Instead, he sipped his champagne (Bubbly cow juice, Louis my boy, but it’ll do for now) and watched the goings on around the Money Tree. Did they really believe it would sprout cash and golden acorns? The idea was too goddamn ludicrous to take seriously. Pigs would fly before that happened. Then again, he admitted to himself, this was the After Life and anything was possible, wasn’t it?
Like rabbits with wings.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cheap Ways To Feel Good
AFTER more than an hour of staring out the window and listening to the others gossip, Louis was itching for a change of goddamn scenery. The Limo was still someway from the hotel drop-off, stuck behind a dozen other Limos and going nowhere in a hurry. Compounding matters, the champagne was getting a little flat and sour, and the stench from Santosa’s burps made his stomach churn. As it turned out, the opportunity he was looking for came like a godsend a quarter of an hour later when the Limo was bumped from behind.
Smiggins nearly dropped his calculator. Santosa spilled champagne on his lap. “What was that?” he said.
Out through the rear window, Louis saw a chauffeur hopping out of another Limo that was obviously the cause of the bump. “I think we’ve been hit,” he said, and scrambled out to inspect the damage with Flash Freddy and Smiggins. He barely noticed The Tower logo chipping away at the back of his skull while he made his way to the rear. The two Limos were gently touching, kissing each other’s personalized number plates. He could see no major damage at all. Not even a scratch.
A minute behind, Santosa rolled down the wheelchair ramp with help from Tiffany and his chauffeur, grumbling through his oxygen mask. “Out of my way! Out of my way!” Louis stepped back to allow the wheelchair through. Santosa eyed the smooching vehicles, then the other chauffeur. Hooking down his mask, he said, “Look what you’ve done to my car! Do you know who I am? I could have you crucified for this!”
The chauffeur’s whole body seemed to tremble under the Grand Pooh-Bah’s onslaught. Louis felt no pity for the rat. “I’m s… s… sorry sir. I didn’t mean to…”
“I don’t care what you meant to do, you’ve done it! I hope you’re insured! Where’s your employer?” Santosa glanced to the rear of the other Limo. “Is he in the back?”
“N… n… no sir. I’m… I’m… waiting to pick him up at the hotel.” The chauffeur wrung his trembling paws. “P… P… Please sir. He… he… doesn’t need to know about this. If… If he hears I’ve had another accident, he’ll sack me.”
“Do you think I care? Look what you’ve done to my car. Who’s going to pay for the repairs?”
One of the Limos further back hooted angrily. Another chauffeur down the line stepped out of his Limo and shouted at the Grand Pooh-Bah to get a move on.
Santosa barked back, “You’re not the only one who’s late for a meeting!” Then to the trembling chauffeur, “Well? What are you going to do about it?”
Several worshippers at the back of the crowd glanced over their tails to see what all the fuss was about, saying nothing, then went back to praying. Flash Freddy took Louis’ arm and whispered in his ear. “This could go on for a while. How about we pop over to the Happythecary and restock on supplies? We’ll be back before they resolve anything.”
Louis almost tripped over his toga in his eagerness to get going. He, Flash Freddy and Smiggins left the Grand Pooh-Bah to sort out the problem and circumnavigated the worshipping crowd to the other side of the piazza. On the way they passed an office of LeMont Real Estate. Every house and apartment on the property board had a red SOLD or LEASED slashed across it. “Why do they advertise property that’s not even available?” he said.
Flash Freddy shrugged and kept walking. “It’s the system. You’ll get used to it.”
The Happythecary was adjacent to a branch of the Union Bank. CHEAP WAYS TO FEEL GOOD, a sign said at the front as he stepped inside. The ferret behind the cash register looked bored and didn’t even seem to notice them. Probably couldn’t see a damn thing through his sunglasses, Louis scoffed. To his disappointment, the Happythecary was more like a Dollar Dazzler (Everything’s a dollar! Nothing over a dollar! Come on in and grab a bargain! You won’t find better value anywhere! Guaranteed!) than a pharmaceutical outlet. The aisles were crammed with everything and anything – toiletry goods, party stuff, novelty items, stationary, even suits hanging on a rack at the end of the aisle next to the changing room. The place didn’t even have that sterile cosmetic smell all drugstores seemed to have, just your ever-present LeMont stench of horseshit. Nothing more than a glorified warehouse, he reckoned, the kind that sold everything you could think of but nothing you actually needed. Exactly the kind of place he used to avoid like the goddamn plague.
