by Andrew Fox
“You have a genetic analyzer with you?” He says nothing. If only I could get him to turn away — “Running the hair and fat through the analyzer is completely unnecessary. Proof of the fat’s identity is easily visible. Surely you’re aware that my father’s cannula accidentally punctured Elvis’s stomach cavity. Take a closer look at the fat in that jar, and you’ll see partially digested chunks of Elvis’s breakfast mixed in.”
He picks up the jar again. This is my chance. “Here, let me turn on that lamp so you can see better.”
I turn on the standing floor lamp next to my couch, then back away as he steps into the light. He holds the jar beneath the lamp shade, searching for what I described. Finally, his back is turned. I reach onto my desk for the commemorative plaque from the city, a gift celebrating my twentieth anniversary as a Good Humor Man. It’s marble, heavy as a bowling ball.
“I do not see any particles of food matter, Doctor.”
“Look closer,” I say. No good; he’s turning back toward me. There’s a spare remote control for the vid-9 unit near the edge of my desk. I punch the Play button. The voice of the unctuous MannaSantos narrator blares from the meeting room next door —
“Beware the Fat Monster! In the days before your parents were born, the people of the rest of the world looked at America and laughed —”
His face jerks away from me. “What trickery is this?”
I lift the marble plaque above my head and clout him with all my strength.
Got him! But he drops Emily’s jar — the thick glass bounces off the lamp’s edge and shatters on the floor. I hadn’t thought — oh God, Emily’s remains are all over the carpet, mixed with broken glass…
He fell onto the couch. He’s lying still. Not dead — he’s still breathing.
Emily. I’m so sorry. No part of you ever deserved to be used like this. But you saved me, darling. You saved me.
At least for the time being. I nudge the shoulder of the man who has deranged my life. He doesn’t stir. But he’s brutally strong; he won’t remain unconscious forever.
Killing him now would be easy… technically easy. In this house, scalpels are more numerous than spoons. And I know exactly where to cut him. But I just can’t do it. If I had anesthesia equipment… no, leaving him unattended while under anesthesia would be the same as killing him. What else do I have in my clinic?
My examining table has restraining straps. I could strap him down. And shunt him with a glucose feed so he wouldn’t starve to death while he’s waiting for someone to find him.
But before I move him, I have to take care of Emily. I couldn’t bear to smear her adulterated remains into the carpet while dragging the Ottoman to my clinic. I fetch a flexible spatula, soup ladle, and bowl from the kitchen. I know she’d be laughing if she could watch me scooping her up like spilled pieces of jellied gefilte fish. I wish I could hear her laughter right now.
Thank heaven my examination table has a hydraulic adjuster that lets me lower it to knee level. The three straps seem unnervingly thin as I draw them tightly across my captive’s broad chest and legs, securing them with angry yanks. I reluctantly clean and dress his head wound. Then I rig up a glucose drip. His veins are clearly delineated, steel blue like a map of rivers feeding into the Black Sea.
I bury the bowl of Emily’s exposed remains in the back yard, beneath an elm tree we planted together. She loved the night sky, tracing the constellations. The cool desert wind quickly dries my sweat, leaving only the salt behind on my skin.
They expect me to have the Elvis. Maybe the only way for me to stay alive will be for me to actually have it again. But more important than having the Elvis as a potential shield is this: Nothing has been right, nothing has been good since the day I sold my birthright. Selling it didn’t save Emily. Nothing I bought with that money has brought me satisfaction or joy.
I used to bring the Elvis into the daytime darkness of my mother’s bedroom, hoping that its invisible rays would somehow banish the wraiths draining her spirit. And they did. For at least a little while, its magic returned a living, caring mother to the scared little boy who needed her. I want to call on that magic again.
I need to call on that magic again.
My old life has withered into a dried scab on the back of my hand. New, unseen flesh has grown underneath. It’s time to pull the scab away and learn my new skin.
