Yours(2)
But he loved our stories.
“Alright,” I said, “You’ll never beat this one. I was hired to kill this guy in Thailand, right? Feds gave me three hundred thousand dollars for the job.”
“Who was the target?” Rien asked.
“Some drug lord who got off scot-free after tattling on his associates,” I said, chewing a bite slowly. Mmmm. Ham and green peppers. You can’t beat a good Denver omelet.
“Why did they want to kill him?”
“This guy… well, this guy was stupid. Sloppy as hell, breaking the borders whenever he wants to fly out to Amsterdam for a joint, hiring underage hookers, gambling with the local chao pho.”
“What’s that?” Dan asked.
I took another bite of omelet and chewed as I explained.
“That’s like the mafia.”
“Mafia?”
“The Thai mafia. He’s betting around in mob circles, spreading cash around for cockfights, dogfights, whatever.”
“Basically doing all kinds of things you’re not supposed to do if you’re in the witness protection program,” Rien interjected.
“Exactly. So he has this whorehouse he likes to go to, and he always calls ahead to reserve the same ladyboy whore.”
“Chicks with dicks?” Dan’s eyes were huge. “Oh, man, what a country.”
“What, you think we don’t got that in America?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.
“Ladyboys? No way.”
“Hell yeah, ladyboys. Thai ladyboys, Mexican horsefuckers, Chinese masseuse blowshops. We got everything in America. We’re the melting pot of kinky stuff,” I said.
“We don’t have the crazy shit they have in Japan,” Rien said, shaking his head. He swiped his finger through the top of the bowl of whipped cream and licked it off suggestively.
“That’s different, man. Japan is, like, the fucking cutting edge of sexual kink technology. They have artificially cultivated watermelons that grow in a plastic mold shaped like an anus. They’re cloning half-rabbits, half-women to make real life playboys.”
“Are you for real?” Dan asked.
“I don’t know, I heard it.”
“What, you want to move to Japan?” Rien teased the younger man.
“No!”
“Fuck a watermelon asshole, maybe?”
“No!”
I turned back to Dan and waved my fork to get his attention back to my story.
“Anyway, so this ladyboy, I’m trying to offer her a bribe to make things go easy. She doesn’t speak English too good.”
“Neither do you, huh, Vale?” Rien grinned.
“Fuck off,” I said. “So I’m trying to tell her what I’m gonna do, you know.”
“You’re telling her you’re gonna kill the guy?” Dan asked.
“Yeah. I don’t want her to freak out when I bust in the room and cut this guy’s throat. I’m doing all kinds of, you know, hand gestures, like we’re playing charades. Finger across my throat, making dead guy noises, you know.”
“Ugh, you had to cut his throat?” Dan looked a bit green.
The waitress came by and slid a plate of pancakes off onto the table on her way to the back of the diner. Rien licked his lips and poured syrup on top.
“You’re such a goddamn pussy, Dan. You could never be a killer,” I said.
“Not if I’m gonna have to cut anyone’s throat, I couldn’t!” Dan said, rubbing his neck.
“My girlfriend cut a guy’s throat once,” Rien said.
“Your girlfriend has bigger balls than Dan,” I said.
Dan frowned in confusion at Rien.
“Is your girlfriend a ladyboy?”
“Swear to God, Dan, I’ll cut your throat right now,” Rien warned. He lifted his butter knife in a threatening gesture.
Dan swallowed and turned back to me to hear the rest of the story.
“Anyway,” I said, “So I finish gesturing to this whore, and it seems like she gets it. I hand her a hundred bucks in baht, and I make a shushing gesture.”
I put my finger to my lips in case Dan didn’t get it.
“Like, shhh don’t tell anyone. And she repeats it, nodding the whole time. So I think we’re good.”
I paused for dramatic effect.
“Did you fuck her?” Dan blurted out.
“Wh—What? Fuck her? What does that have to do with the goddamn story, anyway? And no, I didn’t fuck her. Jesus, Dan. She’s a goddamn ladyboy.”
“I thought that was the point of the story,” Dan said.
“Stop interrupting and we’ll get there. So I wait in the back until the mark arrives, and then I give him five minutes more to take off his pants and get busy. Five minutes, and then I come bursting through the door, my knife in the air, ready to slice this guy open. And what do I see?”