All Families Are Psychotic (29 page)

coun tertop is made of travertine marble, just like the ki tchens of the British embassy before Idi Amin and his reign of blood y terror forced me out on the street.' She opened the bathroom door; its interior was of marble and mirror s. 'Elegant simpli city. Florian is really too kind, my dear. He has spared no expense to ensure that my needs as a lady are adequately met.'

'He is a nice fello w, isn' t he?' Janet said.

'Indeed. He even made accommod ation for my other womanly desires. Come see—' She opened a door to the bedroom , which Janet entered, only to find Howie buck naked and asleep atop a chinchilla

bedspread, snoring like a lawnmo wer. A half-empty J&B bott le rested on the side table.

'I've been with so many men, but never one as beautiful as this. He is my angel. He is my reward.'
Oh my — I'm not even shocked or embarrassed here. I'm amused. It must be the gin.
'You are lucky indeed,' Janet said.

'It 's been enchanting meeting you, Janet.
Au revoir.' 'Au revoir.'

Outside the car, Florian said to Janet, 'You Americans just love your house tours, don ' t you?' 'I'm Canadian, you're Swiss and Cissy's Ugandan.'

They hopped into the car. On the rear seat was a plastic Medevac cooler. 'What's in there, Flor?'

'Goodies and treats.'

'What
kind
of goodi es?'

'Let's look and see.' He removed the lid and meddled abou t with the cooler's contents. 'I just love my trips to Atlanta. Such a hotel-loving kind of town. That's how I obtain most of my specimens, you kno w.

Chambermaids are the content providers of the next human epoch. Just look at
this
—' He held up a Ziploc baggie. 'Bill Gates's hairbru sh. Five hundr ed dollars cash. This hairbru sh alone is going to put thousands of li tt le Florians through beauty school. What else have we in here?'

Janet said, 'You're joking , righ t?' Florian's blank return glance confirmed otherwise. 'Sorry, Flor.'

Inside another vacuum-sealed clear plastic bag was a white towel. 'Ashley Judd was here — imagine

billion s of li tt le Juddling s, just waiting to entertain the dickens out of us. Now Celine Dion, though —
she

remains my Holy Grail. Lordy, that woman has a scorched-earth policy when it comes to hotel rooms.
Ooh

—
what have we here?' He removed a vacuum-packed black T-shir t. 'Garth Brooks, manly sweat and all.
Ka-ching, ka-ching.
And here—' Florian's tone indicated the piece de resistance. He removed an aluminum canister, and his voice became borderline awestruck: '—a Tiger Woods used condom , nestled inside a bath of liquid nitrogen.'

'Stop!'
'Janet—I'

'Stop righ t there. This is becoming too much of a muchness.'

Florian closed the cooler. 'I can see how this migh t overwhelm a novice.' 'Just put the cooler away for a while.'

'Of course. Ano ther drink ?' 'Please.'

Florian poured drink s. Janet asked him if he didn ' t worry abou t being so rich and not having much

securi ty, but he smiled and curled back his righ t ear. 'A chip embedded righ t here. If I touch this chip firmly five times in tw o seconds, my, how shall we say,
wrestling team
will be with me inside of tw o minu tes.'

'You have securi ty people always within tw o minu tes of you?' 'Always.'

'Impressive.'

'Necessity, But a part of their job descrip tion is that I don ' t have to actually
see
them. That's how the best securi ty is always done.' Florian changed gears: 'So tell me, Janet, how many of your family members

down here are sick?'

'Four: me, Wade, Nickie and Ted.' 'Ted?'

'Liver cancer.'

'Hmmm. Don' t forget, you're not sick any more.'

Oh, God, he's righ t.
'Three.'

Florian went on: 'I suppose we'd better take care of them all. Call them—' He gave Janet a phone. 'You can fix liver cancer?'

'Oh,
please'

Janet paused a second, then began to dial the number of Kevin's trailer. Florian said, 'Have them come to Daytona Beach and meet us. But
only
the sick ones. I don ' t enjoy mob scenes.'

Janet called and gave Wade the message, and shor tly, at Lloyd and Gayle's, they parked in the driveway. The house was dark inside, so they turned on some ligh ts. In the living room, Janet reached under a cushion and pulled out a
Mummy
envelope. 'Here you go.'

'Thank you, Janet. What
is
that whining sound I hear?'

'Kimba the dog, locked in the den. The Munsters are downstairs. Let's go look.' They walked down the cold — not even cool, but
cold —
stairs. Janet opened the door. She half expected monsters to grab her and rip out her bowels, or a sawed-off shotgun to be stuck in her face follo wed by being duct-taped to a stacking chair. But instead she found Lloyd and Gayle inside the pink jail cell looking very cross indeed. 'It 's abou t time you shitheads came back. Do you have any idea the amoun t of troubl e you're in now?

