Behind us, bay doors opened and something dropped from the plane.

Now.

Oh dear.

This is awkward.

You see ... I know nuclear warheads have a b.u.m rap in our culture-radiation, nuclear winter, ma.s.sive extinction, sad little doll heads lying in the gutter covered with bits of black muck. But to watch one exploding in real life is insanely f.u.c.king awesome. Yes. It is true. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself, snacking on saltines and drinking Arrowhead bottled water while our plane circled a heaving, pulsating, smoking-hot 15-kiloton explosion, with Neal pointing out little sparkling patches on the ocean where extra-dense bits of plastic trash were blipping into a green eco-friendly solution for a better tomorrow.

Yes, yes, I know, I know. Atomic weapons. Charred little kittens. Nuns vaporizing. The economy in shambles. But still ... what a f.u.c.king sight!

I had to knuckle-b.u.mp both Neal and Jennifer for so skillfully keeping it a surprise for me. My hostess loaned me her iPhone and I took some smashing "Me and my good buddy Mushroom Cloud" photos, which she promised she'd send me once her workload lightened.

"Bombs are one thing, Raymond, but caramba, the paperwork involved in dropping one! There'd be less paperwork involved making the entire country switch over to metric."

I had seriously underestimated this woman.

She caught the new, appraising look in my eye. "Too late, Raymond. The mood's gone. You and your pals are on your way tonight."

f.u.c.king h.e.l.l.

And then the plane cartwheeled, and that's when I actually shat my pants. No dream.

24.

Let me tell you, the first thing you do when you s.h.i.t your pants for real is tell n.o.body. n.o.body.

And then you try to deal with the fact that your plane just cartwheeled over a lake of fire, as the pilot declares, "That was easy," followed by the lieutenant laughing giddily and Neal shouting, "Blimey! Let's do that again!"

And you sit there trying to figure out how you're going to get back to a clean, dry room on Wake Island with a hose to rinse yourself off and fresh undergarments and a fresh pair of trousers identical to the ones you've just kacked-as well as a rubbish can large enough to bury the soiled pants in.

"Ray!" Neal called out. "To think just one week ago I was frittering away my life in a cardboard Samsung telly box-and here I am living large!"

Sadly, the condition of my pants made it impossible to continue to enjoy the nuclear fireworks. Neal mistook my new highly focused and somewhat unhappy facial expression to be some sort of politically correct judgment on the bombing.

"Don't be such a sourpuss, Ray! Think of all that plastic, gone forever-fluffy little dolphins now able to romp through lagoons free of plastic six-pack yokes. Seahorses cantering about, snacking on little bits of seahorse food. It's a Disney movie down there now, like Finding Nemo. It's world peace. Our Jenny here is a planetary hero."

"You're making me blush, Neal," said Jennifer. Then she stared at me and her brow furrowed. "Raymond-are you ... leaking?"

Neal looked down at my seat. "Oh, now you've done it, Ray ..."

"Done what?" asked Jennifer.

I said, "Look, both of you, it's nothing ..."

"Raymond's shat his pants."

"Raymond!" Jennifer sounded really shocked.

"Christ, the plane did a f.u.c.king cartwheel overtop a nuclear explosion."

"Changing the subject," Neal chided. "Common behaviour for someone experiencing fecal remorse."

Jennifer flipped into problem-solving mode. "Raymond, once we're on the ground, I can have someone come meet us with a hazmat suit. I'll call for one right now." She clicked a b.u.t.ton on the dash and began barking into her headset: "Alpha nine, alpha nine, we've had a Code-Mocha bowel evacuation-"

"No, really, I-" But there was no stopping her.

Neal, meanwhile, looked me over with a father's sad, judgmental eyes.

I said, "Come on, Neal, I think what happened was a perfectly normal response given the situation."

"I would never judge you, Ray."

"Thank you, Neal."

"Bye the way, Ray, Sarah sent me a text to relay to you."

"What the f.u.c.k? Neal, since when do you have a cellphone?"

"Poor Arnaud du Puis never cancelled his account with Orange France, so I took the initiative and started adding to his contact list the numbers of people connected to the show. That Sarah is one hard worker, mate. I think she has a thing for you. In fact, I'm sure she does."

She does? "I'm listening, Neal."

"She said, 'Give my Ray-Ray a big hug and tell him I can't wait to introduce him to the alluring ways of the tropics.' "

"Show me."

Neal showed me the text; he was word for word. "I think she could be The One, Ray, I really do," he said.

I thought of her spooning me back to health in Honolulu, her cheerful manner, her milkmaid freshness-her absolutely perfect pair of baps.

The flight back was as airy and hopeful as the infinite shaving-cream clouds above us and caterwauling flocks of sea birds below. The c.o.c.kpit was somewhat chilly with the alt.i.tude, and I felt like I was sitting atop a tub of melted gelato, but I didn't care.

Once on the ground, we were greeted by perhaps fifty goons, all of them clapping wildly for the lieutenant. Jennifer took a bow, smiled for the cameras, gave a small speech and then said, "But before I disembark, we have a small medical issue to attend to." She stood away from the door, saying, "Raymond, the medics will take good care of you. They really will. All of us here in your Wake Island family just want you to get clean again. And watch your left leg. You're dripping on the hatch."

The crowd went silent as it watched me walk down the aluminum stairway, where I was met by a ginger-haired medic-whom I recognized as being the one on whom my good-luck loogey had landed earlier. He came at me with a huge Spielbergy Tyvek jumpsuit, bellowing, "Mandatory for potential bowel-related contamination scenarios! Can I ask you, Mr. Gunt, if you have any history of hepat.i.tis A, B or C, cholera or superbugs?"

"f.u.c.k off."

"No need to swear, sir. There are ladies present."

f.u.c.king Americans.

