8

The small studio apartment located just above our office in Westwood is not, by any means, soundproofed, a fact that has recently come to our attention by way of some very personal experience. For the past two days of Rupert’s incarceration up there, we’ve heard all manner of banging, shouting, and a fair number of expletives, most of which have yet to make much sense. At least I’ve got some good words to mutter under my breath next time I’m audited by the IRS.

Tell the truth, I can’t understand what all the fuss is about. Sure we’ve got him locked up against his will, sure he was knocked on his head and dragged through a dirty, muddy forest, sure he was put in the trunk of a Lincoln Mark VIII and driven over potholed alleyways, but the guy’s got water, a place to sleep, and all the take-out food he could ask for. We even ordered in from Twin Dragon one night, and MSG does not come cheap.

“You gotta eat,” Ernie told him.

“You gotta drink,” was my refrain.

“Thank you, no,” was his only response. He’d shut us out entirely for that first day, begging off all manner of nourishment with a polite refusal and a tight little grimace. The plan was to get him to a state of acceptance, lull him into an easygoing frame of mind, then drill it into his head full-bore that he wasn’t a Progressive—he was just a kid who needed help, with a sister who loved him—but all this no thank you crap was throwing a monkey wrench in the works.

“Maybe we need professional help on this,” I suggested to Ernie that first morning.

“What’s a shrink gonna do that we can’t?”

“Get him to eat, maybe.”

“I can do whatever one of them fellas can, kid. Watch and see.”

But such macho answers didn’t help Rupert, and Ernie’s protestations and hour-long lectures bounced off deaf ears. It was a Tony Robbins moment (an Ankylosaur to be sure, like John Tesh or Rosey Grier—no natural human could possibly be that massive) gone horribly, horribly wrong. Rupert simply sat there and stared at us staring at him.

“This gonna help your Progress?” Ernie asked him. “Eating nothing and drinking nothing and saying nothing’s gonna wind you up dead, and you think being dead’s gonna help?”

No answer. Sarcasm and rhetoric were either beyond the boy or beneath him, and Rupert simply sat cross-legged on the floor or the fold-out sofa bed, prepared, if need be, to wither away just to spite us.

We didn’t tell Louise. She didn’t need to see him like this.

By afternoon of the second day, the basic pangs of hunger must have overriden whatever meager philosophical constraints had bound Rupert to his prior convictions, and he was more than willing to eat the copious leftovers from the previous day’s meals. He wolfed down two orders of pad thai and a generous helping of spicy fried chicken from KFC before excusing himself to the bathroom, where I believe his stomach revolted at the unnatural combination.

“Will you talk to us now?” Ernie pleaded, but he was asking too much.

“At least we got him eating, Ern,” I pointed out. “Talking can come later.”

Later on, we attempted another amateur deprogramming session, consisting mainly of us knocking on the door, telling Rupert he was crazy, and being told to go away.

Still, we felt it better not to tell Louise. Yet.

We both slept over that night, worried that Rupert would attempt to break out of the apartment, even though we’d done our best to make sure such a thing was impossible. Boards on the windows, locks on the doors, phone cord taken out of the wall, and any means of communication with the outside world pretty much sealed off from his use. I felt like a criminal, locking him up in that manner—and, sure, technically, we were—but enough of it rang true as something good and right that I forgot about the felony and carried on with the plan.

So Ernie and I were both there the other morning when Rupert decided to abandon the peaceful part of his resistance and get down to the nitty-gritty of making himself a real nuisance. He started banging on the floor, the walls, the doors, shouting our names at the top of his stuffed-up lungs (he’s got a cold now, of all things), threatening us with civil action and bodily harm. Clearly, this couldn’t last for long, as the other denizens of the office building would be arriving for work shortly, and it would be unseemly to have a T-Rex shouting for all the world to hear that the two dinos on the third floor had kidnaped a twenty-two-year-old and are currently in the process of holding him against his will. That’s the kind of thing that attracts attention, even in LA.

This time we called Louise.

She came over twenty minutes later, cheeks flushed from either anticipation or the sudden exertion of guising herself up and rushing down to Westwood.

“He’s a little argumentative right now,” I warned her. “You may not get anywhere.”

But Louise said she had to try, and we respected her decision. So, for the last three hours, she’s been up there with Rupert, presumably talking him down, and hopefully talking him out. Ernie and I have been twiddling our claws down here on the third floor, unable to help and unable to research the other cases that badly need our attention.

