Carl Hiassen - Sick Puppy

He tried to make up after the team returned to Atlanta, but Desie refused to see him. She moved out of the Buckhead apartment and went to stay with her parents. One day, when Dido showed up at the house, Desie turned the garden hose on him. Being rejected sent him into a glum frame of mind that deleteriously affected his already marginal performance on the basketball court. One wretched night, filling in for a flu-bound Moses Malone, Dido scored only three points, snagged precisely one rebound, turned the ball over five times and fouled out by the middle of the third quarter. The following morning he was traded to the Golden State Warriors, and Desie never saw him again, not even on television.

Oh, you'll find somebody new, her mother assured her. You just got off on the wrong foot.

But Desie couldn't seem to find the right one. In her twenties she was engaged three other times but never married. Twice she returned the rings without rancor, but one she kept. It had been given to her by a fiance named Andrew Beck, with whom Desie was nearly in love. Andrew Beck produced and directed campaign commercials for political candidates, but his background was as an artist. For years he had seriously painted and sculpted and nearly starved. Then he got into television and became wealthy, as were all of Desie's fiances. She told herself this was coincidence but knew better. In any case, she felt strongly about Andrew, who had a dreamily creative and distant side. Desie was captivated, as she'd never before been with a man who was even slightly enigmatic. Andrew couldn't stand politics and generally detested the senators and congressmen who paid so exorbitantly for his image-shaping skills. Desie came to admire Andrew for hating his own work – only a highly principled man would stand up and admit to wasting his God-given talent on something so shallow, manipulative and deceptive as a thirty-second campaign commercial.

The downside of Andrew Beck's commendable candor was that he often went around brooding and depressed. Desie blamed herself for what happened next. She had persuaded Andrew to see a psychologist, who urged him to seek an outlet for releasing his inner fountain of angst. Andrew chose body piercing and embarked on a zealous program of self-mutilation. He began with three small holes in each earlobe and advanced quickly to the eyebrows, one cheek and both nostrils. And he didn't stop there. He wore studs and pegs made only of the finest silver, and before long he bristled from so many man-made orifices that commercial air travel became impractical, due to delays caused by the metal detectors. With each new attachment Andrew's visage became more grotesque, although it didn't seem to bother his politician clients; Andrew's professional services were in greater demand than ever. Desie, on the other hand, could hardly bear to look at him. She held out hope that it was just a phase, even after Andrew got his tongue pierced to accommodate a size 4/0. Desie appreciated the symbolism but not the tactile effect. In fact, sex with Andrew had already become too much of an obstacle course, body ornaments snagging and jabbing her at the most inopportune moments.

But she cared for him so she kept trying, until the evening he showed up with a tiny fourteen-karat Cupid's arrow pinned through the folds of his scrotum. It was then Desie realized there was no saving the relationship, and she moved home with her folks. She hung on to the engagement ring not for sentimental reasons, but because she feared Andrew Beck might otherwise put it to some perversely self-decorative use.

Less than a week later, Desie got a phone call from Palmer Stoat. She had met him only once, during an editing session at Andrew's studio. Andrew had been videotaping trial campaign spots for a man named Dick Artemus, who was planning to run for the governorship of Florida. Palmer Stoat had accompanied Artemus to Atlanta, and sat beside him while the "Vote for Dick" commercials were screened. Desie was there to prevent Andrew from offending Artemus (whom he abhorred) and thereby pissing away a $175,000 production contract.

In the studio Stoat began flirting with Desie, until she made it plain she was spoken for. Stoat apologized convincingly and didn't say another word, although he hardly took his eyes off her all afternoon. Desie never did figure out how he learned so quickly of her breakup with Andrew Beck, but Palmer wasted no time with phone calls, flowers and first-class plane tickets. Initially Desie put him off but in the end he wore her down with his slick enthusiasm – she had always been a sucker for pampering and flattery, and Palmer was a virtuoso. Desie's parents seemed to adore him (which should have been a warning signal) and urged her to give the nice young gentleman a fair chance. Only later, when she'd married Palmer and moved away to Fort Lauderdale, did it occur to Desie that her folks had been trying to nudge her out of the house. (Two days after the wedding, her father brought in a team of carpenters to convert her bedroom into a gym.)

She couldn't deny that Stoat treated her well: the Beemer, the canal-front house off Las Olas, all the shopping she could stand. And while the physical relationship between Desie and her husband wasn't acrobatic or fiery, it was mostly pleasurable. Morphologically, Palmer was a bit doughy for Desie's taste, but at least he didn't look like a damn Christmas tree when he took off his clothes. Not one of Palmer's pallid body parts was pierced, pinned or spangled, which was a treat for his new bride. It was nice, if not exactly rapturous, to make love without fear of puncture or abrasion.

Desie felt so liberated that on their honeymoon night in Tortola she was able to remain aroused – and not dissolve into giggles – when Palmer panted into her ear: "Come on, baby, light my candle."

"Fire," she whispered gently.

"What?"

"It's 'fire,' honey. The song goes, 'Come on, baby, light my fire.' "

"No way. I saw that fella do a show down at Dinner Key before he croaked – "

"Palmer," Desie said, changing the subject, "can I get on top now?"

It was three months before he brought the Polaroid camera into bed. Desie went along but she didn't approve – the flash was annoying, as were Palmer's stage directions. Moreover, the snapshots came out so blurry and shabbily composed that she couldn't understand how her husband found them titillating. Did that make him a weirdo? After being with Andrew Beck, nothing short of a medieval mace and chain-mail suit would have seemed kinky to Desie.

She did, however, draw the line at cigars. Palmer wanted her to try one in the bedroom, before and possibly during sex.

"No chance," Desie said.

"It's that goddamn Bill Clinton, isn't it? Him and his twisted bimbos, they've given the whole cigar scene a bad name. Honest, Des, all I want you to do is smoke one."

"The answer is no, and it's got nothing to do with the president."

"Then what?" Palmer Stoat rattled off the names of several cigar-puffing movie starlets. "Come on," he pleaded, "it's a very erotic look."

"It's a very stupid look. Not to mention the nausea that goes with it."

"Oh, Desie, please."

"They cause cancer, you know," she said. "Tumors in the soft palate. You find that erotic, Palmer?"

He never again mentioned cigar sex. But now: rhinoceros horns. Desie was appalled. Killing one was bad enough, but this!

Admittedly, she and Palmer hadn't been making love so often. Desie knew why she wasn't feeling amorous – she wasn't happy with herself or the marriage; wasn't even certain she still liked her husband all that much. And she was aware he seemed to have lost interest, as well. Maybe he kept girlfriends in Tallahassee and Washington, or maybe he didn't. Maybe he was being truthful when he said that the only reason he'd purchased the black-market rhino powder was to rekindle their romance.