Thirty-Four--Arvin at the Bar

After disastrous results in his first five World Series of Poker events, busting out within 15 minutes in all of them, usually with holdings like 7 4 offsuit or pocket deuces, Quincy finally got off to a good start in his sixth event, $3,000 Limit Holdem.  He was still dressed as a sixty-year-old farmhand, and he played the limit format as if he hated it, raising most hands preflop, most flops, most turns, and most rivers, because he did hate it.  His only problem was that he kept catching cards and was beginning to amass a gigantic stack.

Arvin, Quincy's toady, having little to do and never having learned poker, hung out at the nearest Rio bar, where his immense size had convinced Rio staff that he wasn't a minor.  A woman wearing a rhinestone-studded miniskirt, and who resembled a backup singer for a band that makes music for gay cowboy porn movies, asked Arvin if he'd like to buy a cowgirl a drink.

"No thanks," Arvin replied.  "I already have one."  He was, in fact, ingesting Jack and Coke at ten-minute intervals and feeling no pain.

Holding out a hand and leaning over so far that a nipple made itself visible at the top of her dress, she said, "Oh my," then pretended to blush and slowly, methodically pushed her nipple back into the confines of her dress.

"Nice tit," observed Arvin.

"Thanks.  I've got another one just like it over here."

"Me too," Arvin responded.

"So, cowboy, what's your story?"

Arvin dropped into a lengthy silence, staring vacantly at nothing, and then he said, "I was born with a big head, and I grew into it.  I went to school.  My brother drowned in a speedboat accident.  The cage with the screaming girl inside made it top heavy.  So when he died, I got his job.  I'm a sidekick.  I've always wanted to be a sidekick.  Some people call me muscle.  You can call me either.  I was in a facepunching contest, and I put myself in the hospital.  That's how I got the job.  My name is Arvin."

Undeterred by anything he had said, Rhinestone whispered, "I heard there's a party in your room."

Arvin nodded.  "Better than that.  There's a cage."

She rubbed her hand up and down his arm.  "Do you wanna put me in your cage?"

Arvin looked at her in all seriousness.  "With one hand, I want to lift you up in the air and twirl you like a pinwheel while I bounce you off my penis, spinning round and round, while I drink these"--he held up his Jack and Coke--"with the other hand."

"You get to the point."

"But you'd probably vomit all over the place."

"I bet I would, pardner."

"And I wanna put you in the cage too, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"Not my cage."

"Whose is it?"

"Natalia Pertman's."

"You've got Natalia Pertman in a cage in your room."

"Not yet."

Rhinestone's curiosity was engaged.  She took the seat next to Arvin and waved off the approaching bartender.  "So you're gonna kidnap Pertman?"

"It's not kidnapping if you do it for love."

She laughed.  "So it's love, huh?"

"Not me.  Boss."

"Boss loves her."

"Yup."

"So you're going to put her in a cage for Boss, because he loves her, and because he loves her, it isn't kidnapping."

"Yeah."  He turned to her with a perplexed look on his face.  "And the tough part is, I can't bop her on the head.  It would be so much easier if I could just bop her on the head.  But I can't.  Those are the rules."

"Sounds tough."

"Yeah.  Step one, bop her on the head.  Step two, carry her to the cage.  Step three, drink these."  He held up the drink.

"You've got it all figured out."

"Yeah, but Boss says we have to use stealth.  I'm not good at stealth."

"I see that."

"My only instruction now is to be secretive.  'Do not tell a soul.'  Those are my instructions."

"I'm sure you can do that."

"So far, so good."

Meanwhile, Quincy had quadrupled his buyin.  He raised from early position, two players in middle position called, and an Internet kid on the button threebet.  Quincy fourbet, and everyone called.  The flop came

Qd 7c 3s

Quincy bet, and everyone called.  The turn came

3h

Quincy bet, and everyone called.  The river came

3d

Quincy bet, and everyone called.

Quincy turned over 4s 3c.  Everyone else mucked.  The button stood and marched away from the table without a word.  Piotr had told him never to speak, because he would give himself away as a kid if he did.  So he just shrugged and started stacking the chips.  Stacking chips resembled manual labor and made him wish that all of these events could happen online.  That way he could watch South Park or something, because one-tabling was pure hell.

Still, he was the chipleader, and that counted for something.

His pocket buzzed.  He pulled out his cell phone.  Tonight, Piotr had texted him.

Quincy imagined Natalia Pertman, surrounded by iron bars, eating some yogurt and a few cashews.  The most beautiful and exotic pet in the world.  Should he install a perch for her?  Would that be thoughtful or inhumane?  They would watch cartoons together.  And when Beavis spoke, they would laugh simultaneously, no matter what Beavis said.

Yes, his luck was changing, on every front.

