Nap Lapkin and the Confusing Story
If you’re familiar with the reaction that teenage girls had to seeing the Beatles in concert in 1964, I bet you remember it in black & white, then you have an idea of how both men and women greeted the appearance of legendary super-spy Nap Lapkin as he spoke to a new class of recruits at Camp Swampy (a covert CIA training facility in Williamsburg, Virginia). Except instead of screaming and crying, they sat completely motionless, in color in their chairs as he entered the conference room to address them.
In their heads they were screaming and crying and, just to give you an accurate idea of how they were feeling, shaking. Shaking a whole lot.
To one young recruit, what Nap said wasn’t as important as how he said it. Let me back up a moment here to mention something that I didn’t mention when Nap entered the room because in all honesty, I couldn’t see how it was in the least bit important, but leave it to a young recruit to obsess on it and make me look like a writer who doesn’t convey relevant details.
I’m not fucking Dan Brown. I think we’ve established that. I didn’t tell you what Nap was wearing and I didn’t mention if the fixed tables in the conference room were laminate or wood. The list of things I didn’t tell you about could choke a horse and that explains why clerks at the bookstore tell you to lift with your knees when you go to pick up a Dan Brown novel.
Nap entered carrying a cup of coffee. As he began to talk, he occasionally sipped it. A number of times, he used the hand that held the coffee to point at somebody or make a point. And yes, I know Dan Brown would never use the word point twice in the same sentence.
After Nap was done speaking, he exited the building and began the short walk to the parking lot. He didn’t get far before the young recruit who made me look so bad earlier in the story chased him down and tapped him on the shoulder.
(Honestly, a part of me wants to make that young recruit trip and snap his neck for embarrassing me in front of my readership)
“Mr. Napkin... do you have a minute to talk?”
Nap turned and looked at him. Inside the new recruit’s head, he once again began to scream and cradle his face in his hands as tears ran down his face.
“Sure,” replied Nap, “What can I do for you?”
Unlike Dan fucking Brown, who would spend a thousand words relating an endless torrent of pointless dialogue and mentioning the type of tree to their left, I will jump to the salient bits.
“I noticed you carried a full cup of coffee in your hand as you entered the room this morning. It made me wonder if I’m cut out for this stuff.”
Nap looked at him a second then, putting his hand on the recruit’s shoulder, and asked “Are you special?”
Sucking in his chest the new recruit asked “Do you mean do I feel uniquely qualified to be a field agent?”
“No,” said Nap. “I mean are you retarded? Are we starting to put retarded agents in the field now?”
“No sir! What I meant is that my hand shakes when I try to walk and drink coffee.”
Nap gave him a look that made it clear he wasn’t sure if Dan had answered his original question. I’m calling the new recruit Dan now because I’m not Dan fucking Brown.
Trying to answer Nap’s original question Dan continued, “You look the part, Nap. There is no shakiness in your hand. When I try to walk and drink coffee at the same time, it always splashes up in my face or I have to concentrate so much that I trip. It makes me wonder if I’m cool enough to be an agent.”
Nap smiled. “Now I understand. You’re not that retarded after all.”
Dan smiled. He had not anticipated such accolades.
“The short answer is: you’re cool enough to be an agent. You’re just not cool enough to be me.”
Nap walked over to a bench and invited the young recruit to sit down next to him.
“But nobody is, kid. There is only one me.”
Dan nodded. Truer words had never been spoken.
“Let me tell you a story, kid.” With those words, Dan began to scream and cry again in his head. In fact, if Nap had bothered to notice, a single real tear began to make its way down Dan’s cheek.
“When I was just getting into the business, I had a few of the same preconceptions about what it meant to be a spy. I’m going to tell you something I never told another person. If you ever share this information with anyone, I will find you and I will crush your larynx.” With that Nap lifted an eyebrow ever so slightly to indicate that he was expecting a reply.
“Understood, Mr. Lapkin.”
“Ok then. I grew up watching James Bond films and if you’ve ever noticed, a lot of them involve casinos or gambling. Wanting to make sure I was ready for this environment, I decided to learn how to card count. I would drive up to Atlantic City on weekends where they had classes that taught such things.”
Eastern Redbud.
That’s the type of tree they were sitting under.
Take that, Dan Brown.
