Worst. Person. Ever. (14 page)

Then, at last, it was over.

Thunderous applause.

Waves of love.

Thank fucking Christ.

As Neal took deep bows, I scuttled off the bottom crate, crab-like, over to a buffet table now devoid of food save for saltine crackers in little cello wrappers. I pocketed as many as I could, then turned around to find the canteen almost empty; the audience had fled. Neal was standing with Jennifer, who was all smiles for me: “Raymond! I had no idea you and Neal were planning such a sensational performance. I underestimated you.”

“Well, you know, uh …” Finally, I’d caught a fucking break. I changed the subject. “Neal, where did you get the new clothes?”

“Jenny here gave them to me. They belonged to some French bloke.”

Jenny?

She cut in. “Arnaud du Puis, the world’s leading radio telemetry expert until last Bastille Day, when he jumped off the dock directly onto a Portuguese man-of war the size of a child’s wading pool.”

Neal added, “One of the lads told me last night that a clump of poor Arnaud’s lymph nodes washed into the lagoon, but an albatross ate them before they could be landed in a net.”

“Neal is the same size as Arnaud,” Jennifer volunteered, “so fortunately the clothes won’t go to waste.”

Pinching his jacket material, Neal said, “Everything’s made by Paul Smith. The fabric breathes.”

“Linen!” said Jennifer. “Don’t talk to me about linen—the wrinkles! Gentlemen, as a token of our thanks, you’ll be riding as my guests on today’s mission.”

“Today’s
mission
?” I asked.

Jennifer and Neal wouldn’t tell me what the day’s operation was to be, only that “we” were going to be taking some photos. An hour after the performance, we walked up aluminum stairs into a massive beast of a plane with no windows, save for a few up front, where we were to sit.

“What’s in the back?” I asked.

Neal, for some reason, seemed to be clued into what was going on. “It’s a surprise, Ray. Just rekindle your sense of childlike wonder and go with the day’s flow.”

Jennifer hopped in and took the main passenger seat in front of us. “Ready, boys?”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Neal. Me, I coughed up a loogey that was not unlike a sea creature. I flicked it out the closing door, where it landed on someone’s shoulder. I suppose it was very good luck for him, like being shat on by a gull.

The engines started. Over the roar, I asked, “Can you at least tell me how long we’ll be flying for?”

“Forty-five minutes there, one hour on location and then home.”

“What do you mean by ‘on
location
’?”

Her reply was cut off by the atrocious noise of the plane’s engines. Neal and I put on heavy-duty protective earmuffs. We taxied and took off, then headed southeast amidst glorious whipped-cream clouds. Neal had a window on his right; I had one on my left. Couldn’t ask for a better view, really.

About forty-three minutes into the flight, high above the Pacific, Jennifer turned around and gave us each a pair of goggles with dark glass lenses.

“What are these for?” I asked.

“Put them on, Ray,” said Neal. “You’d better, really.”

“Why the fuck do I want to wear some stupid glasses, Neal?”

“Ray, in one minute we’re dropping an atomic bomb.”

“We’re
whattttttttttt!!!!!????
”

The lieutenant pointed something out to the pilot. She then turned around and smiled at me reassuringly. “It’s a new tactic, Ray. We’re using leftover Cold War nuclear warheads to vaporize the Pacific Trash Vortex!”

“It’s a genius idea, it is, Jenny,” shouted Neal.

I screamed, “Are you demented cunts out of your fucking minds!”

“Showtime!” shouted Jennifer.

Behind us, bay doors opened and something dropped from the plane.

Now.

Oh dear.

This is awkward.

You see … I
know
nuclear warheads have a bum rap in our culture—radiation, nuclear winter, massive extinction, sad little doll heads lying in the gutter covered with bits of black muck. But to watch one exploding in real life is insanely fucking awesome. Yes. It is true. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself, snacking on saltines and drinking Arrowhead bottled water while our plane circled a heaving, pulsating, smoking-hot 15-kiloton explosion, with Neal pointing out little sparkling patches on the ocean where extra-dense bits of plastic trash were blipping into a green eco-friendly solution for a better tomorrow.

Yes, yes, I know, I know. Atomic weapons. Charred little kittens. Nuns vaporizing. The economy in shambles. But still … what a fucking sight!

I had to knuckle-bump both Neal and Jennifer for so skillfully keeping it a surprise for me. My hostess loaned me her iPhone and I took some smashing “Me and my good buddy Mushroom Cloud” photos, which she promised she’d send me once her workload lightened.

“Bombs are one thing, Raymond, but
caramba
, the paperwork involved in dropping one! There’d be less paperwork involved making the entire country switch over to metric.”

I had seriously underestimated this woman.

She caught the new, appraising look in my eye. “Too late, Raymond. The mood’s gone. You and your pals are on your way tonight.”

Fucking hell.

And then the plane cartwheeled, and that’s when I actually shat my pants. No dream.

Let me tell you, the first thing you do when you shit your pants for real is tell nobody.
Nobody.

And then you try to deal with the fact that your plane just cartwheeled over a lake of fire, as the pilot declares, “That was easy,” followed by the lieutenant laughing giddily and Neal shouting, “Blimey! Let’s do that again!”

And you sit there trying to figure out how you’re going to get back to a clean, dry room on Wake Island with a hose to rinse yourself off and fresh undergarments and a fresh pair of trousers identical to the ones you’ve just kacked—as well as a rubbish can large enough to bury the soiled pants in.

