Chocolate Chocolate Moons Page 22

  I am relieved and overjoyed that we have discovered an antidote to the anti-flavonoid that poisoned the Chocolate Moons, but I am sad that the patients will be injected with its chemical essence and will not be able enjoy the delicate pâté a choux pastry, custard-cream middle and the smooth dark chocolate topping of real éclairs. But I know the minute the antidote takes effect and they awaken, they will be starved and will immediately ask for one. And they do.

  Before I leave I say to Trenton and Jersey, “Excuse me; I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “You just came out of the bathroom,” Jersey says. “In fact I saw you go three times.”

  “Yes, but I have to go again. It’s more urgent. Something feels very different.”

  “Different?” Jersey asks, concerned that I might be sick.

  “I think CC’s charm is going to emerge.” And emerge it does.

  I contact Lamont to ask him to ask CC if she wants her charm back.

  Sometime later Lamont tells me that CC declined my offer and said after all it’s been through, she never wants to see it again.

  45

  SID AND LAMONT wait for Drew to exit the River Area-New Chicago tram. They are in plain clothes.

  “I could have worn something better,” Sid says. “Drew is such a snappy dresser. You make me feel inferior even in front of criminals.”

  “It’s all in your mind.”

  “No, it’s on my back,” Sid retorts. “I don’t know why you made me wear this old gray velour sweat suit. You just want me out of the loop. And out of the competition for next month’s cover of Diva Detective.”

  “Are you finished?” Lamont adjusts his Turnbull and Asser tie, tucks a silk handkerchief into his breast pocket, and angles his fedora over one eye.

  Sid frowns. Finally Lamont points and says, “Look, there he is.”

  Drew is wearing all black. Sid wonders if it’s an artist’s camouflage or if Drew is just depressed. He slides his jacket zipper up and down and doesn’t think he looks so bad.

  Lamont and Sid meet Drew. They walk to Lamont’s rover.

  “Get in the back,” Lamont says. Drew moves. “Not you. You sit up front with me so I can keep an eye on you.” He thumbs Sid to sit in the back.

  Lamont drives to Dr. Scholl’s Plaza, an ugly industrial area that lies at the base of the space elevator populated by people down on their heels. It is filled with storage facilities, off-track gaming parlors, cheap hotels, and restaurants with waiters who sing ballads of sad cafés.

  He parks at one of the hotels formally used as a 23rd Century Fox B-rated movie set that has never seen better days. Sid pushes the door open into a dim, smoky, foul-smelling lobby. They don’t see any doormen or porters, only a vending machine that gives out keys and an empty brown whisky bottle on a desk. Lamont gets keys to two adjoining rooms. He hands one to Sid, who will share his room with Drew. Lamont takes the other. He leaves the door open between the rooms.

  No one unpacks.

  Drew sits in the dingy hotel room on a faded yellow sofa with Jackson Pollock–like drips that Drew estimates if properly displayed at Park Bengay could sell for a lot of money.

  Lamont comes over to Drew. He hands him an unmarked palm. “No time like the present to make the call to Scheherazade to arrange your meeting,” he says.

  After several rings Scheherazade picks up. A portfolio of etchings of heavy naked women by Lucy and Desi Rubins destined to hang in the lounge of Rose’s Heaven lies open on her desk. Rose rejected Odalisque by Ingres as sending the wrong message because the woman in the painting was too thin, and as everyone at Rose’s knew, you can’t be too rich or too fat.

  “Hello, Scheherazade,” Drew says. “Remember we spoke a few days ago about me coming over and selecting a few more artworks.”

  “As long as you’re coming, can I can interest you in buying some unlimited editions? The market for them is soaring. Even Roger Orbit bought some for the Far Horizons foundation.”

  “I’ll consider it, Scheherazade.”

  Sid whispers to Lamont, “Maybe that’s a good investment. We can make early retirement from the police force.”

  “Shaddup,” Lamont says. “You want early retirement I’ll give you early retirement!”

  “Did I hear other customers near you? I think I heard something.”

  Lamont punches Sid in the arm.

  “No, just getting my shoes shined,” Drew responds.

