Like We Care by Tom Matthews Page A

them but pleased for them because they would never run out of victims of their assholery. They’d see each other again when the crew passed through Manhattan, share a laugh at the Christmas party over the trouble they caused. Much of this, Annie told herself, would seem a lot less despicable with the passage of time.
    The crew was gathered around a small monitor, watching the playback of the day’s fun, and Casey was up now, eager to critique his work. Annie grimaced at the prospect of reliving this, but she could tell by the tone of Hutch’s voice that this material would be designated for air. It was her job—at least for now—to assess its potential.
    On the screen, Casey and Mr. Jubel stood at the ass-end of a cow, the other farm folk trying to squeeze into the frame. They were still in what Annie had come to think of as “the nice place,” that convivial, doomed period in which Casey was on his best behavior, all the better to trick the hayseeds into not anticipating the knife to the gut.
    They had no cable, you see? They couldn’t have known.
    “Huh. . .” Casey said, wide-eyed and eager to learn as he considered the cow’s anus. It was his gift, really, to turn his dimwittedness into a charming, child-like innocence. With his scrawny, scarecrow frame and his knotty mess of hair, the locals invariably took a liking to him, intent on having a little harmless fun with this odd-looking waif from the big city.
    “That’s right,” Mr. Jubel said, never thinking he’d find a televised forum on which to share his expertise on bovine bowel obstructions. “Sometimes, the bowel itself gets twisted. Now that can be a mess.”
    Mr. Jubel shared a sly wink with his farmer friends as the fellah from the tee-vee blanched.
    A long rubber glove and a big sloppy can of lubricant were suddenly in the frame. Mr. Jubel prepared to suit up.
    “Hey, you know what?”
    (It always began with “Hey, you know what?” Annie wished she could make it stop.)
    “How about if I do it?” Casey offered, just as eager and well-intentioned as you please. Mr. Jubel actually seemed to consider this for about a fifth of a second, until he got that first vague whiff of trouble.
    “Well, now, I ’ppreciate your interest, but I don’t think—”
    “Look! My hand’s smaller than yours. I’m just thinking of the cow’s comfort.”
    The farmer’s mind began to race. Things were getting confused, all the more so with that camera trained on him.
    “The boy really does seem sincere,” he thought to himself, “but I wonder if maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. Guess it’d be rude to back out now.”
    “And I’ve seen this in gay porno,” Casey went on. “You work the hand in, a finger at a time, right?”
    Oh God, oh God, oh God. When air was wrenched from a scene this violently, oxygen masks should fall from the ceiling. Or cyanide pills.
    Annie felt that familiar queasiness as the farm folk on the screen stood dumbstruck, all of them hazily convinced that they couldn’t possibly have heard what they just heard. They blinked reflexively, and smiled hopefully.
    Into this stunned void, there was always plenty of time to tee up the kill shot. Casey never failed to play it perfectly.
    “I mean, you get to do it all the time. Right, Mrs. Jubel?”
    Annie had to turn away. Casey and the crew marveled at this car wreck of their own making as she listened to working men, just trying to eke out a living, having given up an afternoon to indulge this pretty gal and her friends from New York City, set to beating the snot out of her star.
    There was lots of swearing, she was trained to note. Hutch would approve. Bleeped-out profanity, together with digitally-scrambled faces, genitals, and breasts, meant that R 2 Rev was delivering on its promise to the viewer.
    Pushing the envelope. Burying the needle. Coloring outside the lines.
    Balls-out extreme.
    There had to be a place in there for Annie somewhere.

Recalling the Yahtzee