ranting, but the idea that he was going to break down was worse. I stared down at my shoes, ashamed.
“I tried so hard,” he said.
“But now you’re taking it away.”
“If there’s no RiverGroup, there
I shook my head. “Without her, I have nothing.”
He smacked his face with his hand, clenched his eyes, and said, “Get outta here! I can’t take this. I can feel my hemorrhoids acting up!” Pointing at Joelene, he said, “Take the idiot home and teach him something!”
“Sir, let me reassure you that—”
“Excuse me!” interrupted Ken, who had run from the table.
“What now?” asked Father, as if he wanted to
Gritting his teeth, his blue eyebrows practically knotted together over his nose, Ken said, “Please don’t be mad at me.”
Father rolled his eyes.
Ken cupped his hands over Father’s ear and whispered. As he did, Father’s eyes got large. “No!” He stood back and glared at us. For a second, I thought he was going to laugh. “They didn’t!” he said, shaking his head. “No. It’s impossible! They couldn’t have. I completely forbid it!”
Ken shrugged as if he couldn’t explain it and backed away a step.
Father’s face turned the color of salmon. The veins on his forehead throbbed. “Fucktastic bombastic!” he finally bellowed. “You saw
“Sir,” said Joelene, shielding me with an arm, “please! Listen to the facts. What happened was that we —”
Father’s right fist shot forward in a karate chop of a punch that slammed her breastbone. A loud and horrible
When he turned to me, I saw a ripple of fury like I had never seen before pass through his face. It was like a tectonic shift beneath his skin. “I’m killing someone today,” he said to me, his voice raw.
Crouching beside my advisor, but keeping an eye on him so he didn’t try and bash me over the head, I asked her, “Are you all right?”
As she huffed to try and get air back into her lungs, I think she said, “Yeah.”
“First we pull a super twenty-two rating!” said Father, tugging at his Afro like he wanted to rip it from his skull. “We’re hard lard and now another disaster!” Pointing at Ken, he said, “Get back to the table and tell Chesterfield something. Say whatever he wants to hear. Beg him. Cry for him!
“Anything!” said Ken. He ran back to the table.
Joelene was breathing easier now, but her eyes shined with tears, her mouth was scrunched into a frown, and her teeth were tightly clenched. She was glaring at Father as if she were going to burn a hole through his chest.
“You are officially fired from RiverGroup,” said Father to her. “I’ll get you kicked out of the families and sent to slubberland where they’ll eat your guts alive.”
“It was my plan!” I told him. “I did it.”
“Dick-tastic!” he sneered as he rubbed his hand, as if now he felt the impact of his punch. “You’re like the worse son in the history of the universe.”
“Just leave her alone!”
“Hiro!” said Xavid as he approached, “look what you’ve done to
“They saw Nora!” Father whined. “It’s a betrayal of everything RiverGroup. Most of all it’s a big fat slap in my face.”
“You need to control this,” said his hairdresser, quietly yet sternly, as he chopsticked Father’s Afro.
“I won’t do anything if you fire Joelene,” I threatened.
With his hands on his hips, Father glared at me. “You’re no help anyway!”
“Hiro,” said Xavid, “remember what I said. We need him. You need to
“He just mocks me or makes me look like an idiot!”
“Joelene didn’t do any of this. It was my plan,” I said, ignoring his ridiculous hairdresser.
“Michael,” Joelene said, “maybe it’s time that I should—”
“No!” I told her, hating even the suggestion that she should quit. The thing was, she didn’t look so much angry or hurt, but resolute.
“She can’t leave me!” I said to both Father and her. Looking her in the eye, I said, “I need her. She’s like my real family.”
Joelene suppressed a smile, and then patted the back of my hand.
“Butt vomit!” said Father. “What is the matter with you? She’s your damn tutor! Not your
“Well,” I asked, thumbing toward Xavid, “who is
“Now look what you did!” said Xavid, scolding him like a little boy. As he got out a silky cloth and wiped Father’s forehead, he leaned in and said, “I think you need to make it very clear to them what you expect.”
“Yeah!” agreed Father. A beat later, he asked, “How do you think?”
“What about your friend in Europa-13?”
Father narrowed his eyes at his hairdresser.
“Let us go back to the compound,” I told Father.
“Don’t think so! We’re taking a drive.” With a wink toward Xavid, he added, “I’ve got a rotten, horrible, stinking, evil bastard I’d like you to meet.”
Nine
From the outside, our Loop cars were identical orange-and-blue-painted teardrops, with a tilted glass all around. Inside, his was not surprisingly a design catastrophe.
Every surface was upholstered with a different material so it looked like a cheap fabric sampler. Unlike the muted, indirect lighting in my car, here a hundred blue and orange pinpoint lasers scribbled Ultra lyrics everywhere at high speed. While it covered everything in a senseless, vibrating surface, occasionally a phrase lingered in the eye.
When I stepped in, I found that the floor was covered with an unpleasant super-shag rug that crunched like dried leaves. Scattered among the yarns was a vast assortment of garbage, including empty carrot liquor bottles, star-shaped pills, phallus-shaped pills, fist-shaped pills, skull-shaped pills, red and black dildos, some of which were twitching like dying insects, and several bits of what looked like bloody fur. I figured it was the debris of a debauched car-party while he watched the promotion date.
My car had only four seats with consoles; his had a dozen chairs all the way around. He and Xavid sat on the far side, the film crew set up in back, and Joelene and I were closest to the side door.