Thirty-Three--Piotr Invents a New Term

As Quincy was playing in Event #3--$1,500 PLO--of the 2006 WSOP at the Rio, and as Alex Trebek, disguised as a washed-out Hells Angel, raced south towards Las Vegas with a car trunk full of shotguns, Natalia Pertman, a fictional character bearing no resemblance to any living movie starlet, approached the director of "Hit Me," the indie flick owned by Gleeman Productions Unlimited.

Pertman had a copy of the script in her hands.  She slapped it down in front of the director, Harvey Wills, who had previously directed only dog food commercials.  "I have problems with your edits," she said.

"They aren't my edits.  I'm just the director," Harvey said.

"You're the director.  That's important," she said.

"You can talk it over with the producer."

"Where's he?"

"Right there," Harvey said, pointing at Piotr, who was texting with one phone while talking into another phone.

"That kid is the producer?"

"That kid hired me."

"So one kid is bankrolling the movie, and another kid is exec producing it?"

The director shrugged.  "Money is money."

As Natalia stalked over to Piotr, he quickly finished with both phones.  "Ms. Pertman, a pleasure," he said.

"Your edits are shit," she said, tossing the script onto the felt.

Piotr smiled, unruffled.  "Which edits in particular bother you?"

"Look at them," she said.  "The original reads, 'Fiona: Hit me.'  Now it reads, 'Fiona [seductively]: Hit me.'"

"What's wrong with you being seductive?"

"It's blackjack.  I'm losing.  I'm asking for a hit from a 70-year-old female blackjack dealer.  What's seductive about any of that?  Are you going to have me asking for her number next?"

"Would you do that?"

"Are you kidding?"

"Okay.  It's out.  Good eye.  Anything else?"

"Lots.  When I order a bloody mary, the script now says I'm topless."

"Yep.  That part requires toplessness."

"I'm standing in the middle of a casino, ordering a bloody mary, and I'm topless?"

"Exactly."

"How did I suddenly get topless?"

"You took your top off."

"Why?"

Piotr shrugged.  "The a/c is broken."

"Bullshit.  Nothing in my contract states anything about being topless."

Piotr drummed his fingers on the felt.  "What will it take?"

"Take?"

"To get you topless."

"I've never been topless on film before."

He met her angry stare with one of his own.  "This is a business.  How much per boob-second?"

She blinked.  "What?"

"Let's break it down to boob-second.  How much per boob-second?"

"Boob-second?"

"If you showed one boob for five seconds, that would be five boob-seconds.  If you showed two boobs for ten seconds, that would be twenty boob-seconds.  Two questions.  One, how much do you need per boob-second?  Two, how many boob-seconds will you agree to?"

She stared at him with her mouth open.

"For example," he continued, "let's say we agree to--oh, I don't know--fifty thousand bucks per boob-second.  You go topless ten seconds.  That's a quick million right there.  Half a mill per boob."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"So what's your max?"

She took a breath and said, "My max is zero."

"Zero what?"

"Zero boob-seconds."

"How about 100k per boob-second."

"My max is zero boob-seconds."

"250k."

"Zero boob-seconds."

"Okay.  This is going to be experimental, and I don't think it will work, but we'll try the scene with you clothed.  It won't be realistic, but let's see how it plays.  Anything else?"

"Yeah, asshole, this part.  The original says, '[Fiona steps onto elevator after losing all of her money.]'  The edited version reads, '[Fiona steps onto elevator buck naked after losing all of her money.]'"

"Correct."

"What am I doing buck naked?"

"It's a metaphorical thing about you losing your shirt at the blackjack table.  It's all very philosophical.  Because your max offer is zero boob-seconds, we'll have to shoot you from behind.  Have we negotiated an ass-second rate yet?"

"My max is zero ass-seconds."

Piotr opened his hands.  "How are we supposed to shoot you buck naked if we aren't allowed any ass-seconds or boob-seconds?"

"You aren't going to shoot me buck naked!"

"Okay, okay.  No nudity.  It won't be realistic, but let's see how it plays.  Anything else?"

She grabbed the script and flipped through the pages.  "I won't kiss my tits for luck."  She turned a page.  "I won't massage my ass to relieve stress."  Another page.  "And I won't dry hump the wall in my sleep while having hot sex dreams."

"What if your tits are clothed?  Will you kiss them then?"

"No."

"Same thing for your ass?"

"Same."

"About the sex dream, everything in the movie leads up to that moment.  We had a really good song chosen, Milli from Milli Vanilli would've licensed it to us for pennies, Vanilli committed suicide, of course, but this new song by Milli would've started his comeback, it would've been just perfect--"

"No sex dreams!"

Piotr nodded slowly.  "Anything else?"

"I'm going to ignore all of the edits."

"Deal."

She stalked off.  Piotr texted Quincy, She hated your edits.  No to all of them.

After receiving the text, Quincy reraised with 6 3 offsuit, then busted out after five-betting all-in preflop against pocket aces.  He hurried back to his hotel room, excited by a new idea for a fresh batch of edits.  Time for Plan B.

