Part 26 (1/2)
”Oh, very well, Raymond. I did it to torture you. Satisfied?”
”Really? You brought her down here just to annoy me?”
”Yes, Raymond. Yes, I did.”
My heart melted. ”That is, in a weird way, kind of sweet, Fi.”
”I'm not a total monster, you know.”
I could see some of the show's staffers milling about outside the trailers, like the dodgy-looking people you find on Google once you remove ”safe search”-not that I've ever done that. Many of them were carrying empty plastic cola bottles filled with something resembling dirt. I stopped one particularly slaggy-looking production a.s.sistant to ask what was in the bottles.
”These? We're gathering insects for the bug-eating challenge this afternoon.”
I shuddered. ”Bug-eating? Really?”
”Yup. It's one of our favourite contestant challenges. Unless team members eat a plate of live bugs, they don't get to read letters from their loved ones back home-or some other prize equally stupid.”
I looked into the PA's face, hard and sunburned, scoured clean by a lifetime of putting out. I figured this one's done list must have been at least ten thousand blokes long.
Fiona cut into my reverie. ”Raymond, stop ogling her t.i.ts and come along.”
I suddenly felt, of all things, married.
We entered one of the trailers and found a production team seated on stools staring at a wall covered with screens displaying multiple camera feeds. I felt like I was in a home away from home. Then I heard some familiar voices: ”Ray! Welcome to paradise!”
It was Tony and Eli, two cameramen I'd last seen in Damascus when we set fire to cars because we were on deadline and badly needed footage.
”Tony! Eli! I hope you brought the petrol!”
”Ray! You're just in time. It's bug-eating day!” Eli exclaimed. He and Tony were delighted to see me.
”So I hear.”
Fiona seemed furious that I had actual acquaintances on set. Through the simmering mirage-like heat waves rising from her inflamed body, I could tell she was planning some sort of accidental-seeming death for both Tony and Eli. Poor fellows.
I said, ”Tell me more about bug-eating day.”
Christmas morning glee shone from their eyes. Eli, the older one, filled me in. ”Everyone on staff goes out with buckets and bottles and collects as many terrifying insects as they can. Anything will do: grubs, spiders, millipedes, mostly anything you find beneath a stump.”
Tony took it from there. ”Stumps are actually the best place to find things, Ray. Things with five hundred legs, six eyes ...” He picked up a blue plastic tub. ”Think about it. If you saw a prawn walking across your living room floor, you'd shoot it with a handgun, but find one in a Pacific net? Bon appet.i.t.” He removed the blue lid from the tub to show me a hairy black spider the size of a Sunday roast. ”Look at the hair on this f.u.c.ker.”
I cooed my approval.
”Not much protein in hair, though. Hair is a bran-like fibre. But in the legs and thoraxes of spiders lie pockets of protein not unlike those found in lobster claws. If this thing lived in the ocean, we'd be making chowder from it in ten minutes. People are dietary hypocrites. Land equals evil. Sea equals good.”
”Beats what you find in a Honolulu vending machine. Any of these things toxic?”
”Oh, probably,” Tony said. ”We lost our entomology textbook in transit, and the Internet's down, so we can't look them up.”
”Do contestants eat them whole or smoothied?”
”Depends. We start out with live bugs, but if everyone balks, we smoothie a few handfuls and throw some live ones on top as a garnish. Whoever eats the least amount of bugs is kicked off the show and loses their chance to earn a million bucks.”
I was greatly impressed. ”Pure genius.”
”Come along then, you two-we're just about to leave for the big event.”
I could tell this suggestion came at the wrong moment for whatever Fiona had on her agenda for me. But watching a group of brain-dead Americans eating bird-sized insects trumped any plot against me she might have had in the works.
”Sure, let's all go,” she said. ”And Raymond, afterwards you and I can talk. I miss having someone intelligent to banter with.”
Moi?
Intelligent?
Here's the thing about Fiona: when she's nice to you, everyone else on earth vanishes and you feel like you're melting under a beam of sweetness that erases your memory of, say, the time she used your Visa and PIN number to buy two dozen d.i.l.d.os and had them delivered to a daycare centre in your name.
In any event, earlier, while Fi was temporarily distracted searching for some clothes to put on after her ma.s.sage, I did notice a plastic bag containing my Cure T-s.h.i.+rt peeking out from beneath a stack of modelling headshots in her tent. I pinched it and reached outside and slid it beneath the tent's front corner. Tonight I planned to return and reclaim my treasure.
Raymond Gunt: 1; The G.o.ds: 0 Florida Man Collapses and Dies After Winning a Friday Night ”Midnight Madness” Insect-Eating Compet.i.tion October 12, 2012 Floridian Edward Archbold, 32, died after consuming 60 grams of meal worms, thirty-five 3-inch-long ”super worms” and a bucket of 1-inch-long South American c.o.c.kroaches in an effort to win a ”Midnight Madness” insect-eating contest held at Ben Siegel Reptiles, 40 miles north of Miami in Deerfield Beach.
Having eaten more insects than thirty other contestants, Archbold's first-place prize was a live python. However, soon after winning, he began vomiting. The Broward County Sheriff's Office reports that Archbold collapsed outside the event venue and was soon p.r.o.nounced dead at a local hospital. Legal representatives of the store have told the press that roaches are sold as reptile feed, are raised in sterile containers from hatching onward, and are safe for human consumption. As well, all bug-eating contestants had signed waivers that acknowledged they understood the risk of illness and injury a.s.sociated with eating ma.s.sive amounts of live insects.
Lydia Wellstrom, Director of Parasitology at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, says that eating c.o.c.kroaches is not harmful to one's health per se, but that insects do contain many allergens. ”Even so, anaphylactic shock was probably not the cause here. Outside the industrialized West, insects are a dietary staple, cherished both as a staple for daily meals and as highly antic.i.p.ated snacks.”
A Ben Siegel Reptiles store rep said the prize python, worth $850, will go to Archbold's heirs.
44.
Given the fuss involved in getting to this wretched island from London, I'd largely forgotten that there was a TV show we all had to yank out of our collective a.r.s.e. After driving in a wheezing golf cart through a forest of Venus flytraps, we arrived at a barren patch of land on which rested a dozen picnic tables painted in bright clownish colours. Seated at them were twenty people who all looked, to Fi's credit, highly f.u.c.kable. ”My hat goes off to you, Fiona. This is a truly ... enjoyable cast you've a.s.sembled. At the last moment, no less. Bravo.”
At that instant, a brunette with a single rubber band around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and another one bisecting her crotch area vomited onto the white dust behind her. A pigeon-like flock of Pringle-sized winged insects descended on the puddle, while Scott, Sarah's production a.s.sistant, shouted through a bullhorn, ”Shovel! Shovel! Shovel of dirt to table seven! Quickly. The bug wagon just arrived!”
An acne-faced pleb ran to shovel grit over the puke.
Fiona, Eli, Tony and I found a vantage point on some small shaded bleachers outside of a predetermined series of established camera angles. While a PA handed us lemonades, I asked Tony and Eli when their s.h.i.+ft started.
”We're on sunset-to-dawn beginning tomorrow. Join us? I can put your name on the roster.”
”Please do.”
”Oh look!” said Tony, pointing to a jumbo plastic Diet Pepsi bottle full of millipedes being emptied into tiki-style bowls. ”The games are about to begin!”