The kitchen door swings open and one of the waiter screams. ‘He’s feeding! He’s feeding!’
‘Oh shit!’
Adam and the chef push out of the door to find Governor Christie with Eve’s arm in his enormous mouth. He’s slurping at her arm, his eyes fixated on the former governor of Texas, who is standing on the table before the enormous governor and speaking in a Texas drawl.
‘Eve!’ Adam latches onto her waist, tugging with all his might.
‘Please, Governor, stop!’ the chef implores. ‘She’s one of our best waitresses!’
Governor Christie is now too busy watching the man from Texas Two Step on top of a Mexican flag to acknowledge the chef’s plea. ‘Export or deport – send’em somewhere!’ Rick Perry hollers, throwing his hands in the air as if they’re a pair of pistols.
‘Here’s our chance!’ Adam climbs onto the table, runs up the governor’s sleeve. As Governor Christie’s jowls move up and down in laughter, Adam uses all his weight to pry his girlfriend free from the obtuse man’s blubbery lips. She falls, her arm covered in spittle. He abseils down the governor’s body using the back of his chair.
‘Did he bite?’
‘No,’ she says, on the verge of tears. ‘He just sucked.’
***
Back in the kitchen, Adam lifts his girlfriend’s hand, wiping excess spit on his apron. ‘All right, baby, we need to keep serving food. Take a smoke break if you want.’
‘I’m still mad at you, by the way.’
‘Why?’
She turned her shoulder to him. ‘If I have to tell you, it means you haven’t learned your lesson.’
‘How does that work again?’ he asks as they return to the kitchen.
‘What did it feel like?’ a waitress named Maddie asks Eve.
‘It felt… gooey.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ Maddie says with a wince. ‘He almost ate my leg once. Actually was able to nibble on some of the toes. It’s why I walk with a limp. Luckily, the state has a fund for these types of tragedies. Hopefully they won’t pull the plug during the next budget meeting.’
‘Going for a smoke.’ Eve is out the backdoor before Adam can stop her.
‘Aren’t you going after her?’ Maddie asks. ‘Or do you… want to hang here with me?’
‘I probably should go out there.’
Maddie laughs nervously. ‘You should. It’s what good boyfriends do.’
Adam finds Eve out near the dumpster, smoking and wiping spittle off her arm. ‘Let me help,’ he says.
‘Still mad at you…’ She blows a cloud of smoke in his face.
‘Thanks,’ he says, taking the cigarette from her. ‘So you’re mad about something, but I should know what it is, right?’
‘How hard is this for you to understand? You liked her photos again.’
‘Seriously, this is what you’re mad about?’
‘Ummmm… how else should I feel? She’s your ex.’
‘We never dated.’
‘You fucked.’
‘Dating and fucking are two completely different things…’ Adam thinks for a moment. ‘Or at least they should be.’
‘Pig.’
‘Come on, I didn’t like her photos.’
‘Would you like me to show you which photo you liked exactly?’
Adam’s hands come up. ‘No! I mean, hasn’t this gone on long enough. I’m with you now. We’ve been dating… how long?’
‘How long?’ She takes the cigarette back from him. ‘You seriously don’t remember?’
‘Just kidding! It’s been six months.’
‘Six months, six days…’
‘Six hours? The mark of the beast!’
She smirks. ‘Seven hours.’
‘Well, anyway, you’re my girl and that’s all that matters.’ He claps her on the shoulder as she rolls her eyes at him. It’s hard to stay mad at Adam. With his elfin features and perfect teeth, there hasn’t been a time when he wasn’t worshiped by at least a handful of ladies. ‘You’re all that matters to me,’ he reminds her.
‘Is that so?’ Eve drops the cigarette to the ground, stomps it out with her shoe. ‘If I’m your girl, how do you explain this?’
She shows Adam her Instagram feed. Sure enough, Adam has liked his ex-fuck buddy’s picture, a selfie taken using a sepia tone. He’s also written a comment – looks cute.
‘I meant the sepia tone looks cute, not her!’ he says, his face filling with blood.
‘The sepia tone looks cute? You do know that it takes absolutely no effort to make a photo look vintage on Instagram, don’t you?’
‘What I meant was that the tone really added some body to the photo…’ he grits his teeth. ‘That’s not what I’m trying to say! The sepia tone adds volume to her hair!’
