Homemade Sin

by V. Mark Covington

  “I found her in Key West,” said Roland. “She was looking for a job and I needed a new chef.”

  “Fucker!” Dee Dee shouted as she slipped past the bar back into the kitchen.

  “Her sporadic Tourette’s flaring up again?” Roland called after her.

  “Nice ass, but she’s got a mouth on her,” said Tony as Dee Dee banged back through the kitchen door wielding a large knife.

  “Needed my fucking castrating knife,” Dee Dee said as she stalked back over to the sushi bar.

  “She’s got Tourette’s syndrome,” Roland said to Tony, placing a second full, frosted mug before him. “She says it’s uncontrollable, comes and goes, but sometimes I wonder.”

  “From the looks of her I bet she bangs like an outhouse door in a hurricane.” Tony grinned, definitely smitten.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Roland said, “I’ve been warned that she’s a short-handled shovel of a girl. A lot of work for little results and she’ll break your back sooner or later.”

  “What happened to this place?” Tony picked up a handwritten dinner menu off the counter and scanned it. “I noticed something was different when I came in but I didn’t notice all this stuff. Didn’t this place yusta to be da Blue Flamingo? I mean, its da same place and all, but everything’s different. Whaddya do to da Blue Flamingo?”

  “Well,” Roland said, “The Blue Flamingo wasn’t exactly a five-star resort. I figured the place needed a make-over. The seventies’ seedy look of the place didn’t attract customers much anymore, at least not the kind of customers I wanted, customers who have money and don’t dispose of bodies in the pool.”

  Tony tugged at his collar nervously. “Who’s the broad in the picture?” he said. “She looks spooky.”

  Roland came around the bar and stood in front of the large oil painting of a light- skinned black woman wearing a blue turban on her head. She was also wearing a pale blue shawl and large hoop earrings. Her eyes seemed to follow you around the room wherever you went. “That’s Marie Laveau herself, the original ‘Voodoo Queen of New Orleans’. She is kind of spooky now that I take a closer look.”

  Roland crossed back to the bar as Tony examined the menu. ‘Extreme Dining’ was written on the cover below was written; ‘Fugu Lounge.’ Below that, a small skull and crossbones smiled at him from the menu. “I was gonna get a burger or something but all you got on this menu is weird shit. I mean, ya got stuff on here like nikogori … usuzukuri? What is that?”

  Dee Dee looked up and smiled as she sliced shashimi made from Red Sea blowfish. She deftly sliced fish and piled up the slices of filleted candied California newt and eastern salamander, both rich in poisonous tetrodotoxin, on to her sushi rolling platter. A small sign behind Dee Dee’s sushi bar read:

  ‘To throw away life, eat blowfish. – Japanese Maxim’

  “Blowfish,” Dee Dee said from her sushi station. “Nikogori is blowfish jelly and usuzukuri is thinly sliced, raw blowfish.”

  “Ain’t blowfish poisonous? I think I heard about it on some food show once. It can kill ya if ya don’t cut it exactly right.”

  “That’s the stuff,” Dee Dee said. “But I’m getting good at cutting it; I haven’t lost a customer yet. Everybody who has eaten it has walked out under their own power.”

  “Doesn’t it take a while for the poison to kill them?” said Tony. “Coupla hours at least?”

  “What they do after they leave here is their own business,” Dee Dee slammed the business edge of her knife down separating the head from the body of a large, ugly fish.

  “Dee Dee’s read up on how to slice fugu fish,” Roland told Tony. “She knows how to cut it. Did you know voodoo folks used blowfish to make zombies? It’s got something to do with some kind of toxin in the fish. I don’t believe in all that zombie crap, but since Dee Dee was a sushi chef, I thought we’d add fugu sushi to the menu, go with the whole voodoo theme. I found all this voodoo stuff in Key West and Dee Dee figured it might attract customers.”

  Roland and Tony watched Dee Dee walk up to the bar, pick up the remote control, and give life to the television mounted behind the bar. She ran the channels until she found a NASCAR race. “Could I get a Margarita?” she said.

  Roland scooped ice into the blender and added Margarita mix and tequila while Tony leered at her lasciviously from his seat at the bar. Both men watched her curvaceous backside sway back and forth as she crossed to the sushi station. She alternately sliced fish and lizard flesh into paper-thin slivers and sipped her Margarita while she watched NASCAR highlights on the television above the bar.

  “It looks like old Rebel Buford might finally win one!” Dee Dee said, pointing to the cars circling the racetrack on the television.