Thirty-Two--Travels with Trebek

After the massacre at the Sisters of the Silent Hug, Alex Trebek had fled in the school bus with Pluto, Far Flung, Inkblot, and Creeper--four doofuses that he only knew by code name.  At the on-ramp to I-80 West, Trebek told Creeper to pull over.  When he did, Trebek stepped off the bus, a vehicle which he figured--correctly--was headed for immediate capture.  Unfortunately, Far Flung, an acne-scarred moon-faced waddler, had stepped off the bus with him.  Hearing sirens in the distance, they rushed down the embankment and up the other side, until they found themselves in a Walmart parking lot.

"Can you jump start a car?" Trebek asked.  Far Flung nodded.  "Well then, do it."

Within 60 seconds, Trebek's last sidekick had found a Camry, opened the door, and started it up.  Leaving the car, he waddled over to the bush where Trebek was waiting, at which point the host of Jeopardy! used a silenced pistol to pump two slugs into Far Flung's heart.

Master planner! thought Trebek.

He drove down I-80 85 miles till he hit Sacramento, where he pulled into a gas station.  Stepping into the Exxon, the man behind the counter managed to say, "Hey, aren't you--?" before Trebek shot him in the neck.  He substituted the dead cashier's blue pickup truck for the Camry and headed south on I-5.  Cop cars passed twice, coming from the other direction, sirens flashing.

After midnight, he pulled into a small motel across the street from an abandoned gas station and rang the bell.  A gray-haired woman answered the manager's door in a green robe.

"Any rooms open?" Trebek asked.

"Hell, they're all open," she answered, and Trebek put two bullets into her, grabbed a key, and slept in Room 101.

In the morning, he saw two people he guessed to be the janitor and the dead woman's replacement.  He shot them both in the parking lot, drank a couple of coffees, and headed off down I-5 in the woman's yellow Subaru hatchback.

Driving carefully at 65 miles per hour in the slow lane, he saw a car pulled over on the side of the road and a man waving his arms.  He rolled down his window and shot him as he drove past.

Naked freckled boy scout, Quincy had said at the child prodigy edition that never aired.

And what had Trebek said?  Had he sensed a trick?  Yes, he had.  The boy was trying to explain Jeopardy! to Trebek.  He was trying to teach Trebek the rules!  Hell, Trebek knew that contestants were given the answer and had to supply the question.  But what had he said?

"Pardon?"

To which the boy had replied with a smirk: "Who is handcuffed to Trebek's bed?"

Then the audience had gasped and started giggling.  All of those taunting faces.

At that point, Trebek knew he had to kill the boy.

But no, not in front of a studio audience.  Later.  When the boy was least suspecting a terror attack.

Trebek winced.  So okay, he got the wrong address and ended up blasting a house full of nuns.  His mistake.  No excuses.  Not exactly the sign of a master planner.  But now he would be in control.  He would manage his impulses.  He would be at the height of his powers.

He pulled into a 76 station, filled up with gas, shot the cashier and two truckers, grabbed a couple of hot dogs and a Coke, and hit the road.

He would not make any more mistakes.  No more random shows of violence.  Control.

The road to Las Vegas was a long one.  At a gas station, where he shot the cashier, two mechanics, and a school bus full of teenaged girls, he entered the bathroom with a razor, scissors, and a makeup kit looking like this:

and came out of the bathroom looking like this:

but when he ordered a baked potato and chili at the first Wendy's he saw down the road, everyone said, "Tom Selleck!" so he tossed a grenade into the kitchen area and shot the senior citizens eating their doublestacks on the patio, then hurried into the bathroom and came out looking like this:

and zoomed off down the road on a stolen motorcycle.

He spent three months living in a foreclosed, abandoned house in North Las Vegas.  It had no electricity, and he made sure not to leave a candle burning during the evenings.  Cold water ran in the faucets, but Trebek didn't need hot water.  Cold water kept him sharp.  No one ever stopped by.

He knew the boy--knew that eventually he would be pulled to Vegas.

During the World Series of Poker, Trebek had begun to feel his hope slipping away.  No sign of the kid anywhere.  Sure, he knew, the kid was underage, but his private investigators had given him so much information!

They said, The kid's playing in disguise!  The kid's winning millions!  Nobody can stop the kid!

Well, he, Alex Trebek, would stop the kid.  With a bullet in the forehead.  And then he would go down in a hail of bullets, a hero of the people.

The first few events had given him no hint, no clue whatsoever.  But then he had noticed that late at night, a movie was filming.

Starring Natalia Pertman.

Hot teenage Russian chick, Trebek thought.  Yes.  He sat at video poker ten nights straight and lost three thousand dollars.  All the while, he watched.

And then it happened.  He saw him.  No costume.  Just a shithead kid with his shithead friend.  Trebek saw Quincy give Pertman a brick of cash, saw the shithead run off to the elevator, saw a blush creeping onto Pertman's face.

