Lunatics

by Dave Barry

  “I saw him,” said Denise. “It’s Philip Horkman. He owns a pet store. I thought he was a nice man! Why did he take my insulin pump?”

  “I think he was actually after the lemur,” I said, nodding toward Buddy, who was sitting on Taylor’s head.

  “That thing is his?” said Denise.

  I said it was, which, looking back, was another mistake. For a drunk woman the size of a tool shed, Denise showed excellent quickness. She snatched Buddy off Taylor’s head and started toward her car. Donna yelled at me to stop her, and I tried, but Denise threw a stiff arm that caught me right in the throat, and I went down again. I heard Oprah ladies screaming and Taylor crying. Then I heard tires squealing. Then Donna was in my face, grabbing my shirt, pulling me up.

  “Jeffrey!” she shouted. “You have to stop her!”

  She yanked me to my feet and started shoving me toward my car. “Hurry! She’s going to kill herself!”

  “She might hurt Buddy!” said Taylor.

  I stumbled to my car, started the engine, put it in gear. Then a thought occurred to me. I put it back in park and lowered the window.

  “What?” says Donna.

  “Where the fuck am I going?”

  “Don’t use that language in front of Taylor!”

  You ever notice this? You make a valid, logical point, and women try to change the subject.

  “Well, where am I going?” I said.

  “After Denise!”

  “And where is Denise going?” I said.

  That stopped her. She held a quick conference with the other book club women, and they agreed Denise was probably going to find this Philip Horkman. One of the women said he lived in Fox Hollow Estates, which figures because it is a development completely filled with Prius-driving assholes. Somebody pulled out an iPhone and Googled his address. I put the car in gear and took off.

  Ten minutes later, I turned into the asshole’s street and slammed on my brakes hard just in time to avoid getting hit by Denise Rodecker’s Range Rover going the other way at about 280 miles an hour. Just ahead, I saw a lady in a driveway shouting at Denise to slow down. I pulled over and lowered my window, and this lady, who turned out to be Horkman’s neighbor, told me Denise had made a big scene, honking her horn, yelling for Horkman to come out.

  “So I went out there,” the lady told me, “and I told her the Horkmans aren’t home. She was very rude. I think she’s been drinking. She has a monkey.”

  “It’s actually a lemur,” I said. “Do you know where she’s going?”

  “Well, the Horkmans are at a dance recital at Martin Luther King Jr.”

  “You told her that?”

  “I did. Was that a mistake? Should I call the police?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, putting the car in gear. At that point, if there was one thing I was sure of, it was this: If the police arrested Denise Rodecker for driving drunk with a stolen lemur, in the eyes of my wife—for that matter, in the eyes of the entire Oprah book club vagina brigade—it would be my fault.

  Five minutes later, I’m pulling into the Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High parking lot. I see Denise’s Range Rover parked at a bad angle halfway up on the curb. The door’s open, the engine’s running. Denise is not inside.

  I pull up behind the Range Rover and get out. I’m standing there, trying to decide what to do. What I should have done, looking back, is take the key out of Denise’s car. But I didn’t.

  Suddenly, BANG, a door on the side of the school slams open. Here’s who comes out, in order:

  1.Denise, holding Buddy by his tail, like he’s a fur handbag.

  2.The asshole, who I’m happy to see is limping, yelling at Denise.

  3.A woman, who has to be the asshole’s wife, because she is yelling at him.

  4.A fat kid wearing some kind of douchebaggy silver suit, who’s crying, and right away I know this is the asshole’s kid, because (a) he looks like him, and (b) he’s a douchebag.

  The asshole sees me, and he stops short.

  “What are you doing here?” he says.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, which I admit was not a good comeback, but I didn’t have anything prepared.

  He says, “I’m here to watch my son’s dance recital.”

  I look at his son and say, “What’s he supposed to be, Elton John as a refrigerator?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” says the wife.

  “He’s Sonny Corleone,” says the asshole.

  “He’s WHO?”