  On the screen, a good quarter lap ahead of the other racers, car number 13 unexpectedly steered into the infield, hit the brakes and slid to a stop. The driver jumped out, tore off his helmet and curled into a fetal position on the grass.

  “Damn! There he goes again, and I had fifty dollars riding on the son of a bitch! Damned stupid NASCAR asshole,” Dee Dee hollered.

  “Anyway,” said Roland, “we’re hoping the sushi thing will catch on, a lot of tourists like sushi, and Dee Dee thinks customers will like the idea of eating something that could kill you. I guess it adds an element of danger to their lives, like bungee jumping or mountain climbing.”

  “I don’t see why folks would want to do things could kill ‘em,” said Tony polishing off his beer and lighting a cigarette. “How about pouring me another beer? I’m dryer than a hundred-year-old nun’s twat.”

  “You couldn’t outrun those other dogs in a race car.” His master’s voice still rang in his head. Moreover didn’t know what those words meant, he just knew his master had been angry, he’d heard it in his tone. That, and the fact that moments after his master had said those words, he had been kicked out of the car.

  Hungry and depressed, the now homeless brindle greyhound was sniffing the sidewalks along the beach for street treats. So far he had only managed to come up with a lone French fry and it had been kinda gritty. He moped up and down the street looking for food, occasionally wandering over to the beach to splash in the clear green Gulf water to cool off. He had decided the man who took care of him wasn’t coming back for him. He was on his own; a street dog. The thought made him more depressed than ever. He was bordering on suicidal and contemplating throwing himself under the wheels of a passing limo (why not at least go out in style?) until he had spotted the cat.

  An orange and black tabby streaked across the big greyhound’s path. Moreover, catching a whiff of the feline as it passed, snapped out of his funk, his misery forgotten temporarily, as he tore down the beach after the tabby in hot pursuit.

  Today he was a greyhound, a lean tiger-striped blur with a kitty in his cross-hairs. The problem was, he wasn’t a greyhound all the time, and to win races you needed to be a greyhound every day, for every race. That was why the man who had always taken care of him had dropped him on the street and left him there, because you can’t beat a pack of greyhounds in a race if you aren’t a greyhound. And the racing dog had come in dead last in the last ten consecutive races. Genetically, he was a greyhound. He looked like a greyhound and he ran like a greyhound when he felt like a greyhound.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t always feel like a greyhound. Sometimes, as he stood in the chute, ready to spring out of the gate and run like the wind, he would feel like a dachshund. He would try to keep up with the other dogs when the race started, but as a dachshund he had to stay low to the ground and take tiny little steps. Once, in the middle of a race, he began to feel like an Australian Shepherd. He imagined a little tattoo of a demon ram’s head on his shoulder, underneath it was the slogan ‘Born to Herd.’ He had tried to herd the rest of the pack as they raced after the mechanized rabbit. They sure didn’t like being herded. And they didn’t like it when he was a police dog either, sniffing their cages for evidence of steroids.

  But boy, di
d they like it when he was Yvette, the slutty poodle … they liked him far too much then, it was tough being a female, it was a bitch.

  Sometimes he was known as Prince, the ‘metro alpha’ and he imagined himself wearing a Gucci collar and going to an expensive grooming salon. He couldn’t very well race when he was the ‘metro alpha’: The dirty track would mess up his manicure. He raced better when he was formerly known as Prince. And then there was the Jack Russell incident. He really, really didn’t want to think about that. The more races he lost the more depressed he became and the more he wanted to be a different breed. It was a ‘catch your tail 22’ kind of thing.

  But right now, the only thing going on in his doggie brain was ‘get the cat’ and the chase was the thing.

  As he gained on the cat, the fleeing feline took a sudden hard left off the beach around a hotel pool and into the alley behind the Santeria Hotel. He pursued at full greyhound speed but the tabby jumped to the top of a dumpster and disappeared inside.

  Moreover tried to stop, but his momentum carried him past the alley entrance, his paws skidding on the pavement. He spun around and as he entered the alley he saw the cat’s tail poking out from the partially open dumpster lid twitching back and forth.

  Got him!

  Barking a celebration, he sped toward the dumpster. Moreover launched himself up on his hind legs, front paws on the edge of the open lid, and peered into the darkness. Two pairs of green eyes glowed back at him. He sensed another feline presence. Sure, he sensed the scaredy cat he had been chasing, cowering in the dumpster, but this new kitty wasn’t scared, this new kitty smelled evil.

