The Future We Wish We Had

rivals most was that he then sold the apartments containing said walls and ceilings for a pretty penny. (More accurately, for an unsightly seven-figure sum.)

What galled him was the thought of needlessly parting with money. His first reaction to the Newcomb threat was dismissive. “Let them sue. We’ve got better lawyers than any-What sort of business is Newcomb in, anyhow?” He flashed the boyish grin that had caused many a supermodel to drop her La Perla undies at his bidding. “Oil? Black gold? Texas tea?”

Marjorie pursed her lips. “Sir, trust me, you don’t want to mention anything even vaguely connected with that old TV show around the Newcombs, especially their daughter. Boone Newcomb’s money comes from insurance.”

“You mean the little skank is a second generation conman?” Joss turned stern. “If she wants to ride the fake personal injury pony, I’ve got private investigators who’ll yank her out of the saddle before she can even look at a neck brace.”

“Boone Newcomb owns an insurance company, a very profitable one. He specializes in insuring the incredibly wealthy. He and his daughter have contacts with-”

“-our target market.” Joss shaded his eyes wearily. “If we don’t give that bitch satisfaction, she won’t just take us to court, she’ll badmouth us to her daddy’s clients. I might as well cut her that check right now.” He gave Marjorie a hard look. “Your commission from the Newcomb sale won’t quite cover this, but it will be a start, and I’ll take the remainder out of your next sale.”

Marjorie’s jaw dropped. “My commission?” For the first time in her life, she understood Abraham’s feelings when he’d received the initial directive to sacrifice his son Isaac.

“You were the person who sold them the-” Joss’s manicured finger skimmed through the documents before him. “-hostile and unsafe domicile. It’s only fair that you make amends.” He was grinning again, but there was less Charming Little Man-Child behind those pearly whites and much more Big, Bad, Commission-Devouring Wolf.

Marjorie made a stab at fiscal self-preservation: “All right, Mr. Parker,” she said sweetly. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements with Accounting.” She turned to go, then paused and turned at the door. “Do you want me to alert Legal too?”

“Legal?” Joss echoed. “We’re settling this out of court.”

“Yes,” Marjorie purred. “We’re settling with the Newcombs out of court, but I don’t think that Mequizeen, Incorporated, will be willing to do the same when they sue us for defamation.”

“What?”

She framed imaginary headlines with her hands: “ ‘Real Estate Tycoon Affirms Mequizeen’s Careme 6000 Unsafe, Generously Offers Reparations to Victims of Robotic Death-Chef.’ Mequizeen will be so pleased.”

Joss Parker looked stricken. Marjorie had presented a plausible scenario, every syllable laden with grief. In his gilt-swaddled world, grief was for other people. “We’ll make the payment to the Newcombs through a third party,” he suggested, eager to make everything go his way again. “They won’t care, as long as they get their money.”

“You forget, they also want the Careme 6000 removed and destroyed. That is not a common piece of kitchen equipment, sir. Remember when Mequizeen first put it on the market? ‘The Kitchen of the Future Is Yours Today!’ Every Careme 6000 installation was a major publicity splash. Some sites still have their own corps of dedicated paparazzi, watching and waiting.”

“For what?” Joss asked. “Dinner?”

Marjorie laughed dutifully at her employer’s sally. “Waiting for something to go wrong. Horribly, dramatically, photogenically wrong. Sir, do you remember the old cartoons where the main character finds fully automated model house? At first it’s wonderful. Push the big red start button and the house does everything for you, especially the kitchen. Turn the dial, punch the keypad, throw the switch, and robotic mechanisms make you any dish you want, from pizza to pate de foie gras. But then, this being a cartoon, hijinks ensue. Next thing you know, the main character’s being kneaded, floured, tossed, sprinkled with mozzarella, and shoved into the oven. And that, sir, is what the paparazzi are waiting for and hoping to capture happening in real life.”

Joss closed his brilliant blue eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked pained. “So it will be virtually impossible to comply with the Newcombs’ demands without attracting unfavorable media attention to the Careme 6000?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But if we don’t comply, the Newcombs will sue us and most likely win?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Marjorie, you’ll have to excuse me: this is my first encounter with a lose-lose situation and I can’t say I like it. As a matter of fact, as we speak, my brain is racing to find a way to distance myself from it as fast as possible. I think I’m gong to fire you, for starters.”

“Sir, I wouldn’t do that,” Marjorie said quickly. “It would leave me with no motivation to give you the solution you need.”

“Solution?” Joss perked up, eager and attentive.

“Yes, sir. As in lose-lose turning into win-win for us, whereas for the Newcombs…”

“Tell me more.”

Which is how Marjorie wound up on the Newcombs’ lawn, rubbing elbows with a mob of reporters, waiting for their hosts to appear. She’d presented her employer with a plan-a plan of simplicity, a plan of brilliance, a plan that would defang the Newcomb’s threatened lawsuit and save her commission. It was perfect.

