Every Friday I will be posting a snippet from the sequel to Flipka. If you’re interested in following along, welcome! All feedback, be it fair or foul, is welcome.
SERGEI SLEPT ON A COT in one of the prop rooms, although never the same cot and never the same prop room. Thus, finding him in that labyrinth of costumes, backdrops and props was nearly impossible but … I knew where he showered every morning.
“Flipka!” He said, emerging from the row of showers in all his hairy-as-a-Russian bear and built-like-a-Polish ox nakedness.
“Haven’t they caught you yet?” I asked as he pulled a clean towel from the bin and began drying off, armpits first.
“When it comes to the ladies, I never tell,” he winked. Sergei claimed that the male acrobats farted garlic when they showered. He didn’t mind garlic on someone’s breath but expelled via the anus was a different story. And so he had taken up the habit of showering in the dressing rooms used by the showgirls and female acrobats. Generally after all of them had left for the day. When he’d saved enough money by sleeping in the prop rooms, showering with the ladies, and eating throwaways from the all-you-can-eat buffets, Sergei planned to bring his entire family over from Moscow, and then, they were going to take over Vegas. And I believed him because he knew things about the town that no one knew, not even Hyman. He claimed that he’d stumbled upon the real plans for the Strip. The secret passageways and tunnels unknown to any city planner or building inspector. He would never say where he’d found them or where they were hidden because those plans were more valuable to him than all the “gold in the Kremlin.”
“I’ll get right to the point: I need you to get me out of here,” I said.
“I heard you meet with big man.”
“Yes. I may be a little paranoid but —”
“Last year we hear stories of his daughter’s big rescue. See pictures in newspaper. Ha!” Sergei rarely believed anything he read in the newspapers or saw on television. “You think girls in Switzerland … in mountains … yodeling? And big man pays? Ha! Fairy stories. Girls in newspaper … girls they show on television … actors.”
“I didn’t see any of the news coverage. I was —“
“And then we hear our Flipka very sick. We send get well card!” He chuckled. “Everybody sign!”
“Yes I got your card.” The news that a trio of missing teenage girls had been found in the clutches of a polygamist cult had failed to ignite the East Coast media. It was Nevada, after all. Another planet in another solar system. A place where stuff like that happened all the time. Didn’t it? “I wasn’t sick. I was deported. Someone didn’t want me around when the story broke.”
“Hyman?”
“I didn’t think so … although I’m starting to wonder…” What kind of a father would try to profit off a bogus story about his own daughter? What kind of father?
“We have to find new prop lady.” Sergei continued drying his body. After the pits, he dried his hairy arms, then his hairy legs and finally … his considerable groin sac. “I get you out of here, Flipka,” he mumbled tossing the towel into the dirty bin. “I’m thinking afterwards … steak for breakfast. At Steakhouse. With a Stoli. A bottle of Stoli.”
I handed him a couple of twenties. “I didn’t come with a lot of cash —”
“And some cigars …” He added as he pulled on grey slacks and grabbed a plaid shirt.
“You louse! After I helped with the immigration!“
He threw back his head and laughed. “I kid you, little one. You lost sense of humor?”
“Then I’ll take the twenties back …”
“Ha! I have new gaffer at eleven. We have steak at Steakhouse with Stoli then he tell me why is best person for job. Ha! Follow me. We go fast.” he said as he began walking toward one of the prop rooms. “First, we suit up!”
“Suit up?”
I may need to take next week off. We’re having work done around the house and have already had one emergency and one haggle with the contractor … those of you who live in old houses know what I mean!
Saying nothing in particular 