“What are you doing?” Dee Dee said.
“Doin’ voodoo,” Hussey said. “I’m making a doggie zombie.”
In the ventilator shaft above the bar, Stinky gasped.
“This is too weird,” Roland said. “I redecorate this bar with all this voodoo stuff and then you show up, practicing voodoo, turning a stray dog into a zombie right on top of my bar. What are the odds?”
“A wise old woman once said when you have certain powers it makes you stand out, like a lighthouse in a thunderstorm. You get a better look at the Universe from the top of the lighthouse but the Universe also sees you better. And when you stand out like that it also makes you a lightning rod for the Universe. Weird shit happens to me all the time. And as far as voodoo goes, I thought I left had all that behind back in Cassandra,” Hussey said, “I came here to go to college, study medicine. But here I am at voodoo central of St. Petersburg, turning a greyhound into a zombie.”
“I guess this is a zombie emergency,” said Cutter in a snide tone.
“And I thought you were through being an irresponsible fuck-up,” Hussey treated Cutter to a basilisk glance.
“God, look at that poor dog shake,” said Dee Dee.
“Hussey honey,” said Cutter, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lose all our money … I don’t want to be a screw up. I wish I could make it up to you.”
In her best Bette Davis, Baby Jane voice, Hussey said over her shoulder, “’But you can’t Blanche, you can’t!’ Furthermore,” Hussey turned to him, with a voice full of menace, “why don’t you find another place to be for a while, maybe permanently. I’m sick to my stomach at the sight of you.”
His head down, hangdog again, Cutter slumped on to a barstool. Dee Dee slipped on to the stool beside him.
“Now we wait,” Hussey said to Roland as she closed her doctor’s bag and stroked the dog’s head.
As Roland gazed at Hussey, he felt the same charge of electricity that shot up his spine when he had touched her hand the evening before. He was impressed by the compassion, the tenderness in her eyes.
Hussey reached down to examine the dog’s collar. “The owner’s name and a phone number are here. It looks like the dog’s name is Moreover, funny name for a dog. Says here his home is the dog track.”
“Moreover?” Cutter said. “I thought I recognized that dog! I lost two bucks on him at the dog track the other day.”
“Was that the day you were supposed to be looking for an apartment?” Hussey glared at him.
Cutter looked down at his feet.
Hussey shook her head in disgust and turned her attention back to the dog. “Hang in there, Moreover.”
Roland simply stared at Hussey. He gazed at her longingly as she stroked the dog’s head.
A minute later the greyhound stopped shaking, his eyes rolled forward in his head and his tongue lolled. He wheezed a final wheeze and lay still.
“Is he dead?” Dee Dee said.
“Give him a minute,” Hussey said. “He isn’t all dead, just a little dead. If the powder works he should come around soon.”
Moreover’s legs started kicking as if he was chasing rabbits in his sleep.
“That’s good,” Hussey said. “He’s coming around. Moreover, listen to the sound of my voice, when you open your eyes you will be fine, all your problems will be gone, you will feel great, happy, healthy and alive. You will also respond to the sound of my voice; when I tell you to do something, you will do it. If you understand wag your tail.”
Moreover’s tail started wagging furiously.
“Good,” Hussey said. “Now wake up.”
The dog rose shakily to its feet, shook furiously from nose to tail, and licked Hussey’s face. Then Moreover caught sight of Cutter behind Hussey and growled deep in his throat, remembering the cigar.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” said Dee Dee. “You brought him back from the dead!”
“Yeah, well it’s a gift,” Hussey said. “But it doesn’t pay the rent, and besides, I’m on the voodoo wagon, trying to quit.”
“Can you do that with people?” Dee Dee said.
“Yeah, well,” Hussey said, still watching the dog closely, “it all started with people, animals came later.”
Dee Dee gazed off in the distance, wheels turning in her head.
