Free Welcome to Paradise by Laurence Shames

green
like Christmas bulbs.
    Through the pain he noticed that both her
hands were on his chest.
    And her soft and playful ow rose to an
enraged and screeching OUCH, and she belted him across the temple
with her forearm.
    Wrestling with the bedclothes, thrashing and
struggling to free herself, she hissed out, "You're not kinky, you
sick bastard? Just one more sick bastard!"
    She managed to rise, clutching at the inside
of her thigh. As she did so, something clunked onto the floor and
seemed to drag itself away. Fifi, her neat paws skidding on the
varnished boards, ran in circles until she'd tracked it down. There
was a scuffle, then a yelp.
    A befuddled but tumescent Alan Tuschman
scrambled up from bed. He watched the thick-haired woman quickly
climb into her skirt. The anguish of losing her briefly overwhelmed
the searing pain in his groin, and it was a heartbeat or two before
he focused on the unnatural weight and appalling pressure he was
feeling there.
    Then he looked down and he screamed. Loudly.
He had a two-pound lobster dangling from his nuts. Its antennae
were exploring his stomach hair and its tail was curling upward
toward his asshole. "Help!"
    The thick-haired woman was not inclined to
get that close. She pulled her blouse on and turned her back. "You
fucking pervert," she said across her shoulder. "I feel sorry for
the dog!"
    Al reached down and grabbed the two shells of
the lobster claw, tried with all his strength to pry them off his
scrotum. "You think I had this planned?" he yelled.
    There was no reply. The thick-haired woman
was out of there. Hadn't even closed the door behind her.
    Hopping madly, fighting with the lobster and
fondling his dented balls, Al Tuschman stared out at her sudden
absence, at the giant philodendrons and the faint blue shimmer of
the pool beyond.
     

 
TWO
11
    In a clean and quiet Long Island suburb,
Nicky Scotto climbed out of the bed he shared with his skinny,
late- sleeping wife and padded off to the bathroom. He showered and
carefully shaved, paying particular attention to the difficult
places at the corners of his mouth. Then he found scissors and
trimmed the overly luxuriant fringes of his eyebrows.
    Standing now in his underwear and knee-high
cashmere socks, he buffed his Bruno Maglis till they gleamed. He
pulled on a black silk turtleneck and a pearl-gray worsted suit,
and headed off for his first morning at his former job, now very
temporarily his again.
    He didn't have to dress this fancily for
work. In fact, it was totally impractical. The thin soles of the
loafers barely cleared the streams of fishy ice water that trickled
over tile floors toward half-clogged rusty drains. The silk
turtleneck didn't keep him warm enough as he made the rounds of
reefer trucks and seafood lockers, which steamed a frosty fog when
their doors were opened.
    Still, he dressed rich because it reflected
how he felt. Walking through the clamor and the echoes of the
market, making his presence known, waving benignly to the little
people in the stalls as they shoveled ice, uncrated octopus, he
might have been an old-time duke parading through his village.
People called his name. There was a friendliness in it, almost a
hurrah, though it was not the friendliness of equals. It was the
friendliness of happy subjects, supplicants who were rewarded as
long as they paid tribute and obeyed the rules. Pete, Luigi, Tony,
Fred—beyond the confines of the market, they would casually make it
known that they called Nicky by his name, and this would give them
standing in the wider world.
    So, quietly thrilled to be back, he did his
circuit, shaking hands, slapping backs, then headed down a chilly
corridor toward what used to be his office.
    An absurd and salty sorrow tweaked him as he
neared the door. Not that there was much to have missed about the
place. The lighting was lousy and it smelled of fish. The furniture
was cold, cheap metal, and the one, dirty window faced out on a
loading dock and a mountain of