Crazy Little Thing

by Layce Gardner

  “Take that back!” the Skunk yelled, pointing a paw at Claire.

  Claire jumped off the chair. The crowd parted giving Claire a three-foot aisle leading directly to the skunk. Claire marched straight up him and threw her drink in his face.

  The crowd gasped.

  Skunk grasped both sides of his face and cried out, “You ruined my head! Do you have any idea how much these heads cost?”

  “No, because I’m not stupid enough to pay to dress up as an animal and parade around like an idiot!” Claire said. Which, as it turns out, was completely the wrong thing to say when standing in a crowd people dressed up like animals and parading around.

  “Oh yeah?” Shaggy dog said.

  Claire put her hands on her hips and faced him. “Yeah, Mr. Snoop Snoop Shaggy Dog,” Claire said.

  Shaggy Dog wasted no time in picking up Claire and unceremoniously tossing her, head first, into the pool.

  The crowd applauded.

  Glug, glug, glug, said Claire.

  “Hey!” Ollie said, pointing a finger at Shaggy Dog. “You can’t throw my wife in the pool!”

  “I just did!” Shaggy Dog said. “What’re you going to do about it?”

  Well, that was like waving a red cape in front of Ollie. She pawed the diving board with one foot, lowered her head and charged off the board and around the corner of the pool. She ran straight into Shaggy Dog and head butted him in the belly. He flew backwards and splashed into the pool.

  Glug, glug, glug, said Shaggy Dog.

  “You can’t do that!” said Skunk.

  Ollie glared at Skunk. “You stink. You need a bath.” Then she charged Skunk. She head butted him and he flew high in the air, ass over teakettle, and did a belly buster into the deep end.

  Glug, glug, glug, said Skunk.

  The next thing Ollie knew she was airborne. And while she was spinning in the air she saw the French Poodle triumphantly holding her hands above her head and doing a victory dance.

  Ollie cannon-balled into the pool and when she stood up, she was next to Claire. Claire flailed and gasped, “I can’t swim! I can’t swim!” Claire churned the water with her arms and sunk under. When her chin lifted back over the water, she yelled, “Somebody help me! I’m drowning!”

  Ollie reached over and grabbed Claire by the back of her shirt. “Stand up, Claire. You’re only in three feet of water.”

  “Oh.” Claire stood. “Thanks.”

  Splash!

  Ollie looked over. The big red dog was treading water in the pool.

  Splash splash!

  Two more Furries were thrown in!

  Splash splash splash!

  Three more Furries were hurled into the pool!

  Ollie couldn’t believe her eyes. The entire place was in mass hysteria and Furries were fighting Furries. Dogs, cats, and every type of animal in between were being tossed and kicked into the pool.

  And standing to the side of it all was G-Ray. His helmet cam was blinking red and he looked ecstatic to be catching all of the action on film.

  Police sirens wailed over the din of fighting. Ollie panicked. She grabbed Claire by the hand. “We have to get out of here. The police are coming!”

  But it was too late. The S.W.A.T. team poured through the hotel doors and quickly surrounded the pool. They were wearing Kevlar, armor, gas masks, and had big shields and guns. Ollie almost peed her pants at the sight. Okay, to be truthful, she did pee. But she was in the pool and everybody peed in a pool so she didn’t think it counted.

  Ollie lost Claire’s hand in all the excitement. She pushed a fat tiger out of the way and found Claire again. Ollie grabbed her by the hand and pulled in the opposite direction, saying, “Follow me.”

  Ollie ducked, dodged and darted all the fists, feet and flying drinks. She quickly pulled Claire away from the pool and under a table on the far side of the pool grounds. She pulled an overturned lounge chair in front of them, partially hiding them from view. She watched the melee unfold. The police grabbed every wet animal they could find and threw them into the back of several paddy wagons.

  The place was a mess of broken glass, overturned chairs and tables. Potted plants were smashed, fences were ripped out of the ground; even the diving board was broken in half.

  “Thanks for saving me,” a voice said.

  “You owe me one,” Ollie said. Wait a minute. That wasn’t Claire’s voice. She looked behind her.

