Jeff Strand - A Bad Day for Voodoo

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’ll just follow him at a reasonable pace.”

He got back into the correct lane and proceeded to follow the car, which was going fast but not recklessly disregarding the law.

“Can I please borrow your phone?” I asked again. “I promise I won’t call the police. My mom thinks I’m dead, and I need to tell her that I’m not.”

“You’re the third person today to say that.”

“Seriously?”

“No. Gullible!” He punched me on the shoulder, then handed me his phone. “Here. Make it quick.”

I stared at the phone for a moment.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m used to only picking her name from my contacts list. I’m trying to remember her actual number.”

“Well, just scroll through recent calls. I’ve probably got your mom on there.” He punched me in the arm again. “Kidding! Kidding! Gullible!”

My mom’s car turned to the right and he followed, staying about a block behind.

The ten digits flashed into my mind. (I’m not going to share them here, because, no offense, you might be into prank calls.) I quickly dialed.

“Hello?” Mom answered, sounding frantic.

“Mom, it’s me!”

“Tyler!”

“I’ve got to go, but everything’s okay. I promise you I’m not dead.” I hung up.

“Were you disappointed that I didn’t ram him?” asked the driver.

“Not at all,” I assured him.

“I can still make it happen.”

“No, no. Just keep following him.”

“He won’t get away,” said the driver. “Do you know what my vision is? Guess what my vision is.”

“Twenty-twenty?”

“Not that good. I mean, I’m not a robot. But I can read pretty much any street sign. Go on, point to a street sign and see if I can read it.”

“That’s not necessary,” I assured him. “Just follow the car.”

“Are you being condescending?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. Just checking.”

I didn’t bother to look back at Kelley and Adam to gauge their expressions. I knew they were not smiling.

We continued the relatively low-speed chase for another couple of blocks, and then the carjacker stopped. A large metal sliding door opened to his right, he pulled into the garage, and the door closed behind him.

The cabbie drove up next to the door and stopped. I was surprised that he didn’t ask if he should ram it.

I stared at the garage door, trying to figure out exactly what I should do.

“Did I ever tell you why I became a cabdriver?” asked the cabbie. “It’s a long story but a fascinating one.”

“I don’t think we have time,” I said.

“I’ll tell you the short version. When I was three, my dad bought me a Matchbox car—”

“We really are kind of distracted right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Figuring out how to get my car back.”

“Oh, that car’s not coming back. I’ll tell you that right now. Anyway, it was a green Matchbox car, a Trans-Am, a kind of vehicle that you kids today don’t really appreciate but that in my time was quite the—”

I tuned him out, which was not easy. What should I do? They were probably chop-shopping the car right now. At any moment the sadistic carjacker could find the box, and he would open it, and, okay, maybe he wouldn’t start unraveling the doll right away. (I could imagine my skin unraveling, a long thin strip of flesh winding off of my arm until it was just veins and muscles.) But what if he tossed it in a garbage can? What if eighty tons of other garbage got poured on top of the doll at the dump?

I had to get the doll back. Now.

Or maybe I could send Adam to get it. Bribe him with a Snickers.

No, I had to do it.

I opened the door.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Kelley asked.

“Saving my life.” I got out of the cab.

“No!” Kelley opened the back door and got out as well. “He’ll shoot you!”

“No, he won’t.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Knock.”

“Knock?”

I nodded. “Knock.”

“Uh, guys, don’t leave me here,” said Adam from the backseat. “I don’t have any money for the fare.”

I gave Kelley a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “He has nothing to gain by shooting me. I can talk him out of it. Stay in the car. I’m going by myself.”

“Don’t do this. You don’t have to.”

I gave her another kiss. “Yes,” I said, “I do.” I have to admit that I said it in kind of a corny, melodramatic way, as if I were making some sort of noble sacrifice. Of course, I wasn’t being a hero or anything—I was only trying not to have my fingers burned off one by one. Still, for that one moment, I felt as if Daniel-Day Lewis could play me in an Academy Award-winning motion picture.

“Get back in the cab,” I told Kelley. “Nobody is going to shoot anybody, but if you do hear bullets, I won’t be offended if you drive away.”

Kelley let out an exasperated and heartsick sigh and then got back into the cab. She slammed the door shut. I suddenly decided that I could really use a hug before I went over to the garage door, but no.. .I’d wasted enough time already.

Then Adam got out of the car. “I’m coming with you,” he said, his voice filled with bravery.

“No.”

“I won’t let you do this alone. Part of this is sort of my fault, and I’m going to stand by your side.”

“Adam, my strategy involves talking. You’re not good at it.”

He looked hurt. “I can talk.”

“Seriously, stay in the cab. I need you to protect Kelley.”

Of course, Adam knew that I wouldn’t put him in charge of protecting a bag of stale Cheetos, much less my girlfriend. He looked at the ground and shrugged. “All right. Shriek if you need me.”

“I will. Get back in the car.”

I walked over to the metal garage door. I was sick to my stomach, my head was pounding, at least eight different body parts were trembling, and I very much doubted that my bladder was going to operate at maximum efficiency. But what choice did I have?

I stood there for a few seconds, gathering my courage, and then I knocked.

This information comes from several different sources, mostly Wikipedia, which I know isn’t completely reliable, but it’s sure convenient.

Throughout his childhood, Gary Sheck’s parents had said that one day he should open his own Italian restaurant. Nobody in the Sheck family was Italian, and in fact, the family had a long history of making fun of people with Italian accents, but nevertheless, that was the career path they encouraged. When he was sixteen, Gary took a job washing dishes at a local Italian restaurant, and that’s when he discovered that being a professional dishwasher absolutely sucked.

Here’s how it works: A customer complains to the server that the chicken on his fettuccine Alfredo is overcooked. The server says, “Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix that right up, and it’ll be no problem at all.” The server goes back into the kitchen and informs the chef that the customer sent the chicken back because it was overcooked. Despite the server’s assurance to the customer that it’s no problem at all, it really is a problem, and the chef throws a minor temper tantrum. Of course, the chef can’t come out into the dining area and punch the customer in the face or dump a bowl of spaghetti sauce on his head, so he yells at the server. The server can’t yell at the chef or the customer, so to vent his or her frustration, the server yells at the dishwasher, who is entirely powerless and who had nothing to do with the overcooked chicken on the fettuccine Alfredo.