I reach a shaky hand out and grab the phone. I place it by my ear and listen for a second before saying, “Hello?”
A familiar voice replies, “Dennis?”
It’s definitely not the voice I was expecting. Not at all.
“Dennis, what the hell are you doing?”
What the fuck?
“Carrie? Is that you?”
A World of Shit:
The Final Sequence
“Take pill and drink this.”
In the rental car, Mongo hands me a blue pill and a cup. “What the fuck is this?”
“Is Daddy’s Little Helper. Down it and empty cup now or I get back on phone and bad things will happen to ex-wife.”
I’m tempted to toss it out the window but I take it. As much as I hated Carrie, it’s not like I really want her to get hurt. Especially because of me. I imagine her sitting on Mongo’s bed back at the motel, handcuffed to the railing, her eyes red and her cheeks streaked with mascara from crying. I can’t get the image out of my head and the gravity of this situation hits me full-on.
The hospital is a ten minute drive away from our base of operations at the motel, Pervert Central, and I watch Mongo the whole way. He’s folded into the driver seat of the little rented economy car, looking completely incongruous. Here’s this hulk of a brute from some far off corner of Chechnya or wherever, a place I imagined was always cold, gray, and in the throes of one revolution or another, a man who seemed to have no compassion for other people, particularly if they happened to be of the female persuasion, simply a horrid example of humanity, stuffed behind the wheel of a Ford Festiva. And he made sure to buckle his seat belt and check his blind spot before changing lanes.
How can someone appear so normal and so evil at the same time? How does that person reconcile one side of his personality with the other? Mongo’s very existence is a contradiction of epic proportions, both physically and in the abstract. I don’t know how to compute this in my head. Is it because I’m too black-and-white? Am I too rigid in my thinking, that a person is either one thing or the other? Was Carrie right about me this whole time? I can’t seem to come to terms with a person’s ability to be so genial and banal at one moment and so depraved and unconscionable in the next.
I don’t want to think about this right now. I can try to figure out the why later, but first I have to make sure there is a later for me, and for Carrie and Tricia and anyone else who might get caught up with this bastard. Now is the time to survive and avoid becoming the unwilling masochistic star of an underground rape film.
We pull into a parking space near our room and I move to get out but Mongo grabs my arm and says, “You go slowly, yes? We are not drawing attention to ourselves.”
I nod and force myself to casually walk to the stairs leading up to the second level where the room is located. I notice a dark, blackened spot at the bottom of the stairs, soaked into the cheap Astroturf carpeting covering the steps. Jesus, I think that’s my blood. I still don’t remember anything about Muffy-Mandy-Misty whatever-her-name-is and the sanchez.
We get to the room and Mongo unlocks it. Despite his warning to act nonchalant, I push past him and rush into the room. “Carrie? Are you here, Carrie?”
“Where the hell else would I be?”
She’s sitting on the edge of Mongo’s bed, wearing nothing but a short silk robe that hardly goes past her waist. I’m momentarily stunned by the soft curve of her uncovered ass. “Uh… Are you, you know, are you alright?”
She looks nothing like the damsel in distress I had pictured when I heard her over the phone. She’s not crying and pulling at handcuffs anchored to the bedpost. Instead, she’s sitting demurely on top of the bedspread with her legs crossed, wearing little more than a very familiar look of impatience. She completely ignores my question and looks to Mongo. “Are we ready to start, or what?”
Mongo busily moves around the room, checking the numerous cameras I’m just now noticing. At least five are set up in the room at different angles, all pointing at the two beds. I’m trying to understand what’s going on here, but as usual, I feel slower than everyone else.
“You… You mean you’re not hurt?”
Carrie looks back at me and says, “Well, duh.”
Mongo finishes fiddling with the cameras and claps his hands together. He looks very excited and he’s talking quickly. “OK, time to get show on road. Dennis, sit on bed next to whore and we begin film.”
“Hey,” Carrie says as she edges her robe down her shoulders. “Watch who you’re calling a whore, you Commie douchebag.”
I can’t move. I think I know what’s happening but, at the same time, I can’t rationalize it.
“Well, come on,” Carrie tells me. “Take off your fucking clothes and get over here.”
“What the hell are you doing, Carrie?”
She’s completely naked now, leaning back on her hands. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Mongo stands next to me, much closer than I’m comfortable with. He smells like garlic and oily medicine. “Lovely ex-wife has agreed to help us. Isn’t that good news, homo?”
I’m speechless.
Mongo sees that some explanation is necessary and starts filling in the blanks. “We are finishing contest today, OK. You only need last four challenges, and just so happens I know what last four challenges are.”
“You do? How?”
“Last night at bar. Strange little sickly man with thick glasses sits in booth with me. He tells me many interesting things. He tells me he wants you to win contest and can give me final challenges. Says he knows all about dirty sanchez and finds girl for you. Even sends her over to speak to you. And when I look, there you are, with Misty whore.”
Jack Mehoff. The weirdo that sicced Pauline on me.
“Little man was funny,” Mongo continues. “He asks to be cut in on prize money. Can you believe balls of that guy? Good news is we do not have to worry about him turning up again. And now that we know final challenges, is time to end this game and get paid!”
I turn to Carrie and say, “And you agreed to this?”
“Fuck yes, I did. Because when you win, half of that money is mine.”
“The fuck you say.”
She laughs at me. “Alimony, dumb ass. I’m a single mother and my ex-husband just won a huge pile of cash. Who do you think the court will side with?”
Mongo shoves me toward the bed. “Enough with blah, blah, blah,” he says. “Time to take off clothes and prove you are King Pervert. First challenge is rusty trombone.”
Mongo turns to the laptop behind him on the desk. “Here is instruction video for how to do proper trombone. Is very simple, you just –”
Carrie cuts him off and she gets on her knees. “Yeah, yeah, I know how to do a goddamn rusty trombone, jeez.”
I shouldn’t be shocked considering all the things I know now about my ex-wife, and continue to learn about her, but I can’t help myself. “You do?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Jesus, Dennis, you’re so fucking naïve sometimes. Maybe if you would’ve tried some of this shit you’re doing for this stupid show with me instead, we’d still be married. I might have even been able to pretend that I was happy.”