‘Volume to her hair? The picture barely shows her hair – it mostly shows her cleavage.’
‘Does it? I didn’t see that part…’
‘Adam, you are such a bastard. The picture is essentially a selfie from her eyes down with a good dosage of cleavage. In fact, if I were dividing the picture into quadrants, I’d say that her tits cover nearly sixty-five percent of the picture.’
‘What? Really? Let me see that again…’
Eve pushes past him. ‘Fuck you, Adam, seriously.’
***
Inside the kitchen the chef – a short man, I forgot to mention this – is being hoisted onto a bar stool so he can properly glaze a ham the size of a 1996 Honda Civic. He winks at Eve as she enters the room, winks as he sprays the glaze from what appears to be a white bag simply labeled GLAZE (CONTAINS HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP).
‘I just vomited in my mouth a little,’ Eve says. ‘It’s a ham by the way, not a two dollar hooker.’
The chef laughs as he continues to glaze the ham salaciously. ‘A two dollar hooker wouldn’t let you do this!’
‘Three dollars maybe,’ one of the illegal dishwashers says.
‘All of you are pigs.’
‘Feeding a big pig to a big pig,’ the illegal jokes.
The chef shoots the Mexican man a dirty look. ‘Watch it, Pedro. Don’t talk about the governor of our state that way! He’s the reason you can come to America and prosper enough to build a villa back in Mexico!’
‘He is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, señor.’
Adam enters, his shirt untucked.
‘Tuck your shirt in,’ the chef commands. ‘What the hell happened out there? Did you two have some make up sex or something?’
Eve scowls; Adam makes a throat-cutting gesture at the chef.
‘OK the ham is ready!’ The chef waves his arm around his head. ‘Onward!’
The three illegals and two waiters get behind a giant food cart, easily the size of three dining room tables combined, and start pushing. The chef climbs to the top of the ham, sitting on it like Major Kong from Dr. Strangelove. He procures a whip from the front of his chef’s uniform and begins cracking it at the illegals and the two unfortunate waiters, one of whom is Adam.
‘Careful!’ Adam calls up the chef.
‘I’m just getting started! Get this ham to the governor!’
They wheel the gargantuan ham into the dining area and the chef – who is even smaller than you imagine, but not quite a dwarf – hops down and bows at Governor Christie.
‘Dinner is served, good sirs!’
The governor bellows, ‘Eat all you want, boys! This one’s coming out of the state pension funds that I cut earlier this year!’
He swipes the chef aside with his beefy paw and the chef slams into the wall. The chef is up moments later, helped to the kitchen by one of the illegals. Next to the governor, Rick Perry takes off his glasses and stares with pride at the ham. ‘Now that,’ he declares in an almost decipherable accent, ‘now that’s a real, Texas-sized pig.’
His glasses go back on and he pulls out a pistol with a laser sight, aiming it at the huge hunk of pig flesh. The little red bead from the gun trac
es up and down the ham until he finds a portion he likes. One shot later and a hunk of pig flesh doused in the chef's special glaze is twirling through the air slow motion. Like a pro, Perry hops on top of the table landing on one foot. He does a quick pirouette, catching the ham in his mouth and bows to the governor.
Governor Christie roars in approval. His henchman join in, clapping and nodding enthusiastically. They start banging their fists against the table, hooting and hollering. More! More! More!
‘Bring out the entertainment!’ Rick Perry shouts, unaware of the fact that there is white ham glaze dripping from his chin (yes, it looks like cum).
‘There is no entertainment!’ One of the governor’s men responds.
***
Back in the kitchen, the chef is laying on a metallic prep table with a collapsed lung. One of the illegals is by his side, holding his hand and praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Meanwhile, the waitress named Maddie has taken over, shouting orders at the other waiters and waitresses.
‘We must not fail!’ she screams, finally coming to grips with the point of her existence. ‘The governor is hungry and we must, by all means people, we must feed him! Good job…’ She looks at the illegal praying next to the chef.
‘My name is Ricardo,’ he says, stopping mid-prayer.
‘English, por favor!’
‘Me llamo Ricardo?’
Maddie beams with pride. ‘Yes, Yamo Ricado! Everyone give him a round of applause for rescuing the chef!’
