The Teratologist

by Edward Lee

  He had some big time willies right now.

  Then he thought one word, one name. Farringworth.

  Even the name sounded pinky-in-the-air, like Carnegie, Van Buren, and Rothschild. Thirty-year-old multi-billionaire, Westmore thought. It was nothing new to him; he’d been snapping pix of these caviar-scarfing snobs five years. Bluebloods. Their fucking handkerchiefs cost more than Westmore’s best suit. But what the hell was putting the butterflies in his gut? Bryant would know more.

  They worked for Blue Chip magazine, a Forbes clone that had taken off. He’d teamed with Bryant on a couple jobs in the past—Trump, Rockefeller’s kid, and some Indian Chief who owned the biggest casino in the country, in Connecticut of all places. Best thing about Bryant was he didn’t fuck around. Westmore’d snap the pix right off, and Bryant would take his notes, and they were out of there. He hoped this gig would go as well.

  He glanced around, bothered. He didn’t like being the only person in a bar; it made him feel like a man with a problem, which he supposed he had. “Hey, how come nobody’s in the bar?”

  “Because you’re here?” she answered.

  “Beautiful and witty.”

  “Hate to tell you this, killer. Not many people drink this early.”

  “Ah, there is that…”

  She meandered away just as a massive shadow crossed Westmore’s back.

  “Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”

  Westmore frowned. “Everybody seems to be telling me that today.” Bryant stepped up to the bar: black, shaved head, six-five, two-fifty, and zero body fat. The barmaid winked at him. Figures, Westmore thought.

  Bryant didn’t look like a writer. He looked like a kick-boxer or something, he looked like the kind of guy who could clear out a shit-pit bar full of rednecks with one arm. He wore a suit and tie, while Westmore wore jeans, Velcro sneakers, and a t-shirt that read CAPTAIN KIDD’S SEAFOOD MARKET, REDONDO BEACH.

  “We’re interviewing a billionaire today,” Bryant reminded him. “Did you have to get so dressed up?”

  “Come on, these Velcro sneakers cost ten bucks. At K-Mart.” Then Westmore raised his overly stiff drink. His hand was shaking.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Bryant asked next. “Even I’ve never seen you this jittery so early in the day.”

  What could Westmore say? “I’ve just…got a bad vibe, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Something’s giving me the willies about this one.”

  “Who? Farringworth? He’s just another billionaire. We see these guys all the time. They’re like sports stars, they’re all the same and they’re all assholes.”

  “The guy’s thirty years old,” Westmore pointed out. “How’d he get to be a billionaire by thirty?”

  “Spot trading on the 4X. On a average there’s about three trillion dollars a day trading. Farrington’s an institutional trader whose clients have to put up a minimum of ten million dollars per transaction. He gauges global monetary fluctuations on a minute-to-minute basis. Farrington watches everything as it happens, from New York to Tokyo, Switzerland to Hong Kong, from Dollar to Yen to Deutschmark to Guilder to Lire to Ruble. His own profits he juggles through authority loan markets, interbank markets, yearling bonds, sterling money contracts, and flexible competitive-range ventures.”

  Westmore’s face scrunched up. “Well, I guess whatever just came out of your mouth answered my question.”

  “What are you worried about? We know he’s legit. IRS and SEC audit the guy out the ass every year. What, you think he’s secretly funneling biological weapons to Iraq? He a front for white-slavers? That’s what you thought about the last guy.”

  “I don’t know what it is. I just feel weird.”

  “Westmore. You are weird. Rejoice in who you are.”

  “Boy, for a guy who complained about his drink being too stiff, you sure downed that in a hurry,” the barmaid observed of Westmore’s empty glass.

  “May I have a Corona Light, this time, please?” Westmore asked. The bad scotch scorched his stomach.

  “Isn’t that also the name for the end of a penis?” she brought to mind, then put an opened bottle in front of him.

  “That’s on the house, right?” Westmore asked.

