Page 24 of The Prince and the Puck
“You know, wombats are actually super interesting,” Joey said one night as I sat across the table from her at the Teakhouse, a scotch in front of me. Declan and John were reviewing tapes from the North Carolina game, hoping to overcome whatever issues had flagged them and led to the loss. I’d slipped a tracker onto Declan’s truck, and could see that he was still at John’s house, which had been part of my original security evaluation when I’d arrived. It was as secure as a private home could be. I hoped John used his security system when he was home. Or at least locked his doors. People could be so careless.
“What do you mean by interesting?” I asked, sipping my scotch.
Joey leaned her head to one side, her eyes widening. “Oh my gosh, there’s so much.”
I scrunched my nose at her. Wombats had really never crossed my radar prior to this assignment. As far as I knew, they were some sort of exotic marsupial native to Australia. I hadn’t come across any in my lifetime, and I still didn’t understand how a Virginia-based hockey team had come to be named for such a strange animal.
I supposed having a new friend meant I should humor her quirks. Maybe affection for marsupials was one of Joey’s. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”
“Well, for one thing, they are adorable.”
Joey pulled out her phone and showed me a bunch of images of squat, fat, furry animals with big dark noses and very long claws. I had to admit, they were cute. They looked kind of snuggly, and one video seemed to suggest they could be trained to do laundry.
“They are cute,” I admitted. “But cute does not necessarily mean interesting, Joey.”
“Right. But how about this? Did you know that their poop is cube-shaped?”
“Why would I know that?”
“Well, it is. And wombats use their cube-shaped poop to build towers, mark territory, and attract mates.”
She was giving me a look after this statement that told me I should be extremely impressed by animals who build towers out of their own feces, but I was struggling to feel much of anything about this odd fact. Maybe a vague sense of disgust.
“Fine, I have more.” Joey smiled and then gave me a look that seemed to say she was very determined to sway my opinion of wombats.
I waved my hand for her to proceed. “By all means.”
“Wombats. Have. Killer. Butts.” She pronounced every word of this statement with exaggerated emphasis and then stared at me.
“Excuse me?”
“Killer butts.” She waited, saying nothing else.
“Joey, I’m gonna need a little more.”
“Their butts are how they kill predators.”
A raft of images came to mind as I tried to imagine how these small, fat, furry creatures could kill anything with their butts. But I didn’t have to consider the options for long because Joey was pulling up a video on her phone. Moments later, I watched as a big, fat wombat fled from a fox. It dove into its burrow and then squatted down, waiting for the predator to stick its head inside. When the silly fox did, the wombat did the craziest upward twerk I’d ever seen and smashed the fox’s skull against the roof of its burrow.
As it did this, Joey yelled. “BAM!” A nearby couple shot us dirty looks as the woman leaned across the table to blot the man’s sleeve with a napkin after he’d been startled enough to spill his drink.
“Wow,” I said. That was actually very impressive. I had never considered how wombats might take on predators, but now I had a healthy respect for them—and for the power of the butt in general.
“OK,” I said to Joey. “That is super impressive. But it doesn’t actually help me with my mission to gain admiration and awareness for the Wombats hockey team.”
Joey thought for a moment, one finger against her bottom lip, her blond hair waving around her shoulders in a way that made me somewhat envious.
“Wait a minute,” Joey said, her eyes widening. “I have a great idea!”
“Anything would be great at this point.” I’d considered Declan’s desire to make a movie, but lacking any kind of production knowledge or filmmaking expertise, and being a one-woman show, I didn’t think that was going to be possible.
“A butt calendar!”
I stared at her. “A what? Who would want a calendar full of wombat butts?”
“Not that kind of wombat butt. Think about it, these guys—our Wombats—they have incredible physiques, right?”
“Right...” A blush tried to climb my neck, but I willed it back down. Thinking about the corded muscles on Declan’s forearms, or the very prominent bulges of his biceps would serve no purpose at this moment. And I was not going to let myself think about the prince’s butt.
