Worst. Person. Ever. (21 page)

Eventually, with utmost fortitude, I clamped my right thumb and forefinger on Shelley’s skin tag just at the moment our bus driver chose to run over a drunken Samoan, who quickly came to reside behind the bus’s front right tire. There was a catastrophic bump, and in the blink of an eye, Shelley’s skin tag ripped away from her shoulder, prompting her to shriek like a smoke detector. Dazzling Carrie-esque crimson fountains geysered upward. Shelley dashed for the door, as did our driver. I looked at my
hand: in the shock of it all, my finger and thumb had seized up, leaving me unable to drop my newly liberated satanic flesh nubbin.

Neal yanked me away from the appalling mess on Shelley’s seat back: “Ray, for God’s sake, don’t get any blood on the Cure shirt.”

Shelley was out on the roadside shrieking, as was our driver, who then quickly fled on foot.

The TV production staff couldn’t wait to see the carcass beneath us and quickly left the bus like Muppets vacating a vaudeville stage. Fortunately, everyone assumed Shelley had a nosebleed or some other form of collateral damage from the collision and completely ignored her.

Neal whispered, “Ray, maybe Miss Skin Tag doesn’t remember what happened—you know—post-traumatic shock from our bus having run over a Samoan.”

Beneath the bus, the corpse had an almost cartoon-like dusty tire tread overtop his kidneys and lower back.

“He’s a goner, he is,” said Neal. “Saw lots of accidents like this back in my paramedic days—mostly after sunset at the end of bank holidays.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do for him, Neal?”

“Nope. Can’t comfort him, because he’s dead.”

The crew was now photographing the scene with their iPhones. Shelley, thank Christ, had stopped shrieking and joined the rubbernecking crowd, her right hand clamped to the wound on her left shoulder.

Fiona, now out of the bus, dragged her attention away from her phone and was also staring at our dusty, motionless, unfortunate speed bump. She looked towards me, made an
ugh
noise and then went over to Shelley. “You: what happened to your shoulder?”

“I—I used to have a skin tag there, and now it’s gone. I’ve no idea what happened.”

“You lost a skin tag in the accident?”

I glanced ever so casually Shelley’s way and Fiona caught me. “Raymond Gunt, you come over here right now.”

I thought,
You festering twat
, yet I couldn’t help but obey.

“What do you know about this woman’s shoulder?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Fiona X-rayed my soul. “This woman here—”

“My name is Shelley,” Shelley said.

“Shelley here lost a skin tag during the accident, and you were sitting directly behind her.”

I played it cool. “I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing too painful, I hope. Nasty things, skin tags. The devil’s doorbells.”

Shelley stared at me. From within her pain-cramped face, recognition emerged. “Raymond Gunt?
Ray?
”

I was baffled. “Um, yes …?”

“It’s me, Shelley.”

“Shelley …” I scoured my memory banks.

“Kodak Shelley. Los Angeles Airport. 1985.”

Dear
God
 … This was the Shelley I’d banged in the executive lounge’s men’s lav at LAX back in 1985. “Shelley! Yes, Kodak Shelley. Lovely to see you again. How are you?” I was desperately trying to remember that 1985 shag and whether there was anything iffy about it.

“You two know each other?” Fi asked.

“Intimately,” said Shelley. “And not only that, after he had his way with me in the airport lounge toilet at LAX, Raymond here stole a set of wide-angle lenses from my
display case. I had to replace them, and it cost me eight hundred bucks, and I almost lost my job, too.” Shelley’s eyes had become snaky and vengeful.

“That was
swag
, for Christ’s sake,” I protested. “Nobody ever pays for fucking
swag
at conventions. You should have put it on the entertainment tab the way everyone else does.”

Shelley raised her bloody hand to slap me, and I reflexively extended my own hand to ward off the blow. My fingers unclenched, revealing the skin tag pasted onto the meat of my thumb. Shelley screamed. “You monster! You stole my goddamn skin tag! I don’t believe it!”

Fiona smiled. “I knew it: good old Raymond, wrecking everything again.”

Sarah raced over to us as Shelley continued to scream. “Good lord, Shelley, you’re hurt—you’re bleeding!” She placed a comforting hand on Shelley’s unsoiled other shoulder, vibrating with concern. (Oh!
My Sarah! What an angel!
)

Shelley attacked, clawing at me with her warty she-talons. “You fricking ghoul—stealing body parts! What the hell is wrong with a person like you?”

“Jesus, Shelley, I did you a favour.”

“What the hell?”

“I removed a piece of possibly carcinogenic tissue from your shoulder. I most likely saved your life, and what do I get from you? Nothing but shit. I’m a hero. I saved you from getting cancer, Shelley, that’s right—
cancer!
”

Neal leapt to my defence then, containing her flailing arms in a bear hug. “Best remove that shirt right now, Ray. I can’t stop this ticking time bomb forever, and I want my shirt in mint condition.”

“Right.” I doffed it and handed it to Sarah, who, sensing the need for a collective gear change, said, “Look! Brave and kind Raymond is removing his shirt so he can crawl under the bus and remove the victim!” She smiled at me. “You are a wonder, Raymond Gunt.
LACEY
must be so proud of you.”

On cue,
LACEY
entered our charmed circle. “Gallant, isn’t he?” She picked up a small chunk of coral and threw it at my chest. “You go, hero boy. Save our day,
vakubati.
”

Shelley spat at me: “You
prick.
”

Sarah looked at Shelley. “Calm down, Shelley. I’ll have my personal assistant, Scott, bring you some pre-moistened towelettes so you can clean yourself up.” She pulled a small walkie-talkie from her purse. “Scott, can you bring me the tub of baby wipes right now?”

