Processed cheese, p.21
Processed Cheese, page 21
Meanwhile he had a company to run and money to make. Both occupations he could manage in his sleep and sometimes did. He’d had several transformational experiences while asleep, going into sleep, and coming out of sleep. He had not the slightest doubt it was a magical place, well worth visiting frequently, even if it did eat up unfortunate tons of precious moneymaking hours. Solution: make money while sleeping. Learn to put your money into dark warm humid places conducive to the care and propagation of those marvelous little green notes, places like PDQParaphernalia, BurningBushCache, and XYZNut, all of which he owned and, frankly, contributed to the steady, ludicrous growth of his numerous bank accounts at a rate far greater than anything he ever did here at NationalProcedures while awake. Go figure. If only the living, breathing side of life could be managed so lucratively. If only emotions were dollars and could generate profits. What an overlord of the psyche he could be, standing astride all that mess like a god. The phone buzzed. It was the president calling.
“Tell him I’m busy,” he said to PocketGuard, his administrative assistant for special assistance, whom he’d once had a fuck-buddy relationship with about three years ago. “Tell him I’m in a meeting, an important meeting, a very important meeting.”
“You know he won’t care. He’ll insist you take it anyway. Like he’s always done before.”
“Tell him I’m in the damn john.”
“But he knows you have a phone in there.”
“Fucking catacombs,” he said. He took the call. Nothing monumental. It was about a golfing engagement next Saturday. MisterMenu courteously declined. He had to be in Bugaboo that weekend, or so he said. His daughter NoDeposit was getting married Saturday to Filament, the competence-challenged son of Cravensworth, CEO of BolsterIndustries. Like father, like son. How any of these people managed to make even a single dime’s worth of profit was a mystery of biblical proportions to MisterMenu. As was his style, the president pressed. DentalDam was scheduled to be in their foursome. His entourage, no doubt, in attendance at the clubhouse. You know, in all their flower-pussied glory. Postpone the wedding. Your daughter can get married any day of the week. A clam buffet of such splendor as this is served maybe once, twice per lifetime. MisterMenu agreed. He appreciated the invite and, to himself, regretted the lost opportunity to weasel something more useful out of this buffaloed chief executive than he already had—and believe me, he’d scarfed up plenty of tidbits wherever he found them. But no, his younger daughter, the wedding, you understand. The president pretended he did. They hung up. MisterMenu needed to look at some numbers—now. So he did. Illuminated figures scrolled across the screen in stately procession. The sight always comforted him. Even when the sums were not particularly beneficial either to him or NationalProcedures, the endless parade of 123s projected a sense of vibrancy, of invincibility, proof that no matter what happened to him or the firm, something in this porous world held fast, continued on undeterred. Something was eternal.
At 10:28 MattressTesterJr called. He and MisterMenu discussed the AutomatedCarnage deal.
At 11:52 ProvidentialWind called. They discussed the likely FerretHoldings acquisition.
At 1:11 MissusMenu called.
“Of course,” she said, “you may leave me anytime you wish. You know that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.
“I can persist in this charade as long as you can.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You and I both know the water’s been draining out of the tub for six years now. It’s just a matter of who’s going to pull the plug first.”
“We’ll talk about this when I get home.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“Fine. Don’t.”
He hung up first.
He went into his private bathroom and washed his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked pretty good for a man of his years. Slightly balding, slightly overweight, slightly handsome. He figured he could pass for someone half his age. He couldn’t.
At 2:16 MisterMenu held an impromptu meeting of the innovative Guided Crash Team. Although he conducted the meeting with his usual perspicacity and vigor, a half hour later he couldn’t recall much of what he’d said.
His day staggered on to its unacceptably serrated end somewhere around 8:38 p.m., when, instead of repairing to the MemoryFoamRoom of the trending ClusterClub for his customary workcapper of a pair of double BoltCutters on the rocks, he climbed into his chauffeured car for the interminable ride home.