  “No but it can be on your head if you like.”

  Bryant ordered an orange juice; when she gave it to him she said, “Now that’s on the house.”

  “It’s my karma,” Westmore excused. “But I don’t care. I’m a Kierkegaardian existentialist.” This was what Westmore always said because it was easier and less humiliating that saying I’m a fuckin’ social failure and it doesn’t bother me any more. “So, what? Farringworth’s meeting us here?”

  “His people are picking us up and taking us to his house in Bloomfield Hills. It’s the highest per-capita-income community in the world. Iacocca lives there, John Ford, Trump’s got a house, plus any CEO of any car manufacturer.”

  “What else you know about Farringworth?”

  “He did his undergrad at Cornell, then got his MBA in international finance at the Wharton School, started at Fidelity as an investment analyst, studied under Peter Lynch. Rose through the ranks, got promoted to fund manager. They make a couple million a year. Everything after that was his own creativity. Took him five years in the field, and then—“

  ”Then he’s a billionaire.”

  “I agree, it’s a little unusual for a guy to get that rich that quick.” Bryant shrugged. “But it happens.”

  “I guess some guys are just lucky,” Westmore said.

  “But not you, I’ll bet,” the barmaid chimed in. “I’ll bet you never get lucky.”

  “I got lucky today, didn’t I? I met you.”

  The barmaid rubbed the corner of her eye, with her middle finger.

  “You’re right,” Bryant agreed. “It’s your karma.”

  Westmore didn’t argue. “All right, there’s some historical info available about the guy, we know how old he is—oh, and I heard he wasn’t married.”

  “Nope, never been. No kids, no rumors about girlfriends, stuff like that. A year ago there was an unauthorized biography. The hack who wrote it claimed he interviewed lots of people who went to school with Farringworth, and they all said they never saw him with a girl.”

  “Maybe he’s a balls-across-the-nose kind’a guy,” Westmore eloquently suggested.

  “No, because no one ever saw him with a guy, either.”

  “If I had Farringworth’s loot I’d have every girl in the Atlanta Cheetah Club living with me, but this guy’s never even been seen with a chick?”

  “Odd. The guy who wrote the bio said he dug back further but found nothing about his family background, either. And there aren’t any photographs of him. College graduation pic says photo not available.”

  This perked Westmore up. “So I’ll be the first—“

  ”The first guy to officially take his picture for any public forum.”

  “What about the book? Weren’t there any pictures of him in that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Shit, I didn’t even there was a book about the guy.”

  “Well, there wasn’t, really. This is just stuff that the author told me, some old putz down in St. Pete.”

  Westmore was confused, a fairly familiar condition. “Fill me in. There was a book or there wasn’t?”

  “This guy wrote one, got a contract for it but when Farringworth heard about it, he paid the publisher ten times their projected net profits to not publish it. At least that’s what the writer said.”

  “Farrington sounds like some kind of gunned-up Howard Hughs, recluse to the max. Then all of a sudden he agrees to be interviewed for our magazine?”

  “Change of heart, who knows,” Bryant said, “or cares?”

  “Yeah, and—Christ.” Westmore looked up dreamily. “I’ll be the first to get a picture of him. Why me?”

  “Maybe it’s your karma,” Bryant alluded. “And as for the detai
ls, I guess we just sit here and wait till his people pick us up.”

  Westmore looked at his K-Mart watch. “I can’t wait too long. I want to get this done quick. My flight out is at eleven, and I want my bad-karma ass right back in this bar by seven-oh-five.”

  “Seven-oh-five?” Bryant questioned.

  “The Yankees play Boston tonight. Come on, man, get with it. The Yankees, the Yankees.”

  “Yeah, but look what’s playing now.”

