Banana Hammock (22 page)
Authors: Jack Kilborn
But which one should I eat now?
Harry should eat the yellow thing,
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.
Harry should eat the General Tsao chicken,
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.
Harry should eat them both,
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.
To return to the previous section,
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I went with the yellow thing. I prodded it with my finger, finding it to be sticky and spongy. I picked off a few curly hairs, then popped the whole thing in my mouth.
It was porous, chewy, and filled with cool, bitter liquid.
Sponge cake?
No. Just a sponge. I remembered a month ago, when I threw it in the fridge to inhibit bacteria growth, after cleaning my toilet.
I spit out half of it, having already swallowed the other half. I knew I didn’t worry too much about it, because I knew I’d see it again later, one way or another. Then the office door opened and a woman walked in. She wore a stylish business suit, heels, and a pearl necklace with matching earrings. Everything about her said
class
. Especially her shirt, which had CLASS written on it in big letter.
“Mr. McGlade, I need your help.”
“Have a seat, Miss…?”
“Reader. Avid Reader. Call me Avid.”
“How can I help you, Avid?”
She opened up her stylish, classy purse and took out a Nook. One of the new models, with the 50% improved contrast.
“I just bought this Nook, and I’m overwhelmed with choices. There are over 700,000 ebooks on the Barnes & Noble Nook store, and more than a million free ebooks on the Internet. Where can I even begin?”
I pursed my lips and nodded. Hers was a common problem. The sheer number of ebooks available was daunting.
“What kind of books do you like to read?” I asked.
“Thrillers. Mysteries. Horror.”
“Have you heard of the Jack Daniels series by J.A. Konrath? Jack is a woman, a Homicide lieutenant in Chicago, and she chases some pretty nasty criminals. The books are funny, laugh out loud, but also have some scary parts.”
“How many are there?”
“Seven so far. The eighth will come out in 2011. And best of all, I’m in every single one of them.”
She smiled. “They sound fabulous. What order should I read them in?”
“They can be read out of order. But if you’re a bit anal—”
“I am.”
“Good. I like anal. So I’d read them in the order they were written. They go:
Dirty Martini
Shaken.
You can also read about me and Jack Daniels in various short stories and novellas, including:
Jack also has a cameo in
The List
. All of these ebooks are under $5. Most are $2.99.”
Avid batted her eyelashes. “Those all sound wonderful. Do you have any scary books you can recommend?”
I nodded. “J.A. Konrath also writes horror novels under the name Jack Kilborn. If you like to be frightened, check out:
Avid Reader stood up, offering her hand. “Thank you, Mr. McGlade. Now I’ll have dozens of hours of inexpensive, delightful reading enjoyment on the best ereader on the market. You’re my hero.”
“Yes. Yes I am. I’m all things to all people. And to show you how cool I am, I’ll let you read an exclusive excerpt from Shaken, the latest Jack Daniels ebook, coming out October 26, 2010.”
“I’d love to read that. But I’d also love to show my gratitude for your help.” She leaned over my desk, her lips almost touching mine. “Are you man enough to handle me, Harry McGlade?”
Should Harry kiss Avid Reader? If so,
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.
Would you rather read an excerpt from Shaken? If so,
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.
To return to the previous section,
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.
“It’s just me and you, General Tsao. But I think I’m man enough to handle you.”
I dug in.
The first two bites were putrid.
The next two bites were absolutely fucking revolting. It tasted like someone crapped a dead rat onto a rotten cabbage and then puked on it.
My eyes were watering. My stomach was turning flip-flops. My tongue wanted to kill me, then itself. I had the dry heaves, and the shakes, and my sphincter puckered.
I could barely finish the last three bites. Then my door opened, and a man walked in. An old, bearded, frail-looking man who had one of those old person humps on his back, making him look like a question mark.
“Are you Harry McGlade? I’m Haknort. J. Andrew Haknort.”
“The poet,” I said.
