by Don Calame
“These things carry all sorts of diseases,” he says, holding his hands up high and close to his lab coat. “There’s a reason they don’t want pregnant women going anywhere near kitty litter.”
“Well”— I take a furtive whiff of my palm —“It’s a good thing you’re not a pregnant woman.”
“Anyone can get sick from cat feces,” Uncle Doug argues.
Coop sighs. “We’re not asking you to stick your finger up its ass. We just want you to hold it. Like a billion people do a billion times a day.”
Leyna and Hunter are crouched outside, looking in the open basement window and laughing. They’re supposed to be catching Dr. Schmaloogan in the act of doing evil experiments. But the only thing they’re witnessing is my uncle’s breakdown.
“It’s not just their excrement.” Uncle Doug tugs on his bushy beard. “It’s their saliva too. These things bite. They carry all kinds of pathogens. Staph. Meningitis. The plague. Not to mention, cats are one of the main transmitters of rabies. Believe me, I’ve done the research.”
“Buttons doesn’t have rabies.” I start to chew my tongue nervously. “Look at her. She’s a sweetie. Besides, I have her trained. She won’t move unless I tell her to.”
“Be that as it may.” Uncle Doug steps back from the table, looking flustered and sweaty. “Cats are unpredictable. I’d just as soon do the scene with some kind of replica. I’ll put up with having the animals in cages in the background for verisimilitude. And I’ll deal with the aftereffects of all the fluff and dander. But I am not about to have my penis bitten off by a venomous disease-ridden feline, thank you very much.”
“Your what?” Hunter calls from the window.
“I just don’t want to be bitten. Or scratched. Anywhere. Okay? So”— Uncle Doug wafts his hands at Buttons —“take this thing away from me. Immediately.” He grabs his pack of American Spirits and taps one out. The cigarette’s in his mouth and lit before I even have a chance to move.
“We don’t have any animal models.” Coop checks his cell phone. “And we’re running out time. You don’t like cats? What about the ferret?”
Uncle Doug sneers and puffs on his cigarette. “I think I’ll pass. The last thing I need is a feral weasel wriggling out of my hands and sneaking down my pants. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“The dog then,” Matt offers. “I’m not even a dog person and I think it’s cute. And you’d have to work really hard to get it down your pants.”
Uncle Doug picks a fleck of tobacco off his tongue. He studies it while seeming to consider this latest proposition. “What kind of dog is it?”
“A Maltipoo.” I slide Buttons back into her cat carrier. “He’s around six pounds.”
“Dogs are much more obedient than cats,” Uncle Doug says. “You have a muzzle for it?”
“A muzzle?” I move over to Jo-Jo’s kennel and take him out. He’s a gray fluff ball barely bigger than my hand. “I don’t think they make muzzles small enough.”
“Come on, Uncle Doug,” Coop pleads from behind the video camera.
“It’s pretty cold just squatting out here,” Leyna says from outside.
Uncle Doug gestures at me with his cigarette. “How well you got that thing trained?”
I place Jo-Jo on the floor and show my uncle all his tricks. Ballerina, play dead, flip, lie down, roll over. By the time we’re done, his tiny little tongue hangs from his mouth as he pants.
Finally Uncle Doug sighs and crushes out his cigarette. “Okay. But I want that beast to lie stock-still. In total submission. If he even flinches, I’m gonna hurl him across the room.”
“You will not,” I say.
“Okay, then, I’ll hurl you across the room. How’s that?”
“Fine.” I scoop Jo-Jo up and put him on the table. I get him to lie down and roll over. “Stay, Jo-Jo. Stay.”
“Look how adorable,” Matt coos.
Uncle Doug shuffles cautiously up to the table. “Yeah, that’s how they get you. Kill you with cuteness. Sucker you in and then go right for your nuts.”
I laugh. “I can guarantee you he’s not going to go anywhere near your balls.”
“You think it’s funny, but go ask any emergency-room physician how often she sees pet-incurred testicular injuries. You’d be mighty surprised how common it is.”
“Yes,” I say. “I would be incredibly surprised. Now, can we get on with this?”
