Sarah said, "Sweetie, don't worry too much about the tropical parasites that sleep inside the fecal dust along the roadside. What matters most is that you feel fresh and comparatively safe."

Lymphatic filariasis Dengue virus type 4 Soil-transmitted helminth infection Parastrongylus cantonensis Plasmodium berghei Trypanosoma cruzi Leishmaniasis Schistosomiasis Multidrug-resistant falc.i.p.arum Simulium (Gomphostilbia) palauense Stuart approached. "Gunt, get that G.o.dd.a.m.n corpse out from under the bus or we're never going to get to the fricking dock before it's totally dark out."

Suddenly all eyes were on me. For better or worse, I had to lug the barbecue-grade carca.s.s out from under the bus. Christ, it was like trying to drag a concrete-filled grand piano across a sandy beach. But after a sweat-soaked few minutes, the job was done.

Stuart barked, "Okay, everyone back in the bus."

Sarah held up her hand. She said, "Scott, write a note to the authorities and attach it to the body with gaffer tape. His family will want to know what happened."

"And serve him for dinner, too," I added.

Sarah giggled. "You're such an imp, Raymond. And possibly correct."

Scott's note: We ran over him by accident.

We will file incident report with local authorities later.

Have an awesome day.

Scott He taped it onto the speed b.u.mp's chest, and then we hopped onto the bus.

I must say, I never paid too much attention in history cla.s.s when they taught about the fight for civil rights in Mississippi in the 1960s, but for the first time in my life, I was able to sense how a black man might have felt accidentally walking into a ballroom cotillion of virginal, creamy white Daughters of the Confederacy3 in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1961. As I got onto the bus, my busmates silently simmered at me.

Sh.e.l.ley led the attack: "I can't believe you stole my skin tag. That is so disgusting. Why would anyone even do that?"

I glanced at my thumb, where it remained, stuck with blood. I peeled it away-it felt like masking tape-and discreetly dropped it on the floor.

"You are the worst human being I have ever met," Sh.e.l.ley went on. "The. Worst. Person. Ever. And what in h.e.l.l's name are you even doing on our production bus? Don't tell me you're involved in this show!"

Stuart piped up, "He's a B-unit cameraman."

"Where is he slated to stay?"

A guy with a clipboard volunteered, "South island camera camp B."

"Wrong. He's staying on the yacht," said Sh.e.l.ley.

Stuart was taken aback. "The yacht?"

"Yes. In room seventeen."

"Ahhh ..." Stuart smiled. "Perfect. Oh, and by the way, people, this is also the pinhead who spelled the 'Harry' in 'Harry Potter' with an 'e'."

"I can't believe anyone could be that stupid," Sh.e.l.ley said.

A chant began: "Pot-ter. Pot-ter. Pot-ter."

Scott was in the driver's seat and the bus belched forward. f.u.c.k these people. I was sick of them and hungry, too. "Neal, we never had a proper dinner in the end. Is there anything to eat on this f.u.c.king bus?"

Always prepared, our Neal. He tossed me a cardboard meal box that contained a vacuum-wrapped cheese block manufactured 60,000 miles away in a Republican cheese factory in Nebraska, a cellophane packet of saltine crackers, an unripe banana and a-dear-f.u.c.king-G.o.d, surely not. My brain couldn't absorb what I had just seen-and once seen, it could never be unseen. There in the box was a ...

A knork (the "k" is silent) is a hybrid form of cutlery that combines the cutting capability of a knife with the spearing capability of a fork in a single powerful utensil. The word "knork" is a portmanteau of "knife" and "fork." Typically, one or both of the outer edges of a knork are sharpened to allow the user to cut food.

An advantage of the knork is that people with one arm can use it easily. It is also sometimes known as a Nelson fork, after Horatio Nelson, who used this type of cutlery after losing his right arm in 1797.

"Look, Ray-it's a knork!"

I was speechless.

Neal prattled on, "I've always wanted to see one in real life. It's sister cutlery to the spork, and it's sometimes called a Nelson fork, after Horatio Nelson, who used this type of cutlery after losing his right arm in 1797."

"f.u.c.k me with a power tool, I would end up saddled with a living Wikipedia."

"Nothing wrong with displaying a bit of knork spirit, Ray."

I could feel my eyes bulging from my skull. "Neal, for f.u.c.k sake, if you keep on discussing hybrid cutlery, I'll have you ball-gagged and tossed off the yacht like a Belarussian hooker."

