Body Surfing

Q. didn’t respond, his smile turned into a frown. “You buzzed, right?”
    Q. furrowed his brows. His brain had been acting weird lately—Virupaksha!—but he was pretty sure he hadn’t called for anything besides pizza. “Not that I know of.”
    “You sure?”
    “Well, since they took out the buzzers three years ago, yeah, I’m pretty sure. You just call now.”
    “Oh yeah, right. Old habits, you know? It’s like people saying dial when they call someone, even though phones don’t have dials on them anymore. I always liked dials myself but I guess you can’t really fit them on a cell, right? Anyway, whatever. We still say buzz, even though we don’t have buzzers no more.”
    Q. blinked. “Look, um, Larry. I’m watching Sleepless in —er, Gone in Sixty Seconds and my pizza’s getting cold.”
    “Maybe I’d better come in and check the system.” Larry scratched nervously behind his ear. “You know your dad. He’ll pitch a fit if he buzzes—er, calls, whatever—and no one comes.”
    When Larry put his arm down, Q. noticed that his cuff rode a good three inches above his wrist. And then he noticed something else.
    He noticed his watch.
    The Patek.
    “Hey! That’s my—”
    Before he could finish his sentence, Larry had brought one of his battered kicks up and slammed it into the accordion gate. It was a good thing Mohammed Qusay Sr. was paranoid about security: the gate bent, but held. The buttons on Larry’s too-tight shirt popped off, and Q. saw that the spaghetti sauce had soaked through to his skin.
    He saw that it wasn’t spaghetti sauce.
    He ducked through the door, grabbed the poker.
    “Get back! I’ll use this!”
    Larry didn’t look at him. He merely kicked the gate again. It buckled visibly, but still held.
    “Stop! I will use this!”
    Larry smirked. “Q., Q., Q. You know that won’t help you against me.” His foot slammed against the gate again.
    Suddenly Q. remembered where he’d seen him before.
    “You—you were the paramedic. At the accident.”
    “Forest for the trees, Q.” Larry kicked the gate again, and it bent outwards sharply. “You know who I am.”
    Something had happened to the man’s eyes. They were still washed-out druggy eyes, but they seemed to have deepened, grown almost luminous, as if phosphorescent lights were moving about in them. Glowing fish swimming at the bottom of a pond.
    Q. almost dropped the poker.
    “Leo.”

15
    E ight years ago Lawrence Bishop had been huffing glue in his cousin’s apartment on Union Street and playing a game Trim called What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Well, it wasn’t a game as much as it was a lecture. Not a lecture really. More like a rant. Or just a foaming at the mouth. It went something like this:
    “Celia Ng, right? Hot little Vietnamese chick. Five feet tall, pussy tighter than the nickel slot in a one-armed bandit? I mean, she’s got a boyfriend, but what’s the worst that could happen?”
    “Bam?” Larry said.
    “Not yet, man. So she wants to do it in the car. And I’m like hells yeah, let’s do it in the car. So we do it in the car. Then she’s like, let’s do it while driving, and I’m all like w00t! Well, I prolly wasn’t w00t! then, I was prolly dope! or shit! or, I dunno, radical!, but still, what’s the worst that could happen?”
    “Bam?”
    “Dude. Not yet. So, like, ninety-five pounds of me-so-horny bouncing up and down on my johnson, and we hit a couple-a parked cars on Allen Street? Totally worth it, right? And then she’s like faster. And I’m like I’ll go faster, bitch. And then she’s like faster you motherfucker! And I’m like I’ll show you faster, be-atch. I mean, Route 9, right? No traffic, Use Your Illusion blasting from the stereo—I don’t care what anyone says, Volume II kicks Volume I’s ass. A bottle ofJack Daniel’s and a pretty sunset. What’s the worst that could happen?”
    “Bmmf?” Lawrence Bishop muttered, his nose being stuffed in a bottle of Elmer’s rubber cement at that particular moment.
    “Dude. Not yet . So then she’s like pour some-a that Jack on my bush and lick it off. And I’m like two great tastes that taste great together! So now she’s got her head sticking out of the sunroof, flashing those little bitty Asian titties at the world, her twat’s in my mouth and she’s more or less pouring Jack down my throat while I eat her out. And I mean, yeah, the only thing I can see is her navel ring, some cute little purple stone,