He wanted to tell Flash Freddy that he was no longer interested in getting anything, but the lizard was already ambling down the aisle, grazing the shelves. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, and begrudgingly followed. At the toiletry section, Flash Freddy removed a can of underarm deodorant from the shelf, and said, “Degradation Spray. Try it. You’ll like it.”
Louis removed the cap, shook it, then lifted his toga and gave two quick sprays under each armpit. Suddenly, the smell of rotting salmon wafted up his snout. “What the hell is this?” he said, holding back the urge to retch. “I smell like a goddamn fishmonger.”
Flash Freddy had a glint in his eyes. Smiggins sniggered and kept punching numbers into his calculator. Thankfully, the wave of repulsion didn’t last very long. Oddly, instead of ebbing away, it grew into an even stronger urge to belittle everything and everyone in the shop. He turned on the easiest target standing next to him. “You! You good-for-noth’n little rat! Why didn’t you warn me? You’re pathetic. I knew it was a mistake to let you be my PA. You’re nothing but a useless piece of…”
Flash Freddy took the can of Degradation Spray from Louis and put it back on the shelf. “I’d say it worked, wouldn’t you?”
Louis hitched his toga, liking the warmth of indignation and righteousness flooding his senses. The goddamn spray made me feel this way? Still, he scoffed, even if it did he wasn’t going to apologize. The sniggering rat deserved everything he got.
The lizard now handed him what looked like a bottle of bath gel. Its label read: SHAMEPOO. “Just wash with it whenever you want to humiliate somebody,” Flash Freddy said. “I use it at least once a week. It’s amazing how smug and self-important you can feel.”
Louis sniffed the cap and recoiled at the reek of brackish water. Bottled sewage, he thought, and told Flash Freddy that he would pass for now.
The lizard now reached for a cylindrical container of talc. “Domination Powder?”
Louis shook his head to that too, so Flash Freddy took him down the aisle to the party section. “If you don’t like the behavior of your boss or colleagues, just blow on one of these,” he said, and put a Whistle Blower to his mouth. The shrill made Louis cringe and think of the warbling bell at the end of Conduit Number 1. Smiggins sniggered, barely affected by the noise. “They’re also great for framing anyone who hasn’t actually done anything wrong.”
Flash Freddy now moved down the aisle and dropped a packet of gray Super Silly-Us Balloons into his briefcase. “I highly recommend these. They’re great at office parties and functions where you want to make an impression. The trick is to have the biggest in the room. But you have to be careful. Once they’re blown up, they’re more fragile than a soap bubble. They’ll burst with any mishandling. I’ve even seen them pop with the wrong word said at the wrong time.”
Adjacent to the Super Silly-Us Balloons, what initially looked like a stand of birthday and wedding cards turned out to be something else all together – Discredit Cards. According to the lizard, they were ideal for destroying reputations. The greater the number of signatures collected (and you could even falsify them if you wanted to), the greater the dishonor heaped upon the recipient of the card. “Everybody does it,” he said. “They work just as well as a Whistle Blower, even better som
etimes.” He put a couple in his inner pocket. Smiggins took seven.
Louis hitched his toga. He had no interest in ego balloons or discredit cards or whistle blowing. He still smelled of rotting salmon and just wanted to get his paws on some of those little blue diamonds and get to the hotel for a shower as soon as possible.
Flash Freddy and Smiggins, however, were now heading toward the rack of navy-gray jackets and trousers at the end of the aisle. “You might want to purchase one of these at some point,” the lizard said. “Defamation Suits. They’re great if you need to get somewhere in a hurry.” Flash Freddy took a jacket off the rack and held it in front of Louis, appraising him briefly before hanging it back. “If anyone sees you wearing one, they get out of your way fast. Perfect for anyone in politics or the entertainment industry.”
“I’ll keep it in mind for when I start work,” Louis said.
