That Monday the eleventh was not, for MisterMenu, at least, your typical blue Monday. NationalProcedures finally closed on the record-breaking SpiritualEquities deal and, frankly, had made a freaking killing, and an hour later he was informed he had won the monthly HoneyDrippers Screen Meet Lottery. He had forgotten he’d even entered the damn contest. And especially unusual for him, he’d even forgotten the precise amount he’d had to shell out for the privilege of claiming a ticket in the draw. He had to log in and check out the girl’s image again. He was sure she’d be predictably stunning. He did. She was. Her name was LavenderLips. Her favorite fruit: the banana. Her favorite snack: cherry popsicles. Yeah, right. Nevertheless, MisterMenu was very excited. The clock would begin ticking in a week, at 0800 next Monday. More than enough time to get a crackerjack construction team over to the recently vacated PeerlessPolicies warehouse on the Lower West Side and prepare a suitable enclosure. What was required was a very specific look. Simple, spare, clean. And the walls, including floor and ceiling, had to be white, blindingly white, immaculately white. A solid door with a solid lock. The bag of money, the bottles of water, the roll of paper towels, and the bucket would be delivered to the room the morning of LavenderLips’s arrival. He was guaranteed a full day with her, all the way until 1700—more than adequate to explore every twist and turn of your particular kink. He was very excited.
Meanwhile he had a company to run and money to make. Both occupations he could manage in his sleep and sometimes did. He’d had several transformational experiences while asleep, going into sleep, and coming out of sleep. He had not the slightest doubt it was a magical place, well worth visiting frequently, even if it did eat up unfortunate tons of precious moneymaking hours. Solution: make money while sleeping. Learn to put your money into dark warm humid places conducive to the care and propagation of those marvelous little green notes, places like PDQParaphernalia, BurningBushCache, and XYZNut, all of which he owned and, frankly, contributed to the steady, ludicrous growth of his numerous bank accounts at a rate far greater than anything he ever did here at NationalProcedures while awake. Go figure. If only the living, breathing side of life could be managed so lucratively. If only emotions were dollars and could generate profits. What an overlord of the psyche he could be, standing astride all that mess like a god. The phone buzzed. It was the president calling.
“Tell him I’m busy,” he said to PocketGuard, his administrative assistant for special assistance, whom he’d once had a fuck-buddy relationship with about three years ago. “Tell him I’m in a meeting, an important meeting, a very important meeting.”
“You know he won’t care. He’ll insist you take it anyway. Like he’s always done before.”
“Tell him I’m in the damn john.”
“But he knows you have a phone in there.”
“Fucking catacombs,” he said. He took the call. Nothing monumental. It was about a golfing engagement next Saturday. MisterMenu courteously declined. He had to be in Bugaboo that weekend, or so he said. His daughter NoDeposit was getting married Saturday to Filament, the competence-challenged son of Cravensworth, CEO of BolsterIndustries. Like father, like son. How any of these people managed to make even a single dime’s worth of profit was a mystery of biblical proportions to MisterMenu. As was his style, the president pressed. DentalDam was scheduled to be in their foursome. His entourage, no doubt, in attendance at the clubhouse. You know, in all their flower-pussied glory. Postpone the wedding. Your daughter can get married any day of the week. A clam buffet of such splendor as this is served maybe once, twice per lifetime. MisterMenu agreed. He appreciated the invite and, to himself, regretted the lost opportunity to weasel something more useful out of this buffaloed chief executive than he already had—and believe me, he’d scarfed up plenty of tidbits wherever he found them. But no, his younger daughter, the wedding, you understand. The president pretended he did. They hung up. MisterMenu needed to look at some numbers—now. So he did. Illuminated figures scrolled across the screen in stately procession. The sight always comforted him. Even when the sums were not particularly beneficial either to him or NationalProcedures, the endless parade of 123s projected a sense of vibrancy, of invincibility, proof that no matter what happened to him or the firm, something in this porous world held fast, continued on undeterred. Something was eternal.
