Deadly Little Drama Queen
Chapter 2 of An Evening With God
Deadly Little Drama Queen
Hedrick and his daughter Irie were extremely close during her childhood, even when she was breaking his heart by pining for Mommy during their three Daddy-and-daughter weekends together per month. Hedrick and Mommy — Carolyn — had started out like gangbusters, but then, after almost five years, gradually ceased to be able to stand each other, and Carol had filed for divorce. Hedrick wanted to consult a marriage counsellor because not getting to see Irie every day seemed worse than having to interact with Carol. He found later that for some months Carol had been getting progressively chummier with a Belgian chocolatier whose son she was tutoring in French. Not three months after the divorce became official, she married the guy, and Hedrick was beside himself about the four-year-old Irie’s having another man playing the role of her daddy 24 days per month.
In her single-digit years, Irie often pined for Mommy at the most painful times, such as when Hedrick had turned down a lucrative commission and spent major bucks taking her to Hawaii. He never doubted that she loved and admired him, though, and was beside himself with delight when Carolyn pointed out, not entirely delightedly, that she’d seemed to inherit his acerbic sense of humor. But then Irie reached adolescence, and he wasn’t so sure anymore about how close they’d remained. Indeed, on one Friday night Hedrick would never forget, one on which Irie was pretty sure she was the only girl at her school who hadn’t been asked to the big dance that night, the lines of their relationship were redrawn. He could tell Irie was in agony just under the skin, but it didn’t make her telling him, “You know, Daddy, I don’t think we’re very close anymore,” less excruciating. It came out she resented his having had a new life partner, Natalie, for the past three years. It was just fine for Mommy to have Luc, it seemed, but not fine at all for him to have Nat.
At 14, Irie took to comfort eating, and put on a lot of weight at exactly the age a teenager most wants to be seen as attractive. There had been no happier moment in Hedrick’s life than when he’d taught her to play tennis, which she’d seemed to enjoy. But when he proposed that they head together for a local court for some casual hitting, the 14-year-old Irie reacted as though he’d said, “Why don’t we go to the beach, step on some jellyfish, and get food poisoning from a rotten hot dog?”
As an alternative, he suggested Irie go to the gym with him a couple of times a week. He went every day. He told her how much fun it was to ride the exercycle and read. “Don’t tell me you don’t like reading anymore!” Carolyn had read about 80 books per year, and at 10 and 11, Irie had seemed intent on reading 81.
“Uh, no,” she said at 14, in that incredulously contemptuous way teenagers had. Without Hedrick’s having noticed, reading had become the most. uncool thing anyone could suggest.
“Well,” Hedrick said, “you could listen to music, or what passes for music among people your age, while you work out.” There’d been a time when she’d have laughed at that, as he intended. Those times, though, were apparently long past.
“Listen, pretty girl,” he persisted, “I know you think you’re not getting asked out as much as other girls…”
The expression of contempt on her face stopped him in mid-sentence, which opened the door to her rolling her eyes and saying, “Uh, I don’t like ‘think’ it. I know it.”
Hedrick soldiered on. “You’re a beautiful girl, ‘Rie, and I’m pretty sure you’d get asked out so much your head would swim if you came to the gym with me and worked off a few pounds.”
And here he thought she’d given him hateful looks before. This one was all the more hideous for her being not just angry and defiant, but also ashamed as a result of his having stated the obvious for the first time. She hadn’t heard what he’d actually said. She’d heard, “You’re a disgusting fat sow, and will never be loved.”
In the week to come, three women colleagues at work would all be aghast that he’d said what he said. Did he not understand that body-shaming was the worst thing a father could do to a teenage daughter?
Worse, did they mean, than failing to encourage something almost guaranteed to improve the situation?”
For their 10th anniversary, Carolyn and Luc headed for Europe and a three-week Mediterranean cruise. Irie was undelighted about having to spend 22 straight days with Natalie and Hedrick, to whom she barely spoke the first week and a half. She let her sneers and glowers convey her feelings.
