Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

This is me sleeping, Tuck thought. This is exactly how I behave when I sleep.

“I twisted up a joint of skunky green bud the size of your dick.”

“I hope you got help carrying it,” he said, still under the covers.

“I rolled it on the inside of my thigh the way the women in Cuba roll cigars.”

“Don’t tell me how you licked the paper.”

She slapped him on the bottom. “Come on, dance with me.”

He rolled over and pulled the sheet off his face. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”

“Not until you dance with me and have some champagne.”

Tuck looked at his watch. “It’s five in the morning.”

“Haven’t you ever danced till dawn?”

“Not vertically.”

“Oh, you nasty boy.” Coy now, as if anything short of being caught at genocide could make her blush. The song changed to something slow and oily that Tuck didn’t recognize.

“This is such a good song. Let’s dance.” She swooned. She actually swooned. Swooning, Tuck noticed, looked very much like an asthma attack wheezed in slow motion. A rooster crowed, and seven thousand six hundred and fifty-two roosters responded in turn.

“Beth, it’s morning. Please go home.”

“Then you’re not going to dance with me?”

“No.”

“All right, I guess we’ll skip the dancing, but I want you to know that I’m very disappointed.” She stood up, pulled the evening gown over her head, and dropped it to the floor. The sequins sizzled against the floor like a dying rattlesnake. She wore only stockings underneath.

Tuck said, “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” but there was no conviction in his voice and she pushed him back on the bed.

Tuck was staring up at the ceiling, his arm pinned under her neck, silently mouthing his mantra, “After this, I will not bone the crazy woman. After this, I will not bone the crazy woman. After…” Boy, how many times had he said that? Maybe things were getting better, though. In the past it had always been “I will not get drunk and bone the crazy woman.” He had been only sleepy this time.

He tried to worm his arm out from under her, then used the “old snuggle method.” He rolled into her for a hug and when she responded with a sleepy moan and tried to kiss him, the space under her neck opened up and he was free. It worked as well on murdering bitch goddesses as it did on Mary Jean ladies. Better even, Beth

didn’t wear near as much hair spray, which can slow a guy down. God, I’m good.

He rolled out of bed and crept into the bathroom. While he peed, he softly chanted, “Yo, after this, I will not bone the crazy woman.” It had taken on a rap cadence and he was feeling very hip along with the usual self-loathing. His scars made him think of Kimi’s wound, and suddenly he was angry. He padded naked back to the bed and jostled the sleeping icon. “Get up, Beth. Go home.”

And someone pounded on the door. “Mr. Case, tee time in five.”

Tuck clamped his hand over Beth’s mouth, lifted her by her head in a single sweeping move from the bed to the bathroom, where he released her and shut the door. Fred Astaire, had he been a terrorist, would have been proud of the move.

Tuck grabbed his pants off the floor, which is where he kept them, pulled them on, and answered the door. Sebastian Curtis had a driver slung over his shoulder. “You might want to put on a shirt, Mr. Case. You can get burned, even this early.”

“Right,” Tuck said. He was looking at the caddie. Today Stripe carried the clubs. The guard sneered at him. Tuck smiled back. Stripe, like Mato before him, was doing caddie duty unarmed. Time to play a little round for the navigator, he thought. He winked at Stripe.

“I’ll be right there.” Tuck closed the door and went to the bathroom to tell Beth to wait until he’d gone before coming out, but when he opened the door, she was gone.

“Did you know that over ninety percent of all the endangered species are on islands?” the doctor said.

“Nope,” Tuck said. He picked his ball up and put it on the rubberized mat, then turned to Stripe. “Dopey, give me a five iron.”

They were on the fourth hole and had crisscrossed the compound pretending to play golf for an hour. Tuck swung and skidded the ball fifty yards across the gravel. “Heads up, Bashful,” Tuck said as he threw the club back to Stripe.

“Islands are like evolutionary pressure cookers. New species pop up faster and go extinct more quickly. It works the same way with religions.”

“No kidding, Doc?” They still had fifty yards to get to where Sebastian’s first shot lay. Tuck had hit three times.

“The cargo cults have all the same events associated with the great reli-gions: a period of oppression, the rise of a Messiah, a new order, the promise of an endless time of peace and prosperity. But instead of devel-oping over centuries like Christianity or Buddhism, it happens in just a few years. It’s fascinating, like being able to see the hands of the clock move right before your eyes and be a part of it.”

“So you must totally get off when daylight savings time comes around.”

“It was just a metaphor, Mr. Case.”

“Call me Tuck.” They had reached Tuck’s ball and he placed it on the Astro Turf mat. “Sneezy, give me the driver.”

Sebastian cleared his throat. “That looks more like a nine iron to me. You’ve only got fifty yards to the pin.”

“Trust me, Doc. I need a driver for this one.”

Stripe snickered and handed him the driver. Tuck examined it, one of the large-headed alloy models that had become so popular in the States—all metal. Tuck grinned at Stripe. “So, Doc, I guess you shitcanned the Meth-odist thing to watch the clock spin.” Tuck lined up the shot and took a practice swing. The club whooshed through the air.

“Have you ever had faith in anything, Mr. Case?”

Tuck took another practice swing. “Me? Faith? Nope.”

“Not even your own abilities?”

“Nope.” Tuck made a show of lining up the shot again and making sure his hips were loose.

“Then you shouldn’t make jokes about it.”

“Right,” Tuck said. He tensed and put his entire weight behind the club, but instead of hitting the ball, he swung it around like a baseball bat, slamming the head into Stripe’s cheek, shattering the bone with a sickening thwack . The guard’s feet went out from under him and he landed with a crunch in the coral.

“Christ!” Sebastian yelled. He grabbed the club and wrenched it from Tuck’s grasp. “What in the hell are you doing?”

Tuck didn’t answer. He bent over the guard until he was only inches from his face and whispered, “Fore, motherfucker.”

A second later Tuck heard a mechanical click and the guard who had been tending the pin had an Uzi pressed to his ear.

Sebastian Curtis was bent over Stripe, pulling his eyes open to see if his pupils would contract. “Take Mr. Case to his bungalow

and stay with him. Send two men with a stretcher and find Beth. Tell her to—” Curtis suddenly realized that the guard was only getting about a third of what he said. “Bring my wife.”

“I’ll get back to you on that faith thing, Doc,” Tuck said.

The Sorcerer paced back and forth across the lanai. “I want to find another pilot, Beth. We can’t let him act that way and get away with it.”

The Sky Priestess yawned. She was draped across the wicker emperor’s chair, wearing a towel she’d wrapped above her breasts at the Sorcerer’s request. He said he needed to think. “Did you ask him why he did it?”

“Of course I asked him. He said he was trying to liven up the game.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”