At 10:28 MattressTesterJr called. He and MisterMenu discussed the AutomatedCarnage deal.
At 11:52 ProvidentialWind called. They discussed the likely FerretHoldings acquisition.
At 1:11 MissusMenu called.
“Of course,” she said, “you may leave me anytime you wish. You know that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.
“I can persist in this charade as long as you can.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You and I both know the water’s been draining out of the tub for six years now. It’s just a matter of who’s going to pull the plug first.”
“We’ll talk about this when I get home.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“Fine. Don’t.”
He hung up first.
He went into his private bathroom and washed his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked pretty good for a man of his years. Slightly balding, slightly overweight, slightly handsome. He figured he could pass for someone half his age. He couldn’t.
At 2:16 MisterMenu held an impromptu meeting of the innovative Guided Crash Team. Although he conducted the meeting with his usual perspicacity and vigor, a half hour later he couldn’t recall much of what he’d said.
His day staggered on to its unacceptably serrated end somewhere around 8:38 p.m., when, instead of repairing to the MemoryFoamRoom of the trending ClusterClub for his customary workcapper of a pair of double BoltCutters on the rocks, he climbed into his chauffeured car for the interminable ride home.
Repeat with the usual variations for next four days.
Late Friday afternoon he was informed his fabled Bag O’ Money was still somewhere at large in the wilderness of the world. BlisterPac hadn’t been heard from in over a week. But what the hell. It was the weekend. Monday was only two days away. Until then he and MissusMenu rarely spoke. She stayed in her room. He stayed in his. Fine with him. He didn’t like talking to her. He didn’t like looking at her. He didn’t like touching her. Or her touching him. And he didn’t like her smell. And he especially couldn’t care less about whatever the hell it was she doing in her room. Or even whether she was alone in her room or not. YOLO. Saturday night he went out with X from XAnalytics and Y from YBurdens. They all got stupid drunk and pretended they were twenty-one again. They insulted waiters, grabbed strange women’s tits, picked fights with fellow assholes, broke assorted plates and highball glasses, got kicked out of two bars, threw up on the street in front of the HighHatHotel, and, before the night was over, each got a free hand job under a table at MadameUncertain’s. They behaved like total jackasses. No apologies. What on earth had possessed them? he mused to himself later that morning. Humanity, he decided, being human, for a change, had ambushed them.
Sunday MisterMenu spent at the BobolinkRestHomeAndPetulanceCourse trying for four-plus hours to get a damn little ball into eighteen damn little holes. He was moderately successful. He shot a 98. When he got home he discovered the dirty breakfast dishes (all imported AddleWare china) he’d left in the sink were now broken and scattered across the kitchen floor. He and MissusMenu did not exchange a single word that entire day.
Monday morning arrived in a burst of glaring sunlight under the half-dropped blind, hitting his face directly in the eyes, but he didn’t care. He’d been up since 6:00. In his room he locked the door, settled into his special custom-built PleasureForm erotognomic chair, switched on the 103-inch HeebieJeebie, and tuned to HoneyDrippers4U/LOTTERY, where he typed in his secret winner’s code, and blooming onto the screen came the channel’s logo, a drawing of a cross section of a beehive with big cartoon bees circling around it and an exaggerated stream of thick honey leaking from the bottom in big heavy drops into a cartoon woman’s outrageous receptacle-shaped mouth. He looked at that for a while. At precisely 0800 the image of his newly built room popped into focus, revealing the white walls, the white floor, the simple gray metal chair, but no LavenderLips, no female human anywhere in sight. He checked his watch. He stared at the screen. Nothing. He kept staring, as if attempting to will her appearance into view. He picked up his cell, preparing to call somebody, anybody, when abruptly a live woman stepped into the frame. She had arrived in total work costume: thigh-high boots, black leather miniskirt, biscuit-popping shiny metallic blue cutoff halter top, a fringed hippie-style suede shoulder bag. At first he wasn’t entirely sure it was the real LavenderLips. She looked so different. Her hair was now a high-end boutique blond, and it was