There’d been a time when she’d been a frequent visitor to his little home recording studio, where he composed and then recorded the advertising jingles that were his bread and butter. Indeed, at one point, at around eight and nine, Irie popped in so often that he had to print out a picture of an electronic sign in Electric Ladyland Studios in New York that said Recording Don’t Enter. Beginning at around 12, though, she had less and less interest in what Daddy was up to. But then, three days after Carolyn and Luc caught their flight to London, and nine days after Hedrick had offered his disastrous gym suggestion, Irie knocked on his door, from which he’d long since removed the Electric Ladyland sign. He was delighted, but only for as long as it. took to notice her expression of unalloyed loathing. “I thought you might like to know that I’ve figured out why I’m ugly, and it’s got nothing to do with going to the gym not going.”
Hedrick began to apologize again for what he’d said, but Irie wasn’t having it. “It’s not Mom’s fault,” she said. “You know what the boys used to say before Luc got me my car Mom picked me up from school sometimes? ‘Your mom’s hot. How come you’re not?’ What I’ve figured it out. It’s the genes I inherited from you. Why couldn’t I look like Mom?” Saying which, she exploded in tears, and stormed out of the room.
But just before the second Saturday night of Mom’s and Luc’s absence, she arrived home flushed with pleasure and actually knocked on Hedrick’s studio door. She’d been asked out. A boy in her Spanish class had asked if she wanted to go see the new Marvel superhero movie. She’d been asked out! She threw her arms around Hedrick in ecstasy, and he nearly burst into tears.
She needed money. She wanted to get her nails done, and her hair. She wanted to buy something really cool to wear. Hedrick gave her $100 and said, “Happy birthday in advance, pretty girl.” She apparently hadn’t dared hope for that much, and burst into tears of her own. She hugged Hedrick with all her might. Once again, he managed not to cry. He hadn’t felt so close to her in millennia.
From mid-afternoon on Saturday, she was so nervous Hedrick wondered how she managed to convey her wishes to the hairstylist. He was nervous right along with her. He imagined shaking hands with Rory, her classmate, and then inviting him to have a seat while Irie finished getting ready (as though she hadn’t been ready since six in the evening). Would he, for the first time, do the traditional dad thing? Would he ask Rory about school, and his plans for the future, and urge him to drive carefully, and make clear that Irie had to be home by 11:30? Would Rory think him a ridiculous old fart? Was the Marvel superhero all a ruse? Would he instead drive Irie to a secluded spot up in the hills? Would this be Irie’s first kiss? Hedrick couldn’t imagine otherwise. He was as nervous as Irie was. Natalie was the only member of the household able to eat.
Hedrick needn’t have been worried. Rory didn’t show up. He was due at 7:30, and at 7:55 there was still no sign of him. Hedrick imagined what Irie was going through upstairs. Natalie could apparently imagine it too, and went up to offer Irie some moral support. “Get the fuck away from me!” Irie shrieked, blood-curdlingly. Tips for teens: When you’re suffering humiliation almost beyond your ability to endure, take it out on someone who loves you.
Natalie came downstairs shaking her head, and pale.
At seven minutes after eight, Hedrick went up and found his daughter chewing on one of the fingernails she’d had beautified for the occasion that afternoon. “Does he have your cell phone number?” he asked with the utmost gentleness.
Irie jumped off the edge of the bed, giving Hedrick a look that made the one she’d given him the day he’d urged her to come to the gym seem benevolent in comparison. “No, Daddy,” she roared. “Who would have ever thought of that?
“Of course, he has my fucking number! Of course he does!”
Should he try to take her in his arms? No, probably not. He remained in the doorway, and nodded gravely. “Things happen,” he said. “There might have been some sort of emergency. I’m sure if he’s got your number he’ll call, ‘Rie.”
“Maybe I should call him,” she said, suddenly meek. “Just to ask if everything’s all right?”
“I wouldn’t,” Hedrick said quietly.
Her knowing Hedrick was right made her detonate all the louder this time, this time wordlessly, with a scream of anguish Hedrick worried might inspire a neighbor to call the police. He was going to say, “I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” but the words wouldn’t pass his lips. He tried with his expression to tell Irie that he loved her, and that he would do anything to lessen her pain. “Would you mind getting out of my room?” she demanded sarcastically. “Do you think maybe — just maybe! — I might want to be alone at a time like this?”
Hedrick went back downstairs. He heard her sobbing right above him, and wanted to get his hands around young Rory’s neck. He wanted the boy’s eyes to bulge in terror and for his face to turn a hideous shade of red. He wanted to stomp the boy’s face into unrecognizability.
