So after all this time MisterMenu and DelicateSear had gotten back together. Who knew? Each had sampled plenty of other genitals in plenty of other places and had found that theirs fitted together just so. Neither was all that clear on how or why, exactly, their reconnect had taken place. They’d gone out one evening to SilverSettings on what each initially believed to be a routine friendly business dinner. Halfway through the entrée (bloody buckhorn stump for him, cosseted cabbie claw for her), MisterMenu began replaying the dramatic season-ending episode of what he called the MissusMenu Show. DelicateSear’d heard it all before in minute detail, but he couldn’t seem to keep from rerunning it. In a nutshell, he and the wife had begun dinner that evening with a verbal spat over drinks (subject: did it even matter?), a shouting match during the entrées, and by dessert a full-on food fight that ended in the kitchen with most of the imported Mannaware in pieces on the fifteen-thousand-dollar nugget-parquet floor. She’d sued for divorce the following day. The day after that he’d settled more or less permanently into his not-so-secret pied-à-terre in the monied elevations of the MinisteringArms. Smiles for all. Cue the theme.
“I remember,” she said. “About three months ago. When you changed.”
“No. I didn’t change.”
“Oh, drop your pearls. It wasn’t anything really you could even put your finger on. Like a subtle new seasoning added to the ragout. That’s all.”
“Did I seem down? Was it anything apparent?”
“No, no, not at all. Nothing visible.”
“Because that can destroy you in negotiations, you know. They’re predators out there, all of ’em—they sense weakness in an instant, then go in for the kill.”
“Not to worry. Never occurred to me that your claws were ever anything but razor sharp. It’s just that a small part of you, an infinitesimal part, might have seemed a bit distracted.”
“But it wasn’t noticeable?”
“Not at all. I’m sure most people, in fact, didn’t detect a thing. It’s just that ever since I was a little girl I’ve been fine-tuned to other people’s internal weather. Don’t know why. My grandmama was like that, too. You couldn’t lie to her about anything.”
“That’s why you’re in charge of Context and Control.”
The waiter appeared tableside as if by magic. MisterMenu ordered another magnum of the Grand Marque TickleWaterReserve2009 ($1,100).
“I’m not used to such heights of extravagance,” DelicateSear said.
“You’ll adjust,” said MisterMenu. “And I think you’ve been acclimating to the altitude quite professionally.” He offered her a toast. To the bestest, the grandest, the loveliest, the sexiest, you know, the estiest of everything.
“Guess what? I’m already thoroughly acclimated.” And she toasted him. To the richest, the handsomest, the sexiest, the kindest, the whateveriest, etc., etc.
Their eyes locked. And it was tempered Dura-Bolt.
“You know what?” MisterMenu said.
“What?”
“I think we need to repair to my collateral crib.”
“Well, listen at you, Mr. DaShiznit.”
“I may be an old wrinkle mask, but I’ve still got a pulse.”
“Next you’ll be rattling off your fave beats.”
“I was serious, though. We need to check out those sheets.”
“We do, huh?”
“I think they might need changing.”
MisterMenu called for the check, paid, and in minutes they found themselves out on the sidewalk, blinking into the setting sunlight. The GalacticCloudTouringConfiguration glided noiselessly to the curb. Trefoil, in his tailored black uniform with gold piping, exited the driver’s seat, came around, and opened the rear door.
“Good evening, madame,” he said. He gave her a crisp salute. “Pleasant to see you again.”
“Nice to see you, too, Trefoil.”
MisterMenu and DelicateSear slid onto the commodious rear seat, assumed their respective look-at-me-I’m-being-driven-around faces, and settled back into the intoxicating glove leather. Trefoil guided the Cloud into traffic with hydraulic grace. In less than a minute the passengers’ mouths were squirming wetly around all over each other. DelicateSear’s hand moved reflexively toward MisterMenu’s zipper. Gently he touched her arm and unglued himself from her face. “Not yet,” he said. “Like to have something left in the tank for the bedroom.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “When has that ever been a problem for you?”
“Like cigarettes—first one of the day is always best. Rather not blow it in the back seat of a car. We’re older than that, right?”
“If you say so.” Her expression shifted slightly toward the business end of the spectrum. She slid back a panel, revealing the well-stocked liquor cabinet. “Drink?”
“Know how to make a GoldenRubySpikedPlatitude?”
“Sounds out of my pay grade. What’s in it?”
“Twenty-year-old Maccloister, tomb vodka, volcanic-rock-filtered gin, aurora borealis nectar, dawn-harvested master melons, speckled tummerl eggs, and a generous sprinkling of gold flecks up top.”