long, much longer than in her lottery-site photo. Fine with him. Makeup, obviously professionally applied, had also somewhat altered her face. It was now a glossy magazine face of devastating unreality. He felt an awakening in his pants. So he unzipped his fly, placed his hand inside. Her deep black eyebrows, obviously drawn in by a practiced hand, and her famous lips seemed even larger, the skin even creamier. But the major effect of all this perfect paint was to direct attention to the center of the picture: her eyes. They, too, had increased significantly in size: huge, alert, endless, they were like whole planets you could not avert your gaze from. They invited study, close study. They seemed made of glass, shining and clear, illuminated from within by an intense, sharp, hypnotic, almost unearthly deep yellow. It was the magnetic color of these irises that you could not pull yourself away from: a pure living gold, a gold that demanded to be mined. What was happening? He didn’t know. He was obviously having a moment of some kind or other. He had never, not once in his long, narrow life, experienced the effects from the glance this woman seemed able to deliver so effortlessly. He was certainly glad he’d shelled out the cash to install a top-shelf HD camera capable of recording such a moment. And yes, he finally had to admit to himself, he did recognize her, the striking engrave-it-on-a-coin profile. And the dimples, he remembered the dimples, similar to the ones on NoDeposit’s pink fuzzy cheeks. It was definitely the real LavenderLips. She looked around for a moment, noticed the camera, stared into it. She gave a little wave.
“Hi,” she said. “Anyone there?”
“You find the place okay?” MisterMenu said.
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
“You surely are. I take it my instructions were clear enough?”
She was still attempting to take in these strange new surroundings. “No problem,” she said. She was looking around, nervously checking every corner, like a doe in a strange wood. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Good.”
“What’s up with this place, anyway? It’s pretty creepy.”
“A refuge from the distractions of the buzzing world,” he said. “Have a seat.”
She settled carefully into the gray metal folding chair, took in the objects arranged on the floor before her: an impressive stack of fifty-dollar bills, a half dozen family-size bottles of MountainMama volcanic-rock-filtered artisanal water, a clear plastic bucket, and a hefty roll of paper towels. There was a sudden clicking noise and she gave a start, turned toward the door. “What’s that?” she said.
“I believe they’re just locking the door. You’re in there with a fair amount of money. We want to make sure it stays in there. My name, by the way, is MegaHyphenate.”
“I can’t see you. What do you look like?”
“If you want the physicals, okay. I’m six foot three, one hundred and eighty pounds. I’ve got medium-length dirty blond hair, a broken nose, but it’s not too obvious, am in pretty good shape for my age but with the beginning of a slight pooch, kinda bowlegged with a hairy chest. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but the total package, I believe, is not entirely unappealing.”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to want to lie about it.”
“So lie.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Nice. You picked a good age.”
“I have a confession.”
“What’s that?”
“I couldn’t lie. That’s my real age.”
“Well, you know something?”
“What?”
“You sound honest.”
“You can’t have a good relationship without being honest.”
He could literally watch her body visibly relax, slump comfortably into her uncomfortable chair. “You don’t know how wired I was about all this. I mean, the instructions were so weird and all. You sounded like a total freak.”
“So sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you in the least.”
“You didn’t. Well, maybe a little.”
“Feel better?”
“Much.”
He liked it when she tilted her head, the way she was doing now. It reminded him of DustBunny. One drunken night back in his twenties, he had fallen into a pontification about string theory or some such bullshit and fancied himself a physicist for about a day and a half, though of the decidedly junior variety. The blue light from DustBunny’s computer screen fell across her neck, the side of her smooth cheek, did something pleasant to his dick.
“Let me see your fingers.”
She held up her hands.
“Spread ’em.”
She did. Her fingers were beautiful.
“Lick ’em.”
She did. They were wet and shiny. Something pleasant was starting to happen in MisterMenu’s down there. She continued sucking them, one slick finger after another.
“I like that.”