Halfway up the adjacent aisle, they encountered the stationary section. Apart from the Shame Files (manila folders to store gossip about your colleagues and friends) and Blame Boxes (similar to Shame Files, but here you stored all the negative information about someone you could find – circumstantial evidence, hearsay and rumor mongering, bogus material, forged letters, leaked documents – the list was endless), Louis was drawn to something he had seen before. Snipes, little yellow booklets the size of Post-It notes. Flash Freddy peeled one off and stuck it on Smiggins’ back. TAX EVADER! He and Louis laughed.
“Very funny,” Smiggins said. When he removed his jacket to get rid of the Snipe, Louis saw how skinny the PA’s arms really were. Goddamn rat’s wasting away, he thought. He’s almost anorexic.
Flash Freddy drew his attention to some more Snipes. The booklets had the same message on each page: I DRIVE LIKE A WOMAN! or FAKE TAN! and others he recognized from Conduit Number 1: I AM AND IDIOT! and I STILL WET MY BED! There were even mixed booklets of cynical Snipes: NICE GUY! and one Louis liked most, TRUST ME. I’M A DOCTOR!
To be effective, Flash Freddy advised, the whole booklet had to be used. “Your target will usually laugh off the first Snipe as a childish prank,” he said, “but after the twentieth or thirtieth time they’ll get really annoyed and do something completely out of character. It’s a real hoot if you stick with it.”
Flash Freddy pocketed a booklet of mixed Snipes, then went to the cooler near the checkout for a bottle of strawberry-gray soda. Smiggins took a yellow-gray bottle. “Superiority Soda. Cheapest thing in the store,” Flash Freddy said, holding the door open for Louis. “Problem is, the effect doesn’t last very long, but it’s good while it does. There’s Superiority-Lite too, if you’re on a diet, or want everyone to think you are.”
Louis thought about it for a second, then declined. He didn’t have a problem feeling superior, and he certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. He was above that sort of thing.
Flash Freddy downed the Superiority Soda in one gulp and went to the counter. On a spiral rack were pairs of sunglasses, similar to what the sales assistant was wearing. As if you need them in this city, sonny, he scoffed; but before he could stop him, Flash Freddy had slipped a pair over his eyes. Suddenly, everything looked in miniature. Flash Freddy, Smiggins, the entire store in fact, had shrunk to the size of Lego Land. He felt absolutely massive; a giant with the power to do whatever he damn well wanted.
“Egoroids,” Flash Freddy said. He looked so far away, like a bug on the floor he could easily squash. Smiggins too. “The lenses have a special filter. They’re designed to make you feel bigger than everyone you meet. Sports stars and TV personalities tend to like them.”
Louis considered buying a pair, then slipped it back on the rack. On the shelves behind the sales assistant were the things he wanted, hundreds of drug bottles promising a cure for every known ailment, even Post Traumatic Death Syndrome. Then, to his frustration, his eye caught a sign above the bottles: NO UNION CARD. NO SALE. Just his goddamn luck. He asked for a bottle of EZPZs anyway, but the ferret with the Egoroids rolled his eyes and refused to get off his stool. “I need to see your union card. It’s the law.” He sounded as bored as he looked. “And don’t bother getting your friends to buy you some either. That’s illegal too.”
Flash Freddy shrugged as if to say the sales assistant was right. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do, even if I wanted to. The law’s the law.”
Louis closed his eyes and clenched his claws, thinking that the lizard had a certain degree of smugness about him, a look that said I can buy it and you can’t. It was goddamn humiliating and he hated it.
Flash Freddy showed his ID. “Two bottles of Eezie-Peezies please.”
The sales assistant gathered the bottles and sighed, “Will that be all?”
“Just the Superiority Soda.”
Louis eyed the bottles on top of the counter, still smarting at Flash Freddy’s unwillingness to help him out. The lizard could have at least tried a bribe, but he hadn’t done a goddamn thing. Except, of course, to make him feel small and useless. “Remember the Ego Balloons,” he said, nodding toward Flash Freddy’s briefcase.
Although he knew it was coming, he still wasn’t prepared for the coldness of the lizard’s stare, little arrows of ice that made him freeze when they hit their mark. “Of course,” Flash Freddy said, suddenly smiling at the sales assistant. He removed the packet of Ego Balloons and put them on the counter. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
If I’m going to do it, I might as well go all the goddamned way, Louis thought. It’s all or nothing now. “And the Discredit Cards.”
