Chad leaned up against the counter next to the sink, affecting a pose that Amy supposed was calculated to look like a male model.  He tossed Amy his famous wink.  She didn’t bother to catch it.

Chad changed poses, leaning on one arm, crossing his feet and pooching out his bottom lip.  Amy supposed it was his sultry look.

“Where are your pink shoes?” Amy asked.

Chad’s smile disappeared.  “They were stolen. I couldn’t believe it.  Who would steal pink size 12 men’s shoes?”

“A clown?” Isabel said.

Amy snickered.

Chad ignored the insult.  “Do you know how hard it is to find a shoe like that?” he said, petulantly.  “And now I’ve got to do it again.  But you should see all the adorable kid Converse shoes.  You know for when we’ve got little ones,” Chad said, raising his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.

Amy might have decked him if what happened next hadn’t happened.

Chad’s face turned red and he screamed.  He plucked his hand up off the counter by the sink.  The lobster was dangling from his finger!  The lobster had a death grip on his forefinger with one of its enormous claws.  Chad jumped up and down, spun in a circle and then banged the lobster on the edge of the counter.  The lobster sailed across the room, splashing into the pot of Saag Paneer.

Jeremy yelped and jumped back.

Isabel screamed, “Save him!”

Amy said, “I’ll save him!”  She rushed to Chad who was now spurting a stream of blood from his hand.

Isabel shook her head.  “Not him!  Save the lobster!”  Isabel pushed Jeremy back and whacked the back of the pot.  It turned over, emptying out the green lumpy stuff and one seriously dizzy lobster onto the floor.  The lobster scurried away.

Jeremy put his hands over his ears, screaming, “Will somebody please turn off the alarm?”

“That’s not an alarm.  It’s Chad screaming,” Amy shouted.  “The lobster bit off his finger!”

That seemed to be news to Chad.  He looked down at his hand and, for the first time, saw that he was missing his index finger.  He stopped screaming.  His eyes rolled back into his head, his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor.

“What kind of doctor faints?” Isabel said.

“One that just lost his finger,” Amy said.

“He’s bleeding an awful lot,” Isabel said.  This observation kicked Amy into gear.  She grabbed a dishtowel and kitchen shears.  She cut the towel into strips.  “Snap, snap, you two,” Amy said, gesturing to the floor, “find the finger.  The lobster probably dropped it into that green goo.”  She tied the strips to Chad’s hand, fashioning a tourniquet.

Jeremy and Isabel knelt on the floor, searching the globs of Saag Paneer with their bare hands.  They looked like two kids making mud pies.  Green mud pies.

“How do we know which lump is it?” Isabel asked.

“Just find a lump that looks like a finger,” Amy said.

“They all look like decapitated fingers,” Jeremy said.

Amy said, “Get them all, we’ll sort it out later.”

“I found it!” Isabel yelled triumphantly.  She held the finger up for everyone to see.

Jeremy gently pinched the dismembered digit between his thumb and forefinger and dunked it in the sink of water, to rinse it off.  “Isabel, get a baggie. Fill it with ice.”

Isabel leaped up and got a baggie and ice.  Jeremy dropped the finger inside.  Isabel put her hands on her hips and looked at the kitchen floor.  “Gross.  It looks like Linda Blair was here.”

Satisfied that the tourniquet was working, Amy turned her attention to waking Chad up.  She slapped him across the face.  He didn’t move.  She slapped him again, harder.

Chad’s eyelids fluttered.  He opened his eyes and smiled at Amy.  “I knew it.  I knew you cared.”

She gave him one more slap just because she could.


Indy 500

 

Isabel was driving her Jeep Cherokee with Jeremy riding shotgun.  Amy sat in the back seat with Chad’s passed-out head in her lap.  Amy couldn’t believe this was happening, although she had to admit that this was far more exciting than the evening Chad originally had planned.

Isabel had the accelerator mashed to the floor and weaved in and out of traffic with a steady hand.  Jeremy and Amy held their breath each time Isabel cut in front of another car.

