We stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts. This cute virginal-looking Jersey babe behind the counter is salivating over Alchemy. The first of a million times I see this. He’s talking in this voice that one of his babes later says “oozes out like delicious, hot cum.” I’m watching this in disbelief as he spews his BS. “Are those sugar-covered doughnuts … are they as sweet as you look?” She smiles red faced as she hands him the bag. He goes, “I’d just like one little lick.” I wanna fucking puke. I mean, she’s ready to get down on her knees. While they’re mindfucking away, I look at him hard. It’s the first time I examine him in daylight and, whoa, he looks sort of different than the night before. Very weird ’cause now he looks part something. He’s brownish skinned. His eyes look a much darker brown. Maybe part black. Maybe Arab, or who knows what?
He hands me the bag of doughnuts, two coffees, and the keys to the car. “Have to use the facilities. Be out in a minute.”
Waiting in the car, I’m steaming. I go back inside. I don’t see him or the cutie.
He comes back fifteen minutes later and he pauses outside the car and gives me that smile of his that says, “If you’re cool, I’ll give you the key to babe heaven.” Well, right then he ain’t givin’ me nothing but agita. He announces like someone important is really listening (as if someday he knew I’d be doing this), “This is where the American heartland really begins. Where the towns and communities are bound together by winding blacktop roads like the seams on a baseball. Someday, I want to spend more time here.”
I’m thinking, Why? So you can fuck more of ’em? Only I learn soon enough it’s part of his Big Plan, but me, I care not one rat turd about the American heartland, so I yell, “Did you just fuck that cunt? Did that little whoarh give you a blow job in the bathroom?”
“Hey, man, first, it’s not cool to screw and tell. Second, if you call women by those misogynistic names, you will pile up no chicks and no money.”
I shake my head, not real pleased at being lectured, not knowing what “misogynistic” means, and I’m feeling the itch like he’s a born-too-fucking-late child-of-the-’60s hippie type. We get going and he keeps chewing his doughnuts, drinking his coffee, and flying down this two-lane road through what looks like Robin Hood’s hideaway in Sherwood Forest. We come to this gate all connected to twenty-foot-tall cement walls. Alchemy waves to the guard, who lets us in, and we drive about two miles ’til we’re outside the main house that looks like some French castle I seen in the movies. The sign reads COLLIER LAYNE HEALTH FACILITY. The place is famous for housing million-dollar nut jobs. Until now, I ain’t seen Alchemy as money. He just don’t have that feel that rich schmucks have, that no matter what happens, Mommy and Daddy will bail their ass outta trouble. I think maybe this guy is flummoxing my instincts and I need to be more careful.
“So, you are a spoilt fucker after all? I shoulda guessed when you high-stepped outta that limo. Shoulda rolled you then.” I’m still pissed at him for getting sex and talking to me like I’m a doofus.
“Man, is that wrong. You have no idea why I was in that limo. Let’s just say a two-faced woman paid for the limo and that well is nearly dry.”
I think, Sure, whatever you say, bub. You call yourself Alchemy and we’re visiting your mom in biddy-bip-bip land.
We walk into the lobby. He whispers to the guy at the desk and they start laughing. The guy leads us into this large sitting area with all of these fuckin’ trees growing out of the roof. He calls it the “arboretum.” I’m looking up for birds and squirrel monkeys that’ll be dropping their turds on me.
I find a safe spot and plop down in this fluffy sofa by a TV that is on to the Mets game. Alchemy sits down, too. Turns out we’re both Mets fans.
Five minutes later, the hottest middle-aged babe la-di-dahs out, dressed in tight-assed pedal pusher pants and a bikini bra and a fishnet shawl, in sandals with her toes painted purple, and holding a flashlight in her left hand. I do a Jackie Gleason — like double take. Really, she is about the sexiest any-thing, any age, I ever seen. I would’ve done her in a Flushin’ flash.
She and Alchemy hug and hold hands. He says, “Mom, please meet Ricky Mindswallow, a car thief from Queens.” I look at him thinking, like, Whoa there, that was your idea. And that name? I don’t say nuthin’ before he says to me, “This is my mom, Salome. A shape-shifter from another dimension.”
She looks at me, her eyes a popping deep green and unblinking, and her skin is damn pale. She takes the flashlight, turns it on, points it at his feet, and slowly moves the light up his body.
“Mr. Mindswallow, take a close look at my son of the multicolored eyes,” she says, kinda snarky, “I am not the only shape-shifter in this family.” Then she turns and shines the light in my face and I can’t tell if she notices my glass eye. “A car thief, hmmm. What I need to know is this: Are you a homicider or a suicider?”
Alchemy starts chuckling. I try to block the light with my hand until she turns it off.
“You see, my pretty, splenetic young seedling, there are two main species of bipeds in the world — homiciders and suiciders. A few fit into the smaller category of those who would kill their enemy or lover, and also themselves. Most of us lie about what we are.” She pauses and almost hisses. “Then there are those, like my son here, who think they are too superior for any one designation. Right, honey?” That don’t sound like a question, but a threat.
“No, Mom, I’m an apple cider.”
“As long as you’re not a matricider.” She points the flashlight at him but don’t turn it on. “Doing much fucking lately?”
I think, yeah, like half an hour ago, but he slides right beside her and he takes her outstretched hand in his, and like Fred and Ginger they do a pretend tap dance while singing to the tune of that awful Three Dog Night song, “Sub-li-mate, Sub-li-mate, dance to the mew … zak …” and chortle like they’re both nuts. They had what Alchemy calls their “undercover language.” Then she turns to me.
“Now, I’ll ask you again. What are you?”
“You bes’ believe I’m a killah.”
“Yes, I bes’ believe you are. Oh, that Queens accent, it’s such an aphrodisiac.” She sidles up to me, and she rubs this tiny kind of sexy scar on her right cheek. Then she scratches my right cheek with her long fingers and pulls almost too hard on my skull earring. With the nail on her pointer finger, she circles the tatt on my right forearm. Then she kisses me on the lips in the sexiest way. This daffy bitch gave me a fucking hard-on! Then she grabs my cock, my balls, really, and squeezes them so I’m doubling over in pain.
“Mr. Ricky Mindswallow, you are rotten. I smell that. You smell like a pestilential rat encased in fossilized peanut butter with rusted nails for claws.” She shrugs and lets go. I kind of want to slug her and I feel like she sees that. I don’t hit no women. So she just giggles again, and in a real motherly way — well, not my fuckin’ mother — she takes my hand between her hands, and I don’t know what the hell she is gonna do next. She says, “My son needs a Sancho Panza of evil by his side.” I’m wondering who the hell is Sancho Panzer?
I say, “Okay.” I mean, Christ, what do you say to that?