Dead Clown Barbecue (31 page)

"Let's go get them," said Chester. "And then I wouldn't mind going to the emergency room."

We all agreed that was a good idea. I offered to go get the body parts myself and meet them at the hospital, but Chester wanted to stick with me. I sort of took offense to this as well, since he was hinting that I was some creepy weirdo who'd hoard somebody else's body parts. I would do no such thing.

We stole Harry's car and drove back to my apartment. Once there I skipped the tour and headed straight for my refrigerator. I took the baggie out of the crisper and handed it to Chester.

He opened it up, removed the paper towel, and unwrapped it on my kitchen counter, which seemed unhygienic and rude.

"There's only an ear," he said. "Where's my nose?"

"It's not in the bag?"

"No. Are you sure that's where you put it?"

I tried to recreate the series of events in my mind, just in case I was misremembering, but no, I'd definitely put the nose and ear in the same plastic bag and then in the refrigerator. I would have remembered taking one of them out. And I hadn't seen either Harry or Baldy go into the kitchen.

"Hmmmmm," I said, trying to buy myself some time.

"You'd better not have lost my nose," Chester warned me.

"Let's all calm down," said Josh. "It can't have gone far."

"It didn't go anywhere!" Chester pointed at me. "He's hiding it from us!"

"Why would I do something like that?"

"I don't know! That's why the idea is so disturbing! Maybe you're going to sell it!"

"What kind of market value could it possibly have? Ten bucks, maybe? You've gone insane."

"I think
you've
gone insane. That would explain why you'd steal my nose! Give it back!"

"I did not steal your nose," I said. "That's ludicrous."

"Is it?" Chester asked. "Is it?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Yes," Josh agreed.

Chester looked at him angrily. "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on the side that doesn't involve accusations of stealing a nose." Josh pointed at me. "Look at him. Believe me, I've seen people who would steal noses. They get these weird twitches in their face, and their eyes don't move quite right, and they sometimes drool a little bit. Not a lot, not a whole flood, but they tend to have this faint little trickle coming out of one side of their mouth. And they make odd noises, almost out of normal hearing range. This guy, he doesn't do any of that."

"He's drooling right now!" Chester insisted.

"No, I'm not!"

"I saw something glisten next to his cheek! He wiped it off as soon as you started talking about drooling!"

Josh shook his head. "No, he didn't. I was watching for that kind of thing. Look, Chester, I know you've had a hard time of things recently, but we have to be logical about this. Accusing him of drooling isn't going to get your nose back."

"We'd better get it."

"We will. But we have to use our brains. Think about this."

All three of us stood there for a moment, thinking about it.

My only reasonable explanation was all of the stress had caused me to acquire a second personality. But I didn't want Josh and Chester to start thinking along those lines, so I didn't share my hypothesis. It was also possible that his nose had simply decomposed more rapidly than anticipated.

"You did check your pockets, right?" Josh asked me.

I'd never put the nose in my pocket, and would've remembered if I had, but I patted my pockets anyway. "Not there."

There was a knock at the door. I groaned. Knocks at the door had really worked out poorly for me this week.

"I'll answer it," said Chester.

"Oh, sure, let the noseless guy open the door," said Josh. "That won't freak anybody out or anything."

"I just want to start feeling normal again!"

Instead of contributing to the conversation, I walked into the living room and answered the door. Standing in the hallway was my despised downstairs neighbor Preston. As always, he had thick glasses, crooked teeth, and a bowl haircut that was unfashionable even by my standards. "Hello," he said, looking like he was trying hard not to laugh.

"May I help you?"

"You have a very thin floor. And I have a very thin ceiling. You also seem to have very thin carpet. You know what this means, right?"

I took a wild guess: "You know about the severed nose?" I'm all for playing coy, but there's also a time when you simply have to respect everybody's intelligence and get matters out into the open.

Preston nodded. "I do."

Chester pushed his way forward. "Give it back! Give it back!"

