Monster - A. Lee Martinez [5]
“There. All signed. Can I go now?”
“Certainly, miss. Have a pleasant night.”
She tossed him the clipboard and headed toward her car. “And tell your boss he’s lucky I don’t sue his ass for giving me an exploding baseball bat.”
Judy didn’t see how she could ever forget this, and her contrary nature made her even more determined not to.
By the time she’d gotten home, she’d forgotten that vow.
2
Since dead things couldn’t be transmogrified, Monster had to lug the yeti corpse back to his van. He slapped a few gravity-defying Post-it note runes onto the carcass to make it easier. Still, he found it annoying, especially since there wasn’t quite enough room for a full-grown yeti in his van. He’d known that but decided to give it a try. Now the carcass’s wide shoulders were caught on the shelves and cabinets that filled the interior, and its lower half hung out.
“Come on, Chester,” he grunted. “Are you pulling?”
Chester spoke from somewhere on the other side of the corpse. “I’m not exactly the strongest paper gnome in the business. Maybe we should just call Hardy. He’s got a pickup.”
“Screw that. I’m not giving him a cut of my commission.” Monster planted his hands on the yeti’s ass cheeks and pushed. It slid in a little farther. A shelf tipped. Its contents spilled. Most of the forms fell in the interior, and a few plastic bottles with elixirs and potions bounced around.
“Stupid girl.”
“Perhaps it’s not my place to say,” called Chester, “but she is a civilian. Under the circumstances, she behaved admirably.”
“Shut up, Chester.”
“Yes, boss.”
Monster took a minute to catch his breath. It was too bad he wasn’t superstrong green today. Would’ve made things a lot easier.
“So should I radio for Hardy yet?” asked Chester. “Or should I wait until the specimen is good and wedged?”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”
“To be technical, I was being facetious, not sarcastic.” Monster wasn’t really sure what facetious meant. The gnome had a bigger vocabulary than he did, and it bugged him. Not enough for Monster to actually try to improve his word power, but just enough to irritate. Kind of like a pebble in his shoe that moved around so that he felt it only once every dozen steps or so. Annoying, but not quite enough to induce him to unlace his sneakers and fish it out.
“Call Hardy,” he said.
“You got it.”
Monster sat on the wedge of fender not blocked by yeti hips. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Then he remembered he didn’t smoke anymore, and even if he did, his shirt pocket had been ripped to shreds by his earlier mauling.
Chester appeared. The paper gnome held up a one-inch doll that chimed steadily. “You missed a call.”
Monster took the doll, set it on the fender, and searched his pocket again for cigarettes that he knew weren’t there. “Got any smokes?”
“Sorry. Fire and paper gnomes don’t mix.” Chester folded himself into a parrot and settled on Monster’s shoulder. “Dispatch says Hardy is on the way.”
Monster made a neutral gruntish kind of noise.
The doll continued to chime. “If you’re not going to check your messages, you could at least turn that thing off,” said Chester.
“Can’t turn it off,” said Monster. “Only way to get it to shut up is to listen to the message.”
The doll grew more insistent in its chiming. “I don’t know why you don’t just get a cell phone,” said Chester. “At least those can be set on Silent.”
“Don’t want a cell phone.”
He didn’t want a nagging doll either, but Liz had insisted. She’d said the doll was more reliable, and it didn’t have to be recharged. The truth was that it was a lot harder to ignore the doll than a cell. The chiming would just get louder and louder and louder. Now that the doll knew he knew about the message, it would be even worse. It would also report his slow response time back to Liz.
The doll’s chime changed to a shrill hiss. It was getting impatient.
“All right, already. Give me the damn message.”