Upstairs, Irie’s phone didn’t ring. Hedrick wanted to tell her to turn it off, for fear that the boy might finally call, and that she’d make things worse for herself by screaming at him.
Having been jettisoned by his own first girlfriend, at 17, Hedrick knew what the night would be like. Irie would sob herself dry and just lie there numb for a while until the pain became unendurable again, whereupon she’d scream and resume sobbing. No one was going to get much sleep.
Hedrick went over to his friend Jack Traynor’s the following afternoon to watch football, eat nachos, and drink Dos Equis. Junior Blumenthal’s Chiefs were getting crushed by the Seahawks, and Junior was having a horrible game, which gave both of the old friends great pleasure, as they shared the view that Junior was one of American professional sports’ pre-eminent jerkoffs.
At halftime, Hedrick told Jack what had happened the night before. Jack taught biology at San Rodrigo High, but didn’t have a Rory in any of his classes. “If I were you, buddy,” he told Hedrick, “I’d think of a way to inflict a little pain in the boy’s life. Not that you heard me say that, of course.”
“How would I go about doing that?”
“Well, you’re not hearing this from me, but there’s what I think of as the Goon Squad, led by this kid Rex Timmons. You could describe them as the school sadists. They’re probably responsible for 80 percent of the bullying at San Rod.”
Hedrick couldn’t be sure for a minute if Jack was kidding. It turned out that he was, but he liked the idea of confronting Rory, and asked if Jack could ascertain the boy’s identity.
“”I’ll get you his last name,” Jack said, “but that’s all I’ll do. And of course you have to promise not to leave him brain-dead.”
Back at home, Irie would make no sound for an hour or two, and then bawl or rage for 20 minutes, and then go silent again. She left her bedroom only to use the bathroom, acknowledging neither Hedrick nor Natalie if they passed in the hall. At one point, Hedrick dared ask Irie if she’d received a text message or email from Rory. She looked at him as though she’d deduced he’d bribed the boy to stand her up and snarled, “I’d appreciate it if we could stop talking about it,” and then stormed into her bedroom, slammed the door behind her, and resumed sobbing.
Hedrick thought about phoning Rory and asking if the boy had any idea how much pain he’d caused. He tried to figure out a way to get Rory to meet with him face to face, but couldn’t, and resigned himself to a phone call. Jack reluctantly determined and sent Hedrick the boy’s number.
To supplement the not-very-much he earned composing advertising jingles, mostly for local clients with small budgets, Hedrick worked occasionally at one of San Rodrigo’s two musical instrument stores. On Saturday mornings, Chezz, a young man of no social grace, impeachable personal hygiene, and very bad skin would come in, ask to try out a guitar he had no real intention (or maybe ability) to buy, and shred — that is, demonstrate remarkable facility, as in playing 120 miles per hour — until his fingers bled. Whether he could actually play any chords was questionable, as all he ever did was play 16th- and 32nd-note triplets up at the top of the neck. Other guitarists his age would gape at him in awe. Those over18 would gape for 16 bars or so and then roll their eyes.
The kid was a pipsqueak, but an insolent pipsqueak. Once the place’s owner, in a bad mood, had asked Hedrick to relieve the boy of the guitar he happened to be trying out that morning. Hedrick had done so with the utmost gentleness, but the kid — Toby — had whined and sneered vengefully. “Oh, this so sucks, dude,” he’d pointed out to Hedrick as the 1959 Stratocaster whose fretboard he’d left smoldering went back up on the guitar wall. “What are you, dude, a Nazi or something?”
Hedrick expected Rory to be Toby Redux, but the young man who answered Hedrick’s phone call could hardly have sounded less like Toby. “How can I help you?” the voice of a young man with a long career in sales ahead of him asked eagerly, rather than saying hello. It was a bright orange, his voice, absolutely dripping self-confidence and optimism.
“Am I speaking to Rory?”
“You sure are! What can I do for you?”
“You don’t know me, Rory. My name’s Jamie Hedrick, the father of Irie Hedrick, who you had a date with this past Saturday evening?”
“Oh, yeah,” Toby said, no less perkily. “I forgot all about it. One of my homies invited me over to try out his new PlayStation with him. It was after 11 before I remembered the date.”
“And I don’t suppose you could have called her the next day to apologize. I suppose that would have been too much to ask?”
“Well, I am sorry, now that I think of that. You can tell her that for me, OK, Jim? So are we cool now?”