PART II
All the King’s Fat
CHAPTER 7
“I’m going to Graceland
Graceland
In Memphis, Tennessee
I’m going to Graceland…”
Paul Simon’s been spinning on the car’s stereo for the last five hours. I pull into Albuquerque well after dark. The first three exits off the highway into the city are blocked, so I take the fourth, the Central Avenue exit. Which takes me onto a still-living portion of old Route 66. The Mother Road. Adobe motels with glowing Art Deco neon signs beckon to me, images from sepia-toned postcards.
The snowfall’s gotten much heavier. Good thing I’ve acquired a sense of how to drive on the white stuff. Growing expertise or no, I’m beyond eager to get off the road. Any of these motels will do. I choose the Pueblo 66 Motor Inn, based more on the quality of its neon sign than anything else. Just three cars are parked in the central courtyard. At least I won’t have any trouble getting a room.
I expect to see a Native American waiting for me behind the reception desk. But the man behind the desk is tall and blond, maybe ten years younger than me, with a pinched, severe face.
‘“Evening,” he says. “Bet you’re happy to be getting off the road.”
That’s an understatement. “Hello.” I brush flecks of snow off my shoulders and stare enviously at the fireplace. “Do any of your rooms have fireplaces like that one?”
“Some do. Fireplace rooms cost a little more — ten a night more than our standard rate.”
“Which is?”
“Twenty-nine ninety-five double occupancy. Local calls free. Special movies extra. Will you be paying cash or charge?”
Out of habit, I almost pull a credit card out of my wallet. But I hesitate. Charges on a card can be traced. Besides, the money I took from the trunk of the Ottoman’s car gives me an extremely generous cash cushion. At least until the time comes to bargain for the Elvis.
“Cash,” I say. “And I’ll take a room with a fireplace.”
“It’s worth it. Staying one night?”
I nod. “Unless this storm doesn’t let up.” I’m bone-tired and hungry. “I need dinner, but I don’t want to get back in the car. Do you serve meals here, or is there somewhere I can walk to?”
“We only do breakfasts here. There’s a place called Mona’s a block-and-a-half away, to the right up Central. Food’s decent, nothing fancy.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I take my key and walk toward the door.
“Hey, mister? You gonna want a woman? For later, I mean.”
I stop and turn around, thinking maybe I misheard. “I’m sorry —?”
“I can get you a woman for the night, or just part of the night.” His expression remains dull and matter-of-fact, enlivened a little by expectation of extra profit. “Indian or white, your choice. Good rates. I could have her waiting for you when you get back from dinner. It’s a cold night.”
We’re shrinking back to our roots, the whole country. Albuquerque has become a rough-edged frontier town again. “No, uh, thank you. The fireplace should keep me warm enough.”
The food at Mona’s smells much better than “decent” as I walk through the door of the small, dimly lit adobe diner. I don’t need to read the menu; I’ll indulge in the enchiladas, tostadas, and taquitos I remember so well from lunches with my father in downtown Los Angeles… even if the beef is flavorless Leanie-Lean, and the cheese is denatured.
While waiting for my dinner, I peruse the dusty bric-a-brac for sale in the back of the restaurant. Lots of vintage Southwestern kitsch: Lone Ranger Big Little Books, be
aded necklaces, kachina dolls. Something metallic and familiar-looking sits near the back of a shelf. A portable Realité Magique unit. God… I haven’t seen one in years. I pick it up, look for the place of manufacture. Lyons, France. It’s one of the early ones. Not only that — it’s been illegally jacked, just like mine was; the unit that Mitch made me throw away when I first became a Good Humor Man. Whoever owned this wanted to create his own private fantasias. Despite the risks of addiction, despite the dangers to his brain.
Holding this thing brings back so many memories. Not all of them bad, but all dangerously seductive.
