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  “Yeah,” he said, with one of those sighs that come from a life of confusion in which a purpose never becomes clear, obscured by the steely bristles of Burt Reynolds’s beefy mustache. “I don’t know. My dad has this thing about America, and testosterone, and combining them into a delicious confection. Kinda like a blueberry pancake. Only more butch.”

  “Right,” Edwina encouraged, poking at a deviously evasive olive that kept slipping beneath the feta.

  “Well, so, when he comes to America,” Reynolds continued, “the caterpillar that had been Carlos Alvarez blooms into the butterfly that is Kevin Costner. Why Costner, right?”

  Edwina, despite owning an original VHS printing of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, nodded. (She’d had it signed by Christian Slater.)

  “His favorite action star. Simple as that. Now, at that time, I’m only ten years old. And he tells me, ‘So who you want to be, eh?’ And I say, ‘Ryan Reynolds.’ He’s a funny guy. But my dad—Ryan Reynolds doesn’t exist to him. Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place may as well never happened. He only hears ‘Burt.’ So, I become Burt Reynolds. And—”

  Reynolds paused to deride himself with a mocking ‘hah,’ a scoff laced with bitterness, like a hint of nutmeg in a sopapilla.

  “I’ve had my whole life trying to live up to that name,” he went on. “I can grow a mustache as much as I can eat oil spills and crap lollipops. And the worst thing about it all? Even Ryan Reynolds got all beefy and macho now! What’s with that? I’m a pussy in my father’s eyes and—yeah, y’know what? Maybe even my own.”

  Edwina had listened with growing sympathy for a tale so equally harrowing and stupid. But she understood completely, minus the bizarre homoeroticism; she remembered how it felt to be told she would amount to nothing unless she learned the proper use of go-go boots, the sense of uselessness she felt upon receiving a stripper pole for her fourteenth birthday, the desire to just disappear when her jeans would always come out of the wash as daisy-dukes.

  “There’s always Debbie Reynolds,” Edwina suggested with glib amusement.

  Lancing one of the shrimp sulkily, he replied after some hesitation, “You’d get along with my dad.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. Really. I can see how Burt Reynolds can be a cloud over your head—a hairy, musk-scented cloud. But you shouldn’t let it get to you. I’d pick you over Burt any day.”

  With a mischievous grin, Reynolds finished off the helpless, marinara-covered shrimp, and spoke these magic words, “Thanks, Deezen. Let’s dance!”

  Reynolds rose from the cherry wood table with the nimbleness of any cartoon mouse, his hand out-stretched to the fine piece of ‘50s-throwback ass. He’d never felt more free. He didn’t need to be Burt, Reynolds, not even Debbie. He’d be his own damn Reynolds. The kinda Reynolds that’ll get laid by Eddie Deezen—a hot girl named ‘Eddie Deezen,’ that is.

  Not sure what the radio station was, but Elvis was singing “Burning Love,” and Edwina had never felt more like dancing. She accepted Reynold’s delicate, brown hand, and they broke to the dance floor with such joy, the breadstick-wielding patron had to play dead and hope they’d just pass. Other patrons, however, made space in the center of the café’s small dance floor—built by a blind carpenter named ‘Tantra Jack,’ and where he got that name is best left a deep, dark secret.

  Soon, the couple’s incredible twisting skills had attracted such attention even the table in the far corner, from beneath their cloud of gloom, rebellion, and second-hand smoke, took notice.

  “Hey, Sherry,” Ginger the Cherry Bomb noticed, “looks like one-a them Bubblegum Queens groovin’ with the papoose.”

  “A papoose is a Native American kid,” Cinnamon the Cherry Bomb argued.

  “Then what’s a Mexican kid?”

  “A prostitute, I think.”

  “Shut it,” that bitch Sherry exclaimed, taking a long drag from her self-rolled cigarette—just to annoy the waitress. “You’re right. It’s ol’ Bubblebutt Edwina. The competition’s not over till it’s over, right?”