“Thought you might. What’s all this money here for?” She gestured toward the pile of bills stacked neatly on the floor in front of her.
“I want you to eat them. One at a time. They’re fifties, aren’t they?”
She checked. “Yes.”
“Well, I’d like you to devour them, one by one, till they’re all gone.”
She regarded the size of the pile. “I’ve never eaten money before.”
“Some folks find it right tasty. You’ve got the bucket, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it transparent?”
She held the bucket up before the camera.
“Any reversals of fortune,” he said, “you may deposit in there.”
She looked skeptically at the camera, then back at the bucket. “I don’t know,” she said.
“You know more than you think you do. And each bill you eat you get to keep, metaphorically speaking, of course. You earn that amount in untouched notes, which will be awarded you at the conclusion of our day. So go ahead, savor your adventure. You might even discover you enjoy munching on money.”
“Chew it and swallow it?”
“Yes, of course.”
She granted the camera a wary look. “So weird,” she said.
“Indulge me.”
“I thought this was supposed to be about something sexual or something.”
“We’re getting there.”
She studied the pile with an appraiser’s eye, as if gauging the feasibility of the task. Then, delicately, she lifted a single fifty from the pile. She looked into the camera. She looked at the crisp new note. Then she stared into the camera again and, abruptly, defiantly, balled up the bill, stuffed it into her mouth, and began chewing vigorously. Immediately she leaned over and spit a wad of wet green paper out into the bucket.
“Tastes like a dirty rag,” she said. She glared at the camera and shook her head.
“You’ll get used to it. Try another.”
“I don’t know.”
“But I won the lottery. You’re supposed to do what I say.”
So she did. She spit that one out, too.
“C’mon now, don’t disappoint me.”
“Well, you dig it, Mr. Hyphenate. It’s like trying to choke down a handful of dead dry leaves. Stuff should be colored brown, not green.”
“But they’re new. All clean. Fresh from the vault. And I’m paying you to eat them. There’s two thousand dollars’ worth of fifties on the top of the pile. Get those down and all the rest are shiny hundreds. As many as you can chew and swallow you get to keep.”
Dubiously, she eyed the stack in front of her, and, after a pronounced pause, reached down, lifted a fresh fifty off the top of the pile, placed it cautiously into her mouth, and began slowly to chew. And chew and chew and chew.
“Swallow,” MisterMenu said.
So she did. And made a pained face. “I’ve had cough syrup that was easier to get down than this crap.”
“Very good. Another.”
She did. Another face. Another complaint. And so on for another couple hundred or so. But then something happened. She had either, unaccountably, developed a taste for the bills or suddenly glimpsed the true possibility of making a quick bundle of easy cash. She was soon popping one after another crumpled fifty into her mouth. Chewing. And swallowing. And on and on.
“You’re making me very happy.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“I know you are. And don’t forget, however much you manage to ingest, you get that total as bonus cash in addition to whatever you’re being paid for this session. And by the way, what are you being paid?”
“Not anywhere near enough. But I think that’s my business, thank you very much.”
“Well, you’re right, it is. But money happens to be my business and I’m always naturally curious about how it’s flowing in other people’s business.”
“Could always be better.”
MisterMenu let out a phony chuckle. “Popped the pimple with that one, young lady. ‘Could always be better.’ What we all say, isn’t it? Speaking of which, where are we now at the bottom line? Seem to have lost track in all this excitement.”
“I think it’s six fifty so far.”
“Now, that’s yours, understand? Hopefully, though, it’s just the beginning. Let’s see just how high you can truly go.”
She picked up another bill, stuffed it in her mouth, and almost immediately began to gag.
“You have water, I presume?”
She lifted the bottle of MountainMama into view, unscrewed the top, and eagerly drank about half of it.
“That last one go down?”
She opened her mouth. It was empty.
“Seven hundred,” he said.
