Processed cheese, p.7
Processed Cheese, page 7
She sat on the toilet seat for about ten minutes. Nothing. Mr. Pig yelled something. She couldn’t understand a word. After a while, she got up, splashed some cold water on her face, and returned to the arena.
Mr. Pig was sitting up in bed and actually flossing his teeth.
“Make yourself at home,” DelicateSear said.
“Do you have any GlacialEuphoriaReserve?”
“I only drink tap.”
“Get me a glass.”
So she did. Still wrapped in the sheet, trying not to trip over herself, she made her clumsy way to the kitchen, flipped on the light. What she wouldn’t do for unlove. See, she hadn’t quite decided yet whether she was actually done with this guy. You could never really know. She filled a glass, carried it back to the bedroom.
He took a sip. “I can taste the crud in this,” he said, putting the glass down. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t subject your body to such swill. Use a filter, like me. And a good one, not one of those shitty loose-carbon jobs, either. They’re breeding grounds for all kind of exotic bacteria you don’t even want to think about. Get yourself a solid carbon block reverse-osmosis system. The BioElite is pretty good. That’s what I’ve got. Pricey, but what’s your health worth to you, anyway? Otherwise, you’re just hosing down your internals with a sweet cocktail of germs, viruses, cysts, chemicals like lead and arsenic, industrial pollutants like nitrate and trihalomethane, and, of course, every drug ever invented in the history of the world—all the uppers, all the downers, all the steroids, all the hormones. Even estrogen—can you believe it? The goddamn fish are getting feminized. It’s a wonder we’re not all walking around totally cataloged just from what we’re pouring into our bellies from the tap. And don’t forget defocaine, tons of defocaine. You know, everything you drink, eat, and touch in this country, including all our money, carries traces of defocaine. Not many people know that.”
“That’s why I lick everything twice before touching it.”
“I never go near the stuff myself. I’ve seen what it can do to people.”
“What? Talons and horns?”
“You know. You lose track of what’s important.”
“Which would be?”
“Making money, of course. Now get over here and make me some happy.”
So she did. He’d told her earlier that he worshipped his penis and that she should, too. She tried and she tried. No go. She figured she probably wasn’t much of an idolator. He finally managed to get the thing inside without spilling any cargo on the landing strip. For which they were both grateful. And then it (whatever it was) was, thankfully, over. The verdict? Well, not the best, but not the worst, either. Wait a minute. What was she saying? Of course it was the worst. The worst of the worst. She hoped to never have to undergo such an experience again. In minutes he was snoring like a walrus. And she was in the john cleaning herself up. One of those fun head-to-toe jobs. Every adult bathroom should come equipped with a special chamber you step inside of after sex where you are magically dry-cleaned and disinfected in mere instamoments, and, and most important, relieved of any psychic parasites your partner may have, wittingly or not, infected you with. A function equally effective, of course, for deleting the troubling aftereffects of septic social encounters. The Expungerator. Go invent that, somebody. She looked at herself in the mirror. She had previously noted that how you appeared to yourself in an unforgiving mirror was directly proportional to how you were feeling at that particular moment. She wasn’t feeling good. Period.
Two hours later Mr. Pig was gone. She’d wakened him up. With all apologies. She didn’t want to be rude, but she had to be at an important confab at some ridiculously early hour. Which was true, or partly true, or whatever portion of true she wanted it to be. Plus she found it nearly impossible to get a decent night’s rest lying in bed next to a virtual stranger. Or even lying in bed next to a good friend, for that matter. Mr. Pig was not happy. He gathered up his bulk and his clothes. He called her names. She didn’t respond. She’d heard them all before. Whatever it took to get this stiff outta here. He huffed. He puffed. But in the end he went away like a good little boy.
She changed the sheets. She sprayed the room with GrottoGusto. She popped a couple tabs of Oblivia. While waiting for the chemicals to get up to her brain, she clicked through a mental review of her exes. What a rogues’ gallery. A few good, too many not so good. Why’d he do that? Why’d she do this? The permutations of blame were infinite. Her version of counting sheep. And finally, who were they all, anyway? She wasn’t sure she even knew. Oh, she was acutely aware of everyone’s internoodle crap, those minutely managed likes and dislikes. But was that all anyone was? A collection of superficial tics? Maybe. She didn’t know. Yet there was some shiny stuff amidst the wreckage. Paraphernalia, for instance. He was kind. Relatively. He was generous. Relatively. He never got on her nerves too much. Except for that thankfully brief period when he got fed up with investment banking and decided to try cooking, on a purely experimental basis only, and habitually left the kitchen looking like a high school chemistry lab after a fire drill. And DigitalNoise. Her first husband. He carried some good memories she could wallow around in for a while. This was in Bludgeontown, across the river, when they were poor and everyone had a scraggly lawn and lived in a crumbling house and no one had any money. Odd little moments of such seeming insignificance you wouldn’t think they’d be remembered by anyone at all. He was sitting across from her at dinner in a restaurant they really couldn’t afford. She looked at him. She asked him if he was happy. He said he wasn’t sure anymore what that meant. She asked him if he was happy right now, sitting there with her. He looked at her. She looked at him. There was so much going on in his face she couldn’t take it all in. No one moved. No one spoke. That’s all. A handful of seconds so loaded with meaning they never really went away. Was that love? She suspected it probably was. Then she slept.
