Tricky Twenty-Two(35)
“No!” I said. “Shoot him. Shoot him!”
Lula reached into her purse and pulled out the dildo.
“What the hell?” Blatzo said.
Lula threw the dildo at him, it bounced off his forehead, and he bent to pick it up.
“Run!” I said to Lula.
We bolted out of the house and across the street, and jumped into the Buick. My hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition.
“He’s coming! He’s coming!” Lula yelled.
I got the engine to crank over, I slammed the gas pedal to the floor, and we motored off, leaving Blatzo standing in the middle of the road. I had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel, and my heart was skipping beats.
“I thought I was going to be cat food,” I said to Lula. “I hit him with the stun gun and he barely blinked.”
“I left my dildo there,” Lula said.
“No kidding. What was the deal with the dildo anyway? I told you to shoot him, not make love to him.”
“Mostly you don’t make love to a man with a dildo,” Lula said. “Maybe if you’re another man. I don’t know too much about that side of it.”
“Why didn’t you shoot him?”
“I meant to, but the dildo was on top, and I pulled it out by mistake. I guess it was just easy to wrap my hand around in a panic. You know how you go for something familiar.”
I looked down and saw that my shirt had splotches of blood on it.
“You got a cut on the corner of your mouth,” Lula said.
“I kicked him, and he smacked me.”
“I told you I had a feeling. I had a premonition of disaster.”
“It wouldn’t have been such a disaster if you’d pulled your gun out of your purse instead of your dildo.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen him up close. He’s not an attractive man,” Lula said. “And I think he’d been drinking.”
THIRTEEN
I DROVE OUT of Blatzo’s neighborhood and stopped at the bonds office to clean up.
“Whoops,” Connie said. “What happened to you?”
“I found Ernest Blatzo.”
“And?”
“He hit me. Lula threw the dildo at him. We ran for our lives. Next time I’ll take Ranger.”
“I got video,” Lula said to Connie. “You gotta see this. Stephanie stepped on a snake.”
I went to the powder room and stared at myself in the mirror. My lip was puffy but not terrible. The cut wasn’t serious. Painful, but not needing stitches. A bruise was forming on the right side of my face. I washed the blood away and put a Band-Aid over the cut. Not much I could do with the shirt.
“I called the pizza in,” Connie said when I came out of the powder room. “Do you want me to cancel?”
I shook my head no. “I’m fine.” I looked over at Lula. “Let’s roll.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lula asked. “You got a eye twitch.”
“What kind of a person has no reaction to a stun gun?” I asked.
“He might be on drugs,” Lula said.
“You think?”
“Probably be best if I drive the Buick this time,” Lula said. “You look like you got road rage coming on.”
“I need a donut. I’ll be fine if I just get a donut or four or five.”
“Ordinarily I’d think that was a fine idea,” Lula said, “but you might not want all that sugar what with the pimple and the eye twitch.”
“I want a donut and I want it now!” I yelled at Lula.
I looked over at Connie. “I’m out of control, right?”
“Yeah,” Connie said. “Pretty much. Maybe you want to dial it back.”
“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
“You know what I do when I got stress?” Lula said. “I go shoe shopping.”
“I knit,” Connie said.
“Get out!” Lula said. “I never knew you knit stuff.”
“I don’t knit stuff,” Connie said. “I just knit.”
Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “You know what I do?”
“We all know what you do,” Lula said. “And we don’t want to hear about it.”
Vinnie pulled his head back into his office and slammed and locked the door.
“How about instead of a donut we bogart one of those pizzas,” Lula said. “That’ll fix you right up.”
I followed Lula out of the office and buckled myself into the Buick. “I want a donut,” I said. And a tear leaked out of my eye.
“Yeah, I could see that,” Lula said. “Don’t you worry, I’ll get you some donuts. And then we’ll wash them donuts down with pizza.”