Hedrick fought with himself. Should he say that he wasn’t Jim, but Mr. Hedrick? That he thought little white kids having ‘homies’, rather than friends or even buddies, was the height of silliness, and that they were nowhere even close to cool yet.
“You still there, dude?” Rory wondered eagerly.
Caution, meet wind .“Do you have any idea how much pain you caused my little girl, you unspeakable little twerp? Do you know how excited she was? How she got her hair and nails done to look her best for. you? How she spent most of the night crying?”
“I said I was sorry, dude,” Rory said, in a tone now very similar to that in which Toby Shredder protested being stripped of a guitar actual adult customer with money in their wallets wanted to play, and broke the connection.
There seemed nothing more Hedrick could do.
Irie phoned him from school — specifically, the student parking lot — the next day. She sounded drugged, or was she so furious as to be beyond fury? “I’m just calling,” she said, “to thank you for ruining my life, Daddy,” She made “Daddy” sound like the worst thing she could think of to call someone.
He waited. She said no more. “I’m going to have to ask you to explain, pretty girl,” he said.
“Your little phone call to Rory. He told everybody. About my getting my nails done, and my hair. About my spending the whole night crying because he forgot our date. That was really smart, Daddy. Now I can never go back to school.”
“What do you mean you can never…” he began.
“Everybody was laughing at me!” she screamed, making him jump out of his chair. “Even people I’ve never spoken to are coming up and saying ‘Can I see your nails?’ I can never set foot in San Rodrigo High School again. Don’t you understand that? Not ever! And it’s because of you!”
She broke the connection. Hedrick felt as though someone had plunged a machete into his trachea. He was paralysed.
She called right back, speaking again in her scary dead voice. “You’ve always told me how no one could love me more than you do. Well, tell me something. Do you think Luc would have done this to me? Do you?”
Machete.
He began to implore her to come home so that they could speak face-to-face, but she was already gone again.
She didn’t come home, and didn’t come home, and didn’t come home. When Hedrick tried to phone her, she didn’t answer, and didn’t answer, and didn’t answer. It was 7:30, and then 7:50, and then 8:15. Hedrick realized this was what it must have been like for her, waiting for her date to turn up, and becoming ever more excruciatingly sure he wouldn’t.
At 8:35, someone knocked on the front door. Hedrick and Natalie looked at each with dread. If it had been Irie, coming home, she wouldn’t be knocking on the front door.
Neither wanted to respond to the knock. Their visitor knocked again, deferentially, apologetically, without impatience. Their dread increased. Hedrick took a deep breath and got up. He wanted to run upstairs and look himself in his studio, but went to the door, where his fears were confirmed. Two cops, one of each gender, each looking grave. “Mr. Hedrick?” the female one asked. He wanted to slam the door. If he didn’t hear what they’d come to tell him, it wouldn’t have happened.
“Guilty as charged,” he said. It was the sort of thing Irie might have laughed at. Flippancy in the least appropriate context.
“We’re very sorry to have to inform you that your daughter was involved in…”
Hedrick tried to close the door, but the woman officer had her foot in it. The expression on her face said she was sorry to have to keep him from not hearing what she and her partner had come to convey.
“…a head-on collision with an oncoming car in the opposite lane oft the frontage road that runs parallel to the 518 just north of El Bosquito,” the male cop said. “We. think she was probably killed instantly.”
“And you’re sorry for my loss,” Hedrick, frantically clinging to the possibility that he could wise-guy himself through this horror, thought he’d save them the trouble of mumbling. Sarcasm to keep the tidal wave of grief from breaking right above his his head.
The male cop, presumably unaccustomed to such churlishness, winced. “We think the woman driving the other car, the westbound one, was also killed instantly,” the female cop said. “Her little girl is in the hospital, in an induced coma.”
While Hedrick died a thousand times in two seconds, the male cop said, “It appears as though your daughter was attempting suicide.”
Hedrick crumpled gurgling to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been snipped. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t breathe — and didn’t want to breathe. The female cop’s expression married compassion to disgust. “We are sorry for your loss,” she said, finally removing her foot from the door.
Hedrick wanted to scream. Telling her at the top of his lungs that dutifully mouthing a hollow platitude didn’t make anyone feel better — neither her, nor the person it was intended to console — would buy him a few seconds before he had to deal with what he’d found out. But he couldn’t speak. His gurgling sounded like someone whose throat had just been cut.