Preston gave him a serene smile. "All in due time. Your nose is safe, I assure you. It's been hidden. To find it, you'll need to decipher a series of clues, each more perplexing than the last. If you have the wits, perception, and courage to make it to the end, you'll get your precious nose back."

"We really don't have time for this," I informed him.

"Well, make time! You always thought you were so much smarter than me, didn't you? Now you can prove it!"

"I never said I was smarter than you."

"You've implied it."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, I've said things that are smarter than what you've said and done things that are smarter than what you've done, but I've never been condescending about it."

"Either way, I've hated you from the first — no, second — moment we laid eyes on each other. And now if you want the nose back, you'll have to prove your worth."

"How about we make a deal?" Chester asked. "Give me back my nose and I won't bite off yours?"

"Threaten me all you like. It won't do any good. I have the upper hand, and the only way you'll get what you so desperately seek is to play my little game."

Chester grabbed Preston by the collar, yanked him into my living room, then spun him around and twisted his arm up behind his back. "Give it back, geek!"

"No!"

Chester twisted his arm harder, making Preston cry out in pain. "Give it back or I'll break your arm!"

"No! You have to do the perplexing clues!"

"How many are there?"

"Three."

"That's all?"

"I didn't have a lot of time to think them up."

"Well, either way, we don't have time for this. Give me the nose or I'll break your arm."

"If you break my arm, I'll be non-communicative about the nose because I'll be too busy shrieking in pain."

"It might be worth it. I have a lot of frustration to work off."

"Oh, come on," said Preston, getting that whiny tone in his voice that always annoyed me. "At least look at the first clue. You don't have to do all three."

"No."

"How about this? I'll be with you the whole time, offering hints. That way you're guaranteed not to get stuck."

"What's the point of that?" asked Chester. "It's like playing a video game with a cheat code."

"People play video games with cheat codes all the time. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun."

Chester considered that. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."

"So you'll do it?"

"No!" said Chester, twisting Preston's arm back even further. "Give me back my frickin' tongue!"

"Tongue?" Josh asked.

"I meant nose! I'm stressed!"

"We should at least look at the first clue," I said.

Chester glared at me. "Nobody asked you."

"It's my apartment. And I helped save your life. And it sounds kind of fun. And there's no reason to be rude."

"He broke into your apartment and stole a body part. That's a pretty good reason to be rude."

"Everybody knock it off," said Josh. "Every second we stand here arguing, more bacteria is forming on the nose. Let's just look at the first stupid clue so we can move on with our lives."

Chester let go of Preston's arm. "Fine. Whatever."

Preston smiled and took a small white envelope out of his back pocket. He handed it to me with dramatic flourish. I tore it open and glanced at the card inside. "Oh, okay. I know where this is. We've gotta go downstairs."

Preston frowned. "You were supposed to read the clue out loud."

"I don't need to. It's at the birdfeeder."

"But . . . you were supposed to read the clue out loud. That's part of the game."

"
If it's the next clue thou seek, look ye where they fill their beak.
It's the birdfeeder, right?"

"Yeah." Preston looked so crestfallen that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"I was thinking about the birdfeeder earlier today," I explained. "Otherwise it would have taken me a while to figure it out."

"So why don't you just tell us the next clue instead of making us walk all the way downstairs?" asked Chester.

"Forget it," said Preston with a deep sigh. "Your nose is on the trophy case in my living room."

We hurried down the flight of stairs and went into Preston's apartment.

"It's in my grandfather's urn," Preston said, pointing to a silver urn resting on top of the trophy case.

Chester stopped in his tracks. "Owned by your grandfather or containing your grandfather?"

"Well, he used to be in there. After he was cremated, my mom kept him on her entertainment center, but then she moved into an apartment that was too small for the entertainment center, and the urn didn't go with any of her new furniture, so she asked me to keep it. I didn't really want to keep his ashes at my place, so I poured them out and kept the urn."

"Are you telling me that my nose is in an urn that used to contain cremated remains?" Chester asked.

"I washed it out first. I mean, jeez."