Curiouser and curiouser, was Stinky’s thought as he eavesdropped on the scene below from his perch behind the grate above the bar. He became aware of a slight movement next to his paw and saw a small cockroach trying to scuttle away from him. He put his paw down hard and squashed the bug. Hearing Stinky’s paw come down on the insect with a metallic thump, Dee Dee’s eyes moved to the round hole in the wall above the bar. She realized that was how the furry little blackmailer had sneaked into the bar last night. Stinky saw Dee Dee glaring up at him and he told himself to calm down, his paws were shaking with excitement and his claws were scraping on the metal ductwork.
Hussey turned to Roland. “Seeing that our friend Moreover is alive again, maybe you should call his owner and let him know his doggie is OK, see if we can get him back home. “Moreover!” Hussey commanded the dog, “why don’t you get down off the bar and find a nice comfortable place to lie down for a while.”
Hussey followed Moreover’s progress as he hopped from the bar to a stool and then to the floor. The dog wobbled over to a booth and crawled up onto the padded bench. Moreover turned around in the seat so he was facing Hussey. He curled up and waited expectantly for her next command.
Hussey faced Roland behind the bar, “It’s already been a long morning. I need a drink, how about a glass of wine?”
“You got it,” Roland said. He pulled a wine glass out of the rack above the bar and held it under the dispenser, from which flowed the contents of the box-o-wine that served as the house red. He presented her with the glass, never taking his eyes off her.
Hussey raised the glass to her nose, her pinky curved out, inhaled deeply, and sipped the wine delicately.
Roland watched her, rapt. It has be fate, he thought, what are the odds of a voodoo girl showing up at my voodoo place. And God, the more he looked at her, the more beautiful she became.
Hussey, swallowed, wrinkled up her nose, contracting the spray of freckles, and frowned, “The wine is corked,” she said.
Roland picked up her glass and tasted the wine. “The wine isn’t corked,” he said. “This stuff has never seen a cork. It’s just awful.” He reached under the bar and retrieved a dusty bottle of wine. He stuck his middle finger in the dent in the bottom of the bottle. “A good way to tell if it’s a good wine is to stick your finger in the dent at the bottom and see how deep the hole is. The deeper the hole: The better the wine.” He lifted his finger from the wine hole to his nose and sniffed. “Yep, this is a good one. Shall I pour you a glass?” He tried to remember if there was actually a corkscrew at the bar.
Hussey rolled her eyes and leaned over the bar to examine the label. “I think I’ll pass.”
“Princess and the Pinot, huh? Alright then, try I have something else.” He plucked a bottle of absinthe from the bar shelf, flipping the bottle end over end before he place it in front of her. Roland reached into the bar fridge and pulled out a bottle of relatively good champagne. He pried off the little wire cage at the top of the bottle and pushed the cork out with his thumbs. The cork shot up, struck the air duct, and ricocheted inside. Roland heard a distinct, surprised and pissed off meoooow as the cork rang off the metal walls of the air duct. He looked up at the air duct but Stinky had retreated inside. Shrugging, Roland filled a champagne flute four-fifths full with champagne and then filled it to the brim with absinthe.
“Death in the Afternoon,” Roland said as he slid the glass toward Hussey.
“What do you think?” Roland watched as Hussey took a sip.
“Death never tasted so good,” said Hussey. “What’s the stuff in the green bottle?”
“Absinthe: The Devil in a Bottle, The Green Fairy. A drink that inspired the vis
ions and works of Oscar Wilde, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Allen Poe.”
“Tastes like bubbly liquorish,” Hussey said after she took another cautious sip. “I thought absinthe was illegal in the United States.”
“Well,” Roland said. He held up the mint-green bottle. “It was recently legalized and this has the highest content of wormwood allowable to be imported. That’s the stuff in absinthe that brings the visions. And,” he continued, reaching below the bar and holding up a small bottle with an eye-dropper top, “when I add this, we exceed the maximum allowable limit here and in Europe.”
