Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 12:17:40 +1000
From: Alice Dee <ms.alice.dee@gmail.com>
Subject: A Slight Career Hiccup

All characters, events depicted in this story are fictional.


A Slight Career Hiccup
By Alice Dee

Catullus 97

"It's just like taking a shit," he said.

Suddenly I had a whole new bunch of really rather revolting images to
go with his cheeky gap toothed grin and the homespun threadbare charm
of his clothes. Now I had to be able to see him straining away at a
big crap while I looked at him standing there in front of me bobbing
up and down in his nervousness as he smiled vacuously at me. This was
pretty bad. I mean. He was bad enough even if you put a brave face on
things. Like the "homespun threadbare charm of his clothes" does not
really take in to account that the clothes were threadbare because he
had been wearing them and because he had been wearing them, he hadn't
been washing them. As far as that went, the other way of saying
"cheeky gap toothed grin" is to say "slimy smile with a set of teeth
that looked like the Jewish section in a Nazi churchyard. " As far as
that goes, his teeth smelt like Nazis. Well, like I always imagine
that Nazi's smell not having ever really met any, living as I do in a
relatively enlightened corner of the world.

His teeth though, they hadn't been brushed in a longish while, if
ever, and there was a deep and abiding aroma of ripe fish hanging
around his mouth like a haze. In a way it was a pity that the haze
wasn't thicker, since it would have masked his unshaven chin, his
pockmarked cheeks and his bright red drinkers nose. In situations
like these though, the only thing that you can ever really do is to
put a brave face on things and I decided to ignore that I could smell
him from where he stood. As far as that goes, "smell him" was an
understatement. The reek was making me light headed. I could
catalogue the smells. His teeth, for a start. Whenever he opened his
mouth either to giggle or to blind me with his wit the smell of his
rotting teeth became almost too much to bear. The rest of the time
the stench of unwashed tobacco clothes, fetid sweaty body and dirty
feet was the one to contend with. I found that I was wondering quite
faintly exactly what his penis and scrotum smelt like. I didn't like
the way that that particular thought felt so quiet and dreamy. I
wondered whether I was going to have an attack of the vapours right
where I stood and simply pass out, right exactly where I stood in the
dark corner just near the rack, over from the stocks and the pillory.

I knew that passing out would be a mistake. While my dear old Gran
had been quite given to the vapours she had been quite sensible about
passing on good advice too, and one thing that she had said to me,
over and over again, as I was growing up was "better the devil you
know." In this case, I agreed with her. Passing out here would be a
major mistake. Passing out anywhere nowadays is not that safe an
activity but passing out here, in the "sex magic dungeon" in dank sub
- sub - sub basement club was absolutely guaranteed to be a bad move.
A big time bad move.

No. I was going to have to get over the smell, smile sweetly, drop to
my knees, and open this man's pants. That done, I was going to open
my mouth and suck on his penis until he ejaculated in my mouth. I was
going to give the best blow job that I was capable of giving, and
when it was done, I was going to swallow his sperm, smile sweetly and
help him to sit down.

More than that, I was going to do all this without gagging at the
stench and while pretending that I thought that he was Tom Cruise's
hotter twin brother.
Not that I would EVER suck off Tom Cruise, though. A girl has to have
some standards. And that guy may be cute, but I think he is creepy,
creepy, creepy.
Um. "Could I reconsider that last part?" I thought. At least "Tom"
looks like he washes. I had just caught a glimpse of this guy's
fingernails. The bits that weren't blue with bad circulation looked
like cigarette filters.

This guy was REALLY pretty bad. It was almost funny, except that it
wasn't really funny at all. Here I was in a filthy dark basement that
smelt of sex, about to suck on the first cock of my life. The cock in
question belonged to a man who looked like Diogenes' filthy flat
mate, and now, to make matter worse, he was telling me that his
ejaculating in my mouth was going to be "just like him taking a
shit." Except out of his broken toothed, fish stench mouth his thick
Kiwi accent made it sound like "ert jez laak tekkin er sheet."
It was almost more than I could bear. I still have no idea what form
of demented politeness it was that made me open my dewy wet PoppyKing
"RoseLust"(tm) mouth and ask him, breathlessly (believe me, I was
breathless) what he meant by that. I found that I felt like I was
some dowager duchess and he was , for a moment, a worthy peasant,
smelling, shall we say, of the fields. For a wonderful moment, I was
Margaret Dumont, and he was the forgotten smelly Marx brother, Reeky,
and none of any of this nightmare was real.
Maybe the smell was making me mad.

