Tracklist:
Maui Waui - Chuck Mangione
Ain’t Nobody’s Business But My Own -
Tennessee Ernie Ford & Kay Starr
Hells Bells - AC/DC
2
Something warm and soft covered Dean’s face. As he breathed, it puffed out like a dreamy spider web and floated back to his dry lips.
The couch leather stuck to his cheek like a postage stamp. Through the fuzzy pain in his head Dean realized he’d fallen asleep, and someone had covered him with a sheet and blanket.
He turned sideways on the lumpy furniture and a female voice sighed, a sweet sound of longing and exhaustion saved for lovers or extremely long road trips. An arm slid across his shoulder.
Dean considered the possibility that the couch might not be lumpy after all but supported a population of more than one, including himself. He rejected this absurdity and tried to shoulder his way through the door of sleep, but felt a rising pressure from his bladder. Humans are similar to mountain gorillas and the embarrassment of urinating upon a sleeping female increases exponentially with the status of the sleeping female: she could be a friend of Chip’s, a Oaxacan prostitute, a state senator, or all of the above. He pulled the sheet away from his face as carefully as the previously mentioned and now frightened mountain gorilla.
The dim light revealed a pale neck and dark brown hair woven in complicated braids and covered in tiny gold jewelry. Was that a French twist? Dean added “daughter of senior French consular official” to the list of females not to be micturated upon.
He rolled off the couch, intending to land on all fours like a baby gorilla but instead dropped onto the substantial chest of an obese and suddenly wide-eyed woman.
She screamed in Dean’s face and yelled unintelligibly as he scrambled up the stairs on all fours. Dean collided with Chip’s life-sized doll of PTSD Babe and for a panicked moment both of his airways were covered by another substantial chest, although in this case, the busty components were fake. He extricated himself and after a bit of banging, Lin opened her bedroom door. She looked at Dean wearily and cinched her robe with a sudden, efficient motion.
“Another bad dream?”
“Lin! Do I scream like a woman?”
“Of course not.” Lin took him by the arm. “You’ve never done that every single time you sleep over. I’ll make you a hot cup of milk like every time you never screamed and it never happened.”
A poster of a girl in a bikini shivered on Chip’s door and he wearily opened it.
“Please see someone, Dean. Probably a doctor.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“Denial is a river in Egypt,” said Chip.
“No, it’s not.”
“Can we save this debate for later?” asked Lin, and turned Chip and Dean around like a farmer’s wife leading errant goats to their pens. “Back to sleep.”
Dean shrugged her hand from his shoulder and spun around. “Stop! There are two women downstairs, one who could be French and another who could be a gigantic French roll. I know that sounds silly, but I’m just going with what I’ve seen with my eyes and the things I’ve felt on my face. Since I don’t remember anything past midnight, going with what I’ve seen and felt is a bit of a gamble at this point.”
“We didn’t go anywhere or do anything,” said Chip. “You fell asleep after your third beer.”
Something clattered and rolled like a marble on marble, and all three rushed downstairs.
Lin flipped on the lights. “There’s no one here.”
Dean’s sheet and blanket were piled on the floor. He lifted the cloth and peered underneath, then felt several depressions in the leather couch. Near the arm of the couch he sniffed like pig searching for truffles.
“You’re disgusting,” said Chip. “That’s where I was sitting last night.”
“It smells like perfume.”
“I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”
“No, the girl was here. Look––I found a clue!”
Lin shook her head at the long strand of hair between Dean’s thumb and forefinger.
“Dear me, look at the clock. Who wants a cup of morning coffee?”
“It’s the best part of waking up!” said Chip.
DEAN SHOWERED after breakfast and prepared for his flight by double-checking promotional materials for the conference and repacking the small suitcase.
He considered the possibility that Joanie had hired French Girl and Fat Lady to destroy his reputation in the motivational speaker community, a reputation he’d fought hard to keep over the years. If there was anything the famous Robert Timmins hated more than a lack of punctuality, it was the French. He would never hire someone caught in flagrante au sofa with a Francophone, much less two of them.
To confuse any pursuers, he struggled into Chip’s Godzilla costume and left precipitously out the back door. After Lin had circled the block a few times, Dean clambered into her car for a ride to the airport.