He raised a bushy old eyebrow. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Of course. You’re the most famous poet in the room right now. But I thought you were dead.”
“You’re thinking of William Shakespeare.”
“Oh yeah. Of course I am. Have a seat, Mr. Haknort.”
He sat across from my desk, his vertebrae crackling like a bag of chips. “I hear you know a thing or two about the Nook, Mr. McGlade.”
“I know lots of things. What have you got in mind?”
He reached into a tattered old satchel and took out a sheaf of papers, tossing them ontp my desk. “I just wrote a children’s book. I want to make it available for Nook. But I need help creating the cover art, and I need someone to format it and assist me in uploading it to pubit.barnesandnoble.com.”
“Carl Graves does all the cover art for J.A. Konrath. You can reach him at [email protected]. He charges about $300 per cover.”
“I’ve seen his covers. They’re terrific. But how about formatting?” the old man asked.
“I use a guy named Rob Siders. He can do the formatting, and also help you upload the document.”
“What does he charge?”
“I’ll let him answer. Rob?”
Rob came out of my broom closet, where he waited 9-to-5 everyday in the hopes someone would come to me asking a Nook formatting question.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Haknort. Thinking about adding your book to the Barnes & Noble Nook Store but don’t know how to start? Frustrated with converting your Microsoft Word file or PDF to a Nook-friendly format by yourself? I can help. My name is Rob Siders and I’ve been designing and creating ebooks for the better part of a decade. I can save you time and hassle by getting your source document to play nice with Barnes & Noble’s Nook format. Less time plus less hassle equals more time for you to focus on marketing and selling your ebook. Reasonable rates. Thorough work. Satisfied when you’re satisfied. Visit my webiste at
www.52novels.com
and let’s talk about your project.”
“Thanks, Rob. Back into the closet with you. And don’t touch anything while you’re in there. I paid eight bucks for that broom.”
Rob nodded, then headed back to his hidey-hole.
“Well, Mr. McGlade, I’m certainly impressed. Thank you for your help. Would you like to take a look at my children’s ebook? You’d be the first one to see it.”
“What’s it called?”
“
Ninnie-the-Poop Visits His Friend Jiglet
.”
“Ninnie-the-Poop? That sounds a lot like—”
“It’s nothing like that at all,” Haknort interrupted. “It’s a completely different name, and it qualifies as a parody, which is fair use under international copyright law.”
“I see,” I said, somewhat dubious.
“You wanna read it, or not? It’s pretty offensive, and not for everyone.”
I wasn’t sure. On one hand, I liked offensive children’s book parodies. On the other hand, my stomach wasn’t feeling so hot and I needed to make a thunder-box deposit.
If Harry should read Ninnie-the-Poop,
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.
If Harry should run to the bathroom,
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.
I was hungry. Damn hungry. So I plunked the weird yellow thing onto the old Chinese food and gobbled the whole mess up, holding my nose so I didn’t have to smell it or taste it. Even so, it was like eating a sweaty gym sock stuffed with maggots, rotten meat, and pig dung, with a hint of sesame oil.
When I finished licking the box clean, I logged onto Facebook to get some quality Combville time. Then she walked into my office.
This woman had it all. Legs. Eyes. Elbows. A big head of blond hair that for some reason I wanted to comb. She wore a plain blue dress, and had a white bonnet on her head, which was unusual for Chicago. Actually, it was unusual for pretty much everywhere.
“Are you Harry McGlade? The private investigator?”
I nodded, still tapping the COMB button on my screen. Fifty-six thousand more strokes and I’d get a virtual gold coin. When I earned ten coins, I’d be able to buy a different color comb.
“My name is Lula. Lula Coleslaw. I need your help.”
I looked up from my computer screen and scratched my neck. This all seemed very familiar.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You ask me to take your case, but I keep playing Combville. Isn’t that how it works?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re Amish. You want me to prove your husband is cheating. I get abducted by aliens, your husband kicks my ass, I pop into a lot of J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn books, cracking bad jokes, and then I wind up dead several times. Right?”