  Oh my God! It wasn’t Claire she had pulled from the pool! She was holding hands with a mouse. A little white mouse.

  “Who are you?” Ollie said, beginning to hyperventilate. “Where’s Claire?”

  The white mouse pointed to the other side of the pool grounds. “There she is.”

  Ollie followed the mouse’s finger and saw Claire being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon by two burly policemen. “Oh, no. Scarlet is going to freakin’ kill me.”

  Claire must have felt Ollie’s gaze because she looked over her shoulder, spotted Ollie crouched under the table and waved cheerfully. “Look at me, Ollie! This is an adventure! Who’s frigid now, huh?” She laughed and a policeman put his hand on her head and pushed her inside the truck.

  Jailhouse Rock

  When Claire woke up she had no idea where she was. The last thing she remembered was drinking a margarita and… she had the weirdest dream. In the dream, she had picked a fight with Ollie out by the hotel pool and there were giant stuffed animals everywhere and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had scooped her up and thrown her into his wagon and carted her off to Vulgaria. “Where am I?” she muttered. “Is this the dungeon in Vulgaria?”

  Claire almost jumped out of her skin when she heard a woman’s voice say, “Where you think you be? You in the pokey, Sugar.”

  Claire sat straight up. Oh no, she shouldn’t have done that. All the blood in her head immediately drained to her belly. She didn’t know what to do first, faint or puke. She saw a woman’s face appear in front of her. It was a narrow black face with long teeth and Day-Glo make-up. The face was topped with a hot pink wig that draped sausage curls down over her bony shoulders.

  “What’s a pokey?” Claire asked.

  The face laughed. The too-red lips parted and said, “Jail. You sure is white, ain’t you?”

  Claire rubbed her eyes and looked again. This time she saw three more faces staring at her. Now there were a total of two black faces and two white faces. They all wore various kinds of Day-Glo make-up and brightly colored wigs. Their boobs burst out of their bras and their butts were bursting out of their mini-skirts. She assumed they were prostitutes, but they didn’t look a thing like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

  “Did you say jail?” Claire looked around. She was sitting on a metal bench bolted to the wall. To her horror, there was a toilet right out in the open. The four women lounged or sat on double bunk beds on the other side of the cell.

  Cell? Oh my God, did she really just think cell? Yup, sure enough, there were bars. Big, thick metal bars.

  “Scarlet!” Claire gasped. “I have to call Scarlet.”

  “Who’s Scarlet?” one of the white women asked. She chomped on her gum, blew a big bubble and popped it. “Scarlet the name of your pimp?”

  “Pimp?” Claire asked breathlessly. “You think I’m a prostitute?”

  The four women laughed. Finally, the first black woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Joyce Carol Oates said, “I’m Wilma.” She pointed to the other black woman and said, “That’s Wanda.” Claire politely nodded hello. Wilma gestured to the two white women and said “Them there’s Dixie and Trixie. We Li’l Prince’s girls.”

  Claire flashed a tight smile. She couldn’t believe she was in jail and consorting with prostitutes. What had Ollie gotten her into now? “I need to leave,” Claire whispered. “I don’t belong here.”

  “You’ll be out soon,” Wilma said. “They never keeps us too awful long. Soon as your pimp posts bail, they cut you loose.”

  “Pimp
? Bail?” Claire said.

  “I was wrong,” Wilma said. “She ain’t white. She’s green.”

  They all laughed.

  *

  Ollie held the phone next to her ear and dialed. She was back in the hotel suite, pacing nervously as the phone rang on the other end. G-Ray watched her closely, his helmet cam blinking its red light. Ollie stopped pacing just long enough to hold a paper bag over her mouth and nose and breathe in and out.

  “Hello?” Scarlet’s voice answered.

  Ollie dropped the paper bag. “Hi, um, Scarlet? This is Ollie. I’m calling about Claire.”

  “Oh my God,” Scarlet said. “What happened? What did you do to her?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a long story…” Ollie said. “Are you sitting down?”

