Homemade Sin

by V. Mark Covington

  “So,” Dee Dee said. “Jesus was a zombie?”

  “Not exactly, but the toxins would have dulled the pain of crucifixion a bit.”

  “So I could make a man into a zombie and he wouldn’t have any fears anymore, and I would be able to control him? He would do, like, anything I said?” Dee Dee had been listening intently while she unconsciously sliced her steak into thin sushi-like strips, rolled each strip up like sushi and popped it into her mouth. ‘Control is power and power is money’ was the maxim that came to her mind.

  “Theoretically,” Hussey said, “but it is not a very nice thing to do, and there are dangers. Remember, what you do will come back to haunt you.”

  She was considering that Dee Dee might be a little sociopathic and decided she better watch her back when around her.

  “How about a nightcap?” Roland said to Hussey as they pulled into the hotel parking lot.

  “Sounds great,” Dee Dee said.

  Damn, thought Roland as he led the two girls into the bar. He found Cutter behind an empty bar washing glasses.

  “How did it go today?” Roland said as he joined Cutter behind the bar.

  “I had a few people come in for lunch and ordered fugu so I took a shot at cutting those ugly fugu fish. I hope I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “What the customers do after they leave isn’t our concern,” Dee Dee said. “That’s my motto.”

  “And those old people drove me nuts all day,” Cutter said, “If I didn’t get out to the pool and take their orders every fifteen minutes some old geezer would come storming into the bar, all pruney and dripping water on the carpet, and bitch at me for not waiting on them properly. There was one old hairy guy in Speedos who scared the hell out of me. He actually growled at me and started throwing wedges of lime. I thought a rabid, mangy Grizzly was loose in the bar.”

  “Moreover won the race. We won, like four hundred dollars,” she told Cutter.

  “I know,” Cutter said. “I won too. I placed a bet with Tony.”

  “You bet on Moreover?” Hussey said.

  “After what you did to Mrs. Zoller’s Aussie, I figured he couldn’t lose,” Cutter said.

  Dee Dee perked up her ears and was listening intently.

  “Anyway, I’m taking off,” Cutter said. He untied his bar apron and laid it on top of the bar. “I’m going out to my stifling hot van and try to sleep. See you tomorrow.” He nodded in Hussey’s direction and stalked toward the door.

  “Would you mind taking out the garbage on your way out?” Roland said.

  Cutter hefted a large trash bag over his shoulder and trudged through the kitchen door.

  “And thanks for running the place while we were away,” Roland called after him.

  Stinky looked down menacingly from atop the dumpster as Cutter approached. “Worship me lowly human. I am Stinky, Fierce Feline of Fatalism, the Caustic Cat of Cataclysm, I am the Kitty Courier of—”

  The back of Cutter’s hand connected with the side of Stinky’s head knocking him from the dumpster into a pile of fetid fugu.

  “Fucking stupid cat,” Cutter said as he lifted the lid and deposited the garbage in the dumpster.

  Stinky stared up at Cutter with hate-filled eyes, marking him, burning Cutter’s face into his memory. “You will pay for that!” he growled.

  “Now, ladies?” Roland said, turning toward Hussey and Dee Dee, “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Make me something special,” Hussey said.

  Roland smiled. Here is my chance to impress her, he thought as he plucked the bottle of absinthe from the shelf and poured two fingers of the dark green liquid into two heavily- walled bar tumblers. He retrieved a large, slotted silver spoon with a serrated edge that hung from a hook on a shelf behind the bar. “My runcible spoon,” he said as he suspended the spoon like a strainer above one of the glasses. He placed a sugar cube in the center of the runcible spoon’s slotted bowl and sprinkled a few drops of absinthe on to the sugar cube. He made a big showing of flicking his lighter to life and setting the Absinthe soaked sugar cube ablaze while Hussey raised one eyebrow and smirked. Finally, Roland reached into the small bar cooler, retrieved a pitcher of water and a yellow, pear-like fruit. Roland used the cutting edge of the spoon to pare a slice of quince and dropped it into the glass of absinthe, where it was sucked down into the emerald depths of the glass.

