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“Ow.” Rome rolled over and the pain sharpened up enough to cut through his aching, foggy haze. “Motherfucker.”
He smacked his lips and winced. His head was throbbing. Actually, a lot of body parts were throbbing. He pushed himself halfway upright and an unsettling feeling shuddered through him. He slumped back down on the floor, rolled onto his back and blinked up at the ceiling. A strange cooing noise started up very close by.
Roman rolled his head to the side and flinched. “MOTHERFUCKER!”
The most fucked-up monkey he’d ever seen just blinked and cooed at him from its regal position on Tej’s chest. Its amber-orange eyes sized Roman up balefully and then the….whatever it was went back to grooming its striped tail.
“Dude, nice monkey.” Rome dared to poke at Tej, hopefully faster than the monkey could bite him.
Tej just moaned and swiped grumpily at Rome’s poking finger. The…whatever it was cooed more gently and nestled into Tej’s neck with all the entitlement of a long-term girlfriend.
“It’s a lemur.” Came an even voice from the ceiling.
Rome managed to keep the nausea and whole-body ache at bay by moving only his eyes. Some guy who looked vaguely like Han moved into his peripheral vision. Rome squinted up at him. “Lemur?”
“Ring-tailed.” The guy who looked like Han but bald, crunched loudly on what smelled like popcorn. Rome’s stomach heaved, even while hunger started radiating out from his midsection all the way to his fingers and toes. “From Madagascar, probably.”
Rome just blinked again. Anything else felt like too much effort.
“What?” Bald Han sounded vaguely defensive. “I like Nat Geo.”
“What the fuck happened last night?” Rome wanted to bellow, but it came out as more of a yelp.
“We stole $100,000,000.” Bald Han grinned. He reached down and pulled something out of Rome’s front pocket. Rome blanched. It looked like a tiny yellow Camaro from one angle. Han started chuckling and walked off with it.
“Eyebrows.” Rome mumbled, making a sincere effort to get off the floor. He discovered that the bone-deep ache in his hip was from lying on a toy that looked vaguely like a motorcycle but more like some wacked-out robot clone. He turned it back and forth, bemused.
When Rome got upright that unsettlingly loose, painful feeling washed over him again. He tried to shuffle toward the nearest bathroom on the abandoned factory floor, but an odd pinching ache made his steps short.
Tego and Rico were slumped hang-dog over their situation table. They kept sliding a mobile phone back and forth between them. They both looked like they’d aged about a decade. Even Tego’s dreads looked exhausted.
Vince was lying half-off the battered couch and his hair made Rome stutter to a halt. Vince muzzily raised his head and barked ‘What?’ at Rome. Rome looked back at Tego and Rico and they all said in unison: “Hair.”
Vince looked hunted for a second and then instantly relieved when he lapped both hands over his pate. “What the fuck’th your problem, I don’t…”
He trailed off and one of his hands flew to his mouth.
“That is some grille you got there.” Rome quickly checked his own mouth for new adornments. Then he held up a hand as if to ward off the glare.
“What ith thith?” Vince looked like a car with incomplete ground effects, inexpressibly whiter with his platinum hair and silver teeth. Like some kind of redneck superhero.
Rome tapped his own choppers. “Snatch outs, your mouth. Looking good, big homie.”
Vince stumbled over to the side of the Porsche and twisted the driver’s side mirror up to get a gander. He grunted at his reflection and sank down the side of the car in a squeaky cascade.
“Now, she, she is special.” Tego mumbled at Rico. From somewhere a cell phone started to ring. Reflexively, Roman checked his own pockets. His phone was deep in his back pocket, silent. His front pocket was full of…it looked like a USB stick, but then it folded out to be a mechanical-looking panther. The other pocket had something that looked like a fighter jet, sort of.
Roman’s head throbbed with the weight of however many missing hours. He shifted uncomfortably, foot to foot. It felt like there was something…
“HOLY SHIT!” OK, Tej was obviously awake now. With his wild eyes and flaring nostrils, he looked like a cartoon character. He certainly rocketed over to the table like the Road Runner from Looney Tunes. “Did you see the…goddamned monkey?” Tej rubbed his mouth in a way that made Rome think that the lady lemur had made a pass.
“It’s a lemur, you ass.” Rome said condescendingly. The lemur in question loped to the table and gracefully vaulted up onto it, ignoring Tej’s cringe. She (Rome hoped it was a she) looped her tail around her body and chittered at them.
“I don’t care if it’s a great gray ape, you Discovery-watching fucktard.” Tej said slowly out of the side of his mouth. He never broke eye contact with the lemur. “What the fuck am I doing with a lemur? Did we, like…wander around the damn Amazon for a while?”