  Scheherazade clears her throat. “I could always use more business. Will that be cash?”

  “Of course cash. I’m insulted you asked. I can make it sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  Drew closes his palm and says. “I’m going to visit Scheherazade’s workshop tomorrow.”

  “Know that already,” Lamont says. “We were standing right here. Ya think we’re stupid?”

  “Yeah,” Sid says. “Ya think we’re stupid?”

  Drew doesn’t answer.

  Lamont sighs. “How much do you think you will need this time?” anticipating the question before it is asked.

  “At least forty thousand; she thinks I’m loaded.”

  “You used to be,” Sid says.

  Lamont thinks the deal he offers Drew is one of the best he ever made. Only a fool would refuse what he considered to be a generous offer of going to a moon of Uranus to work in a toy factory that makes colorful “babushka planets” that fit one inside the other, which children break and throw at each other.

  The next morning Lamont tells Sid to bring Drew down to the lobby and wait with him while Lamont gets his rover. Sid doesn’t want to handcuff Drew’s hand to his own hand, because no one will be able to tell which one of them is the criminal. So he tells Drew he’s using the honor system, and Drew tells him that’s a good idea.

  Before they leave the room, Sid checks his wrist cam for any messages and reads his horoscope. It says, “Beware the ides of March.” Sid thinks hard. But this is July. He presses again. The next message says, “If this is not the ides of March, then just beware.” Sid, who was hoping it would say today you will meet the woman of your dreams and win ten million starbucks frowns but then smiles thinking that all this might happen in March.

  The lobby is noisy and crowded. Noisier and more crowded than Lamont and Sid thought it would be. Drew tells Sid he has to go to the men’s room.

  “I’ll have to accompany you,” Sid says. “As a matter of fact, I have to go myself.”

  Drew immediately starts pushing through the crowd to the middle of the room. Then he makes an abrupt turn, putting a few people between himself and Sid.

  “Slow down,” Sid yells.

  “It’s an emergency,” Drew shouts back over his shoulder. Drew pushes the person on his right, who staggers backward into a pile of luggage. Then Drew pushes the person on his left and runs.

  “Did you push me?” says the person on the left, retrieving his bearings and making a fist.

  “No, it was that other guy,” the person on the right says.

  “What other guy? You’re only trying to make an excuse. I know your type.”

  “And what type is that?”

  Sid yells, “Criminal trying to escape!”

  “Who you calling a criminal?” another man cries.

  “Animal trying to escape!” a woman standing near them cries.

  “Someone’s got a dog loose,” another person booms.

  “What kind of dog? I saw a dog over there,” she points to a man wearing a dog costume holding a sign that says, “Eat at Franks.”

  A man carrying coffee and doughnuts is shoved. His coffee spills. His doughnuts roll. The woman who is talking about the dog slides into the man making a fist. Pow! Right in the kisser.

  She falls on Sid.

  The woman looks down. “It’s all your fault! You must be a criminal! Are you the criminal who lost a dog? Help! Police!”

  The place is growing more and more operatic.

  Sid is pinned under the woman. “I am the police,” he tries to
say. But it does not sound like that. Someone steps on his hand. “Ouch!” Three doughnuts roll near his face. He closes his eyes.

  His head throbs. A big guy, with muscles popping all over wearing a Calvin Crime T-shirt with a skull in decorator shades of blood, reaches down and shoves the doughnuts into his mouth. “Next time make them lemon-glazed,” he snarls.

  Sid gets a hand free and tries to reach for his badge. Now someone steps on his other hand.

  “OW!” Sid screams.

  The hotel manager finally comes. “Watch it, fella. Don’t reach for anything.” He flashes his eyes around; his hair is flying. “I’m in charge here.” he shouts several times. “Will someone help this woman?”

  “What about you?” says the woman on the floor. “You could help me up!”

  “That’s not my job. My job is to get other people to do things.”

  A crowd gathers around. Everyone watches as she pushes herself to her feet.

  “There you go,” the manager says. She gives him a dirty look and kicks him in the shin.

  “Where’s the dog?” she asks. “Did someone catch the dog?”