The food, when it comes, is tasteless as sand. Not the fault of the cook, or even the ingredients… guilt doesn’t make for a pleasant dinner companion. And I’ve got two: the guilt of having just purchased the RM unit, and the guilt of having not driven directly to Harri. This morning, when I awoke in Yucca, it would’ve been a straight shot north to Las Vegas. Maybe three or four hours at most. But I told myself I didn’t want to bring my troubles down on Harri’s head, in addition to her own problems.
I’ll call her as soon as I get back to the motel. It’s not too late to turn around and go north to Las Vegas. If she needs me. If she wants me.
Her voice on the phone is fogged with sleep. “Louis… is that you? I tried calling you back last night… left you a message to call me… let me call you back in a little while, okay?”
I’m so relieved to hear her voice. “You’re all right?”
“Sure I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You cut our conversation short yesterday. When those men drove up-”
“It was nothing,” she says quickly, all traces of sleep gone from her voice. “Let me call you back in a few, okay?”
“I’m not home.”
“Where are you?”
“New Mexico.” I could tell her I’m on vacation. But just like fourteen years ago, I can’t lie to her. “I had to leave Rancho Bernardino.”
Her voice reverts to cautious distrust. “What’s going on?”
How do I explain without sounding like a psychiatric patient? “I got in trouble with my Good Humor Men squad. An enemy ratted out some family members of my mine —”
“Since when have you had enemies?”
“Let me finish… when I tried to protect my family from having their health cards taken away, the other members of my squad turned against me. I’ve lost my practice. I’ve been publicly disgraced. So I’m taking the opportunity to… well, to recover a family heirloom.”
“What! All this in one day? What deity did you piss off?”
She doesn’t want to talk anymore on her home phone. She doesn’t say why, but I’m sure she’s afraid her line is tapped. Waiting for her to call back, I end up staring at the Remington print hanging on the wall. A Plains Indian hunts a bison with bow-and-arrow in the glow of a glorious purple sunset. Another ten years of population melt and it’ll seem like white settlers never set foot on the Plains.
I wonder how they’re doing. The Indians. So much of their traditional diet is made up of corn. So are they wasting away faster than the rest of us? Or has their high communal incidence of obesity provided them a shield, a temporary bulwark of flesh against the workings of the Metaboloft gene?
The phone rings. I pick it up before the first tone fades. “You found a safe phone?”
“Safe in one respect, at least,” Harri answers, a strained laugh in her voice. “I’m at a pay phone outside a titty bar, about two miles from my house. I didn’t think I’d be much competition to the girls inside, but most of the ‘guests’ here are about your age, and, well — you should see the wolf-looks I’m getting from these men as they walk to their cars!”
“If they’re staring at you, they at least have good taste.”
Her laugh is more full-bodied this time. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Louis. Now, how the hell could you get yourself run out of town? Didn’t I always tell you you had no business being involved with those Good Humor roughnecks? I knew something evil like this was bound to happen!”
Oh really? Someone is engaging in a little selective memory adjustment. When we first started dating, Harri was perfectly happy to be hooking up with a Good Humor Man. “Thanks so much for the support and sympathy.”
Nervous, I flip through the pages of a Gideon Bible I found on the nightstand. It falls open to a bookmark. No, not a bookmark; a business card from one of the local “warmth” girls.
“Okay, guess I deserved that,” Harri apologizes, more quickly than I expected she would. “It sounds like you’ve gone through a real shit-storm. I’m just disappointed…”
“Why?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, if I end up needing a whistle-blower, you’d be a hell of a lot more useful to me if you hadn’t become a disgraced fugitive.”
“I get you.” I take a closer look at the card. The drawing of a vulva is explicit in a raw way, but also very well done. “It certainly wasn’t my intention to ruin my reputation.”
“I know. I know.”
I put the card back and close the Bible. “You never finished telling me about the Metaboloft gene.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Where did I stop yesterday?”
“We were talking about starving deer. I caught one knocking over my trash cans. How are the deer being affected by Metaboloft? Corn isn’t normally part of their diet.”
