Chapter 22.
I sat inside a fort of designer shopping bags, built next to Muffy and Bunny’s table. They seemed to be trying to hide from my onboard camera and microphone. They kept referring to me as ‘the eyeball’ or ‘the ear’ and they spoke into their hands for more private comments. I always get nervous around Muffy, so I began licking my balls. She noticed my dependence between their silences and poked my rump with her very pointy shoe. I hated when she did that – it made me feel even more nervous, so the cycle continued during the entire lunch. Neither Muffy or Bunny needed to be strong-armed into spending a sizeable stack of Creative Reality Production’s slush fund on new clothes but they both knew that it came at a cost – invasion of their privacy. Bellini’s Restaurant sported some of the most fashionable eaters in L.A. I’ve always found it strange that humans who go to places like Bellini’s, don’t eat much more than Mister Floppers and his kind.
A waitress whose skin was concealed by dragons, snakes and cartoon characters arrived at our table. She waited politely, until Muffy acknowledged her presence. Muffy’s disapproving gaze followed the serpent’s head on the waitress’ wrist up to its tail that coiled around her neck.
“Are the ice cubes Fijian?” Muffy asked.
“Huh? Fijian? I’m not with you maam,” the waitress replied in a southern accent.
“Are they frozen bottled water or are they just frozen tap water?”
“The water came out of jug. But I’m not sure where the jug came from.”
“I knew it,” Muffy said, matter-of-factly like she’d discovered a new species. “I do not want cubes of frozen human waste in my water.”
The waitress lifted the jug and peered in through the water examining the frozen cubes like they were a newly discovered species.
“You know eighty-five per cent of water in cities in America have traces of prescription medicine in it. I read that,” Muffy declared. “And I heard this place was supposed to have class.”
“We could probably freeze some for you but it’ll take about an hour.”
“Forget it, just get my salad. And is the lettuce on the salad, Icelandic?” Muffy asked.
“I think so, it said it was on the box,” the waitress said.
“Yes, but Icelandic is also a brand. Is the lettuce imported from Iceland or is it grown in the U.S. and called Icelandic?”
“I dunno, someone left it on our doorstep and we just sort of took it in and looked after it. I didn’t see any immigration papers,” the waitress said.
Bunny looked up from her smartphone and snickered.
“Just bring me the salad dear and I’ll take my chances. And sweetie save the wisecracks for the auditions or you’ll find yourself on the bus back to your trailer, skinning cats in banjo-ville, before you know it.”
“Would your dog like some water? He looks like he’s warping for a drink.”
I was warping for a drink. My tongue hung down to my collar and I was panting like a strangled pug. Muffy looked at my tongue and tried to pinch it between her fingers. “Typical drooling male. Yes, you can get him some.”
“Does he have an aversion to tap water?” the waitress asked.
“Get him tap water,” Muffy snapped. “Seems like anyone with half a brain can get a job in here these days.”
Muffy leaned over the table and surveyed Bunny’s latest cosmetic surgery. “I told you Doctor Tran Nga was a master craftsman. You know, I’m seriously thinking of adopting a Vietnamese child. You wouldn’t believe that life that man had growing up in the slums of Nha Trang. Simply dreadful.”
“Adopting! Are you crazy Muffy? You can’t even keep your houseplants alive and what about me? I want to be your only daughter,” Bunny whined, like a spoilt child.
“I think you’ve got bigger problems with this colour palette that you’ve got going? You look like a Lithuanian streetwalker. Have I taught you nothing? And how’s you father?”
The waitress brought me a bowl of water. I lapped voraciously while she tickled my ears with her printed hands. Muffy looked annoyed that I was getting more attention than her from the waitress.
“Dad’s ok. He’s got a few months work over at Studio twenty-six.”
“If the ear over here licking his balls and this reality TV thing pays up, then he might be able to hang up his little hammer and bag of nails.”
Bunny scratched her face with both hands. “My face is really itchy and it’s still sore. Is it supposed to be so itchy? It wasn’t like this, the last few times I had work done.”
