A Date of a Different Kind

Without much hesitation, I got in, like a stupid and trusting child in one of those to-catch-a-predator-themed thrillers, you know, with the criminal who looks a lot like Christopher Lloyd’s Switchblade Sam from Dennis the Menace, rolling up in his stereotypically nondescript rear-windowless white van, luring the kiddie in with promises of candy and ice cream before he goes in for the nap, and you’re on the edge of your seat going Don’t do it, kid, there’re clearly no frozen treats in the back of that van! and Oh God, where the fuck are the parents?  Ah, but I wasn’t too concerned with any of that, about being adult-napped by Seamus, the brooding and somewhat sinister lug though that he was.  Plus, I was thinking as I hopped in, it was a fucking ambulance—pretty hard to blend in, to stay under the radar—and, if it actually came down to it, I’d just go half-psycho girlfriend on him and start pushing all the buttons, pulling all the levers, turning all the knobs.  Shit, maybe even dial it up to three-quarters and make a grab for the wheel?  Once I’d settled in and clicked my seatbelt, though, I was quickly disabused of the notion that the front cabin of an ambulance was anything like the cockpit of an airplane.  Nope.  In fact, this one was more like a U-Haul from the early 2000s.  And after a few wordless blocks, heading in the opposite direction of my house, the only sound in the cabin the roaring hum of the accelerating engine, I admit my Spidey sense had begun to tingle, so I asked Seamus if he’d be a doll and wouldn’t mind swinging by my place to drop me off.

“After” was all he said.  Well, alrighty then.  At least after implied he wasn’t going to murder me, but after what, exactly—and how long that what would last—he didn’t say, which meant adult-napping and false imprisonment were still on the table.  Seamus, though, eventually filled me in on what he had planned, and none of it involved murder or false imprisonment or criminal activity of any kind.  Okay, that’s a lie.  Maybe it involved a little, but nothing felonious, nothing too crazy.  Maybe just a misdemeanor or two, some sprinkling of trespassing here, a little littering there, perhaps a dash of vandalism?  I don’t know.  Now, you’re probably wondering—trespassing, littering, vandalism—what the hell could he have had cooked up, what, was he gonna roll someone’s house?  Well, dear reader, yes, that’s exactly what he’d cooked up.  And not just roll someone’s house, but “fork” it, too.  I knew of the former—rolling, or toilet papering, TP-ing, depending on where you’re from—because, sure, I’d done my time as a neighborhood ne’er-do-well and had myself rolled a few homes back in the day, but I had to ask Seamus to explain the latter, which, turned out, involved sticking hundreds of plastic forks into someone’s yard, transforming it into a miniature Arlington cemetery.  It all sounded really fun and exciting, if you were thirteen years old.  Oh, and by the way, Seamus said, we weren’t rolling and forking the home of just any unsuspecting stranger, but that of Mike and Carl, who shared a place on the south side of town.  Now, again, dear reader, you’re probably wondering if—hoping that—it was at this point that I went full-psycho girlfriend on Seamus and simply opened the door and jumped out of the ambulance, removing myself from this terrible, terrible idea and situation.  Well, if you hadn’t already thought very little of me, prepare to feel even less.  I wish I could blame it on the half-dozen jumbo frozen margaritas again, but, in truth, the drunkenness from my date with Kelley had dissipated into that post-boozy grogginess, which is probably why Seamus’ promise of a free meal had sealed the deal. 

