“Who are you and what do you want?” Lizard Boots asked, not understanding what Chiffon was seeing.
“To help your stepbrother. My name is Elijah Clearfather.”
“Well, I’m . . . I’m Simon(e),” Pink Chiffon managed, thinking that perhaps the hallucination was due to the hormone treatments. “And on hookah tonight is Alvin. Meanwhile, representing the zany world of creepshow bizness is Theodore.”
“Sit on it and rotate,” Theodore replied, and then to Clearfather, “And that there’s Simon(e), failed visionary behind the Fruit BBQ—tireless spokeswoman for the ecological Kanga Burger—mastermind of Salad Days, the convenient frozen salads you defrost in the microwave. Now she’s changed hats yet again to become Professor Chicken! Cholesterol-free fried chicken, prepared by secret scientific formula. Lots of spicy flavor, but not a single grain of salt.”
“How does he—she do that?” Clearfather asked.
“That’s just what they asked him on America This Morning. You know what she answered? Nada.”
“Shut up, Theo. There’ll be a defamation suit and you’ll lose.”
“Fried chicken will never be healthy—that’s why people like it!”
“Say another word and I’m calling my lawyer,” Simon(e) threatened.
“Why? Because Professor Chicken is a big frog in a little pond?”
Simon(e) doused Theo with cognac.
“Now I’m gonna nail your ass.”
“I don’t understand,” Clearfather said.
“Professor Chicken franchises secretly serve frogs. You’ve heard the old saying, ‘Tastes like chicken’? Well, it’s true. Trouble is, it doesn’t sell like chicken—at least not among civilized people who can be trusted with nondigital pets.”
“I’ll get you, Theo,” Simon(e) said. One of his/her hands shot into Theodore’s pocket and with surgical precision extracted a titanium vial. Simon(e) whipped open the vial and splashed a fine mist of what looked like souchong tea. Theodore screamed and flung himself down on the carpet and began licking and snorting with groveling abandon.
“There,” Simon(e) gestured. “Lick that carpet, boy! Don’t miss a single precious drop! Hard to believe, but Theo was once a promising filmmaker. Then something unpleasant happened . . . didn’t it, Theo?”
Clearfather felt a twinge in his head, followed by a sensation in the scarring on his back—like someone tracing over the letters with menthol.
“Theo’s too modest to tell—besides he’s sucking carpet—but the gist was that he was going to direct a landmark film—full-scale X-rated sex but with a real story—an honest to God fucking art film. Priapus it was called—and he had his male star, a fresh new talent. But Mr. Dinosaur Tool wouldn’t do the friggin’ gig unless his honey bunny had the female lead. The problem was dear young Theo discovered that the girl was pregnant. So Theo tried to pay the girl off—get her to bow out gracefully. But before he could do that, the loving couple tied the knot in Vegas, which meant that Theo needed an alternative plan.”
“What happened?” Clearfather asked, the menthol heat intensifying.
“Well, in simple terms, my bro flew to Vegas and arranged for the new bride to have too much access to a very questionable recreational drug.”
“Shut up!” Theo cried.
“He killed her?” Clearfather asked, the freezing burn spreading across his back.
“Oh, I wouldn’t give Theo credit for having the cojones to do such a thing directly. But yes, the girl and her baby died. The plan backfired, though. Mr. D recoiled in mourning and quit the project. Without his contribution, Theo’s Yakuza backers pulled out. They wanted their money returned but Theo had already put that up his nose. They said ‘No problem. We’ll take your head.’ Theo had to slink home with his tail between his legs and turn his cinematic skills to animal porn.”
Clearfather vomited over the pool table.
“Ooh, shit, dude!” the hookah head exclaimed. “Like, make yourself at home!”
“I’ve never done animal porn!” Theo whimpered from the floor as Hooper burst into the room.
“Listen up,” the machine-man rasped through his mask, not noticing the spew. “You will all be cleaned up and in the library within twenty-five minutes. Bald Boy, you follow me.”
Clearfather wiped his mouth and glared in disgust at the brothers.
CHAPTER 11
Professor Chicken’s Party
Hooper thumped down the halls like a vending machine playing hard-to-get. At last they arrived in Wilton’s wing. The boy was Voyanced into an Uruguayan puppet game show, Miniature Gaelic Football, a Winnipeg-based panel called “Guys Who Like Babes Who Like Girls (Who Have Had Babies to Men Who Are in Prison for Killing Women)”—and the TWIN news. Upon seeing Clearfather, the boy disconned. “Where did you go?”