“Hey,” I suggest, “I could run down and check out that lead on Minsky’s babe. Won’t take a half-hour.”

“I need you here,” Ernie says to me. “In case he tries to bolt.”

So I sit. And I wait. I clean my claws. I read the paper. I clean my claws again. I go downstairs and run them through a patch of mud, just so I have something to do. I clean my claws for a third time.

Eventually, there’s a knock at the door, and Louise steps inside. The human makeup she’s so expertly applied to the mask of her guise has run in great streaks down her cheeks, staining the latex a deep purple. We both rush to her aid, but I back off and let Ernie bear the brunt of the consolation.

Between weeps, Louise explains that Rupert didn’t say a syllable to her, that she didn’t even know if he had heard a word she said, and that he’d barely even registered her presence the whole time she was up there. “It’s not him,” she says to us. “I don’t recognize my own brother.”

I look to Ernie, and he shrugs. I’ve yet to chew him out good and proper for starting these shenanigans in the first place, so the lug knows he owes me one. It’s time to get this thing settled, once and for all.

“Louise,” I say, “how would you feel about bringing in a professional?”

* * *

 

“I’ve heard about those guys,” Sergeant Dan Patterson is saying to me over the phone less than ten minutes later. Dan’s my contact at the LAPD, a one-time private detective who took the jump to law enforcement once he tired of the freelance life, and probably the best Brontosaur I know. We take the occasional fishing trip together when both of our schedules mesh and we get some spare moments—that’s once in the last two years, mind you—and aside from his prowess as an officer of the law, he’s an incredible fisherman to boot. A hundred-and-fifty-pound bass would be nothing more than a laugh and a throwback for Dan Patterson, but he’s kind enough not to begrudge me my catches of minnows and guppies. “These Progressives got a place up in Hollywood, right?”

“Right. But what I need from you now,” I say, “is a name. You must have worked with cults before, maybe heard about someone who can deprogram a member.”

“Risky business.”

“You know someone or not?”

Dan says, “Not offhand, but I can ask around. Actually going through with it, though . . . that’s a different story. Usually you gotta kidnap the guy first, and that ain’t always what you’d call legal.”

Silence from my end. I fear it’s telltale.

“Vincent, you still there?”

“Hm? Yeah, yeah, kidnaping’s illegal, I know. Can we forget about that part right now?”

“Do I wanna forget about it?”

“You do,” I say, and to my great relief, my good friend on the LAPD is quick on the uptake. He’s got a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil policy when it comes to his friends, an attitude that has saved my green butt from the county poke countless times.

“Done and done. You give me a little bit of time, maybe I can round up someone for you. Any preferences—male, female, that sorta thing?”

“Someone fast,” I say, worried for the future of the furnishings in the upstairs apartment. If anything’s dented beyond repair, Minsky’s gonna take it out of our ever-dwindling security deposit. As it is, he has only the most glancing knowledge of what’s going on up there; we told him the weeklong free rental of the empty studio was in lieu of further “research fees” for his case, and he reluctantly agreed to back off.

I hang up with Dan and give Ernie and Louise the good news. “He’s going to find us somebody,” I tell them. “Just a matter of time.”

From upstairs, I hear a sharp crack and believe it might be the legs of the sleeper sofa being snapped in two. “Just a matter of time,” I repeat optimistically and sit down to order up some lunch.

Six hours later, the phone wakes me from a light snooze and a dream about licorice whips and bottomless elevators. The infernal device has already rung three times within the last few hours, but each time it’s been for a purpose unrelated to the case at hand. Two were wrong numbers, and the third was another lead on the Minsky affair, from Sweetums, the dino pimp. He’d claimed to have seen Star hiking her way back up to the St. Regis, but as I was confined to quarters for the evening, I was unable to follow up on the tip. He whined and pleaded with me to messenger him a bit of informant cash in advance, but the rules are the rules: I don’t wire money and I don’t write checks. Western Union is dead to me—don’t ask, don’t ask—so he’ll have to wait for the moola.

I answer the phone, still a little groggy from the catnap. “Rubio.”

“Y’all lookin’ for a little help down there, I hear.” The individual words are not quite that clear—running together like a stream of thick molasses, drawn out into a long drawl, as if the speaker has slowed his 45 rpm voice box down to 33 1/3—but after some thought I’m able to piece together enough of the syllables to make out an actual sentence.