  “It’s interpretive,” says the asshole.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “I can definitely see the Corleone family following Sonny here into battle. ‘Come on, fellows! We have to go to the mattresses.’” Only I’m lisping, so it comes out “fellowth” and “mattretheth.”

  This really pisses off the asshole’s wife. She’s in my face, yelling, “Just who the hell do you think you . . .”

  Then we hear a slamming sound, which is Denise shutting the door of her Range Rover. The asshole hustles over and pounds on the window. She lowers it, but only a half inch.

  “Denise,” he says, trying to sound calm, which he is not. “Give me the lemur.”

  “GIVE ME MY INSULIN PUMP!” she says.

  “I don’t have your insulin pump.”

  It occurs to me that the asshole doesn’t know that Buddy left it in his Prius. I’m about to point this out, but before I can say anything, Denise holds Buddy up by his tail and screams, “THEN YOUR FUCKING LEMUR IS GOING OFF THE GEORGE FUCKING WASHINGTON BRIDGE.” She stomps the gas and fishtails out of the parking lot.

  “STOP!” the asshole is screaming. “THAT IS AN ENDANGERED ANIMAL!” He’s gimping as fast as he can toward his Prius. I head for my car and get in just as the Prius leaves the parking lot. I put the pedal to the floor and am right behind, the asshole and me weaving through traffic, trying to catch up with Denise, who is driving like a maniac.

  My cell rings. It’s Donna.

  “What,” I say.

  “Did you find Denise?” she says.

  “Yes.” Up ahead Denise is getting on I-95.

  “So she’s okay? She got her pump?”

  “Um, not yet.” Denise is weaving across four lanes. The asshole is staying as close as he can, but he’s having trouble keeping up in the Prius, which has basically the same motor as a food processor.

  “What do you mean not yet?” says Donna. “Is there a problem?”

  “Listen, this is a bad time, okay? I’ll call you right back.”

  In the background, I hear Taylor saying something to Donna. Up ahead I see Denise’s arm, which is the size of my leg, sticking out the Range Rover window. She has something in her hand. She’s waving it around so the asshole can see it.

  It’s Buddy.

  Donna says, “Taylor wants to know if Buddy is okay.”

  “Tell her Buddy’s fine,” I say, and hang up.

  CHAPTER 9

  Philip

  I have absolutely no complaints about my penis. While neither exceptionally long nor formidable in girth, it has performed all duties admirably. It’s sired two children, has sexually satisfied a wife on those special occasions when we enjoy a romp in the hay for purposes other than procreation, and has regularly expelled liquid waste from my system without even once waking me up from a night’s sleep to do so.

  Consequently, I have never been one of those guys with a need to compensate by driving either a souped-up or pimped-out car. Hence, my Prius. It gets me where I want to go, has an AM radio, and the fact that it’s eco-friendly (fifty-five miles per gallon!) is in the plus column as well. Is it built for a car chase? Probably not. However, that was never really a consideration, given it hadn’t crossed my mind that one day I might be chasing a drunken dia
betic motorist swinging an endangered primate out her window while driving at breakneck speed toward the toll booths of the George Washington Bridge.

  But that was exactly the situation I now found myself in, although I figured I’d caught a break when her Range Rover didn’t go into the E-ZPass lane. As a result, my plan was a simple one—that is, when Denise Rodecker stopped to pay the toll, I would jump out of my car, run up to her car, reach inside, grab the lemur, run back to my car, get back into my car, make a huge sweeping U-turn into a westbound lane, then leisurely drive back to the peace and quiet of my home in Fox Hollow Estates. Even with my taped ribs and soft walking cast, I was confident I could easily pull this off. Innate quickness played a major role in my winning four varsity letters in fencing at Haverford College (“Go Black Squirrels!”) and I had no doubt it would trump any of my current liabilities, given the short distance between our cars.

