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“So what do we do?” Grossberg asked.

Adams smirked. “We already got a plan to outsmart them. Every ten minutes three pledges are to leave together with their gear and meet in the Ralphs Market parking lot where Lincoln hits the Marina Freeway. Across the street from Kinko's, next to those huge condos.” He looked around. “Everybody got that?” Most of us nodded. “Grossberg, you assign teams.” Then Adams looked at me. “Stafford, when you're at Ralphs, go in there and buy seventeen bottles—not cans—of beer, nine light and eight dark. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“And something else.” He motioned me closer and whispered more instructions in my ear.

The faint roar of a motorcycle was in the distance. The sound got louder and louder until the chopper turned the corner of the cul-de-sac. The driver, wearing a big, black helmet with the name HECTOR written across the front in white script, cut the engine and rolled to a stop in front of us.

He removed the helmet and hung the chinstrap across the chrome handlebars. Then he wiped off the front of the orange florescent vest which was soaking wet and slid the palms of his hands up and down on the front his jeans. Walking towards us, the guy looked a little like Oscar de la Hoya. He rubbed the palms of his hands together. The obvious cuts and scratches didn't seem to bother him much.

“Telegram for Kurt Stafford,” he said, looking around at everybody.

I flinched like I touched a live electrical wire. Everybody looked at me.

“That's me.”

Nobody ever sent me a telegram before. My parents would've called if there was an emergency. Suddenly my stomach felt like a whirling blender again.

The guy handed me a brown clipboard and a blue, ballpoint pen. “Please sign line eight.”

My hand shook as I signed my name. The other pledges and most of the actives were gathered around with Vysell on one side of me and Batman on the other. From under the signature sheet, the delivery guy removed a tan, Western Union envelope and handed it to me.

Expecting the worst, as usual, I ripped the envelope open and read the short message out loud: CHEMISTRY LAB EXPLOSION. WILL BE HOSPITALIZED FOR NEXT TWO WEEKS. SORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING. ALI REZA.

Shit!

“Who's Ali Reza?” Adams asked.

“Stafford's ghost writer,” Lyman snickered.

Now how could I write a term paper when I was with these guys all week? I had to think of something. I squashed the telegram and envelope into a ball and jammed it in my back pocket.

“You see anybody parked around the corner?” Adams asked the delivery guy.

“Fuck yeah! Two guys in a green Honda. They ran me off the road!”

“What do you mean?”

“Driver was on a cell phone. Driving real slow. Not watching where he was going. Came on the wrong side of the street. Would've hit me head-on if I didn't lay the bike down. Lucky for me I slid on the wet lawn. Just got a few scrapes.”

“Didn't they stop?”

“Fuck no! My face was sniffing weeds while they took off. Those motherfuckers!”

“You OK?”

He flashed us a perfect smile that would probably get him in the movies some day. “Yeah. But just my luck. My brother's fucking a lady lawyer who files bullshit accident claims. If I knew the guy's name who was driving I'd have her sue him.”

“And have him arrested, too,” Christianson added. “For hit and run.”

“But his car never actually touched the bike.”

“That's how they got me for hit and run once,” No-Wood piped up. “Matched paint transfers from my fender to the guy's car I hit.”

“Maybe you could find the guy's car and you can scrape your fender against his bumper,” I suggested like a real chip-off-the-old-block. “Bet he was drinking too,” I also suggested helpfully.

The guy sighed. “Yeah. Must've been. But who the hell is he?”

We were more than happy to give him all the information he needed to find Dean O'Neill and the car. And because O'Neill ate shit, we agreed to be witnesses to smelling alcohol on O'Neill's breath when him and Buckskin were here immediately before the accident.

“Why don't you go to the emergency hospital to document the injuries?” Grossberg asked.

“Yeah,” Dung piped up. “Say your back and neck are sore. Called soft tissue injuries. Can't disprove that with X-rays.”

“That's true,” Grossberg said firmly.

“How do you know?” Castle asked.

“Got a family of Jewish lawyers.”

_____

10:30
P.M
.

