Hellbent Read Free Page B

week.”
    “Right.”
    “We’re filming, and we’re filming, and we’re filming … you know, tedious shit. One asshole after another with a broken pot or a third-grade painting, blah-blah-blah. And then this guy—he’s one of the producers, named Gary—Gary comes up to me and he’s like, ‘We’ve got something weird at the exotics table.’ ”
    “And naturally, they call you.” I used present tense because that’s what Horace uses when he’s telling stories about himself. Always the hero of his own ongoing show, that guy.
    “The weird stuff
is
my specialty.”
    “Wait. What’s the ‘exotics’ table?”
    “It’s where they sort out all the tricky stuff. Ivory, pelts from endangered species—or pelts that
might be
from an endangered species—anything an appraiser suspects is stolen, human remains, or the like.”
    “Human remains? Does that really happen?”
    “All the fucking time. Usually teeth and shit, but sometimes you get Great-Great-Uncle Casper’s scalp, and then we all get to have a good freak-out about it. But we never put those on the show,” he said with sudden earnestness. “We don’t want to encourage the freaks.”
    “Gotcha.”
    “Anyway. Over at the exotics table, Gary hands me over to Phil, who’s holding a cigar box about this big.” He made the motions for an object the size of a big dictionary. “And I’m getting all excited, because—”
    “Because you’re one of the freaks,” I interjected.
    “Precisely,” he agreed. “I mean, you just never know with those events—they’re like war. Long periods of boredom punctuated by high excitement, nay
terror
.”
    “You were afraid of the cigar box?”
    “I was
not
afraid of the cigar box,” he responded crossly. “I was
excited
about it. Now you’ve thrown me off. Let’s see, okay—”
    “What was in the cigar box?” I cued him. “I think that’s probably where the point of this story lies.”
    “Goddamn, you’re a bitch. Yes, fine. All right—so I take a look in this cigar box and it’s filled with …” He reached for an interior jacket pocket and produced an old-fashioned Polaroid. He slid it across the slightly damp tabletop, and I picked it up.
    The square picture showed the box’s interior, illuminated by an overenthusiastic flash. The contents were oblong, more or less—and very white, or maybe that was just an effect of the lighting. It looked like perhaps a dozen of the objects were scattered therein, dropped like Pixy Stix.
    “Definitely not cigars,” I observed.
    Which prompted him to muse, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar …” very softly. And then he concluded, “But sometimes it’s a big fat cock.”
    “I’m aware,” I said.
    “No, no. I’m being funny. You don’t get it? Don’t you see what these are?”
    I squinted at the photo and gave it the ol’ college try. “I … hmm. I don’t know. There’s not enough zoom. Not enough detail for me to guess. You’re going to have to tell me.”
    He scrunched his hands into fists, and his whole body began that low-frequency hum of outrageous, joyful greed. “They’re
bacula
!”
    “Bacula? Like … Count Bacula?”
    “Oh for fuck’s sake, you ignorant cunt
—bacula
,” he pronounced carefully. “Plural of
baculum.
”
    “Well, that clears it right up.”
    With a sigh that almost ruffled the curtains, he said, “Raylene, they’re
penis bones.
”
    Aaaaand … he’d finally done it. The little bastard had rendered me completely speechless. I sat there with my hand on my wineglass and my mouth hanging ever-so-slightly open, waiting for the rest of it.
    He waved his hands in circles, like he was trying to diffuse a fart. “Don’t you get it?”
    “Apparently not,” I all but stuttered.
    “Honey, these aren’t
ordinary
penis bones.”
    “Not the kind you pick up at Walgreens, with a bottle of aspirin and a scented candle?”
    “Oh for the love of …” But he couldn’t find anything holy enough