“Sounds rather yummy.”
“I’ll have Sinisteria prepare you one. You’ll like it.”
“I need something now.” She grabbed the most interesting-looking fifth within reach, the decorative amber cylinder of historic Lickerlich, unscrewed the cap, raised it to her lips, tossed back a slug right out of the bottle.
“You’re such a peasant. I love it.”
She turned and stretched her legs across his lap. He stroked them all the way home.
Since the separation MisterMenu had resided in the presidential penthouse of the MinisteringArms, in midtown. DelicateSear had already been there on numerous occasions so was thoroughly adjusted to the manifold conveniences that invariably and deliberately wowed first-timers. She headed straight for the bathroom and the shower that adjusted itself to the user’s preprogrammed preferences regarding water temperature, force of spray, and number and positioning of various nozzles during the “aqueous clarify.” On exiting the cleansing pod you controlled the air temp through verbal command. Which DelicateSear did. She liked being naked, so she didn’t even bother enfolding herself in one of the lamb-soft fleece bathrobes hanging freshly laundered in the robe closet. She found MisterMenu in the odeum, lounging on his favorite viewing berth, staring at some ratty old picture with all the men running around in hats and all the women draped out in ugly gowns she couldn’t believe anyone actually wore in real time. She also couldn’t believe MisterMenu looked at these yawners for any other reason than to impress what few friends he had with the fact that he’d actually endured watching them.
She stood before him, languidly drying herself. “I simply cannot believe these towels,” she said. “They feel so good they should be illegal.”
“Take a couple.”
“I couldn’t. I’d like to but I couldn’t.”
“Why not? I can get more.”
“All right. Maybe I’ll pick out a few before I go.”
MisterMenu pressed a button in the armrest of his berth. He had barely lifted his hand away before a tall, slim woman of obvious tropical origin appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a curious royal purple uniform consisting of a pleated miniskirt and an usher’s bolero jacket with a large M embroidered in white above each breast. DelicateSear, who had made not the slightest effort to conceal her exposed body, stared steadily at the woman as if she were the one who was starkers.
“Sinisteria,” said MisterMenu, “would you please be so good as to mix us a couple SpikedPlatitudes?”
“Yes, sir.” She was answering DelicateSear’s stare beat for beat.
“And make one for yourself, if you’d like. You may serve us in the dream chamber.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned to go.
“And Sinisteria,” DelicateSear said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Wouldn’t you like to get a bit more comfortable? Aren’t you hot in all those icky, sticky clothes?”
“Thank you, ma’am.” And she softly exited.
“Has Sinisteria lost weight since the last time I was here?”
“You’ll have to ask her, I’m afraid. She’s always looked quite smokin’ to me.”
“There you go again. The older you get, the younger you seem.”
“Thank you. Shall we adjourn to the dream chamber?”
“Capital idea, Fussbutt.”
So they did.
MisterMenu liked women. He liked having them in his life. He liked them in the boardroom (within reason). He liked them in the bedroom (without reason). He was a woman’s man. In fact, he never felt more himself than when he was in bed with a woman or women, as the case may be. He liked to think they liked him. Except from his wife, he had never heard differently.
The master dream chamber, MisterMenu’s preferred lair, was decorated in a style best described as “nouveau primeval mystique.” The full carpet was an absurdly thick white alpaca, the walls were a dark blue suede, and the few spare pieces of outer-space-safari furniture had all been custom-crafted by Halcyon of Planisphere. The sole painting, a multimedia piece, actually, mounted precariously over the bed, was entitled Veiled Lagoon, an original fabulation by the trending BluntShears. The bed itself, a circus-ring-size monstrosity that actually revolved, he’d had specially constructed after reading in SumpTown, a periodical he never admitted to anyone he even glanced through, that this was the very type of bed that Razzlapin famously cavorted upon. MisterMenu wanted the exact same model, only bigger. Now he had it. Which was where MisterMenu and DelicateSear artfully arranged themselves after MisterMenu relieved himself of his workaday costume, tossing each bespoke item wherever it happened to fall on the insanely soft and insanely expensive carpeting. He stood before her in complete unselfconscious exposure, including his penis in all its unadorned whatever-the-hell-it-was. He caught DelicateSear staring markedly at it. Rightly or wrongly, he interpreted her gaze as a sign of avid affection.
“Do you want me to shower also?”
“You needn’t bother. But what you could do, though, is pop into the powder room and give your asshole a quick scrub.”
“I assume you’ve performed the same courtesy on yourself.”
“Certainly. I believe in always being well prepared.”
“I’ll get right on it, then. And by the way, I love when you give me orders.”
“I know you do.”
