Father said to Walter.
“Oh, I did, indeed!” he beamed, as he knit his hands together and then tried to pry them apart in a wiggly sort of excitement. “First I licked her boots, and then her bottom!”
“They’re good that way! Take some home,” said Father, as he presented him with a box. “You know, sometimes I bite off their feet first. Or other times, I start with their hair. I guess it’s true what they say—there’s no right way to eat a slut!”
“Thank you so much,” said Walter, his face aglow. “We had a very enjoyable morning.” He shot me an odd, rather mischievous smile.
Walter’s nannies packed up his magazines, straightened his clothes and hat, and led him to me. Holding out his hand, he said, “It was my pleasure to meet you!” Without moving his lips, he whispered, “We can have a grand adventure in the slubs if you want.”
“Thank you.” I said, as I shook his moist hand.
He and his uncle then left and the second the door closed, Father turned to me. Your Joelene is our second traitor of the day.”
At first, I thought it a joke, but he wasn’t laughing or making one of his stupid faces when he thought himself funny. “She is not!”
“We caught the bitch in the code workshop trying to send a message to MKG! So we tossed her in the dungeon next to Ken.” By the end of his sentence he was screaming as loud as of one of his Ültra bands.
“Let her go!?” I said. “She’s not a traitor!”
Father closed his eyes for a moment. “Anyway,” he began, “here’s the story. If I send and he kills Nora now, then you’re not going to be properly motivated for the product show. So, what we’ve come up with is that we send him to harm her, then she’s still alive, and you’re still in check.” Father turned to Xavid.
Xavid pushed up his glasses. “We’ll just have him break off one of her little toes.”
“Yeah… that’s good!” said Father. “So, I could send him to—”
I reared back but when I flung my fist at his face, he grabbed me and threw me to the iron tiles. A pinpoint of black pain burned at the back of my head. As I pushed myself up, I said, “Do not do send that beast!”
“God, you’re weak!” said Father with a laugh. “I barely knocked you.”
“Do not send !”
He glanced at Xavid and rolled his eyes. “You’re embarrassing me!” He started to head for the door then stopped. “Oh, and for the show… none of your Pure Haggis clothes. Get some color.”
Eleven
Once they left, I turned right around and raced to the back door. I was going to run to the garage, get in my car, and somehow make it to Nora’s this time. Once I opened the door and stepped out, though, I nearly slammed into the orange satin with the gold visor.
I said.
He didn’t reply, but grasped my shoulders and picked me up like a bag of groceries. After placing me back inside, he closed the door.
I said, as I watched him through the peek-cam, hoping he’d go, but he just stood staring back through his visor. Turning, I sprinted to the front door, but an identical satin waited there.
I rushed to my desk and opened Joelene’s screens. I turned every knob, but they had been wiped clean. Frantic, I grabbed the remote for the big screen, hoping to find the Soup and Intellectual show or something, but all the channels were blocked. Smacking the controller, I must have hit the history knob as it began playing a recording of Heavy Profit Camp that hadn’t been erased.
Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu complained about RiverGroup again, and there was Nora.
“Hide,” I told her. “Go somewhere safe.” Stepping before the screen I leaned forward to kiss her gloved hand, and just before I did, she lifted it, and touched the button. Up close, though, I saw something. Hitting the stop knob, I realized that she was pointing to a capital f that had been scratched into the shiny black surface of the button. The letter wasn’t perfect and it looked as though Nora had done it with a needle or pin.
What did it mean? I could think of a vulgar word, but surely Nora would never use it. Staring at it, I willed myself to understand, but without Joelene’s help, I couldn’t figure it out.
The estimator clock said Father wasn’t due back for forty-seven minutes, but I had a bad feeling, so I erased the memory and switched off the screen.
At my desk, I pulled open the refrigerated drawer, took out several Pure H magazines, and began rifling through them, but nothing made sense. I felt a presence. Looking up, I saw Xavid with his head held high, his hands on his hips, as if he were posing. Once he saw that I’d seen him, he smiled, stepped closer, and said, “I crept up on you,” as if pleased.
“What do you want?” I asked, irritated.
Combing his white-capped hair with a hand, he gazed around my place and said, “We are going to have to learn to work together, because you are also one of the extremely valuable assets here.”
Assuming that was some sort of bizarre compliment, I just asked, “Can you help me with Joelene?”
He laughed at me. “You’re fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not. There’s something strange about her. I have a sense like that. I’m good with people.” He pushed up his amber glasses. “Besides, her hair is awful. That color is wrong for her and ugly. I’ve never liked it.”
Her natural curly hair was fine. I said, “I’d like to see her.”
Frowning, he said, “She’s gone.”
I hoped he didn’t mean dead. “I thought she was at the PartyHaus dungeon.”
He whipped around as if someone was sneaking up on him. His eyes darted left and right behind his amber glasses. Finally, when he seemed satisfied that we were he turned and asked, “What?” as if he had forgotten what we were talking about.
“Joelene…” I said, wondering what was wrong with him, “is she all right?”
As if it didn’t matter, he said, “I suppose.”
“I want to see her.”
He started walking around my apartment, looking over my things. “I don’t think so.” He stopped before my couch, bent close enough to smell it, and asked, “Do you have any real skills or anything?”
For an instant, I felt depressed. The truth was I wasn’t sure. “What do you want?”
He then headed to my small kitchen. “I think RiverGroup can make a comeback,” he said, admiring the black gold cabinets. “Some don’t, but I do. They don’t know what I know.” Turning, he smiled and asked, “Did I tell you that I’m very fucking smart?”
“I think you did.” I knew I’d heard him say that before.
“If I can turn it around, there will be profits. Extraordinary profits, because it’s one thing to build something, it is quite another to rebuild. That’s a particular type of skill. It’s not just creating, but destroying, too. Do you know what I mean?”