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Last Wednesday, Ms. Wanda had soured on me inside our love lair, Room 122 of the Lewd Dude Motel. In a pique of passion, Ms. Wanda hopped off our vibrating bed (and me as well), then sashayed out the door, out the room, and maybe out of my life forever. Ms. Wanda said she’d “never get horizontal again” until I untangled “the mysteries of love” — meaning my Michael Bay-esque, premature dong detonations. But what she “really wanted, was for TexArkanaBama’s killer be brought to justice.”
My soul was sideways. I’d run over Ms. Wanda’s pet mole, TexArkanaBama. I just hoped it wouldn’t ruin my life.
Before she boogied, I stonewalled Ms. Wanda with faux-sympathies (which were, in truth, for myself). But it was no use. Ms. Wanda left me. Like always. Alone in Room 122, I was uncertain of everything — especially my semi-frozen supper-time steaks, the discounted meats I’d flung blithely into the mini fridge, minutes before. Thinking of those gray-lookin’ patties, which rather resembled TexArkanaBama after I squished him into a pet pupusa, felt like ill tidings.
Back in town, Sam Piccolo, chair of the Ezekiel City Council, was coming for my mayoral seat (and my estranged babydoll). The Ezekiel Coffee Club was talking shit in Piggly Wiggly. My steamy nights with Ms. Wanda were on the outs. My Grans had even written about me in The Ezekiel Trumpet: “Mayor Wilkins Murders Swing Voter TexArkanaBama.”
Now, normally in Ezekiel, MS, few people this south of sensible gave a goddamn about moles in general — let alone roadkill ones — before TexArkanaBama went underneath my Prius. But Sam Piccolo caught wind of my political peccadillo and rebranded his mayoral run with a “Justice 4 TexArkanaBama” platform, trying to cozy up to Ms. Wanda, as well. Sam Piccolo — whose faux-suede shoes and ratty-ass chinos gave him upper crust airs — was making political hay out of my misery and my embargoed lovemaking.
Mole murder had become a hot button issue around town, and with more than Ms. Wanda: I had Sam Piccolo’s radio attack ads coming at my head like randy rats. Local news had been starving for substantive stories since the former high school QB, Mr. Benji, fell through the roof at Waffle House. In Sunday’s paper, Grans’d co-authored her piece for The Ezekiel Trumpet with Ms. Wanda, and while there was no lost love between the two, their loathing of me brought them together (though there was some truth to the editorial, as Ms. Wanda had previously registered TexArkanaBama as an Independent). Their politically-charged reportage even got me and my pleasure craft, “Monkey Business II,” banned from the Coastal Elites Yacht Club.1
When the race against Sam Piccolo turned tight, I had to court various perverts and stone-cold randos around town to schmooze votes. I kissed a baby (which turned out to be a very small man) outside City Hall. And Dr. Dick Diamond, the disgraced audiologist, agreed to vote for me only if I listened with his stethoscope while he farted directly into the bell.
I felt pretty shaky about life in general, the only certainty being that I didn’t have a good one. Back when TexArkanaBama was living, whenever I had asked about that mole’s name, how come it was he was named for non-contiguous states (though it would have been a sorry thing to name anything — even a mole — after the sorry state of Mississippi), Ms. Wanda always would say: “Well, there’s a hole in TexArkanaBama’s name like there’s a hole in your heart. And won’t nothing ever make that right.” Ms. Wanda was always one for dropping a hot load like that before sashaying away.
My problem was, it seemed to me, I always got people’s attention when I least wished for it, and I never paid attention when I needed to the most. I sometimes tried to give folks the evil eye, like I really did have a hole in my soul, like I was a really bad dude. But from what Grans told me, my thousand-yard stare made me look constipated. Communication often failed me. I once tried to get all romantical with Ms. Wanda, but instead of telling her I wanted to slide into her DMs, I accidentally told her I “want to slide into your BMs.” But if my heart was connected to the confines of my trousers, I didn’t want anyone taking a gander inside.
Remembering Ms. Wanda, I rode to Drive-Thru Sushi for a couple of Hongo Burgers, but when I tried to go back to our room at the Lewd Dude, things went worse, or got confused. When I knocked at Room 122, I heard a cacophony of Jimmy Buffett ballads and other shameful night noises coming from within.
I dared to peek behind the rattan shades.2 That was when my heart came undone.
The room was dark, only alit from the surveillant eye of the teevee (tuned to the Army-Navy game, a real barnburner), but on top of the vibrating bed, the same bed where I’d spent many an evening, I saw Ms. Wanda bronco busting atop a shadowy figure, none other than Sam Piccolo.
I got dizzy and had to grab the railing. I will tell you that all this time I was clutching the rail to keep from chucking over the side, it seemed, if anything, their no-tell-motel lovemaking had only gotten angrier and woolier. I felt my heart was breaking, maybe this time for good. I didn’t want to say too much about it.
Inside Room 122, the passion of their doinking seemed matched only by their obliviousness to me (I tried to give them the evil eye, without much success). It seemed like Ms. Wanda was attempting to grind Piccolo into the bed with funky ex-sex, the impress of their infidelity leaving a Piccolo-sized indention in the bed. Peeking in at my ex-paramour get horizontal with my politico-nemesis (and also at the Army-Navy game) I wished I was someplace where run over moles didn’t ruin a feller’s life. I wished I was someplace a woman wouldn’t abandon me for my mayoral successor.3 I wished I was someplace where my Grans didn’t write nasty things about me in the paper (then spoil a fine Sunday Supper of white bean caprese). I wished I was someplace where nobody listened to Jimmy Buffett.
I wished I was someplace nothing like here.
The Yacht Club, I discovered to my dismay, took great pains to avoid a soupçon of scandal, and sank my pontoon-pooncraft to the bottom of Muskogee Pond, and even burned my name out of the Club’s history for good measure, to deny I was ever a member.↩︎
The Lewd Dude Hotel was just that kind of place, where they kept the bamboo window blinds outside the room.↩︎
I lost the election.↩︎