“I think it was my third class when it happened. There was an old guy there and he must have had Parkinson’s or something because he kept having these little bursts where he’d shake. Annoying, sure, but I actually found it to be just the type of distraction I might run across in the field, so I didn’t ask that he leave.”
Dan nodded, showing Nap that he appreciated his compassion.
“All morning, this guy was shaking and trembling. Finally, we got to take a break and this guy heads directly over to the coffee station. Everybody in the room freezes. I mean, everyone was watching as this guy grabs a cup and the pot and begins to pour. You could hear a pin drop. He must have known everyone was watching.”
Cedar.
That’s the type of wood that the bench they were sitting on was made of.
“He finished pouring it and everyone exhaled. His hand was like a rock. Then he reached for the creamer and shook a little into his cup. We were all suffering. Waiting for the inevitable. I’m telling you, it was so tense. When he was done with that, he went to grab the sugar and, in my head, I was yelling ‘Don’t get greedy!’ but he poured a little sugar into his cup with no problem. I then realized that I hadn’t taken a breath in over a minute.”
Dan then realized that he hadn’t taken a breath in over a minute.
“This guy, this old Parkinson’s-riddled guy, then picked up a stirrer and began to stir his coffee. The room was just about to erupt in applause. He swirled the stick around in the cup and then, with the steady hands of a brain surgeon, placed the stirrer down on the table in front of him.”
Nap looked Dan in the eye to make sure he was paying close attention.
“Then the old guy lifted the cup to his lips and sent the coffee flying with the mother of all spasms. Seizure city. The Splash Zone at Seaworld didn’t hold a candle to this. Every square inch of the room was drenched. More liquid was sent flying than the cup could have possibly held.”
Nap fixed his gaze on Dan again, making sure he understood.
“Do you understand? More liquid was sent flying from that shaky old man’s cup than it could have possibly held.”
Dan did not understand.
Dan Brown doesn’t understand how hard it is to write about Nap Lapkin. His characters make sense. I can only write things as they happen. If Dan Brown had to write about Nap Lapkin his stories would be just as dumb.
“You see rookie, some of who you are is you. The rest is circumstance.” Once again, his eyebrow lifted slightly to feel out the new recruit’s understanding, then he continued.
“I walked out of that room and never went back. I knew that when it mattered, when I’m playing blackjack and the bad guys are watching and I have a ten and an eight showing and I hit, I’m going to get a three.”
Dan wanted to understand. Desperately. He knew somehow that it was important. In his head, it was as if the Beatles started playing an old George Gershwin tune. There was screaming. Confused screaming.
Nap slapped the knee of the new recruit and said “Fate will make you who you are.”
“Are you saying not to worry about how I drink coffee as I walk?” inquired Dan, stammering a little.
“Oh no, no, no- you definitely need to work on that.”
With that, Nap chuckled to himself, stood up, and walked towards his car.
On the way, he passed three Eastern White Pines, two Yellow Birches and a Bitternut Hickory.
Author’s Note: This last story is a bonus. It’s actually the first Nap story and was the last story to appear in the first book Merciful Flush. I had no idea at the time that he would become my only recurring character.
The Nap Lapkin Trilogy
Part 1: Mitcheltree Ridge
As far as detention centers went, it was pretty much as Harold had always imagined them. Something out of an old spy movie, cold and cramped, with just enough light to let the occupant know he was in a crappy spot. He had been in this crappy spot for what seemed like weeks. He lost count of the days after about five and there were no windows to let him know if it was daytime or night.
Had he been informed of the name of the building he was being held in, he still wouldn't have known where he was. None of the sexy Leavenworth or Alcatraz imagery, this place was off the grid.
When they first threw a bag over his head at the bank, he truly had no idea why he was being hauled off. After a day or so of being interrogated, it dawned on him this must have been about all the stamps he had been taking home from work. The bank did a lot of overseas business and he would routinely scan the incoming mail for new stamps to add to his collection. Obviously, the bank frowned on this behavior because for three hours straight, there were shadowy men taking turns waterboarding him. He gasped and spluttered and begged for them to ask a question he could answer but they only went about their work in the same way men might have stacked boxes or audited someone. Wild-eyed, he confessed to taking home postmarked stamps and, after another hour, a variety of other sins both real and imagined that the shadowy men had little interest in hearing about.
This went on for days. Finally after about a week, someone actually spoke and asked him, "Do you have anything you'd like to tell us?"