“I met some more of your family,” Clearfather informed him as the nausea and anger began to subside.
“Shit. Which ones?”
“Your mother—and stepbrothers—although one of them was more like a sister.”
“Simon(e). He started off male then he became a female—but he couldn’t cope so he switched back—then he couldn’t deal with being male so he tried going girlie again but the hormone therapy’s giving him trouble. He’s got plumbing problems and psychological issues up the yin-yang but he or she’s a Harvard MBA and head of Professor Chicken.”
“I know,” Clearfather said. He couldn’t decide if the faintly proud tone in Wilton’s voice was honorable or sad—but he didn’t have the heart to reveal the base dealings that the stepbrothers had been involved with. “What’s on the news?”
Wilton touched a hologram icon and Kasai Owuzu, an African in a Savile Row suit, appeared in 3-D to tell them about the beheadings and castrations in Tehran.
“But now here’s our vote for the oddest story of the day, which comes from the Pittsburgh Greyhound bus station of all places, where the eidolons of TWIN presenter Vinata Nidhu and the ChildRite Nurturing Centers’ Queen Ubba Dubba and Dooley Duck caused a furor. All three eidolons broke their programming protocols, demonstrating impromptu behavior. Dooley Duck’s actions were the most bizarre. The famously insecure blue duck had a cyberrevelation about his sexuality or lack thereof, which has led to a demand to be rendered with ‘fully operational genitals.’ And it seems that the events in Pittsburgh are not isolated. According to Sanders Lugwich, the head of Creaturetivity, the studio responsible for Ubba Dubba and Dooley Duck, the behavior of the Pittsburgh eidolons has rippled through the network, affecting the manifestations of the characters around the world.
“In an emergency ChildRite board meeting plans were made to write Dooley out of existence, but this may be fraught with more problems than ChildRite has anticipated, as shown by a group of spirited kids in Concord, Massachusetts, who this afternoon staged a nude protest to help save Dooley. Said little Ariel Sturt at the kids’ press conference, ‘We don’t think Dooley should die just because he wants a wiener.’ More pro Duck + Dick protests are planned for tomorrow in Cincinnati, Madison, and LosVegas—as well as throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region.”
“You have anything to do with that?” Wilton asked.
“I don’t know,” Clearfather said truthfully.
“Hm. Maybe the light’s coming out from under the bushel.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Clearfather replied.
“You just need a good manager,” Wilton reiterated and led Clearfather to an adjoining room with an enormous four-poster bed and a very authentic-looking polar bear rug. “Hose yourself down and try on that penguin suit in the closet.”
“You want me to dress up—like a penguin?” Clearfather frowned.
“A dinner jacket!” Wilton chortled and went off to get cleaned up.
Clearfather entered the bathroom. He stripped down and looked at himself in the full-length mirror, fearing for a moment that it was a screen that Ainsley could be watching. The things Simon(e) had said about Th
eo had revolted and horrified him. He felt like he wanted to cry but all that came out was water from the showerhead.
A scrubbed-up Wilton helped him into his tuxedo and led him down to the library, where they found the Man of Steel puttering about on a contraption that resembled a motorized surfboard on wheels, complete with independent front and rear suspension, lever-action controls, and plenty of room for his oxygen tanks, ashtrays, a mini bar, and a stand for an IV drip—which was filled with a cocktail of Prozac, Bombay gin, megavitamins, and a dash of Benzedrine. The man’s face was dotted with medipatches and countercancer laser burns. His hair was thick and white, the result of surgery in which human hair follicles combined with fur from an arctic hare had been microimplanted. He wore a Cary Grant dinner suit with shoes made from the hide of a manatee. In one hand was an Egyptian oval cigarette, in the other a cigar. Around his neck was an electronic voice synthesizer collar. Clearfather noticed Ainsley’s scrambled face on a monitor.
“My Son,” the Steel Man said as if he had but one. “Hooper, our butler, entertains him in the evening. My wife will not be joining us. She sadly ran into a mirror.”
The doorbell rang and Mr. and Mrs. Privett arrived; the latter introduced herself by saying, “My first husband was sucked up in a jet engine—just like a seagull.”
