Chapter 61
APRIL
“I
t's so unfair. Everything bad happens to me.”
Dinah slouches on the couch, looking like a skunk with her washed-out makeup. I've prepared a basket of boiled eggs for her so she doesn't starve to death.
“There, there,” I say. I give her shoulder two weak pats because it's hard to fake how much I give a shit. Home is quiet now that Clint is gone. The smell of BO is gone. Happy days are here again. Nobody's allowed to mention his name, which is a rule I'll gladly follow.
If I had known what would happen, I would have burned Dinah's garage down last year.
It was a beautiful night. The garage was a pile of blackened wood and ruined audiovisual equipment with no wall left standing.
Smoke floated as the last of the fire was put out by the firemen.
All of our neighbors stood in front of the driveway to gawk at the disaster.
Inside the living room, Dinah walked deliriously in circles. The fire marshal came through the back door with something in his gloves.
“We found the culprit.” He held up Clint's cheap plastic vape pen.
All of us stared at Clint, who squirmed like a cat with bird feathers sticking out of its mouth.
“You dunderheaded dicksore,” Dinah said, her voice growing louder. “A lifetime loser, a useless drunk like your father! Get out of my house! NEVER come back.”
Clint raised his palms toward her, fingers sprawled out. “Let's cool our jets here, okay? Take a deep breath.”
The vein on Dinah's temple pulsed even harder. Sensing the tension, the fire marshal excused himself.
Dinah grabbed Clint's AR-15 from the coffee table and unloaded a storm of bullets into his guitar.
“Cool what now?”
“Dinah, don't do this to us!” he screamed. “Wade, back me up here!” I yawn.
Clint begged her to put the gun back down.
She flashed a maniacal grin, her eyes googly like a mad scientist, and yelled, “I'm just getting started!” She ran through the front door like she was called into battle.
The neighbors saw her with the gun and scattered in different directions.
When she aimed at Clint's truck, I could practically hear him screaming in slow motion.
The bullets sprayed through the windshield and engine, all across the side to the bed. The tires on the driver's side popped, sinking the truck onto the driveway.
“First you stole my show from me! Then you ruined my garage and my painting!”
She continued to hit the truck until the tires on the other side also popped. After enough gunfire, she turned to Clint with a sad realization.
“Get out of my life!”
“You can't get rid of me like this. I even came up with your podcast name! You need me!” he screamed back. This was the worst possible thing he could have said, because this tapped into another level of rage.
“I NEED YOU LIKE I NEED A SEA LAMPREY ON MY SNATCH!”
She started shooting around his feet. He flew off the grass and ran in zigzags across the lawn, all the way across the neighbors' front yards to the end of the street until he disappeared into the dark. We never saw him again.
At least I got one happy ending this year. Everything else still sucks.
Dinah and I watch the news, which shows a gunfight at a gas station between some Dinahmiters and Brandonites. Because of Dinah's email, someone went and shot down all the IntegriDrones they could find, and the resulting gunfight left three men hospitalized.
“Dinah's reckless lies and thinly veiled threats against me and my customers are creating a dangerous atmosphere in our town,” Brandon Barton Buckley says.
“You're causing a whole civil war and somebody might die,” I say to Dinah.
“Oh well! Now that Clint lit a real fire under our asses, I need to light a fake one under everybody else's if I'm going to survive,” she says.
Nobody has sent her so much as a dime so far. They all want Clint. It also didn't help that she claims anybody who watches her show is being surveilled. She's refusing to see that now that she's got creative control of her show back in her hands.
“Wade, go get the mail in case somebody sent me a check,” she orders, so I run down the driveway to the mailbox. There's nothing but a thick envelope for me.
It's from the hospital. Several folded papers fall out when I tear the top flap open. I kneel to the ground to grab them, then freeze. I can't be reading this right. I know it's a bill, but I can't be looking at a real number. This must be some kind of mistake.
BALANCE OWED: $367,495.34
No, no, no. This can't be happening. Why am I getting the bill more than a month later? I rush into the house so I can face-plant into my bed and not wake up for the next three thousand years.
“What'd the mailman bring?” Dinah asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Junk mail.”
I retreat to my room and do the only thing I can do when I'm in need of a large sum of money: create a fundraiser.