She likes him? he wondered, aghast.  Then he smiled, understanding that this could work in his favor.

A waitress appeared at his side.  "Would you like a drink?" she asked, interrupting his thoughts.  He reached for his pistol, then remembered that he had to play it cool, real cool.

Just say what a normal person would say, he advised himself.

"I'll have an Aqua Velva," he said.

"Ooookay.  Is the bartender gonna know how to make that?"

"One ounce vodka, one ounce gin, one ounce blue curacao," he instructed.  "Mix together and serve with a little umbrella."

"What color umbrella?" she asked, laughing, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to strangle her against a slot machine covered with mermaids.

Thirty-One--A First Meeting

In 2006, the first year that poker events would play at the Rio instead of Binion's, Quincy, wearing enough makeup to resemble a sun-ravaged, retired farmhand, entered 32 of the 45 World Series of Poker matches.  He missed some of them because he didn't qualify--like Event #1, the NL event for casino employees that annually kicked off the tournament series, or the events for ladies and seniors--but also because he was too lazy to multitable two events at once.  Tournament rules disallowed Piotr from taking one of Quincy's seats and following instructions by text, which in Quincy's words "sucked bigtime."

"If you can't multitable, then only old people will play," Quincy complained.

At the same time and in the same casino, Natalia Pertman, the teenage Russian starlet famed for her petite figure, aquiline face, long black hair, and wildly eccentric movie performances, an actress who has no resemblance to any actual person living or dead, was starring in an indie flick filming late at night on the gaming floor.  At 3 a.m. nightly, when the number of gamblers had whittled down to the homeless, insomniac tourists, drunk college kids, and Red-Bull-pumped grandmothers, the casino closed off the lesser-used blackjack tables and roulette wheel.

In the $1,500 NL Event #2, Quincy had made it through three orbits before busting out with nine-deuce of hearts on a flop containing the ace of hearts, the jack of hearts, and the deuce of diamonds.  An ace on the turn gave his opponent, an Internet kid wearing gigantic black headphones, a full house.  No other events were running, so he spent the rest of the day playing Grand Theft Auto 3 on his PS2 while Piotr watched a six-hour pay-per-view documentary called "The Russian Elite: The World's Greatest Chess Matches."

"That's like porn for you," Quincy said.

Piotr sat up in bed and feigned indifference.  "No."

"Really.  It is."

"Why?"

"One, because there's porn on pay per view, but instead you're watching 'The World's Greatest Chess Matches.'  Two, because you have a hardon underneath those sheets."

Ignoring him, Piotr was already absorbed in the game underway on the screen.  "Watch this," Piotr said, mesmerized.  Boris Spassky moved his knight to king's rook six.  "Boom!" Piotr exclaimed.  Spassky's opponent, Mikhail Tal, stood and wavered, as if he had just been clocked by a devastating uppercut.  A few moments of deliberation later, seeing that his position had just been rendered indefensible, Tal extended his hand, and Spassky shook it.  "TKO," Piotr noted.  "He'll be pissing blood for weeks."

Before they knew it, a dozen hours had passed.  It was the middle of the night, and they were starving.  Instead of ordering room service, they headed downstairs.  

"What's going on over there?" Quincy asked.

"Movie, I think," Piotr replied.

They approached the barrier, above which a sign read "SILENCE PLEASE," and saw a camera set up near the craps table.  It was pointed at a blackjack table where a young woman was seated with her back to them both.

"Who is she?"

"Dunno," Piotr lied.

They circled around.  When the actress turned, Quincy froze, unable to look away from her face.  Seeming not to notice, or else immune from such attention, she turned her attention to the casino chips in front of her.  She tried to shuffle the chips, but she obviously needed practice.

"Quince, you okay?"

"That's her."

Piotr nodded.  He knew.  He had arranged the meeting.  Kidnapping her hadn't been much of an option.  He had checked with his most reliable illegal sources and been told that her security was too tight.  So Piotr had spent the next half year stumped--until he awoke in the middle of the night with the perfect solution.  Plan B!  He got in touch with a Hollywood friend of his father and promptly bought a half-dozen scripts that he thought that she might like based on her past films, in which she tended to play a hooker, an addict, or a young girl slowly losing her sanity, and sent them all to her agent from "Gleeman Productions Unlimited."

The script she chose was about a gambling addict who goes broke, turns to prostitution to fuel her blackjack needs, get smacked around by an abusive pimp, and slowly loses her mind.  Its working title was "Hit Me."

The agent also informed Piotr that Pertman might also be interested in another of the scripts about a Russian chick who mistakenly buys a lottery ticket, wins a million dollars, loses every penny playing video poker, joins a religious cult, becomes the cult leader's thirteenth wife, and abruptly gets swallowed alive by a sinkhole.  Its working title was "A Lunch for Earth."

Quincy stepped through an opening in the barrier and approached her, a move that Piotr had anticipated, giving all of the film workers (except Natalia) a picture of Quincy and telling them that he had carte blanche.  