As a few people clap, Eve ducks into the refrigerator unit to check her Instagram feed. Somehow, Adam has managed to like another one of his ex-girlfriend’s photos in the last three minutes. In this photo she’s wearing a pair of sunglasses with golden rims and is making a kissy-face at the camera. If Eve didn’t own an iPhone 6.215 (an upgrade from the 6.214 released to great fanfare last fall even though there weren’t really any improvements), she would have smashed the phone right then and there.
‘There you are,’ Adam says, dipping into the refrigerator behind her. It’s cold inside; their breaths are suddenly visible. ‘Everyone is applauding Yamo Ricado.’
‘Who?’
‘One of the dishwashers.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He rescued the chef after the governor swiped him aside with his hand. Now he’s praying for him.’
‘So?’
‘What is it now?’ he asked.
‘Do you love me?’
‘I more-than-like you. How’s that?’
Adam doesn’t use the word love unless it was in reference to food or beer. This had been his dad’s advice, actually. Son, if you start throwing the word love around towards anything but food, beer or a good dog, you’re bound to get in trouble. Keep that word free from your lips. Got me?
‘You more-than-like me?’ Eve sighs. ‘You really are hopeless, you know, like… like Charlie Brown or something.’
‘I always thought of myself as Schroeder.’
The refrigerator door swings open and Maddie sticks her head in. ‘Hey lovebirds,’ she says sharply, ‘we are serving another ham and the chef’s lung has collapsed and we need someone else to whip the ham-pushers.’
‘Is that a necessary task?’ Eve asks.
A wolfish grin appears on Maddie’s face. ‘Eve, you’re the whipper; Adam, you’re on ham-pushing duty.’
‘Perfect!’
Eve is out of the walk-in refrigerator before Adam can say anything else to her. ‘Thanks a lot, Maddie.’
‘Stop liking other girl’s photos on Instagram,’ she says with a wink.
***
Crack!
Or if that sound doesn’t work for you, Whip!
Eve is on top of the Ford Pinto-sized ham, her legs spread on either side of the glistening hog as she whips at Adam, a waiter named Dustin, and the three illegals pushing the giant hunk of swine flesh towards the governor and his hungry henchmen. The whip lashes against the back of Adam’s back and he screams.
‘That’s for liking her photo yesterday!’ Eve calls down to him. ‘And this one is for today!’
The whip connects again with his back and Adam’s knees nearly buckle. ‘Today?’ he asks in his painful delirium. ‘Did you say… today?’
Adam is certain he hasn’t like any Instagram photos today, but the time to protest quickly passes as Governor Christie’s beefy paw comes forward, sweeping over the top of the giant ham. His hand latches onto Eve, whom the governor assumes is an edible decoration.
The governor quickly swallows Eve.
‘NOOOOOO!’ Adam watches in horror as Governor Christie licks his lips.
In an instant Adam is scaling the giant ham, trying to get the governor’s attention. ‘Look at me!’ He screams at the top of his lungs. ‘You ate my girlfriend! YOU ATE MY GIRLFRIEND!’
Governor Christie is too busy digesting Eve to notice Adam jumping up and down on top of his ham.
‘Whooooo-eeeee!’ Rick Perry shouts. ‘That right there looks like a Mexican jumping bean!’
Before anyone can stop the former governor of Texas, he pulls his pistol with the laser sight out and begins shooting at Adam’s feet.
‘Jump boy! Jump! This here is better than forced HPV vaccinations! Look at that little queer dance. Dance you little queer! Dance like the devil’s in you!’
‘Stop shooting at me you Texas hick!’ Adam bellows. With each bullet, ham flesh cartwheels into the air, landing on the plates of Governor Christie’s henchman. Glaze is flying too, coating people’s faces in a way that would excite even the most discerning Japanese porn connoisseur.
Out of options, Adam slides down the ham and runs back to the kitchen.
‘Where are you going?’ Maddie yells after him.
‘I’m getting the bacon suit. The governor ate Eve!’
***
‘All right,’ Adam tells the three illegals, one of whom is named Yamo Ricado (or something). ‘I need you three to suit me up.’
‘You’re going in?’ Yamo asks, still grieving for the chef but almost ready to move on.
