Processed cheese, p.17
Processed Cheese, page 17
“Don’t have to tell me that.”
“The universe. Think about it.”
“No subject is ever further from my mind.”
“Well, that’s why you’re one of the special people.”
“What special people?”
“The ones trying to save the planet with their thoughts.”
“I’d hate to see what kind of world could be tossed together out of my used-up thoughts.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. How could your version of existence possibly be any worse than this squalid shithole we’re all trapped in?”
“And, of course, we can all be comforted by the certainty that when thoughts fail us there’s always the backup in the bag.”
“Not to worry. I have zero interest in breaking into your precious armory, staining all your little toys with my grubby fingerprints.”
“Never a doubt, Plexi.”
“I mean, I don’t even want to look in there. I could care less. Guns are icky.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed your chronic aversion.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like ickiness. Of course, if while you’re away, the zombie apocalypse should happen to descend upon us, well…” Plexi shrugged his shoulders like a waiter signaling that the kitchen was out of the special.
For no discernible reason, Bullionvilla seemed, at this particular confluence, to be an aggravatingly difficult destination to arrive at by air. They would have to cross an ocean, a sea, a continent, a ludicrous number of time zones, a couple of unhinged countries no one ever wanted to fly over, and several unpredictable weather patterns pilots would just as soon avoid. Plus two layovers, in Macabreb and Orthodontia. And booking reservations at the last minute landed them (big surprise) peasant’s seats on the last flight of the day of that budgeteer’s fave, TurboBusAirways. Their motto: Take a Flying Fuck.
Ten minutes into the flight and Graveyard was already squirming around on his narrow, thinly cushioned, plastic-wrapped Passenger Support Device. “There’s more room in a coffin,” he said.
“Curious,” said Ambience, “how sometimes even money isn’t the insulation it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s a goddamn outrage.”
They looked at each other and they laughed.
When they finally landed in Bullionvilla, some eight and a half indescribably excruciating hours later, the air smelled of adhesive bandages and oven cleanser. Everyone yammering away in some sort of vowelly jibber-jabber neither Graveyard nor Ambience could make any sense out of whatsoever. Everyone with at least one hand out, if not two. Graveyard dutifully crossed every palm thrust his way. Which led, naturally enough, to an available and suspiciously agreeable cabbie Graveyard was able to trade enough meaningful grunts and shrugs with to establish a useful business connection. The ride into Bullionvilla was like being trapped in an amateur stock car rally in which even the most casual principles of self-preservation had been gaily abandoned. They did manage to glimpse through half-open windows, when not frantically seeking firmer handholds inside the lurching cab, several go-to destinations scattered about the fabled city: the granite polyhedron where hunted lovers in olden times sought refuge from the usual bands of nonlovers armed with the usual sticks and stones; the dried-up reflecting pool from which Ancient Guy delivered his famous treatises on the ineluctability of the world, the warts, the welts; Cleft Towers major and minor; the Dangling Gate; Bitter Hall, bolted seat of government through half a dozen energetic wars, three failed insurrections, and a couple of herd-thinning contagions; the architectural wonder of Busybee Cathedral, sole surviving structure of the Great Fire, which had virtually consumed the town, leaving the massive walls of the sanctuary permanently scorched and hard-boiling the sacred egg in the Holy Kettle; and, finally, the giant rutabaga sculpture in the center of Diatribe Park, which, for reasons not entirely clear to anyone, respectful citizens touched and kissed as they went about their citizenly business.
“This place fairly reeks of history,” said Ambience.
Graveyard shot her a glance. “You don’t honestly expect me to respond to that comment, do you?”
When the careering taxi at last lurched to an abrupt stop before the imposing edifice of the Cowled Castle, Graveyard, grateful that he and Ambience were still physically intact, pressed upon the beaming driver a pocketful of colorful currency whose actual value he still had barely a clue about. The driver let out an involuntary shriek, quickly composed himself, snapped to attention, and presented Graveyard with a smart salute, then scurried around the cab, waving the bills in the air, and showering upon amused onlookers a series of exclamations requiring no translation.