The Brothers 3 stumbled in stag—Alvin and Theodore ridiculous in their tuxedos, with Simon(e) more stylish in a Coco Chanel little black dress. Clearfather recognized the next guest to arrive as the smiling Dr. Hugh Wieviel from the organ clinic in the city. He had a trace of Texas twang and a freshly applied tan, and was partnered by one of the patients he was officially sleeping with (that is, not just while she was under anesthesia)—a stacked WASP in her early thirties named Judith Beazley, who wore a boomerang-shaped brooch with light-emitting diodes and not much else.
Next came the Paddiartons. At 112, Josh was Kingland Brand’s oldest living friend. Despite or perhaps because of fifty-five years of plastic surgery, the former CEO of Chemplex bore a remarkable resemblance to a Staffordshire terrier with a mouth full of roofing nails. His recently delivered Thai wife had just turned nineteen and wore a plunging kelp-green evening dress and a rope of pearls the size of a dachshund’s testicles. Rounding out the table was a minor talk-show intellectual and professional dinner guest named Tina Curl, who’d been flown in from DC. Hooper didn’t appear although he must’ve passed through earlier because there was a scent of dogshit lingering in the air. The Man of Steel was left to usher the guests into the oak-lined dining room, where he rang a tiny Waterford bell and said in his sinister metallic quack, “Tonight I present the healthy and economical alternative for the Now Age, Professor Chicken’s Cajun Country Special!”
Simon(e) sat thunderstruck as a frozen-faced maid named Mrs. Stovington proceeded to fill the room with Professor Chicken cartons while Theodore made sure that the founder of the food chain enjoyed extra helpings of his famous no-fat fare.
After the main course, Chuck Privett tried to ignite interest in the subject of fume extraction while Dr. Wieviel waxed lyrical about the possibility of providing a birth-defect girl with wings. The thrill of recreational reconstructive surgery—stretching and grafting skin, reshaping bone and muscle, and then applying intensive hormonal therapy—made his blue eyes sparkle.
“Of course we could go the organatron route and roboticize her,” he said, which prompted a discussion of robotics and its origins in automata.
“In 1574 a mechanical rooster was crowing atop a clock tower in Strasbourg,” Tina Curl announced. “And in the eighteenth century the genius Vaucanson invented a mechanical duck that could quack and splash in water. There’s even a legend about a jeweled goose that could fly, created by a secret guild of Bavarian toy makers.”
Hearing about the rooster, the duck, and the goose reminded Mrs. Privett of her first husband, who was sucked up into a jet engine—just like a seagull.
Dr. Wieviel went on to discuss the convention he was going to in LosVegas devoted to the latest intelligence-enhancing drugs and the release of a new range of sex programs.
“They sent us a free sample.” Judith Beazley grinned. “Takes a while to load but when it gets going!”
“That’s right.” Wieviel winked. “It’s very atmospheric. You’re both young teens going at it hell for leather in the velvet weed in a late-August cornfield.”
“Can you get me a copy?” the Man of Steel wheezed.
“You have to be careful with this new thoughtware,” the doctor said. “If you haven’t paid the subscription . . . there you are about to come when your partner becomes obese—or dead. Have to give them your credit number to get it going right again.”
“There are some new Finnish ones that are mythologically themed . . . you know, like Zeus and Leda,” Tina Curl remarked.
“Ooh,” shivered Judith. “I don’t think I’d want to have sex with a bull.”
“A swan,” Tina Curl corrected.
“How could a swan screw a woman?” Simon(e) wanted to know.
“How could anyone mistake a frog for a chicken?” Theodore croaked.
“Shut up,” Simon(e) fired back.
“I didn’t make up the myth,” Tina Curl replied. “I’m just telling you—when Zeus knocked up Leda he took the form of a swan.”
“My firsht husband was suckedup innna jetplane. Like a sheagull,” Mrs. Privett reminded them.
“And now it is time for a toast,” the Man of Steel announced.
Wilton nudged Clearfather and whispered, “They never learn, do they?”
Mrs. Stovington appeared with a chilled magnum of French champagne, followed by a tray of glasses, and proceeded to pop and pour.