Later, somewhere in the dankest well of the night, she was asleep, then she was awake, passing instantly from nothingness to everythingness, eyelids snapping abruptly open on a pair of human legs standing right next to her bed, not a foot away from her head.
“What the—” she said, her panicked self pulling quickly away.
“You’re outta milk,” said a voice. Okay, relax. It was only BlisterPac.
“Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
“You’re tough. You can take it.”
She had her hand on her chest and appeared to be listening down into herself. “I can hear my pulse in my head.”
“Oh, chill out. This was a good exercise. Keeps those reflexes toned.”
“Ever consider the possibility you might get shot?”
“Frankly, no. It never occurs to me I might get shot. And you told me once you refuse to keep a gun in your apartment. You said it would be like owning a venomous snake.”
“I don’t always tell the truth.”
“Good M.O.”
“How do I ever forgive you for this?”
“Prayer and contemplation?”
“I’m not going to get angry. I’m done with that. And I don’t drink milk.”
“Then what do you put on your KrunchyChunks here?” He had a bowl of them in one hand, a spoon in the other.
“I eat ’em raw. With my hands. Like a wild animal.”
“So primal. Who would’ve thunk?” He sat down on the end of the bed and began shoveling the gravel-shaped confections into his mouth.
“I can be a lot of things,” she said. “A lot of strange, wild things.”
“Tell me.”
She watched him eat. Then she said, “Just what, may I ask, are you doing here, exactly?”
“I had some free time.”
She glanced at the clock. “At four thirty-seven in the a.m.”
BlisterPac shrugged. “I was up.”
“Priceless, you know,” she said. “That’s what you are.”
“So people tell me.”
“Okay, out. Let me get myself together. And close the door on your way.”
She was naked under the covers. So she got up and threw on a popping-blue silk bathrobe she had had custom made for her in the gated district of a really expensive city really far away. She ran a brush through her hair and then checked the mirror to see which face she happened to be wearing at the moment. She approved.
In the living room she found BlisterPac sprawled across the bone-white Comber&Wrack sectional in front of the God-knows-how-many-inches optical platform. He was watching an extremely loud infomercial for DemonBeGone. Is your house talking back to you? Are precious loved ones changing shape before your very eyes? Pets refusing to come indoors, even out of the rain? Do you feel as if your own personal body is not really yours? If so, you may be suffering the symptoms of a total demon infestation. And we can help. A century’s worth of proven techniques. We are licensed to eradicate demons, sprites, spooks, fairies, ghosts, poltergeists, banshees, gremlins, apparitions of every order, exotics like jinn, incubi, succubi, lamia, lemures, and countless miscellaneous manifestations that don’t even have proper names. Satisfaction guaranteed. Call 1-666-666-6666. Why wait? Be demon-free now.
“Pretty cheap,” said BlisterPac. “Considering. Your entire soul gets a thorough wash and rinse. And they do pets and children under five for free.”
“My soul’s been out on loan for years.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not talking about it.”
“You’re such a tease.”
“That’s how I make my living.”
“Look, man,” said BlisterPac, pointing to the screen, “if you act now, you also get as a free bonus gift a convenient travel-size tube of DemonBalm for those unexpected paranormal encounters on the road.”
“I thought we were supposed to be doing this tomorrow…well, actually, today at ten a.m.”
“Business? Already? So cold and impersonal. I like it.”
“I’d like it better if we were kicking back in a private power booth at Bassinet. Enjoying a couple large flagons of MilitarizedPeninsulas.”
“Who says we can’t?”
“Yeah, what would be the point? You decided you had to see me now. For reasons known, or perhaps unknown, only to you. Kinda selfish and thoughtless, don’t you think?”
“I was under the impression this job was important.”
“It is. But okay, you win, you’re right, why waste breath arguing about date and time? You’re on your own schedule. You’ve always been on your own schedule.”
They’d met when both had ended up together on the Mammoth City Police Department’s Special Anti-NastyBusiness Unit. By then BlisterPac was already a known commodity for certain redacted achievements on behalf of various acronymic organizations. Known at least within the secret inner circles of secret circles. He’d been a member of the teams that assassinated RootieKazootie and abducted MercyMe from the ThinOzoneGang. He’d helped thwart the SackTiedInMiddleReservoirContamination. He was involved in the toxic little-green-apples scare and tracking down the source of the OoLaLa virus. Ever hear of any of these operations? Few people have. No news is good news. Now, thanks to DelicateSear, he was a “paid business consultant” to NationalProcedures, Inc., where he did less, much less, for more, much more.