Harold nodded his head and told them they had the wrong man and that they could all go fuck themselves sideways. When that got no reaction, he asked a question himself.
"Why me?"
They answered with a syringe full of the latest truth serum in the hopes he would answer that very question.
You see, they wanted to know why recently an automated robotic vehicle on Mars that had until recently been dormant and considered dead had sprung back to life. Why, you ask, would they think that Harold, a bank teller in good standing at The National Trust for the past seven years and who considered astronomy a slight interest at best, despite owning a very nice telescope which he received from his parents for Christmas a few years back, would have any idea about why this have occurred?
"Ever been to Mars, Harold?" the man asked him in a voice that was eerily flat.
Harold stared back, assuming that the chemicals they had injected him with were causing his hearing to be less than trustworthy. In a fog, he answered, "Pardon me?"
"Mars, Harold. Ever been to Mars?" he again asked in a somewhat less flat tone that suddenly made it clear that Harold's faculties were indeed working and he had heard correctly.
"No...?"
"Do you know anyone that has been?"
Harold pretended to give it some thought. Had our astronauts been to Mars? He wasn't sure now. Perhaps they had been and he had met one of them at some bank function. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and felt fairly certain that while Americans had in fact walked on the moon, we still had either been unable or not interested enough in the endeavor to actually get to Mars with anything other than a few mechanical toys to probe and record and such.
"No, sir. Nobody knows anyone who has been to Mars, as far as I know."
See, this is the strange bit: The reason the man in the dark suit was asking what seemed like odd questions of Harold was because he knew something that Harold didn't.
Soon after the robot on Mars had suddenly began respond again, the Deep Space Network had it back to work collecting samples and moving deeper into the crater it had been exploring. Soon after that, it saw an object that had everyone at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology gasping and fighting to comprehend what they were seeing. What they couldn't be seeing. They were all looking at something that they couldn't be looking at.
On the surface of Mars, on the edge of the Mitcheltree Ridge, there was what appeared to be a small white square. As the robot approached, it started to look like it was a Polaroid picture. The President was notified of what they couldn't actually be looking at. After four torturous days of getting the rover maneuvered close enough to take a better look, it became clear it was a picture of Harold.
Smiling and holding up what appeared to be some sort of tropical drink.
At this point, you're probably expecting to hear how that picture of Harold got there and I hate to disappoint, but the truth is, I have no idea myself. I can only assure you that neither does Harold. I could go further and tell you that the shadowy men in the dark suits never quite believe him but that might be a bit depressing trying to imagine what will become of Harold.
The Nap Lapkin Trilogy
Part 2: The Escape Goat
It was obvious to everyone concerned they were getting nowhere with the prisoner. In fact, if you were to ask some of them off the record, to even call him a prisoner was a gross mischaracterization. They would have told you he was a victim of fate or even a cruel joke. But that was off the record. On the record, he was a tough guy who wouldn't tell them what they needed to know. Even still, there were people at the even highest places of government that would have been shocked at who sat behind the wheel of the dark blue 1978 Le Mans that was now pulling into the detention facility that officially didn't exist and therefore couldn't have a name.
Nap Lapkin turned off the engine and began to compose himself. Why he insisted on listening to his mix-tape of David Bowie and Annie Lennox doing Under Pressure live at Wembley before a big meeting with his handlers, he didn't know, but there he was all choked up.
"Shit! Nap is here." The guards looked at each other and watched as the minutes ticked by and there was no movement in the Le Mans.
"Nap fucking Lapkin... right here at our little base." A smile crept across the rugged features of the taller of the two men.
"You'd better wipe that smile off your face before he does it for you."
The smile evaporated as if it were never there.
Nap climbed out of the car and made his way to the side door. He pressed his thumb against the small pad and he heard the lock mechanism click. He had no idea where he was going but there wasn't a door in America that didn't jump to attention when it got a whiff of his fingerprints. He gave the door a push and slipped inside a brightly lit corridor with two large men standing on either side of a small desk.
"Sign here, Mr. Lapkin." He slid over a large book that would have looked more at home at a bad Midwest wedding and tried to hide his eyes, which screamed "Holy fuck, it's Lapkin right here in front of me!"