  On the TV in the corner, a CNN newswoman was reciting the day’s lead story: “—when pictures of Father Thomas Corelli arrived in the mailboxes of every registered member of St. Simon’s Church. Corelli was a well-regarded pastor at the largest Catholic Church in Texas when he took a leave of absence early last month, according to diocesan authorities. However, police authorities say that the pictures depict Father Corelli engaged in various sex acts, though they wouldn’t comment further, nor would the Diocese…”

  “Looks like the Cat-Licks are taking on the chin again,” Westmore said.

  Bryant added: “Not just the Catholics. Last week there was that report of sex videos being delivered to a local TV station in Tennessee. The videos showed a guy sodomizing a collie, and the guy was a big wheel minister for the Baptist Church.”

  Westmore gaped. “You’re shitting me.”

  “No, don’t you watch the news? There’ve been several things like that going on the past few months. Another one in South Carolina, too, some Evangelist guy. Mpegs showed up on the internet. Same deal with all of them, they’d all either gone on vacation, or had a leave of absence. Organized religion is going to hell in a hand basket and fast.”

  It’s a fucked up world, Westmore thought.

  The next news-clip announced that the U.S. Air Force had dropped an 18,000-pound “daisy-cutter” bomb by mistake on a UN food storage facility in Afghanistan.

  Yeah. Really fucked up…

  “Mr. Bryant, Mr. Westmore.” The voice was crisp, enunciated, and it took them by surprise. “I trust you haven’t been waiting long?”

  The pair turned quickly. Westmore stood up.

  “I’m Philip Michaels, Mr. Farringworth’s personal adjutant.” Slim, short dark hair, sharp dark suit. “If you’ll be so kind as to follow me, I’ll take you gentlemen up to the house.” Westmore fumbled for his camera bag, was about to leave, when the barmaid reminded, “Hey, dad, that’ll be ten-fifty for the drinks.”

  Ho! At least kiss me first, honey! Remind me not to drink in airports… Westmore hurriedly paid, left her a buck tip, was about to pull off again, but then she said, “Don’t forget your receipt. For your taxes. Never give Uncle Sam a break is what I say.”

  Yeah, yeah— He took the receipt and half-trotted out of the bar. When he went to stuff the slip of paper in his pocket he noticed that the barmaid had written her phone number on the back of it. Well how do you like that?

  Maybe his karma was improving.

  He caught up to Bryant and Michaels as they were exiting the doors at the baggage. The writer and “adjutant” were conversing casually. Westmore couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he paused to wonder a possibility: Maybe Farringworth’s from England, because his assistant, Michaels, had one hell of an obvious British accent. He leaned in closer to hear what Michaels and his partner were talking about.

  “So what’s Farringworth like anyway? What’s it like working for the guy?”

  “Those questions, unfortunately, I cannot answer. You will have to see for yourself.”

  “Are you serious?” Bryant asked, with his eyebrows raised suspiciously.

  “Quite. I am under contract.”

  “So you can’t tell me anything?”

  “Well, I can tell you that if you are interviewing him in the hopes of finding some new business strategies you are wasting your time. Farringworth is somewhat of a savant.”

  “You don’t just make over 300 million in your first year of trading, double that the second year and every year thereafter, without a solid grasp of the global market.”

  “Uh huh. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Mr. Farrington’s trading methods are mostly instinctual. He’s like a good tennis player. He has a feel for where the ball is and where it’s going to be the minute it’s served and he only has to get himself into the right position to benefit.”

  “Yeah, it may sound simple but we’re talking about multiple millions of dollars maneuvered through a constantly fluctuating global economic structure. It’s not as simple as eenie meenie minie moe.”

  “Well, it would seem that for Mr. Farrington it is that simple.”

  “Hold on! Hold on one second!” Westmore spoke up, “Are you saying that we’re not going to get anything from this guy? You mean we came all the way out here to get an interview so boring and unenlightening that the minute we get back to the office our editor will just toss the whole thing into the trash?”

  “You may not get the interview that you were hoping for, but I assure you that it will be neither boring nor unenlightening.” Michaels replied and the way he grinned made Westmore’s skin suddenly feel as if it was too loose on him and a draft had slipped beneath it. They rode the rest of the way to the estate in silence. Michaels never stopped grinning.