“Sweetie that is nothing. I’ve had it a hundred times. Change is pain and pain is part of the process,” Muffy said sincerely. “Pain and I are old friends. Just think in a few more weeks, you’ll be parading the chin that you should have been born with, before your fathers genes beat it like an old carpet.”
Bunny checked her reflection on the side of a knife.
“I don’t know, I think I should have gone for the Audrey Hepburn chin.”
“Nonsense, you look beautiful my little Bunnykins. That new Prada top I got you today will look stunning with your new chin,” Muffy said. “But I know someone who could do with a wikkle nip tuck in the tum-tums area.”
Bunny tried to pinch some fat from her waist. The flesh slipped out from between her fingers. All she could manage, was a small, taut tent of skin. “I was thinking about taking up Yagashooshi yoga. It’s the latest. You eat nothing but seaweed for a week, then you spend a week of intensive Yagashooshi yoga while immersed in baths of seaweed. It’s run by this half-Indian, half-Japanese, half-Tibetan, Yen or Zen master yogi type guy. Or maybe I should just join a spa and gym.”
Muffy balked. “Gym! Are you crazy? Gym schmim. You pay two-thousand dollars a month and you’re the one doing all the work. Liposuction baby. Suck it out. There’s two roads in life kiddo – the hard life and the lipo life. I wouldn’t be caught dead on a treadmill sweating with all those gerbils,” Muffy said. She pointed up at a large glass window of a very expensive looking gym. “Look at them. Just look at them.”
A large red faced man sweated profusely on a treadmill. His comb-over flapped from side to side on his pasty freckled skull. He squinted and eyed the two women looking up at him. He checked over his shoulder to see if they were looking at someone behind him. Muffy waved at him and managed as wide a smile as her latest botox shots would allow. He returned her gesture with a wave and a nervous grin. Muffy waved again. He waved back, almost shooting off the back of the treadmill. He managed to clamber back into position.
“Yes little bald man keep workin’ it,” Muffy said through clenched teeth and a fake smile. “I hope for your sake you’ve got a Lamborghini in the garage or at least something Italian. Keep it going. Keeeeeepp it going.”
The man upped the speed on his machine. His head looked like it was about to burst.
“Oh maybe a little faster to impress the girls. That’s it, crank it up. Burn it baby.”
Bunny looked like she was bored with her mothers behaviour. She disappeared back into her smartphone.
“Mummy you can be so cruel. You do love Archibald don’t you?”
Muffy snickered. “Love? I let him climb on top of me twice a month and fiddle with my bits, if that’s what you mean.”
Bunny’s new face scrunched up like a pug. “EEEuuuuuwww, that’s so gross.”
“What can I say, he paid for most of them,” Muffy said.
“Mother, you’re such a whore.”
Muffy looked surprised by her daughters naivety. “Men, women, we’re all whores kiddo. Just remember, you don’t find ivory in a dogs mouth. No offense doggie.”
She poked my head awkwardly with her foot, like she was trying to appease me. It hurt.
“Didn’t someone famous say that?” Bunny asked.
Muffy stared dead into her daughters eyes. “I said that.”
“I thought you were a cat person anyway,” Bunny said.
Muffy looked down at me with distain. “I am. Dogs remind me too much of men. Always slobbering over themselves and generally not that smart. They’ll hump anything with a pulse. But cats they’re clever, independent creatures.”
When I meet a new human, I can tell immediately whether they are a cat person or a dog person. As a dog, I don’t understand why some humans harbour this misguided view that cats are clever or the even more completely delusional idea, that cats are smarter than dogs. I’ve never heard of a sniffer cat, security cat, rescue cat, police cat, military cat or seeing-eye cat. Can you imagine seeing-eye cats? It would be a great way to cure blindness – there’re wouldn’t be a single blind person left alive. No, let’s put this argument to bed right now – cats are sneaky, selfish, lazy animals.