Any?

'Be quiet,' Janet said. 'We found your goodi es hidden under the metal plate in the garage.' 'Oh.'

'Yeah, " Oh " is righ t,' said Janet. Gayle asked, 'Who 's
this
guy, then?'

'This is my friend Florian, and he's a thousand times richer than you small-timers, so be humbl e in his presence.'

Florian turned to Lloyd and Gayle. 'A million times richer, in fact.' He then turned his body and lectured them severely. 'You silly tw its. You went and paid for the Full Meal Deal, I hear. Stupid, stupid,
stupid.
Donor mothers
always
turn on you in the end. How much were you going to pay for Janet's grandchild?' Lloyd shrugg ed. 'Fifty K.'

'And what were you going to sell it for?'

Lloyd was abou t to speak, but Gayle cut him off with bravado: 'A half million .' 'Who buys them?'

'You should see the list.' Janet said, 'We have.'

Florian turned to Janet. 'Janet, the pink color in this room is making my nippl es turn tender. Let's go back upstairs.'

Heading upstairs from the dungeon and the undigni fied cries of Lloyd and Gayle, Florian said, 'Well, Janet, you can see how much cleaner my own business model is. The Lloyds and Gayles of this world will be out of business in no time.' They looked up in time to see Wade, Nickie and Ted walk in the fron t door.

The sky had been darkening as Wade, Ted and Nickie drove to Daytona Beach with the windo ws rolled

up. Wade had felt as if he were in a mobil e sarcophagus, and that death really was the four th passenger.

The A/C was on, the air-recycling butt on switched on, too. Wade had felt the air becoming increasingly full of death particles — from their lungs and their scalps and their skin. He rolled down a windo w a crack. His father's skin was pale and waxy; Nickie's veins were bulging , pulsing with kryptoni te.

None of them had spoken. They arrived at the house, parked and walked up to the door, which was sligh tly ajar.

It was all Wade could do to keep his cool when he found Florian and his mother in the dimly li t living room. He switched the ligh ts up briefly, but Florian gestured for him to lower them again. 'The decor, Wade. Look for yourself.'

'Hey, Florian. Good eye job.' 'Yes, hello, Wade, old chap.'

Ted and Nickie, drained and tarnished, trailed in behind Wade. '. . . and this must be Ted and Nickie.'

A stiff ly formal round of introductions follo wed. Wade plopp ed himself onto a living room sofa. 'I'm

riding a burnou t wave. They come and go.' His pill buzzer buzzed, and he leaned his head back, sucked in air, and said, 'I have no idea what I'm supposed to take righ t now.'

'
You're
pooped?' Ted sank into a piece of furni ture, as did the others.

'Guess what, Florian,' said Wade. 'All of us are terminal.' As his father had done earlier, Wade hummed the funeral dirge.

'You're no such thing,' said Florian. 'And how vulgar of you to try and shock me merely for effect. Your mother brough t you up better than that — didn ' t you, Janet?'

Janet was rubbing her temples and didn ' t reply. Ted asked Florian, 'Did you get your letter?'

'I did,' said Florian.

Ted asked Janet, 'How much did he pay?'

Janet said, 'He didn ' t pay anything, Ted. Charging him money didn ' t seem righ t.' 'It didn ' t seem
righ t?'

'Ted, Florian is my friend, and I didn ' t want to muck up our friendship with money.'

'Janet,' said Florian, 'you are too,
too
valiant, but don ' t fret. I'll pay a hundr ed thousand for it — but Canadian dollars, not U.S.'

'Gee, thanks,' said Ted. 'Take it or leave it.' 'Yeah, OK, we'll take it.'

'Good,' said Florian. 'I'll have my minion s deliver it to you tomorro w morning .' 'Yeah. Sure. Whatever.'

Wade had expected a gloriou sly messy drama, but instead he felt as if he'd just sold an '89 Trans Am through the want ads. 'Are those tw o vampires still locked up downstairs?'

'They're bored and cranky,' Janet said. She looked as though she had news to tell but was thinking better of it. She changed the subject. 'Florian, Wade once worked for you. What did he actually do? Whenever we've brough t up the subject he goes mute.'

'Wade's velvety bum used to transpor t me to the Milky Way every nigh t.' 'Florian! That's not true and you kno w it.'