When Natalia turned to him, Quincy said, "You have been the last dream of my soul."

She stared at him, marveling, then said, "That's the most morose and hopeless thing I've ever heard."

He beamed.  "Thanks.  I got it from 'A Tale of Two Cities.'"

"He's bankrolling the movie, by the way," Piotr said, appearing at Quincy's side.

She seemed genuinely surprised.  "Him?"

"Me?" asked Quincy.

She laughed.  "Well then, I guess you're the one I should complain to about the casino."

"What's wrong with it?" Quincy asked.

"Everything.  The room service is especially bad."

Quincy fished around in his backpack, then placed a brick of hundreds on the felt table.  She blinked twice and said, "Is that supposed to impress me?"

Quincy looked confused.  "It's for dinner."  He took a step back and added, "You shuffle the chips real bad."

Unruffled, she said, "I noticed that."

"That's because your hands are too small."  She gave him a half-smile, so he added, "How tall are you?"

"Five three.  Why?"

"Just want to make sure your cage is tall enough."  

"What cage, funny boy?"

He felt himself getting an erection, so he said, "Bye!" and headed for the elevator.

Once he was gone, Natalia said simply, "What a manchild."

Piotr nodded.  His assessment: Complete success.

Thirty--The Spice House

Despite Enquirer reports, Quincy had gone to Reno instead of Vegas, with Piotr Gleeman, his agent, and Arvin, his toady.

"How are you going to play?" Piotr laughed.  "You look like the youngest cub scout in the troop."

Without makeup or anything to disguise his age, he opted for a Hawaiian shirt, which only drew more attention to his age.  He was instamatically booted from John Ascuaga's Nugget, Harrahs, and Circus Circus, eventually complaining to a security guard, "Did you even look at the shirt?"

"What about it?" asked the guard with a smirk.

"Haven't you ever been on a cruise?  Only old people wear these."

"So you gotta be old?  What do you think I am, a retard?"

"You're a security guard."

"Get lost, kid."

Eventually, he found a home at the Peppermill.

After a bit of $2/$5 NL, the biggest game that Quincy could find in Reno on a Tuesday afternoon, he found himself bored and hungry.  During the half-hour session, Quincy had gone all in on about forty percent of the hands he played and had lost the completely boring amount of $4,300.  The other players kept motioning for the security guards to keep away.  On the last hand, when he reraised all in with 5 2 of diamonds on a Q 6 3 rainbow flop, he decided to try his facepunching strat.

"Dealer, wait," he said.

Before the dealer could respond, Quincy socked himself in the temple three times in quick succession and flew from his seat.  The bearded man next to him flinched and stood, looking down at the floor.  Other players craned their necks.  The dealer, indifferent, dealt the turn and river.

"Natalia's toes," Quincy said nonsensically from below the table.  "Bubble bath."

The bearded man held out a hand to help Quincy, who rose unsteadily to his feet.  When he saw the dealer pushing the pot to a player in a T-Wolves ballcap across the table, he shook his head and thought, Wasted facepunch.

He staggered into the parking lot, Piotr and Arvin in tow.

"Your first time in Reno," Piotr said to Arvin.  "What do you think?"

"Bad video games, bums under benches, and everyone drunk in the afternoon," Arvin said, and then added philosophically, "Reno is awesome."

They hopped into Quincy's orange Maserati, shiny as a gumball, and zipped through the streets in search of lunch, eventually stopping at a promising spot.

"Uh, Quince," said Piotr, "I don't think that is a restaurant."

"It's got 'Spice' in the name," Quincy replied.  "They'll have food."

It was dark inside, dull light emanating from above the bar, from a muted glow along the walls, and from the shine of the stripper poles.  A hint of bleach was overwhelmed by the stench of sweat.

"Nobody here," Piotr said.  "Let's go get some pizza."

The door closed behind them, and they heard the click-click-click of heels. A woman with a hawk-like face approached them and abruptly said, "Out.  Too young."





But Quincy had been kicked out of enough places for the day.  He pulled a softball-sized ball of cash from his jacket pocket, which the woman give little more than a glance, peeled away two Benjamins, and handed them to her.  "One big bowl of mac and cheese and whatever they want," he said, motioning to Piotr and Arvin.

She smiled.  "My name is Chamomile.  Take a seat, gentlemen."  She returned to the entrance, flipped a sign so that "CLOSED" faced the parking lot, and locked the door.  She wore a black miniskirt and a sleeveless top with vertical black-and-white stripes.

"Maybe her Dad is an NFL referee," Arvin guessed.

When she returned to the table, she held a pen and pad in hand.  She said, "One big bowl mac and cheese."

Then she looked at Piotr, who asked, "Do you have a menu?"

"The menu is whatever you want."

"Lasagna."

"Uh huh," she said, and turned to Arvin.

"Nine Whopper meals."

