Looking for Mrs Dextrose

by Nick Griffiths

  The lapsed explorer did not play ball. “Minking lies!” he railed, offering a renewed but fruitless struggle. “That minker kidnapped me!”

  “What’s a minker?” asked Bri.

  “Long story,” I said.

  “I still think we should throw him out,” asserted Socks ‘N’ Sandals’ patron.

  “Agreed,” said Si and Kai.

  “I too,” added Importos, from the safety of his table, having not lifted a finger to help.

  But Dextrose had ceased paying attention and was sniffing the air. “I know that smell!” He inhaled with relish. “Booze! Lovely minking booze!” He swiped aside his captors, at once superhuman, flung himself at the bar, tumbled over it, landed in a heap on the other side and was up in a jiffy, pouring himself a pint. Once content with the head he walked around to the customers’ side of the bar, pushed Duane off his stool and occupied it himself. Though Duane’s head hit the floor with a thud, he uttered not a peep and lay at Dextrose’s feet in the shape of a homicide-department outline.

  Far from being appalled, Bri, Si and Kai’s expressions became sunnily dispossessed.

  “Hold on, fellas,” went Kai. “He’s only one of us!”

  “So who the fuck is this?” demanded Si, pointing a twiggy finger at me.

  “Yeah, go sit with your ladyfriend,” snapped Kai, nodding towards Importos.

  “Bloody nerve,” grumbled Bri. “Taking up our valuable time like that.”

  Importos was tapping an empty pint glass on the table when I pulled up the chair opposite. He glared down at me with those murky green eyes. “Where my beer? Why you to buy zem beer? Zey stupid.”

  “They’re not!” I riposted without thinking it through. Anyway, how dare he? “Why should I buy your drink? Why don’t you buy your own drink?”

  “Because,” he said, in the tone of one addressing the intellectually challenged. “I. To. Have. No. Money.”

  “You mean you’ve come all this way without money?”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “So I’m expected to pay for you?”

  Importos looked gobsmacked. “I to come all zis way. For to help you.” He jabbed me above the breast. “Is most little can to do.”

  “But you haven’t actually helped!” I thought for a moment, hoping to speak fairly. “Besides when you looked through that window just now.”

  “See? I to help!”

  “Well it’s hardly Sherpa Tensing, is it?”

  “Who she?”

  I was about to become infuriated when I remembered Detritos and my lies. Could guilty parties buy off their guilt with alcohol, I wondered? In my slightly inebriated state, those cold ales having gone straight to my head, I decided it was worth a shot. “Don’t worry about it,” I told Importos. “What are you having?”

  “I to have two beer. To say sorry.”

  My crimes, I suspected, would require considerably more than two.

  Having bought another round for the entire pub, including Duane, who was quite possibly dead, I retook my seat opposite Importos, cradling four fresh ales (if Importos needed two, so did I). As Bri had poured, I had overheard Dextrose launching into that old chestnut about Nadia of Bujina, his audience already rapt.

  The tall man chugged on his first pint. “When last time you to see bruzzer?”

  He wasn’t ever going to let it lie, as I had feared. I was going to have to tell him something to put him off the scent – but where to start? How to wheedle around Detritos’s demise while making my tale seem palatable?

  The facts, as I had experienced them, were these:

  Detritos was a member of a worldwide network of secret agents, named Secret Heroes Ho! (SHH! for short). He had become convinced – here I stress that he was very probably delusional – that a terrorist group was plotting to fire a laser at the moon, dragging it out of earth orbit to crash into our planet, unless a ransom was paid. The dwarf had stolen the ruby at the heart of the laser, and the terrorists wanted it back. The events had culminated in a showdown beside the crater of the volcano, Monserratum.

  Now, how much of that was Importos likely to believe? The dwarf had made me an honorary member of the network, complete with my own ‘SHH!’ button badge – still attached to my tank top, in my baggage – and as such I could hardly come out with, “Did you know that Detritos was a spy?” which didn’t feel terribly Mata Hari.

  No, I would have to play it subtly.

  When had I last seen his brother?

  “He comes and goes,” I replied, then winked. “As well you know.”

  Importos leaned away from me. “Why you to do eye zing?” he spluttered.