“It’s a hallucination,” said General Tsao. “You have sever food poisoning, and you’re hallucinating.”
“Prove it,” I challenged.
“A moment ago I was an Amish woman, and now I’m a Chinese General with chicken feet.”
He wiggled his chicken feet.
“So this whole
Choose Your Own Damn Story
thing was a hallucination due to eating spoiled food?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” he said. Then he began scratching and pecking at the floor.
“Huh. How about that.” It made as much sense as anything else. “So what happens next?”
General Tsao laid an egg, then sat on it. “You throw up, pass out, crap your pants, and the cleaning lady discovers you wallowing in your own mess and calls 911.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“I’m lying. You die.”
“Oh. Well, that sucks. I never even solved the mystery, though.”
“There was no mystery,” Lulu said. Apparently General Tsao could morph back into Lulu at will. “I was working for a land development country. I pretended to be Amish, then I hired you to disrupt a peaceful community of God-fearing pacifists, knowing that with your inept fumbling around you’d probably destroy their entire settlement within a few days.”
“Yeah. That sounds like something I’d do.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Do what?”
I burped, and a piece of my stomach lining came up in my mouth. I swallowed the piece, figuring I needed it.
“Will you help me, Mr. McGlade?”
“Hmm?”
Combville had once again captured my attention. Damn these repetitive, boring, addictive Facebook games. Why did I even bother with Facebook? And why did I only have five Facebook friends? And why were they all jerks?
I kept combing.
“Will you help me?” she asked, apparently still in my office.
“What? Oh. No. No I won’t. I’ve got too much to do right now. But check back in a few days.”
Sadness fell across her face and she stood up, turning to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you on Facebook?”
“No. We shun modern technology, Mr. McGlade. My Nook doesn’t even have 3G.”
“You mean it’s only WiFi?”
She nodded, sadly. I felt for her, but I had to be firm on this. “Sorry, tastycakes. I’m really busy.”
“Please, Mr. McGlade. I really need your help.”
“Let me think about it again.”
Should Harry take the case? If so,
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If he should keep playing Combville,
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“I’m man enough, baby,” I whispered. “I’ve got so much testosterone, I have to shave the bottoms of my feet. You might get pregnant simply by standing so close.”
Her soft lips parted. So did mine.
Then I puked bathroom sponge all over her face.
Avid Reader politely ran off, gagging and swearing. But I knew, as soon as she showered, she’d be back.
Five hours later, she hadn’t come back.
It didn’t matter, though. I had my Nook and my ebooks to read. Who needed anything more?
The end.
To return to the previous section,
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To restart the adventure,
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Phin showed Herb Benedict and me the mud lines on the carpeting in the hallway.
“He must have wheeled in a gas canister on a hand truck,” Phin said. “Stuck the tube under the door and filled the bedroom. That’s why he didn’t wake us up when he abducted Jack.”
“So he’s a doctor?” Herb asked. Herb was Jack’s partner, a fat guy with a fat head. He was jotting things down in his notebook. “He has access to anesthetics?”
“Not necessarily,” Phin said. “You can get nitrous oxide—laughing gas—at any welding supply store. When I woke up, I had a metallic taste in my mouth that could have been nitrous.”
Herb blinked at me. “What?” he asked.
“Every time I see you, you have another chin,” I told him.
Herb scowled. “Have you taken your pill today?” he asked.
“What pill?”
“Your
shut the fuck up
pill.”
“Funny,” I said. I thought about asking him if he took his appetite suppressant pill, but I already knew the answer.
“Guys, stay focused,” Phin said.
Herb gave me a lame glare, then turned back to Phin. “How did he know when you went to sleep?”
“He was watching the house. Or maybe a listening device.”
“I’ll check for bugs,” I said. “I brought my spy gear.”
I set a metal suitcase on the floor and opened it up, spilling contents all over the carpet. One of the items that rolled away was a sex toy.