  *

  Back in the jail cell, Claire sat between Wilma and Wanda on the lower bunk. Dixie and Trixie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. Claire resembled Mother Goose telling a bedtime story to her charges.

  Claire said, “Facebook is considered social media.” She made air-quotes with her fingers around the words social media. “But mostly, it’s used to promote whatever it is you have to sell. Facebook has gotten a bad reputation among people for being Fakebook. But really, if done correctly, you can get friends to promote and sell your work for you. And you already have the four of you together. That means you can cross-promote. Wilma you can talk up Dixie, and Wanda you can promote Trixie. Back and forth. See how that works?”

  Wilma spoke up, “I understand how that could work if we was sellin’ books or even sellin’ shoes. But we be sellin’ pussy.”

  “Yeah,” Dixie said. “How are we ‘sposed to peddle pussy on the internet?”

  Claire shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if you’re selling intellectual property or the property between your legs. Selling is selling. This is selling smarter. Aren’t you tired of standing on the street in those high heels in the rain and the cold and the extreme heat?”

  All the girls nodded.

  “So do your selling on the internet from the comfort of your own homes. You don’t have to call it pussy either. That’s such an unsavory word. Call it something else.”

  Wilma knitted her eyebrows. “Like what?”

  Claire snapped her fingers. “I know! Call it romance. Romance practically sells itself.”

  Wilma looked puzzled. Claire explained, “It’s all in how you package it. For instance, which would you rather buy? Street pussy for one hour or a romantic interlude for the evening?”

  The four women smiled and high-fived each other. It looked as if they were going into the romance-selling biz.

  *

  Ollie held the phone an arms-length away from her ear. She stuck a finger in her ear as Scarlet let loose with a scream that could shatter glass.

  *

  Back in the jail cell, Claire had moved on to another topic that was near and dear to her heart. “I’ve been a stockbroker for over twenty years, ladies, and I’ve seen it all. The market moves up and down and sometimes people make a lot of money and sometimes they lose money. But the one thing that never changes is that over the long haul, you will make money in the stock market. Don’t take it out, just leave it, and watch it grow. Don’t panic when it goes down. In fact, if it does go down, buy more. Buy low, sell high. That’s all you need to remember to let the market make you rich. If you can buy low and sell high, you will have enough to retire on by the time you’re too old for your chosen profession.”

  “That all sounds good, but there’s only one problem,” Wilma said.

  “What’s that?” Claire asked.

  “Our pimp daddy ain’t gonna let us invest no money. Hell, Li’l Prince takes most of it anyways,” Wanda said.

  Claire tapped her chin with her fingertip and closed one eye. “That is a sticky situation.” She thought for a while then said, “Aha! I have one word for you that will solve all your problems.”

  The four women leaned forward expectantly.

  “Unionize!” Claire said.

  The women looked at each other then back to Claire. Wilma spoke, “You want us make a union?”

  “Why not?” Claire asked. “You want health care? Dental insurance? Daycare for your children? Standardized wages?”

  The women nodded. “You bet your white ass we do,” Wanda said.

  “Then you have to get everyone together and form a union,” Claire said. “You ever hear of Lysistrata?”

  They shook their heads.

  “She was Greek. And when her husband made her mad, she closed her legs. And she got all her girlfriends to close theirs, too. So the husbands learned the hard way that if they wanted any lovin’ they had to do what their women said. You girls can do the same thing. You have to stick together, though. Form a union.”

  “You want our pussies to go on strike?” Wanda asked.

  “You bet,” Claire said. “Go Norma Rae all over their asses.”

  *

  Ollie hung up the phone and turned to G-Ray. “Claire should be released this morning. Scarlet’s ex-girlfriend’s plastic surgeon’s lawyer’s cousin lives here in Tulsa and owes Scarlet a favor for representing her during her malpractice suit when her surgery backfired. I guess she went in and the surgeon Michael Jackson-ed her.”

  “What’s a Michael Jackson?” G-Ray asked.

  “I’m not totally sure, but from what I gathered the surgeon goofed and cut off the tip of her nose.”

  “Wow. I knew a Jewish guy that happened to once.”

  “The tip of his nose got cut off?” Ollie asked.