She nodded.  She squinted at the pad for a moment, then said, "Nine hundred bucks, and it'll take an hour.  Cash up front."

Quincy paid.  A man came out of a room behind the bar, craning his neck, and Chamomile hurried over to whisper to him.  He disappeared, and she clicked back over to their table.

"Your food is on the way.  While you're waiting for lunch," she said, "how about a show?"

"Anything we want?" Quincy asked, scanning the room for a television set.

"Anything."

"Beavis and Butthead," said Quincy.

"How about," she said, leaning forward to reveal cleavage, "I get naked and we call that a show?"

"I guess," Quincy said.  He figured that if she wanted to get naked, who was he to stand in the way?  "But what are you gonna do?"

She laughed.  "I'm going to get naked."

Quincy seemed unconvinced.  "Can you get naked while we watch Spongebob?"

"No Spongebob.  Me.  Naked.  Dancing around that pole over there."

Quincy peered at her.  "That's the show?"

For a split second, Chamomile's face turned furious.  Then the anger was gone.  She said sweetly, "Why don't I put on some music, get naked, and dance over there, and you can tell me what you think?"

"You talk about getting naked a lot," Piotr observed.

Arvin interrupted.  "I want to change my order.  I want extra cheese.  On my Whoppers."

"Fuck your Whoppers!" Chamomile exclaimed.  Then she walked behind the bar, crouched down, and soon a song with strong bass began vibrating their chairs.  She sat up on the bar, pouted at them, twirled around on her ass to the other side, and headed with a determined gait toward the platform.  As the music played, she gradually lost her top, skirt, and bra.

"What's that called?" Arvin pointed, shouting over the music.

"G-string!" she shouted back.

"No, that blue thing above it!"

"That's a mole, asshole!"

She wrapped her legs around the pole and fell backwards, breasts gyrating and hair brushing the floor.

"How do you make your breasts do that?" Piotr shouted.

"Do what?" she shouted back at him.

"Move to the beat of the music like that?"

"Practice!"

"Good job!"

"Thanks!"

When the song ended, she stalked over to them.  Quincy saw sweat beads on her upper lip.

"Private show," she said, "is four hundred bucks."  Quincy shrugged and paid her.  Folding the money into her g-string, she seemed to toss a vulnerable glance their way.  "Why?  Didn't you like it?"

They were quiet.

She frowned at them.  "Well, how about ping pong?  You like ping pong?"

They remained quiet.  Eventually, Arvin declared, "Ping pong sucks."

"Well, you've never seen ping pong like this."

She started another song and returned to the stage with a pink bucket.  Soon she tossed her g-string in Quincy's direction--he ducked--and deposited her ass onto the shiny stage floor.  As the song thumped its chorus, she shouted, "How about this!" and inserted one of the white balls into herself.  She made it disappear, reappear, disappear, and then launched the ball at them.  It bounced off of Arvin's forehead.

"Ping pong is awesome," Arvin said.

More ping pong balls began to fly in their direction, sometimes three at a time.

"Her aim," Piotr observed, "is surprisingly good."

A well-placed ball flew toward Arvin's face.  He caught it in his mouth, crunched down three times, and swallowed it.

"You're not supposed to eat the ping pong balls!"

In his own defense, Arvin shouted, "What's the point of the game then?"

With renewed fury, she launched another trio of ping pong balls.  Two of them bounced off of Arvin's face.  Trio after trio kept hitting their target.

Eventually Arvin wailed, "I'm hungry!"

Just then, the front doors opened, and a blaze of light fell across the platform, forcing everyone to squint.  The man they had seen earlier entered, shut the door, and placed bags of food on their table.  As he did, the music stopped, and Chamomile came over.

At the same time, Chamomile and the man said, "A thousand bucks."

Clarifying, he said, "Delivery charge," and she said, "For the private show and one eaten ping pong ball."

Paying, Quincy noticed a small TV above the bar and said, "Can we watch TV now?"

"Fuck it all to hell," Chamomile spat, and marched over to collect her clothes.

"You don't like Cammy, eh?" the man remarked, and chuckled.  "Okay.  Let's watch TV."

Arvin had already finished one Whopper and was midway through a second.  Quincy's bowl of mac and cheese was gigantic.  He dove in.  Even Piotr, normally picky, said that the lasagna was the best he had ever had.

Meanwhile, the TV news was reporting on the Truckee Massacre.  Beneath a picture of Alex Trebek was a single word: "Manhunt."  When the man behind the bar saw that nobody was watching, he switched channels to Bugs Bunny, which immediately caught the attention of the three eaters, who giggled at the cartoons while an angry stripper named Chamomile glared at them from a distant corner, absently counting new cash.

Twenty-Nine--When Bullets Fly, Do Nuns Die?

Trebek Snaps, Truckee Trembles--When Bullets Fly, Do Nuns Die?  