Scott was five feet away. “Roger.” He walked three steps towards us and removed the plastic tub of wipes from his knapsack. He handed them to Shelley.

Sarah said, “Sweetie, don’t worry too much about the tropical parasites that sleep inside the fecal dust along the roadside. What matters most is that you feel fresh and comparatively safe.”

Stuart approached. “Gunt, get that goddamn corpse out from under the bus or we’re never going to get to the fricking dock before it’s totally dark out.”

Suddenly all eyes were on me. For better or worse, I had to lug the barbecue-grade carcass out from under the bus. Christ, it was like trying to drag a concrete-filled grand piano across a sandy beach. But after a sweat-soaked few minutes, the job was done.

Stuart barked, “Okay, everyone back in the bus.”

Sarah held up her hand. She said, “Scott, write a note to the authorities and attach it to the body with gaffer tape. His family will want to know what happened.”

“And serve him for dinner, too,” I added.

Sarah giggled. “You’re such an imp, Raymond. And possibly correct.”

Scott’s note:

He taped it onto the speed bump’s chest, and then we hopped onto the bus.

I must say, I never paid too much attention in history class when they taught about the fight for civil rights in Mississippi in the 1960s, but for the first time in my life, I was able to sense how a black man might have felt accidentally walking into a ballroom cotillion
of virginal, creamy white Daughters of the Confederacy
³
in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1961. As I got onto the bus, my busmates silently simmered at me.

Shelley led the attack: “I can’t believe you stole my skin tag. That is so disgusting. Why would anyone even
do
that?”

I glanced at my thumb, where it remained, stuck with blood. I peeled it away—it felt like masking tape—and discreetly dropped it on the floor.

“You are the worst human being I have ever met,” Shelley went on. “The. Worst. Person. Ever. And what in hell’s name are you even doing on our production bus? Don’t tell me you’re involved in this show!”

Stuart piped up, “He’s a B-unit cameraman.”

“Where is he slated to stay?”

A guy with a clipboard volunteered, “South island camera camp B.”

“Wrong. He’s staying on the yacht,” said Shelley.

Stuart was taken aback. “The yacht?”

“Yes. In room seventeen.”

“Ahhh …” Stuart smiled. “Perfect. Oh, and by the way, people, this is also the pinhead who spelled the ‘Harry’ in ‘Harry Potter’ with an ‘e’.”

“I can’t believe anyone could be that stupid,” Shelley said.

A chant began: “Pot-
ter
. Pot-
ter
. Pot-
ter
.”

Scott was in the driver’s seat and the bus belched forward. Fuck these people. I was sick of them and hungry, too. “Neal, we never had a proper dinner in the end. Is there anything to eat on this fucking bus?”

Always prepared, our Neal. He tossed me a cardboard meal box that contained a vacuum-wrapped cheese block manufactured 60,000 miles away in a Republican cheese factory in Nebraska, a cellophane packet of saltine crackers, an unripe banana and a—dear-fucking-God, surely not. My brain couldn’t absorb what I had just seen—and once seen, it could never be unseen. There in the box was a …

“Look, Ray—it’s a knork!”

I was speechless.

Neal prattled on, “I’ve always wanted to see one in real life. It’s sister cutlery to the spork, and it’s sometimes called a Nelson fork, after Horatio Nelson, who used this type of cutlery after losing his right arm in 1797.”

“Fuck me with a power tool, I
would
end up saddled with a living Wikipedia.”

“Nothing wrong with displaying a bit of knork spirit, Ray.”

I could feel my eyes bulging from my skull. “Neal, for fuck sake, if you keep on discussing hybrid cutlery, I’ll have you ball-gagged and tossed off the yacht like a Belarussian hooker.”

“I’m just saying, Horatio Nelson was a smart man, Ray. But okay, then, seeing as you’re being ungrateful about your snack pack, maybe you’d like some trail mix instead.” He took my box and handed me a foil packet.

“That’s very gracious of you, Neal.”

I grabbed the bag, ripped it open and chugged its entire contents, having only millionths of a second to think the two fateful words that mar my life on earth:
macadamia nuts.

“Whoops!” said Neal. “My mistake. Sweet dreams and do try to be a bit nicer to me when you wake up.”

Blackness.

When I oozed my way back into consciousness, I felt a rotating motion gently scrubbing my gentleman’s region.
God bless the South Seas!

The warm, smooth finger teased its way towards my mangina—
ahhhh
. My eyelids squidged open a bit, and the truth was revealed: Billy, Fiona’s assistant, last seen the previous week in her Covent Garden offices, was giving me a sponge bath wearing rubber gloves and using a foam scrub brush with an extended handle like they use in prison kitchens filled with all those rapey-looking cooks.

“What the fuck! Billy, get your hands off my nether bits!” My head felt like two train cars colliding.

“Oh. Good morning, Raymond. I’d like to point out that my hands aren’t touching you. All the tea in China couldn’t—well, whatever. Not to worry. Fiona and I drew straws, and I got the shorty, so here I am playing Nurse Jackie. Had a nice little coma, did we?”

“How long have I been out of it?”

“Maybe two days.”

“Where am I?”

“The luxurious TV network yacht, obviously.”

I tried to reach for a towel to cover my nether bits, but an IV line got in the way. “Jesus, Billy, why are you washing me?”

“If you must know, darling, you gave birth to a bowling ball of fecal matter a few hours back, and its odour got into the ventilator shaft and began to … 
infuse
the racquetball court next door. People were retching.”