Muffy and Bunny’s food arrived. Muffy poked at hers like it was a laboratory specimen. Bunny’s phone danced on the table. She frowned at the screen and canceled the call. It danced again. She tapped the screen. A familiar sounding voice came through the speaker. “Hello.”
“YES, who am I speaking to?
“I’m calling from Creative Reality Productions. This is Mister Flowers, Harvey Spinks’ executive assistant.”
“Flowers. Ok. Ok. Ok. But how did you get this number?”
Muffy noisily peeled through the pages of a fashion magazine while she waited.
“We have all your numbers on the call sheet.”
“So, what do you want?”
“We’ve been watching you live on Chumley’s onboard camera,” Flowers said.
“What! You’re watching us now?” Bunny asked.
“Yes of course.”
Muffy looked up to the skies and around their table. She realigned her breasts, checked her teeth in a small little mirror she kept in her purse and pinched her cheeks.
“I didn’t know it was live. I thought you were going to, I dunno edit footage later.”
“No, we can cut live from any of the cameras in the house or to Chumley’s onboard. You’ve already been live today. ”
“Whaaaat!”
“Once you see the little red light on Chumley’s camera pack light up, you’re on air,” Flowers said.
“I’m calling because we seem to be having a problem with audio on your end. We’re picking up a weird sound throughout your entire lunch,” Flowers said.
“Sound?”
“What the hell is that sound?”
“What sound?”
“That sound! That sound!”
“Traffic?”
“No that sound. It’s like a slurping, lapping sound.”
“Oh,” Bunny said looking down at me. She giggled. “I think it’s the sound of the dog licking his balls.”
“We can’t have that sound. We can not have that sound.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know, can you shake some Tabasco sauce on his nuts or squirt some mustard down there. The camera won’t see it.”
“Tabasco sauce! Mustard! That’s just cruel. I can’t do that,” Bunny said, in a rare moment of compassion. She reached down and tugged gently on one of my ears.
Muffy made a strange giggling sound and snorted. “I hate to be the one to point out the obvious but wouldn’t that add a new dimension to the humble hot dog?”
Bunny rolled her eyes and sighed at her mother’s idiotic comment. I stopped what I was doing as I sensed that it was the main topic of conversation.
“Also can you not show the magazine cover to the camera as we don’t have a legal release to have it on air. And can you plug the restaurant a little, they’ve kicked in one free sitting with a family member every week, if we mention them.”
Muffy closed the magazine and slapped it down on the table. “The food is awful, they sell frozen piss as ice cubes and the service staff look like tattooed inbreds.”
“There must be something good you can say about the place,” Flowers said.
“Yes, we’re close to the exit and we’re leaving soon.”
“Just say anything nice. Say something,” Flowers said. “We’re coming back to you in twenty seconds, nineteen, seventeen...”
He hung up.
“Wait we’re on air in like fifteen seconds?” Muffy asked in a panicked voice.
She dabbed her lipstick on as quickly as she could and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse. A little red light that no one had ever noticed before on my camera pack lit up. Bunny pointed to me and made a rolling gesture with her hand. Muffy leaned over the table in my direction. “That water looks really tasty Chumley. Yum Chums. We’ll have to bring you back to this place again, for a bowl of that delicious water.”
“I thought the salad was pretty good,” Bunny added, unconvincingly.
Muffy twirled a loose lank of her hair with her finger. “Yes I enjoyed mine too,” Muffy said like she was playing a part in a soap opera that didn’t scrape past the pilot.
The little red light on my back went off. Bunny signaled to Muffy that we were off air.
“Muffy, I’ve seen better acting in uncle Chuck’s, Korean porn collection,” Bunny said.
“I don’t know, I think I might have a flair for this kind of thing,” Muffy said.
“You know it’s a reality TV show, not a cheesy drama.”
“Don’t be silly girl, there’s no such thing as reality TV. You think those bitches on that housewives of wherever, actually behave like that every day? Or that those muppets, groveling for a job with some king-shit corporate asshole, is reality? Take off the blinkers kiddo and take a long look around.”