'Testy young lad. Compose yourself.' Florian looked at the others in the room. ' Mostly young Wade

smuggl ed in samples for my lab — endangered or threatened species. The biggest load he brough t in was a shipping container full of Pacific yew trees.' He looked poin tedly at Wade. 'You li tt le lumberjack you.'

He resumed speaking to the room. 'I needed the bark for tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug. He also smuggl ed in dolphin s for use in cancer trials.'

'They use dolphin s in cancer trials?' Nickie was jol ted.

'Of course, dear. Nasty,
nasty
li tt le beasts. They'd mug you, and rape you, and take your handbag inside of three seconds if they though t they could. The tuna industry is doing us a large favor.'

'You're joking .'

'Wade, by the way, is actually a very good employee. Sometimes his jobs were, of necessity, messy, but he never once complained. On the other hand, I did pay him well, but what did he do in the end? He left me for a ...
baseball wife.'

Wade said, 'Remember the time Eddy's Chris-Craft full of codeine scraped out its bott om on the coral bordering Wilhel-mina's lagoon. Her whole dolphin pod went into catatonic euphori a.'

'That
mad cow. She still tortures me abou t that every time we play backgammon in that living room of hers — so many museum-grade Jasper Johns paintings turning to cheesecloth on the walls. All that salt air.' He sighed.

'Is Eddy still around ?'

'Eddy's gone to a better place, Wade. Cour tesy of a band of pirates out of Santo Domingo who wanted his boatload of Samsung electronics produ cts. Take consolation in kno wing that his skeleton will be just the ticket to start a spiffy li tt le coral reef.'

Wade and Florian sett led into reminiscences; Janet went over to speak with Ted and Nickie. After some

minu tes, out of the corner of his eyes, Wade saw his father and stepmo ther suddenly glo w from within — a simple peaceful wave of ligh t passing through them. Meanwhile Florian yammered away: '. . . but of

course the old frog never spoke to me again after we accidentally dropp ed the Trini tron out of the Cessna and onto that old private run way — the Bahamian government bulldo zed it just after you left, you kno w

— and I
do
stress the word " accident " . Apparently his bro ther-in-law made a nigh t landing and his tire hit the TV, and he lost four thousand Monte Cristo cigars all over the run way.
He
should have his stomach stapled and lose fifty pound s, if you ask me.'

Ted and Nickie interrup ted them, holding hands and smiling like teen sweethearts. 'We're going to go out for a walk and suck in some fresh air,' said Ted.

They both winked at Florian. Nickie said, 'Thank you,' and so did Ted. 'Oh,' said Wade. 'OK.'
They have a secret.

'We'll be back in an hour or so.' And with that, they were gone.

Florian looked at Janet, who nodded. Wade began to feel excluded from the inner circle. 'Oh yeah — what abou t Howie, then?'

'He's fine,' Janet said. 'Where is he?'

'He's busy righ t now.' 'Doing what?'

Florian said, 'Howie is enjoying hot passionate sex with Cissy Ntombe, lately of Mubende, Uganda. They're in the trailer out fron t of the house if you want to go have a peek.'

'I believe you.' Wade paused for a second. 'So he's cheating on Sarah
and
Alanna.' 'Very much so, but forget abou t that. Wade,' said his mother. 'I have unusual news.' 'You do?' To Wade, unusual news equaled bad news.

'Yes, but it 's
good
news.'

But Janet didn ' t have a chance to relay any sort of news. The fron t door shot open like a reality-based TV crime progr am.
Home invasion? Good Lord —
it was Bryan and Shw, guns in hand. Shw shrieked out, 'OK, gang, I'm in charge here.'

Wade said, 'Bryan, what the hell is this? Drop those guns. You'll hur t someone.' Shw turned to Wade. 'I said
I'm
the one in charge, you sleazy vagabond.' 'Bryan, tell her to—'

Crack!

Shw shot the ceiling , taking out a globe lamp. Wade, admiring her marksmanship, hopped back. Shw shrieked
again, 'Quiet! '

Janet said, 'Bryan, this is utter nonsense.'

Shw was still furiou s that nobod y was addressing her.

'Don' t you people
learn?'
She shot out the central bulb in the chandelier. 'Ooh. We're so scared,' said Florian.

'No sarcasm from you, you shit-for-brains corpor ate gene pimp.' Janet said, ' Mind your language, young lady.'

Florian said, 'So this li tt le intrusion is abou t my day job, I see.'

Shw said, 'Yeah, it
is.
I just abou t freaked when Bryan told me who you were. You sell half the pill s on earth, and God only kno ws what genetic nigh tmares you're brewing in Switzerland or whatever circle of hell you come from.'