Processed cheese, p.35
Processed Cheese, page 35
“All right,” MisterMenu said. “Enough. I think you girls like each other a little too much.” His voice coming from such a far distance that he barely recognized it as his own.
DelicateSear turned a groggy, dazed expression toward him. She was wearing that loose, gray-dawn drunken face of hers. He could tell she wasn’t even seeing him.
“What?” she said.
He grabbed her, pulled her toward him, and planted a MisterMenu buzzbomb right on her wet road-worn lips. She kissed back. Then they mixed it up for a while with their tongues. Suddenly Sinisteria’s mouth was there among them, too, joining in enthusiastically, and it became impossible to know who, exactly, was kissing whom. This round of saliva guzzling lasted until their face muscles wore out and then gradually slid to an end. They couldn’t stop smiling at one another.
“I need another drink,” DelicateSear said.
“Second that,” said MisterMenu.
“Hit it a third time,” said Sinisteria. She rose to go make them. “No,” said DelicateSear. She pushed her back down. “I’ll go.” DelicateSear left the warm bed and, still naked, ambled to the full bar at the end of the room, where she busied herself with a lot of clinking activity.
Gazing in that direction, MisterMenu said to Sinisteria, “Got a dynamite ass, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me ask you something. That bother you, calling me sir all the time?”
“No, sir.”
“I was going to ask you not to do it anymore, but then I realized I liked it. It even excites me sometimes.”
“It excites me, too, sir.”
MisterMenu leaned over and tried to kiss Sinisteria in a frank imitation of DelicateSear’s full-on, go-for-broke manner. It seemed okay, but the charge was of a decidedly lower wattage.
“How about a replay?” he said.
So they did. Same result.
“I think you like DelicateSear better than me,” MisterMenu said afterward.
“She’s a very fine lady.”
“Yes, she is. And so are you.”
“And you’re a very fine man.”
“On my fine days.”
DelicateSear arrived with a tray full of drinks. “And what are you two gossiping about so intensely?”
“You, of course,” said MisterMenu.
“Well, I am an endlessly fascinating topic.” She passed out the drinks and joined them on the bed.
MisterMenu took a sip from his glass, rolled it around in his mouth. “Your Platitudes are as good as Sinisteria’s.”
“Who do you think I learned from?”
“My two girls,” MisterMenu said. “Here, let me get closer to both of you.” He set his drink down on the red teak headboard and wedged himself in between the women. He placed a firm arm around each of them. “Feels like we’re a family now, doesn’t it?”
“A family that every time they’re together again they immediately get naked and screw one another’s brains out,” DelicateSear said.
“Well, what’s a family for?”
“Fighting and making babies,” said Sinisteria.
“Well, we’re making a sandwich,” MisterMenu said. “And I’m the cream in the middle.” He turned to his right and kissed DelicateSear. He turned to his left and kissed Sinisteria. It was like sampling wine. Who hit the best notes, possessed the most lingering finish? He couldn’t determine. So he decided to simply get wasted on both. Consume their fire. Wallow in their practices. So he did. All the while reveling in his lust. There was no end to the body. It was a universe unto itself. You could learn more by exploring the frantic turmoil of skin and flesh than you could scrolling through the compuverse of all your days. Later, when he surfaced for air, he realized it might be actually possible to drown in the physical, in this unfathomable sea of sensation. Or was it? Maybe there was no death here at all, maybe the struggle to keep one’s head above water simply conveyed you to some unimaginable place where all was safety and contentment. In addition to cleansing the body of toxins, indulging in carefree sexual activity provided, at least for MisterMenu, a blue-chip corollary: it also sparked his mind. He became, for a crucial interval, at least, a philosopher of the sheets. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a single human endeavor he was aware of that couldn’t be finessed in order to yield a lucrative return of some caliber. In fact, some of his best perceptions had been slough from an enthusiastic fuck. So what he needed now were supple mouths servicing his stick, and, unusually for him, he surprised himself by actually asking the girls if they wouldn’t mind taking turns, one after the other, polishing the pole with their tongues. Without even the slightest demur, they applied themselves to the task with convincing enthusiasm, feigned or not. The middle finger of his right hand, seemingly having acquired a will of its own, found the opening to a nearby asshole, he didn’t know which one—did it matter?