So he obeyed.
By the time he returned, Sinisteria had brought the drinks and joined DelicateSear on the bed. They were busily engaged in talking about their children. They each had a two-year-old, and each child was experiencing similar difficulties conforming to the demands of the porcelain god, DelicateSear’s girl bursting spontaneously into tears whenever the phrase “toilet training” was even mentioned, Sinisteria’s boy running out of the room to seek refuge beneath the dining-room table.
“My girls glided through the whole issue with hardly even a single complaint, both of them,” said MisterMenu.
“All well adjusted and psychologically fit,” DelicateSear said.
“Of course,” said MisterMenu. “Mental health runs in the family.”
“You’ve all been so very rich in every department,” Sinisteria said.
“There’s the proof. What greater evidence of sanity than the acquisition of vast amounts of the ever-ready?”
“Let’s change the subject,” DelicateSear said. “Talk about money is such a real bringdown.”
“And what subject interests you?” He believed he knew the answer to that question.
“I don’t know. Knitting?”
He emitted his short, sharp laugh. “My favorite subject, too. Let’s knit my body to yours.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her toward him. He appeared to be about halfway there on the occasionally rocky road to maximum hardness. But only halfway.
“Think somebody needs a bit of assistance. Want me to get you an EverTrue?”
He shook his head. “Takes too long. How about a manual?”
She reached down between his legs and began jerking him off. After a while he stopped her arm. “Let’s save it for the closing bell.” He turned and rolled heavily on top of her. He parked his now suitably firm thing inside her. Then, without further ceremony, he pistoned it quickly in and out until he came. Which didn’t take all that long. He, of course, was not wearing a condom. He never did. He sprayed his paste all over the interior of her warm oven. He sighed and rolled off her.
“All right, you two,” he said to the women, “have at it.”
Like most good heterophiles everywhere, MisterMenu could often achieve the height of erotic arousal by watching a couple of hot women cover each other. Which he now proceeded to do. They were on each other’s mouths in an instant. It was as if a private membrane deep inside each one of them had risen to the surface to expose itself for the sole purpose of rubbing furiously against its adjacent twin. They rubbed until the kindling burst into flames. Their bodies merged and burned up altogether. Mouths and nipples and pussies and assholes. Gone. MisterMenu watched. As if the heat were emitting rays that could warm his heart and tan his skin. And it did. He wanted to say something suitably piquant, but nothing occurred to him. Where had those girls just gone? They’d obviously been somewhere not of this world. Where was that? What was that? He wanted to go there, too. Could he? Would he? Probably not. They were women. Natural emonauts to other planets.
“All right,” MisterMenu said. “Enough. I think you girls like each other a little too much.” His voice coming from such a far distance that he barely recognized it as his own.
DelicateSear turned a groggy, dazed expression toward him. She was wearing that loose, gray-dawn drunken face of hers. He could tell she wasn’t even seeing him.
“What?” she said.
He grabbed her, pulled her toward him, and planted a MisterMenu buzzbomb right on her wet road-worn lips. She kissed back. Then they mixed it up for a while with their tongues. Suddenly Sinisteria’s mouth was there among them, too, joining in enthusiastically, and it became impossible to know who, exactly, was kissing whom. This round of saliva guzzling lasted until their face muscles wore out and then gradually slid to an end. They couldn’t stop smiling at one another.
“I need another drink,” DelicateSear said.
“Second that,” said MisterMenu.
“Hit it a third time,” said Sinisteria. She rose to go make them. “No,” said DelicateSear. She pushed her back down. “I’ll go.” DelicateSear left the warm bed and, still naked, ambled to the full bar at the end of the room, where she busied herself with a lot of clinking activity.
Gazing in that direction, MisterMenu said to Sinisteria, “Got a dynamite ass, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me ask you something. That bother you, calling me sir all the time?”
“No, sir.”
“I was going to ask you not to do it anymore, but then I realized I liked it. It even excites me sometimes.”
“It excites me, too, sir.”
MisterMenu leaned over and tried to kiss Sinisteria in a frank imitation of DelicateSear’s full-on, go-for-broke manner. It seemed okay, but the charge was of a decidedly lower wattage.
“How about a replay?” he said.
So they did. Same result.
“I think you like DelicateSear better than me,” MisterMenu said afterward.
“She’s a very fine lady.”
“Yes, she is. And so are you.”
“And you’re a very fine man.”
“On my fine days.”
DelicateSear arrived with a tray full of drinks. “And what are you two gossiping about so intensely?”
“You, of course,” said MisterMenu.
“Well, I am an endlessly fascinating topic.” She passed out the drinks and joined them on the bed.