"I'm just saying, Horatio Nelson was a smart man, Ray. But okay, then, seeing as you're being ungrateful about your snack pack, maybe you'd like some trail mix instead." He took my box and handed me a foil packet.

"That's very gracious of you, Neal."

I grabbed the bag, ripped it open and chugged its entire contents, having only millionths of a second to think the two fateful words that mar my life on earth: macadamia nuts.

"Whoops!" said Neal. "My mistake. Sweet dreams and do try to be a bit nicer to me when you wake up."

Blackness.

3. I'm sure these days they're now called something horrible like "U.S. Power Tweens."

37.

When I oozed my way back into consciousness, I felt a rotating motion gently scrubbing my gentleman's region. G.o.d bless the South Seas!

The warm, smooth finger teased its way towards my mangina-ahhhh. My eyelids squidged open a bit, and the truth was revealed: Billy, Fiona's a.s.sistant, last seen the previous week in her Covent Garden offices, was giving me a sponge bath wearing rubber gloves and using a foam scrub brush with an extended handle like they use in prison kitchens filled with all those rapey-looking cooks.

"What the f.u.c.k! Billy, get your hands off my nether bits!" My head felt like two train cars colliding.

"Oh. Good morning, Raymond. I'd like to point out that my hands aren't touching you. All the tea in China couldn't-well, whatever. Not to worry. Fiona and I drew straws, and I got the shorty, so here I am playing Nurse Jackie. Had a nice little coma, did we?"

"How long have I been out of it?"

"Maybe two days."

"Where am I?"

"The luxurious TV network yacht, obviously."

I tried to reach for a towel to cover my nether bits, but an IV line got in the way. "Jesus, Billy, why are you washing me?"

"If you must know, darling, you gave birth to a bowling ball of fecal matter a few hours back, and its odour got into the ventilator shaft and began to ... infuse the racquetball court next door. People were retching."

"There's a racquetball court next door? A yacht has a racquetball court?"

"That's just the start of it. Anyway, your close personal friend, Stuart-what on earth did you do to him to make him so nasty about you? Anyway, Stuart demanded it be dealt with, so here I am." He rinsed his scrub brush into a plastic bucket.

"Jesus, stop touching me, Billy."

"You'll notice that when I absolutely have to make contact with my hands, I'm touching you with the outsides of my fingers, not the insides."

"There's a difference?"

"Science has shown that it is impossible to be s.e.xually aroused by outside-finger stimulus. Homeland Security requires all their airport security inspectors to use only the outsides."

I couldn't believe the mess my body had made. "Christ, can't they have a slave or a poor person do the s.h.i.t jobs like this?"

I got a face from Billy. "Darling, we are now in a place with neither law nor order. And with the global nuclear kerfuffle, all the local help have jumped ship and are headed back to Bonriki, though heaven only knows why. My theory is that in a life or death crisis, one must find one's local tribal chief, whoever he may be, and make him happy. In my case, this means Stuart, so to please him, I am cleaning up you. Truly marvellous-except for this room, here: seventeen. Not the best room, really."

I looked down at myself. Christ.

Billy said, "What did you eat, Raymond Gunt? Iron filings? Superglue? Higgs bosons? Nineteenth-century German furniture?"

"Do you have to be such a ripping c.u.mfart about my situation? I'm not the one on hands and knees in Hampstead Heath baying for boy cherry."

Billy looked insulted. "First of all, ick, and second of all, I'll have you know I am a bear and prefer people who are age-appropriate, and third, if anyone around here is into age-inappropriate nookie, it would be you. It must be awful knowing that you're breaking all human taboos every time you get a hard-on."

"A bear? What's a bear?"

Billy lost his temper. "Raymond, enough! Let me finish up here and we'll go our separate ways."

I could feel flakes of peeling skin on my sunburned face. "Christ. Hand me a mirror."

Billy rummaged in his aubergine murse and pulled out a compact. "Take one look and you'll see that in your current state you'd be lucky to bang a goat, let alone a human being, Raymond."

A goat? Uh-oh ... "Have you been spending time with Neal?"

"Neal? No, but I can dream." He lifted my leg. "Just let me do a final bit of mopping up here." He scrubbed me until I stung, then vigorously rinsed his brush. "But Neal's people did leave you a note. Here it is."

Neal's people?