“No, it’s not. Your deer aren’t eating corn. That’s the most frightening aspect of this infestation. It’s gone way, way past the corn fields.”
Although what she’s telling me isn’t unexpected, my stomach feels like I’m spinning out on snow-covered I-40. “How far? It’s gotten into the grass?”
“At this point, I don’t have any idea how far. The geo-genetic map of the infestation changes month to month, and we haven’t even begun studying how far insects and wind currents might be spreading it outside the United States. What I do know is that the Metaboloft gene — we lifted it from an Amazonian blowfish — is exceptionally social. The little son-of-a-bitch really sleeps around. Its ability to finagle itself into the genetic structure of other plant forms is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“What about safeguards? Surely MannaSantos must’ve known about their creation’s proclivities before they put it into the hands of farmers?”
“Of course we knew, Louis! We aren’t idiots. The project managers recognized what the new gene could do, and they built a virtual fortress-wall of inert proteins around its location in the altered gene-string, to ensure it would be neutralized if it was ever carried to other plant forms. Sort of a custom-fitted condom. Not only that, but the company directed that all farmers approved to grow Metaboloft corn could only grow the product on limited acreage, and that acreage had to be surrounded by thick belts of non-related crops, like soybeans, wheat, or cotton.”
My father’s eyes float in the shimmering air above the fireplace, seeming to grow bigger as the flesh around his eye sockets melts away. “So what happened?”
“What else? The unexpected. The confluence of X-factors that nobody was able to foresee. All of the field testing on the Metaboloft corn was performed in hermetically sealed environments. The scientists tried to make these sealed environments as nearly identical to natural growing environments as possible. And these trials only took place after months’ worth of simulations had been run on the company’s bank of supercomputers. Everything looked dandy. Normal precautions kept the blowfish gene from spreading, and in the exceedingly rare instances when it did, the protein condom sat on top of it like the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Three years ago we signed up our first farmers. They made record profits. Public acceptance of the new brand was quicker and more enthusiastic than that of any other product in MannaSantos’s history. Our stock price took off like a rocket. Everybody was happy as pigs in perfumed shit. Yours truly included, since my bonus was composed entirely of preferred stock options.
“But a funny th
ing happened on the way to paradise. You remember that ozone hole that appeared over parts of Iowa two summers ago?”
“Vaguely… I remember reading something about a billion dollars’ worth of corn getting a bad sunburn.”
“Yes. Well, the Metaboloft corn actually proved to be hardier than standard varieties. The intensified dose of ultraviolet rays didn’t seem to harm it at all. Not visibly, at least. But later tests showed the product had undergone internal changes. The protein condom surrounding the blowfish gene had been weakened. Just enough to be susceptible to one other environmental factor we’d thought we’d guarded adequately against — the B3Z9 secretion found on the legs of local bees. That’s the stuff which helps make bees ‘sticky’ and more effective at carrying pollen from one plant to another. Under lab conditions, the B3Z9 secretion hadn’t degraded the protein condom at all. But the combination of elevated UV exposure and B3Z9… well, let’s just say our condom broke, but good.”
My ear aches from the pressure of the receiver against it. “What happened when MannaSantos discovered the breakout?”
“Harvest was virtually over by then. The company directed that any remaining Metaboloft corn be cauterized with special herbicides. They promised to reimburse the affected farmers with an improved variety of the product for the following season, cost-free.”
“How benevolent of them —”
“Look, MannaSantos took the outbreak very seriously. They bought up and destroyed all the produce from the crop belts that had surrounded the Metaboloft corn in southeastern Iowa. Our investigators believed the rogue gene hadn’t had time to spread farther than the belts. They tested samples of corn and other crops all over the state. All the samples were clean. They thought they’d nipped the outbreak. Our gene engineers then spent the rest of the year working on strengthening the protein condom and building in even more safeguards. The Metaboloft corn planted the third season, and all the product planted since, is completely environmentally inert.”