Part 18 (1/2)

”Oh, come on now, Raymond. The electricity between us-especially that first time, when you didn't tip me-it was magic.”

Throw up inside my mouth.

”Oh look.” She had come to the top of the stairs and was pointing at the sea. ”I think I can see the yacht out beyond the reef. Imagine the fun they're having: amazing food, the best music, socializing and having a blast. But not nearly the blast you and I have been having all afternoon, my hunny-bunny-wunny.”

Cardiac arrest.

”What exactly happened with us here ... LACEY?”

”Happened?”

”Uh, I mean, how long have we been in our magic pad?”

”Eight hours.”

My body flinched as though ma.s.saged by a stun wand.

”But time has certainly flown. You may be three-eighths of an inch longer than Garcia, but it feels like three whole inches. Though you talk too much. Come back and do me over and over again and again.”

Epileptic seizure.

Out in the lagoon, a 500-pounder with octuple beer t.i.ts was dumping the natural way. Christ, he could derail a train. Hate to imagine how much Spam went into making him.

I asked LACEY ”But how did you even find me?”

”I asked Garcia to make some inquiries with Homeland Security. Lieutenant Jennifer Healey was more than happy to tell me where you were, and she even let me fly here free on a bomber headed to Guam that stopped at Bonriki Airport to refuel. I can't say I'm very happy about the global nuclear crisis, except that it's all the more reason to be marooned here with you, you, you and only you, possibly for the rest of our lives. Isn't that romantic, RayCEY?”

”RayCEY?”

”That's my couple's name for us. Half Raymond, half LACEY.”

”Uh-huh. Do you have a phone?”

”A cellphone on Kiribati? Oh, you're just trying to be funny. Undertippers are always such bad jokers.”

I had to escape. But how? And to where?

”Did Stuart happen to say which way the hotel was back out on the road?”

”You're not leaving me, are you?”

Good Christ, yes.

”Why would I leave a number like you?” Yet again, more cruel fate: point for point, LACEY's body was hotter than Sarah's, and yet to me, in my right mind, she was utterly unf.u.c.kable. I can see what historians mean when they tell us to learn the lessons of the past and how memory can haunt the single or the collective soul.

Wait ...

Wait ...

... Nuclear crisis.

Nuclear crisis!

”Tell me more about this nuclear crisis.”

”It kind of came out of nowhere, really. Just after we took off for Guam, they closed LAX. The bomber flight crew that brought me here was really busy, but they told me a few things. There was a nuclear detonation in the Pacific, not far from Hawaii.”

It was thousands of miles away, you chimp.

”And now North Korea's ten minutes from bombing South Korea. You haven't heard about any of this? It's a mess. The Americans say it was part of an idiotic scheme to get rid of the Pacific Trash Vortex, but n.o.body's buying it. And then a small bomb went off in the Azores, of all places. It's like the Hawaii of the Atlantic, but they think it might have been a Russian nuke headed for South America that got detonated because a deal to sell it went sideways.”

Mrs. Peggy Nielson of Kendallville, Indiana, you certainly earned your paycheque this week. ”Go on.”

”So then Europe got paranoid because a nuclear reactor in Karlsruhe, Germany, melted down-a coincidence? n.o.body thinks so. And the Middle East won't let anyone in or out and, well, n.o.body's going anywhere until this thing cools down. It's like 9/11, except more James Bondy.” She tried to look alluring by fluttering her eyelashes while going down on a corn nut.

I shuddered.

”It feels like fate,” she said. ”It feels like the universe conspired to get RayCEY together in the end.”

Name-mes.h.i.+ng: Two proper names can be used to create a portmanteau word in reference to a couple, especially in cases where both persons are well known, such as ”Billary,” referring to former U.S. president Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary.

An early and well-known example was supercouple ”Bennifer,” referring to film stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Other examples include ”Brangelina” (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) and ”TomKat” (the now split Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes).

Mes.h.i.+ng a name says, ”I am you and you are me,” noted Denise Winterman in the August 3, 2006, issue of BBC News Magazine.

In 2009, the twins John and Edward Grimes followed the growing trend for celebrity portmanteau names when they entered the sixth series of The X-Factor (UK) under the name, ”Jedward.”

The whole thing is just stupid.

32.

Sometimes a person needs some time alone. While LACEY reclined in the merde-cloaked Melanesian f.u.c.k pad-a pad that rested, I noticed, atop six rusting Mobil oil drums, onto one of which was tethered a ferocious black pig that came alive only when I tripped over a nearby yellow nylon fis.h.i.+ng net embedded in the sand and landed right in front of him.

f.u.c.k you, you oinking, amber-tusked chunk of doomed cannibal bacon, I am a free man in Paris, and I am now breaking free of this malarial c.u.mdump. Ha!

I scrambled like a crazy man for the road. Finding it was easy enough, as the island is barely 50 feet wide. On the other side of the road/island lay another coral lagoon that glowed with health. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be flecked with empty Pepsi cans, plastic water bottles and the cardboard remains of Swanson TV dinners. More artery-clogging s.h.i.+t American food.

I could see the ghetto of Betio to the west, maybe a mile away.

I remembered Neal blathering earlier that the island was basically 25 miles of nodules linked by a long, thin path that at times became road-like. Well, at least I wasn't in handcuffs and/or a prison cell. Small blessings. I was, however, at least 20 miles away from the hotel.

Two stray dogs growled at me amid the swath of roadside litter. I growled back. They growled louder. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, all I needed now was to be attacked by dogs. I decided to ignore them and, thank Christ, they decided the same.

My sunburned scalp was stinging like mad. I removed my Cure T-s.h.i.+rt, put it over my head and tied its corners together into a square that fit snugly on my cranium. Yes, I looked just like a Gumby from Monty Python, but the sun was like X-rays.

Gumbys are recurring characters in Monty Python's Flying Circus. They have toothbrush moustaches and wear handkerchiefs knotted at the corners on their heads, wire-rimmed spectacles, braces, Fair Isle knitted sweater vests, a s.h.i.+rt rolled up to the elbows, missing its detachable collar, trousers rolled up above their knees and Wellington boots. They usually hold their arms in an ape-like position, speak loudly and slowly, and p.r.o.nounce words syllable by syllable. A popular Gumby catchphrase is ”My brain hurts!”