“Did anybody turn off the stove?” Isabel asked, not slowing through a yellow light.

“Shit,” Jeremy said.  He sat up straighter.  “Did anybody catch the lobster?”

“Shit,” said Isabel, taking the corner on two wheels.

“So we have an open gas flame and a killer lobster on the loose in our house?” Jeremy said.  “Could this day get any more weird?”

“I’mmalesbian,” Amy blurted.  Wowzer.  She didn’t know that was going to pop out.  The words were out of her mouth before the thought was even formed.  Or maybe the thought had been formed for a long time and it escaped her head once her guard was down.

Isabel looked at Amy quizzically in the rear view mirror.  Jeremy turned in his seat and looked her up and down before turning back around.  Finally he said, “Well, that answers a lot of questions.”

“It does?  Like what?” Amy asked.

Jeremy shrugged.   “Why you were kissing that hottie in the paper.  Why you hate Chad.”

Isabel laid on her horn and swerved around an old man walking his dog across a crosswalk.  “Is it because of Chad?” Isabel asked.  “Because that’s a little extreme, isn’t it?  You don’t have to change your sexual orientation just to make him go away.”

“No,” Amy said.  “It’s not because of Chad.  And in my own defense, plenty of women hate Chad and they’re not all lesbians.”

“True, true,” Jeremy said.

Isabel careened around a corner without touching the brakes.  She gunned the engine up to the emergency room, leaving twin skid marks in front of the double doors.

“If this cooking thing doesn’t work out, you might consider race car driving,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah, who knew I had a natural talent?” Isabel said.

“I’ll be right back, don’t try to move him yourself,” Jeremy said.  He baled out of the Jeep and sprinted inside the emergency room to gather a gurney crew.  After a moment, Veronica and Valerie ran outside.  Amy opened her door and once the twins saw Chad passed out on Amy’s lap, Valerie said, “This was a little over the top, wasn’t it?”

Veronica continued, “Yeah.  You didn’t have to try and kill him.”

“I didn’t do this!” Amy protested.  “A lobster did it.”

“Well,” Valerie said, “You get an A plus for creative excuses.  I don’t know if a jury will buy it, though.”

“If I were you,” Veronica said, “I would have cut off his penis.  But a finger is good, too.”

Amy handed Veronica the finger in the baggie, saying, “Just take this.  Make sure it gets to wherever the rest of him is going.”

Jeremy rolled a gurney up to the Jeep.  It took two EMTs to load Chad onto the stretcher.

As they rolled the stretcher into the hospital, Chad awoke and started screaming.  Amy, Isabel and Jeremy all watched Chad being wheeled away until they could no longer hear his screams.

“Do you think they’ll be able to reattach it?” Isabel asked.

Jeremy shrugged.  “Who knows?  We might be calling him Dr. Stumpy from now on.”

Isabel giggled.  Jeremy joined in.  Their laughter was infectious and soon Amy was laughing, too.


Steve

 

Jeremy drove the Jeep back home.  He had insisted on driving until Isabel’s adrenaline rush had subsided.  Halfway home, he pulled off onto a side street and into a strip mall.  “I have to pick up a few things.  It’ll only take a minute.”  Jeremy got out of the jeep and walked into Uncle Miltie’s Party Land.

“Is it someone’s birthday tomorrow?” Isabel inquired.

“I don’t think so,” Amy said.  “Maybe that’s not a birthday party place.  Uncle Miltie sounds like a perv.  Maybe it’s a sex shop.”

“Yeah,” Isabel giggled.  “Maybe it’s a sex shop for clowns.”  They both laughed and the tension of the past hour eased.

“So speaking of sex,” Isabel said.  “What’s up with the lesbian thing?”

Amy took a deep breath.  “You know how I’ve been hanging out with that woman Jordan, the one I met at work?”

“The pretty one? Yeah, Jeremy told me.”

“We’re sorta kinda dating now.”

“I don’t have a problem with it.  Just tell her if she’s not nice to you, she’ll have to deal with me.  I’ll sic Steve on her.”