He squeezed three drops into Hussey’s drink. “This is pure distilled wormwood. I found it when I was stacking those bottles on the shelf. It’s petite wormwood, melissa and hyssop. Did you know the Russian word for wormwood, even before the nuclear accident, is ‘Chernobyl’? I always thought that was twisted synergy.”
“I have been known to mix up a few herbs myself,” Hussey said. “And I’m no stranger to twisted synergy.”
Roland poured Hussey’s unfinished wine into the sink. “Bad as it is,” he said, “the wine is one of the few things in the restaurant that won’t kill you. As a matter of fact, everything else here is deadly.”
“What do you mean?” Hussey took another tentative sip of the milky green liquid.
“Well, the menu is mostly fugu fish, there are four species of it and all of them are violently toxic. The amount of toxin in one little tiger fugu fish could kill over thirty people. The amount of tetrodotoxin that could fit on the head of a pin can kill in less than a minute. Usually, between seventy and a hundred people a year die from eating the stuff, mostly in Japan. Here at the Fugu Lounge it’s the specialty of the house.” Roland said. “We also proudly serve absinthe, non-filter Camels, and Cinnabuns.”
“If fugu is so deadly, why do you serve it?”
“’Cause the chef is a nut case,” Roland said, nodding toward Dee Dee. “But it’s her kitchen, so she serves what she serves. Fortunately, we haven’t lost a customer yet … at least not that I know of. Of course, we only started serving this stuff today.”
“That’s interesting,” Hussy said, pushing her glass forward, indicating to Roland she wanted a refill. “Is fugu really good enough to be worth risking death?”
“God no, it’s bloody awful.” Roland said. “It’s tasteless as tofu, kind of like flavorless jello that’s been wrapped in an old gym sock and left in a disconnected refrigerator for five years and has gone tough and chewy.”
“Then what’s all the fuss about?” Hussey said.
“People like to cheat death.” Roland placed her second Death in the Afternoon in front of her. “Also fugu is addictive. So is the drink I just poured you. Absinthe is cumulatively poisonous and extremely addictive. But you know what they say: absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.”
Hussey held her glass up to the light and examined the milky green liquid with curiosity.
“With fugu,” Dee Dee said from her seat beside Cutter, “you have to remove all eleven deadly parts of the fish, including the skeleton, skin, ovaries, intestines, and liver. You just leave enough of the fugu poison to give the diner a mellow tingling glow, a flush and a head rush. The effect is kind of like cocaine or amazingly good sex.” When she said sex, she gave Cutter’s leg a squeeze.
“That’s how the dog got hold of the neurotoxins,” Hussey said. “He must have somehow found the leftovers. How do you dispose of the poisonous parts?”
“In Japan,” Dee Dee said, “fugu remains must be bagged in two layers of plastic and kept in a special locked box until they are taken to a special fugu dump. You have to pay to have it destroyed. It’s a dangerous job disposing of the deadly parts, like handling plutonium, because fugu toxin isn’t destroyed by heat.”
“How do you dispose of it then?” Hussey said.
“I just pitch it in the dumpster out back. This is Florida, not Japan.”
“Then the dog must have dug it out of the dumpster,” Hussey said.
Or a certain sociopathic kitty dug it out of the dumpster for him, thought Roland. “Did you happen to see a very black and very evil cat hanging around the dumpster?” he said.
From the vent above his head Stinky whisked the dead cockroach from the vent into Roland’s hair.
Before Hussey could answer, Dee Dee cut loose with a string of profanities. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Almighty Lord on a Fucking Pogo Stick! Oh sorry,” Dee Dee said, “Just the periodic Tourette’s.”
Roland nodded toward Cutter. “I heard your boyfriend say you got no place to go. That true?”
“He is no longer my boyfriend,” Hussey said. “And I can probably sleep on the beach until I find another a job and find an apartment near school.”
Dee Dee inched her hand up Cutter’s leg. She found him cute and wondered if he’d learned a little about this voodoo business from dating the witch girl. He could prove useful.