  (II)

  Farringworth rose from the pool and stood naked on the marble tiles watching the droplets of water cascade over his thin, athletic physique, yet another thing that he barely had to work at. He had the metabolism of a teenager. Each drop of the heavily chlorinated water traced the outline of his perfectly defined musculature as it raced toward the floor. He flexed and the venous striated muscles became more pronounced like the “Anatomical Man” charts of the human muskuloskeletal that hung in hospital exam rooms.

  John Farringworth was beautiful and he knew it. He was a flawless example of God’s perfection, but he knew that creation was far from perfect. Betty smiled at him. Her dazzling diamond blue eyes sparkling out of a tragically pretty face attached to a monstrously malcrafted body. He watched the obese legless, armless thing glide through the water and he knew that God made mistakes. Betty was Farringworth’s physical antithesis. A perfect example of God’s creativity gone awry.

  Unlike many severely deformed people who had been left to rot in hospitals with so little mental stimulation that their brains had turned to oatmeal, Betty was a near genius. She was Farringworth’s secret weapon in the world of economy. A vast Intellect encased in a near useless overstuffed sack of flesh.

  The young billionaire sat down by the edge of the pool and watched as the morbidly deformed “Walrus woman” that he’d rescued from a Russian freak show, undulated her girth through the water towards him. She had never been allowed much exercise in the circus save for her walrus tricks, balancing balls on her nose, catching fish in her mouth, and blowing horns. When his people discovered her, her circus handlers had her displayed in a shallow pool that Betty seldom entered for fear of drowning. Her inactivity had led to an excess of adipose tissue that put her weight well over 350lbs. Without arms or legs the extra fat gave her the appearance of giant water balloon.

  Betty had been born with no limbs of any kind but rather one long aquiline torso ending in two stumps that had been intended to be thighs but had rather merged together into something that looked more like a tail. Wedged between them her sex was barely accessible. Farrington knew. He had tried to gain access to it on more than one occasion. Now he contented himself with the phenomenal blowjobs she could perform. Since he’d taught her to swim she’d not only lost quite a bit of weight but she’d also learned to hold her breath for a miraculously long time and since he’d started raping her esophagus with his cock, she’d completely lost her gag reflex. She could now deep throat like nobody’s business.

  Her gigantic breasts and mountainous ass were his two other favorite pleasure points. Betty had so many ripples and folds that just about any spot on her body could adequately substitute for pussy when properly lubricated. She was happy to pleasure h
im, to show her gratitude for the love and care that he gave her, and John took his fill, attacking her throat and ass on an almost daily basis, except when he was saving his strength for the angels. He loved to watch as she sucked down his seed with childlike enthusiasm, his erection throbbing in her throat, her lips buried in his pubic hair, and her eyes looking up into his for approval. He loved it when she smiled up at him after he’d bathed her face in semen and it dribbled off her lips and eyelids and even the tip of her nose. She never looked happier.

  When John Farringworth’s assistant had brought her here she could not move on her own power at all except to lift her head. She was so enclustered with fat that she was little more than a formless corpulent blob scarcely recognizable as human. Her skeleton was smothered beneath hundreds of pounds of useless tissue. She was a tragedy that utterly delighted Farrington. This was clearly an example of something that was not meant to be; an obvious mistake. “And on the 9th day God created Betty and said: ‘Ooops!’”

  Her body, which was now rather sausage shaped, looked then like that of a bloated leech engorged with blood. Her tremendous breasts had been nearly squashed flat and were blistered and calloused from lying on them. They had showed her how much lighter she was in the pool and had taught her to swim. The first day she was able to propel herself through the pool on her own power she had squealed with delight. That same night John seduced/molested her for the first time and she’d been more than willing to show her appreciation. Now she practically lived in the pool, waiting for John to come swim with her each day so that she could pleasure him. But today he didn’t seem interested.