'Here's the plan,' I said to Lula. 'We cuff him and put him in leg irons and then we wrap him in a blanket so he doesn't get my car greasy.'
'I'm not touching him,' Lula said. 'Not only is he an ugly naked motherfucker, but he's a dry cleaning bill waiting to happen. I'm not ruining this top. I'll never find another top like this. It's genuine fake tiger. And Lord knows what he'd do to rabbit.'
I reached for him with the cuffs. 'Give me your hand.'
'Make me,' he said, waggling his butt. 'Come get me, sweetie pie.'
Lula looked over at me. 'You sure you don't want me to shoot him?'
I took my jacket off and snatched at his wrist, but I couldn't hold tight. After three attempts I had Vaseline up to my elbow, and Punky was skipping around going, '… Nah, nah, nah. Kiss my can, you can't catch me, I'm the Vaseline man.'
'This guy's in the red zone on the Breathalyzer,' Lula said. 'Think he might also be missing a few marbles in his greased-up jug head.'
'I'm crazy like a fox,' Punky said. 'If you can't catch hold of me, you can't take me in. If you can't take me in, I don't go to jail.'
'If I don't take you in, I don't pay my rent and I get kicked out of my apartment,' I told Punky, lunging for him, swearing when he slid away from me.
'This here's embarrassing,' Lula said. 'I can't believe you're trying to grab this funky fat man.'
'It's my job. And you could help! Take the damn top off if you don't want it to get ruined.'
'Yeah, take your top off, momma. I've got plenty of extra Vaseline for you,' Punky sang out.
Punky turned away from me, I gave him a good hard kick to the back of his knee, and he crashed to the floor. I threw myself on top of him and yelled to Lula to cuff him. She managed to get both cuffs on and my cell phone chirped.
It was my Grandma Mazur on the phone. When my Grandpa Mazur cashed in his two-dollar chips and moved on to the High Rollers' Suite in the sky, my Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents.
'Your mother's locked herself in the bathroom and she won't come out,' Grandma said. 'She's been in there for an hour and a half. It's the menopause. Your mother was always so sensible until the menopause hit.'
'She's probably taking a bath.'
'That's what I thought at first, but she's never in there this long. I went up and yelled and banged on the door just now and there's no answer. For all I know, she's dead. She could have had a heart attack and drowned in the tub.'
'Omigod.'
'Anyways, I thought you could get over here and unlock the door like you did last time when your sister locked herself in the bathroom.'
At Christmastime my sister Valerie locked herself in the bathroom with a pregnancy test kit. The test kit kept turning up positive, and if I was Valerie I would have wanted to spend the rest of my life locked in the bathroom, too.
'I wasn't the one who unlocked the door,' I told Grandma. 'I was the one who climbed onto the roof over the back stoop and went in through the window.'
'Well, whatever you did, you better get over here and do it again. Your father's off somewhere and your sister's out. I'd shoot the lock off, but last time I tried to do that the bullet ricocheted off the doorknob and took out a table lamp.'
'Are you sure this is an emergency? I'm sort of in the middle of something.'
'Hard to tell what's an emergency in this house anymore.'
My parents lived in a small three-bedroom, one-bathroom house that was bursting at the seams with my mom and dad, my grandma, my recently divorced, very pregnant sister, and her two kids. Emergencies tended to blend with the normal.
'Hang tight,' I told Grandma. 'I'm not far away. I'll be there in a couple minutes.'
Lula looked down at Punky. 'What are we gonna do with him?'
'We're going to take him with us.'
'The hell you are,' Punky said. 'I'm not getting up. I'm not going anywhere.'
'I don't have time to mess with this,' I said to Lula. 'You stay here and baby-sit and I'll send Vinnie over to do the pickup.'
'You're in trouble now,' Lula said to Punky. 'I bet Vinnie likes greased-up fat men. People tell me Vinnie used to be romantically involved with a duck. I bet he's gonna think you're just fine.'
I hustled down the stairs and out the front door to the Escape. I called Vinnie on the way to my parents' house and gave him the word on Punky.
'What are you, nuts?' Vinnie yelled at me. 'I'm not gonna go out to pick up some greased-up naked guy. I write bonds. I don't do pickups. Read my lips… you're the pickup person.'
'Fine. Then you go to my parents' house and get my mother out of the bathroom.'
'All right, all right, I'll do your pickup, but it's come to a sad state of affairs when I'm the normal member of this family.'
I couldn't argue with that one.
