Shriver

by Chris Belden

  Shriver’s face went warm. He turned away from the magazines only to see, on the opposite wall, row after row of video boxes, all featuring more exposed skin: Genital Hospital, Anal Babies, On Golden Blonde, Sorest Rump, Foreskins and a Funeral, A Beautiful Behind, Gonad the Barbarian, Anal Babies 2, Schindler’s Fist, Free My Willy, Shaving Ryan’s Privates, Edward Penishands, A Hard Man Is Good to Find, Million Dollar Boobies, Glad He Ate Her, Legally Boned, Anal Babies 3.

  “You probably think it’s pretty funny,” Cassandra said from her perch behind the counter. “After all that grief I gave you about your novel being so dirty, huh?” She held up the book she was reading: Goat Time.

  Shriver turned and headed for the exit. Through a small window in the door he saw a blizzard of mosquitoes. He couldn’t go out there again. His hands, his arms, his neck—they all itched.

  “Do you know how much a college education costs nowadays?” Cassandra asked.

  He peered up and down the block.

  “This is my third job,” Cassandra continued. “And it pays better than the other two put together.”

  Headlights spilled across the pavement, bugs dancing in the beams. A sleek sports car sped past the store, its engine growling remarkably loud, its cloth top down. Inside sat Delta Malarkey-Jones, one pudgy hand on the steering wheel, the other fending off a swarm of bugs.

  “Delta!” Shriver cried, pushing open the door. He ran across the sidewalk and into the street. “Delta!” But the roar of her car engine drowned out the sound of his voice. “Stop!” Up ahead, her taillights flared in the dark as she braked at a traffic light.

  He ran as fast as he could. When he was about twenty yards away, he saw the side street traffic light turn yellow. Delta’s light would turn green any second now. She sat in the convertible, waving her thick arms at the marauding bugs.

  “Delta!”

  He reached her just as the light switched to green.

  Without bothering to open the door, he jumped into the passenger seat.

  “Mr. Shriver?”

  “Go!”

  Delta applied her considerable weight onto the accelerator and the car jolted forward. Mosquitoes splattered against the windshield.

  “I can’t get the darn top to go down!” Delta yelled.

  Mosquitoes buzzed inside Shriver’s ears. He swatted at them, then realized the buzzing sound came from somewhere else. He turned to see a motorcycle fast approaching from behind. The driver wore all black, his face covered by a tinted, insect-flecked helmet visor. It was the man who’d been following him all day, the man who may have done away with Gonquin Smithee!

  “Delta,” he said, “can you lose that motorcycle?”

  She looked into the rearview mirror and smiled. “You betcha.” She leaned onto the gas pedal and the little convertible tore down the street. Shriver looked back and saw the motorcycle get smaller. The wheels screeched as Delta took a hard right at a yellow traffic light.

  “This is exciting!” she said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “There!” Shriver shouted, pointing to a familiar one-story building. Delta swung the wheel and the car caromed into a small parking lot. Shriver sprang from the seat and headed to the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Inside, the Bloody Duck was even smokier than yesterday.

  “Well, hello there.”

  From out of the cigarette fog came the alabaster waitress. She took Shriver’s hand and led him to the same booth he’d sat in with Blunt. Delta followed close behind and plopped herself down across from him.

  The waitress trained her green-apple eyes on Shriver. “What can I get you today?”

  He turned to Delta. “I don’t have any cash on me. Can you . . . ?”

  “Don’t you have any plastic?” she asked.

  “Plastic?”

  “Credit cards! You mean you don’t have a credit card?”

  “Course I do.” Shriver remembered he did have a credit card—sometimes he ordered items for delivery—but he kept it in a drawer at home. “I just don’t have it with me.”

  “We don’t accept plastic,” the waitress said.

  “Oh, all right,” Delta said, pulling cash from her purse. “I always bring a big wad to these things anyway. You never know when you’re going to be out gallivanting around with some tightwad author.”