  “Now we add some quince, and water to rinse the sugar through a runcible spoon …” he lilted as he poured water from the pitcher over the sugar cube. The emerald absinthe turned verdigris as it fused with the water. Hussey was reminded of the color of Mama Wati’s house, as she watched the water chase the absinthe around the sides of the glass, turning it as milky as a cataract.

  “‘And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,’” Hussey finished Roland’s bastardized version of the rhyme while he repeated the sugar cube process on his own drink.

  “You know Edward Lear?” Roland grinned at her, his eyes owlishly wide.

  “I’ve read The Owl and the Pussycat,” replied Hussey flashing him a catlike grin. “But I never knew what a runcible spoon was. And I’ve always wondered how an owl and a pussycat could go about using any kind of spoon in the first place. No thumbs ….”

  “Ah,” Roland said, still sporting an impressed smile. “Nobody really knows. I think Lear made up the word. I used to think it meant any spoon with a cutting edge but since I’ve read more of Lear’s poetry I’m not so sure. Like; ‘What has come to your fiddledum head!’ or ‘What a runcible goose you are!’ Or; ‘He has many friends, laymen and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible hat.’”

  “Maybe it’s anything with a sharp edge,” Hussey said.

  Roland swirled the glass in his hand until the liquids consummated their union and placed it on the bar in front of Hussey. “For my runcible friend,” he said and smiled.

  Hussey raised the glass to the light and examined the milky green color, sniffed it and sipped the shot. “It’s a lot stronger than Death in the Afternoon” she said.

  “Here’s to things that are stronger than death.” Roland raised his drink to her.

  “I’ll have one of the same,” Dee Dee said. “And what did Cutter mean about Mrs. Zoller’s Aussie? Did it have anything to do with the voodoo stuff?”

  Roland stared at Dee Dee and made a motion toward the door with his head hoping Dee Dee would take the hint.

  “Mrs. Zoller was a lady who lived in the town where I come from; Cassandra, just east of Orlando. She had an Australian Shepherd that was scared by a ram. I gave him some of my Mambo powder and he got over his fear, entirely straightened him right out.”

  “What’s in the Mambo powder?” Dee Dee ignored Roland’s hints and hoped to catch Hussey off guard.

  “A secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices,” said Hussey with a sly wink. “I can’t divulge trade secrets, part of the voodoo oath. Besides, in the wrong hands, that stuff could be dangerous.” Hussey finished her drink and addressed Roland; “It’s late and it’s been a long day. I’m off to bed.”

  “Want me to walk you back to your room?” Roland said. There was more than a trace of hope in his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” Hussey said. “Let’s take it slow, see what grows. You might turn out to be my knight in shining armor, or you might turn out to be just amour for a night. I want to know that you’re interested in more than just a night.”

  “I’m interested in a lot more than a night—”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Hussey said over her shoulder as she sashayed out of the bar.

  Roland wiped up a frog-green, ring of absinthe left on the bar by Hussey’s glass and began to chant the lines of a poem:

  “‘The Owl looked up to the stars above,

  And sang to a small guitar,

  ‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

  What a beautiful Pussy you a
re,

  You are,

  You are!

  What a beautiful Pussy you are!’”

  Ascending the steps to her room, Hussey could sense someone at the top of the stairs, lurking in the shadows. Cutter didn’t know he was lurking, which was what made him scary.

  As Hussey turned the corner toward her room Cutter stepped out of the shadows and approached her. “I’ve been waiting for you. Can we talk?”

  “Have you gotten my money back?” Hussey said.

  “Not all of it but I’m working on it. I’ll get about five hundred on that dog today when Tony pays me.”

  “Then we have nothing to talk about. When you have the other twenty-nine thousand and five hundred dollars, we can talk. Until then stay the hell away from me!” She turned on her heel and stormed toward her room.