  So when her Range Rover slowed to a halt to become the second car before the booth, I reached down to shift the Prius into neutral and felt something lying on the console that I hadn’t seen in the darkness—a rubber tube. I grasped it, pulled it toward me and could feel that there was something weighted at the other end. From the glow of the lights above the toll booths, I then saw that the tube was attached to a contraption that could very well have been the insulin pump Denise Rodecker kept yammering about. How it had gotten into my car was beyond me. And I had no idea how the weird-looking wooden thing lying next to it got in there as well. I picked up the wooden thing and saw what looked like, well, it looked like some kind of mask of a native of a tropical environment with the words “YA MAN” painted on his forehead. Out of sheer curiosity, I put the mask on my face and checked what I looked like in the rearview mirror when suddenly I noticed that Denise Rodecker’s car had moved up and she was now, in fact, being handed her change by the toll collector. So I grabbed the pump, opened the door to my Prius, and hobbled toward the Range Rover, yelling, “Hey, look what I have!” at the top of my lungs, but I wasn’t fast enough to get her attention as she pulled away from the toll plaza and onto the bridge.

  So I immediately turned, paid no attention whatsoever to the toll collector, who screamed when she saw someone wearing a YA MAN mask holding a strange-looking device with wires and tubes attached to it, hobbled back to my car, got in, and purposely screeched through the toll without paying as I didn’t want to risk losing sight of the vehicle that was now carrying my precious lemur toward Manhattan.

  Did my Prius let me down? Not really. Look, it wasn’t the car’s fault that it ran out of gas about a third of the way across that bridge. Because the Prius was so incredibly fuel-efficient (sixty-eight miles per gallon!) I had a tendency to be lax when it came to refilling—knowing that even if it did run out of gas, since it was a hybrid, the battery could still power it. No problem, except that the battery could only power it up to thirty-four mph before the gas kicked in—which meant that if the car was out of gas, that was the fastest it could go. Thirty-four mph. Good news if you’re driving on local streets trying to get to an Exxon station. Absolutely dreadful news if you’re trying to get away from a veritable armada of police cars, fire engines and EMS trucks that think you have a homemade bomb.

  But that’s what happened—although at first I had no idea the roadblock at the other end of the GW Bridge was intended for me. All I knew was that as I saw the taillights of Denise Rodecker’s speeding car exit onto Manhattan’s Henry Hudson Parkway, I was so hell-bent on not losing her that I didn’t even think that when the cops moved two of their cars to allow me passage to the off-ramp, it was because they were afraid we’d explode on impact.

  Yet, once I’d gotten onto the highway, I did become curious when I saw in my rearview mirror that the entire roadblock was now following me. And that when they got about a hundred yards behind my Prius, they maintained that margin. When I slowed down a bit, they did the same. And when my acceleration topped out at a blazing thirty-four mph, they sped up as well. Thus began the slowest low-speed chase in NYPD history, although at the time I was still unaware that it was actually me they were low-speed chasing. It was only when that helicopter came overhead and shined that huge spotlight on my Prius did it occur that I may have been of specific interest to them—although I must say, I was dumbfounded as to why they would waste all of this manpower on a motorist just because he didn’t pay a measly twelve-dollar toll.

  So I signaled and pulled over onto the right shoulder, figuring that we could clear this thing up quickly so these heroic men in blue who risk their lives on a daily basis protecting and defending could turn their sights back to real criminals. I stopped, opened the car door, stepped out, waved at them, smiled, and shouted, “Okay, fellas, I’m guilty as charged. Do with me what you will.” Whereupon they forced me to the ground and made sure I lay there facedown by dint of a boot on the small of my back before men in heavy bomb squad apparel went into my car, found what they were looking for, and had a special robot gingerly place it inside a special tub, where they blew up Denise Rodecker’s insulin pump.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jeffrey

  I don’t know what this Horkman asshole did to piss off the cops, but he definitely got their attention. There was a whole cop army chasing him, including a helicopter, which was pretty funny, because he was going, like, six miles an hour. They could have caught him on skateboards. But they were keeping their distance, like he was America’s Most Wanted Terrorist Mastermind, instead of an asshole from Jersey in a Prius.

