Helping Hand

The name's Monroe, Eugene Monroe.

It always sounds so cool when James Bond says it. The hostess at Denny's wasn't impressed. Maybe it was that I was drunk. Maybe it was because I was soaking wet from the rain. Maybe it was the severed hand handcuffed to my left wrist. I walked out before she called the cops, but my business there was complete - I pulled a "poop and run."

I had to get home before my pimp-friend Ronnie got there with some fancy, out-of-town hookers for me for the weekend. Ronnie had this sweet scam where he'd find college girls, in town on spring-break, who had lost all their money. He'd offer to help them out, and the next thing you know, the Iowa farmer's daughter is a Las Vegas whore. This weekend, Ronnie was letting me break a couple in.

I was creeping down the dark alleys as fast as I could, but I was not moving fast enough to get there in time. I saw a bus pull up to a stop a half a block away and ran towards it, yelling, but the Indian bastard drove off without me. I tried to catch the back bumper and ride it unnoticed, but my heroic dive left me with a nasty scrape on my knee.

I limped on, wondering if either of Ronnie's girls would be a red-head. I banged a red-head in high school once. I had to shoot her and her principal to keep them from calling the cops. What was her name? Molly? Maggie? Marry? Mary doesn't have two r's, what was I thinking?

Just then, a cab drove by me, albeit at high speed. I jumped up and down and waved my arms to try and catch him. He pulled over about a hundred yards from me. I ran as fast as my gimpy leg would allow. Twenty feet from the cab, an old Chinese lady ran out of a building and jumped into my cab. I tried to stop her and she slammed my had in the car door. Good thing I have three of them, I thought. It would have been funnier if not for the pain. Still, it was nothing compared to the pain Wayne Newton was feeling after I cut off his hand. I felt bad, but I had to get out of there. Those hookers weren't gonna a... Mercy! That was her name, Mercy!

That old Chinese lady thought I was robbing her, but I was just tossing her to the sidewalk and stealing her cab, and purse. The cab driver got me there just in time, so I split the old lady's purse with him. Then I made Ronnie and those hookers give me a nice hot bath.