Repeat with the usual variations for next four days.
Late Friday afternoon he was informed his fabled Bag O’ Money was still somewhere at large in the wilderness of the world. BlisterPac hadn’t been heard from in over a week. But what the hell. It was the weekend. Monday was only two days away. Until then he and MissusMenu rarely spoke. She stayed in her room. He stayed in his. Fine with him. He didn’t like talking to her. He didn’t like looking at her. He didn’t like touching her. Or her touching him. And he didn’t like her smell. And he especially couldn’t care less about whatever the hell it was she doing in her room. Or even whether she was alone in her room or not. YOLO. Saturday night he went out with X from XAnalytics and Y from YBurdens. They all got stupid drunk and pretended they were twenty-one again. They insulted waiters, grabbed strange women’s tits, picked fights with fellow assholes, broke assorted plates and highball glasses, got kicked out of two bars, threw up on the street in front of the HighHatHotel, and, before the night was over, each got a free hand job under a table at MadameUncertain’s. They behaved like total jackasses. No apologies. What on earth had possessed them? he mused to himself later that morning. Humanity, he decided, being human, for a change, had ambushed them.
Sunday MisterMenu spent at the BobolinkRestHomeAndPetulanceCourse trying for four-plus hours to get a damn little ball into eighteen damn little holes. He was moderately successful. He shot a 98. When he got home he discovered the dirty breakfast dishes (all imported AddleWare china) he’d left in the sink were now broken and scattered across the kitchen floor. He and MissusMenu did not exchange a single word that entire day.
Monday morning arrived in a burst of glaring sunlight under the half-dropped blind, hitting his face directly in the eyes, but he didn’t care. He’d been up since 6:00. In his room he locked the door, settled into his special custom-built PleasureForm erotognomic chair, switched on the 103-inch HeebieJeebie, and tuned to HoneyDrippers4U/LOTTERY, where he typed in his secret winner’s code, and blooming onto the screen came the channel’s logo, a drawing of a cross section of a beehive with big cartoon bees circling around it and an exaggerated stream of thick honey leaking from the bottom in big heavy drops into a cartoon woman’s outrageous receptacle-shaped mouth. He looked at that for a while. At precisely 0800 the image of his newly built room popped into focus, revealing the white walls, the white floor, the simple gray metal chair, but no LavenderLips, no female human anywhere in sight. He checked his watch. He stared at the screen. Nothing. He kept staring, as if attempting to will her appearance into view. He picked up his cell, preparing to call somebody, anybody, when abruptly a live woman stepped into the frame. She had arrived in total work costume: thigh-high boots, black leather miniskirt, biscuit-popping shiny metallic blue cutoff halter top, a fringed hippie-style suede shoulder bag. At first he wasn’t entirely sure it was the real LavenderLips. She looked so different. Her hair was now a high-end boutique blond, and it was long, much longer than in her lottery-site photo. Fine with him. Makeup, obviously professionally applied, had also somewhat altered her face. It was now a glossy magazine face of devastating unreality. He felt an awakening in his pants. So he unzipped his fly, placed his hand inside. Her deep black eyebrows, obviously drawn in by a practiced hand, and her famous lips seemed even larger, the skin even creamier. But the major effect of all this perfect paint was to direct attention to the center of the picture: her eyes. They, too, had increased significantly in size: huge, alert, endless, they were like whole planets you could not avert your gaze from. They invited study, close study. They seemed made of glass, shining and clear, illuminated from within by an intense, sharp, hypnotic, almost unearthly deep yellow. It was the magnetic color of these irises that you could not pull yourself away from: a pure living gold, a gold that demanded to be mined. What was happening? He didn’t know. He was obviously having a moment of some kind or other. He had never, not once in his long, narrow life, experienced the effects from the glance this woman seemed able to deliver so effortlessly. He was certainly glad he’d shelled out the cash to install a top-shelf HD camera capable of recording such a moment. And yes, he finally had to admit to himself, he did recognize her, the striking engrave-it-on-a-coin profile. And the dimples, he remembered the dimples, similar to the ones on NoDeposit’s pink fuzzy cheeks. It was definitely the real LavenderLips. She looked around for a moment, noticed the camera, stared into it. She gave a little wave.