We pulled into Newest Hunan, the third iteration of Seamus’s favorite Chinese buffet.  New Hunan burned down under mysterious circumstances, he said, and the health department forced Newer Hunan to close up shop—something about using a Home Depot 5-gallon bucket to store the leftover soup, and then there was that whole thing with the underground prostitution ring.  Much ado about nothing, Seamus had said, and he assured me not to worry, that the establishment was reputable and was under totally new ownership, which turned out to be a bold-faced lie.  I limited myself to a couple glasses of water and one of those sugar doughnut puffs, but Seamus shoveled into his mouth countless forkfuls of various chicken dishes: sesame chicken, chicken fried rice, orange chicken, black pepper chicken, chicken dumplings, Kung Pao chicken, General Tso’s chicken—any poultry permutation you can think of, he ate it.  Then, when it came time to pay, he did the whole pat-your-pockets-in-search-of-your-wallet charade.  I rolled my eyes, and when I told him to relax, that I’d get it, he said no, no, it was already taken care of.  I tried to wrestle with whatever the hell that could mean, and then a darkness swept over his face as he leaned over the table and whispered something about a distraction, and before I could say or do anything, he stuck his middle finger down his throat and began emitting filthy, high-pitched retches.  I stared in disbelief as he gagged himself for several seconds before removing his finger so he could catch his breath.  He wiped away the tears that had formed at the corners of his eyes and then he went at it again, plunging his finger back down his throat for another go.  It was a bit of a disgusting spectacle, for sure, but I admit I was quite impressed, considering the amount of MSG-ridden slop that was in the basement of his stomach and apparently content on staying there, refusing to come upstairs to answer the doorbell of his gag reflex (or lack thereof?).  Eventually, he caught the attention of the hostess, a short, older woman, who came running over to our table, yelling, “No! No! No!”  And it quickly became evident that the hostess had not arrived to render Seamus aide, unless that aide was some ancient Chinese technique called the Angry Praying Mantis, which involved several swift smacks to the face and lightning jabs to the back and karate chops to the shoulders.  “You stop, you bad man!”

Seamus wailed under the hostess’s assault, his voice distorted by the finger still in his mouth and down his throat. “Ow, argh!”

“Bad, bad man! You stop! No, no!” the hostess screamed.  “This third time this week.  No!”  Mid-assault, she turned to me, and, assuming that I was Seamus’ partner in crime, his co-conspirator (which, unfortunately, I guess I was—guilty by association and all that), she shouted, “You, get out!!”  I was about to ask what the hell was going on, if she could please stop hitting Seamus, and Seamus, Jesus Christ, could you please get your finger out of your fucking mouth, when a crusty and bespectacled man with a greasy ponytail banged open the swinging kitchen doors.  His lenses fogged up immediately.  He took off his glasses, careful to avoid the long tubular ash of the cigarette between his lips, and wiped them on his dirty white apron.  He looked over at us.

“Shay-moose?” he grunted, the glowing ember on the end of his cigarette bouncing up and down.  He removed a butcher knife from the back pocket of his ragged jeans.  “You again?” And then he made a beeline for our table, which is when I obeyed the hostess’s previous order and peaced the fuck out of there, flinging myself outside with such force you would’ve thought I was a cartoon come to life, like I’d been tossed out by my trousers by some invisible bouncer.  I caught my breath and then ran over to the parked ambulance, where, instead of calling an Uber or simply continuing to run away, I waited for at least half an hour, ashamed of my cowardice and wondering whether poor Seamus had been murdered, chopped to pieces to be served in tomorrow’s dishes, Kung Pao Seamus, Seamus Rangoon, Sweet and Sour Seamus, when, suddenly, Seamus himself walked outside Newest HunanHun in one piece, albeit a bit flushed and disheveled, like he’d fallen out of a tree on a hot summer day.  In each hand, he held a large plastic bag with a yellow smiley face and Thank You! written underneath, and his shirt and pants were splotched and dotted with the remnants of some repulsive wetness.  He climbed into the ambulance in silence, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, like there wasn’t this massive fucking elephant in here with us, stuffed in the front cabin like it was some miniature clown car.  I couldn’t stand it, I felt like I was being suffocated, so I asked him what the fuck had happened in there.  He told me that, on account of the food poisoning, he’d talked them down to half-price, the meal, so if I wouldn’t mind paying him my share of the $8.25, that would be great. 

“And,” he said, nodding towards the plastic bags at my feet, “we’re all set.”  I grabbed one of the bags and looked inside.  It was full of individually wrapped plastic to-go cutlery.