When people ask me how I became an international fugitive and super-criminal, I tell it to them straight and blame it on the weather.

If it hadn't been for a typhoon in the South Pacific, all that seasoning produced by the Foon Toon fooki plant would have kept coming. If the fooki had kept coming, I would've been working much harder at the Maid of Honor Muffin Factory in Staten Island, where the fooki is used to make the muffins. If I hadn't been hanging around, not making muffins, I never would've called my brother Al to discuss a certain speculation I'd placed on last night's Yankee game. And if I hadn't called Al and left him a message, he never would've returned my call two hours later while I was in my kitchen frying up a fireball of garlic and zucchini.

I answered the phone and we talked until my garlic was badly burned. I hung up the phone and knew that my dinner was ruined—I hate burned garlic, it's less subtle than a stab of sodomy. I no longer felt like cooking and decided to go out to a diner.

If I hadn't gone to the diner, I never would've met a waitress named Keri Lynn. If I hadn't met Keri Lynn, I never would've learned about the Marzookis Machine.

It was late. The diner sat along the greasy local river, between a bombed-out bandanna factory and a boarded-up gas station. The place looked like a puffed-up tin trailer. It also would be closing soon, and there was no one there except for Keri Lynn and the cook. I knew her name was Keri Lynn because she had a name badge stuck to her blouse, just above a curvaceous ketchup stain.

Keri Lynn looked like trouble. Sure, she was sexy. She was poetically petite, with cue-ball eyes that burned like a couple of coals from the devil's favorite barbecue.

"Hey, stranger," she said to me as I sat at a booth near a window, "I never saw you in here before."

"That's because I never come here. But tonight I burned my garlic."

She leaned her lacquered body close to me. I felt her desert-bloom breath as she flipped back her hair, so gorgeous like platinum-frosted spaghetti, and whispered into my ear, "Would you like a chili dog? It's the special of the day."

I didn't want a chili dog.

"I'll have the broccoli with linguini," I said, "and a smoldering waitress on the side."

She smiled and said, "We don't have broccoli here."

Just then another guy walked into the diner. He had a head like a hammer, with a knuckle-shaped nose. He glanced around and then took a seat at the counter. Keri Lynn looked nervous. She dropped her pen and pad. And then she dropped her lithesome little body into my lap.

She said, "Let's get the hell out of here, sugar."

A voice in the back of my brain said, "Don't do it, stupid." A voice in the front of my brain agreed. Then we got into my Ford Mustang and headed down the highway.

As I drove, Keri Lynn admired herself in the rear view mirror. She adjusted her nuclear-lemon lipstick. She nibbled on her frosty, acrylic fingernails while the sledgehammer followed behind us. He was driving a Volvo, which I thought was strange.

I said, "So, where are we going? By the way, my name is Martin."

"Happy to meet you, Marty. Take me somewhere dark and secluded. Take me to the International House of Pancakes."

"I've been there, Keri Lynn. They have florescent lighting."

"There's a spot near the dumpster, in the back of the parking lot, that's just perfect."

I briefly recalled my high school days, when I'd worked at the local burger barn. There had been a picturesque dumpster in the parking lot that I'd often filled with trash.

I said, "Right—pancakes." By now I was starving.

We arrived at the restaurant. I navigated toward the far reaches of the parking lot, right next to the crud-colored dumpster. I didn't park in an actual space—I was well outside the painted lines. Keri Lynn leaned over and gave me a kiss. Her tongue sailed into my esophagus and left a lingering taste of cigarettes and domestic beer. She said, "That's for luck," then exited the vehicle.

Sledge Hammer's Volvo screeched to a stop behind my car. I saw him step out and start lumbering toward Keri Lynn, who was plundering through her purse while I flipped across the radio dial and found only banal, overworked musical cliches. I decided to get out of the car.

Keri pulled out what looked like a tube of toothpaste. Actually, it was a tube of Colgate toothpaste with baking soda added for extra whiteness. Sledge stopped and said, "Okay, honey, where's the cash?"

For the first time all night, I found myself paying attention.

Keri Lynn said, "Right here, cutie." She squeezed the tube with both of her thumbs. A lavender fist of light shot from the tube and zapped Johnny in the chest. Instantly, he vanished. On the ground where he'd been standing was a can of floor wax.

I said, "Hey, you must have amazing teeth."

She said, "The tube is just for show. Inside this tube is the Marzookis Machine."

"Oh—I was wondering where it was... Would you like some pancakes? I'm starving."

She gave me another kiss. I grabbed her bottom as we embraced and she wriggled in my hand like a sack full of snakes. We walked into the restaurant and I ordered a breakfast bonanza.

