Liar

Chapter 69

She’s nuts if she thinks I’m gonna pay for La Russie too. I’ve never been there, but I know it’s a Goddamn outrageously expensive Russian restaurant in the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Oh, Alexei!” She trills to the matter-dee the minute we walk in.

“Miss Claudeea! Yoo have not come for a long time.” He trills back.

This Alexei looks like Dracula, complete with white hair, long molars, and some Eastern European accent. Probably fake.

“I’ve been away, to China,” she lies. The face thing, no doubt.

The Transylvanian monster checks his list. “Ah, Miss Claudeea. Yoo have a reservation?”

She looks at me.

“Schebschitz,” I say.

“I doo not see a Mister Schebschitz here. For vhat time did yoo reserve the table?”

“Eight.” I say firmly.

t I doo not see anything. Are yoo certain it is this restaurant yoo called?”

course.” I say loudly. “I called the hotel reception and they confirmed my reservation at eight tonight.”

, but there is some mistake. We are independent from the hotel. They doo not take the reservations for us.”

She cuts in. “Can’t you give us a table?”

“Ah, Miss Claudeea, I apologize. Toonight everything is booked. I am very sorry.”

“But this is ridiculous.” I glare at the grotesque bloodsucker. “The hotel called me back and confirmed my reservation. You can’t do this to us, you have to give us a table.”

Ha, ha, ha. My ruse worked, now we can go somewhere cheap. Who knows? Maybe even MacDonald.

“Well, let me see,” long-fang frowns in concentration. “It is all right, I will do it only for yoo, Miss Claudeea. I will have a small table made up just for yoo. Yoo do not mind it is in a corner?”

I almost scream. This asshole Alexei! What’s so special about Claudia? Why does he have to make up a Goddamn table just for her?

“Oh yes, that’ll be fine.” She smiles as though she’s some Russian countess. In five minutes there’s a stupid little table set up for us. Goddammit!

“I want a glass of vodka in every flavor they have,” she announces to me, “and then I want a bottle of champagne.”

“I’ll have tap water.”

“Tap water’s good for you, a lot of natural goodness,” she smirks. “You’ll love the caviar and the shaslik.”

“I don’t want anything, I have no appetite.” “Fasting once in a while is also good for the system,” she says with a cow-eyed serious look on her face.

The repulsive night-rat comes to take our order.

“I am very sorry, Mr. Schebschitz. This restaurant only serves a prix-fixe menu of five courses for two. I am afraid yoo must have it.”

“Fine!” If I grind my teeth harder they’d turn into powder. “Just hit me with the whole damned thing!”

She orders Vodka in sixteen flavors. Orange, raspberry, chocolate, lime, pepper, mint...even lavender. Oh, she’s deliberately making me part with my last penny.

“I’m gonna have the same,” I say, smacking my lips as though there’s glue on them. She’s gonna drink them, I’ll have to pay for them, why shouldn’t I get some too.

“Tap water’s really better for your intestines,” she gives me a look outta the corners of her eyes. “Vodka erodes them.”

“I have no intestines. My shit goes out right from the stomach.”

The whatever menu starts with a whatever sample of five kinds of caviar, then a platter of Russian whatever kaka-kooska for two, a salmon, and skewered meat called something that sounds like shits-lick. For dessert we’re supposed to choose between something they call Vodka moose or suffer-lay. Oh yeah, I’m suffering and I’d better get laid.

She tastes her caviar and barely takes a bite of the other stuff.

That’s just like her. Ordering food to look at it, just because someone else is picking up the tab. Wasteful bitch. Well, I’m gonna enjoy what I’m paying for. I wolf down all my five courses and hers as well.

I’m gonna fuck her blind. I’ve paid for it. Yeah, we’ll “make incredible love” all right. She’d better suck my cock till her face turns black.

“Excuse me,” she says during coffee. “I’m going to the ladies’.”

I wait. She’s taking a long time, I hope those “eroding Vodkas” are giving her diarrhea. I wait some more. Hah, her diarrhea must be really bad.

Fifteen minutes go by, then twenty. Then it dawns on me. She’d left.

The Goddamn bitch. I’ll kill her.

Then the hideous coffin-sleeping creature arrives with the terrifying black folder.

I wanna yell at him, “Yoo love your Miss Claudeea so much why don’t yoo send her the fucking bill!”

The bloodless creep’s staring at me right down his snobbish nose. I open the folder, look, then look again. Eight-hundred-eighty-three bucks and change.

I’m gonna explode! I give the undead-who-should-be-dead piece of garbage a look of intense hatred as I throw nine hundred bucks on the table.

“I want my change!”