Free The Anomalies by Joey Goebel Page B

Judge. How the game works is that one person sits in a chair facing opposite everyone else so he can’t see what’s going on. Then, one of the other persons goes up behind him and says, “Good morning, Judge” three times, only you disguise your voice by talking all funny. The person in the chair has to guess who said “Good morning, Judge.”
    The problem with us, though, is that each of us has such a unique voice and can’t fake it. So it’s impossible for the person in the chair to guess wrong.
    “This game blows it,” says Ray. “No one has guessed it incorrectish all night.”
    “I agree with Fuquay,” I say. “It’s bedtime for this booty.”
    “No!” hollers Ember.
    “Yes!” I holler back. “We cannot play Good Morning, Judge all night, honey.”
    “I’m not sleepy!” she whines.
    “Well, baby, I’m sorry, but we are. I know. What if I told you a bedtime story?”
    She reluctantly agrees. We all get ready for bed and get situated in Ember’s big, messy bedroom. Luster, Ray, and Auroralie in sleeping bags on the floor with all the clutter, and I’m in bed next to Ember.
    “What story do you want to hear?” I ask her. “I know ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and the first two seasons of Magnum P. I.”
    “Tell me about the night that you and Luster met.”
    “You’re too young to hear that!” says Aurora.
    “Tell it!” screams Ember.
    “Tell it!” screams Luster.
    I had told Ember this story once before, and she got a kick out of it, so I’ll tell it again if it’ll make her angry little tush happy.
    “It all started one Thursday night a couple years ago when I was—well, I was playing with one of my boyfriends. This was back when I just dated people closer to my own age, and this boyfriend died while we were in the act of…playing.”
    “You mean you were doing it,” interrupts Ember.
    “Right. So my date died, but the night was still young. I had the ambulance give my tail a ride to Gloria’s, my favorite bar. The driver said he was sorry they couldn’t save him and all that, and I told him to forget it, that it happens all the time.
    “So I walked in the bar, and it’s karaoke night, a night I normally avoid. Sean the bartender gave me my usual, which at that time was a Fin du Monde. (They special ordered it for me.) So I was sitting at the bar like I usually did, kind of feeling down after having my playmate croak on me.
    “Just when I was starting to feel old again, I heard this gigantic voice scream over the opening chords of ‘Some Guys Have All the Luck’ by Hot Rod, or Rodzilla as I call him. The voice was screaming, ‘I do not even need that smart-ass teleprompter!’ I turned around from the bar, and that was thefirst time I saw Luster.
    “He was lookin handsome in his flea market T-shirt, the one that says ‘Hey now!’ So then he started singing the opening lines. What were they, Luster?”
    “Alone in a crowd in a bus after work and I’m dreaming,” says Luster, already half-asleep on the floor.
    “That’s it. So he started singing, and his voice was so strong, and he was really gettin into it. He was a showboat even back then in front of a couple dozen skanks at a karaoke bar. He would rub himself all over all sexual and what have you, and he would kind of hop around, and lo and behold, he really didn’t need that teleprompter.
    “So I said to Sean, ‘Who’s that youngblood?’ and Sean said, ‘That’s Luster Johnson. He’s a regular here on Thursday nights. Kind of a weirdo.’
    “And I said, ‘Yeah, but he’s a hot weirdo,’ and then I got up close to the little stage, and I yelled, ‘Hey! Show us your tits!’ and I think it bothered him. He kept on singing and didn’t show me his tits. But I wasn’t through with his tuchis yet.
    “A little later when he was at the bar downing some milk, I went up to him and said, ‘Hey, biggun.’ That’s what I used to call him, ‘biggun.’ I said, ‘Hey, biggun. You kicked rump up there