She told me that the Marzookis Machine was invented by her boyfriend, Lonny the Polecat. Lonny was an emotionally mangled genius who used to work at a Belmar deli before he got his Black Belt in Nu Hu wizardry from a local community college. He'd done some great stuff with turkey and coleslaw. He was currently number one on the FBI's Underground Chart, which is a virile version of the more mundane Most Wanted List. The Underground Chart isn't given out to the public. It was more for true crime-lovers and connoisseurs.

I slurped my coffee. I said, "So where is Lonny right now?"

"He's in Peru," she said to me with a sideways glance toward the restrooms.

I was no fool. I knew Peru was not in that direction.

"And he left his invention with you?"

"He's got a bunch of machines." She batted her banana-sized eyelashes. Then she said, "Wanna go back to my place?"

Her place turned out to be a spider web-sized apartment on the cusp of Carteret. It was right off the New Jersey Turnpike, close to a citadel-shaped oil refinery and a twenty-four-hour White Castle. As she exited the car, I fished through the glove compartment, where I just happened to have a tube of Colgate toothpaste I'd taken with me on a recent trip out West. I had slept in my car at campsites and saved some money. I had ogled the Grand Canyon. I had no interest in Peru.

I shoved the tube deep into my back pocket.

We walked into her apartment, and she tore off her clothes. Her blouse was in shreds. She was naked and I was overdressed. Then she hugged me, and her ninja-nipples stabbed into my chest like a pair of nails. She kissed me and pulled me into a cramped kitchen, where there was a table and a tower of dirty dishes in the sink. Romance was in the air.

She said, "Do me on the table."

I realized that the only reason I was here was to fulfill her fantasy concerning sex and the kitchen table. Being a die-hard believer in destiny, I carried out her request. The table resembled a stone wafer, but things went well. Then we moved to the bedroom, where Keri Lynn was raunchy like a heap of headcheese. She moaned and cursed in all the right places. Finally, she lit up a cigarette.

I said, "So, what does the Marzookis Machine do?"

She blew a blanket of smoke into the darkness. She said, "It turns you into something that you probably should have been."

I got up to use the bathroom. I fumbled my way back to the kitchen and found my pants, then pillaged through Keri Lynn's purse before diving back into her bed.

I said, "I should leave."

She said, "Wanna come with me to Hawaii?"

"Yeah," I said with a sideways glance. It was dark, though, and my glancing went unnoticed.

"Stick around."

"Okay."

The next morning I got up early and took a shower. Then I went into the living room and watched television. Some guy was talking about the war. I forget which war but it was a popular one. I heard Keri Lynn get up and start moving around.

The living room looked like it had been organized by a hand grenade. There were socks and pantyhose flung across the floor. There were shirts and blouses blasted across the furniture. None of it was ironed. There was a coffin-sized suitcase on the sofa.

Keri Lynn came into the room wearing a pair of tourniquet-tight jeans, a bib-sized belly shirt and no bra. She looked sleazy. She looked great. Her hair was still damp as she shoved a roll-on antiperspirant under her left armpit. She kissed me and said, "Let's get some breakfast."

I said, "All right—but don't we have to go back to the diner and get your car?"

"Nah... I think I'll just buy a new one." She lit up a cigarette.

"Someone must have left you a good tip."

She laughed and sauntered over to the suitcase. She flipped it open. It was full of cash. She said, "Five million dollars."

"Wow. You must have really scrambled someone's eggs."

She coughed a cloud of smoke into the air. She laughed and picked up her purse and removed the tube of toothpaste. Then she pointed it at me and said, "You're damn right I did. Look, it's been fun, sugar, but now that I think about it, I've got some things to do—and I think I'm gonna be doing them alone." She squeezed and out came a blob of tooth goop.

"I already brushed my teeth, Keri."

I was never too funny under pressure. I whipped out the Marzookis Machine. She sized up the situation and stared at me with her flying saucer eyes.

She sqeualed, "Oh, John, you wouldn't!"

"Honey, my name is Martin." I squeezed hard.

There was a fluoride-colored flash of light and Keri Lynn was wiped away. In her place was a commercially packaged frozen dinner, complete with a bar code. It was Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes. I picked it up and threw it in the fridge.

I bought a plane ticket for South America, and I don't make muffins anymore. Mostly, I hang around and monitor my investments. Every now and then a government agent comes looking for me and gets turned into something stupid.

There was one woman, though, who was turned into a bright red rose. I regret that one—she must have been someone special. A bright red rose really stands out in a world full of canned hash and SPAM.

THE END