“You know exactly what I think, Dad,” says Artie. “I think that it’s not very nice, forcing someone to become a prostitute against their will.”
“Artie, sweet Jesus, why refer to our people as prostitutes?” the father says. “That’s not a fun term. That’s not a term that makes people want to let their hair down. That’s a sad term. That’s a term that, if anything, makes people want to put their hair back up, which means I eventually close up shop and you hustle your ass home from college sans degree. Sheesh. My son the philosophical sourpuss. Looks down his nose at my line of work but sucks up the tuition like it’s going out of style. Would it violate your principles too much to keep an eye on this guy for a few minutes, O Pure One? Think you could fucking manage that?”
“Fine, Dad,” Artie says. “Whatever.”
“We’ll be in my office talking price,” the father says, and steers the pancake guy into a former walk-in freezer now wood-paneled and decorated with framed posters of sweaty nude Flaweds sucking their fingers.
“Boy, I don’t envy you,” Artie says. “If you think Dad’s mean to me, you should see how mean he is to his whores. I mean his Personal Pleasure Associates. PPAs. You should see how mad he’ll get if he comes back here and finds you talking to me. He doesn’t go for the idea of his whores chatting with Normals. I mean, if you want to pretend to groan in ecstasy or compliment some John’s pecker, that’s fine, but just talking for the sake of talking, no, he doesn’t go for that. Which is exactly why I’m taking Physics at the community college. I’m getting out of the family business. Physics is hard. Really hard. But it’s not at all hard compared to helping Dad beat the snot out of some PPA for accidentally calling an AR a John. Dad makes us call them ARs. Affection Recipients. Are you going to be one of the PPAs who dresses up like a girl? Or one who gets gagged and bound? Do you know yet? I guess you wouldn’t. I hope you’re neither. You seem like a nice guy, so I’ll go out on a limb and say I hope you’re just a regular old whore.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“This one time Mack in Security had to stun-gun this AR for getting too rough with this fragile PPA named Kurt,” he says. “Mack told the AR, he said, look pal, you want to get rough, go to the Rough Room, there’s no need to brutalize a tiny PPA like Kurt. But by that time the AR had a big old hole in his neck courtesy of Mack and had forgotten all about Kurt. You’d be amazed what a big old hole in your neck will do to your sex drive. My point is, did Mack ever catch it from Dad on that one! You should have seen Dad burning a corresponding hole in Mack’s neck while I held poor Mack down. Did I like doing that? Of course not. But what was I supposed to do, contradict Dad in front of Mack? To tell you the truth, Dad scares me. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday he didn’t hold me down and burn a hole in my neck. Gosh, we probably shouldn’t be going on and on like this. If Dad comes back and hears us, you’ll get the pipefitters’ convention for sure. So we’d better stop talking.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Last year at the pipefitters’ convention Dad made this PPA named Earl wear a poodle suit,” he says. “That was one room I did not want to go into, except I had to, because Earl had forgotten his fake bone even though it was clearly marked on the Work Order. Last thing I wanted to see was Earl in a poodle suit going woof woof woof under a big pile of naked pipefitters, but I had my instructions from Dad, the heathen. After I dropped off Earl’s bone I went back to my room and studied Bernoulli’s equation while sobbing quietly. People look at me and think, he’s lucky, his dad’s Max Tanner the rich pimp, but I tell you it’s no picnic. Sometimes after writing a poem about the beauty of the stars I have to go around and change all the sheets. You think that’s uplifting? You think that kind of activity nourishes your sublime nature? Well it doesn’t, believe me.”
Tanner and the pancake guy come out smiling.
“Artie, super news,” Tanner says. “The price is right. All we need now is the physical exam.”
“Great, Dad,” Artie says weakly.
They examine my privates and make me hop in place so they can check my heart rate. They count my teeth and test my grip by making me squeeze a can filled with sand and have me read one of their brochures aloud to check for speech impediments.
“These feet worry me, Artie,” Tanner says, tapping my claws with a Sharpie. “These little fuckers could be serious showstoppers. What if in the heat of passion this guy claws the crap out of some AR’s leg and the AR gets gangrene and sues? Jesus. Although I suppose I could put him on drive-through hand jobs. Would you be in favor of drive-through hand jobs, Artie?”
“I’d be in favor of setting him and every other PPA in this dump free, Dad,” says Artie.
“All right, smart guy, I’ll do that,” Tanner says. “Then you can swap your slide rule for a fucking shovel and join your peers in the sewage trench. Hah? Hah? Is that what you want, Einstein?”
“No, Dad,” Artie says.
“Then let’s have some thoughtful input here,” Tanner says.
“He seems well suited to drive-through hand jobs,” Artie says through clenched teeth.
“That’s more like it,” Tanner says. “Now go get him a sexy smock and some baby oil.”
Then the lights go out and something blows up and suddenly Flaweds in lingerie are rushing by screaming, and swearing Normals are hopping over fallen beams with their pants around their knees. I grab Artie’s stun gun and make for a hole in the wall. Outside are sycamores and clouds and tongues of flame devouring the words GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS on a fallen paper banner. A guy in a ski mask is sitting on a parking bumper trying to get a jammed gun to fire and a brothel security guard is sneaking up behind him with a billy club. So I stun the guard and drag the guy in the ski mask to a kind of clearing, where a bunch of other guys in ski masks pat me on the back and push me into a van as the Safeway collapses like a house of cards.
I’m bleeding at the knees and choking from smoke and have no idea who these people are or where I’m going, but at least I’m off the hook in terms of the hand jobs.
I lie all night in the back of the van with three weeping rescued whores in nun costumes. When we finally stop we’re rushed past some swaying denuded mesquites into a cave, where we’re given bedrolls and wooden bowls of cold mush.
“Where are we?” one of the nuns asks.
“Texas,” somebody answers, and lights a candle.
Outside the cave two Flaweds in ski masks sit on rocks near a campfire.
“Quite a mission,” says one.
“Yes, Mitch, quite a mission,” says the other, who’s half the size of the first.
“Thanks to my leadership, we really exceeded our project goals,” says Mitch.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” says the other. “We only rescued four crummy Flaweds. On top of which you left Frenchy at the scene.”
“I beg your pardon?” says Mitch.
“Oh, come on,” says the other. “First you got lost, then you attacked a brothel rather than a work camp, then you drove off in a panic, leaving Frenchy at the scene.”
“I did no such thing,” says Mitch. “Why do you insist on making up lies, Jerome? Frenchy and I had talked before the mission, and at that time he said that he might want to, you know, undertake some additional activities subsequent to the primary mission. It was a secret talk. No one else heard it. We even arranged a secret signal. As we were leaving the site, Frenchy gave me the secret signal, so I kept driving. Simple as that.”
“What was the secret signal, Mitch?” Jerome says. “Begging you at the top of his lungs to please please slow down while he sprinted alongside the van weeping? You lie, Mitch. I saw the whole thing. If I hadn’t been so busy putting a tourniquet on Lance I would have wrested the wheel away and saved Frenchy myself.”