  I passed him when he slowed down on the GW Bridge, so I was between him and Denise when she got onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. My plan was to stay with her, because Donna would kill me if I lost her, in her condition. Plus she had Buddy, who thank God she did not throw off the bridge.

  I was right behind Denise when I looked in my rearview and saw the asshole stopping and getting out with his hands up. Right away there were cops all over him, pushing him down on the ground and pointing guns at his head. I admit, I smiled.

  I was still smiling when I ran into Denise’s Range Rover. She stopped right in the middle of the Henry Hudson Parkway, and wham, there’s an airbag in my face. After a few seconds of just sitting there and going “fuuuucccckkkk,” I got out of the car, and I saw the whole front end was totally wrecked, steam coming out, green glop dripping down on the road. I knew I wasn’t driving home. I went to yell at Denise for stopping in the road, but when I opened her door, I saw her eyes were closed and her skin was the color of oatmeal. Buddy was sitting on her head, looking at me with an expression of “NOW what?”

  My first thought was that Denise was dead, which meant I was in a world of shit with Donna. But then she made a sound like unh, and her eyes flickered a little bit. So she was alive, but she definitely needed a doctor.

  I started running back toward the cops. All of a sudden, I felt something, which turned out to be Buddy, jumping up on my shoulder. So I thought, Okay, at least I got Buddy. Then I heard this explosion—Bang!—up ahead, and I thought, Whoa, they shot the asshole. But when I got a little closer, I could see he was fine—still facedown on the ground, but not shot.

  Looking back, I realize how it must have looked to the cops when they saw me. They’re all tense, they have a guy on the ground they think is Osama bin Whatever, and all of a sudden another guy, who they also don’t know, comes running toward them in the middle of the Henry Hudson Parkway, shouting and waving his arms, and he has what looks like a monkey on his shoulder. It could arouse suspicions, I can see that now.

  But at the time I didn’t see it. When a bunch of cops started running toward me, holding guns and shouting, I couldn’t hear them, because of the helicopter. But I assumed they were planning to render aid to me as a law-abiding civilian in a bind.

  Now, right here is where a lot of shit happened really fast, including some things that I did not realize at the time but found out later.

  F
irst, the cops reached me. They were still waving guns and yelling, but I still couldn’t hear them. I saw one of them unclipping something shiny from his belt, which it turns out was a Taser. That’s right: This hero was planning to Taser a man armed with a fucking lemur.

  Speaking of whom: Buddy, despite having just gone through a traumatic experience in the form of being waved out of the window like a pennant by Denise, had retained his natural curiosity, not to mention quickness. So when the hero cop reached out toward me with his Taser, Buddy snatched it. The hero went to snatch it back, but Buddy jumped off me, and onto another cop. The hero tried to grab Buddy, and somehow—I don’t know if Buddy did this on purpose, or what—the Taser went off, right into the second cop’s neck. He made a kind of whimpering sound, then fell sideways. While he was falling, his gun went off.

  This next part, I still don’t like to think about. What happened was, the bullet went straight up, right through the metal floor of the helicopter. The good news was, the metal slowed the bullet down enough so that it was no longer traveling at a lethal velocity. The bad news was, it was still traveling fast enough to lodge itself in the scrotum of the helicopter pilot.

  I know that most helicopter pilots, and especially police helicopter pilots, are experienced professionals who spend many hours training for emergencies. But I don’t care how much training you have: You can never really be prepared for having to fly a helicopter when you have just taken a bullet to the balls.

  Next thing I knew, the chopper was coming down, fast, right where I was standing with the cops. We all took off running. I thought I was going to die. The wind from the chopper nearly knocked me over. I jumped over a guardrail and kept running toward some trees on the side of the highway. I heard this really loud whump behind me, which was the helicopter making a rough landing. I stopped and turned around. It looked like a war zone: the chopper on the ground, rotors still turning; ambulances coming from somewhere, sirens going; more cop cars coming with their sirens screaming; cops running all over the place, shouting.