"But there used to be a dead old guy in there?"

"What if your mom gets new furniture that matches the urn?" I asked.

"I'd just burn some newspaper or something. It's not like the ashes had any identifying characteristics."

"If there are dead grandpa ashes up my nose, I'm going to kill you," said Chester. "Maybe not literally, but it'll
feel
like it was literally."

"Wouldn't feeling like I was literally being killed just feel like the end of pain?" asked Preston. "I would expect it to be kind of soothing."

Chester glared at him. "Don't make me beat you. I swear I'll beat you. I'll beat you like a drunken hobo. I'll beat you like a beached whale. I'll beat you like a handcuffed panda. I'll —"

"You should really just take the urn so we can get you to the hospital," said Josh.

Chester pushed Preston out of the way and walked over to the entertainment center. He picked up the urn and frowned. "You didn't put the lid on very well." As he lifted it, a roach scurried out of the urn and ran along Chester's arm. He flicked it to the floor, then hurriedly squatted down and poured the contents out onto the carpet. At least ten roaches ran off, leaving behind the nose. It looked a bit nibbled.

"I, uh, thought it had been sealed better," said Preston. "Please don't kill me."

"You let roaches eat my nose!" Chester shouted. "Do you realize how disgusting that is? Do you? Would you want roaches eating
your
nose?"

"Look at the bright side," I said. "They could have been munching on it while it was still attached."

Chester hit me.

"Everybody calm down," said Josh. "Preston, your careless and sloppy attitude toward my brother's nose is deplorable, but there's nothing we can do about that now."

"Oh, yes there is," said Chester. His eyes carried a spark of insanity. I saw that exact same spark once, in a man at the grocery store who started screaming that the Brussels sprouts were plotting an upcoming apocalypse. At the time, I thought he was just faking it to get a discount on the Brussels sprouts, but now I realized that he'd truly been enveloped by the cloak of madness.

"What's that?" I asked.

Chester pointed at Preston. "His nose. I want his nose."

Yes, there was a definite enveloping by the cloak of madness going on here. "You can't have his nose," Josh said, looking a bit uncomfortable. Preston started to back away.

"I believe I can." Chester grinned. It was not a sane grin. "I believe I will."

At this point, my survival instinct kicked in, and I decided to politely excuse myself from the room. After all, Preston had gotten himself into this mess by carrying our feud and his interest in gaming to ridiculous extremes, and it was up to him to get himself out.

"Well," I said, clearing my throat. "You don't need me anymore. Preston, I wish you all the best in keeping your face intact. Josh, nice meeting you, and if I ever get any mail that was supposed to go to you because we have the same name, I'll be sure to forward it. Chester, sorry about the lack of hospitality you've endured recently, but I think everything will all work out for the best. I'm going to head out for a while, maybe catch a movie if anything good is playing, possibly stop off for a burrito afterward, and I guess I'll see you all later. Have a fine evening."

I walked toward the door, waiting for the almost inevitable moment when one of the three men (most likely Chester) told me to stop. I hadn't yet decided if I would stop or not.

"Where do you think you're going?" Chester asked. The "stop" part was implied.

"I thought I explained it pretty well," I said. "You don't need me anymore. Preston, I wish you all the —"

"You're not going anywhere," said Chester.

"I'm flattered that you want to keep me around," I said, "but I'm really not part of the decision making process anymore."

"I said, you're not going anywhere!" Chester shouted, flinging his nose at me and confirming my "insane" theory beyond all reasonable doubt. His nose struck me on the forehead and stuck there.

I stood there for a moment with his nose on my forehead. After the moment ended, I'm ashamed to admit that I absolutely flipped out.

"
Get it off
!
Get it off
!" I screamed, clawing frantically at my face as I ran for the bathroom. I couldn't feel anything on my forehead anymore, but the panic didn't cease. Maybe the nose had absorbed through my flesh and bone! Maybe it was burrowing into my brain! Yes, I knew these thoughts were irrational. It was a very unnerving experience.