“They’re from Madagascar.” Han called from the other side of the warehouse.
“I don’t care where it’s from either.” Tej said in the long-suffering tone of a person who was deeply hungover and inches away from losing his shit. “What are we…”
“We, nothing, cuz.” Rome shrugged. “Ain’t my lemur. And you already buying the bitch jewelry, so she’s obviously got you so whipped you can’t raise your head. Un-be-liev-able.”
Tej looked from Tego to Rico to Rome, glanced briefly at Vince and back at the lemur. Who was indeed wearing an impressive amount of bling. She fingered her heavy necklace with tiny black paws. The gold kind of clashed with her orange eyes.
Rome turned around before the lemur started demanding an Hermes bag and Prada pumps. A phone was ringing somewhere and he detoured from his route to the bathroom to make the evil noise stop. Every step was actually painful like there was something…
“Oh God.” The floor shook a little as a large figure rolled off the Charger’s hood. Dominic Toretto was awake. It was his phone or at least, the ringing was coming from his crotch, but Dom made no move to dig into a pocket and answer the damn thing. It wasn’t a standard ringtone; it was some lame dubstep shit. Rome stifled a shudder.
“What…” Dom had pressed one palm on the crown of his head, as if to keep it from floating off his shoulders. Roman followed his eyes and winced.
“Aw, man, that’s…” Rome squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. “… I don’t even.”
“Heinous.” Dom regarded the Charger which now looked like something that some stoned kindergartner had put together during craft time. “I think the word is heinous.”
Dom leaned forward and squinted at the forlorn wreck of the Charger. It had been such a proud beast and now… “Is that newspaper?”
“I have no idea.” Rome could feel a crowd building behind him. Vince was swearing with a slight lisp. Tego was shaking his head and Rico was still hunched over his mobile phone. The Buddhist monk who was standing in for Han strolled over and creaked the trunk open. They all craned their necks to gawk at the colorful boxes on display.
“Are those…?” Rome didn’t quite know why he was stage-whispering. Han just glanced at him and shrugged. Han quickly ripped open a box of Tagalongs and started munching appreciatively. After a moment’s hesitation, Rome shrugged and liberated a box of Samoas. The sweet dark chocolate and coconut fought off the sour vinegar taste in his mouth. Cloyingly sweet, but not nauseating.
Dom was squeezing his tiny cross in one huge hand and he appeared to be praying. He kept wiping a hand over his face. Rome edged away, cramming two more cookies in his mouth. Rico held the phone out to Vince who glanced at it, then went back for a longer look.
Dom glanced sharply at Han and smoothed a hand over his own shaven skull. “Uh?”
Han raised non-existent eyebrows.
“Never mind.” Dom went back to scowling at the papier-maché covering his beloved car.
Rome tried to sidestep the tiny cluster hovering around Rico’s mobile phone. Pain radiated from a very delicate place. “Ow!”
Vince looked up and then back at the tiny screen.
“That is…disturbing.” Rome blinked again at Vince’s luminous hair. Vince ignored him to tell Rico to ‘scroll back’ whatever that meant.
“Whoa.” Vince pointed. “Check out that mamacita.”
“La muy cabrona le robo el dinero.” Tego offered bitterly.
“She could take my money anytime.” Vince breathed.
“They’re dudes, you realize that right?” Han ambled past, looking all serene and hairless.
Rome watched Tego, Rico and Vince simultaneously balk and cock their heads at the exact same angle. Rico started furiously scrolling and Rome snorted and turned back to the bathroom.
“Hey, where’s Brian?” Dom was in the process of tossing all the carefully-stacked boxes of Girl Scout cookies hither and yon. He had paused with half a dozen cartons of Thin Mints balanced on his palm.
They all looked up at Dom’s scowl and Tego volunteered, apropos of nothing. “Pienso que un hombre Rico jodido.”
Vince chose that moment to pass out again. Dom grimaced.
****
There was no more denying it: there was something in his ass. Rome leaned down cautiously and double-checked that the door was locked. He positioned himself carefully over the toilet and gingerly swiped a few fingers against his backdoor. It yielded nothing but a lingering sense of embarrassment.
Roman gritted his teeth and probed with two fingers. He felt the edge of something stretchy. Ho-ly shit. It felt like a condom. Rome suddenly felt so sick that he nearly fell off the porcelain throne. This was so not good. He cupped his eyes with his free hand and wonder which revelation would be worse, drugs or spunk? He prepared himself mentally.