We have to do at least a dozen takes of the scene because Uncle Doug is simply not believable as an evil mad veterinarian who experiments on animals. Sure, he looks the part. Big and gruff, hairy, rubber gloved, lab coated, and red eyed. But he’s barely touching the dog with the tips of his fingers, and his scrunched-up face completely betrays his absolute revulsion.
For twenty minutes straight, Jo-Jo doesn’t move a muscle. He is being such a good boy. There’s no biting. No scratching. No ball-sack lunging. Not even a whimper. Just a frozen little Ewok-faced puppy with his tiny furry paws stuck in the air.
“Look,” Coop finally says, his face red from frustration, “grab the dog like you mean it. You’re a vet, for fuck’s sake. You’re not scared of animals. Just jab it with the needle and take the goddamn blood. You wanted to be in the movie. So be in it.”
Uncle Doug takes a deep breath. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do it. Once. But you better make sure you’ve got that camera rolling, because it’s the last time you’re going to see this.”
“Thank you.” Coop nods to Leyna and Hunter at the window, then hits the record button and points at my uncle.
Uncle Doug quickly grasps Jo-Jo by the belly and raises the collapsible hypodermic. “All right, you mutt,” he grumbles his dialogue. “Time to do your part in my grand experiment.” Uncle Doug cackles evilly, then leans over the dog and prepares to stick him with the needle. “I’m going to need a nice hefty sample from you.”
And, as if on cue, Jo-Jo sends a streaming spout of whiz straight into Uncle Doug’s face. Dog pee soaks his mountain-man beard and cascades down the front of his lab coat.
Leyna and Hunter bust into hysterics.
Matt and Coop’s jaws drop in sync as Uncle Doug leaps away from the lab table and unleashes the longest string of curses I think I’ve ever heard. He grabs a soiled rag from the workbench — which, truth be told, is probably way more bacteria laden than Jo-Jo’s pee — and swabs at his face and neck like a madman.
“YOU!” Uncle Doug points at me with the dirty cloth.
My eyes dart to Jo-Jo, still frozen in place on the table. He looks at me for some sort of guidance. Can I move yet? Sorry about the pee, dude, but he squeezed me like a sponge.
I have several options here. Run away and leave my dog to the mercy of my foaming-at-the-mouth uncle. Dart in to save him and risk being beaten to death with any of the numerous blunt objects — baseball bat, pipe wrench, bong — that are in grabbing distance.
Or try to reason with a raging zoophobe who’s just been whizzed on by a dog.
“It was an accident,” I try. “He didn’t mean it. You just spooked him. When you grabbed him so suddenly. He’s a little dog. He’s got a little bladder.”
“Not. So. Little.” Uncle Doug swipes at his face again with the rag, glaring at me, breathing heavily and loudly through his nose, like a speared bull that’s getting ready to charge.
“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer. “At least he didn’t bite you.” I catch Matt’s and Coop’s looks. At any other time, with any other person, we’d be screaming with laughter right now. Just like Hunter and Leyna are doing at the window.
But this is Uncle Doug we’re talking about. And he is royally steamed. And he is three times my size. And he could snap us all in half in the blink of an eye.
Uncle Doug closes his eyes. He takes a deep, deep breath, his hand strangling the filthy rag. “Okay,” he says. “I need a smoke. And I need it now.”
“Your cigarettes.” I dart over to the workbench and grab his pack of American Spirits. “They’re fine. They’re not wet.
See? You put them down over here. They’re safe.”
Uncle Doug slowly opens his eyes. “I don’t think you understand. A cigarette is not going to be strong enough. Not by a moon shot. Uncle Doug needs to forget this little . . . incident. In fact, we’re all going to forget this.” He waves his hand in the air. “Wipe it from our hard drives, so to speak. Understand?”
We all nod vigorously, though I can tell by the expression on Leyna’s and Hunter’s faces that they’re never going to forget this.
“If Uncle Doug ever finds out that anyone else has found out about this”— he laughs, but in a really scary way —“well, let’s just say the person who leaked it will regret they were ever placed on this little planet we call Earth. Are we crystal on this point?”
Suddenly Leyna and Hunter don’t look quite as amused anymore. And Coop totally ignores the “leaked it” bait. The five of us nod like bobblehead dolls in an earthquake.