The silence continued as everyone watched me don my hazmat suit. I gave up trying to maintain dignity. I'd be out of this f.u.c.king sun-kissed dump soon enough. Also, I had just witnessed the first Pacific detonation since 1962.

25.

Instead of taking me to a nice clean clinic furnished with a functioning shower, Ginger the medic led me behind the Quonset hut beside the canteen, where three of his pals stood ready and armed with firehoses.

"Look, boys! It's Billy Elliot!"

"Let the dance of pain begin!"

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.

But when you're caked in your own leavings, you really don't mind being hit with brutally hard jets of water. Truth be told, it just gets the c.r.a.p off sooner, though it does hurt like all get out. When the water hits a large enough flap of trouser fabric, liftoff is easily achieved, and more than once I was hurled into one of the canteen Dumpsters, crammed, no doubt, with saltine packaging and empty Pepsi bottles.

And, of course, there was much festive heckling. "Come on, Billy! Eat hose water, you po-faced Limey b.i.t.c.h!"

"Aim for his teeth, guys! Maybe we can ship his teeth to wherever it was his chin went."

But then I removed my kacked pants and turned away from them. I bent over to let their warm, brackish water rinse away the last of my self-marinade. The tone soon changed when they realized they weren't so much torturing me as they were administering a fairly efficient enema whenever I unclenched my rusty bullet hole. They soon turned off their hoses and walked away in disgust, Ginger tossing a pair of clean sailor's trousers to the ground. I togged up.

Right.

The jet. Time to leave.

Just then Neal roared up in a Jeep driven by one of his video-gaming friends, with two more in the rear seat, all of them holding foaming half-full Oktoberfest mugs of beer. "Rejoice, Ray!" Neal shouted. "The trash vortex will soon be gone."

"Christ, Neal. You're wasted. Let's just get to the f.u.c.king plane."

"Not until you have a beer with us, my friend. Everyone on the island is celebrating a new era of hope for mankind."

"Yes, yes, whatever. We're the worst thing that ever happened to the planet. But a pint of lager right now would be just the ticket."

A back-seat goon turned a spigot on an aluminum canister and ... voila! A cold, frosty, surprisingly delicious mug of lager appeared. I became drunk with the first swig. "All hail the atomic bomb!"

"To the bomb! The bomb! The bomb!"

It was a matey moment that cancelled out the horror of my cleansing. I climbed in beside Neal and we began driving on the runway, carving donuts and weaving in between other Jeeps filled with soused airmen. The whole island had erupted into an orgy of stress release.

"Makes you feel good, doesn't it, Ray?"

"Just hand me another f.u.c.king beer." Finally, a bit of light-heartedness after seventy-two hours of total s.h.i.t.

Neal found an eighties radio channel on the Jeep's satellite set, and the afternoon turned into a blur of hair-band ballads and puddles of vomited saltines. Around sunset, to the waning sound of Haysi Fantayzee's. .h.i.t "Shiny Shiny" from the departing Jeep's sound system, I found myself utterly c.u.n.ted and lying in a heap on the ground at the foot of the stairs leading up to the jet. Neal was Angry Dancing his way upward. I crawled after him. Once on board, I heaved my old aluminum medical gurney out the door. It bit the concrete with an aching clang. Elspeth closed the port and, finally, Wake Island was history.

Haysi Fantayzee was a British New Wave band of the early 1980s. Their single "Shiny Shiny" was released in 1983. It's fun.

26.

I can't remember the last time I've been so thrilled to hear the landing gear pull up. Neal, Elspeth and I feasted on Advil and microwave luxury meals as we tried to process the biggest twenty-four-hour travel kludge in history.

"I telephoned me mum when I was down there," said Elspeth. "I told her where I was and she said her brother, Olly, went through Wake Island back in the late 1970s on a trans.p.a.c boat when he was shipping off to Yokohama."

"Where's Olly now?"

"He runs a Dungeons & Dragons shop in Hull. He never really was the same after he'd spent time training dolphins to wear video cameras on their foreheads. I think those little b.u.g.g.e.rs stole his mind."

"You're f.u.c.king kidding me."

"Laugh if you will, but Olly served the Queen very well." Elspeth wiped tomato sauce from her lips. "And now he throws rocks at you if you go too near his council flat door. f.u.c.king dolphins."

"They think they're actually going to fix the trash vortex with bombs," I exclaimed. "These f.u.c.king Americans are like children."

Neal, being one of nature's mimics, said, "Imagine John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe riding in a bomber above a nuclear blast. 'Ooh, Mr. Kennedy, that H-bomb is so scary.' 'Don't you worry, Marilyn. Just cover up your diseased minge with this lead-lined X-ray-proof garment I stole from Jackie's hope chest.' "

"John Kennedy," said Elspeth. "Is he the one who had a lot of s.e.x and the retro hairdo?"

"Dear G.o.d," I said. "What year were you born?"

"I'm old enough to be a flight attendant is how old I am. Just like Prince William's mum-in-law."

We became reflective then and took a pause from eating. Overtop the dusty whoosh of sleek jet engines I put forth a question. "Neal, let me ask you this: do you think camel toes are, in any way, you know ... hot?"

"That's an excellent question, Ray."

"Oh G.o.d," said Elspeth. "I'm going to be sick."

Neal said, "Come along, Elspeth, think of this as an interfaith symposium, with you representing just one of several points of view. But I do want to say that simply because a woman's got camel toe, it in no way indicates she's a slag."

I said, "Thank you, Neal. I, too, believe women are the future-yay, women! Yay, tampons and all that! But it's the camel toe part about women that's the topic here."

Neal reached for brandy. "It's hard to really get in the mood when there's a badly packed kebab three and a half feet away from your eyes. It's all about the packaging."