  “Thank you. I’ll take a whiskey, please,” Shriver told the waitress. “Make it a double.”

  “And I’ll have a Big Wet Screw on the Beach,” Delta said.

  The waitress blinked. “Uh, I don’t think we can make one of those here.”

  “No problem. How about a shot of to-kill-ya and a beer on the side?”

  The waitress turned and disappeared into the mist.

  “So,” Delta said, “a car chase? What was that all about?”

  Shriver removed his glasses and covered his face with his hands. “Oh, Delta. I’m in so much trouble.”

  “What happened?”

  Shriver peeked at her through his fingers.

  “Tell me!” Delta ordered.

  “I was at Dr. Keaudeen’s house,” he began.

  She gasped. “That nympho gynecologist? Did you sleep with her?”

  “No! I mean—”

  Delta gasped again. “You did sleep with her!”

  “I didn’t sleep with anybody.”

  The waitress materialized, and as she set their drinks on the table, Shriver looked over Delta’s shoulder and recognized the graffiti there: NOW THAT I’M ENLIGHTENED, I’M JUST AS MISERABLE AS EVER.

  Delta picked up her shot glass. “Salut.” Shriver hoisted his tumbler and they both drank. Delta smacked her lips and said, “So, are you going to tell me what happened with Keaudeen or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”

  She watched him with eager, bulging eyes.

  “That part doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “It matters to me.”

  “What would you say,” he said, “if I told you I’m not who you think I am?”

  She looked at him closely. He noticed that her eyes were slightly crossed, as if she were staring at her own nose.

  “Okay. Then who are you?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Is this some kind of existential riddle or something?”

  “What I mean is,” Shriver said, “I’m not Shriver.”

  “You’re not Shriver?”

  “No, I am Shriver, but I’m not the Shriver you think I am.”

  “Are you drunk already?”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Well, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “What I mean is, I’m not the Shriver who wrote Goat Time.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then which Shriver are you?”

  “Some other Shriver.”

  She cocked her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a mistake. They got the wrong Shriver.”

  “Nonsense. The brochure photo . . .”

  “That’s not even me in that picture!”

  “Well, who is it, then?” she asked. “And why’d we have to lose that motorcycle, anyway?”

  “I think someone might be trying to kill Shriver.”

  “Who’d want to kill you?”

  “Not me! The real Shriver.”

  She thought a moment, then smiled.

  “Ah, I get it. You’re pulling my leg. This is some kind of stunt. It’s just the kind of thing the Shriver in your book would do.”

  “But it’s not my book!”

  “Sure, sure. Say, have you had a chance to look at my book? I really wrote it, by the way. I am the real Delta Malarkey-Jones.”

  “You think I’m crazy,” Shriver said.

  “You’re all crazy,” she said with a laugh. “Every last one of you.”

  What did it matter if Delta did or didn’t believe him? He had to get to Simone and explain. But for now he would just get drunk. He finished his wh
iskey in one gulp.

  “So, back to Lady Gyno,” Delta said.

  Shriver wiped at his nose as he recalled the musky perfume of Dr. Keaudeen’s thong. “Nothing happened.”

  Another round appeared on the table. “Gratis,” the waitress said before slinking away. The whiskey charged down his gullet and thudded into his belly. A warm chill spread out toward his extremities. Smoke-shrouded specters moved around the bar, murmuring.

  “So Keaudeen didn’t make a move on you?” Delta asked.

  “Yes, that happened, but . . .”

  “You turned her down?”

  “Course I did,” Shriver said, his tongue like a dead thing in his mouth. “I’m drunk.”

  “Well,” Delta said, “you may be the first author to escape the jaws of that Venus flytrap.”

  More drinks appeared. “Where’re theez comin’ from?” Shriver asked.

  “People keep buying you drinks,” the waitress said, nodding toward the ghosts on the other side of the smoky room. “Fans.”

  “But you don’ unnerstand,” he said. “I’m not the guy.”