  After Dee Dee polished off her drink and left the bar, Roland locked the doors to the bar and went outside into the parking lot. He felt the moist breeze drifting across the beach from the Gulf as he walked around the hotel to the beachfront and stood, looking across the Gulf of Mexico. He watched as a surf of puffy clouds boogie-boarded past a floating, blue-white, man-o-war moon. He could make out the small whitecaps in the backwash of light as they curled backward on themselves and dove into the sand. He was reveling in his evening with Hussey, a mooning smile playing across his lips. He had been charming at dinner, flirting with Hussey, and she had flirted back. Maybe she really liked him, maybe this time he had found someone he could love and who would love him in return.

  As Roland watched the whitecaps, lost in thought, he heard a commotion outside one of the upstairs hotel rooms. It sounded like a man and a woman engaged in a screaming contest and one of the contestants sounded like Hussey. From the sound of it she was winning. Roland turned back from the beach and took the steps up to Hussey’s room two at a time. He found Cutter standing in the hallway in front of room 213 shouting through Hussy’s closed door and he heard Hussy shouting back. He looked down the outdoor walkway and spotted Dee Dee perched in the doorway to her room watching the action with interest. Roland picked up the gist of the conversation from twenty feet away. They were disagreeing on Hussey’s future, Cutter was advocating that he be in it, and Hussey held the opposite view. Just as Roland was about to approach Cutter to suggest he take a hint and leave, Hussey emerged from her room and confronted Cutter face to face. She was brandishing what looked like a large bird claw, maybe a turkey or something larger and the sight of it stopped Cutter cold.

  “If you don’t get away from my door, I’m going to make your dick shrivel up to the size of a cocktail weenie. Not that it’s much bigger anyway!” Hussey aimed the bird claw at Cutter’s crotch and started muttering strange words in what sounded like a bastardization of French.

  Cutter’s hands instantly covered his crotch as he backed away, then he turned and ran full tilt for the parking lot.

  As Cutter brushed by, Roland followed him. “Hey, not so fast, I want to talk to you.”

  “What do you want?” Cutter yelled at Roland over his shoulder as he slowed his pace.

  “What happened back there? What was all the bird foot waving about?”

  “None of your damned business!” Cutter was clearly shamed at running away from Hussey’s threats.

  “I think you’d better leave Hussey alone in the future,” Roland said.

  Cutter shuffled wordlessly down to the parking lot toward his van. He climbed into his van, started it up and drove off.

  Roland leaned on the rail and watched Cutter pull out of the parking lot, the smile returning to his lips. It just might work, he thought to himself as he descended the stairs back to the bar. He unlocked the lounge, strode over to the bar, and retrieved the dusty bottle of wine from under the counter. Then, taking two glasses from the rack overhanging the bar, he headed for Hussey’s room.

  “Dammit Cutter, I told you to get lost!” Hussey screamed through the door as Roland tapped softly. “I’m serious, I’ll turn your balls into peanuts, and you know I can do it!”

  “It’s Roland, I thought you could use a drink,” he said.

  Hussey opened the door a crack and peeked out. Roland held up the bottle of wine and the glasses and smiled his most ingratiating smile.

  “OK, fine, you win,” said Hussey. “One drink, that’s it.”

  Dee Dee was walking toward the casino when she saw Cutter’s van approaching. The van pulled into the marina’s parking lot about fifty yards from the Fugu Lounge and parked. Dee Dee watched Cutter leave the van, and start walking back to the Santeria Hotel. This could be interesting, she thought, and followed him. When Cutter reached the Santeria parking lot he found a spot in the shadow of a Humvee, out of sight from the hotel rooms, and sat down, staring at Hussey’s door, letting the shadow swallow him.

  He’s cute enough and he might be useful, Dee Dee thought, as she approached him.

  “Want to take a walk?” she said. “The moon over the gulf is amazing tonight.”

  Cutter looked up at Dee Dee, startled.

  “Well, I was kind of watching something,” he said.

  “You mean watching someone,” Dee Dee said. “You know there’s a law against stalking?”

  “I’m not stalking, I’m more like lurking. And lurking isn’t really lurking if you don’t know you’re lurking. It’s just sitting, right?”

  “Let’s go sit somewhere else before Hussey calls the cops on you. Come on, we’ll take a walk on the beach.”