“Maybe I got a bit excited. No calls in eight months. Ever since the PrettyShards fiasco. I’m an old horse. I heard the fire bells.”
“Well, this probably isn’t any bigger than a two-alarm blaze. If that.”
She explained the MisterMenu matter. It didn’t take long.
“I don’t see much of a problem here,” said BlisterPac.
“Neither do I.”
“How hard you want me to lean on the guy?”
“You’d be a better judge of that than I. He’ll probably give up the bag if you just ask. Politely, of course.”
“I’m always polite.”
“Not OffLine and BreakfastNook polite.”
“What was I supposed to do? They were OffLine and BreakfastNook.”
“I’ve seen the surveillance on this guy. Just ease on down.”
“My smile is devastating. As you well know.” Then he provided a sample.
“Killer.”
“Listen,” said BlisterPac, “you wanna fuck?”
DelicateSear considered for a moment. “Why not?” she said.
So they did. His dick was as gnarly as she remembered it. All stubby and veiny and exceedingly hairy. Kinda sexy, though, in a mildly perverse sort of way. She didn’t orgasm, but she might have come close. Even through the condom, she could feel him squirting into her. Kinda nice.
Chapter 8
Trolling for Treats
“Where you going?” said Ambience.
“Out,” said Graveyard. He had his keys in his hand. He was headed toward the door.
“Unacceptable.”
“I don’t know where I’m going. All right?” Sometimes, lately, he had so much energy knocking up against his walls he just had to get out and walk. Just go. Go anywhere. Burn off the excess. “Wanna come?” Sometimes Ambience came with him. Sometimes she didn’t.
“How long you gonna be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bring me something.”
“What?”
“Surprise me.”
“Don’t I always?”
Graveyard and Ambience lived in a part of town that started the weekend on Wednesday night. Okay by Graveyard. Fine with him if every day was a weekend day. Without clocks, without demands, especially without bosses. He wanted to go to bed when he wanted. He wanted to get up when he wanted. In between he wanted to do what he wanted. An attitude not notably congruent with the demands of the corporate plantation everyone was now happily born into. You can’t say he hadn’t tried to pull his weight. A distinguished graduate of Porcupine University, he applied for and was typically granted a slot within every position for which his degree in Advanced Marketing Me had more than adequately prepared him. A partial résumé: apprentice weed puller for WeedsAin’tYou; professional desktop arranger for the harried executive who, frankly, couldn’t be bothered; bottle turner at the BetterThanVinegar wine company; official counter at the trials of the GuessTheNumberOfJellyBeansInTheJar Contest world championships; toupee handler for ImmaNoFool of LearnToBeAsFilthyRichAsMe Enterprises; happy cup chemist; living sculpture to brighten up a spartan business office; ticket taker at FreaksOnTheBeach; and, his best job so far, assistant to the personal assistant to BrazenRodentCheeks (before the disgracement), the controlling owner of every scrap of that valuable strip of suburban lawn located between the sidewalk and the street from coast to coast and there’s nothing you can do about it. And, of course, there was also the fab tentacled world of the computer godhead, where he served variously as a compubandageroller, a compupageturner, a compub.s.artist, a compupipejockey, a compucaddy, a compupolesitter, a compubottlewasher, a compugroomer, a compuhandmodel, and, his favorite, a computrashcollector, a gig that allowed him to keep whatever valuables he happened to find in pursuit of his duties. Curiously enough, not one of these golden opportunities had ever blossomed into full-time permanent employment. Maybe he was still trying to find himself. That’s what people said. He tended to agree. Though whoever was running this show had managed to hide him away from himself so thoroughly he was still searching after more than twenty years on the hunt and could report little success. The only occupation he had discovered so far that he actually enjoyed was the one he presently held: good-for-nothing idler. A leisure style requiring, of course, a comfy cushion of coin. Like maybe having a bag of the good stuff fall out of the sky onto your head. The moment kept going round and round in his skull. Like a tune he couldn’t shake. In the city you often heard about the dangers of falling objects: bricks, tiles, pieces of scaffolding, flowerpots, air conditioners. And when a pedestrian took a direct hit, the resulting splat was not usually very pretty. And look how close he himself had come to being reduced to little more than a stain on the sidewalk. Actually, factually, dead. Miracle number one: he was still above ground. Miracle number two: what had nearly flattened him had made him impossibly rich. Was there a meaning in all this? Damned if he knew. Of one thing he was certain: his gain was someone else’s loss and that someone was probably quite agitated by now and that what was in the bag was no doubt dirty and now he was dirty, too. Why not? People who had sacks of loot lying around their apartments were probably not “nice” people. They had probably acquired their “proceeds” in not very “nice” ways. And when they lost their acquisitions, particularly large sums of acquisition, they tended to get less nice. He had gone over the ground dozens of times. So far he didn’t see any way he could possibly be traced. Anonymity was the best disguise. Just another innocuous number in a teeming hive of numbers. Money? What money? I don’t got no money.