He looked almost shocked. Up to this moment I had not spoken, and now
he found an obviously educated ear for his theory. More than that, he
found an interested attractive person. Who was going to have sex with
him. I could see that like all people with poor personal hygiene he
had no friends, and having no one to talk to meant that he had no one
to tell his theory too, either. From his point of view, the evening
was shaping up magnificently.

 From my point of view, well, from my point of view, it wasn't so
good. As I stood there watching him collect his thoughts, I found
myself wondering how the fuck I had ended up here, in this ocean of
shit, just as the tide was coming in.
If I was any judge of time, it had only taken five short hours for my
life to fall apart. They had been a busy five hours, too.

* * * * *

That morning had been a good one. It was easy to say that I had the
world at my feet, but when you consider where I live, it was a valid
enough statement. The first thing that I saw as I opened my eyes was
the Sydney Harbour bridge. It was just dawn, and the arch was just
turning an almost invisibly delicate shade of pink. The arch lights
were still on and offset the foggy light of the early morning sun and
the few visible car headlights quite wonderfully. The harbour itself
was still shrouded in the last pockets of the night and in an almost
invisible sea mist. The view was utterly calm and from the depths of
my imported goose down quilt, (800 pounds online from Harrods and
worth every single penny thank you) as far as I was concerned, the
view was the best thing in the world. It was simultaneously very,
very, pretty and also a complete celebration of my life and more
importantly, of my money.

It was my favourite time of the day. The harbour was deserted and I
could almost believe that I owned it. In my dreamy state I would
tell myself that it wouldn't be long before I did. After all,
everything was on my side. My fortune had reached the point where I
could no longer deny that no matter what happened it could only grow,
and the growth would have to be exponential. I had just been made
junior partner in Greibner, Brogen and Arenba, and there was no doubt
that full partner hood was probably only a matter of months. I was
really rich, I was going to get even richer, there was no limit. I
was just turning thirty-two. I was slim, fit, and attractive. I had
never had a day's sickness in my life, and I was probably the most
desired eligible bachelor in the city. The gossip rags were full of
tales of my "startling" green eyes, and my "lithe figure." My polo
scores in games with the sons of media magnates were a matter of
weekly record, and my sailing victories with the sons of other media
magnates were. just as well known. I had framed my favourite mention
of me in the social pages of the Sydney's most popular paper. I got
the headline. It said simply, "Kyyle Duneland: Sydney's Prince
Charming." The rest of the page was taken up with an image of me
charming the pants off a young lady who was soon to become minor
royalty. Of course, the actual "pants off" part had been missed by
the photographer of the paper, seeing as it had happened somewhat
later that night and across the harbour from the party in the
Ambassador suite of one of Sydney's smaller but most exclusive
hotels.  A hotel, I am happy to say, I owned just about thirty
percent of.

The "pants off" bit had been all right though, if a bit uninspired.
The video came out well, though, which was a consolation.

I had hung that framed page where I could look at it at exactly the
same time as I stared at my favourite view in the world. The Harbour
Bridge, and me. The best view in the world.

Life was pretty damned good.

It was a ritual with me. When the 5:01 ferry left wharf seven on its
way to Mosman, I got out of bed. Unless there was a strike. Then, I
would get out of bed at 5.02 when the alarm in my black and red "U2"
commemoration iPod went off through the Harmon Kardon surround sound
speakers above my bed.  When up I would first urinate then Hannah
would have breakfast ready for me in the breakfast area.
Strawberries, organic oats, and thinly sliced Aitkin's Sourdough Rye
Bread toasted brown and spread with royal jelly. Black coffee from
the special Harrods blend that they make up for me, and the laptop
already open to a selection of the morning papers.  At my time in
life, I like breakfast to be just exactly the way that I want it,
after all, I deserve nothing less. After eating I relax myself for a
few minutes and stare at the view as I enjoy my coffee. If I have
woken with an erection I would have Hannah fellate me as I sat in my
breakfast chair staring at all the poor people dealing with Sydney
public transport. I was usually horny and I found that I usually
achieve orgasm about the time that the morning sun strikes the water
and makes the harbour look like beaten gold. I used to like
reflecting at those moments that the world was literally at my feet.
This morning I had come directly down Hannah's throat. She had not
coughed or gurgled or even jumped.  She did exactly as she was told
when she was hired. She looked directly into my eyes and opened her
mouth to show me that she had swallowed all of my seed, and said,
"Thank you, Sir" without blinking or letting her eyes waver from
mine. I like that. It reminds me of school and Hannah always does it
very well. If slightly robotically. She is only twenty-two but she is
very very good at what she does. After all, I pay her enough. You
have to when you deserve the best.