  “No. It happened during a circumcision.”

  *

  Claire had so generously shared her knowledge with the prostitutes that they wanted to return the favor. Claire sat on the bottom bunk while the women buzzed around her. Wanda worked on Claire’s hair, Wilma applied her contraband make-up – she’d smuggled it in in her hair – on Claire, and team Trixie and Dixie worked on her clothes.

  When Ollie was escorted to the cell all she saw was four women huddled around Claire’s unmoving body. Her first thought was that they had killed her. Her second thought was that they were raping her. It didn’t even cross her mind that they were giving her a makeover.

  “What’re you doing?” Ollie screamed. “Leave her alone!”

  The four women parted, revealing a woman Ollie didn’t recognize. The face she saw reminded her of the giant doll’s head she had been given one year for her birthday. The doll’s head came with make-up and hair accessories. Usually young girls spent hours making up the face and doing the hair. All the girls except Ollie, that is. Ollie took the dog clippers and gave the doll a flattop hair-do. Then she drew on the face with magic markers.

  The woman looking at her had brown hair teased high, eyelids covered in blue and gold, black eyeliner that made Cleopatra’s look tame, boobs pushed so high she could rest her chin on them, and lips that were outlined in black and filled in with blood red lipstick.

  Her clothes were another matter. Or what was left of her clothes anyway. Claire’s jeans had been cut into shorts Daisy Mae style with the bottoms of her butt cheeks showing. Her shirt was cut so high that the bottom of her bra was showing. She was bursting out of both ends.

  Claire beamed at Ollie and struck a pose with one hand on her hip and the other hand behind her head. “How do I look?” she asked.

  Ollie hated to admit it, but Claire looked sexy. She smiled and said, “Great. You ready to go?”

  “Oh, okay,” Claire said. “I guess so.”

  Ollie was amazed. She had fully expected Claire to be having a full-blown hissy fit. Instead, Claire seemed to be having the time of her life. She watched, shell-shocked, as Claire turned to all the women and said, “Hug time. C’mon, everybody, bring it in for a group hug.”

  All four women grabbed Claire and squeezed. Claire was the first to let go. She walked to the open cell door and turned back around. Ollie wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe Claire had
tears in her eyes.

  “Now, remember,” Claire said, “I’m on Facebook. Friend me anytime. I’ll re-tweet you if you want to hook up to Twitter. Don’t underestimate the power of Pinterest and Linkedin. And if you’re down Houston way, look me up!”

  “Bye, girl,” Wilma said. “We’ll keep in touch.”

  Claire blew them a kiss then pranced down the hall. Ollie watched incredulously as the four prostitutes dabbed at their eyes and waved goodbye.

  The Earl of Sandwich

  G-Ray took over the driving. Ollie was still too shell-shocked from Scarlet’s tirade to be trusted behind the wheel. They’d stopped at a Love’s truck stop where Claire changed her clothes, washed her face, brushed out her hair. She rode shotgun. Ollie sat at the table and a still-sleeping EZ was spread out on the floor like a bear rug.

  Everything was quiet until the outskirts of Tulsa. That was when Ollie asked, “So, Claire, what do you want first? The bad news or the good news?”

  Claire sighed. She popped a hard candy into her mouth and sucked on it for a moment. Finally, she said, “Bad news, I guess. Let’s get it over with.”

  “The bad news is that we got kicked out of the hotel after your pool fiasco. They have a wanted poster of our faces in every Hard Rock Hotel across America. It says: If you see these people, do not engage. Call security immediately. Considered crazy and dangerous. So, congratulations, Claire, you are now officially crazier than a grown man wearing a giant weenie dog costume.”

  Claire laughed. “I’ve never been kicked out of anywhere. And that was my first time in jail, too. This is turning out to be quite the adventure.”

  That certainly wasn’t the reaction Ollie expected. She was flabbergasted at Claire’s obvious delight.

  “What’s the good news?” Claire asked.

  “Um… Scarlet is mad as hell. She pulled some strings to get you out of jail. You’re supposed to call her ASAP.”

  “That’s good news?”