Uncle Doug takes another deep breath. “All right. Good. Now, you guys go upstairs and take my sausages out of the oven. I’m going to take fifteen in my trailer.”
And just as I’m starting to relax, feeling like we dodged a major laser blast . . .
There’s a loud thumping at the front door.
Matt, Coop, and me whip our heads around toward the stairs.
My stomach plunges hard. Because there’s only one person in the world I know who knocks like that.
“HEY, HO,” I SAY AS I OPEN the door to see Nick and Evelyn standing there. “You guys are early. That’s . . . great. Excellent. Come on in.” I quickly usher them inside and close the door just as Leyna and Hunter are walking by behind them. Coop stalled them just long enough, thank God.
“I saw you were already here.” Nick laughs. “Not that I’m keeping watch or anything. But we figured, might as well join you, right? You know, in case you needed help setting up.”
“No, that’s . . .” My chest feels like it’s going to cave in. “It’s all good. We were just . . . shooting a scene with Uncle Doug. By himself. You know. Alone. And, uh . . . But . . . Anyway. It’s good you’re here because lunch is just about ready. The others should be here in around twenty.”
A short while later and we’re all crammed into Uncle Doug’s tiny dining room — Nick, Evelyn, Val, Helen, Matt, Coop, and me. We’re still waiting on Pete and Tony, but Uncle Doug said we should just eat and they can join us when they get here.
“Start. Start,” Uncle Doug calls from the kitchen. “I’ll be there in a second.”
Nick grabs hold of the sloppy bun with two hands and somehow manages to shove half of the sausage into his mouth, the chili spilling all over his hands and pitter-pattering onto his plate.
“Guess I’m off my diet today.” Coop follows Nick’s lead and goes for the hand-to-mouth method while Matt, Val, Helen, Evelyn, and me opt for our forks and knives.
I don’t know if it’s the stress of this whole situation or what, but I am absolutely ravenous. Still, I’m a bit wary of my uncle’s gloppy concoction. Beyond the fact that he keeps calling them his Dirty Dogs, there’s something about them — the shriveled sausages, the dark chili sauce, the Day-Glo Cheez Whiz — that looks . . . unappetizing.
I cautiously cut off a small bite, give it a quick sniff — lots of spice, pork, tomatoes, a hint of coffee — and then slide the goopy mess into my mouth.
It tastes pretty good, actually, and before I know it I’m eating way too fast and washing down mouthful after mouthful with generous gulps of tropical punch Kool-Aid, which, oddly enough, is the only drink — besides beer and whiskey — that Uncle Doug has in the house.
“Guess who we saw at Starbucks?” Helen asks out of the blue.
“Who’s that?” Coop says through a mouthful of chili-cheese chorizo.
“Miss Boobalas.” Valerie pushes a kidney bean around the plate with her fork. “Remember her? Bursting out of her dress at the auditions.”
Evelyn sits up like a meerkat that’s heard a hawk. “Oh, yeah. The sloppy strumpet.”
Coop forces a smile. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure you do,” Helen says. “You couldn’t take your eyes off her.”
“Or, a certain part of her,” Valerie adds.
Matt just starts shoveling food in his mouth like it’s his job.
Coop, on the other hand, rolls his eyes. “Okay, look. We’ve apologized for that. Matt and I even took you girls out for ice cream as a show of our deepest regret for our appallingly caveman-like behavior. So do we never get to hear the end of this?”
Nick lets out a snort. “You guys obviously don’t know women very well.” He takes the last bite of his first chili dog and talks while he chews. “I have no idea what you did, but I can assure you, you’ll be punished for it for the rest of your lives. Or as long as you’re going out, anyway. Girls sheathe that shit and then pull it out to jab you with at random odd moments.”
Helen laughs. “We have to keep our cavemen in line somehow.”
“Santé.” Valerie raises her glass in a cheers-to-that gesture.
Just then Uncle Doug tromps into the room, carrying a massive plate of food and an NFL souvenir cup filled to the brim with Kool-Aid. “So, what did I miss?” He plops down in his chair, the neon-pink liquid sloshing over the rim of his cup.
“Nothing.” Coop smirks at Helen. “We were waiting for you before we started talking about anything worthwhile.”