“Take off that silly thing,” said Lin. “It’s ridiculous.”
Dean’s muffled voice came from inside the lizard head. “I’ll wait until the last moment. It’s actually very comfortable.”
San Jose International was international in the sense that you could catch a flight to Puerto Vallarta. The newly designed terminal was wildly popular, but Dean thought the huge wave of gray steel resembled a squashed rattlesnake on the road.
Lin swerved through the traffic on the road that circled the airport. “Throw out any liquids. You don’t want to make that mistake again.”
Dean raised his scaly arms. “If anyone makes a bomb from Crest and eczema cream they deserve a medal. Orange juice and toothpaste I can understand––that’s an explosive combination.”
“It’s for your own safety.”
“Safety’s not the point, Lin––it’s to embarrass celebrities. If the media reports that Dean Cook uses a generic brand of moisturizer, then I could lose advertising contracts with Stevens Creek Honda and the Mac Shack! They have standards, after all.”
“Just don’t make a fuss about it.”
Dean sighed through the costume’s breathing hole. “Air travel should be exactly like that scene in Doctor No, when Sean Connery and Ursula Andress enter the secret underground fortress on a moving belt. Stripped naked, disinfected, and given white jumpsuits––that’s the future of airport security.”
“Speaking of suits, we’re here now so you can take it off.”
“Take off before takeoff?” laughed Dean. He fumbled at his neck with the huge green hands of the costume. “Something’s caught on the zipper and I don’t want to break it. I’ll take it off inside.”
Lin pulled up to the curb near Departures and took Dean’s suitcase from the trunk.
“Have a good trip!”
“Thanks, Lin.”
On the sidewalk a pair of young children laughed and pointed at the giant lizard pulling a suitcase. Inside the terminal he was immediately slammed to the floor by a security guard the size of a pre-fabricated garden shed. Poured concrete foundation included, of course.
“Tango down!” yelled the massive human, his knee on Dean’s sternum.
Dean gurgled and moaned from inside the costume––noises that strangely enough sounded like a squashed lizard––until a second guard pulled off the green, scaly head.
“Get off,” Dean gasped. “Can’t breathe.”
“He can’t breathe! Starting CPR!” yelled the first guard, whose size and appearance hearkened back to a time when the fastest-moving locations in real estate were caves. He grabbed Dean’s jaw and bent down.
Dean squirmed away from the open lips. “No, no. I’m fine now,” he said.
“Another false alarm,” said the guard. “It’s just a costume like the last one.”
“Of course it is, Terry!” said the other, and held up the lizard head. “The eyes are too small to be the real thing.”
“Too small? You mean Son of Godzilla,” wheezed Dean from the floor. ?
??A classic movie, but inconsistent and cartoonish.”
The two guards helped him up.
“Cartoonish? That’s the best movie of all time,” said the second guard. “And my favorite.”
“The one with King Kong is better,” said the first guard.
“You don’t know anything––he lays an egg in Son of Godzilla.”
Dean raised both scaly hands. “Can we not have this discussion right now? Everyone knows that a males don’t lay eggs and I personally don’t accept a female Godzilla as canon.”
“Speaking of cannons,” said the giant. “We need to search this guy.”
“Driver’s license, please,” said the other.
“Don’t have one.”
“Passport?”
Dean clawed at his suitcase with costumed fingers until the second guard helped him open the latch. Dean handed over a blue booklet, but when the guard opened the passport, a rainbow of confetti fluttered to the ground.
“Oh for the love of Crom,” said Dean.
The guard stared at the shredded pages, then poked a finger in Dean’s scaly chest.
“Is this a joke?”
Dean smiled nervously. “Do you think it’s funny?”
“No,” said the giant guards together.
“It was my girlfriend,” said Dean. “Now that I think of it, it really was a joke. I’m sure that wasn’t my real passport. It was a joke passport. Everything’s fine. It’s fine! I’ll get the real one.”
He smiled at them, backed slowly toward the exit, and sprinted away as fast as a middle-aged man could possibly sprint away in a Godzilla costume. The guards leaped after Dean but the first giant slipped in the confetti and the second tripped over Dean’s suitcase.
Dean found a cab easily, as strange as he looked with a normal head and lizard body.