“Hi,” she said. “Anyone there?”
“You find the place okay?” MisterMenu said.
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
“You surely are. I take it my instructions were clear enough?”
She was still attempting to take in these strange new surroundings. “No problem,” she said. She was looking around, nervously checking every corner, like a doe in a strange wood. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Good.”
“What’s up with this place, anyway? It’s pretty creepy.”
“A refuge from the distractions of the buzzing world,” he said. “Have a seat.”
She settled carefully into the gray metal folding chair, took in the objects arranged on the floor before her: an impressive stack of fifty-dollar bills, a half dozen family-size bottles of MountainMama volcanic-rock-filtered artisanal water, a clear plastic bucket, and a hefty roll of paper towels. There was a sudden clicking noise and she gave a start, turned toward the door. “What’s that?” she said.
“I believe they’re just locking the door. You’re in there with a fair amount of money. We want to make sure it stays in there. My name, by the way, is MegaHyphenate.”
“I can’t see you. What do you look like?”
“If you want the physicals, okay. I’m six foot three, one hundred and eighty pounds. I’ve got medium-length dirty blond hair, a broken nose, but it’s not too obvious, am in pretty good shape for my age but with the beginning of a slight pooch, kinda bowlegged with a hairy chest. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but the total package, I believe, is not entirely unappealing.”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to want to lie about it.”
“So lie.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Nice. You picked a good age.”
“I have a confession.”
“What’s that?”
“I couldn’t lie. That’s my real age.”
“Well, you know something?”
“What?”
“You sound honest.”
“You can’t have a good relationship without being honest.”
He could literally watch her body visibly relax, slump comfortably into her uncomfortable chair. “You don’t know how wired I was about all this. I mean, the instructions were so weird and all. You sounded like a total freak.”
“So sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you in the least.”
“You didn’t. Well, maybe a little.”
“Feel better?”
“Much.”
He liked it when she tilted her head, the way she was doing now. It reminded him of DustBunny. One drunken night back in his twenties, he had fallen into a pontification about string theory or some such bullshit and fancied himself a physicist for about a day and a half, though of the decidedly junior variety. The blue light from DustBunny’s computer screen fell across her neck, the side of her smooth cheek, did something pleasant to his dick.
“Let me see your fingers.”
She held up her hands.
“Spread ’em.”
She did. Her fingers were beautiful.
“Lick ’em.”
She did. They were wet and shiny. Something pleasant was starting to happen in MisterMenu’s down there. She continued sucking them, one slick finger after another.
“I like that.”
“Thought you might. What’s all this money here for?” She gestured toward the pile of bills stacked neatly on the floor in front of her.
“I want you to eat them. One at a time. They’re fifties, aren’t they?”
She checked. “Yes.”
“Well, I’d like you to devour them, one by one, till they’re all gone.”
She regarded the size of the pile. “I’ve never eaten money before.”
“Some folks find it right tasty. You’ve got the bucket, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it transparent?”
She held the bucket up before the camera.
“Any reversals of fortune,” he said, “you may deposit in there.”
She looked skeptically at the camera, then back at the bucket. “I don’t know,” she said.
“You know more than you think you do. And each bill you eat you get to keep, metaphorically speaking, of course. You earn that amount in untouched notes, which will be awarded you at the conclusion of our day. So go ahead, savor your adventure. You might even discover you enjoy munching on money.”
“Chew it and swallow it?”
“Yes, of course.”
She granted the camera a wary look. “So weird,” she said.
“Indulge me.”
“I thought this was supposed to be about something sexual or something.”
“We’re getting there.”
