Manzana

"Manzana"

a Stories by Baker exclusive

Gary Baker, September 23, 2013

Carnival lights flashed, kids shooting clowns with water toys squealed, petting zoo goats bleated into the air; and all as the smooth, suave, lady-man spy, Carlos Manzana, flickered passed in his Armani black suit.

He vaulted over a bench with a couple slapping tongue, turning even as he landed down to shoot her a wink, then back to running; bad guys were on his heels. Balloons burst as fragments of pistol-whipped bullets broke through them, glass jars with the little orange fish that die two days after you win them shattered in a quick barrage as Agent Manzana swept around the booth corner. Ladies screamed, hands flying to their hair in utter panic, their shrill cries echoing through Manzana who wanted nothing less than to hold them close and let them swoon their fears away.

Most would anyway, Manzana knew, but lets get this straight: most men would too, for this beast of beauty's rock hard bod.


But he ran on, knowing it was his only way to lose his tail, a band of criminals from overseas plotting revenge on the ice cream vendor whose song had broken decade-long parliamentary laws about not playing "The Wheels on the Bus" more than three times in a row. Manzana grit his teeth and rolled behind a hot dog stand just as more bullets sought his heart, like all those lovely ladies he passed in the process.

The hot dog vendor, a short latino man, fell to the ground spewing deep crimson secrets through holes in his trachea and rib cage. Manzana locked eyes with the poor man as he died, promising to get his revenge by returning the sound chip to the ice cream vendor back in the Bronx; after all, how else would those kids know there was ice cream coming if the truck couldn't play the same old song over and over until their ears bled?

Just then Manzana looked left and came eye to eye with a dashing blonde with long curly waves and a striking pearl necklace hanging over a lovely pair of birds. On her blouse; two of them, parakeets on a tree branch, you perv. So Manzana shot his eyes right, spotting his reflection in the mirror-like panel of the hot dog cart. He checked his teeth, sparkling like diamond, good. He checked his hair, greased and spiked like a rich-ass millionaire spy, which he was, so that was damn fine too. He checked his suit, still crisp and sharp as any ZZTop album, smooth.

"Um," he heard the lady say and turned to give her heart palpitations with just a glance, "hi. My name's Jill."

Manzana heard the footsteps of the bad guys honing in, still running for him like the monkeys they were. Instantly he grabbed her close, fondling her fanny, knowing she'd be a fan; which she was. He moved passed her with a wink and she sighed like a girl, calling her love as he made his way back into the crowd. The ferris wheel was just ahead, at the long end of the pier. If he could make it there, Manzana could leap from the banisters into the ocean below, then swim to the hidden submarine waiting for him not far off.

He barely avoided another hailing of metallic love notes by swiping behind a hoppin' ticket booth for the theater, showing that movie with Stallone and Cage; you know, the one where they argue an' shit. Good movie.

But while standing there looking as fine as ever, like some James Bond look-alike but without the martini, that was when he felt it: a twinge where there shouldn't have been, an icy coolness where none had been before. He looked down to see if he were bleeding, but found no holes. Once again no bullet could hit him; he was just too smooth to bleed.

Yet the subsequent rumble made it clear, so he stepped out into the foray of chaos with both hands up in a "T" shape.

"Time o-" shots fired and burst the lights next to him in an explosion of glass. "Damnit I said hold i--" more bullets found their home in the carnival-red wood paneling beside him, sending him back inside to find a way out.

He swam through hordes of movie-goers, trying to follow his hands as they moved between popcorn-munching human whales, thinking he should tell them about Jenny Craig. He had finally gotten through one channel of bodies and sprinted the to wall of the next when the bad guys showed up again and fired into the masses.

Boy, that cleared them out. Suddenly Manzana appeared like Moses, except he was parting the seas of people instead.

After ducking around yet another corner, Carlos Manzana saw it: a blue door with a little white placard at about one third of the way down from the top. He bolted towards it as if his life depended on it, then broke through and smashed the backside into an old man's face. Blood soaked the poor geezer's shirt, but Manzana didn't have the time to help. He put his hand on a stall door and swept in and had the door shut and locked even as he dropped his drawers and sat down.

Then there was silence.

Finally Manzana sighed, knowing he was in the room alone, and let loose his own hailfire barrage. That rumble in his gut became a horrid monster of death crawling out from his posterior, clinging to the nose in a thickness that seemed it could melt the plastic of the walls.

For several long moments there was serene calm, broken only by the sounds of an alien birthing a creature of putty from Manzana's ass; next time he'd avoid that empanada place before going on a mission. Then suddenly the bathroom door burst open and the footsteps of expensive black leather loafers echoed across the tile.

"God, man," one accented voice exclaimed, "did that old man shit his drawers when he died?"

"Doesn't matter," came another voice, one more demanding and buff, almost Swedish or Russian. "The apple is in here somewhere. Find him." Sorry, did I say 'apple'? I meant 'ass hole', but the thug's accent made it sound like the gay-ass fruit.

As if on cue Manzana's clenched cheeks parted and the dam broke into a burst of released pressure and waste. His door slammed inward, then, and pistols aimed at him from ten black and white suits.

And Manzana went white-hot with rage.

"You think this is funny?!" He screamed. "You think you can just ignore the rules?! Last I checked, every last one of you were there at the International Spy and Terrorist Convention, where official rules were laid down. Chief among them, the rule about not killing a man sitting on the pot!" The thug-like agents backed down, sheepishly. "Repeat after me, damnit: no one..."

"No one," they echoed.

"...be they Yakuza, CIA, terrorist or otherwise..."

"...be they Yakuza, CIA, terrorist or otherwise..."

"...may shoot or in any way harm..."

"...may shoot or in any way harm..."

"...no matter how dire the consequences..."

"...no matter how dire the consequences..."

"...any man, woman, or other..."

"...any man, woman, or other..."

"...while on the sanctity of the toilet, lest they soil their rich-ass suit post-mortem."

"...while on the sanctity of the toilet, lest they soil their rich-ass suit post-mortem."

The restroom echoed in silence again, as Manzana loosed another torrent of biological-grade weapons of mass disturbance.

Manzana felt the eyes behind all those wealthy dark shades staring at anything but him, so he reached out a hand and slammed the door shut so he could clean himself in peace. When he was done, he stepped out into the crowd of agents with guns ranging from Uzi's to AK-47's to the common Glock.

One of them moved his finger to the trigger, then, and was punched furiously by the man next to him. "Notchet!" The man whispered. "He still jas to washis ands and be given tirty seconds to flee again."

Agent Carlos Manzana quietly stepped out of the bathroom and was greeted by the vivacious blonde from beside the hot dog cart, her blouse seeming tighter somehow and the birds more alert. "Oh, Manzana!" She cried, throwing her arms around him. "When will I ever see you again?"

Manzana smiled and flashed those pearly whites that could make a tank swoon, holding one arm around her waist with his hand cupped just above that spot on her skirt where her derrière perked outward. "Dont worry, babe," he pulled a switch from his blazer pocket and flicked the red button. Suddenly the restroom burst into flames with a concussive blast wave. Everything not disintegrated in the room then fell through the pier and into the waves below, solving the crisis of the three repetition rule for cheesy ice cream songs. As the crowds turned to chaos and paramedics and law enforcement arrived, Agent Carlos Manzana dropped his hand a bit lower and flexed his fingers with a smooth smile. "...we got all the time in the world."