Worst. Person. Ever(60)

“That’s just the start of it. Anyway, your close personal friend, Stuart—what on earth did you do to him to make him so nasty about you? Anyway, Stuart demanded it be dealt with, so here I am.” He rinsed his scrub brush into a plastic bucket.

“Jesus, stop touching me, Billy.”

“You’ll notice that when I absolutely have to make contact with my hands, I’m touching you with the outsides of my fingers, not the insides.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Science has shown that it is impossible to be sexually aroused by outside-finger stimulus. Homeland Security requires all their airport security inspectors to use only the outsides.”

I couldn’t believe the mess my body had made. “Christ, can’t they have a slave or a poor person do the shit jobs like this?”

I got a face from Billy. “Darling, we are now in a place with neither law nor order. And with the global nuclear kerfuffle, all the local help have jumped ship and are headed back to Bonriki, though heaven only knows why. My theory is that in a life or death crisis, one must find one’s local tribal chief, whoever he may be, and make him happy. In my case, this means Stuart, so to please him, I am cleaning up you. Truly marvellous—except for this room, here: seventeen. Not the best room, really.”

I looked down at myself. Christ.

Billy said, “What did you eat, Raymond Gunt? Iron filings? Superglue? Higgs bosons? Nineteenth-century German furniture?”

“Do you have to be such a ripping cumfart about my situation? I’m not the one on hands and knees in Hampstead Heath baying for boy cherry.”

Billy looked insulted. “First of all, ick, and second of all, I’ll have you know I am a bear and prefer people who are age-appropriate, and third, if anyone around here is into age-inappropriate nookie, it would be you. It must be awful knowing that you’re breaking all human taboos every time you get a hard-on.”

“A bear? What’s a bear?”

Billy lost his temper. “Raymond, enough! Let me finish up here and we’ll go our separate ways.”

I could feel flakes of peeling skin on my sunburned face. “Christ. Hand me a mirror.”

Billy rummaged in his aubergine murse and pulled out a compact. “Take one look and you’ll see that in your current state you’d be lucky to bang a goat, let alone a human being, Raymond.”

A goat? Uh-oh … “Have you been spending time with Neal?”

“Neal? No, but I can dream.” He lifted my leg. “Just let me do a final bit of mopping up here.” He scrubbed me until I stung, then vigorously rinsed his brush. “But Neal’s people did leave you a note. Here it is.”

Neal’s people?

Billy handed me page 6 of the daily shooting script, on the back of which Neal had written:

Ray,

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I’m stationed in the North Island camp, but we call it Thong Kong. Ray, honestly, pussy grows on trees here. I don’t know how the crew gets anything done in a day. You have to make it over here as soon as possible.

Your pal,

Neal

PS: How was your nap? ;)

I was desperate. “Billy, how do I get myself over to this Thong Kong place?”

“Oh. So you want a favour now, do you?” He performed a Dita Von Teese move while removing his rubber gloves. “I think not.”

“Oh, come on, Billy, you know we’re pals.”

Billy turned his back on me and started bagging all of his cleansing equipment in a black bin liner. He then paused to inspect the IV drip in my right hand.

“Come on, Billy, we’ve known each other such a long time. Take me to the North Island.”

“You’re barely out of your coma. And I have to think about my image. I can’t be seen to be hanging out with the uncool kid.” With this, he finished bagging his gear. “Ciao, darling. Wiping up after you even once is more than enough for a lifetime.” He closed the door, taking with him the bag filled with my toxic waste.

I climbed off the gurney, feeling a bit wobbly, and looked around the room. Private single bunk on the port side. A small window with a pleasant tropical view. In the sky above were clouds reminiscent of exquisite, flawless, snow-drivenly pure, fluffy white peekaboo panties.

Ahhh … the South Pacific.

Thumps on the other side of the wall above me snapped me out of my reverie. The racquetball court? I removed my IV and took a quick shower in a bathroom roughly the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, and then chugged a gallon of warm water from the tap. Fortunately, the chap who’d inhabited my room before me had left behind a trove of garments of reasonable enough taste. Unfortunately, he was twenty-five percent larger than me, so that once togged up I resembled a sort of serial killer version of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.