“This is Vincent Rubio,” I repeat. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I said that word is out that y’all are in need of a professional service. I might be able to provide such a service.”

The meaning behind the words cuts through my stupor, and I blurt out, “You’re the cult guy?”

“If that’s what y’all choose to call me, then yes, I’m the cult guy.”

I backpedal now, not wanting to foster any ill will. “No, I didn’t mean—we can call you whatever you want—”

“Cult Guy is a fine name, son. I’ve been called much worse, believe you me. But if you’d like to refer to me by my Christian name, it’s Dr. Beaumont Beauregard.”

I almost prefer Cult Guy better; at the very least, it doesn’t make me want to fall headlong into a laughing fit. I steady my lips and repeat the name out loud, trying to stifle the giveaway trill of my voice. “Dr. Beaumont Beauregard, thank you for calling. I’m Vincent Rubio.”

“I gathered. And, son—I know my name’s amusing to folks, so it’s okay to laugh. You don’t go through grade school with a name like Beaumont Beauregard without finding out it’s funny somewhere along the way. Makes it any easier, you can just call me Bo.”

I nod, then realize he can’t see me over the phone. “I’ll do that, Bo.” I feel an instant camaraderie with this deprogrammer, and he hasn’t even set foot in my door. “How do you know Dan?” I ask.

“ ‘Scuse me?”

“Sergeant Patterson,” I amend. A lot of people refer to the cops by their rank and last name only; it’s a sign of respect, and I make a mental note to do similarly in the future. “He gave you my number, right?”

“Sure did,” says Bo. “I’ll tell ya—when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, there’s not an official in the country you don’t know. It’s a messy job I do, but ain’t nothing more rewarding than returning happy kids to their families. Tell me, what’s that situation out there lookin’ like?”

When I’m all done running down the basics, Bo asks what group Rupert got himself mixed up in. “Progressives,” I say. “They’re Hollywood-based, and—”

“Hollywood-based, hell,” he says. “Them folks is all over the world.”

“You’ve heard of them, then.”

“Son, I am practically an expert.”

“I don’t know if we’re talking about the same Progressives,” I say. “I doubt they’re national. I mean, I’d never heard of them before—”

“They practice ancestor worship, am I right?”

“Yes . . .” Then again, so do most of the so-called true dino religions. Truth be told, the standard human Bible—Exodus, Numbers, and the rest of ’em—isn’t exactly revered in our society as the holiest of books. We’ve got churchgoing dinos, sure, and a number of them really get into the holy rolling, but it’s more of a cultural and ethical consideration than anything else. Our species has been around long enough to know that if Adam and Eve existed, they did so quite some time after my forefathers were long fossilized, so, at the very least, the Bible’s missing about six thousand chapters before Genesis even gets going.

“And these Progressives you’re talking ’bout,” continues Dr. Beauregard, “they’ve got themselves enough money to choke one of them Arab princes, am I right in that as well?”

I concede that he is.

“Then you and I are talking ’bout the same group, son.”

He’s sold me. The only remaining questions I have are how much Dr. Beaumont Beauregard charges—a prince’s ransom, and up front, but Louise has the bucks to cover it—and how soon he can be in Los Angeles. Quicker the better, because the sounds of splintering wood from upstairs have intensified over the last few hours.

“Next flight outta Memphis is first thing tomorrow morning,” he tells me.

“Memphis, huh? You treat Elvis?” I joke.

“Don’t poke fun at the King, son. Man with a heart that big, did such good for people . . . Ain’t his fault if he needs a little help getting outta where he shouldn’t be.”

Bo’s got me surprised once again. “Elvis is one of your patients?” I ask him.

Dr. Beauregard snorts into the phone, and I can almost feel the wet spittle dripping out of my receiver. “Don’t be daft, boy,” he says to me. “Elvis is dead.”

Somehow I know that two thousand miles away, Dr. B. is shooting me a sly wink.

* * *

 

I’m back up on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood a short while later, ready to make a full frontal assault on the St. Regis Hotel. Ernie’s agreed to baby-sit our special package for the evening, freeing me up to do some investigative work on the Minsky case without having to worry whether or not our bird’s gonna stick to his cage while I’m gone. Seemed like a generous gesture from my partner at the time, but now that I think about it, I realize that he just wanted a few extra hours with Louise. They’ve gotten chummy again, and I’ve got to keep an eye on those two.