MisterMenu took a sip from his glass, rolled it around in his mouth. “Your Platitudes are as good as Sinisteria’s.”
“Who do you think I learned from?”
“My two girls,” MisterMenu said. “Here, let me get closer to both of you.” He set his drink down on the red teak headboard and wedged himself in between the women. He placed a firm arm around each of them. “Feels like we’re a family now, doesn’t it?”
“A family that every time they’re together again they immediately get naked and screw one another’s brains out,” DelicateSear said.
“Well, what’s a family for?”
“Fighting and making babies,” said Sinisteria.
“Well, we’re making a sandwich,” MisterMenu said. “And I’m the cream in the middle.” He turned to his right and kissed DelicateSear. He turned to his left and kissed Sinisteria. It was like sampling wine. Who hit the best notes, possessed the most lingering finish? He couldn’t determine. So he decided to simply get wasted on both. Consume their fire. Wallow in their practices. So he did. All the while reveling in his lust. There was no end to the body. It was a universe unto itself. You could learn more by exploring the frantic turmoil of skin and flesh than you could scrolling through the compuverse of all your days. Later, when he surfaced for air, he realized it might be actually possible to drown in the physical, in this unfathomable sea of sensation. Or was it? Maybe there was no death here at all, maybe the struggle to keep one’s head above water simply conveyed you to some unimaginable place where all was safety and contentment. In addition to cleansing the body of toxins, indulging in carefree sexual activity provided, at least for MisterMenu, a blue-chip corollary: it also sparked his mind. He became, for a crucial interval, at least, a philosopher of the sheets. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a single human endeavor he was aware of that couldn’t be finessed in order to yield a lucrative return of some caliber. In fact, some of his best perceptions had been slough from an enthusiastic fuck. So what he needed now were supple mouths servicing his stick, and, unusually for him, he surprised himself by actually asking the girls if they wouldn’t mind taking turns, one after the other, polishing the pole with their tongues. Without even the slightest demur, they applied themselves to the task with convincing enthusiasm, feigned or not. The middle finger of his right hand, seemingly having acquired a will of its own, found the opening to a nearby asshole, he didn’t know which one—did it matter?—and deftly inserted itself inside. All shiny and warm. He explored the walls of the cave. Then his finger became a dick and began moving like a dick. Someone moaned. Maybe it was him. He removed his finger and tapped the top of each girl’s bobbing head. “That’s enough,” he said. “Main event.” He rolled over onto DelicateSear, but his dick was already beginning to lose some air. “How about an assist?” he said. DelicateSear obligingly reached down and stroked him until the balloon was inflated again. MisterMenu worked it until he was about to cum when he pulled out and turned his attention to Sinisteria. She seemed slightly tighter and wetter and he liked that. Again he was mounted bareback. His preferred ride. Condoms were for ordinaries. He didn’t really care all that much about disease or babies. They were problems that could be taken care of. What mattered in the moment was supreme. The skin-on-skin vibe and the indiscriminate mixing of fluids. Then, just as he began to melt and drop his load inside Sinisteria, he stopped, pulled out, and switched back over to DelicateSear. And that’s how it went, back and forth, in and out, for as long as he could stand and then some. Then he was struck by one of his patented fun notions: why not figure that whichever female he finally happened to explode inside of was obviously the one he liked best? And truly, he didn’t yet know who that particular contestant would be. Ever the reliable gamer (no such thing as a trivial game), he was interested in the outcome. He was always interested in outcomes. But for a true, honest verdict, he would have to let the body, not the mind, decide. He was well aware of all the devious snares the “objective” mind was capable of devising, being a grand master of emotional chess himself. He closed his eyes and, in the heat of the moment, lost track of which side of the bed he was occupying, so that when the finale finally arrived, he wasn’t even sure which squirming lady happened to be the lucky depositee. He had to examine the flushed face beneath him for several seconds to be certain, and—lo and behold!—the winner was (fevered drumroll): Sinisteria. Who knew? He bestowed upon both women a series of plentiful kisses as equally as he could, maybe a few more for the loser, DelicateSear. “My girls,” he said. His plummy voice abundant with all the attributes of untarnished gratification. He sighed. Deeply.
“You can take a well-deserved rest now,” said DelicateSear. “After such a full, productive day.”
Sinisteria was playing with his soft dick, wiggling it back and forth, obviously testing her ability at a bit of manual resuscitation. He kept pushing her arm away. “All right,” he said. Now thoroughly refreshed, MisterMenu clapped his hands. “Back to work.” He and both women jumped simultaneously out of bed. He seized Sinisteria by the waist, pulled her tightly against his chest, leaned down, and whispered in her ear for several beats longer than the usual allotment of ear-whispering time. Her tall, slim body seemed to actually lengthen in height as she listened. They stepped apart. “Okay?” he said. She nodded her head.