A National Enquirer Exclusive

To any regular game show viewers who may have harbored the lingering suspicion that Alex Trebek--host of Jeopardy!--seemed a little too pompous, a tad too strange, even a touch creepy, we invite you to answer the following question: The craziest, most violent game show host in the world.

Winning question: Who is Alex Trebek?

On Thursday evening, TV's ultimate answer man, also known as the Human Container of Information that No One Needs to Know, Thereby Helping Viewers to Replace Important Thoughts with Trivia, led a squadron of bomb- and machine-gun-toting lowlifes--38 in total!--as they stormed the Sisters of the Silent Hug, the only Franciscan convent in Northern California.  

The setting: tranquil.

The weather: overcast with ten percent chance of rain.

The sounds: birds chirping in the trees; light hum of traffic; a nun in the TV room asking another to pass the Cheetohs; the brief squeak of brakes as a bus halted abruptly at the curb outside.

The scene: Thirteen nuns were just finishing dinner and were in the midst of evening prayers and reflection or had settled in to their regular TV viewing when accounts differed as to what they heard next.  A knock?  A scratch?  Could it be a soul in need of comfort?  A homeless cat hungry for tuna?  The pizza man?  Father Sellers, drunk again, for his weekly visit to stare at Sister Suzie?

A murder squad led by TV's biggest madman?

Before they could discover the answer to this death-dealing question, double doors exploded from their hinges . . . the result of a bazooka attack!  

What happened next will haunt the sleepy town of Truckee for a century, a tragedy that the Enquirer will update weekly with glossy photos, mugshots, and victim stories in our newest series: "Spotlight on Terror."

"They poured into our home like burning urine from a syphilitic manpart," wept Sister Margaret Anne.

Firing their guns and tossing grenades in all directions, lunatics instantly destroyed the unoccupied living room, as well as the kitchen, the rosebush garden in the backyard, and the sign out front, which read simply, "Jesus Says Hi."

With the TV room occupying the rear of the convent, the Sisters of the Silent Hug marveled at their luck that the program Here Comes Honey Boo Boo had just started!

"The sounds we heard can best be described as a lightning storm engaged in carnal knowledge with an earthquake," said a breathless Sister Bertie Toto.  "You want to watch, but you know that if you do, hell fire awaits.  We were so fortunate that Honey Boo Boo was on.  If they had attacked ten minutes earlier, they would've blasted me into dust.  I was making oatmeal cookies, you see, right in the middle of their murder path.  They might have raped me first, taking turns, or all at once, flipping me like a pancake and spanking me like a bad girl, but in any case I was dead as Thanksgiving turkey."

Shots and explosions rang out throughout the convent and the surrounding grounds for two horrifying minutes, which neighbors described as "boiling tea kettles landing onto live landmines" and "a firework-filled Satanic dirty sanchez."

Upon the arrival of police, murderous thugs scattered with the wind, guns firing into the air.  Thirteen were captured, all of them confessing that they were led by a man fitting the description of Alex Trebek.  Police discovered eight dead bodies in the convent wreckage.  Their next discovery shocked them to their very core.

Not one single nun had died.

"We thank the Lord for protecting us," Sister Suzie said, while Father Sellers looked on.

Mother Agnes, the leader of the convent, was more direct.  Obviously rattled, with glass and paint chips in her hair, she said, "When you come at the Sisters of the Silent Hug, you better have your shit correct."

You said it, Sister!

Murderous Mugshots--Wednesday!

*     *     *

Murder Squad Update!  Reports surfaced just before printing that the Sisters of the Silent Hug were not the intended target of the murder squad.  The convent's address--532 East 14th Street--was mistaken by these murderous mental misfits for another address ten blocks to the west: 532 West 14th Street.

The occupants of that home?  A God-fearing family of three--mother, father, and teenage boy.

Attempts to interview the family were unsuccessful, but neighbors reported seeing the parents, Teddy and Annie Capers, as recently as this morning.

As for the 16-year-old son, Quincy Capers, numerous schoolmates made the outrageous claim that he was "in Vegas getting ready for the World Series of Poker."

One high-school source further claimed that Quincy had once appeared on the child prodigy edition of Jeopardy!, on a program that was never aired.

Too strange for coincidence?  Not when you see what we have seen--motive!  Tune in Wednesday, when we report the contents of the Lost Episode!

Twenty-Eight--A Murder Squad

The day after the funeral, Teddy Capers, Quincy's stepfather, came to Quincy's bedroom door and said, "C'mere, son.  Your mother and I want to talk with you."

"Kay, one sec."  Quincy had a decision to make on the turn against Brian Hastings in pot limit Omaha.  He had 3d 3s 2c 2h on a As Ts 5s 7d board, and he had check-raised the flop, which Hastings had quickly called.  Now Quincy was unsure whether to continue with his "double shove limp check," the misnomer of a strategy that he had coined which involved him check-raising every street.  Instead, he just bet the pot, and when Hastings shoved, Quincy snap-called, slapped his laptop shut, and hurried from the room.  He would find out later that he was drawing dead to a flopped flush.  Hastings was such a luckbox.