Three flights up, I’m winded. Four and I’m panting. Five, and I’m wondering if I should have had an EKG the last time I was at Doc Zalaznick’s. Since when did flophouse floors get so tall?

By the time I make it to the sixth-floor landing, I’ve got to take a second for a breather—and I thought Ernie was outta shape. Dragging myself down the hallway, I take a quick listen at the door of room 619. Creaking, mumbled grunts. The music of intercourse. This should be fun.

A well-placed kick at the intersection of doorjamb and knob, and the flimsy wooden door flies inward, slamming into the wall behind. The man on the bed—a mammal, a filthy little human—withdraws from the guised-up hooker beneath him, clutching a mass of the stained, filthy sheets in his trembling grip.

“What the—who—”

I don’t bother responding—at least, not with my voice. A quick bounce forward and I’m in the room, knocking whatever I can off the nightstand and dressing table, hoping for a loud, disorienting crash. The sight of this pig violating one of our kind—even as low-down, disgusting, and cheap as this streetwalker might be—is enough to send me into overdrive.

“Five seconds,” I say, trying to keep my voice to a dull roar. My teeth are itching to break free, my claws flickering in and out behind their gloves.

The human is confused. His penis has quickly gone limp, dangling between those pasty white legs like a useless little worm. Viagra is no match for a pissed-off Velociraptor. “Wh—what?”

“Okay, no seconds.” I take a step forward and remove a large gold ring that adorns the third finger on my gloved right hand. This is to indicate that I will be using my fists at some point in the near future.

This john’s seen enough mob flicks to get the signal—tell the truth, that’s where I picked it up—and he doesn’t even bother dressing before grabbing his clothes under one arm, scurrying out of the room, and down the stairway, flabby butt cheeks flopping with each step.

I turn my attention to Star, who has yet to move from the bed. Her naked human costume glistens with whatever she’s passing off for sweat nowadays—I tend to use genuine Nakitara Perspiration Bulbs, but I’ve heard of poorer slobs resorting to water from the Pacific, or, in a pinch, their own urine. Disgusting, what some dinos put themselves through in order to save a few bucks.

“He was a good customer,” she drawls. A line of drool stretches from her mouth down to her chest, and it takes all my concentration to focus back on that too-pale, drugged-out face. “He’ll be back.” Her bubblegum and fresh-sod scent drops in and out, spiking and falling, spiking and falling.

“What is it?” I ask, coming closer, slapping her cheeks to try to convince a bit of color to return. “You on the basil?”

She laughs—it’s a typical streetwalker cackle—and pushes me away. “Basil is so over, asshole. Cayenne’s where it’s at this year. Cay-yaaaaan . . .”

Another slap, this one more for the pleasure than the efficacy. “Where’d you put Minsky’s stuff? You fence it?”

No answer. Instead, she leans over the side of the bed, flicks out her uncapped tongue—didn’t the human john notice it was a bit too long, a bit too dexterous?—and takes a sloppy wet lick off the top of the nightstand. A rust-colored line of cayenne has been sprinkled there, but it disappears into those taste buds two seconds later.

I open the nightstand drawer and find a pharmacy of plastic baggies filled with cayenne pepper and some other noxious herb I don’t immediately recognize. Rosemary, maybe? I open the window—struggle with it, in fact, the damned thing probably having been stuck shut since the Paleolithic—and a warm breeze flows through the room, circulating the stench into new and interesting places. I open the plastic bags and pour the rest of the tramp’s drugs into the alleyway below, an herbal cascade drenching the trash and cracked asphalt.

She starts whining again and tries to lift herself off the bed. “That’s my stash, you bastard.”

“Correction. That was your stash.” I push her back with a flick—her skin nothing more than brittle tissue, muscles weak and useless—and she falls down hard. “I wanna know what you did with Minsky’s stuff.”

“Who?”

“You know who I’m talking about. Minsky, the guy you’ve been seeing.”

“I see a lotta guys,” she says, and tries to pull me toward the bed. “I could see you, too. We could do it right.” She pulls back a corner of her guise at the neck, exposing a hide whose natural color has been obscured by a sickly pallor.

I hold down my gorge, pull away easily, and take a seat in a rickety chair. “Minsky. His ether. The instruments. Talk.”

“Oh, the midget!”