“Who’s Steve?”

“The lobster,” Isabel said.  “He needed to have a name before I could wrap my mind around what just happened.  Besides, despite the Chad thing, I still need him for the race.  I don’t think I can handle picking up another one.”

“We’ve got to find him first.  We should use gloves to handle him,” Amy said, thinking they didn’t need to lose any more fingers tonight.

“Baseball gloves,” Isabel said.  At that moment, Jeremy opened the driver’s door and handed a big sack over to Isabel.  “Mission accomplished.”

“What did you get?” Isabel said, peering inside the bag.

Jeremy smirked.  “I couldn’t resist.  Check it out.”

Isabel rooted around in the bag and pulled out several small plastic lobsters, an inflatable lobster, several hard plastic lobster true-to-scale models, light up lobster patio lights, a lobster cooking apron, a ceramic coffee mug with a lobster painted on the side and one peeking up from the bottom, lobster towels, a pair of lobster boxer shorts and even lobster socks.

“You are terrible,” Isabel said.

“I know, right?”

“Jeremy, aren’t you being a little harsh?” Amy said.

“And the banana thing wasn’t?  Look, he got a lot of mileage out of tormenting you.  Dude gets what he gives.  Picture it:  tomorrow he wakes up and his entire room is lobsterfied. You gotta admit, it’s funny.”

Amy smiled.  Maybe Chad did deserve a little retribution.  Okay, a lot of retribution.

Jeremy started the car while Isabel repacked the bag.  “He is an asshole,” Isabel said.

“And it is funny,” Amy added.

“He uses people, dudes included.  All I’m saying is he needs to come down from Chad mountain,” Jeremy said.  “Doctor Stumpy is going to wake up tomorrow in lobster world.”  He hung a lobster shaped car deodorizer from his rear view mirror.


Here, Lobster, Lobster!

Amy had barely walked through the front door before she heard Isabel yell, “Oh no!”  Amy ran to the kitchen and got there only seconds before Jeremy.  “What? What? What?” Amy said.  “What is it?”

Isabel was standing in front of the stove, staring at it.  There was nothing wrong that Amy could see.  Even the burner was turned off.  Isabel slowly turned to Jeremy and Amy, saying, “The Saag Paneer.  It’s gone.”

“Gone?” Jeremy said.  “It fell on the floor.”

Isabel gestured to the floor.  It was mostly clean except for a twin pair of green drag marks leading toward the dining room.  She picked up the pot the Saag Paneer had been cooking in.  There was nothing inside but a crusty green ring where it had once been.

“Steve ate it,” Amy said, drawing the obvious conclusion.

“Who’s Steve?” Jeremy asked.

“The lobster,” Isabel said.  “I named him Steve.”

“You named a man-maiming, Indian-food-eating lobster Steve?” Jeremy asked.

“Mr. Claw was too obvious,” Isabel said.

Jeremy nodded like it made absolute and complete sense.

“We need to find Steve,” Isabel said.  “Before the Saag Paneer kicks in and he goes really crazy.”

“Yeah, no way I’m sleeping in this house with him on the loose,” Amy said.

“If you find him, don’t hurt him.  I still need him for the race tomorrow,” Isabel said.

“Okay, well, let’s split up and check all the rooms,” Amy said.

“Can lobsters live outside of water?” Jeremy asked.  He was opening kitchen cupboards.  “I mean, they keep them in that tank at the store, right?”

“They need water but as long as they keep moist they can live outside of a pool,” Isabel said.

“Could he have gotten outside?” Amy opened the back door that led outside from the kitchen.  She turned on the light.  “Here lobster, lobster, lobster!”

“I’ll go out and search,” Jeremy said, pulling on oven mitts.  He clicked his heels and saluted them.  “If I’m not back in three days tell my mother I loved her,” he said, soberly.

Isabel snickered.

“I’ll start in my bedroom.  You start in yours,” Amy said.  She opened the storage closet and grabbed a bucket and a Tupperware tub.  She handed Isabel the bucket.  “If you see him trap him under that.”