“I think you might have overtipped,” Ambience said.
“Now that we’ve gotten the opening clichés out of the way…that’s another thing I hate about traveling. Our roles are all so rigidly preprogrammed.”
Mercifully free of the tiresome burdens of luggage, they strolled into the eye-popping lobby of the grand hotel. Back in the day a genuine castle with turrets, crenellations, and ramparts, home to generations of intimately related titled folk, dozens of national artistic treasures, wandering ghosts, and fascinating historical tales—some of them actually true—the site had been repurposed into a gleaming corporate representative of that ever-popular style: Gimcrack-a-Go-Go. Along the inner walls, banks of ringing, beeping slot machines, most of which were being worked with solemn vigor. The walls themselves were papered with reproductions of currencies from around the world. Overhead, darting multicolored lasers strobed in sync to the Nether Boys’ “Don’t Do That.” Even with dawn no doubt breaking outside, the level of activity inside this windowless, atmospherically controlled pleasure zone was more reminiscent of midday anywhere else. The place was packed. With a herd of bad clothes. All denim and pastels or some tasteless mix thereof. T-shirts over heavily tattooed arms. Sweatpants covering a multitude of dietary mistakes, or not. Leisure suits on both sexes. And hats, plenty of hats, mainly baseball caps advertising various manufacturers of farming equipment. The scene resembled a block party at a trailer park.
“Comforting to see,” said Graveyard, “the rest of the world just as cheesy and clueless as we are.”
“Even the well-heeled contingent,” said Ambience. “Must be a goof of some kind.”
“What’s going on?” Graveyard asked the desk clerk. He gestured toward the obnoxious stoogefest steadily unraveling behind him. The desk clerk looked just like the second hitman in The Last Girl. You know. The one with the lazy eye.
“Well, sir, you’re in luck. Just in time for our annual SlamminSlumminSoiree.” The desk clerk’s name tag read: MR. SERVOMOTOR.
“Yes, and that is?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought you’d stayed here before. You looked familiar.”
“First time.”
“Our busiest night, frankly. As you can see. We’re approaching capacity, and that rarely occurs.”
“Everyone seems to be rather shamelessly dressing down.”
“Part of the event, sir. Patrons, guests, and friends are all encouraged to arrive in costume, ready to indulge freely in—well, how shall I put it? Bottom-rung debauchery.”
Graveyard looked at Ambience. Ambience looked at Graveyard. “We are in luck,” said Graveyard.
“You wouldn’t even have to change your clothes,” said Mr. Servomotor.
“We don’t require a formal occasion,” said Ambience. “We enjoy going quote, slummin’, unquote every goddamn day.”
“As do several of our favorite guests,” said Mr. Servomotor.
“Once everyone’s all tacky’d up,” said Graveyard, “then what do they do?”
“Well, where to begin? There are countless buffets of every type of fast food imaginable, hours of reality TV on screens conveniently situated throughout the hotel, and a multilane regulation-size bowling alley specially constructed in our basement for your ten-pin enjoyment. Also, those so inclined are encouraged to hook up with one another on whatever passing whim prevails. No guilt. No regrets. Just good clean fun, you know. Tonight at midnight we hold our annual Overdrafts, Pork Rinds, and Final Notice Lottery. First prize: a HowlinWell toaster oven. Second prize: a case of Blitzo beer. Third: a package of Sunshine & Clover hot dogs. All proceeds, of course, to charity.”
“What charity?” said Graveyard.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal that particular information.”
“Nice gig.” Graveyard glanced at Ambience. Her face was stone.
“And, of course, there’s always gambling.”
“Of course, goes without saying, right? Well, let’s check in. Don’t want to waste a minute of that precious party time.”
Again, due to their last-minute booking attempts, Graveyard and Ambience had been unable to secure the coveted Nabob’s Roost (Graveyard’s choice) and were forced to settle, on a much lower floor, for the slightly less luxe suites 253, 255, 257, and 259.