“Should I get my pad?” DelicateSear said. She had that arch look in her eye, but MisterMenu preferred to ignore it. “Sinisteria,” he said. “Coffee, please, in the bridge.” Which was how he referred to his home office. He and DelicateSear got dressed and retired to said room. MisterMenu assumed his position in his supercomfortable custom-made chair behind his supercomfortable custom-made desk. DelicateSear stretched out on the long, long couch. MisterMenu pondered her for a long while. As if stringing together the words of something important he wanted to say. Or waiting for her to do the same.
“Am I supposed to inquire now exactly what you were whispering to Sinisteria?” she said.
“If you wish.”
“All right, what were you whispering?”
“None of your business.”
“Touché,” she said.
MisterMenu riffled through some papers on his desk. He paused. He studied her in silence. He riffled his papers again.
“I believe I’m going to have to terminate FiberFlywheel,” he finally said.
“Congratulations. What took you so long?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking of Marginalia. You know, the daughter.”
“You fucking her, too?”
“Only a little.”
“You dog.”
“Damn thing is, who do I replace him with?”
“RevenueWarts?”
“His closet’s so jammed with skeletons it bursts into a chorus of ‘Dem Bones’ every time you walk past the door.”
“NonAlignment?”
“He’s best friends and co-owner of SteelCalipers with LoyaltyOath.”
“LensFlare?”
“He’s got that upcoming wire-fraud thing.”
“ThermalExplosion?”
“Bad breath.”
“Looks like the executive holding pen at NationalProcedures has taken a net quality hit. Go outside? Bring in some new blood?”
“Competition’s generally worse off. They’re all trying to pick off our people.”
“Or the whole company itself. What’re you going to do about VariancePanoply?”
There’d been rumors for weeks that Variance, their major rival in the prevalent trade of making money out of money, was preparing a hostile takeover bid. NationalProcedures was on edge. Staff were updating their résumés. Checking the ConnectTheDots website during working hours for job possibilities. Routine corporate hysteria.
“Those clowns don’t know what’s coming to them.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll lay on my jiggery-pokery double thick.”
“And how does that differ from your legendary fiddle-faddle?”
MisterMenu explained.
“Sounds like, if all those dots fall properly into place, you might even end up in a position to buy them.”
“Presto change-o. The abiding rule of global capitalism. Modern business is medieval alchemy, my dear. Embrace that truth, never stray too far from the primal core, and you can do no wrong. You know, a great man once defined happiness as ‘a clear horizon.’ Are my old peepers deceiving me or is that the very scene unfolding spectacularly before us?”
“Somewhat. There is, unfortunately, a slight blemish at the moment threatening to depreciate the market value of that particular picture.”
“Yeah? What?”
“BlisterPac is dead.”
“Who he?”
“The guy who’s been tracking down the whereabouts of your missing bag o’ money for all these months.”
“My bag o’?”
“Your bag o’.”
“What happened?”
“Well, so far as we know, he either slipped or was pushed off a cliff into a giant gorge, apparently a big tourist attraction outside some shithole upstate named Randomburg. He’d traced the money to that area, which, not so coincidentally, is the boyhood home of our mark, the illustrious Graveyard, the lowlife who scooted off with the bag to begin with.”
“Local law enforcement on it?”
“Of course, but that’s all ordinaryland up there, so we don’t know yet the level of competence we’re dealing with.”
“I miss my money.”
“I know you do. And we’re working overtime to get it back.”
“Whatever you have to do. Subcontract it out, if necessary.”
“I know just the right people.”
“Fine. But don’t tell me their names. Don’t tell me any names. Or any details about the operation. Just retrieve the bag.”
“Think of it as already being back home in your hands again. Think of how it feels. Think of how it smells.”
“I’m thinking.” He had actually closed his eyes. “I’m smelling.” Now he opened his eyes. “Visualization of desire is the force that manufactures wealth. Do you know what the eleventh of this month is?”
“A Friday.”
“My birthday. I like birthdays. Especially my own. I like presents.”
“This should be a memorable one.”
“I can already feel the four-leaf clovers popping up at my feet.”
“You deserve them.”
“You know what?” He raised his arms above his head in an athlete’s triumphant victory-lap salute and then beamed a full-on psychic charge of pure MisterMenu directly into the center of DelicateSear’s receptive gaze. “I should just like to announce, with absolute conviction, in full chief executive authority, that I do, most certainly, like being me.”