Free Biceps Of Death by David Stukas Page A

arrived.
    “Monette?”
    “Yes, little Jimmy?” she said like a mother with 2.3 children living in Cleveland, Ohio.
    “Monette, I’ve been here a whole evening and you haven’t played one practical joke on me yet. In fact, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop after the last one I played on you.”
    “I assume you’re referring to the incident where you sent that e-mail to me at work labeled Compromising Photos of Ellen DeGeneres , and when I opened it, the damn thing shot the volume control on my computer way up and screamed, ‘Hey, everyone! I’m looking at porn over here!’ Everyone on my floor heard the fuckin’ thing.”
    “Yes, I recall that I might have had some kind of remote connection to that occurrence.”
    “Robert, it had your signature style written all over it,” Monette said, giving me a sly look. Don’t worry, you’ll get yours,” she added with an evil grin.
    Ever since I met Monette over a decade ago, we both enjoyed playing practical jokes on each other. I think it was the soul mate connection we had with each other that made us both enjoy it, and it was the mental combat that kept things exciting.
    I bid Monette good night and settled down to a well-deserved sleep. The noise from the street kept waking me up since I was used to sleeping in a room in the back of a building. It’s funny how living in New York can make you appreciate the difference between sound levels that would deafen those used to the quiet of the suburbs. My apartment on the Yupper East Side was like sleeping inside the muffler of a taxi cab, and Monette’s apartment was like the inside of a Pratt & Whitney jet engine—it was a difference that mattered.
    At around two-thirty, I awoke to faint noises coming from the window facing Monette’s balcony. Again, I’d slept right through several fire engines a few blocks away, but awoke because of some tiny scratching noises.
    I got up, rubbed my eyes, and went over to the window only to find a man wearing a ski mask partially protruding through an opened window a mere twelve inches from me. The man stared at me for a second and I stared at him, neither of us moving a muscle. Suddenly, there was a horrific, primal growl behind me as I turned to see two glowing eyes racing toward me from Monette’s bedroom down the hall. Amelia must have chewed through her chains, pried opened the bedroom door with her meat hooks and was now barreling down the hall toward my face for a taste of blood. Fifteen-pound Ameila bounded through the air and hit me like a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys, causing me to lose my balance in the darkness and fall back against the window and our burglar. The window, which our nocturnal guest had apparently propped open, came down on his head like a guillotine blade with a sickening bang. Dazed and contused, Mr. Ski Mask raised the window enough to extract his aching head backward, letting the window slam shut a second time. Ameila had landed on the ground nearby and crouched there, growling at me with eyes afire while the burglar (or was he an assailant?) stood unsteadily outside on the balcony, trying, no doubt, to figure out what had just happened. While he was regaining his composure, I went into action.
    I grabbed the nearest heavy object and tossed it through the window at the burglar. The burglar, startled not only by my appearance but also by an unknown object crashing through a window, fell backward over the edge and disappeared, followed by Monette’s 2002 Big Apple Lesbian Soccer Championship trophy.
    Monette flew into the living room like a bat out of hell (which was what she resembled until she had her first cup of coffee in the morning), asking, “What the hell is going on here?”
    “Someone just tried to break in here, and I threw something at him,” I shouted.
    We pushed back what was left of the window and stepped out onto the broken glass of the balcony in our slippers, figuring that we’d be looking down onto the