“Medical School?” Roland remembered what she had said the night before. As he watched Dee Dee slide her fingers toward Cutter’s crotch. Roland wrinkled his brow and frowned at her.
Dee Dee looked innocently at Roland and gave him a ‘what did I do?’ shrug.
Hussey caught the exchange between Roland and Dee Dee and made a mental note of it. “I was going to school to be a neurologist until my brainless ex-boyfriend lost all my tuition money.” She skewered Cutter with a look.
“Hey Roland,” said Dee Dee. “We need a full time waitress around here. Why don’t you give this girl a chance? With the food we serve here you could use somebody who can bring people back to life.”
“It pays eight dollars an hour,” Roland said. “And you can stay in one of the rooms here at the hotel for free. You interested?”
“Sure I’m interested,” Hussey said.
“Looks like I need a job too,” said Cutter.
“I could use some help cooking,” Dee Dee said, letting her hand move higher up Cutter’s inner thigh. “Why don’t we give this guy a job in the kitchen?” She looked deeply into Cutter’s eyes.
“Can you cook, honey?” she said to Cutter.
“I never have, but I could learn.”
“Oh, I can show you how to really cook ….” Dee Dee gave Cutter a lascivious grin and moved her hand a little higher.
I bet you’d like that, Roland thought, but he said; “Eight bucks an hour. But the cook’s job doesn’t come with a room, do you want the job?”
“I guess I could sleep in my van,” said Cutter.
“Sure he wants it,” said Dee Dee. “Let’s take you in the kitchen and show you around. She grabbed Cutter’s hand and dragged him into the kitchen.
Hussey smiled. “Can I work here around my school schedule? That is if I can make enough to go to school. I’ll need more jobs than a Jamaican just to pay tuition.”
“We can work it out,” Roland said. “Pick up the key to room 213 hanging on one of the hooks behind the front desk and settle in. When you’re ready to start work, come on back down to the bar.”
Smiling, Stinky retreated back through the ventilator shaft and returned to the dumpster. That bottle of purple powder was the real thing. The Holy Grail, the Rosetta stone, the key to his greatest ambition, the answer to his dark prayers. He settled back into his dumpster to think. He had plots to plot and plans to plan.
“This is the grill,” Dee Dee said to Cutter, pointing to the six-burner Vulcan range that occupied most of the wall in the kitchen closest to the bar. She was standing close, her shoulder rubbing up against his. “And here you have your oven and your deep fat fryer,” she said, turning and pointing like she was presenting a letter on the Wheel of Fortune. As she turned she rubbed her chest into his shoulder. “And over there you have your walk-in cooler and freezer.” She waved her arm at the freezer as she slid in closer to him. She turned to face him, pressing her breasts against his chest and putting her face close to his, almost touching cheeks. “If you get too hot, you can always go in the cooler and
cool off,” she said in a sexy, smoky voice. “Or we could go in there and get hot together.” Dee Dee reached around and placed her hand on Cutter’s butt.
“Do you still have the money you won from me?” Cutter said, while wondering if Dee Dee’s hand on his butt was part of the job.
“Nope,” Dee Dee said, placing her other hand on his butt. “After you left the table I lost it all on the next hand. Let me show you the bun warmer.”
As Hussey swung open the door to the bar it was caught from the other side by Henry the mailman. Henry, a little person, looked somewhat like one of Willie Wonka’s Oompa Loompas except he had a large nose and a head of hair that looked like a red, fright wig. Henry opened the door wide for Hussey to step out and bowed, his red locks dropping into his eyes. Henry crossed the room as the door noiselessly swung closed behind Hussey.
“Letter for you today,” Henry called out to Roland as he strode purposefully across the room to deliver the mail. “You got a couple of bills, but I know this is what you’re looking for.” Henry called from across the bar and waved a white business-sized envelope with a colorful logo embossed in the left corner.
Homemade Sin Page 10