“Now we’re on the same page.”

She gives me a sly once-over. “Lemme get this straight. You think . . . you think he cares about all that crap?”

“Lady, thinking ain’t part of my job. Just tell me what you did with it and we don’t need to get into any unpleasantness.” I make a show of unsnapping my gloves, preparing my claws, taking my sweet time in order to make my intentions obvious.

But Star isn’t going for my tough-guy act. “The midget don’t care about his drugs,” she says, hopping off the bed—human breasts drooping lasciviously off that pale chest—“believe me. You wait a second, you can ask him.”

The hell is she talking about? “The hell are you talking about?”

With exquisite timing, there’s a knock on the partially opened flophouse door, and a familiar stunted arm pops through the doorway, grasping a bouquet of roses. “Sweetie,” calls the heliuminflected voice, “did I come too soon?”

I rush the door, grab that arm as tight as I can, and yank hard, dragging Minsky off his feet and into my face. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t give you a rose-bouquet suppository,” I growl.

That little body sets to trembling, but I refuse to back off. Minsky, dressed in a fine wool suit and ridiculous tiger-stripe tie, glances back and forth between me and his mistress, as if one or the other of us will somehow disappear and leave him in a good, happy place.

“I—I—she didn’t—”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“She—I didn’t mean to—”

“You sent me to find her and get your stuff back,” I say.

“Please,” Minsky pleads softly. “Not in front of Star—”

“You know she was making it with a human when I got here?”

Not even a cringe from the dentist. He’s probably known about her interspecies dalliances for some time; maybe he even gets off on it. The realm of dino depravity knows no bounds. “Please,” he says again. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain.”

Minsky looks to Star again; I can tell he’d be more forthcoming if she weren’t in the room. “Scram,” I tell her, tossing a dollar bill at her feet. “Go get yourself a soda.”

The tart picks my dollar up off the floor, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it back in my face. I try not to flinch as the rough paper scratches my cheek. Then, still costumed but otherwise buck naked, she strolls out the door—running her hand across Minsky’s chest as she goes—and into the hallway, disappearing from sight.

I throw Minsky onto the bed and he goes down hard, the rusty springs creaking beneath the force. “You been wasting my time,” I bark. “Ernie’s time, too. You think this is the only case we got? You think we do this ’cause we’re nice?”

“I didn’t—I told you guys the truth—she stole those things from me—”

“And?”

“And . . . and nothing. She stole them, I was mad, I wanted you to get them back.”

“So it’s okay now. The stealing, the lying.”

“No, it’s—yes . . .”

“Because you’re still fucking her.”

Minsky looks away. I grab his fleshy cheeks with one hand and turn him back around. Our eyes meet for a second—embarrassment, pain, desire—but he quickly averts his gaze once more. “I can’t help myself,” he admits. “I just can’t stay away.”

With but a flick of my wrist, Minsky goes flying backward again, bouncing off the bed and landing hard on the floor. I’ve spent enough time on this dog of a case already without throwing more good time after bad. “Tell you what you can stay away from,” I say. “My office.”

I slam the door and don’t look back. Two flights down, I pass an open doorway, a familiar cavalcade of shrieks and moans emanating from the room within. It’s Star again—I know it without looking in—and in some petty way it makes me a little happy that Minsky has to wait upstairs twiddling his underclaws while his love of the month is three flights down, shtupping a stranger for fifty bucks.

Strike that. It makes me very happy.

* * *

 

It’s one week later, and, for the most part, things have quieted down around the offices of Watson and Rubio. Louise has ceased her vigil in our offices and returned to her home; we’ve promised to call her the moment anything breaks. Ernie misses her presence, I can tell, and he finds at least two pretenses every day to dial her number and fill her in on some insignificant detail of the case. I wonder if Louise’s new husband knows Ernie’s been calling. If so, I wonder if he cares.

The last twenty-four hours have been blissfully silent, but the days before were filled with an unwelcome cacophony of screams, roars, and blasts of anger from the studio apartment above. Rupert Simmons was not taking well to deprogramming.

Dr. Beaumont Beauregard—Bo, as I call him now after a week of fetching fast food and diet peach iced teas for the guy—showed up on our stoop the morning after I got back from the St. Regis Hotel. He’s a big ‘un, the doctor is, a good ol’ boy in the finest plantation-owning tradition, with a shock of white hair and a similarly colored mustache and goatee—Nakitara brand, Colonel Sanders #3. Smelled mainly like a foil-covered chocolate bar, but I thought I may have detected some wheatgrass in there as well.