  Sherry’s bright, red hair, freshly spiked, penetrated the cloud of tobacco by-product at the very same time the President of France died choking on an oyster. (A complete coincidence, of course.) Her even brighter red lips oozed sensuality from her hard face like puss from a neglected bedsore and the red skulls over each of her breasts flashed their red, LED lights in a warning that went unheeded. Her ill-covered buttocks jiggled with antiestablishment sentiment and pure mischief beneath her black hotpants with each troublemaking step as she slinked toward the front of the café. She always knew how to get her way. Her full, pouty lips, a fist to the diaphragm, a classic up-in-your-grill tantrum, or just destroying that collection of M*A*S*H commemorative plates were all tools in her repertoire for securing her will. Sherry was a girl who’d never read Nietzsche and she’d never needed to, because she’d not just mastered the practicals of his philosophy, she’d bound and gagged them in a dank basement and furiously abused them with an oversized, black strap-on.

  “Put this on,” she told the frightened waitress, handing the rotund woman (who really did hold her weight well) a burnt CD. Feeling let off easy, the waitress popped in the CD at one of Elvis’s high notes, unleashing the charming melodies of The Misfits’s “Astrozombies.”

  “Hey, Burt,” Sherry called out as she slinked toward Reynolds like some half-cat, half-snake hybrid that’s kinda cute, but also kinda gross. “You didn’t call me after last night. Mind if I cut in?” As if she cared!

  Sherry immediately began grinding seductively around the Mexican man, like a small, coffee-colored stripper pole. Her long, white legs wrapped around him like a pita and her firm ass pressed against his crotch like a big bag of refried beans. Reynolds was too astonished to protest, and if he had, surely the protest would have to be in dance form.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. “Last night I was watching re-runs of Friends on my DVR.”

  “Friends with benefits,” Sherry purred, as her athletic dance continued. No denying it, she put a lot of hard work into making trouble. If she’d put that much work into her music lessons, maybe she’d be as good as her sister Beth right now.

  Edwina felt like a camel that had just been punched in the vagina by a drunk Arab: hurt and angry. Her whole life she had felt second-class because she wouldn’t be the white-trash slut her parents expected her to be. “If I had tits like that, I’d never be stupid enough to use my brain,” her mother had told her when she was twelve. Even her sister, Olivia—who was a huge whore!—looked down on her. Olivia had always believed she was abducted by aliens, because getting screwed by countless human mutants wasn’t good enough, apparently. Her parents believed it too. But Edwina wasn’t even included in this fantasy. “You’re just not abductee material,” her sister had explained. “You think they’d kidnap, dissect, probe inside-out and harvest the eggs of just anyone? They’re breeding their intergalactic warriors, Eddie, not setting up a bake sale.” Edwina didn’t believe in the aliens, but she was deeply hurt that even the non-existent entities would dismiss her. Now she waited for her date to pick her over some punk slut with no more depth than a fruit fly’s rectum. She thought of how Eddie Deezen bravely chastised the vampire seductress in Beverly Hills Vamp with the old crucifix-on-the-crotch trick rather than betray his woman to fanged fellatio—that’s what a real man does.

  After a period of standing on the dance floor in complete humiliation and some spilled nachos, Edwina confronted Reynolds with this particular low blow. “Y’know what?” she asked rhetorically. “The real Burt Reynolds would never be such a pussy.”

  “And you,” she said to Sherry, “how about you put your strokes where your Communist ball-licker is and meet my team tomorrow, noon. The competition’s on.”

  Edwina stormed to the café’s exit, patrons clearing the way. The man with the breadsticks offered her his copy of the Koran, but she wasn’t interested. She was done being a good girl, keeping the go
od values, wearing pastels. This was a world of predators, a world where sharks prevail and good, caring dolphins are betrayed, eaten, or humiliated on a café dance floor.

  Always one to have the last word and slice of pizza, Sherry shouted back to Edwina. “Sure,” she taunted, “if your boyfriend here doesn’t keep me up too late. With lots of sex, I mean. Dirty, Mexican sex!”

  Sherry cackled with evil glee, becoming the incarnation of pure skankitude. For Reynolds, she personified all that was wrong with womankind and he was filled with deep self-loathing. At first he thought it was just gas, but no. It was self-loathing. He was no man. No Reynolds. Even Debbie was more of a man than him.

  “You stupid, donkeysucking hellskank!” he growled with unbound hatred, his eyes as wild and vengeful as an unmilked cow. “Why’d you do that?”