“We have two things to celebrate,” the Man of Steel buzzed. “The first is that Dr. Wieviel has located a new liver for me. Second, I’m updating my Will tonight, and I note that Ernst has elected not to be here. My Son Ainsley remains the Number One contender but I am pleased to announce that my stepson, or daughter, has moved into the Number Two position by virtue of his or her efforts with Professor Chicken.”
“Bravo the Chicken!” Mrs. Privett called and Simon(e) bowed—while Theodore and Alvin smiled poisonously.
“So let us toast—my liver, Ainsley’s loyalty, and Simon(e)’s modest attempt at making a living . . .”
“And Mr. Clearfather!” Wilton added.
The Man of Steel spewed champagne over the teak-colored breasts of the new Mrs. Paddiarton. “AND WHY SHOULD WE TOAST HIM?”
Clearfather cleared his throat and began, “I’m not a pheasant plucker—”
“No, please,” Wilton interjected. “Allow me. To you, Mr. Clearfather. May you find what you’re looking for.”
“Whoosh a pheasant fucker?” Mrs. Privett demanded. “My firsht hubband was shuckedup innna shetplane—such like a sheegull.”
The party broke up soon after Wilton’s toast. Tina Curl performed an inebriated waltz with a suit of samurai armor en route to her cab, while Dr. Hugh made the unfortunate discovery that Mrs. Privett had wet her chair. The other guests departed—Alvin, Theodore, and Simon(e) trooping off to their separate wings while the Man of Steel surfed into his elevator, which transported him up to the vastness he shared with the Fidget Woman and Ainsley’s telepresence studio.
Wilton was a little sorry he’d interrupted Clearfather. A part of him was curious about what the bald man’s “demonstration” would’ve entailed this time—but the rest of him was exhausted. For the first time in weeks he wasn’t battling hallucinations or bouts of nausea or ravenous lust. He felt empty but rinsed clean.
“Here’s all the cash I’ve got,” he said when they got to his suite. “Thanks again.”
“I don’t want all your money,” Clearfather told him.
“You deserve it,” the boy replied. “You work wonders, you really do. Don’t know how, but . . . you do. Besides, it means less temptation for me. I’m not going to end up a headless body they pull out of the river.”
“Not—from you,” the boy said and held out his hand. “You get a good sleep. I’ll drive you to the station in the morning.”
“Okay,” Clearfather said, shaking the boy’s hand. Then he hugged Wilton. It was an unplanned action—awkward, instinctive—and the fearful youth hugged back—the first time he’d touched anyone in months without the influence of the Pandora.
Wilton had a deep dreamless sleep that night . . . but not so the others. Certainly not the Man of Steel, who dreamed of his liver transplant—but found that the surgery had been performed on his face instead. His visage was distorted like Ainsley’s—as if the cells were pixilated—continuously mutating in an agonizing blur. He woke to the sound of the heart monitor in his room and lit up a cigarette. (His sedated wife wallowed in her distant suite, her jaw having been wired shut by one of Wieviel’s trainees.) Christ, he thought. I’ll never get back to sleep. He winched himself onto his surfboard and motored into his private Recreation Area.
Clearfather was overwhelmed with fatigue and had fallen on top of the bed after changing back into his own clothes, but he couldn’t break through the wall of dreams into the deeper dark. All night long he whirled around in a tornado of half-seen things. He saw an old radio station shack and a ghost town . . . and then he was playing with Uncle Waldo and Aunt Vivian—only he couldn’t see their faces. He had the idea that his mother was dead but that his father ran a gospel radio station . . . “Please show me your face . . . ,” he said. He saw the boy in the bathroom . . . and then floating up in the mirror, like the creatures in Ernst’s aquariums, were three faces . . . Chinese men . . . trying to speak to him. He woke in the dark of morning to a terrible sound.
“Good Lord!” he said aloud. “Warhol!”
The beast must’ve gotten out of the car barn because Clearfather could hear him snarling in response to the growls of the mastiffs. I’ve got to find him, Clearfather realized, and leapt off the bed—only to put his foot right into the polar bear’s mouth, where it became wedged tight. “Shit!” he yelped. A dogfight to the death was about to break out on the lawn and here he was kickboxing with a dead bear! He’d have to wake Wilton. But when he peered in the other room, the boy’s breathing was so deep and easy he didn’t have the heart to disturb him and so he began shuffling down the hallway with his foot still stuck, no idea where the front door was and all the time dreading running into the mechanical butler with the fun-house face.
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