Natalie came over, nodded apologetically at the cops. She closed the door behind them and held Hedrick while he convulsed with grief.
Another night almost without sleep, and then a day of trying in vain to lose consciousness.
And then nine days of one step forward (toward being used to the idea, and to the pain), and two steps back (finding the idea of Irie’s suicide ever more painful). And then an email, followed by a phone call, followed by a visit by Geoff Cullen, who said he’d suffered a loss comparable to Hedrick’s, though he hoped Hedrick would respect his not wanting to talk about it. He’d survived his own grief by starting a foundation to keep teenagers from self-destruction. The thought of sparing another parent what he was going through had made it possible for him to go on living, and.he thought the same might work for Jack.
Jack allowed him to come over, to be the first civilian other than Natalie Hedrick had interacted with since The Tragedy. He was very bland, soft-spoken and diffident, given to looking everywhere but into Jack’s eyes when he spoke, not a gym-goer — a little rotund — round glasses, receding blond hair, greying, maybe five years Jack’s senior. Colourless eyes. He exuded trustworthiness.
Jack liked Geoff’s idea of setting up a foundation in Irie’s name, but knew nothing of how to go about it, and, probably even more important, didn’t have money for such a project. Leave everything to me,” Cullen said. “I learned all this stuff the hard way, by doing it.”
“What’s in it for you?” Hedrick asked.
“I think most people never feel better than when they’re helping others. It’s an evolutionary thing. That feeling enabled the species survive. Helping you in your moment of great need makes me feel better. In that sense, I won’t be doing any of this for you. I’ll be doing it for me. And I’ll want five percent of the money donated.”
The first step was to get the foundation funded. Geoff would accomplish that through online crowdfunding. There were multiple websites on which one with noble intentions could appeal for money. They all required prospective beneficiaries of public altruism to make a video. Not a problem. Geoff had a videographer he worked with. Geoff would write a script. Geoff’s boyfriend had an app that turned his tablet into a teleprompter like those politicians and TV news anchors read from. Hedrick could leave everything to Geoff and concentrate on restoring himself emotionally. “Think of it,” Geoff urged him, “the Irie Hedrick Foundation, saving teenaged lives since 2022.” David said he’d think it over, thought it over, agreed to the idea, and two afternoons later opened the door to Geoff, Geoff’s boyfriend, and Geoff’s video and sound guy.
As everyone got set up, Hedrick read the script Geoff had written for him. It spoke of how much Hedrick had loved Irie, and of how her suicide had deprived the world of a wonderful, kind, generous, intelligent, creative, and hilarious person Hedrick would miss every moment that he had left on earth. Geoff was a good writer, and the script made Hedrick explode into tears, which he went into the downstairs bathroom to conceal from the strangers in his living room.
When he returned, Geoff told him that if he broke down while they were shooting, he should just keep going as best he could. Hedrick did indeed lose it for a moment, but recovered sufficiently to drag himself through the last word of the script. Geoff said, “I can’t imagine how anyone with a heart won’t want to donate after watching that.” Hedrick was simultaneously pleased and embarrassed.
Geoff showed Hedrick, who prided himself on being a technophobic Luddite, how to monitor the three crowdfunding campaigns, but Hedrick was intimidated by the prospect of failing to get on line on Natalie’s tablet, and had to answer no when Geoff phoned him the week after the video shoot to ask if he were aware of how well the campaigns were doing. On one website, $11,420 had been donated, on another $13,620, and on the third $12,960. Geoff was confident they’d all exceed the $20K goal he’d set for each in the next week.
Hedrick was gobsmacked, amazed by people’s generosity. But then, among the donor comments arrayed on the site that solicited them, there was this: “Your selfish little bitch daughter didn’t just kill herself. She also killed a young mother she’d never met and young mother’s 8-month old daughter. If I knew where her grave was at, I’d make a special trip to shit on it.” It turned out that several might-have-been donors had expressed nearly identical sentiments. Behold the legacy that Hedrick had fashioned for his daughter. Selfish little bitch. Murdering little cunt. Deadly little drama queen.
He wondered if he would use a portion of the donated money to hurt Rory, to inflict injuries that would allow him no more pain-free days for the rest of his life. Not wanting to implicate anyone he knew, he would have to find his own payback crew. Maybe a couple of the poor Latino devils who stood in front of Home Depot every weekday would take the job if he made it worth their while.