  Interesting, I thought: he hadn’t taken my hint. Perhaps he knew nothing of Detritos’s secret activities? How best to phrase such a question without giving too much away? I settled on: “What do you know of your brother’s secret activities?” instantly wishing I had left out ‘secret’. It struck me that I was quite drunk.

  The tall man looked quite taken aback. “What ze to fuck? What zis secret active?”

  That was the clincher: he knew nothing of Detritos’s spying, I felt certain. So, could I now use the secretive nature of the dwarf’s alleged profession to my advantage? Before I could think of a reply, however, Importos spoke to me conspiratorially: “Wait. For many time, I have zink Detritos hide from Importos somezing.”

  Don’t reveal your hand too soon, I told myself. “Yes?”

  “Zis secret active. Is very secret?”

  What sort of a question was that? “Er. Yes.”

  “He to do in dark?”

  Quite possibly. “Yes.”

  “He to do alone? Maybe one uzzer person?”

  I had joined Detritos on his final mission, otherwise I imagined he acted alone. “Yes.”

  “He in, out, zen gone?”

  SAS style? Pretty much. “Yes.”

  “He to make up name, not to use real?”

  Of course! Detritos had had a codename: Green Sparrow. “That’s right!”

  Importos nodded sagely, grinning. “He is homosex man prostitute!”

  What? No! “Yes!” Shit. (It had just sounded better than: “He is dead spy!”)

  Importos clapped his very large hands together and laughed. “Haha! Zis bruzzer, he crazy!”

  I appeared to be compounding the error.

  At least that seemed to appease him and he began opening up, telling me about their childhood in Green Golan. He was the elder of the two, he said. Only when Detritos was ten years old had their parents begun to accept he was unlikely to join the family business (being professional basketball).

  As a result, Importos had become the golden boy and Detritos was increasingly shunned. “One Christmas,” the tall man told me, “parent zey to give Importos many zing: basketball short, basketball shirt, basketball sock, basketball shoe, basketball hoop, basketball ball, television for to watch basketball, Harlem Globe Trotter calendar. Parent, zey to give Detritos leg of chair. To tell him: you to get next leg year later, and so on. Detritos very sad.”

  Poor bugger. Though he hadn’t been overly giving himself, he had always been generous with his actions. There was no doubting that I would have been dead were it not for him. What had been his last words to me? “We beeg friend, yes?”

  Yes, we had been big friends.

  “Hey! Meester Alexander! Importos to tell good story. At least fucking to listen!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Miles away.” I noticed we had finished our drinks.

  As I got up to buy more beers, I stumbled and nearly took a fall. The long day, the sun, my exertions, and now the booze, had all taken their toll. I also realised that I needed the toilet for the first time since entering Socks ‘N’ Sandals, no doubt a result of dehydration and the previous night’s unusual diet at the feast with the Q’tse. Importos’ next free beer would have to wait.

  Bri, Si and Kai were lost in Dextrose’s latest tale – one I recognised from The Lost Incompetent, concerning crewman Shar
k’s conviction that he had seen the Holy Grail in a vision – as I hovered behind them, pathetically holding up my hand like a schoolboy, hoping to gain their attention.

  “Which way’s the toilet?” I asked, timidly.

  Bri, Si and Kai burst into laughter as Dextrose reached one of his inevitable punchlines.

  “Which way’s the toilet?” I tried again, louder.

  “Mink off!” snapped Dextrose, not even looking at me.

  “Yeah, mink off!” went Si, turning and sneering.

  “Yeah, you minker!” went Kai, to renewed guffaws.

  I gave up. “I’ll find it myself, shall I?”

  No one replied.

  Well, it couldn’t be that tricky: there were only those two cubicles to choose from.

  I made first for the one on the left.

  “Not that one,” came Bri’s raised voice. “That’s my room.” Did he mean that he actually lived here: in this crapfest, in that tiny space?

  As I pulled on the wobbly door-handle of the other cubicle, I was hit by a wave of acrid fumes that made me recoil. Twin urinals, stained and leaking, side by side – fairground attractions for touristic germs – and sodden wooden flooring, nothing else. No sit-down.

