“Shit. I should have brought snacks too. What flavor chips you guys eating?”
“Not chips, Callan. Cheetos. And the only flavor that counts: Flamin’ Hot.”
“Pecan, remind me to bring you some All-Dressed after the break.”
I whistle. “He has you there, Peeks. We both know All-Dressed are thesuperiorchip.”
“Someone—cough, Zach—hasn’t been supplying me with them.”
“I haven’t been to Canada in months!”
“Never heard of Amazon?!”
As our squabble escalates, the tow truck triggers the car’s alarm system. Within moments, Dyers’s running out of the house.
“Can’t you read?!” he yells, hands flung wide and loose. “I have a permit!”
His volume draws the attention of a small crowd of pedestrians.
“Oh, my god, this is perfection,” D breathes. “Almost as good as an orgasm?—”
“Hey!”
She ignores my grumble and just clutches at my hand. “My choreography is coming to life, Zach!”
“This isn’t about a permit, sir,” the NYPD officer drawls, ignoring Dyers as he goes about attaching the chains to the Lamborghini. “You owe over fourteen thousand dollars of unpaid parking tickets to the city of New York. This is the authorization to tow form and a receipt?—”
“Idon’t believe this,” Dyers growls. “This is insane. I don’t haveanyparking?—”
Before he can even finish that sentence, Chicago’s “Cell Block Tango” blares on from out of nowhere and the small crowd of pedestrians suddenly start leaping around like loons.
Unimpressed, the officer continues his task as, circling him, a sudden surge of women dressed in tuxedos with plaid ties and cummerbunds and dudes wearing lilac skirt suits and white sun hats loft inflatable pitchforks in one hand.
A couple men are in golden speedos and white-blond wigs, while others wear fake French maid uniforms complete with hats, heavy black eyeliner, and dark red lips. Some are dressed in fake scrubs dotted with pink triangles and others sport thigh-highs, sky-high heels, and corsets with massive “Mom” tattoos painted onto their skin. They skip and hop around the elite ride like they’ve downed a bad batch of LSD.
Dyers watches on in disgusted bewilderment while Denny bursts out laughing when one of the Dr. Frank-N-Furters makes him jump by screaming “he had it coming” in his face.
Snorting, I almost miss one of the French maids spra?—
“Look. There.” I gesture at the fender, having figured out what a sneak—read part-time criminal—my girlfriend is. “The redhead in the French maid costume! What are they doing?”
D’s evil cackle tells me I’ve picked out the whole purpose of this misdirection.
“Is that spray paint?” Pecan asks, squinting at the phone.
“Sure is,” my new best friend crows.
The song’s over almost as quickly as it began—unfortunately because Dyers looks set to burst an aneurysm—and the crowd of people, all laughing and jeering, fade out.
One second they’re there, and the next they’re running off but they’re still chanting, over and over and over: “He had it coming.”
By this point, even the cop’s watching them with a smirk. Never mind Dyers, who’s scowling at the rapidly disappearing flash mob.But neither manage to see what they left behind.
Glee laces Pecan’s words. “Oh, my god. I’m so glad you settled onThe Rocky Horror Picture Showfor the costumes!”
I know there was a massive argument between Callan, Wynter, and D overTRHPSandJesus Christ Superstar.
I join in with a hoot while Denny fist-bumps the air.