  Sid, still on the floor, says, “I’m a policeman.”

  “You shaddup,” growls the hotel manager. “Not in those clothes, you’re not. I used to have a suit like that. My wife just threw mine out; it was my favorite knock-around wear-at-home. Where’d you get it, big boy?” He peers at Sid closely. “Hey, aren’t you number two on the ten-most-wanted list?”

  “He’s number four,” someone says. “Let’s make something of it?”

  “He’s number six,” calls another.

  “No, number eight,” a voice shouts.

  Several close in and chant. “Two, four, six, eight who should we incarcerate?”

  Meanwhile Lamont, who had been waiting in his rover in front of the hotel, hears all the commotion. He parks his car and goes into the lobby, where someone shoves him in the face and grabs his hat.

  “Hey, give that back,” Lamont cries.

  “Consider it an entrance fee, partner. Take it off ya taxes.”

  Lamont pushes his way toward the center of the room. A woman’s long feathered boa dipped in “kryptonite for blondes” makes Lamont feel weak. He staggers through the room.

  Drew makes his way to the back of the hotel and exits. No one stops him. No one follows him. He circles through several buildings, down many alleys, and up a series of staircases until he reaches the base of the space elevator. He finds a dark corner and takes out the forged identity card and presses his finger into it. Then he destroys his old card and places the new one in his wallet. He removes the syringe from the box and plunges the needle into his arm. For the briefest of moments, he feels like he is floating like cracked ice in a glass of vodka. Then he enters the waiting area, looks around, recognizes no one, and strolls casually to a ticket window.

  “And where will that be to?” the ticket agent asks.

  “Earth’s moon. The dark side. Add a shuttle pass to Darth Veda Crater.”

  “One-way or round-trip?”

  “One-way,” Drew says.

  When Lamont Blackberry visits Sandy Andreas and tells him Drew is missing, Sandy acts like four screaming children in a super market. Then Lamont tells him that Mars Yard is at a dead end as to who took the fourth sample of the anti-flavonoid from Congress Drugs.

  Sandy brightens. “If I had known you were looking for a fourth person, I could have saved you a lot of trouble.” He walks to a tall, thin cabinet in a corner of his office. He opens a door, slides out a tray, and says, “Here it is. I always take a sample of all my products for safekeeping. My biometrics don’t appear, because I use my own anti-detection gloves.”

  As soon as Lamont Blackberry leaves, Sandy calls a press conference. He announces that the substance added to the chocolate, which he readily admits came from Congress Drugs, was never a poison but a potion, and the media better get their act together regarding semantic definitions. No way was anyone ever in a coma; the “victims” were in a restful, rejuvenating sleep. Ingesting it caused a brief metabolic processing delay. So much for the truth.

  Then Sandy spends a fortune in PR to rename, reissue, redefine, and repackage all his products. Not long afterward, someone who looks like Sandy Andreas, talks like Sandy Andreas, walks like Sandy Andreas, eats like Sandy Andreas, sleeps like Sandy Andreas and thinks like Sandy Andreas but was not, according to Sandy Andreas actually Sandy Andreas buries all the files containing any information about anti-flavonoids and Chocolate Moons in an unmarked storage area at Ali Baba Caves.

  The case of the Chocolate Moons fades into history. Over time it is rewritten as a human-interest piece and later as a favorite allegory clergymen love to tell of man’s rise, fall and redemption.

  Roses Heaven and Rubies Spa merge becoming “The Ruby Rose.” Historians cite this as the definitive end of the battle of the bulge, mankind’s final frontier and the marking of a major evolutionary turning point. And when future beings discover a tree that bears a delicious candy fruit, a residual memory, from whence they know not where, wells up inside of each of them and urges that this exceptional tree should have a sign placed next to it. And so one is made. It says: “Low calorie, Guaranteed Fresh, Organic, Nothing Forbidden.” Then they ate every one and said it was good.

  Epilogue

  CC IS SENTENCED to four years at a penal colony on Earth picking pineapples in Hawaii. She always felt that what she did was worth it because Drew’s reputation was ruined. She returned to the Moon in better shape than when she left because of the workout she got living in Earth’s heavy gravity. When her father retired, she became CEO of Carbon Copies Media.