  Stinky slinked to the top of the dumpster, stretched languidly, and ran his paws over his whiskers. He looked down at the dog with a sparkle in his glowing, malevolent, yellow-green eyes.

  “You what?” Hussey screamed at Cutter, as he stood, hang dog in the hotel room and tried to explain.

  “I’m sorry!” Cutter said. “It just kind of happened. I was winning one minute and the next minute all the money was gone.”

  “I gave you my money for safe keeping! How did you take the money out of the bank if I had the checkbook?”

  “I still had the ATM card,” Cutter said, having the good grace to look sheepish.

  “So,” Hussy shrieked. “You lied to me. You never went to check out an apartment, you snuck over to the casino boat and lost all of our money! What am I supposed to do now? I can’t pay for my tuition!”

  “It’s only money,” said Cutter.

  “Easy for you to say,” screeched Hussey. “It wasn’t your money!”

  “Well, I guess you can get more money from your parents.”

  “I can’t tell my parents you took all the money and blew it gambling. I’d never hear the end of it. They would make me come home, and besides, it was all the money in my college fund. My parents saved for years to put me through medical school. I’m going to have to get a job, see if I can make tuition payments, maybe get some student loans or something.”

  “How can I make it up to you?”

  “Get me my money back, you fuck-up.” Hussey tossed a shoe at Cutter’s head and stormed out of the door. “In the meantime just stay away from me!”

  Stinky was growing bored with the dog. He had become tedious, yapping and circling the dumpster. He raised a paw to the sky and meowed, “I offer up the soul of this beast to appease the dark and hungry gods, may they look down upon me with favor.” He looked down at the greyhound, and meowed further, “I send you to your eternal rest, die well and be haunted by reality no more.” Stinky paused, then as an afterthought he meowed “’And may flights of angels sing thee to thy sleep.’” He remembered giving Will Shakespeare that line for one of his little stage plays.

  Stinky nosed a hunk of sautéed fugu out of the dumpster which landed at Moreover’s feet.

  The greyhound gobbled up the chunk of fish, with one bite, then looked up at Stinky for more. Within a few seconds he began howling and rolling around on the ground in pain. As the poison took hold of him he began to shake and foam at the mouth.

  Stinky batted another piece of fish off the top of the dumpster with his paw. “Dessert?”

  Stinky graced the dog with a malevolent meow.

  Belief is energy. Belief in the unseen powers of the Universe, whether it’s asking for answers using tarot cards, a Ouija board, I Ching, reading the spread of chicken bones, or praying to win the lottery, it gives the unseen forces of the Universe the power to answer simply by the act of asking. Sometimes the answer is no, but the exchange always changes things. Call it karma, kismet, hoodoo, voodoo or God, the exchange of power changes the course of destiny. Whatever cosmic powers were at work that morning, Hussey almost stumbled over the prone twitching and shaking greyhound as she stormed through the alley behind the Fugu Lounge, her thoughts shooting daggers into a mental image of Cutter. The dog at her feet emitted a choked groan and looked up at her with huge pleading eyes.

  The proverbial sick puppy, Hussey thought, looking down. “What’s wrong with you, boy? Where does it hurt?” She eyed the chunk of fetid-looking fish by the dog’s head and then kicked the gelatinous glob toward the dumpster. She pulled back the dog’s eyelids and examined his pupils. She put her hand on his chest to check his heartbeat. “Looks like you ate something poisonous,” she said to the empty alley, “probably the fish, it looks like some kind of neurotoxin. Let’s take you inside and see if we can get you all fixed up.” She spoke in soothing tones to the dog, eyeing the back door to the restaurant and noticing it was slightly ajar. As Hussey scooped the dog up into her arms Stinky peeked out from inside the dumpster. He watched her kick open the back door and carry the dog inside.

  “I wasn’t finished with him yet,” Stinky mewed as Hussey and the dog disappeared through the door. Stinky leapt from the top of the dumpster and scurried through the ventilator shaft toward the bar.

  The door led through the kitchen to another door which led her behind the bar where she brushed past a startled Roland, who was stacking clean bar glasses on the shelf. She stretched Moreover out on top of the bar. Tony had drained his beer and wandered off toward the beach muttering how things just weren’t like they used to be. Dee Dee looked over from the sushi bar, as the woman stroked the dog’s head and talked to him in a calm, soft voice.