  Sherry laughed in his face like a gorilla laughing at a banana peel—a floppy, valueless, yellow-brown banana peel. “Enjoy your night, El Nino!” she told him, strutting back to her table.

  Reynolds was glued to the dance floor. Not by the wad of cheese he’d stepped in, but by rage and resentment. “So this is what panties feel,” he whispered to himself. “I am panties.”

  Chapter 16

  Go Figure

  Janet and Mandy had decided to get colonics before meeting their fellow Pussy Willows for a swim. At midnight they arrived at the beach, cleansed and ready for whatever Sheena had in mind.

  “They said they’d be at the beach!” Janet exclaimed in desperation. “I’m pretty sure this is the beach.”

  Her bovine eyes rolled anxiously around her pretty, artificially blonde head seeking any sign of the friends she had expected. Where most give up their most cherished beliefs last, Janet considered such trivialities as the existence of beaches much readier for sacrifice than her expectations.

  “It’s gotta be,” Mandy deduced. “There’s the water and we’re standing in sand.”

  “Ughn,” Janet whined, “then where are they?”

  “I dreamed this once,” Mandy answered. “Except, in the dream, your body was an olive and you were getting attacked by these owls in white robes. What does that mean?”

  “There were supposed to be guys,” Janet continued moaning in intellectual agony.

  “Look!” Mandy shouted. Janet looked at her finger. It was stiff, rigid even, the clear-coated nail pointed—not unlike an arrow—at a downward angle. Janet’s big eyes followed the angle of the finger over a lump of seaweed, past the body of a crab, to a gelatinous heap that shimmered in the moonlight.

  Mandy had retracted her incredible finger and was already collecting the blob. She knew exactly what it was, even before she’d picked it up. She’d recognize that blob anywhere.

  “This is Sheena’s left tit!” Mandy gasped.

  “What are you saying?” Janet asked in horror.

  “This is Sheena’s left tit!” Mandy repeated.

  “Ohhhh,” Janet understood now.

  Janet stepped over the clump of seaweed, in which one of their busty friends’ arms had been entangled, to get a good look. Definitely Sheena’s left one. But how had it gotten out? Sheena was very attached to them.

  “Maybe that guy knows what happened,” Mandy said, her remarkable, rigid finger again rising like the great trident of Poseidon to aim Janet’s gaze at that mysterious silhouette against the full moon. How long had that been there?

  Janet’s oversized eyes gazed with apprehension at the boney arrow and at the moonlit figure. The solitary shape reminded her of her childhood around the campfire, her uncle making shadow puppet pornography against the RV. She still considered rabbits sluts to this day.

  “Hey!” Mandy shouted to the stranger, not comprehending any potential danger. “Have you seen any other Pussy Willows here?”

  “You couldn’t miss ‘em!” Janet added. “They’d be topless.”

  “Yes,” the figure replied softly, his whisper carrying in the wind like faeries over a sneaky rainbow. “They’re over here.”

  The surviving bimbos were instantly pleased to realize that, yes, this is the beach. They followed after the distant figure. His pace, slow as molasses poured over a rutabaga, ensured they’d soon catch up with him. Still, that bright moon just kept him so mysterious and…silhouette-y.

  “So, are you one of the guys?” Mandy asked.

  The silhouette stopped abruptly. He doubled over and moaned like a moose in heat. Janet and Mandy waited for him to term’ his ‘sode, but he totally didn’t. Instead, he spun with ferocity, a chloroform-soaked cloth in one black-gloved hand. The fierce, leather claw clamped down over Janet’s face.

  Her legs kicked wildly as she struggled to free herself. She had never trusted a mysterious, moonlit figure before tonight, and it would prove to be the last. She realized she would die not knowing how hot she looked as November in that Hustler calendar. She didn’t think the office-wear suited her that well, but the photographer assured her the Xerox machine brought out the curvature of her bosom like nothing else. As consciousness faded, she tried to articulate to herself, “Remember, remember,” to recall why she didn’t care for that shoot, but it all seemed wonderful now, the Xerox, her breasts, yeah. “The tits of November,” she muttered, as she at last succumbed to oblivion.

