On the front steps of the marble mausoleum sat Bob. I assumed he was a figment of my imagination. My mind had finally snapped. As he stood, I stepped back. Perhaps cocaine addiction was not enough and they were starting an army of real zombies. Then he walked over and gave me a hug, and I knew he was really alive.
He had a white bandage saturated in blood wrapped around his leg and looked a bit paler than usual, but other than that he looked a hell of a lot better than he had in the hot tub. I felt the back of his head to confirm that his brains were still in place.
“How—? I saw your body in a hot tub!” I said.
“Couldn’t be mine. As far as I know I have never died in a hot tub or elsewhere,” he replied.
“Then what the hell happened?”
“Helga had removed her dress and was going to teach me a new form of Swedish massage—or as she called it, ‘Svedish Massage’—when two guys came in. One had a machete and the other a shotgun. The one with the machete went to work on Helga and the one with the shotgun came after me. The dumb bastard slipped on some soapy water and dropped the gun. It went off and some buckshot hit my leg. I tried to save Helga; I picked up the shotgun and shot the guy with the machete right in the head. He fell into the hot tub.”
“That must be the body I had mistaken for yours,” I said.
Bob punched me in the arm. “I think I am insulted. That guy was ugly as a snake and had none of my physical prowess.”
I shrugged. “In my defense the hot tub was filled with blood and innards and I did have other things on my mind.”
“Do you want me to finish?” Bob asked.
“Sorry,” I replied.
“Well, the room with the hot tub had a back door leading to a staircase. The guy who dropped the gun tried to run out. I followed him down the stairs into the kitchen. At that point my leg was bleeding pretty badly. I found a first-aid kit in the kitchen and wrapped it up.”
“Why didn’t you come looking for me?”
“Well, the injury made it pretty hard to get around. Also, they had lobster tails as long as my forearm and a lox tray.”
“You’re telling me that while I was running around trying to save my skin, you were eating lobster and lox?”
“It was Nova.”
I didn’t need to have gone to law school to know this was an argument I couldn’t win. Bob had been shot in the leg and had helped put an end to an evil plot to take over the world. He deserved salmon and lobster.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “We are surrounded by luxury cars and someone stole my van.”
“That’s another story I will explain on the way to the hospital. Why don’t you get in my Ferrari?”
Bob was so impressed by my brand new red Ferrari he didn’t even complain about the obvious pain in his leg from squeezing into the black leather cockpit. I got Bob to the hospital in half the time it would have taken us to drive in his van.
The doctor said Bob would be fine. He had no problem removing the few shotgun pellets and said there was no damage to any veins or arteries. He did order intravenous antibiotics and insist that Bob spend the night. I am not certain the doctor believed the hunting accident explanation. I was fairly certain, however, that the doctor would not have believed the truth.
The important thing was that Bob was alive.