  The waitress looked over at Delta, who said, “He’s having a slight identity crisis.”

  The waitress looked down at Shriver and said, “It’s okay. We all have our bad days.”

  Then she moved off into the fog. Shriver tried to follow her figure but she was lost among the spirits there. Over near the bar, his back to the bartender, a tall, dark figure lifted a glass in a toast to Shriver before being engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Shriver wondered if perhaps he had died—when he fell off Simone’s car?—and this was some way station on the route to heaven. Or maybe he’d been drained of blood by mosquitoes. But no, the itchy lumps on his hands and face could only mean that he was still earthbound.

  “I think I’d better get home,” he said, thinking not of the Hotel 19 but of his cozy apartment, where Mr. Bojangles waited for him by the door. But the distance between this place and there seemed to him unbridgeable, too far to even contemplate. “Lez go,” he mumbled.

  He stood and his legs buckled, but Delta held on to him and walked him out to the parking lot. As she poured him into the car, the wind picked up, and a roaring sound filled the air. The mosquitoes, buzzing angrily, were blown away in the maelstrom.

  “What on earth?” Shriver said.

  From over the rooftops, a helicopter appeared, engine screeching, its floodlights shining down into Shriver’s eyes.

  Delta climbed in and they screeched out of the lot. Overhead, the copter shuddered and whirred.

  “Faster!” Shriver shouted to Delta, convinced now that the black airship was following him.

  “I’m trying!” Delta hollered back, but the helicopter remained directly above.

  “It’s raining!” Shriver cried.

  “That’s not rain!”

  But surely it was rain, he thought, as the wet, oddly scented drops plopped onto his face, and then he saw the moon through the trees, a fat, full, white moon, and stars like the freckles on Simone’s chest all across the sky—except for there, directly above, where the helicopter swooped like a dragon.

  The car bumped over a curb and there it was, Hotel 19, appearing particularly ominous now, as if all lit up with people waiting to murder him. Delta slammed on the brake and threw the gearshift into park.

  He was unable to speak or move. Battery acid coated the back of his throat. Delta climbed out of the car and went around to the passenger side.

  “Let me help you, hon’.”

  She took hold of his arm and, with a powerful tug, pulled him from the seat.

  “I dun feel so great,” Shriver whimpered.

  “No problem. I gotcha.”

  She walked him toward the entrance. The hotel sign was a neon blur in the sky. Off to the left he glimpsed a large, familiar dark shape, but he could not decipher it. Meanwhile, mosquitoes leaped about his face—he felt one sting his earlobe—but he didn’t care anymore.

  “Y’ know, I’m nod who y’ thing I yam,” he said.

  “Yes, sweetie, I know,” Delta said, dragging him toward the entrance.

  Unable to keep his increasingly heavy head up, he leaned into her copious bosom for more support.

  The automatic doors slid open. The hotel lobby seemed endless, a football field long.

  “No, you don’ unnerstan’,” Shriver said, then he yelled into the lobby: “I’m a imposter!”

  “Well, well, well,” someone said from the other side of the room. “Look who’s here.”

  There, at the end zone, stood a small figure with yellow hair. Shriver squinted.

  “S’moh!” he exclaimed, recognizing her now in the haze. He attempted to stand up straight but was unsuccessful, leaning even harder against the pillar of Delta Malarkey-Jones. As they crossed the endless lobby, Simone eyed the big woman suspiciously. Then she turned a pair of laser eyes to Shriver.

  Ecstatic that she had come all this way to see him—to hear his apology—Shriver tried to tell her he loved her, but his dry mouth refused to make a sound.

  “I think Mr. Shriver needs to get to bed,” Delta said.

  Simone’s lower lip trembled, but her eyes blazed at Shriver. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I dunno,” Shriver answered, then belched.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No,” he whined, even as he had to lean against Delta just to stay erect.

  “I feel so . . . so . . . so betrayed,” Simone moaned. Her eyes grew moist, reflecting the harsh lobby lights.