Two months to the day after Irie’s death (and the young mother’s, and the little girl’s) Hedrick had heard nothing from Geoff for weeks, and tried to get on line to see how much money had been donated. None of the three pages would open, not even when Natalie, who was a whiz on computers, affirmed that he was doing everything right. When Hedrick phoned Geoff, he heard a message saying that Geoff’s message box was full.
Natalie left him. Her note said that she’d done everything in her power to try to ease his pain, but that she’d come to feel more and more as though ceasing to be able to breathe herself. Hedrick spent nearly six weeks getting out of the bed he never bothered making to pee or have a pizza delivered. Occasionally he felt he wasn’t suffering as much as he ought to, and went into Irie’s bedroom so the sight of her various possessions could trigger cathartic tears. He didn’t answer the phone, and responded to the doorbell only when he’d ordered groceries. He’d heat up his delivered pizza, eat half of it, and just barely manage to hobble back to bed. There were more half-eaten pizzas scattered around his house than complete ones in the freezer case at any supermarket in San Rodrigo.
One day almost seven weeks after Natalie had fled, he ordered actual groceries on line and then, 25 minutes later, opened his front door not to an emissary of the supermarket from which he’d ordered, but the grim little woman cop who’d advised him of The Tragedy. “Not interested,” Hedrick said, not recognizing her at first.
“And therein the problem, sir,” the cop said, refusing to remove her foot. “You’ve got to get interested again. I’ve given you the greatest gift of all, and you’re pissing on it.”
Hedrick still didn’t recognize her. “If you won’t get your foot out of the door,” he said, “maybe you’ll tell me who you are?”
“Yes!” the cop, very much more vivacious than during her first visit, exulted. “Snideness. A sign of life. That’s what we’re talking about!
“I’m known by many names. What you call me isn’t important. Whatever you might want to say about me — and who’s ever been badmouthed as much as I have? — you can’t say I’m precious, or a drama queen. Are you going to invite me in, Heddy, or what?”
Heddy had been Hedrick’s nickname on a Saturday softball team he and Natalie had belonged to for a couple of seasons. “How do you know my name, let alone my nickname?” he demanded.
“I’m all-knowing, champ,” the cop said. “And yes, I will come in. Thanks for asking.”
She surveyed with displeasure the disaster that his living room had become, and Hedrick recognized her, but didn’t give her the satisfaction of saying so. “Jiminy Christmas, guy,” she marveled. “You could give slob lessons to college freshmen. Where am I even supposed to sit?” Every horizontal surface in the room was covered by ancient pizza, the boxes the pizzas had been delivered in, or underwear that had become too pungent even for Hedrick.
“Listen,” the cop said, “I’m sorry about your kid. I dropped the ball with her. I do that sometimes. I’m the first to admit it. I lose track of things. Being all-knowing and all-powerful doesn’t mean I can stay on top of absolutely everything all the time. What idiot originally posited that I could?”
“Can I offer you anything?” Hedrick said, sarcastically, unmistakably regaining himself. “Some lemonade or something? Some iced tea?”
The 10-year-old Irie would have snickered appreciatively at his offer of lemonade, and the realization made Hedrick smile, if only faintly, for the first time in…what, decades?
The cop was beaming. “Yes!” she said. “I mean, no to the lemonade, but yes to your showing signs of improvement. Yes!”
Stepping over pizza boxes and empty Diet Coke cans, she headed back for the door, pausing when she reached it. “That little shit Rory who didn’t show up for what would have been your kid’s first date? He’s going to have chronic bad breath that medical science can do nothing about. No one will want to be in the same building with him, let alone the same room. He’ll never go on another date, not, of course, that he went on the one with Irie.
“Oh, and Geoff, the baby-faced con artist who ripped you off? He’ll be busted for fraud, and sent to prison, where he’ll have a sexually insatiable cellmate called Bubba.”
What was that sound, so long unheard in the house? Its owner snickering, its owner being Jamie Hedrick, who said, “Wow, that’s lame with a capital L. A cellmate-called-Bubba joke? Like everybody on earth doesn’t think it’s really wry to speculate about some convicted asshole having a cellmate called Bubba?”
“That’s why I said it, champ,” the cop said, winking as she left the house. “Welcome back, Heddy.”