She picked up another bill, stared at it for a moment, continued holding it in her hand, contemplating her next move. She had long vampire nails that were painted a glossy dark plum, contrasting strikingly against the almost unearthly paleness of her skin. It looked, in fact, as if the tips of her artistically long fingers had been dipped in congealed blood. MisterMenu couldn’t help but picture those elegant fingers wrapped around his attentive dick. Then he happened to notice that the end of the nail on the ring finger of her right hand had been torn off and, instantly, he didn’t know why, the realization flashed through his mind: she has a kid. Air began to leak out of the carnal balloon. But no, he said to himself, he had imagined this scene so minutely for so long now, almost an entire week, and he was not about to have the experience ruined by random baseline thoughts that may or may not be true. The best was yet to come, to coin a phrase. Then LavenderLips, who had been dutifully and silently ingesting bill after bill (he’d lost track of how many) suddenly pitched forward, grabbed the bucket, and directed a powerful stream of belly water and clots of money into it, stopped for a moment, then noisily heaved again. Unbidden, MisterMenu’s hand had stealthily ended up inside his shorts. He was surprised to find himself audibly panting.
LavenderLips pulled off a wad of paper towels from the roll that had been placed on the floor before her and swabbed at her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. She had tears in her eyes.
“No problem. That’s what the bucket’s for. What’s the sum so far?”
“I think about a thousand or so. I guess.”
“You okay?”
“I guess.”
“Can we continue on?”
She nodded without acknowledging the camera.
“You’re awfully close to the hundreds.”
“Not close enough. You know, I’m sorry, but frankly, I really don’t know how much longer I can manage this gig.”
“But you’ve been doing a bang-up job.”
“Sure. When do we get to the sexual part?”
“Now,” he said abruptly. “Take off your clothes.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
“No, no. I want you to. Please.”
“You don’t sound all that into it.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see me.”
“You want the whole taco or what?”
“Down to the molding. And do it slowly.”
So she did. She removed her clothes as if she were a little girl who’d been sent to bed early as punishment for some minor parental infraction too absurd to be taken seriously by anyone. She took her sweet time. She peeled off her halter, her thigh-high boots as if each separate article were a piece of dressing covering a wound. There was an exaggerated degree of pain in every move.
“I want some boom-pah,” MisterMenu said.
“Do I get a free fifty for that?”
“Take it.”
She plucked a bill from the stack and stuffed it into the fringed bag lying on the floor next to her chair. Then she stood, displaying an endless pair of admirable legs, turned, and, flashing a practiced stage glance toward the camera, proceeded to detach her crimson-red bra as if unwrapping a coiled snake from around her chest. The magnificent breasts that now plopped into view were of a size and shape MisterMenu had only ever observed in his imagination. Save yourself for later, he told himself. LavenderLips now directed her attention to her leather miniskirt and began fiddling, in a deliberately languorous manner, with the back zipper for so long it seemed as though it were something she had to find first before she could be freed from the garment. But suddenly, success, and the skirt dropped to her feet. Underneath she was wearing a pair of leopard-print panties, and on her unbelievably flat abdomen rested, strangely enough, an elaborate tattoo of a giant turtle in crazy psychedelic colors, its shell an eye-popping checkerboard of neon inks. And with that the spell was crudely broken.
“Oh, no,” MisterMenu said. “What’s that? What’s that thing there on your belly?”
“The tat?” she said. “It’s not a thing. It’s a tortoise.” She looked offended. “He’s a symbol of the earth. He brings peace and good luck. He protects me. His name is PhyloxBox. I couldn’t live without him.”
“Why’d you do that to your body, desecrating it up like that? I just don’t—”
“Most guys seem to get off on it.”
“I’m not most guys.”
“Like you have to tell me.”
“All right. I’ll try to ignore this, this…daub. Let’s get back to business, shall we? Sit down.”
“I thought we were done with that.”
“Baby, we’re just getting started.”
She made a little-girl pouty face.
“Remove the panties.”
She did.
“Sit.”
She sat. She was looking at the camera now, as if it were a camera and not another person.
“Open your legs.”
She did. He stared for a while at the spot where the rubber met the road, on his face an unreadable expression, data being dutifully processed. When the operation concluded, his expression changed.