Now, if it would only work.

While they waited, the press reviewed the briefing download Marjorie had sent to their PDAs, along with the notification of the event itself. None of them could figure out how hate speech could have anything to do with a fully automated kitchen either.

“It’s like saying your bathroom’s gender-biased!” an AP stringer declared.

“Mine was until we got one of those automated seat-lowering devices installed,” said a female colleague. “My husband is not trainable.” The other women in the crowd made sympathetic noises.

“Maybe the refrigerator made a nasty crack about the Polish sausage,” a would-be wit suggested. “Or the Italian bread, or the French dressing, or the-”

He could have gone on in the same vein at painful length, but luckily for his companions, at that moment the front door of the great mansion opened wide. Boone and Betsy Newcomb stepped out on the wide front porch, regarding the clamoring reporters like a pair of overweight asthmatic antelopes tapped to be keynote speakers at a leopard convention.

Boone Newcomb was a simple, sincere soul. He welcomed the media with the air of a man who has been dragged into a situation that scares the scrapple out of him. Nonetheless, he’d been raised with certain ideals, among which was the firm belief that John Wayne was right: a man is obliged to accomplish what a man is required to achieve. Or words to that effect.

He was still greeting the news corps when Marjorie broke a path to him through the mob. Boone smiled. “Why, Miz Marjorie, it’s good to see you again. I’m truly sorry that it’s taken something like this to bring you over for a visit. Betsy and me, we took a real shine to you, and that’s a fact. We meant it when we said you’d be welcome to come by here any time.”

Marjorie’s smile was a brittle grimace. The look of apology in Boone’s eyes was real. This whole ugly business hadn’t been his idea; she’d wager her next sales commission and her realtor’s license on it. “I’m sorry too, Mr. Newcomb,” she said. “I hope that I’ll be able to make up for it once we’ve settled this little… mix-up.”

“ ‘Mix-up’?” Emily June Newcomb stepped out onto the porch from her lurking post behind the great double-wide front doors. “I’d hardly call endangering and belittling our family a ‘mix-up.’ ”

Marjorie had to hand it to the younger woman: Emily knew how to make an entrance. Cameras clicked and whirred; reporters swarmed forward. The undercover crowd-control personnel that Marjorie had so wisely placed among the newshounds subtly stepped in to hold back the tide, but it wasn’t easy. Emily June Newcomb was eye candy of the first order, and she spoke with a ferocious intensity and passion that practically screamed sound bite! Marjorie could almost feel the sudden, almost erotic thrill that coursed through the media mob.

“Well, I suppose we’d best get started,” Boone said. He did not sound happy or eager. Marjorie couldn’t blame him. Chez Newcomb was pure Neo-Greek Revival, a displaced Southern plantation-style abode with a nice patch of pricey landscape surrounding it. Now, thanks to Emily, only a few select reporters were being allowed inside to witness the trial of the Careme 6000, leaving the rest of the pack to trample the costly vegetation outside.

(For the sufficiently well-heeled, ownership of a substantial patch of greenery in the heart of New York City was no longer a pipe dream. The Newcomb place was part of Eminent Domains, an upscale housing development that came into existence when an agenda-toting D.C. somebody did an end-run around the electorate and decreed that unless Central Park became privatized, the terrorists would already have won. It worked like a knee-jerk charm before you could say “bulldozer.”)

Boone conducted his unwished-for guests through the front doors and onward to the kitchen. Marjorie heard the collective gasp of awe from the reporters when they crossed the threshold. Though posh digs were same-old same-old to her, even she still felt a frisson of wonder whenever she encountered a Mequizeen-equipped home. The high-tech cookplace was a monument to sleek, understated opulence, cool practicality, and preprogrammed culinary expertise. The room itself glittered, but looked relatively bare, presenting an array of smooth, shining surfaces. Nonetheless, that smooth shininess reminded the human hindbrain of the surface of a tranquil prehistoric lake. You just knew something was lurking below the surface; something big, with teeth.

“Ready, Mr. Newcomb?” Marjorie asked, taking charge as she stepped up to the control panel. Set into the wall nearest the door, its thin chrome frame embraced a small, flat keypad and a blank display screen.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Wonderful,” she said, not really meaning it. Marjorie hated putting the Newcombs through this media circus, but what choice did she have? It was them or her commission, and besides, their miserable brat had started it! And why? she wondered, not for the first time. For the money? But her parents are rolling in it! What in the world does Emily June Newcomb hope to achieve by putting Mr. Parker’s company and Mequizeen through the negative PR wringer? She was damned if she could figure it out.

You know what? she told herself. The hell with figuring out Miss Emily’s motive. I’ll worry about that after I’ve rescued my livelihood and Joss Parker’s corporate bacon, not before, so let’s get cooking!