—and deftly inserted itself inside. All shiny and warm. He explored the walls of the cave. Then his finger became a dick and began moving like a dick. Someone moaned. Maybe it was him. He removed his finger and tapped the top of each girl’s bobbing head. “That’s enough,” he said. “Main event.” He rolled over onto DelicateSear, but his dick was already beginning to lose some air. “How about an assist?” he said. DelicateSear obligingly reached down and stroked him until the balloon was inflated again. MisterMenu worked it until he was about to cum when he pulled out and turned his attention to Sinisteria. She seemed slightly tighter and wetter and he liked that. Again he was mounted bareback. His preferred ride. Condoms were for ordinaries. He didn’t really care all that much about disease or babies. They were problems that could be taken care of. What mattered in the moment was supreme. The skin-on-skin vibe and the indiscriminate mixing of fluids. Then, just as he began to melt and drop his load inside Sinisteria, he stopped, pulled out, and switched back over to DelicateSear. And that’s how it went, back and forth, in and out, for as long as he could stand and then some. Then he was struck by one of his patented fun notions: why not figure that whichever female he finally happened to explode inside of was obviously the one he liked best? And truly, he didn’t yet know who that particular contestant would be. Ever the reliable gamer (no such thing as a trivial game), he was interested in the outcome. He was always interested in outcomes. But for a true, honest verdict, he would have to let the body, not the mind, decide. He was well aware of all the devious snares the “objective” mind was capable of devising, being a grand master of emotional chess himself. He closed his eyes and, in the heat of the moment, lost track of which side of the bed he was occupying, so that when the finale finally arrived, he wasn’t even sure which squirming lady happened to be the lucky depositee. He had to examine the flushed face beneath him for several seconds to be certain, and—lo and behold!—the winner was (fevered drumroll): Sinisteria. Who knew? He bestowed upon both women a series of plentiful kisses as equally as he could, maybe a few more for the loser, DelicateSear. “My girls,” he said. His plummy voice abundant with all the attributes of untarnished gratification. He sighed. Deeply.
“You can take a well-deserved rest now,” said DelicateSear. “After such a full, productive day.”
Sinisteria was playing with his soft dick, wiggling it back and forth, obviously testing her ability at a bit of manual resuscitation. He kept pushing her arm away. “All right,” he said. Now thoroughly refreshed, MisterMenu clapped his hands. “Back to work.” He and both women jumped simultaneously out of bed. He seized Sinisteria by the waist, pulled her tightly against his chest, leaned down, and whispered in her ear for several beats longer than the usual allotment of ear-whispering time. Her tall, slim body seemed to actually lengthen in height as she listened. They stepped apart. “Okay?” he said. She nodded her head.
“Should I get my pad?” DelicateSear said. She had that arch look in her eye, but MisterMenu preferred to ignore it. “Sinisteria,” he said. “Coffee, please, in the bridge.” Which was how he referred to his home office. He and DelicateSear got dressed and retired to said room. MisterMenu assumed his position in his supercomfortable custom-made chair behind his supercomfortable custom-made desk. DelicateSear stretched out on the long, long couch. MisterMenu pondered her for a long while. As if stringing together the words of something important he wanted to say. Or waiting for her to do the same.
“Am I supposed to inquire now exactly what you were whispering to Sinisteria?” she said.
“If you wish.”
“All right, what were you whispering?”
“None of your business.”
“Touché,” she said.
MisterMenu riffled through some papers on his desk. He paused. He studied her in silence. He riffled his papers again.
“I believe I’m going to have to terminate FiberFlywheel,” he finally said.
“Congratulations. What took you so long?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking of Marginalia. You know, the daughter.”
“You fucking her, too?”
“Only a little.”
“You dog.”
“Damn thing is, who do I replace him with?”
“RevenueWarts?”
“His closet’s so jammed with skeletons it bursts into a chorus of ‘Dem Bones’ every time you walk past the door.”
“NonAlignment?”
“He’s best friends and co-owner of SteelCalipers with LoyaltyOath.”
“LensFlare?”
“He’s got that upcoming wire-fraud thing.”
“ThermalExplosion?”
“Bad breath.”
“Looks like the executive holding pen at NationalProcedures has taken a net quality hit. Go outside? Bring in some new blood?”