  Cutter followed Dee Dee around the hotel to the beach. The light of the full moon danced on the water like shimmering mercury.

  “What do you want to do with your life?” Dee Dee said after a long silence.

  “I was going to be a casino dealer but I’m not sure I have the talent for it.” Cutter sounded resigned.

  “I remember taking your money,” Dee Dee said, “you ain’t exactly a world class poker player. So what’s your new plan?”

  “I was thinking of maybe going to medical school, like Hussey, and then when I become a doctor I could convert my van to a rolling vasectomy clinic. I’ve already picked out a name for the practice. I could to call it the ‘Drive-by Snip and Tie’. The slogan will be ‘Thanks for Shooting Blanks’. I’d do vasectomies in poor neighborhoods where the folks there are financially indignant.”

  “You mean indigent?” Dee Dee said.

  “That too.”

  “Hussey was right,” Dee Dee suppressed a giggle. “You are almost retarded.”

  “I just want to help people,” Cutter said, bristling. “Those folks have lots of unwanted pregnancies, and I want to help with that.”

  “How much money do you expect to make with your drive-by vasectomy business?”

  “Probably not much. The folks in those neighborhoods are very poor, so I’ll take whatever they give me.”

  “But don’t you owe Hussey a whole lot of money? Money you lost to me playing poker?”

  “Yeah, and I have no idea how I’m going to pay her back.”

  “I have the makings of a plan to make us both some money.” Dee Dee smiled.

  “What kind of plan?” Cutter said.

  “You dated Hussey for quite a while,” Dee Dee broached the subject, “do you know anything about this Mambo powder zombie business?”

  “I know a little. She sometimes told me what she was learning from Mama Wati. Not a lot though. She usually kept that stuff secret.”

  “I could use someone with practical experience and I could use a partner in what I have planned. Do you remember the dog she saved? Moreover, the greyhound?”

  “Yeah, I was there when she did voodoo on him, even after she told me that she wouldn’t ever use zombie powder again. I won some money betting on that dog today. I’ve seen what she can do for animals so I figured he would win.”

  “And the dog won the race. He hadn’t won anything before, and bingo … he’s a winner.”

  “So?” Cutter said.

  “So, if we can do tha
t to people, athletes in particular, we could make some serious money on bets. Hussey said the dog wasn’t winning because he had some psychological problems. We need to find competitors who have some psychological problems. Then we use Mambo powder on them. The dog got that way by eating fugu fish first, so we’ll have to lure them into the restaurant and feed them some poison fugu, then give them Mambo powder. Then we make our bets and clean up.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Do you know where she keeps this Mambo powder?” Dee Dee said.

  “Yeah, she keeps it in her doctor bag,” Cutter replied.

  “Do you think you can get your hands on in?”

  “I’d have to sneak into her room to get it.”

  “No problem,” Dee Dee said. “I can get you the master key from the front desk and I’ll keep her distracted while you get the powder. My strategy is still in the planning stage, but if it works, you and I can make lots of money.”

  “I sure could use some money. I could pay Hussey back what I lost and maybe she would talk to me again.”

  “Sure, you want Hussey back,” Dee Dee said. “And I can help you get the money to do it, so it’s helping her out too. What do you say? Are you in?”

  “OK,” Cutter said. “I guess I’m in.”

  “What am I doing?” Hussey said aloud. “Two days ago I arrived here to get an apartment and go to medical school, now I’m broke, living in a flea bag hotel and sleeping with the bartender. My life has gone to shit.” She had her head nestled in Roland’s neck, one arm draped across his chest. They were both bathed in moonlight and afterglow.

  “Is being with me all that bad?” Roland said.

  “It’s not you.” Hussey sighed. “It’s everything. My father nicknamed me Hussey when I was born. He just looked into the crib and said to my mom, ‘she looks like your sister, that damned hussy.’ And according to my father, the holier than all of thou, Reverend Paine,” said Hussey into Roland’s neck, “I’m a pagan voodoo witch who is going straight to hell. I don’t even need a hand basket.”