Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 3 "A Familiar Fruit"

Detective Willie Lobster lived in an apartment over on Maple Avenue. It was a small, rinky-dink affair with just enough room for a a mattress, wardrobe, bidet, and hot plate.

Apartment 1313.

The neighborhood was diseased, a gathering place for those waiting to die and those who'd already done it. Lobster's next-door-neighbor had died a few years back, and no one had noticed for almost the month.

The stink was that bad.

Curling wisps of stream shot out of a number of crevasses on the sidewalk--no one asked what it was exactly that was leaking out of ground. All anyone could tell was that it stank. It stank like the apartment, the building, the street, the neighborhood, the borough, the city, the county, the State, the nation, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet...the whole goddamn universe.

"Everything stinks in the miserable city," Savanna Koqteese said.

She was sitting next to Detective Lobster. They were inside his 1971 Chevy Crapi. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very good car.

"Yeah, well..." Lobster grumbled, "It ain't so bad."

"It ain't so bad?" Koqteese said in disbelief.

"That's what I said," Lobster told her. "Now you wait here, I gotta run inside and fetch something..."

The word "fetch" reminded Lobster of Daniel, his fallen Spaniel.

"Get it together, Lobster. Get it together," he murmured to himself as he climbed out of the shit-bucket seat and oozed himself out onto the steaming streets.

The climb up to his apartment was long and arduous. In the winter, when there was snow and ice on the cold concrete steps, Lobster liked to pretend he was an explorer climbing some treacherous, far-way mountain.

Like Mount Kill-a-Man-orrow.

Lobster knew something was wrong even before he'd reached his front door. The "Wipe Your Fucking Feet" mat was slightly askew. As he approached his front door, he could see that it was part of the way open.

"Better check my piece," Lobster said.

He reached down and gave his dick a squeeze.

That was what he called his pistol--Lobster called it his "dick." He called his penis his "gun." The last time he'd tried to make love to a woman...well...you can see that there was a misunderstanding. Four hours and several phone calls to Sloan Whixler, his attorney, straightened everyone out (except his "gun" which was no longer very straight).

"Well, well..." a voice said as Lobster entered his apartment. "Look what the proverbial cat dragged in!"

There were five men lurking amid Lobsters meager possessions. These (the possessions) included: pizza boxes, empty tin cans, used tissues, discarded candy wrappers, a can opener, a TV Guide from 10 years ago, several dozen cardboard tubes (from paper towels, one never knows when one might need a cardboard tube), and a carton of milk--aged to a fine blue cheddar.

"A gang! Inside my apartment!" Lobster exclaimed as he reached for his gun, but he was confused himself and reached for his...well you know...which wasn't very helpful in this situation.

"Yo, check out this perv," the leader of the lurkers said.

All the men were wearing identical rubber banana costumes. There was something familiar about them...but Lobster couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" he asked them.

"Okay, first off--we're not a "gang" we're a bunch," the leader of the lurkers said.

The rest of the bunch sniggered in approval.

"You lady friend, a Ms. Neverputt, she's a bit of a problem for us," the banana man said.

"What are you talking about?" Lobster said, wondering where his glasses were.

Lobster fumbled over to the light switch near the front door and turned on the apartments single dim-bulb.

"Like roaches," Lobster said as the bananas scrambled to avoid the light.

"Hey! Let's trash his shit 'an leave!"

"Let's bash his brains in!"

The leader of the lurkers huffed, "Nah man, we gotta rare opportunity to do a little one-on-five counseling..."

The banana thugs descended upon Detective Lobster in a loose configuration roughly resembling a crescent moon.

The Moon. It had been Daniel's favorite celestial body. He'd stay up all night a yawl at it, his furry paws occasionally swiping the air as if he could somehow...get at the moon.

"You're standing on Daniel's nest," Lobster sobbed.

It was true, one of the banana thugs was trampling on Daniel's circular puppy bed--Lobster had left it untouched in the dog's honor. Now it was soiled by the rubbed robed brute.

"Fuck you, Lobster...and your damn dog bed," the banana thug spat.

Lobster gritted his teeth and lunged in anger at the banana.

"I'll PEEL you! I'll PEEL all of you!" Lobster shouted as he transformed himself into a whirling dervish of hands, feet, teeth, and eyebrows.

Someone kicked someone else in the face, while someone smacked someone else in the knee cap.

It was all very exciting.

But in the end, Detective Lobster was no match for a gang of fruit-themed thugs.

"Hold 'em down!" the leader said, spitting blood.

The blood was from a recent oral surgery and not, as one might expect, all the excitement and scrapping.

"Oh crap, I popped a stitch. My dentist is gonna kill me!" the banana thug said. "Listen boys, wail on Detective Lobster until he knows better than to get mixed up with mysterious, provocatively-named dames."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

WHAT FRUIT SAVES DETECTIVE LOBSTER?

APPLE?

OR

PEAR?

Fast Food Slogans From Red Light Districts

McDonald's

• "Over 1 Billion Serviced"

Burger King

• "Have A Four-Way"

Wendy's

• "Where's The Beefcake?"

Quiznos

• "Mmmm...sexy!"

Taco Bell

• "Think About Those Buns"

Dairy Queen

• "Hot Eats, Cool Teats"

Kentucky Friend Chicken

• "Finger Lickin' Good"

914

I was having a typically crappy day at work, when something unusual happened—my cellphone rang. Being the ray-of-sunshine-shut-in that I am, I don’t get a whole lot of phone calls. I looked down at the front of my phone, expecting to see the word “Leah.” Instead there was a strange number that I didn’t recognize, with a 914 area code.

“Hello?” I said answering the phone.

“Um, hello James?” a woman said.

She sounded strangely foreign, her accent was hard to understand, just very noticeable. She spoke with that polite-syntax found in former British colonies. Listening to her breath on the other end of the line my brain thought “Africa.”

“Ah, no,” I told her. “My name is Jason…”

“Why do you sound like that, James?” she said, almost pleading.

It almost broke my heart that I wasn’t her James.

“I’m not James,” I said. “I’m Jason, this has been my phone for years…”

I don’t know why I do that. Every time I get a wrong number, I always affirm how long I’ve had my telephone number.

“Oh,” she said softly.

If I had to guess, this woman was in her late teens or early twenties—I bring this up only because I don’t want you to think I was talking to a six-year-old…or some blue-haired lady. This was someone closer to my own age, that’s the only reason I can figure what happened next…happened.

I started talking to her.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked her.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I was certain she was going to hang up.

But she didn’t.

“New York,” she said. “I’m in New York—where are you?”

“I’m in St. Louis,” I told her. “What’s the weather like there?”

“Oh man!” she exclaimed. “It’s awful, it’s gray and rainy here…”

“Yeah?” I said. “It’s gray and rainy here, too.”

She told me some more about the weather in New York—in that cheery way people have when they’re happy to have something to complain about. Something that’s no one’s fault, something that that’s bigger than all of us. I missed exactly what she said, because I was at work, and there were people in the room trying to talk to me.

I ignored them.

“Well, I hope you get a hold of James.”

“I do, too.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Bye.”

And for some reason I felt better the rest of the day. I guess it was because I didn’t feel so alone. Sometimes it’s nice to know that there are other people trapped in gray, rainy cities. Pleasant people, trying to deal with life…people with numbers similar to mine…