“Excelente.” Uncle Doug hefts his loaded chili dog off his plate. “That’s how I like it. When the king arrives, the conversation thrives.”
Matt’s phone buzzes. He checks the screen, and his eyes go wide. “Oh, crap,” he says. “We’ve got a problem.”
It doesn’t take nearly as long as I’d hoped to get into the oversize monkey costumes. In fact, it could have taken the rest of the day and it wouldn’t have been long enough for me.
As it turns out, thirty-four minutes after we find out that Tony and Pete have bailed on us for a pickup basketball game, Nick, Matt, and me are dressed in the ill-fitting humanzee outfits and the whole crew is driving to the Elk Hills Country Club in Uncle Doug’s green rattletrap of a van.
“Everyone okay back there?” My uncle glances in the rearview mirror. He’s smoking his third joint since lunch, and I can’t believe he can still see straight, never mind pilot a car. But he’s driving just fine, which only means he’s probably got the pot tolerance of a Colombian drug lord.
“Sure,” I lie, from the second set of backseats. “It’s all good.”
I actually feel pretty carsick. I don’t know if it’s nerves, or the fact that I’m sitting in the very back of the van and breathing in wafts of smoke through the rubbery stench of this monkey mask, but the chili-cheese sausages are starting to seriously complain to the tropical punch Kool-Aid about their current accommodations.
Not to mention I feel totally claustrophobic in this costume. I try to casually tug at my monkey-crotch, which is riding up and cutting in to my mansack.
“Hey.” Coop swats my furry leg. “Don’t play with your chimp-choad, dawg. Those costumes have to last for the whole shoot. We don’t need your simian semen gumming them up.”
“I’m not playing with anything. The costume’s a little big, okay? I’m adjusting.”
“Yeah, well, don’t adjust too vigorously.” Coop chuckles. “Someone else might have to wear that thing at some point.”
“Be my guest,” I say.
Coop throws up his hands. “Hey, we’ve already discussed this. I need to be behind the scenes to direct. This whole operation has to be perfectly timed or we’re screwed.”
“These costumes are hotter than an oven,” Matt says from the first set of backseats, his voice muffled by the mask.
“Yeah, but they smother your buck snorts pretty good.” Nick lifts his shaggy left butt cheek and rips a meaty rumbler. “Okay, well, maybe not that good.” He doubles over laughing.
The warm-wet-manure stench hijacks the int
erior of the van almost immediately.
“Oh, man. Come on.” As if I wasn’t feeling nauseous enough already. I shove my ape nose out the minuscule air slit afforded by the latched windows back here and sniff away, trying to replace the poo particles in my nostrils with the clean outside air.
Evelyn smacks Nick’s hairy head. “Real classy.”
“What? I’m just getting into character. Chimps are disgusting creatures. They fart just like truckers and hurl their own dukers. Isn’t that right, guy?” Nick grabs Matt’s neck and shakes him violently.
“Could you not, please?” Matt complains. “I’m hot enough in this thing.”
Valerie leans over and examines the seam between Matt’s mask and body. “Maybe we should have added some ventilation. We’ll have to see about that when we get home later.”
“All right,” Coop says, glancing down at his notebook. “Let’s go over the game plan. The Elk Hills’ website says the Rico Petrelli party is taking place in the Amethyst Room. That’s in the east wing of the club. It’s the only thing going on this afternoon, so it’ll be easy to find.”
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” I ask. “I mean, it’s the poor guy’s sixtieth birthday celebration. Couldn’t we do this somewhere else?”
Coop cants his head. “Don’t be a schween. This is the perfect opportunity to get some real fear on tape. It’s exactly what we need to make our film stand out. Besides, my dad’s worked on this Rico dude’s Rolls-Royce and he says he’s a royal dingus. Getting mechanics fired for no reason, hitting on the young receptionists, throwing garbage out his window as he drives away. Basically, he’s a pig, so he deserves whatever he gets. But be careful. Apparently dawg’s got a bad temper. So we’re going to want to get in and get out as fast as we can.”
“Hey,” Nick says, “I had just had a great idea. Wouldn’t it be cool if the monkeys could talk? That way they could threaten the party guests. Write us some dialogue, Sean.”