“And how will you be paying, sir?” said Mr. Servomotor.
Stashed on Graveyard’s person was the ten thousand dollars in currency he and Ambience had been permitted to bring into the country, plus several well-loaded chip-and-PIN HappyWanderer travel cards he had picked up at OmniBank on his way back from Plexi’s. He decided he wanted to impress this clown. “Cash,” he said.
“How novel,” said the clerk. “Haven’t seen any of that stuff in days. You forget people actually carry it around in their pockets.”
Their rooms offered the expected ooh-aah visual, especially considering the price point required for the satisfaction. They were spacious. The frescoed walls so tall you might have been able to insert another full story between floor and ceiling. They were aggressively opulent, the question “Guess how much I cost?” invisibly affixed to every table, chair, bed, and whirlpool bath, a plebe’s fantasy of financial royalty. The furniture, upon closer examination, seemed to have been purchased wholesale from one of those discount marts catering to the kitsch-loving rich. The whole look, in fact, reminiscent of a movie set designed to wow the locals. Between suites 253 and 255, in a narrow potted-plant corridor, was an actual sunken marble pool of fairly good size for your private use only.
“Now, that’s what I would call decadent,” said Graveyard.
“I love it,” said Ambience.
“Me, too,” said Graveyard.
They decided to save the water fun for later and, for now, before heading out to join their fellow elites on a spree, lie down for a moment and rest on one of these soft, soft, criminally soft beds. When they awoke late in the afternoon of that impossibly long day, the western sun was busy working its way through every available crack and crevice in blinds and curtains.
“Oh, my God,” said Graveyard. He took a squint at the Elaboration on his wrist. “We missed the masked paupers’ picnic.”
“There’ll probably be some overflow. Events like that have a habit of not ending cleanly.”
“Plenty of time, though, to load up on tickets for the lottery.”
“Didn’t we already win the lottery?”
“Listen, my tangerine, you can’t win too many lotteries.”
They got dressed and went downstairs to the Cowled Castle’s massively hyped three-star eatery, the Velvet Oubliette. They had the sautéed checkerfin loony on a wilted bed of crushed lolly nuts accompanied by seasoned melody sticks, meh. Washed that overpriced presumption down with a couple of bottles of undistinguished white. And decided to make the day an all-out cultural assault.
The Museum of Big Art was conveniently located, as the snide desk clerk haughtily informed them, a mere five short “walking” blocks from the hotel. “As opposed to what?” said Graveyard, “Driving blocks?” So they went. They saw everything they were supposed to see. They saw The Stoning of the Heterodox; Emperor LinenInABunch Receives Tribute from a Delegation of the Vanquished Twig People; Mother, Child, Apple, Dog; After Fortune’s Fall, the Binding of the Wounds; Pail #29; and the impressively monumental View of Ditherydoo in Midwinter Storm from the StandandSee Bridge.
“Jeeps,” said Ambience. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine its size from a reproduction in a book.”
“And so bright,” said Graveyard.
There was an entire separate room reserved for The Collocation of the Mist. The triptych covered three walls. A chattering, sharp-elbowed crowd of masterpiece consumers was busy clicking pics of each section with their ubiquitous cell phones.
“The paint’s laid on so thick,” said Ambience, “it looks like frosting. You want to lick every panel.”
“And so bright,” said Graveyard. He strolled through the rest of the museum behind the protection of his exclusive KMA sunglasses.
“But you’re missing all this astonishing color,” said Ambience.
“It still gets through,” he said. “It still astonishes.”
After absorbing the recommended dosage of cultural nutrients, they managed to book a lunch table at that nearby mega-go-to celeb hangout, the Quacking Duck. Nothing much to brag about there. Chef WindsorKnot was, unfortunately, out of town.
Which, despite the disappointing meal, somehow put them in the mood for an extended session of energetic water fun back at the hotel. They splashed around for an hour or so in their shamelessly private pool like a couple of horny porpoises. And then they fucked each other. And each other fucked them.
Then they took a nap.