“Competition’s generally worse off. They’re all trying to pick off our people.”
“Or the whole company itself. What’re you going to do about VariancePanoply?”
There’d been rumors for weeks that Variance, their major rival in the prevalent trade of making money out of money, was preparing a hostile takeover bid. NationalProcedures was on edge. Staff were updating their résumés. Checking the ConnectTheDots website during working hours for job possibilities. Routine corporate hysteria.
“Those clowns don’t know what’s coming to them.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll lay on my jiggery-pokery double thick.”
“And how does that differ from your legendary fiddle-faddle?”
MisterMenu explained.
“Sounds like, if all those dots fall properly into place, you might even end up in a position to buy them.”
“Presto change-o. The abiding rule of global capitalism. Modern business is medieval alchemy, my dear. Embrace that truth, never stray too far from the primal core, and you can do no wrong. You know, a great man once defined happiness as ‘a clear horizon.’ Are my old peepers deceiving me or is that the very scene unfolding spectacularly before us?”
“Somewhat. There is, unfortunately, a slight blemish at the moment threatening to depreciate the market value of that particular picture.”
“Yeah? What?”
“BlisterPac is dead.”
“Who he?”
“The guy who’s been tracking down the whereabouts of your missing bag o’ money for all these months.”
“My bag o’?”
“Your bag o’.”
“What happened?”
“Well, so far as we know, he either slipped or was pushed off a cliff into a giant gorge, apparently a big tourist attraction outside some shithole upstate named Randomburg. He’d traced the money to that area, which, not so coincidentally, is the boyhood home of our mark, the illustrious Graveyard, the lowlife who scooted off with the bag to begin with.”
“Local law enforcement on it?”
“Of course, but that’s all ordinaryland up there, so we don’t know yet the level of competence we’re dealing with.”
“I miss my money.”
“I know you do. And we’re working overtime to get it back.”
“Whatever you have to do. Subcontract it out, if necessary.”
“I know just the right people.”
“Fine. But don’t tell me their names. Don’t tell me any names. Or any details about the operation. Just retrieve the bag.”
“Think of it as already being back home in your hands again. Think of how it feels. Think of how it smells.”
“I’m thinking.” He had actually closed his eyes. “I’m smelling.” Now he opened his eyes. “Visualization of desire is the force that manufactures wealth. Do you know what the eleventh of this month is?”
“A Friday.”
“My birthday. I like birthdays. Especially my own. I like presents.”
“This should be a memorable one.”
“I can already feel the four-leaf clovers popping up at my feet.”
“You deserve them.”
“You know what?” He raised his arms above his head in an athlete’s triumphant victory-lap salute and then beamed a full-on psychic charge of pure MisterMenu directly into the center of DelicateSear’s receptive gaze. “I should just like to announce, with absolute conviction, in full chief executive authority, that I do, most certainly, like being me.”
Chapter 23
Shyster Specie
To his vast annoyance Graveyard was awakened before noon by the chattering of his cell phone. It was his mother.
“Your sister’s been arrested,” she said.
He managed to mumble something in response that probably wasn’t even an actual word. He carefully opened one sticky eye. He checked his Elaboration. He couldn’t read the dial. The hands and all the numbers were blurred.
“Are you even awake yet? I’ve been up for hours. What is your problem? No wonder you can’t hold down a real job. I said, your sister’s been arrested. If you can rouse yourself to pretend you care.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. There’s more than one charge. They’re calling it domestic abuse or spousal abuse or assault or something worse. The lawyer said attempted murder’s been mentioned.” At which point she broke into tears.
“What—her boyfriend try to beat her up?”
“No, she beat him up.”
“Blood oranges and farrago beans,” he said. “Where is she now?”
“Here with us. Your father bailed her out. She wants to see you.”
“Be there in ten.” And he hung up and turned to Ambience. “Get dressed. We’ve got to get over to the house.”
“What’s up?”
“Major howdy-do at the ranch. My sister’s been busted,” he explained.
They struggled into yesterday’s clothes. The instant Ambience was outside the door she immediately lit up.
“So now we have to wait for you to smoke a cigarette?” Graveyard said.
“Just a couple puffs.”
“Give me a hit.”