  Puzzled, but undeterred, the silhouette cast the bimbo aside to pursue the fleeing Mandy. The way the soft, delicate light of the moon caressed her bouncing buttocks filled him with fury. He wanted to squeeze them, twist them, sink his teeth into them. “No ass should look that fucking good,” he growled, leaping over sand dunes and driftwood to pursue the jiggling escapee.

  As all fleeing bimbos must do, Mandy tripped over some grains of sand. Each time she rose, adjusted her bikini top back over her escaping boobage, and resumed running. Her flying milk jugs slapped brutally against her chest and up toward her face, so that she nearly cursed her massive melons! Nearly. She in fact did not and even regretted letting the thought cross her mind. (“Sorry, melons. I love you guys.”) There’s a trouper.

  But it did her no good. The silhouette approached her, his large, gleaming blade drawn high against the moon’s voyeuristic gaze. (The sun, alternatively, reads the Times and pays us no heed.) He brought the blade down, stretching a foot-long line of scarlet across Mandy’s perfectly-sculpted back. Mandy shrieked in agony and fell against Costner’s stage, her skin parting and admitting painful particles of sand into the soft tissue.

  “Please,” Mandy sobbed. “I just wanted to frolic topless, party, and have lots of sex with hot guys. I don’t deserve to die!”

  The silhouette seemed to pause, but he was only eyeing the hideous, wooden stage with utter contempt for its poor craftsmanship. The knife again flew up against the moon and down into Mandy’s beautiful abs. The tip pierced into her pancreas and easily sliced it open. With two hands, the sinister figure drew the blade across her full abdomen, opening her up like a TV dinner. Her salad-filled guts spilled from the gaping, gushing wound eagerly, but apprehensively. They fell onto her lap and there they stayed, a steaming pile. Mandy watched helplessly and soundlessly, unable to comprehend why her simple desires in life should lead to this, why her pleas would go unheard, or just what was in that particular segment of intestine—was that a leek?

  When Mandy’s light at last went out, the vicious slasher stooped to brush some intestine off Mandy’s magnificent thigh. With a primal growl, he sank his teeth into the already-bloody thigh, leaving his mark. The mark of the Shakatitt Ripper, long-time rival of the Shakatitt Shark!

  Just kidding. It was the Shakatitt Shark.

  Chapter 17

  Even More Excerpts from Researchmeister Sigmund Sigersbaum’s Diary, a Glimpse into the Mind of a Misunderstood Man

  The mouths of sharks are slow and cumbersome. They could never shred documents in a hurry. Moreover, I find their teeth aesthetically displeasing, bearing uncomfortable resemblance to my Uncle Anders’. I had to change this.

  “Think of the bear-trap,” I told
my assistants, who were already working on the electromagnetic exoskeleton I’d requested at noon. “How powerfully and quickly it snaps.”

  “But Researchmeister,” they answered, “there are no bears in the sea!”

  How unoriginal their minds.

  “When your mouth is a bear trap,” I replied, “everything starts looking like a bear. Which is why we need a bear trap that the shark can open and close with a pneumatic pump in its mandibles.”

  “Yes, Researchmeister,” they answered, fearful of being fed to my pet shark, Slice, so named for his fin-blades and preference for some lime in his margarita.

  From my good humor, one would not suspect I had found the Commandant buggering my wife earlier. “Here is a real man, Sigmund,” she’d shouted, “a real man goes in the back door and comes out the front.”

  I wasn’t even sure what that meant, other than to insult me. The Commandant, for his part, continued the buggery in earnest, the sweat glistening on his bald, red head, gluing to it strands of his comb-over. Even in this state, he took the time to explain himself. “You are too much the tit-man, Sigersbaum,” he grunted, “and have neglected this fantastic ass. I do not even care about tits. They are the protuberances of cattle. Let them hang there, out of my sight.”

  I was disheartened. As much by my wife’s infidelity as by the unwholesome neglect of her bounteous boobs. His hands had no desire to squeeze them into erotic pulp. His mouth no need to slather their every square centimeter. Yet I was not the real man!

  At any rate, he’s dead now.

  Chapter 18

  Shakatitt Showdown

  “Do you think they’ll even show?” Nikki asked.

  She figured they wouldn’t, but what if they did? What had Edwina gotten them into? Synchronized swimming was one thing, but in shark-infested waters with a serial killer on the loose—those are no conditions for a pirouette.