When they woke, it was dark: a.m. or p.m.? They didn’t know. They didn’t care. They were rich. Time to drop some coin.
The Million Kisses Lifestyle and Casino was easily accessed from the Cowled Castle via an abrasively lit connecting tunnel lined with life-size photographs of notorious gamblers past and present, among them: TrickleDown, LintBrush, HogTheTrough, and RidingTheTrail, the guy who broke the bank twice at the Nugget Emporium (he was now banned for life) and manipulated Birches&Elms stock in an elaborate pump-and-dump scheme to get his wife a coveted position on the board of trustees ($250,000 fine, three years’ probation).
So they exited into the bright, loud world of high-stakes professional gambling. The floor was teeming. The teemees wound up to the glittering edge of delirium. Pheromones were bouncing around off the walls like invisible Ping-Pong balls. Graveyard checked his Elaboration: 4:32. In the a.m. He assumed the don’t-look-at-me-I’m-looking-at-you sort of face he imagined upper-level execs preferred to adopt while touring any of the plentiful lower orders.
“You know where I’m headed?” said Ambience.
“Try not to blow your whole wad in the first ten minutes.”
“I’ll wear a condom. What the fuck are you talking about? I wasn’t aware we were on a budget.”
“Just thinking of our total pleasure enhancement.”
“I’ll get off the way I want to get off, if it’s okay with you.”
“Fine.”
“And if you’re gonna helicopter-parent me, let’s just pack up our marbles and go home.”
“All right, all right. Do what you want.”
“I will, thank you very much.”
And off she walked. No backward glance. Farro and fiddleheads, he said to himself. Don’t let the vibe step on our luck.
The Million Kisses Lifestyle and Casino offered all the usual slots, cards, wheels, and dice other casinos came fully equipped with but had added to the mix its own unique spin on going bust in endlessly entertaining variations. The pocket laundering took place in an amphitheater-size annex attached to the casino’s east wing. Above the entrance a sign in firehouse-red neon script: A STOLEN KISS. Beneath the high domed radiant ceiling one could place a bet on anything from heads or tails and rock, paper, scissors to “traffic fatalities in latest twenty-four-hour period on the (pick your pike)” and the insanely popular Russian roulette. There were squibs, of course, and red-dye-splattered heads everywhere. Don’t Like What You See? Devise Your Own Game At Our Customer Service Counter and Wet Bar. Where there was a rather lengthy line.
Graveyard’s attention was immediately transfixed, as was everyone’s upon first entering A Stolen Kiss, by a twenty-one-foot-high glass column into which a nimble attendant, perched on an adjoining ladder, delicately placed a single feather and let it drop. How many seconds until said feather touched bottom? Place your bets now. Graveyard passed. The feather descended and it descended and descended. Action too slack? Try our nearby staghhorn-beetle jousting tournaments and turtle obstacle runs.
She was standing alone over by the End of the World booth. In a crush of interesting faces, hers seemed at once the most interesting, the most dramatically lit, singled out for his, and only his, particular close attention. For an embarrassing number of minutes it was all that he could see. Even as her striking features did keep going in and out of focus. And her bearing. Indelible. Straight as a drill sergeant’s. Such confidence, such pride.
She actually reminded him of someone of whom he was reminded too often. Her name was Aquatint. They’d met his junior year at Porcupine U. He was living in a crusty dive with five other confused punk wannabes.
He was standing at the sink one night washing a plate, mind busy exploring off-worlds, when suddenly out of nowhere this body materialized right next to him. A living human body. It was Aquatint. They’d been playing eye pong on and off since she’d moved in a couple of months ago.
“Whoa!” he said, trying to act as if he wasn’t startled.
“What’s up?” she said. Her eyes appeared to be as cooked as his.
He didn’t know what to say. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing much.”
“Think you’re about done with that one,” she said. Dry as vermouth. She pointed.
He looked down. One hand held a plate. One hand held a sponge. The sponge was going round and round on the plate. Then it stopped. “Need the sink?” he said.
