very long.”
“How much have you given away?” the girl wanted to know.
“I donate about 10 % of my income.”
“So how much do you give away?”
“In great years I give away several million.”
Jasmine found that hilarious, slamming the floating table so hard that she nearly unbalanced it. “How do they make these damn things float, anyway?”
“Huge magnets under the floor,” he answered.
She made a face. “Crap. Now it doesn’t feel magical anymore.”
“It will actually feel more magical on your next visit.”
“Dude, this is way beyond my price range. If mom didn’t win two free meals in an Internet contest, we would have never come here.”
James and Gina now looked uncomfortable again. Jasmine searched the vibes they gave off. “Ah, fuck! You invited us?”
“No. I invited her. You see, Pristina started acting distant ever since I bought the Ganymed tickets for our honeymoon. I think she would have married me otherwise. She expressed interest in going into orbit before, but apparently that was only to humor me because I am such a space nut. I grew up wanting to be an astronaut, but my father was in finance, so I went into finance.”
“Why did her parents name Pristina after a computer font?” Jasmine asked.
James laughed. “Her mother was a famous Albanian beauty queen, so she named her daughter after the largest city in Kosovo so she would never forget her roots. The Pristina International Airport actually has a giant welcome sign with my ex’s image on it, showing all the cleavage I paid for.”
“You bought her tits?” Jasmine asked.
“And the ungrateful bitch still wouldn’t swallow me.”
“Buy me tits and I’ll fucking swallow you!” Jasmine laughed when she said it, but everyone understood that she fucking meant it. The old couple in the next floating table didn’t doubt it either.
“Jimmy has a beautiful cock,” Gina added, before blushing. “It doesn’t bend like a banana like your father’s.”
“Mom!”
“It’s true. Look! I have pictures.”
Mom whipped out her phone and the two of them starting ooo-ing and aaa-ing while James gestured to the waiter for more champagne. Minutes after his fiancee broke up with him, he didn’t expect his mistress to share nudes of him with her daughter. Her really hot daughter. Jasmine was just like her mom, only more so. Which meant his crush on Gina would be nothing compared to how he felt towards Jasmine.
“So why wasn’t I invited?” Jasmine demanded.
“I expected Pristina to dump me and assumed I would need some self-pity sex to help me get over it. Plus I’ve always wanted to take Gina here. I have no idea why your mom brought you.”
Although a few thoughts crossed his mind.
The two of them stared at Gina, and the silence increasingly grew unbearable.
“Mom, you gonna tell us why you brought me along? This man — who paid off our house — was expecting to get laid. Now I feel like a third wheel.”
Gina finally reached her breaking point. The dam burst and everything spilled out.
“Jimmy needs a good wife! That shallow, materialistic fashion-obsessed airhead would have hired servants to do her fucking job. He wants kids, yet I had my tubes tied, so I spent the last year searching for someone worthy of him. Without luck. You know he wouldn’t even date my sister? Says she unfuckable. Sure, she went overboard on the plastic surgery, but her tits are harder than cement.”
“She does have incredible boobies,” Jasmine agreed. “Why didn’t you, at least, fuck her?”
James sighed. God, this was going to sound so lame. “I didn’t want to be unfaithful to Pristina.”
“But fucking my mother was okay?”
“We stopped fucking once I proposed. Call me old fashioned.”
“Okay. You’re old fashioned.”
They all drank as one.
“So why me?” Jasmine asked her mother.
“You’re self-absorbed like most teenagers, but at least you’re pretty, smart, and hard working. And don’t even pretend that he isn’t a major upgrade from the boys you have been seeing since you started community college.”
“Pretty? I can’t hold a candle to that babe.”
“Actually,” James interrupted, “Pristina is not as attractive as she looks. She wasn’t marrying me for my money, per se, since her father is loaded, and she still wanted to marry up. Someone richer than her father, in order to one-up her mother. But I doubt she ever loved me for me.”
“Yeah,” Jasmine replied. “I think she’s a bitch, too. Did you see her throw her hate on me when she walked by? It’s like she knew I would be fucking you tonight.”
“Maybe I should send her video of us having sex.”
“Oh, you are baaaad,” Jasmine said approvingly. “We’re gonna get along just fine.”
“If you really want to get back at her — and I sure as hell do — then I should get you perfect breasts, kick- ass outfits, and really expensive jewelry. Then I can take you out on the social circuit. If you one-up my ex, I’ll make it worth your while. Plus, I bet the fashion show reporters, celebrity gossip bloggers, and sordid tabloids would love to hear you tell them how excited you are to fuck me in space.”
Jasmine’s eyes glazed over just as the Doomsday Asteroid passed overhead. “I will swallow you every morning.”
Now James was the one who had to cross his legs.
“Mom, did this bitch just purr?” Jasmine asked, reaching over to scratch James behind the ear.
“Jasmine,” her mother said disapprovingly.
“But, mom, I thought you wanted me to give him some.”
“No, I want you to give him it all. He doesn’t need you to drain his balls. He needs a wife who will take care of him. You should see his empty condo. I can’t understand how bachelors live like that.”
“I work a lot,” James protested.
“You wouldn’t work so much if you had a horny hottie waiting for you at home.”
“True.”
“And you better be a good fucking wife for him!” her mother demanded, her feelings for James apparently more than sexual.
“Mom, you’ve known him for twenty years, so I have no doubt you believe he will make a good husband, but he’s not going to marry someone he just met. No matter how perfect her tits.”
“Oh, yeah, um, about that. Jasmine, the billion dollars that magazine said I’m worth? I only make that if the Ganymed Space Port becomes profitable. And to become profitable, it needs favorable publicity, so the company that owns the rock plans to document an R-rated reality show to air free on the Internet.”
“You’re gonna be on TV?” Jasmine asked, clearly jealous. “Oh, I am so going to swallow every pez from your dispenser.”
“You see, that’s the catch. The company chose ten rich couples who will marry in Riobamba, Ecuador, then spend their honeymoon in space. I can only go to Ganymed for the reality show if I am one of those who marries. And I just lost my fiancee.
“I have a lot riding on this. Hell, I have everything riding on this. As a large investor, I need to see for himself what works best on the space port. Consequential decisions have to be made, like how much we should mine the interior for precious metals? How many underground hotels should we build in the holes we excavate? How can we speed up construction of the maglev catapult? What should be exploit and colonize first — the Moon, Mercury, or Mars? The Moon alone has $5 quadrillion worth of helium-3, a rare element virtually absent on Earth.”
“I’m sorry. Quadrillion? Is that like a bazillion?” the girl asked.
“After million, billion, and trillion comes quadrillion. $5 quadrillion is $5000 billion. Helium-3 could fuel fusion power plants so cheap they would put coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power plants out of business, which could