She passed him the lighted butt. He inhaled deeply. He exhaled slowly. He handed it back. “Wish this stuff didn’t kill you,” he said.
Ambience shrugged. “We all have to go sometime.” She banged a couple more pulls, let the butt fall where it may, rubbed it out with the sole of her RavenMistressSideLaced boot. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go spring the kid from the slammer.”
When they arrived at the old homestead, Roulette, fronting full paternal mode, was buried in his big chair in the living room, dressed in his underwear and hiding his face behind a newspaper.
“Hi, Dad,” Graveyard said.
His father grunted. The paper rattled.
Carousel was in the kitchen opening and slamming shut cabinet doors in apparent random order, constructing a meal of some kind or other. The phrase “in a dither” came to Graveyard’s mind.
“Hi, Mom,” Graveyard said.
She looked as if the oxygen in the room had just run out. “Your sister’s upstairs locked in her room. She’s expecting you.”
Outside Farrago’s closed door Graveyard paused, then quickly knocked twice.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
The door immediately opened, releasing an enveloping cloud of thick leaf smoke. Farrago stood before them, holding a neon-green glass bong in one hand and a lighted joint in the other. “Fuck me,” she said. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days and like there wasn’t a mattress in the world comfortable enough to provide any relief. She passed the bong to Graveyard, who took a healthy hit and passed it to Ambience, who seconded his judgment.
“Come in,” she said. “Welcome to private hell number ditto fuck. Excuse the mess. Maid’s day off.” She dropped onto the stained couch, peppered with cigarette burns, and began busying herself with the mouth end of the bong. She inhaled more than it seemed possible for normal lungs to contain. “I assume you’ve heard all the gory details from at least one of the parental units.” Extended breathy exhale.
“Actually, no,” Graveyard said. “Mom babbled out something about you beating your boyfriend up.”
“That’s the noodle version.”
“So,” said Graveyard. “Give us the restored director’s cut.”
So she did. Last year she’d begun detecting other scents on Loophole’s clothes and skin, scents not originating with her. Loophole explained the aroma as a by-product of his new job. He’d supposedly been hired as a part-time bartender at TheRancidSaddle, out on the NobodyGoesThere Pike, where staff and patrons were all “superfriendly huggy types.” Okay. Dubious, but conceivable. Then his hours began getting unexpectedly extended and he’d have to go to work on nights he’d already claimed he had off. So she finally called the place on a Thursday he was supposed to be subbing for someone named FaultyBrakes and they’d never heard of him or FaultyBrakes. He hadn’t even had the respect to deceive her with an inventive lie. She waited until the next gaming session, when her mother was out at her stupid book club gossiping about the who’s-on-who erotic byplay of Good Girls at Home with the End of the World or some such shit and when Loophole was thoroughly locked into the meanest section of Level XII of that ultimate fanboy favorite, The Ruby Caskets of Melanthia, to initiate her interrogation. He ripped off into a rage, blew the game, which made him even madder, and then started threatening her like she was one of his curb puppies or something. Then he called her an ungrateful cunt and bitch-slapped her across the mouth. She slapped him. He slapped her again. So she clocked him across the face with a game controller, cutting his right cheek. His face went all red and he grabbed her by the throat with both hands and started choking the life out of her. She was gasping for breath but still managed to knee him hard in the nuts and after he let go of her and while he was doubled over in pain, she seized the entire game console, lifted it high above her head, then brought it down with all her strength onto the back of his skull. He dropped to the floor like a side of beef. She was so mad; she’d never been that mad in her whole life. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t think. She just yanked the game’s power cord out of the wall socket, wrapped it around his neck, and began tugging on the ends like she was trying to kill a rabid animal. Which she was. He made some sort of pathetic gagging sounds. When the sounds stopped and he quit squirming around like a stuck pig, for good measure she bashed him in the head with her favorite giant glass ashtray. He groaned and blood started running out of his hair. Then she pulled his cell out of his back pocket, threw it on the floor, and stomped on it until it cracked. When he started moaning and trying to get up, she clobbered him again in the head with the ashtray. Then he stopped doing anything. She ran out of the house, hopped into her MileWolf, and fled the scene. She raced on over to Dad’s place, where the cops picked her up two days later. She’d been locked up, slapped with all kinds of fake charges, and it didn’t look good.