“Now,” he said, “where were we?”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Right. Pick it up from there.”
She crumpled up a fifty-dollar note, inserted it carefully into her waiting mouth, looked defiantly into the lens, and swallowed.
“Eleven fifty,” she said.
“Good. Eight fifty to go.”
Then suddenly she wadded up two more bills and swallowed those quickly. Then two more. She took a pause. She took a drink.
“Only thirteen more fifties and you break into the hundreds.”
She looked at him as if she’d just been presented with a dare she couldn’t possibly refuse. She picked up two fifties from the pile and, never for a moment taking her eyes off the camera, rolled them together between her hands into a single paper ball, which she proceeded to toss casually into her mouth as if it were nothing more than a big piece of candy. She choked it down and smiled for the camera as if to say, see, mister, it ain’t nothing, I can gobble down this stuff all the fuck-long day. Then she balled up two more fifties and swallowed those.
“I do like what I’m seeing,” said MisterMenu.
LavenderLips stared quizzically into the lens as if she were far away and thinking of something entirely different. Then abruptly she leaned over and casually vomited, only a portion of which made it into the bucket, the rest splattering violently onto the floor.
She looked up at him. “Sorry,” she said. She ripped off a couple of sheets of paper towel and sheepishly wiped her mouth.
“S’okay,” he said. “S’stuff happens.”
“Do the last two still count?”
“Of course they do. Raw dough don’t always go down so sweet.”
She was studying the tower of money in front of her. She looked into the camera. “I don’t believe I can go on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I quit.”
“You can’t quit. You haven’t even broken into the hundreds.”
“There’s not enough hundreds even in all that stupid pile to make me eat even one more of those nasty bills.” Something new had come into her large, explosive eyes, something serious and dead.
“But you’re forgetting. You were hired for eight hours today to honor my requests, not yours.”
“But I think you’re forgetting a key phrase in that clause, ‘within reason.’ All requests ‘within reason.’ Forcing someone to eat a pile of money is not ‘reasonable.’”
“How about ordering you to open up your twat, jam your fingers inside, and then suck them clean? Is that within reason? Masturbate with a plastic bottle? Stick your middle finger up your ass? Reasonable? Eat your own shit and smile while doing it? Reasonable? And I’ll bet you’ve heard all those requests, and honored them, too. So let’s make a deal. You need money or you wouldn’t be here. Everybody needs money or they wouldn’t be where they are. So let’s get down to the metal. How much do you need? How much to open up some space around your life?”
“Oh, a couple million, probably.”
“I said some space, not a country retreat.”
“A million, then. Just one.”
“The minimum.”
“I suppose two hundred and fifty would do.”
“The bare minimum.”
“A hundred grand?”
“How much do you need right now, right this minute, to alleviate the pressure that’s squeezing you the tightest?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“What’s it for?”
“Living expenses.”
“Such as?”
She gazed off to her left.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Okay.”
“Your business.”
She looked back at the camera. “Rent,” she said. “I’m a couple months behind.”
“And what does that entail, exactly?”
“Seven hundred a month.”
“The other three thousand?”
“Food and stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“You know, car payments, loans, electric, clothes, that sort of stuff.”
“And I suppose you’re behind in all those areas, too?”
She nodded.
“Tell you what, let’s make a deal here. You continue on with our little project, polish off, say, another two grand or so, and again that’s added on to the total you get to keep, of course, plus whatever HoneyDrippers is paying you, and on top of that, I’ll throw in…how about an extra ten thousand? How’s that sound? You can handle that, can’t you?”
She nodded.
“Excellent. Let’s get back to business.”
She looked for a moment as if she weren’t wearing makeup anymore and a glimpse of her real face came up for air. The face was unrecognizable. The sight disturbed MisterMenu for a second, but the second passed and he saw her again as he’d always seen her since she first stepped into camera range. Now she was intently studying the pile of money as if she hadn’t noticed it before and was wondering who put it there and what specifically he wanted.