The terrorist bombers who blasted the basement of the World Trade Center and Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building were great free endorsements for Ryder Truck Rentals. A yellow, fifteen-foot, enclosed truck pulled in the far corner of the Ralphs Market where me and the other sixteen pledges were gathered, milling around our cars drinking beer hidden in paper bags.

Bones Kingsley, the most ferocious hazer in the fraternity was driving the truck, balancing a can of Bud on the open windowsill. Thank God Adams was riding shotgun; hopefully to contain Bones.

As they approached us, Bones held two unopened beer cans while Adams struggled to hold a case of Bud before dropping it on the ground at the rear of the truck. As soon as both guys started talking, it became obvious that neither one could pass a drunk driving test if the cops stopped them. The alcohol smell was so strong that if you put a wick in their mouths and lit it, they'd burn for a week.

“The beer is for you guys to drink during the great ride over the mountains,” Bones slurred before he undid the rear truck latch and yanked open both doors. “Leave your cars here and get in the truck and get your costumes on.”

Adams was drunker than Bones. His light eyes were completely bloodshot and starting to run while his speech was barely at half speed.

“Stafford,” Adams asked slowly and deliberately. “You do what I said? You pissed in one Corona bottle and squashed some dog shit in a dark Modelo bottle before carefully recapping them?”

“Yeah.”

A silly smile formed on his lips. “Good. Be sure to bring it with the other beer.”

Adams collected everybody's watch and cell phones before we jumped into the truck with Rawlings hoisting the beer onto the truck's bed.

Adams turned to Bones and said thickly, “Leave me alone with the pledges for a minute. OK?”

Bones nodded and staggered around toward the front of the truck.

“Listen up you guys,” Adams said in a voice that almost sounded like it was computer generated. “I want every guy here to know I want him as a fraternity brother. But that's impossible. The Rule of Eleven is never violated so that at least six of you guys are going to be history. And traditionally on the first night of Hell Week, more than one guy quits the first few minutes.”

Then he slammed the doors shut, throwing us into darkness.

_____

For the next hour, through Venice and onto Pacific Coast Highway, past the Santa Monica Pier, and finally into Malibu, Bones drove the truck like a lunatic; flooring the gas, whipping us backward before jamming on the brakes and banging us forward; all the time throwing us around helplessly like rag dolls. For variety, Bones swerved excessively during turns and somehow even found some speed bumps to bounce over, making us all immediate customers for a chiropractor.

And the beer that we drank got re-channeled into yellow streams against the back doors, stinking up the truck. I felt like a human pinball being knocked around by springy flippers. My elbows and knees hurt, my palms were slivered from trying to steady myself on the goddamn wooden floor and I banged my
head against Castle's head. Everybody else was complaining too, especially since it was so hard to dress in the dark.

On that painful ride, it seemed like hours later until the truck came almost to a complete stop before Bones shifted into low gear and we started uphill. Then the truck slowed down before taking a sharp right turn, taking the curve on the right two tires!

“The fucker's going to kill us!” Rickshaw Boy screamed in a cracked voice just as the whirring sound of helicopter blades revved overhead before buzzing away.

The truck bounced along the hairpin turns on the chewed-up pavement, with its vile stink suffocating its seventeen-man human cargo before it suddenly came to a screeching halt. The metal-against-metal rubbing of the truck latch slid open and both back doors spread apart. Suddenly nighttime light and fresh air poured inside.

“Out!” Bones growled as we awkwardly climbed down, gulping the fresh air like lifesaving oxygen. “Get in line, single file! Now!”

“F
IRST GAME IS BETWEEN TWO TEAMS
,
CORNHOLERS versus RECTUM REAMERS!” Rick Janus screamed like a carnival barker to the dozens of drunken actives circling us in the dark patio of a vacant house somewhere on a mountain top, lit up by millions of twinkling stars. The inevitable smell of pot floated like a cloud over the patio.

“What about their supplies?” Derek Wayne yelled out.

Janus, big and husky from taking steroids that he always tried to sell everybody, smiled sadistically. “Yeah, I almost forgot.” He reached into a brown bag on the ground and pulled out a box of disposable latex gloves and a carton of KY lubricant. “Grossberg,” he ordered, “pass them out.”

