t stand to have them touched, let alone fondled.”
“I gotta feeling this is gonna get worse,” Flotsam said, getting sympathy pangs and gingerly feeling his own breasts.
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “Because by now I’m scared to touch any more of her below her chin for fear of what I might find that ain’t really hers. Or like, maybe some part of her will fall off in my hand! And now she’s all laying there with her eyes shut, and I’m, like, confused, sort of. So I say to myself, Go for it. And I pounce like a panther, and she is the recipient of one of those mega-long, steamy-hot, summertime movie kisses that the women in the chick flicks all swoon over.”
“I never could see that part of the game,” Flotsam said with a shrug.
“Me neither,” Jetsam said, “but I locked on because her lips are, like, Scarlett Johansson-huge. Think of two all-meat tire tubes pressed together. And bro, I kissed and I nibbled and I licked with the darting tongue of a cobra! And then I started some sinister sucking on her lower lip with mucho enthusiasmo. But when I got no applause, no response, no nothing, I go, ‘Don’t you like this?’ And she goes, ‘Like what?’ And I go, ‘That ain’t no casual kiddie kiss you just got, wahini. That was cooleoleol kissing designed to propel a lucky chickie to an advanced state of beach blanket bliss.’ ”
“And what did she say to that, dude?” Flotsam asked. “Though I’m almost scared to hear the answer.”
Jetsam shook his head slowly and said, “She tells me that her lips are so plumped with implants gone bad, she didn’t feel a thing. And that when she gets through with her lawsuit, her plastic surgeon’s gonna be dressing as Alvin the Chipmunk and posing for tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” Jetsam sighed then and added, “Bro, I ain’t got my mind in the game tonight. I am like, way, way woefully noodled.”
They rode for a while in silence, and finally it was Flotsam who said somberly, “Dude, we all know that Mother Nature is a pitiless cunt.”
“A heartless bitch, bro,” Jetsam concurred.
Waxing philosophical, Flotsam added, “But when a person chooses a surgical body shop to rebuild their own chassis, it’s, like, bound to wreak collateral damage on innocent bystanders like you. Only one thing we can say about Spare-parts Suzie and your tale of terrible despair.”
Flotsam paused and looked toward Jetsam, who took the cue. And they uttered the station mantra in unison: “This… is… fucking… Hollywood!”
Dewey got to the duplex/office just after 6 P.M. He hadn’t had any jobs for the Mexicans in the last few days, so the place was unoccupied. He unlocked the door and had to sit there and wait twenty minutes before Creole and Jerzy showed up with a disappointingly small bag of mail.
“That’s all you have?” he said in his German accent when they entered, looking almost as tired as he was.
“Yeah, but it’s good stuff, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said, even though he didn’t know what the hell they’d grabbed from the curbside mailboxes that afternoon.
“It isn’t even sorted,” their boss said.
“We been busy lately,” Tristan said. “All we had time to do was toss the junk mail. I took a quick look and I know you’ll be happy with some of the stuff we got for you.”
Since Jakob Kessler never used obscenities, Dewey didn’t tell them what he was thinking when he withdrew $100 from his wallet and grudgingly handed it over. “And now I would like to go home,” he said.
“So would we, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said as he quickly left the apartment, with his partner shuffling along behind him.
They were in Tristan’s old Chevy Caprice half a block away and spotted their employer exit the apartment, set the dead bolt, and walk to his car as though his feet were killing him, as indeed they were with those three-inch lifts in his shoes.
There was still plenty of daylight left by the time they were three cars behind him on Sunset Boulevard, and Jerzy said to Tristan, “I don’t know what the fuck this superspy shit is gonna do for us.”
“I don’t either,” Tristan said. “But I got real good instincts, wood.”
They almost lost his car when, after turning north on Cahuenga, their target turned quickly west on Franklin Avenue. Tristan caught the red light and slammed on his brakes too late. They were in the middle of the intersection, initially blocked from a left turn by swift moving southbound traffic. Tristan made it all stop for him by making a reckless left turn that got brakes screeching and horns honking.
“Fuck!” Tristan said. “We lost him.”
After barely escaping a head-on, Tristan was driving westbound on Franklin, when he encountered a stalled car half a block ahead. A dozen other cars were trapped behind it in traffic, their employer’s car among them.