Worst. Person. Ever(29)

Peggy, God bless her, wouldn’t stop yammering on about how, instead of returning with her family to her numbingly dull cornfields after a Disneyland holiday, she was being whisked off to Guantánamo Bay without legal recourse.

I was in a foul mood, even for me. “Listen, Mrs. Nielson. You might as well get used to a life of gang rape and prayers five times a day. It’s a nasty, shitty world. How do we even know you’re really who you say you are? You could be a very good little actress, for all I know.”

She began to cry. “Disneyland was so amazing—and now this. Why are they doing this to me? My life is boring. I’m no terrorist.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What is wrong with you? Why are you being so mean to me?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you … Peggy bin Laden? Your mom-pants and that poorly styled meerkat on your head don’t fool me for one second. The more you snivel, the more I question your supposed identity.”

More boohoos and even more snivelling. A merciful spirit swept over me. “Mrs. Nielson, for God’s sake, look at life for what it is—a repulsive waste of self-important protein molecules. It’s not you who did something wrong. It’s life.”

“That’s so negative. You’re so negative!”

Well, I had tried to be nice. “Peggy, you’re wearing out my patience. What sort of place is Kendallville, anyway? A hub for the manufacturing of crybabies?”

“I hate you.”

“But I don’t hate you. I, actually, in some hard-to-describe way, like you.”

“Really?”

“I do. But you have to tough this out, Peggy. What comes around goes around. I prefer to think I lead a fine and upstanding life. When things turn to rat shit—as they invariably do—I never think it’s me who’s done something wrong; it’s the fucking universe having a bad day, and I just happened to be there.”

“That’s a new way of looking at things, Mr. …”

“Gunt. Raymond Gunt.”

Miracle of miracles, she stopped snivelling.

The Venezuelans regarded both of us with disdain, and I stared right back. “Look here, you two. Go fuck dead goats or whatever it is you do in your taco factories back home.” I turned to Peggy. “Venezuela. Dreadful country. Nothing but cocaine and Miss Universe contestants.”

“Nothing but grief.”

“See there, Peggy? You really can turn that frown upside down.”

“Thank you, Raymond Gunt. Tell me, where were you headed before you ended up here?”

“Kiribati. I’m a cameraman on that TV show Survival, and if I ever get out of this hole, that’s where I’m headed, on one of the posh private jets the TV network uses to fly me around.”

“I have to admit, I love Survival.”

Oh, crap.

“What’s it like being on a shoot? Where do crew members sleep when the contestants are in their camps?”

“Well, you know, Peggy …” Christ, get me out of here now. I stared around the cell and suddenly had a brainwave about how to escape. One of my Venezuelan cellmates was idly snacking on fragments from a Hawaiian Airlines snack pack he’d dug out of his pocket.

I walked over to him. “Share?”

“¿Qué?”

I snatched his snack bag, dug inside and found what I wanted: one macadamia nut. I ate it.

Tree nut allergy is a hypersensitivity to tree nuts that causes an overreaction of the immune system, which may lead to severe physical symptoms. Tree nuts include Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts. The severity of sensitivity can vary from person to person. Those diagnosed with anaphylaxis will have a more immediate mast cell reaction and must avoid all exposure to any allergen-containing products or by-products, regardless of processing.

Tree nut allergy is distinct from peanut allergy. Peanuts are legumes, whereas a tree nut is the hard-shelled fruit of certain plants. A person with a peanut allergy may not necessarily also be allergic to tree nuts, and vice versa.

Many people feign nut allergies as a means of establishing an often pathetically small amount of control in a social or dining situation. In a recent and highly gratifying airline decision, a passenger who alerts airlines of a nut allergy after having obtained a boarding pass must be removed from a flight and forced to wait until a different plane, certified to have no contact with nuts, appears, a process that can sometimes take days. This process is irreversible, even if the passenger immediately admits he or she is a lying needy tard.





17


Next thing I knew, I was staring up into Neal’s face—and yet it wasn’t Neal. This person had a proper haircut and shave, moisturized skin, a silk tattersall button-down shirt and radioactive-looking American-white teeth.