  Could I hold it in? I hovered for a moment and decided that I couldn’t. What to do? That which had begun as a desire had elevated to desperation.

  I returned to the bar and closed the door behind me, gratefully gulping in the comparatively fresher air. “Excuse me!” I said with feeling.

  “What now?” wailed Bri, as if I had been pestering him with sanitation-based enquiries all night.

  Dextrose slammed a fist on the bar, Kai put his hands on his hips and glared at me, then Si did the same.

  “Is there anything more than a urinal?” I ventured.

  Kai slapped his knee. “Oh that’s lovely! D’y’hear that, Si? He wants to know if there’s ‘anything more than a urinal?’That is priceless!”

  “Yeah, that’s priceless,” agreed Si, slapping his knee.

  Kai tapped Dextrose on the arm. “D’y’hear that, Mr Dextrose? He said he wants…”

  “I heard what he minking said,” growled Dextrose.

  The idiot looked put out. “Yeah, well I was just going to say, you should put that in your next book. That’s all.”

  As if there would be a next book, given the state of him. Were any member of the Dextrose family likely to document their travels, it would have to be me. In fact, I decided there and then, I might even do just that. If he could do it, I was damn well sure I could. The conviction gave me strength.

  “Hilarious as my query was, I do need ‘more than a urinal’, so if you’d point me to the sit-down I’d be very grateful.”

  Kai winked at Bri. Then Bri said, “Yeah, listen, mate. I never got round to plumbing one in. So we go out back, if you get my drift. There’s a hole out there, mate.” He pointed at the back door.

  Socks ‘N’ Sandals’ patrons hooted derisively.

  “Mind your pee while you poop, mate!” wheezed Kai. “Wouldn’t want you attracting one of them toads!”

  I swallowed, hard, and stared at the back door.

  They were all watching, stifling glee with hands to mouths, as I lifted the catch and pulled.

  “Go on, mate,” called out Si, the weasel. “It won’t bite – or will it?”

  The comedy genius.

  I had no intention of letting them witness my nerves shredding as I wept freely, so I dived outside, slamming the door shut behind me. Instantly my heart stopped and my senses came alive.

  It was quiet out there, disconcertingly so, though the dry, cool night air provided some comfort. My eyes darted from side to side, scanning what ground I could make out under the faint illumination of a crescent moon. I stood rigid, straining my ears to detect the presence of even the tiniest movement – because one thing was certain out there: I was not alone.

  Any fool knows that night-time equals party time for the unconsciously inhuman. Earthly abominations on four, six, eight, ten legs and more, I feared them all. They were all going about their dastardly business under cover of darkness, smelling the air keenly, seeking person-flesh.

  As I feared I imagined the sounds, so they came. A tiny footfall here, a shuffling in the sand over there, the Doppler-effected buzz of insect wings cavorting around my ears. Or was my mind playing tricks?

  …What was that? Over there, perhaps a hundred yards up ahead, out into the gloom. Had that been… a scuttle? It had. What scuttles, I wondered. Rodents? Yes, rodents. Rodents with their teeth bared, rife with the diseases of carrion. Or lizards: they might easily scuttle. All nasty-scaled and venom-fuelled, with their creepy crests and pensioner-skin. Arthropods. The family of fuckers including the scorpion. Anything with an exoskeleton was not pissing about. Arthropods would surely scuttle.

  I backed towards the door, already only a few inches away, shuddering, and marched on the spot, which kept each alternate foot off the ground for a small amount of time. My intention was to confuse ground-based attackers.

  But, wait a second. Hadn’t that sound been more of a scamper? It had. Hadn’t it? A scamper was surely less sinister than a scuttle. Stars of Disney cartoons scampered. Yes, it had been a scamper, I convinced myself.

  Hauling down a deep breath, I relaxed very slightly. Fact-wise, I hadn’t actually seen anything, even with my night vision starting to kick in. I had thought I’d heard movement, but the sozzled paranoid mind is apt to play tricks.

  Just maybe I could do my business real fast, if I found Bri’s hole? “Come on!” I told myself out loud.