He tugged gently on the edge of the condom and his whole body sang with pain. He took a few deep huffing breaths and pushed and pulled at the same time. After a second which seemed to last for millennia, his body released the foreign invader. Rome gaped at the tiny, condom-wrapped figure long enough for his open mouth to dry out completely.
There was a ringing in his ears. It buzzed annoyingly in time with the echo of blood pumping through his veins. The revelation was so earth-shattering that he had to say it out loud to make sure he was awake.
“Optimus Prime was in my ass.” Rome said in shock, not realizing that he’d unconsciously pulled his phone out and clicked the ‘answer’ button.
“Uh,” Brian’s voice sounded faint, but clear. “Bro, are you still wasted?”
“My ass, Brian.” Rome clutched the phone in one hand and the toy in the other. “How did…who put…why is there a Transformer in my ass?”
“This connection is kinda shit.” Again Brian’s voice was perfectly clear. “Sounds like you said something…transformed your ass? Do I really wanna know? Could you come…”
Rome set the toy down very gently on the side of the sink. It was so…spiky. Rome shuddered and focused on the reality of Brian’s voice. Brian was OK. Somewhere within cell-phone range. Maybe hungover, but hopefully as-yet-unmolested by an Autobot.
Rome talked over Brian’s plea. “Brian, promise me we’ll never get this drunk again.”
Brian sounded awfully blasé even for Brian. “Sure, dude. Cross my heart. Now can you come get me? I’m at the beach.”
“Could you be a little more specific?” Someone was jiggling at the door handle. Rome slammed one fist into the door testily. It was so much easier to move without a toy up his butt.
“The big beach? Opposite the hotel.”
“The Copacabana?”
“That’s the one.” Brian affirmed. “Could you tell Dom to step on it? And bring my…”
Rome bristled. “You just get your ass up to the street next to the hotel and we’ll be by as soon as I can get these drunk-ass motherfuckers to move.”
“I can’t go up to the street, cuz.” Brian sounded sincerely regretful, if a trifle abstracted. “You guys gotta come to the beach and get me.”
“Fucking A, Brian, there are, like a million, billion people on that beach. I’m hungry, I don’t have time to go…”
“Rome.” Brian was using his no-bullshit voice now. “If you don’t wanna, send someone else. Just not Mia. Or Gisele. OK?”
“Brian, are you all right?” For the second time, it occurred to Rome that he should be worried, maybe.
“I don’t have any sunscreen. Look, this lady needs her phone back.” Brian said cryptically. “Just hurry, OK?”
The phone went dead and Roman swore at it. He attempted to stomp out to find Dom, but quickly discovered that it was best to walk lightly after extracting an Autobot from the rectum.
Dom was attempting to slap Vince awake while having a desperate conversation with Han who was examining what looked like one of Brian’s Converse sneakers.
Rico was still dry-heaving over a bucket. Tego fluttered helplessly “¿Dónde coño están las llaves?”
“Man, the only thing I didn’t do last night was drive, so I got no fucking clue where the keys are.” Rome sulked. “You coming?”
Tej looked up from where he was communing with the lemur and shook his head. “Gotta feed Rita.”
“Oh so you got mad love for the lemur now?” Rome folded his arms.
Tej just turned and stroked the long tail. Rita rose up on her hind legs and pressed her little paw against Tej’s cheek. Tej looked up at Rome and love was blooming in his eyes. “She needs me.”
“Brian’s down at the beach, near the Copacabana.” Rome tried to slouch and discovered that didn’t work either. “Said we had to come down to the beach to get him, for some reason the princess can’t come up and meet us anywhere convenient.”
Dom had stopped smacking Vince lightly and when he looked up at Rome the relief on his face turned wry. “I think I know why.”
****
As Rome had predicted, there were a million, billion people down at the beach. It was another gorgeous day, but every ray of sunlight felt like a lance of concentrated lightning through his head. But damn, there were some jaw-dropping women here. It was hard to feel like shit when there was such an astonishing array of beauty in the world.
He let Dom scan for Brian while he ogled the talent on display shamelessly from behind his sunglasses. He followed Dom as Dom strode unerringly over the sand. They were almost to the surf before Rome spotted Brian splashing toward them. It was like the most fucked-up Bond film ever conceived. Brian was wearing a wide grin, the beginnings of a sunburn and…nothing else.
And OK, so it was an open question whether it was worse to wake up completely naked on the most popular beach in Rio or with a Hasbro product shoved up your butt. Rome wasn’t prepared to debate the issue. Dom pulled a pair of board shorts and a t-shirt out of nowhere and Rome looped an arm around Brian’s neck and said, “C’mon, brah, I’m hungry.”
Brian grinned, "I hope someone has photos."