Worst. Person. Ever(76)

I sighed. How far the once mighty human race has fallen—from the majesty and glory of slavery down to the sterile, joyless realm of the personal assistant.

Well, a personal assistant is better than nothing. “Okay. Let’s go.”


4. I did have a scholarship to a fancy place, but Mum spent it on a Benidorm holiday with her best friend Sheila. I only learned of this decades later. I was on a TV shoot about pedophiles in the private school system, and this bloke we were filming looks up at me while we’re changing batteries and says, “Gunt? That sounds just like ‘cunt,’ ” and I say, “Yeah. I get a lot of that.” And so he says, “You’re Raymond Gunt?” and I say, “Yup. That’s me.” And he says, “Why ever didn’t you accept that scholarship we gave you?” and I say, “Scholarship?” Yes, that’s how I found out about it. At least I escaped a decade of arse-rapings, but still, it would have been nice to be more posh, you know, using all the magic fancy words that leave Pippa Middleton all moist and gagging for it.





47


It was dark out, but you’d never know it by the temperature. As we left Neal’s casa, I was instantly homesick for its kickass air conditioning. Weather reports never mention mugginess, do they? No. No, they don’t. They only show little suns or clouds. If I ran the weather service, I’d invent new icons for South Pacific swelter: tiny gas chambers or tiny dishwashers with their doors wide open and chokingly hot steam billowing out.

Fucking heat.

I said, “So, Billy, can you give me a hint about Fiona’s special surprise?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Has she located a patch of quicksand for me to investigate? A flock of sleeping HIV-infected bats she wants me to startle awake with a foghorn? Or perhaps she wants to feed me a pudding made from time-expired dairy products?”

“Raymond, I’m not telling you anything. Neal, how’s your ankle on this sandy path?”

“I’ll make it okay, Billy. Thanks for asking.”

I was incensed. “I’ll make it okay? Neal, for fuck sake, you’re talking like you’ve lost a limb in Afghanistan.”

“Leave him alone, Raymond. A sprained ankle is nothing to laugh about.”

“Okay, how much farther to go, Billy?”

“Just around the corner.”

At the tent city, the evening shift change was in progress. Since I had been fired, I didn’t have to worry about it. Scurrying around us were men and women in cargo pants and T-shirts, carrying clipboards and camera gear, their belt loops jammed with gaffer tape, flashlights, Swiss Army knives and all the other equipment one needs at a moment’s notice. One thing that was odd, though, was that nobody seemed to notice me or make eye contact with me. Hmmm.

Just then Stuart walked by. “Fuck me with a chainsaw. Gunt—what are you still doing here? You’ve been cast off the island. Go. Leave. Now.”

“Yes, Stuart. I’ll hop the next British Airways jumbo leaving from Arsefuck Island International Airport.”

“Well, you can’t stay in our camp, eat our food or use any of our infrastructure. I’ve also told all staff members that anyone caught communicating with you will be fired. Have a nice life.”

“… ” (The sound of me having no stinging, witty retort at hand. Fucking Stuart.)

“Potter. Out of here. Go. Now.” Stuart walked away.

I turned to Neal. “Well, isn’t this just ducky? So what now—I find a little island and make a lean- to from palm fronds? Maybe play a ukulele until I die of old age?”

“Think of yourself as a DNA stockpile ready to repopulate a post-nuclear society badly in need of quality genetic material, Ray.”

Billy cut in, “Kids, can we stay on topic? We are headed to Fiona’s surprise.”

Neal put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ray. I’m not a staff member, so nobody can fire me if I talk to you. You stay on in the hut. If I see anyone from the show coming by, I’ll send you a signal so you can crawl behind the deep-freeze until they go away.”

“Oh. My. God. It’s come to this, has it?”

“I’d let you stay in the business centre, but your mum’s in there and I have to think of her health.”

“Neal, my mother will outlive cockroaches in the post-nuclear era. She is unkillable. Have her bunk beside the deep-freeze.”

“I can’t change her room now that she’s settled in. Besides, she said she’d make me egg and chips for breakfast tomorrow.”

From my left came an “Ahem!” The enchanting Billy.