  And then I heard the tiny, high-pitched ‘Ribbit’ – at least, I could have sworn I did. I’d been so worried about non-amphibians that the twinkle-toed toad had completely slipped my mind. No longer. Thumbnail-sized, the sadistic critters might feasibly have been gathering around me as I cowered in the doorway. Tens of them, perhaps hundreds, barely burrowed into the sand, only their beady eyes above the surface, gazing longingly at my fly region. ‘Pull down the zip! Pull down the zip!’ I imagined them urging me in toad thoughts.

  Or… Sweet Jesus, what was that? Directly to my left, and close enough that I might be able to touch it. I darted my gaze towards the sound, saw nothing. There it was again! Was that… toad frottage?

  It was the final straw.

  I turned on a penny, grabbed the catch and hurled myself back through the door with such abandon that I tripped on the step and was launched into Socks ‘N’ Sandals, arms and legs flailing, like Gene Kelly via catapult. As my internal instrument panels went haywire and my gyros worked to right me, I heard the joyous whoops and catcalls of the guys at the bar. I burned with indignation.

  Now I really had to go. The fear had exacerbated my need.

  As I picked myself up off the floor, Kai taunted me: “Brought any toads in with yer, Pils mate? If yer know what I mean!”

  “Yes, I know what you mean, Kai,” I said. “I’ll use the toilet in here, if that’s OK with you?”

  Bri piped up: “Hey, you can’t use that if…”

  I cut in: “Don’t worry, Bri. The moment has passed.”

  It hadn’t.

  I would have to work quickly, since Bri would be suspicious, but I had a plan.

  Pulling a bag of Sheep Shavings from my jacket pocket, I emptied the contents onto the floor. Peeing into a urinal with one hand, I held the opened bag beneath me with the other, trousers around my ankles. The bodily functions were such a blessed relief that I almost failed to hear the footsteps on floorboards – someone was approaching. There was no time to think.

  I dropped the filled bag into my trousers, yanked them up and was zipping up my fly as the door swung open and Bri stood in the doorway, brow furrowed, gob agape despite the smell. “Are you done yet?”

  “Sure,” I said, praying the bag had closed by itself. “All sorted!”

  He looked down at the floor. “Where’d these Sheep Shavings come from?”

  �
��Those?” I thought fast. “Already there when I came in.”

  It confused his tiny mind and he mulled it over while seconds ticked by. Finally he decided: “Yeah. Sounds reasonable.”

  Great. Now leave me alone. Go!

  But Bri didn’t go. With the mannered gait of a detective cross-examining suspects on sofas, he walked to the next-door urinal and began very slowly to grapple with his own fly. Though I felt sure his need was not genuine, what could I do?

  So I smiled at him and edged gingerly towards the door, hoping he would not spot me mincing unnaturally. And when I sat down very gingerly opposite Importos, having exchanged nods with the chaps at the bar, wearing a fixed grin, I made sure my thighs were very far apart and just prayed I wasn’t perched on anything untoward.

  “Where beer?” demanded Importos. I noticed he was slurring.

  How was I going to get rid of the bag?

  When I failed to respond, Importos persisted: “Where beer? You to buy beer.”

  What if the contents were already seeping out?

  “Hey!” he banged his empty glass down on the table.

  It did feel warm down there, but it also felt dry. I reckoned I’d got away with it. Reached a stasis.

  “I to talk!”

  “Yes, I know you’re to talking! Look, why don’t you get the drinks for a change?” I chucked some cash at him.

  He shovelled it up in his great mitts. “OK,” he huffed. “Zis one only.”

  I could try to work the bag down my trouser leg and ditch it on the floor, like they did with all that soil in The Great Escape. But what if it got stuck? Or someone spotted me shaking my leg vigorously?

  Importos returned with four more beers. My head swam. The alcohol, the wankers at the bar, the tension, the confusion: they were all getting to me.

  I made a snap decision, rose and headed for the toilet. I’d extricate the bag and just get rid of it. Anywhere.

  But Bri’s voice emerged, among my swirling plans. “No you don’t mate! Bog’s out of order!”

  I didn’t even protest. I just turned on my heel and sat down.

  Importos’ long, happy face was there in mine, as he lofted his glass toward me. “Hey! As to say in Green Golan: ‘Pingu!’” He had free beer. He was smiling.