Removing them from his inner pocket, Flash Freddy shot another ice-arrow at Louis. “How silly of me,” he said. “I believe that’s everything now.”
Except for occasional snigger from Smiggins, they left the Happythecary under a cloud of angry silence more menacing than The Tower logo. Louis had no doubts at all that his little act of impetuousness would be returned with interest in the not too distant future. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t let that spoil his moment of triumph. He had almost forgotten how good payback felt. As good as any bottle of Shamepoo or Superiority, he reckoned, and to think it hadn’t even cost him a cent.
What could be cheaper than that?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Seventh Heaven
LOUIS, Smiggins and Flash Freddy arrived at the hotel just as Santosa’s Limo pulled into the undercover drop-off zone. To Louis’ surprise, there was no bellboy to greet and open the door for them. That was left to the chauffeur, who Santosa berated for being too slow and lazy.
Glancing at the rear bumper, Flash Freddy said, “How’d it go?”
Tiffany pushed Santosa past. He patted his jacket pocket and said with a smile, “Just fine. The chauffeur made a donation to the Union Fund.”
“I thought you had a meeting,” Louis said.
“I do. It can wait for the moment.”
Santosa led everyone through the revolving doorway into the lobby. As Louis had suspected, the inside wasn’t anything goddamn special. The marble floor needed polishing. Cobwebs dirtied the ceiling and lampshades. Half the chandelier bulbs had blown, and beneath the reek of horseshit the whole place smelled of dusty curtains and rugs. What’s more, while they waited in another line at reception, they had to suffer the instrumental version of Top of the World playing over and over again in the background; and by the time they were served, Louis again found himself humming the words in his head. I’m on the… top of the world, lookin’… down on creation…
“This is ridiculous,” Santosa said to the receptionist. “I want to see the manager.”
The lizard behind the desk hooded his eyes and licked his lips. It could’ve been Flash Freddy’s identical twin, Louis reckoned, without the briefcase. Similarly, he also had a dermatological condition; but where Flash Freddy had dry, dandruff-like scales flaking off his skin, the receptionist had the worst case of acne Louis could recall seeing. Yellow heads of puss were scattered all over his face and scalp like scabrous pox. “I am the manager,” he sa
id.
The nametag pinned to the lapel of his navy-gray suit gave his name as Salma Gundi. Probably a goddamn Indian or Pakistani in a previous existence; and now that he thought about it, old pizza face did seem to have an accent. His words collapsed into one another in a kind of concertina effect, each sentence sounding as if it were one long, incomprehensible word. I am the manager became: I-am-the-manager. Melodious to the ear, but at the same time damned annoying.
“In-fact-I-am-the-concierge-the-bellboy-the-chef-the-elevator-operator-room-service-and-receptionist-all-in-one,” Salma Gundi said, looking proud. “I-am-the-hotel’s-only-employee. Now-how-can-I-help-you?”
Flash Freddy stepped forward and told him they had a booking for Louis DeVille.
The solitary employee of the LeMont Hotel glanced down at the registry, pressing his lips together in a tight line. “Hmm. I-am-afraid-it-doesn’t-look-good. No-No. Not-good-at-all. Not-good-at-all.” He wobbled his head in a strange figure-of-8 motion. “The-name-doesn’t-seem-to-be-here. Are-you-sure-you-booked?”
Flash Freddy glanced at Smiggins, catching him in the middle of swallowing another blue diamond. With a look of don’t blame me, the rat sniggered and said, “I made the booking ages ago. I even paid a deposit. With my own money.”
Salma Gundi glanced back at the registry, shaking his head again in that weird figure-of-8 motion. Louis told him to have a look for Lewey DeVille, not Lewis Deville, but neither name was registered. Salma Gundi lifted the book and showed him the list of reservations. To Louis’ dismay, the hotel was solidly booked. There wasn’t a goddamn room available for the next two years, and even then he would have to go on a waiting list. “There-is-absolutely-nothing-I-can-do,” the manager-cum-bellboy said, shaking his head as he had. “Absolutely-totally-undeniably-nothing.”
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