“Ray!” Neal called out. “To think just one week ago I was frittering away my life in a cardboard Samsung telly box—and here I am living large!”

Sadly, the condition of my pants made it impossible to continue to enjoy the nuclear fireworks. Neal mistook my new highly focused and somewhat unhappy facial expression to be some sort of politically correct judgment on the bombing.

“Don’t be such a sourpuss, Ray! Think of all that plastic, gone forever—fluffy little dolphins now able to romp through lagoons free of plastic six-pack yokes. Seahorses cantering about, snacking on little bits of seahorse food. It’s a Disney movie down there now, like
Finding Nemo.
It’s world peace. Our Jenny here is a planetary hero.”

“You’re making me blush, Neal,” said Jennifer. Then she stared at me and her brow furrowed. “Raymond—are you … 
leaking
?”

Neal looked down at my seat. “Oh, now you’ve done it, Ray …”

“Done what?” asked Jennifer.

I said, “Look, both of you, it’s nothing …”

“Raymond’s shat his pants.”

“Raymond!” Jennifer sounded really shocked.

“Christ, the plane did a fucking cartwheel overtop a nuclear explosion.”

“Changing the subject,” Neal chided. “Common behaviour for someone experiencing fecal remorse.”

Jennifer flipped into problem-solving mode. “Raymond, once we’re on the ground, I can have someone come meet us with a hazmat suit. I’ll call for one right now.” She clicked a button on the dash and began barking into her headset: “Alpha nine, alpha nine, we’ve had a Code-Mocha bowel evacuation—”

“No, really, I—” But there was no stopping her.

Neal, meanwhile, looked me over with a father’s sad, judgmental eyes.

I said, “Come on, Neal, I think what happened was a perfectly normal response given the situation.”

“I would never judge you, Ray.”

“Thank you, Neal.”

“Bye the way, Ray, Sarah sent me a text to relay to you.”

“What the
fuck?
Neal, since when do
you
have a cellphone?”

“Poor Arnaud du Puis never cancelled his account with Orange France, so I took the initiative and started adding to his contact list the numbers of people connected to the show. That Sarah is one hard worker, mate. I think she has a thing for you. In fact, I’m sure she does.”

She does?
“I’m listening, Neal.”

“She said, ‘Give my Ray-Ray a big hug and tell him I can’t wait to introduce him to the alluring ways of the tropics.’ ”

“Show me.”

Neal showed me the text; he was word for word. “I think she could be The One, Ray, I really do,” he said.

I thought of her spooning me back to health in Honolulu, her cheerful manner, her milkmaid freshness—her absolutely perfect pair of baps.

The flight back was as airy and hopeful as the infinite shaving-cream clouds above us and caterwauling flocks of sea birds below. The cockpit was somewhat chilly with the altitude, and I felt like I was sitting atop a tub of melted gelato, but I didn’t care.

Once on the ground, we were greeted by perhaps fifty goons, all of them clapping wildly for the lieutenant. Jennifer took a bow, smiled for the cameras, gave a small speech and then said, “But before I disembark, we have a small medical issue to attend to.” She stood away from the door, saying, “Raymond, the medics will take good care of you. They really will. All of us here in your Wake
Island family just want you to get clean again. And watch your left leg. You’re dripping on the hatch.”

The crowd went silent as it watched me walk down the aluminum stairway, where I was met by a ginger-haired medic—whom I recognized as being the one on whom my good-luck loogey had landed earlier. He came at me with a huge Spielbergy Tyvek jumpsuit, bellowing, “Mandatory for potential bowel-related contamination scenarios! Can I ask you, Mr. Gunt, if you have any history of hepatitis A, B or C, cholera or superbugs?”

“Fuck off.”

“No need to swear, sir. There are ladies present.”

Fucking Americans.

The silence continued as everyone watched me don my hazmat suit. I gave up trying to maintain dignity. I’d be out of this fucking sun-kissed dump soon enough. Also, I had just witnessed the first Pacific detonation since 1962.

Instead of taking me to a nice clean clinic furnished with a functioning shower, Ginger the medic led me behind the Quonset hut beside the canteen, where three of his pals stood ready and armed with firehoses.

“Look, boys! It’s Billy Elliot!”

“Let the dance of pain begin!”

Bloody hell.

But when you’re caked in your own leavings, you really don’t mind being hit with brutally hard jets of water. Truth be told, it just gets the crap off sooner, though it does hurt like all get out. When the water hits a large enough flap of trouser fabric, liftoff is easily achieved, and more than once I was hurled into one of the canteen Dumpsters, crammed, no doubt, with saltine packaging and empty Pepsi bottles.

And, of course, there was much festive heckling. “Come on, Billy! Eat hose water, you po-faced Limey bitch!”

“Aim for his teeth, guys! Maybe we can ship his teeth to wherever it was his chin went.”

But then I removed my kacked pants and turned away
from them. I bent over to let their warm, brackish water rinse away the last of my self-marinade. The tone soon changed when they realized they weren’t so much torturing me as they were administering a fairly efficient enema whenever I unclenched my rusty bullet hole. They soon turned off their hoses and walked away in disgust, Ginger tossing a pair of clean sailor’s trousers to the ground. I togged up.