Curbside Your Enthusiasm

We're back working at the library, everyone!

"No, we're not," Todd said, arms crossed.

Hey, I didn't say that out loud. How'd...?

"I have powers. Spooky powers."

Huh! Anyway, Todd and I were pretending to work at the library as we set up quarantine zones and decontamination kits and cootie extermination camps. I took the Oxivir bottle from my holster.

"Just call me the KKK," I said.

"What?"

"You know, Kootie Kontamination Killer!"

"Consider a new name, hooker."

Sure, the library isn't open and never will be, but at least we'll be doing curbside service FTW. That's when patrons/customers will drive up to the building and we'll catapult them their stuff as they speed by, but only after we've sprayed down every page and all the curbs WTF. 

Clunk.

"What was that?" I said.

"I'll check it out," Todd said, swiftly putting on his hemp hazmat hood (HHH) and radiology gloves. "Wish me luck!"

"Don't forget to turn the big wheel thingy on the airlock, like they do in movies!"

Todd came back with a returned item from the bookdrop--our first of the day! He held up the hardcover book, a Dave Barry laff-a-thon, in zero-gravity tungsten grip-tongs that had been washed in sulphuric emulsifier.

"Excellent," I said. "Now I can actually do some work around here and stop bloggin'. I hope the world can forgive me."

"They will."

I sprayed Oxivir all over Dave Barry's face, a common enough fantasy, and then placed the book under the DPL electron microscope.

"Is it good?" Todd said through his breathing grill.

"Yes... Wait. Wait." 

I peered through the electronoscope. On the carbon-14 film sub-atomic bubble chamber I could see a virus bouncing around like a beach ball. The nerve! I hit the fucker with my fist. And then again. 

"Yeah! Get it!" Todd yelled.

"Smashy smashy," I said, as was the protocol. "DIE!! Okay... Got it! Now, put this back in the quarantine zone for questioning. We'll need to get some answers."

Todd rolled his eyes, which I couldn't see behind his multi-visors.

"You have a problem, private?"

"It's already dead, man. Come on."

"Excuse me? This organization has no room for renegade cowboys. You better get with the winning team, son. You hear me, hepcat?"

Todd shrugscowled.

"You know, just for that I'm going to tell you some stories to fill this post out. Firstly, that Mom has been putting a mask on Bingo, but Bingo keeps chewing through his mask and maybe it's only a matter of time before he dies fingers crossed. Meanwhile Pat thinks his dad has a GPS tracer on his truck and wants me to get him adopted in New Mexico because that way he'll be a real boy and not a wooden dummy. And during all the lockdown excitement I took up drinking, by popular demand, and woke up a hundred years later with a beard and a Hannibal-smile sure to charm the ladies..."

"Shay, lend a brother a dime? A beard comb?"

"I think your beard is..." Todd began.

"What?"

"Too much, dude. Too much. And is that a dead cricket?"

"This? No, it's an old pop-tart. Hehe." I took the morsel out from the luxuriant thicket of my beard and chewed it. "Yuck. I mean: yum."

Frightened, disgusted, turned on, Todd backed away from me. Just then I noticed something squirming across the floor.

"The virus!"

Todd swung his fists wildly. Then he fell backward, and my beard broke his fall.

"Whew! Thanks!"

I smiled. "I guess the beard is an American hero after all."

Todd nodded dreamily. As we leaned in for a kiss, the screen faded to black and the virus ran off to appear in the sequels.

NEXT WEEK: The Return of the Curse of the Virus's Ghost