“You Rubio?” he asked me when I approached and offered a hand with his luggage.

“Dr. Beauregard?”

He grinned and grabbed his own bags, easily hoisting the heavy suckers without so much as a grunt. “No need to waste your time with these, son. Ain’t nothing but books, anyway. All my clothes I got on my back.”

I got my first smell of the doctor right then, and commented on what I thought to be a pleasant aroma.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

“Your smell,” I said. “Your scent. I’d guess you were an Ankie, but I’m not too good at this.”

Again, no recognition. Had I made a fatal error and somehow contacted a non-dino deprogrammer? Would Dan have been dense enough to give me the name of a mammal?

I tried again. “It’s okay. We’re all . . . we’re all of a kind here. No one eavesdropping. All I’m saying is I like your scent.”

Bo threw me an exasperated glare, then softened it to one of mild annoyance. Lowering his voice, though there was no one else within a hundred yards, he whispered, “Listen—if I’m gonna have to convince a patient to come back to the real world, if I’m gonna be telling him that he ain’t one of the ancestors, I can’t be walking around talking dinosaur the whole day. Long as I am in this guise, I am as human as the next fella. You got that?”

Ernie, Louise, and I camped out in the office below while Bo and Rupert went at it upstairs in what sounded like the world’s greatest pro wrestling grudge match. If I thought I knew banging and screaming before . . . Let’s just say that it was chamber music compared to the struggle—both physical and emotional—that has been taking place upstairs for the last few days.

Every day at one and at six, Bo would emerge from the apartment, sweaty and slick beneath his guise—though of course we weren’t allowed to mention the costume in any way—and put in his fast-food order for the day. Hamburgers, hot dogs, the odd taco or two. Rupert’s meals, on the other hand, were carefully prepared banquets concocted by his sister, slaved over for hours in the small kitchenette attached to our office, and more often than not returned untouched come nightfall.

Louise was losing weight. She was losing sleep. And she was losing her sanity. We were relieved when she finally bailed out two nights ago.

So it’s just Ernie and me who are around to look up in shock when Rupert appears at the door to our office—well-dressed, a little thin, but seemingly sane—and says, “I feel better now.”

Bo, standing just behind him, glows with pride. “It wasn’t easy,” he says. “No, sir. But we’re over the hard part now. It’s all level ground from here on in.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “I mean . . . everything’s . . . better?”

“I understand what happened to me,” says Rupert. “I understand what the Progressives were trying to do to me, and I’m glad that you got me out of it. And that’s a step.”

“And the other thing?” prompts Bo.

“Right,” says Rupert. He approaches Ernie and me, and, in an effort that must stretch his arms to their maximum limit, envelops us in a group hug. My face squishes up against his shoulder, and since it would be bad manners to back off, I deal with the pain. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“Anytime, kid,” says Ernie, and I second the emotion while pulling away. Enough with the huggy-huggy.

“Could you maybe call my sister?” asks Rupert. “I don’t want her to worry.”

“Course we can,” I say, but Ernie’s already on the phone telling Louise to hurry her little self on over to the office.

That night, we all head out for a celebratory dinner at Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian joint near our office, and the tiki torches and huge fruit drinks with uncommonly large parasols serve as a perfect reflection of our elevated mood. Dr. Bo proves to be a fascinating conversationalist, and we learn about his exploits curing cult members all over the world. A few sprigs of basil are passed around the table as a further means of enhancing our good feelings, but Bo forbids Rupert to take any of the weed. Probably a wise choice.

Still, I feel that I can’t let the night end without a proper toast. Plucking a sprig of basil from the side of my pu-pu platter, I thrust it into the air and say, “To Rupert, for coming back to us.”

“To Rupert,” is the chorus that echoes me, my dining companions holding aloft their own herbal buddies.

“And to Bo,” I continue, “for leading the way.”

“To Bo.” We munch up. We feel good. It’s a happy day.

And so it is that on March 19th at eight forty-five in the evening, Rupert Simmons was successfully deprogrammed from the dinosaur cult known as the Progressives and returned to his friends and family, a happy, healthy, and well-adjusted Tyrannosaurus Rex.

* * *

 

And so it is that three days later, Rupert Simmons is dead.