His mother was sitting on the sofa.  Taking a seat next to her, Teddy placed his hand on top of hers.

Uh oh, thought Quincy.

"Quincy," his mother asked, "did you know Rufus Bankman?"

Rufus? he wondered.  He laughed.  They gave him a quizzical look.  "Riff," he answered.  "Yeah.  He's the dead guy."

She and Teddy exchanged a look.  "Did you see him on Halloween?" she asked.

"Yeah.  He punched me in the head twice and took my candy."  He was following Piotr's instructions: Don't lie about anything, unless it has to do with me.

Here, Quincy's mother dropped her face into her hands.  He couldn't tell if she was weeping.

"Kid," Teddy said, taking over, "a detective stopped by today.  Asked a couple questions."

"Cool!"

"About you."

"Awesome!"  Talking with detectives could be a fun new game full of interesting strategies.

"The detective told us that the coroner's report of this Rufus kid showed that he had died from poison.  Rat poison."

"Whoa.  Sucks for him."

"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"  Teddy turned his head slightly and seemed to be measuring Quincy with his eyeballs.

"Nope.  But I'm glad he's dead."

Alarmed, Teddy asked, "Why?"

"He was the biggest bully in Truckee.  All the kids wanted him dead.  Anything else?"

"No," Teddy said, turning to comfort his mother.  "Go play."

*     *     *

Days had passed, then weeks, then months, and still Alex Trebek couldn't stop thinking about the ratfaced kid from the unaired Child Prodigy edition of the show.  Turned out they weren't able to edit out enough of the kid's wiseass remarks to move forward with it.  And the kid was creeping into his dreams, giving him answers that led to questions that accused Trebek of pedophilia.  To top it off, just last night while taping another segment, he had mispronounced joie de vivre!  The kid was messing with his mind, and the only way that he could get back on track would be by turning to the ultimate step . . . again.

Murder.

Few in the game show industry knew that Trebek was a complete madman.  Those few either kept quiet about it or ended up "accident" victims.  Ted Berman, an executive producer, had been run over by a diaper truck while stepping out of the dry cleaners in West Hollywood.  Charlie Sanders, a cameraman on the show for over a dozen years, had died in a hit and run accident that left his Subaru halfway up a tree.  Witness reports varied, but a couple of them thought that they had seen a blue diaper truck in the area.

Time to try a new vehicle perhaps, before the clueless cops figured him out.

With a few days off from airing new programs, Trebek had flown to North Sacramento where, with the assistance of a reliable underground friend, he found himself in a warehouse with a group of lowlifes.  The underground friend had assigned them all nicknames to preserve their anonymity.

“Roll call!” Trebek announced.  The crew gave him their attention.  Trebek began reading from a list.  “Barfly?”

“Here.”

“Rimshot?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hiccup?”

“Present.”

“Butter?”

“Yep.”

“Waffles?”

“At your service.”

“Firefly?”

“Me!”

“Ticklish?”

“Hee hee!”

“Tank?”

“What.”

“Bingo?”

“Woof!”

“Batshit?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Aqua Velva?”

“Yes.”

“Zamboni?”

“Right.”

“Swede?”

“Absolutely.”

“Rickets?”

“Okay.”

“Splashy?”

“Sure.”

“Alabaster Lenny?”

“A nickname I hate.”

“Chimichanga?”

“Si.”

“Rocket?”

“Pow!”

“Eclipse?”

“Wild.”

“Pluto?”

“Hi.”

“Army Ant?”

“Accounted for.”

“Far Flung?”

“Never absent.”

“Toadstool?”

“To your left.”

“TV?”

“Sir.”

“Cirrhosis?”

“Shwing.”

“Microwave?”

“On time.”

“Creeper?”

“Hey.”

“Froglegs?”

“Oui.”

“Irkutsk?”

"Da.”

“Fatty?”

“Urp.”

“Blitzkrieg?”

“Tock!” went his clicked heels.

“Spazztard?”

“Aw.”

“Psychedelic?”

“Groovy.”

“Inkblot?”

“Shhh.”

“Eczema?”

“Okie dokie.”

“Frisco?”

“Fantastic.”

“And Evergreen?”

“Always.”

“Good. That’s everyone.  You’ll be forming two lines.  One line will form in front of me.  I will be giving you your pay.  A second line will form at the rear of the school bus outside.  Next to the school bus, you will find Midget.  Tell Midget your nickname and he will supply you with your firepower.  In four hours, you will be storming the house of a kid named Quincy Capers.  Kill everyone you see.  You'll be traveling together in that school bus over there."

The group stared at him.

Suddenly, a word popped into Trebek's mind.  The boy had used it to sting him to his depths.  With all of these stupid faces staring at him and not moving, he instantly became furious.

"Get going, fuckballs!"