The same Nap Lapkin that once broke into a zoo and stole a tiger only to slip back in with it and deposit it in with the zebras after he had the orange stripes genetically altered to appear white. Just to watch the confused look on the people's faces as it massacred the whole herd. It cost a fortune and had jack to do with national security but there wasn't an accountant inside the government who had the stones to reject an expense report from Nap Lapkin.
He walked down the hallway and made his way to an unmarked door. Behind the door was a set of stairs that led down. He cursed himself for watching the ending of Armageddon last night because it was all he could think about. The way Bruce Willis gave his life for everyone on Earth... he leaned on the handrail for a moment to collect himself.
Soon after he had arrived, a car driven by Madonna Axion had roared into the parking lot and slid clumsily into a handicap spot. Out jumped Madonna, an Amazon of a woman with bright red hair and curves that would make a mountain climber dizzy. She ran as fast and as gracefully as a woman in 5-inch heels could and quickly made for the same door that had recently given entrance to Nap.
"Is he here?!" she barked at the two guards.
Finally, one of them, neither was sure which after the fact, was able to inquire "Who?"
"Lapkin! Is that his piece of shit Le Mans I see out there?"
"Yes Ma’am. He arrived a few minutes ago."
"Damnit to hell!" she roared in a way that made it clear that Nap Lapkin had had her more than once and left her without a second thought.
The two men waited until she was headed down the stairs in pursuit of Nap before they allowed themselves to whistle and giggle like school boys.
Six stories below the enraged Ms. Axion...
"Lapkin. Where have you been? I've been calling you for days."
"Sorry General. Was getting a little rest and relaxation. After the little incident with the spider-milk goats, I'd say I earned it."
The General grunted almost imperceptibly while Nap looked through the two-way mirror at the man slumped in the metal chair.
"That our boy?"
Without waiting for an answer, he walked in to find out why this fellow insisted on littering other planets with his picture.
The Nap Lapkin Trilogy
Part 3: Heading East
It was the most senseless act he’d done in a long time. A heartless action done with all the reckless precision of a hug. He knew the moment he walked into the room that the poor bastard Harold knew nothing but he also knew that he would never be allowed to leave. So he did what came unnaturally natural to him.
He swore at him and then broke his neck in a fit of mock rage. He just had to hold it together until he was off the base. He couldn't allow them to see the ache that was spreading through his chest like a cancer. Even worse... weakness. Or double secret worse... compassion.
The first time he killed a man, he was only a boy. And the man was a boy, to be accurate. The kid had teased him about his name. His name was Nap Lapkin. The young man called him Ass Napkin.
He had killed the boy with a casualness that became legendary in circles where killing people casually was admired. Even when the government shrink had repeated the name Ass Napkin during his initial evaluation, his upper lip trembled and danced like a Hollywood version of a fault line giving way in a big-budget earthquake movie. The shrink left the room, retired and, as far as anyone remembers, lives in a mobile home with no wheels in Omaha.
So he killed Harold to save him the pain of endless imprisonment and torment. When the General watching outside rushed in full of hell and fury, Nap simply looked at him and shrugged.
"This one was a hard one, Boss. He would have never talked. Never." And then met the General’s gaze with a look that dared him to challenge his diagnosis.
"Never?"
"Never. Ask him yourself."
And with that, Nap headed towards the stairs. Only to be interrupted halfway up by a tall red-haired woman whose face seemed to be indistinguishable in hue from her hair.
"Nap! Please tell me the prisoner is still alive."
"He's alive."
For a second, her demeanor relaxed and she almost looked relieved but then suddenly her body stiffened and her eyes darted back to the man trying hastily trying to make his way by her.
"Nap! Are you lying to me?"
"You asked me to tell you the prisoner is still alive."
"Lapkin... you big dumb animal! I wanted a shot at him."
Nap sighed a sigh equal parts fury and resignation with a dash of condescension thrown in. His eyes rolled almost imperceptibly but they might as well have rolled right out of his head as far as Madonna Axion was concerned.
Like every encounter Nap had ever had with an attractive woman, the sexual tension was so thick, it threatened to swallow them both up. He knew if he didn't leave at that very instant, he would mount her right there on the stairs and add to his already impressive security camera collection.
"I got this thing I’ve got to get to."
And with that, Nap slipped past her and made his way to his '78 Le Mans. Before he knew it, he had cranked open the sunroof, slipped in the Head East cassette and was free to cry his eyes out.
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.
Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.
Save my life, I'm going down for the last time.