Billy handed me page 6 of the daily shooting script, on the back of which Neal had written: Ray, Oh. My. f.u.c.king. G.o.d.

I'm stationed in the North Island camp, but we call it Thong Kong. Ray, honestly, p.u.s.s.y grows on trees here. I don't know how the crew gets anything done in a day. You have to make it over here as soon as possible.

Your pal, Neal PS: How was your nap? ;) I was desperate. "Billy, how do I get myself over to this Thong Kong place?"

"Oh. So you want a favour now, do you?" He performed a Dita Von Teese move while removing his rubber gloves. "I think not."

"Oh, come on, Billy, you know we're pals."

Billy turned his back on me and started bagging all of his cleansing equipment in a black bin liner. He then paused to inspect the IV drip in my right hand.

"Come on, Billy, we've known each other such a long time. Take me to the North Island."

"You're barely out of your coma. And I have to think about my image. I can't be seen to be hanging out with the uncool kid." With this, he finished bagging his gear. "Ciao, darling. Wiping up after you even once is more than enough for a lifetime." He closed the door, taking with him the bag filled with my toxic waste.

I climbed off the gurney, feeling a bit wobbly, and looked around the room. Private single bunk on the port side. A small window with a pleasant tropical view. In the sky above were clouds reminiscent of exquisite, flawless, snow-drivenly pure, fluffy white peekaboo panties.

Ahhh ... the South Pacific.

Thumps on the other side of the wall above me snapped me out of my reverie. The racquetball court? I removed my IV and took a quick shower in a bathroom roughly the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, and then chugged a gallon of warm water from the tap. Fortunately, the chap who'd inhabited my room before me had left behind a trove of garments of reasonable enough taste. Unfortunately, he was twenty-five percent larger than me, so that once togged up I resembled a sort of serial killer version of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.

As suddenly as an earthquake, the most gut-snarlingly terrifying engine kicked into gear above my head. What the f.u.c.k?

Wait-room seventeen. Maybe this was why n.o.body wanted it. Well, I was going to put a stop to whatever maniac was using an industrial gravel crusher directly above my room. I headed out. As my door clicked shut, I realized I had no key. c.r.a.p.

I inspected my new neighbourhood, and it was like a hotel, really: creamy wool carpeting, light coming from sources recessed into walls, and framed photographs of TV network plutocrats holding up jumbo marlins. My room was alone on the port side. The other rooms, to starboard, were luxurious and s.p.a.cious to judge from the generous gaps between the doors.

The noise from the gravel smasher above me grew in its anger. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l. I found a staircase and climbed it. Pushing open a door, I saw a row of industrial-sized washing machines-huge honkers that could easily accommodate your next-door neighbour's Fiat, let alone a boatload of beshatted sheets. I wasn't in there for five seconds before a Samoan cheerfully pa.s.sed me, headed out the door; he threw me a fob with several keys as he went. "This laundry room now be your s.h.i.t job, not mine. You have a happy and gracious apocalypse."

"Thank you very much."

The door closed behind him. This was my chance to find clothes that might fit me better. I pushed an OFF b.u.t.ton and opened the door to what turned out to be a dryer holding a load of laundry mixed in with kitchen trays, cafeteria-sized cans of Heinz ketchup and beans and, well, just about anything one might find unbolted on a glamorous TV network yacht. Good on my Samoan friend for getting a bit of fun out of his sack-of-s.h.i.t life situation.

What now? I went back down to my floor. None of the keys worked in my door, so I embarked on a fishing expedition along the hallways to see if any of the keys worked in any of the doors, and I was richly rewarded. At the front of the boat, I entered a stunningly designed gla.s.sed-in area that stopped me with its beauty: perhaps Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might live in a place like this. Rare woods and sleek crystal light fixtures, exotic potted ferns and expensive-looking canvases on every wall. A tray rested on a polished marble side table, and on it sat several bottles of chilled Sauvignon Blanc and six gla.s.ses. Time for a toast to myself, I quite reasonably thought, for having navigated yet another level of the TV network lifestyle.

Raymond, you're a survivor, you are.

Why, thank you, Raymond, I was just thinking that myself.

Delicious wine, isn't it, Raymond?

Why, yes it is, Raymond, yes it is.

I think we all need quiet little moments like this to remind ourselves of how far we've come in life. The moment didn't last long, however. An American male voice came from beyond a set of gla.s.s doors to a patio area on the deck, intruding on my almost religious state of bliss.

38.