As soon as each pledge was wearing one glove, Janus scratched the left side of his dark, military haircut and smiled again, revealing too many teeth in his small mouth. “I'm giving you assholes fair warning: if you use all the KY for the first game, you're not going to have anything left for the other games.”

“I'm supervising Stafford!” Parker yelled out laughing.

I didn't need to be a genius to figure out what the KY and the glove was for. The only question was, who was it going to be used on and under what circumstances? Well I knew it wasn't
going to be used on me! Fuck that shit!

The boozed-up audience laughed, clapped, and cheered at whatever they were expecting.

“Do the costume parade first,” Christianson ordered. “Let's get rid of some pledges immediately. Then the KY games will weed out some more.”

Janus shrugged his shoulders. “OK.” He suddenly started laughing, looking around at us. “It's parade time!” he yelled, picking up the tempo. “When the light shines in your face, announce your costume and do it fast! A pledge will be gone in the next few minutes.”

My stomach was getting queasy again, wondering who was the first guy to go and how the actives were going to do it. I sucked on a Rolaid even though I was repelled by its constant bitter taste.

Somebody shined a giant flashlight in Grossberg's face. “One-at-a-time,” Janus barked. “Start! And be quick about it!”

“Grossberg, the Rabbi,” he answered evenly. “Wearing my black hat, long black coat and sideburn curls.”

“Rickshaw Boy, gook villager.” A rubber band around his head made his eyes slit a little. He touched the top of his pointed straw hat.

“Stafford, a pussy Marine!” Parker ordered me to say.

Janus' voice barked over the laughter. “Next!”

“I'm Dung, Bedpan Man,” he said, proudly pointing to a silver, metal bedpan duct-taped to the front of his chest.

Rainey was next, standing there with a triangular-shaped, black, fur pillow covering his face, held up with white elastic circling his head. He slid the pillow off his mouth.

“I'm Muff Diving Melvin the Methodical Muncher.”

Rawlings, who was wearing a cardinal and gold USC sweatshirt and matching cap, mumbled, “I'm Tommy Trojan.”

Batman and G-Spot shared flashlight beams. Both guys wore tennis shoes.

“Right out of Victoria's Secret catalogue,” Jesse Stahl yelled laughing.

“I'm Batman, wearing a Batman mask and cape, gray bra,
matching panties, garter belt and stockings.”

“I'm Robin,” G-Spot said, “wearing a yellow cape, red bra, green panties, garter belt and stockings.”

“I'm a cholo,” Vysel muttered, with his hair slicked straight back, wearing a wife-beater and asshole-high, baggy pants held up by thin, blue suspenders.

“I'm Mr. Hard-on,” No-Wood announced faintly.

Strapped to No-Wood's waist was an eight-inch, red dildo. In his right hand was a white, powdered donut that he slowly slid up and down the dildo.

Watson had about half a dozen white, paper, toilet seat covers around his neck with his head sticking out of the hole in the center. He said, “I'm the groom at a Mexican wedding.”

“I'm Mr. Listerine Man,” Zoom said, visibly shaking as he held a pint bottle of Listerine. His teeth started chattering.

“Wash your face with it!” Janus ordered.

While Zoom was rubbing that green shit on his face, Froggy was next, wearing a snorkel and face mask with swim fins. “I'm Froggy.”

The low hum of an airplane or maybe a helicopter was approaching in the distance, with its engine getting increasingly louder as it neared the house before the sound slowly disappeared.

“I'm Sherlock Holmes,” Holmes announced, wearing the inevitable tan, plaid, Sherlock Holmes cape, a two-billed cap, and carrying a large magnifying glass.

Lyman was wearing one swim fin and one webbed glove. “I'm half a flipper,” he mumbled, sounding resentful of his lame Filipino heritage.

Wide-Load was the last pledge before some perverted game would start. “I'm Mr. Slumlord Man,” he said. He was wearing a dark, three-piece suit with a gold watch chain across his stomach and a thick, false, black mustache that hung down the sides of his mouth making him look like the mean banker who fore-closed the mortgages of widows and orphans in the silent movies.

From behind the drunken, screaming mob that circled us,
somebody threw a black, plastic wastebasket into the center.