‘That fat bastard ate my girlfriend.’
Adam spreads his arms wide and the three illegals get to work. Using industrial-sized bacon slices (each strip essentially the size of a large beach towel), they begin wrapping Adam until he is completely covered in bacon. ‘Scuba mask,’ he says. ‘And hurry.’
They put a scuba mask on his face, hooking the breathing tube to what appears to be a garden hose. ‘Extra hose for Eve too,’ he tells them. ‘The pockets of air in Governor Christie’s belly will be cleared the next time he farts. We can only hope that he hasn’t passed gas in the last two minutes. Otherwise… she may be dead.’
‘We’re ready,’ Yamo Ricado says.
‘Good, I’ll need you to stay close by to feed me the breathing tubes, mine first then Eve’s.’
‘No problemo, amigo.’
‘Now there’s some Spanish I can understand.’ Adam smiles at the three illegals as he tests the dexterity of his new bacon costume. ‘Listen, I just want you guys to know, if I don’t make it out, I wish you three the best of luck in my country. Also…’
‘Yes?’ Yamo Ricado asks.
‘I’m sorry Americans are such dicks to Mexicans. There really is no reason for it aside from class warfare, fear of outsiders, fear of learning a fucking second language, fear of fear, fear of faulty Catholic over-breeding and… well face it, you three are from Mexico, correct?’
‘I was born in Mexico and raised here,’ Yamo Ricado informs him. ‘I’ve lived here all my life and I have no idea what I’d do if I were sent back.’
‘Well, then it shouldn’t hurt your feelings when I tell you that Mexico is a shithole. I mean sure, there are some nice places, but for real, you guys should take a page out of Canada’s playbook. It isn’t that hard to keep the place nice.’
‘There are many complicated social issues facing modern day Mexico,’ Yamo Ricado says. ‘The current condition is a reflection of this, and can’t
be summed up in a comparison to Canada. There are also places in Mexico that outshine the beauty of the States.’
‘English, Yamo Ricado, English.’
‘Your girlfriend is being digested by Governor Christie. If he farts, all the air pockets in his stomach will disappear and she’ll suffocate to death.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Adam says to Yamo Ricado, ‘Let’s get out there then!’
Covered in industrial-sized bacon strips, Adam sprints to the dining area with Yamo Ricado following close behind him. He takes a running leap for the ham, springboards off it, and lands on Governor Christie’s plate.
‘Eat me!’ he shouts, waving his hands.
The governor ignores him, so enthralled he is by what Rick Perry is saying about his new prescription glasses.
‘You wear glasses, people think you’re smart. It’s as simple as that! Hell, if my run for president doesn’t work out, I might open one of them there online universities. There’s a market for it, you know. I’ll call it…’ The Texan’s bushy eyebrows scrunch together as he thinks of a name for his fictitious university. ‘Well hell, I’ll need to consult the good ol’ Bible for a name. I’m sure one’s in there. God knows this country needs more Christians. With Muslims in the White House and gays parading around getting married and stoners smoking the wacky weed and big brother telling me I have to pay more taxes to fund abortions and liberal college researchers and… and…’
Adam waves his hands furiously at Governor Christie as he screams, ‘IGNORE THE REDNECK FROM TEXAS. I AM BACON, EAT ME!’
‘Light the bacon,’ Yamo Ricado says, who is now next to Adam holding both breathing hoses.
‘I don’t have a lighter!’ Adam cries.
‘Don’t worry…’ Yamo Ricado sparks his lighter and runs it along Adam’s bacon-wrapped arm. Not two seconds later, Governor Christie’s giant nostrils twitch at the smell of boiling pig fat. His watery eyes fall upon Adam and he plucks him in the air.
‘Don’t chew!’ Adam yells as he’s tossed into the governor’s mouth. Down the governor’s throat he goes, swallowed whole. Having never been swallowed before, our youthful protagonist (with $75,000 in student loan debt and a degree in Philately – didn’t mention that earlier) is quite inexperienced when it comes to being swallowed. You see, there are methods to being swallowed by an obese person that make the process less painful and more fluid. For one, don’t stick your hands out. Hands should come straight to your side as illustrated in Picture Number One:
Dear NSA: A Collection of Politically Incorrect Short Stories Page 7