  “But, S’moh,” he said. “Tha’ woman. Dr. Keau . . . Dr. Keau . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t give a damn about that,” she hissed. “Though it’s no surprise to me you’d be so depraved.”

  “She s’duced me!”

  “I knew it!” Delta exclaimed.

  “Nothing happened!”

  “That’s not how it looked to me,” Simone said.

  Even in his whiskey-addled state Shriver could detect Simone’s jealousy. If he could just convince her that Dr. Keaudeen had ambushed him, he figured, she might back down and give him another shot.

  Then, from somewhere nearby—the bar? the restroom?—a man materialized beside Simone.

  “Who’s this?” Delta asked.

  From the way she looked at him, Simone apparently expected Shriver to provide the answer. He took in the man standing next to her: the facial stubble, the aroma of nicotine and whiskey, the eyes raw from reading, the expensive-looking suit jacket and black T-shirt and designer jeans. Shriver became impossibly, unacceptably sober. So this is him, he thought. He tried to say the name, to force the air from his mouth. “Sh . . .” he said. “Shhh . . .”

  The man stepped forward, grinning, and extended his hand.

  “The name’s Shriver,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Shriver just stared at the hand, then up at the man’s face. Look at him, he thought, with that smug expression. He certainly is feeling proud of himself for crawling out of the woodwork and ruining my plan.

  “How could you do this to me?” Simone cried.

  “Lemme explain.”

  But she turned away. The real Shriver placed his hand on her quivering shoulder.

  “Take your hand off her, you . . . you . . . imposter!” Shriver said.

  “Me? You’re the imposter.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Delta Malarkey-Jones asked.

  “Just calm down, everyone,” Simone said, pulling her shoulder away from the real Shriver’s hand.

  “Tell him to calm down,” the writer said.

  “You keep your hands to yourself,” Shriver countered.

  “Mind your own damn business—whatever that is,” the real Shriver said, moving closer, his face just inches away. Shriver could smell the alcohol on his breath.

  “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “You’re drunk.”

  Delta stepped up and gave the real Shriver a menacing look. �
�Careful, pal.”

  The writer turned to Simone and asked, “Is this the gruesome gal he fornicated with earlier?”

  “Hey!” Shriver said. “I didn’t fornicate with anybody.”

  “Stop it, all of you!” Simone said.

  The two men stood eye to bloodshot eye.

  “How do we know you’re the real Shriver?” Shriver asked.

  “How do we know you’re the real Shriver?” the real Shriver asked.

  “Oh my God,” Simone groaned.

  “Let’s see your driver’s license, pal,” Delta said.

  “Certainly.” The real Shriver pulled out his wallet and displayed his license. Caleb David Shriver. “Now yours.”

  “My pleasure,” Shriver said, before realizing, again, that his wallet was upstairs.

  “Well?”

  “My wallet is up in my room.”

  “We can wait.”

  Shriver blinked.

  “What now?” the real Shriver asked.

  “I’ve misplaced my key.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Never mind,” Simone said. She dried her eyes and straightened her spine. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow.” She glared at Shriver. “And then you’ll be going.”

  “But, Simone—”

  “Good night.” She turned to the real Shriver. “Let’s go, Mr. Shriver.”

  Grinning triumphantly, the writer followed her to the door.

  “Simone!” Shriver called after her. But she did not turn back. He watched her step out into the parking lot, escorting the real Shriver to her car. Where was he going? Shriver wondered. Was he staying with Simone?

  “What the heck is going on?” Delta asked. “Who was that guy?”

  “That was me.”

  “Everybody’s gone bonkers,” she said, dragging him toward the elevator.

  “Wait,” Shriver said. “I need a drink.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.” Shriver headed across the lobby to the Prairie Dog Saloon and sat at the bar.

  “Double whiskey comin’ up,” the bartendress said.

  Delta plopped down next to Shriver with a sigh. “Shot of to-kill-ya.”