It seriously pissed me off when I realized I was dead.

            I mean, what the fuck? One minute, I’m cruising down the road, minding my own business. Got my tunes goin’ through my earbuds to musically blow my brains out.

            The crazy-cool pot pipe I got yesterday is filled with my favorite blend. Got the window cracked—don’t want to pull a Cheech and Chong smoke bomb if I get pulled over.

            Hold on there, cowboy! Before you go all Jesus-freak judgmental on my ass, it’s medicinal. I got a ‘script for it. So, get off my ass, Bubba Redneck.

            Anyway.

            I’m scootin’ along, doin’ my job like a good little grunt. I’m headin’ to a meeting with some chick at a cheap-ass motel and touristy trap thingy down toward the coast. My boss, the big-time lawyer dude, sent me to give this “extremely important client” the papers in the sealed manila folder sitting on the passenger seat.

            Here’s my thinkin’: if she’s such a hot-shit client, why ain’t she meetin’ me in some office or in her fancy house? Why don’t you just FedEx the papers to the multimillion-dollar mansion she’s surely got somewhere? Why don’t she bring her silicon-implanted ass and perfect, saline-filled boobs struttin’ into the office to get her papers so everyone can drool over her?

Why don’t she send her own legal powerhouse with nuts the size of bowling balls over to get her precious papers?

            I’ll tell ya why. Because these ain’t business papers I’m runnin’ down here to give this skank. These are bearer bonds. Just like with the last one six months ago, and the other one six months before that. This is the payoff to keep Ms. Sugar-tits from showin’ your wife all the different times and imaginative ways you drove your cock into Ms. Not-Your-Wife’s various orifices.

            Ya see, that’s the thing with you movers and shakers and big business ball-bangin’ dicks-with-ears. Y’all think you’re all sneaky, James Bond slick-like with your fuckin’ around. But you ain’t. Everybody and their brother knows what you’re up to.

            Whaddya think the ladies are whisperin’ about in the church choir on Sunday? They sure as hell ain’t havin’ a theological debate over the preacher’s sermon!

            Me? I don’t care who you’re doin’, when you’re doin’ ‘em or how you’re doin’ ‘em. As long as I get my paycheck on payday, I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ that don’t directly concern me or mine.

            ‘Course, if I was married to a bat-shit crazy bitch like my boss’s wife, I sure as hell wouldn’t be porkin’ any of the local high-priced poontang around town. No, sir. I’d restrict my carnal knowledge to Mr. Happy Hand until I could snag an out-of-town convention or conference. I’d be jumpin’ on every change-of-venue case I could grab and get my jollies outside of the three hundred mile “no fuck zone” I’d impose around my house.

            Hell, Mrs. Boss has already been in rehab twice and locked up for in-patient psycho-babble bullshit treatment at least four times. Everybody knows he’d divorce her if her name wasn’t on sixty percent of the law firm and everything else they own. Community property state, don’t ya know.

            She started the firm, hired him on, married him for some stupid reason, then let him do his legal-eagle thing with it. But she kept control. And most of the money, too, from what the girls with the cleaning service say.

            Awright, awright, awright. Here’s my turn. Hope this heifer is expectin’ me. I want to hand off these papers and get the hell back to the house. Got two twelve-packs, a frozen supreme pizza and the better part of a quarter ounce of smoke waiting on me.

            Sweet. Parkin’ place right in front. What the hell room number am I lookin’ for? Oh, yeah. Says right here on the folder—Room 217.

            Getting’ through the lobby is no problem. I left my pipe in the car, of course. Still, I get a few of “those looks” from a couple of the people finishin’ up the last of the continental breakfast. What can I say? The aroma of the good shit lingers.

            Elevator music sucks. The old lady in front of me has that blue hair, teased-up rat nest on her head. Why does every granny in the South think they got to tease up their thinnin’ hair, plaster it with hair spray, and put that blue rinse crap on it? It’s like they wake up one mornin’, realize they turned sixty-five, and POOF! Blue hair and teased-up rat nest.

            Squeeze past Blue Belle to get off on the second floor. Rm. 223…221…219…217.

            Here we go. Knock on the door.

*****

            This is the part that keeps playin’ back in my mind over and over, in slow motion, 3D, technicolor, with Dolby surround sound.

            The door flies open. But it’s not Miss Fuck-me-blind-because-I-have-perfect-boobs standin’ there. It’s Mrs. Boss.

            Is that blood all over her face and shirt?

            Goddamn! Bitch pointin’ a gun at me?

            “Do you believe in life after love?” she asks.

            “What?” I say.

            “Wrong answer.”

            BOOM!

            When I realized I was dead, I was fuckin’ pissed, you hear me?

            Can you hear me?

            Hello?

            Anybody there?

            Dammit.

            Left my pipe in the car…