“Makes me gag just looking at it,” she said.
“So close your eyes and take one, just one, and place it carefully in your mouth without looking at it or thinking about it. God, don’t think about it. Just pick one up and stick it in your mouth. But do it quickly, okay? Got to do it quickly. Don’t think, try one right now. Just as a test. Don’t think.”
So she did. And before she knew it the bill was gone. And she hadn’t felt a thing. Swiftly she moved on to another and another after that and soon she was popping note after note into her receptive mouth as if they were all no more than cocktail peanuts and announcing the new grand total after each swallow in the brisk matter-of-fact tone of a track announcer reading off the payouts after each race. She had reached seventeen hundred dollars and two full bottles of water when her body initiated another rebellion. It began with her holding up a finger as if to signal a slight pause in the morning’s activities, on her face a serious focused expression as if she were attending to a dim, faraway sound at the very edge of audibility, then suddenly a volcanic explosion of ejecta, a fire-hose-caliber torrent of water and bits of paper money and whatever else was still in there, shooting out from her in an opulent display of unadulterated rejection.
“Not on the money!” MisterMenu said. He was barking at her now, concerned about the spray.
And once she finally did stop, she couldn’t stop. The retching seemed to have assumed a mind of its own. It possessed her body and wouldn’t let go until it had wrung every speck of loose matter and every drop of loose water from her spastic interior. Those goals achieved, the heaving mercifully subsided at last. Eyes bloodshot, panting like a dog, she stared imploringly into the camera, body goo dripping from her chin. “I can’t go on,” she said. She tore a wad of paper towels from the roll and wiped her face. “Sorry,” she said.
MisterMenu stood, unbuttoned his pants, let them fall to the floor. He stepped out of his boxers. He sat back down. “Ten thousand dollars!” he said. “Ten thousand dollars!” He was practically screaming.
After a significant pause, she lifted one of the MountainMama bottles to her mouth, took a sizable gulp and paused, and then vomited that up. She took a smaller sip. It stayed down. Then, never taking her eyes from the camera, she plucked a bill from the pile, wadded it up, and swallowed without chewing. Immediately she was seized by a major internal contraction. She clutched at her stomach, bent over, and spewed out whatever little remained in her guts. The bucket, having been kicked out of the way long ago, and being more or less irrelevant by this time anyway, left the result to go splattering in every direction.
“Not on the money!” MisterMenu said. “Don’t do it on the money!”
She slipped off her chair and onto the wet floor. On her hands and knees she continued to heave even though she had long ago been thoroughly emptied out. In an interval between spasms she tried taking another taste of water and that, too, came instantly back up. She was little more now than a brutal upchuck machine.
MisterMenu was laid out fully flat on his back in his fancy erotognomic reclining device. His eyes were closed. A hint of a smile going in and out of focus around his thin lips. A gleaming puddle of fresh ejaculate smeared across his hairy abdominal bulge. He had just experienced an event he didn’t even think possible: the achievement of a completely spontaneous, mirabile dictu!, look-ma-no-hands orgasm. And it had been better than even the best of the humdrum coital variety. He bathed in the afterglow.
Naked, sitting in her own slime, LavenderLips, whose body seemed to have settled at last into some momentary simulacrum of physical peace, was toweling off her wet face with one hand, caressing her belly with the other. “My stomach hurts,” she said.
MisterMenu sat up, wiped himself with his boxers, and said, “You’ve been magnificent. Better than you even know. In addition to the ten grand plus the substantial amount you’ve already ingested, you deserve a tip, a big fat tip. Off the top of the pile, however much you can fit in one hand, take it, it’s yours.”
“Really?”
“When I speak, people generally do what I say.”
She cleaned off her right hand with a fresh paper towel, contemplated the stack of cash for a moment, then reached over and seized about a three-inch-thick bundle of hundreds. She showed the camera what she’d done.
MisterMenu said nothing. Which she took as approval.
“Are we done here?”
“Yes,” MisterMenu said, “we’re done here.”