She studied the pile with an appraiser’s eye, as if gauging the feasibility of the task. Then, delicately, she lifted a single fifty from the pile. She looked into the camera. She looked at the crisp new note. Then she stared into the camera again and, abruptly, defiantly, balled up the bill, stuffed it into her mouth, and began chewing vigorously. Immediately she leaned over and spit a wad of wet green paper out into the bucket.
“Tastes like a dirty rag,” she said. She glared at the camera and shook her head.
“You’ll get used to it. Try another.”
“I don’t know.”
“But I won the lottery. You’re supposed to do what I say.”
So she did. She spit that one out, too.
“C’mon now, don’t disappoint me.”
“Well, you dig it, Mr. Hyphenate. It’s like trying to choke down a handful of dead dry leaves. Stuff should be colored brown, not green.”
“But they’re new. All clean. Fresh from the vault. And I’m paying you to eat them. There’s two thousand dollars’ worth of fifties on the top of the pile. Get those down and all the rest are shiny hundreds. As many as you can chew and swallow you get to keep.”
Dubiously, she eyed the stack in front of her, and, after a pronounced pause, reached down, lifted a fresh fifty off the top of the pile, placed it cautiously into her mouth, and began slowly to chew. And chew and chew and chew.
“Swallow,” MisterMenu said.
So she did. And made a pained face. “I’ve had cough syrup that was easier to get down than this crap.”
“Very good. Another.”
She did. Another face. Another complaint. And so on for another couple hundred or so. But then something happened. She had either, unaccountably, developed a taste for the bills or suddenly glimpsed the true possibility of making a quick bundle of easy cash. She was soon popping one after another crumpled fifty into her mouth. Chewing. And swallowing. And on and on.
“You’re making me very happy.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“I know you are. And don’t forget, however much you manage to ingest, you get that total as bonus cash in addition to whatever you’re being paid for this session. And by the way, what are you being paid?”
“Not anywhere near enough. But I think that’s my business, thank you very much.”
“Well, you’re right, it is. But money happens to be my business and I’m always naturally curious about how it’s flowing in other people’s business.”
“Could always be better.”
MisterMenu let out a phony chuckle. “Popped the pimple with that one, young lady. ‘Could always be better.’ What we all say, isn’t it? Speaking of which, where are we now at the bottom line? Seem to have lost track in all this excitement.”
“I think it’s six fifty so far.”
“Now, that’s yours, understand? Hopefully, though, it’s just the beginning. Let’s see just how high you can truly go.”
She picked up another bill, stuffed it in her mouth, and almost immediately began to gag.
“You have water, I presume?”
She lifted the bottle of MountainMama into view, unscrewed the top, and eagerly drank about half of it.
“That last one go down?”
She opened her mouth. It was empty.
“Seven hundred,” he said.
She picked up another bill, stared at it for a moment, continued holding it in her hand, contemplating her next move. She had long vampire nails that were painted a glossy dark plum, contrasting strikingly against the almost unearthly paleness of her skin. It looked, in fact, as if the tips of her artistically long fingers had been dipped in congealed blood. MisterMenu couldn’t help but picture those elegant fingers wrapped around his attentive dick. Then he happened to notice that the end of the nail on the ring finger of her right hand had been torn off and, instantly, he didn’t know why, the realization flashed through his mind: she has a kid. Air began to leak out of the carnal balloon. But no, he said to himself, he had imagined this scene so minutely for so long now, almost an entire week, and he was not about to have the experience ruined by random baseline thoughts that may or may not be true. The best was yet to come, to coin a phrase. Then LavenderLips, who had been dutifully and silently ingesting bill after bill (he’d lost track of how many) suddenly pitched forward, grabbed the bucket, and directed a powerful stream of belly water and clots of money into it, stopped for a moment, then noisily heaved again. Unbidden, MisterMenu’s hand had stealthily ended up inside his shorts. He was surprised to find himself audibly panting.