  Pluto Pastrami and Breezy Point serve three years for attempted manslaughter. When they’re released, Pluto changes his name to Pluto Picasso and opens an art gallery in River Area. He attracts an affluent clientele when he turns a copy of Nude Descending a Staircase, by the French surrealist Marcel Duchamp, upside down and says the staircase is a symbol for financial markets, and—since more people make money in bull markets rather than bear markets—Nude Ascending a Staircase is far better artwork than Duchamp’s original. Copies, and copies of copies, sell out overnight.

  Breezy becomes an artist using a medium her father invents, making her a technical virtuoso. She paints Ode to the Forty Thieves in a cubist style. Scheherazade ignores the work but her lover, Taliban, considers it a signal to start a war.

  Scheherazade remains at her job for life. Her business thrives. She sells several of Mona Lisa’s teeth and swears on the head of Medusa, not the supermarket checkout girl, Medusa Feinstein, that they are the real teeth because when she personally took them out of Mona’s mouth, Mona moaned.

  Sandy Andreas buys a ten-foot copy of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X from Scheherazade with his face replacing that of the pope and “Big Sandy Is Watching You” in large black letters on the top, and a copy of Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women to hang in his home office.

  His wife, Solaria, heads the Culinary Institute. She hates the art that Sandy bought, but Sandy says that it is his office and if she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t go in there, so she never did.

  Kandy marries a good friend of Solaria’s who is the head chef at Gramercy Gardens. She has a boy and a girl, each of whom look like her and appear every month on the cover of Beautiful Baby Universe until they graduate to Beautiful Teen Universe and Beautiful Adult Universe.

  Billings Montana owns the largest chain of pizza restaurants on Mars.

  Through middle age and menopause, Flo gains a half a pound that she blames on being related to me.

  Decibel Point briefly continues to work for several labs, but as soon as he can, he retires to a community in space where he can eat whatever he wants whenever he wants it and never has to feel the effects of gravity again.

  I finally learn that Jersey’s last name is Shore. But she says she doesn’t want anyone to know, because getting teased about the name Jersey is b
ad enough. She quits her job at the Culinary and takes a job at a bank because the smell of money is more appealing than the smell of food.

  Trenton is given a large space for a laboratory at Mars Yard. Jersey and Trenton continue to live frugally and mostly on supplements, except for the free chicken soup I send them.

  Cortland is Mars’s biggest music producer. He buys a building in New Chicago and transforms it into a work space and living space. It has a recording studio and offices on the four lower levels; each twin has her own apartment on the middle floors. We live in the penthouse, complete with wraparound terrace, full gym and indoor swimming pool. The entire building rotates maximizing views and light.

  In total I lose more than 160 Earth pounds. The twins help me get a new wardrobe and hairstyle. And although I am older, I’ve never looked or felt better. But my love of food never wanes.

  It’s a typical morning. I say good-bye to my personal trainer and slide into a hot bath. Friends are coming for brunch tomorrow. I consider “oysters and pearls”—caviar-topped oysters on a bed of tapioca pearls in a sabayon-vermouth sauce that I found in an ancient French Laundry restaurant cook book—but although I love it, I think it too ethereal for the occasion and decide that farm-fresh eggs with pancetta and lobster knuckles on a bed of spinach placed in a hollowed-out brioche is a better choice.

  I step from the bath and wrap myself in a peach terry-cloth robe. I go into the bedroom and sit on a soft blue-and-white lounge chair. I reach for the holo’s remote and click the cooking channel. Today’s guest on Interviews with Chef Rachael X-Ray is Pierre Ambrosias, president and CEO of Half Foods, a company that is revolutionizing the food industry.

  “Welcome,” Rachael says. “Today’s guest is Pierre Ambrosias, CEO of Half Foods, a company that combines supplements and nutritional extras such as Growthex and Libido Plus with regular food. His sales have outpaced Congress Drugs’ Freedom Plan. This week he will open his first superstore in New Chicago. Please welcome Pierre Ambrosias.”