  Staring at the woman carrying the dog, Roland remembered the spark that passed between them at the front desk. “What’s with the dog?” he said.

  “He’s sick,” Hussey said, meeting Roland’s eyes. They exchanged a silent acknowledgement of the electric moment when their hands had touched the night before. When the moment passed she said, “I believe he ate some poisoned fish. I need to call him a vet.” Hussey looked around the room at the various voodoo paraphernalia. “What’s with picture of Marie Laveau?”

  “You actually know who she is?” said Roland. “That’s a first. I changed the décor here recently; it went with the voodoo theme.”

  “It figures,” Hussey said. She let out a brief high-pitched chuckle. It wasn’t the kind of chuckle that says ‘something’s funny’, but the kind of chuckle that says ‘the universe just dumped a whole butt-load of ironic on me which means it’s using me for its personal entertainment once again, and if I don’t laugh, I’m going to go bat-shit crazy.’

  Her face settled into a sardonic smile as she looked down at the dog. His eyes were rolling back in his head and his muscles were constricting. “Damn, no time for a vet,” she said. “Watch him for a minute.” Hussey sprinted across the room and collided with Cutter as he opened the door to the bar. Hussey lowered her shoulder and knocked him to the ground as she passed. Before Cutter could pick himself up off the floor Hussey was halfway to their room.

  Crossing her hotel room in two steps Hussey snatched up her weathered leather medical valise which had once belonged to her grandfather and ran back to the bar.

  Dee Dee sashayed across the bar for a better look at the dog, “What’s wrong with the f
ucking dog?” she said.

  “Looks like he’s dying,” Roland said. “He may have been poisoned.”

  “Try to dilute the poison,” Dee Dee said. “Use the bar gun.”

  Hussey brushed past a shaky Cutter without a word and crossed back to the bar with her doctor’s bag. Roland was trying to spray water into the dog’s mouth with the bar-gun dispenser while Dee Dee held open his jaws.

  “That’s good,” Hussey said, nodding acknowledgement to the woman holding the dog’s head as she approached. “Diluting the poison, but I have something even better. I’m Hussey.” She placed the doctor’s bag on the bar and snapped it open.

  Dee Dee, still holding the dog’s jaws open, cut loose with a string of vulgarities that would have made a baboon blush blue.

  Hussey gasped and gawked at her.

  “She has occasional Tourette’s,” Roland said, rolling his eyes.

  Cutter stopped when he saw the group huddled over ministering to the dying dog. He looked past Hussey who was rooting through the valise and his eyes settled on Dee Dee. When Dee Dee looked up, their eyes met in recognition. They stared at each other for a minute.

  “I remember you,” said Cutter. “You were in the poker game last night? You took all of my money. You kept yelling out weird shit and cussing a blue streak.”

  Dee Dee remembered him too, and the whole time she’d been at the table the previous night, she’d kept thinking his money wasn’t all she wanted.

  “Grab your ass and squeeze it while you pound me!” Dee Dee said.

  “I know you are supposed to have infrequent Tourette’s syndrome,” said Roland, “but if you ask me you’re faking it, just an excuse to say what you truly feel.”

  “Cut your nuts off!”

  “See?” Roland said.

  “No,” Dee Dee said, “it wasn’t the Tourette’s. I’m really gonna cut off your nuts.”

  “Oh,” Roland said.

  Hussey pulled bottles from her grandfather’s bag. A small brass plate on the outside of the bag read Dr. Lester Paine, her grandfather. She had found the bag in the attic in an old trunk and decided it was perfect for holding her voodoo supplies. Whenever she looked at the lined, cracked leather of the case she thought of her grandfather’s lined, weathered face, tanned in the Florida sun from all those house calls in his old rattle-trap Ford convertible. She had long ago replaced his medical instruments – the tongue depressors, stethoscope and blood pressure cuff – with her very different tools – gris-gris bags, voodoo dolls and chicken bones. Morphine and penicillin had been replaced with dried mushrooms, mescaline and assorted potions and powders from ‘conjure ashes’ to ‘Eros powder.’ She removed two small glass vials filled with purple powder. One vial was labeled ‘Mambo’ and the other labeled ‘Borko.’ She held the Borko powder up to the light and dropped it back into the doctor bag. “Don’t want to use that one,” she said. “It’s the old stuff, may do permanent damage. She held up the Mambo powder and smiled. “This is my own recipe, it should work.” She told Roland to hold the dog’s jaws open while she poured some of the powder down its throat.