After breakfast, I have exactly three minutes in the multi-point
needle shower with the water at twenty degrees to wake me up,
followed by ten minutes on the cross trainer while watching the
market reports on cable. Then a fifteen-minute session with the
building masseuse and ten more minutes in the shower but with the
water now at 45 degrees to relax my muscles. Hannah looks after my
bathing and once a week depilates me. I like my body as smooth as
possible. I find it more appealing, and I find that I play squash
better right after a good depilation.

Since today had been a Monday, it was the blue Lyndon pin stripe
single button worsted. Saville Row simply cannot deliver better. I
like Mondays.

After that, it was five-minute walk to the Bridge Street offices of
the Arenba Building and a short hop up 40 stories in the VIP lift and
a few words with Otis, the liveried flunky. A rich source of street
humour is Otis and I always give him a hundred dollars at Christmas.
I have an office directly in the middle of the city side of the
fortieth floor, meaning that I look out down Pitt Street. On a clear
day I can actually see almost as far as Central station. It is not a
corner office and it does not look out over the Harbour but I am
there to work, not look at the view, as I have been quoted as saying,
and as far as that goes, I find watching the ants in the street
rather more work inspiring than watching the Harbour, which in the
sun always reminds me of my 35 foot ketch "Marigold." And I like to
keep my work life and my leisure life separate as far as possible.

In the office the work is easy enough, if you know what you are doing
and you have the sort of gift for it that I do. Simply put I buy and
sell shares in large office buildings. Sometimes I buy or sell the
large office buildings themselves, but not that often. The actual
buildings themselves generate too much legal type paper, and legal
paper is noting but hassle. Sometimes I only trade the insurance
policies relating to the buildings and sometimes only the air rights
above them. I always seem to sell at a profit and I have gone from
the humble five million dollar fortune that my parents left to being
worth something over three hundred million dollars today, depending
on the markets. It's a hard business though. If you fuck up, you can
lose big time, but business is all about making the other guy fuck
up, and if you don't like him,  making it as bad as possible for him
in the process. I've been in the business just over fourteen years
and I have seen a few people fall really hard. Sometimes it is
actually quite funny.

That side of the business does not actually take up that much time,
except when there is a big deal on. When things are just bubbling
along I spend my time doing tasks related to the five boards that I
sit on, and to dealing with matters related to the legal proceedings
surrounding the collapse of the phone company that I was briefly
associated with a few years back. The days can be busy, but they are
rarely really hectic. There is always time for a good lunch, and
sometimes the lunches can become dinners. As the man says, "its a
hard life, but someone has to do it."

I walked into the office that morning at exactly 6.45am with my mind
already quite taken up with the minutiae of a deal I had been cooking
for a couple of weeks. It was a sweet enough plan to swap the tunnel
rights under half a block of downtown Castlereagh Street for a sixty
percent interest in the futures on some of the insurance policies
related to parts of Sydney airport freight handling facility. The
Lebanese company who wanted the tunnel rights were more than pleased
to take the time necessary to screw the Sydney Council for some back
handers down the line, which was something which I couldn't do if I
wanted to remain lily white, and at the same time I had an inkling
that world situation was going to make the futures on the policies
gain value hand over fist within about six months. After all, its my
business to know stuff people don't know, and one of my school chums
is now quite high up in the Foreign Office in London. And I am very
good friends with him. We talk on the phone quite a lot.  All up the
whole thing looked to be worth about three mill over two years, which
at a total investment of about a week was pretty good shit, by
anyone's odds. I honestly think that international terrorism is the
best thing to happen to international trade, and the especially the
markets since the Korean War.  If they ever catch Osama, in six
months the world economy will melt down.

Mr Arenba ("call me Frank") had been tickled pink about the fact that
the council was going to get screwed on the tunneling rights but that
we would remain unsullied by the shitstorm that was sure to hit the
pages of Sydney's more "socially aware" media. Frank always likes a
nice show. Preferably one with blood, and he hates councils with a
passion, "penny ante blackmailers" is about the nicest quote he has
ever delivered on the subject and as far as he was concerned if the
free market could take over the business of government he would be a
very happy man. If the council were going to get to look corrupt
Frank would be very pleased. If I was responsible that would be major
brownie points. Damn but I was hot.

Of course, I saved the best bit for me. I was cut in for ten percent
off the top of the airport stuff, off the record and under the desk.
That would be about 200K that Greinber, Brogen and Arenba would never
hear about, tax free and tasty and just for me. It all comes in
handy, but the best bit was always having that little extra bit of
iron in the fire. It made the game more interesting.

The morning didn't quite pan out like I expected though. As you can
probably guess. The rest of my life was looking rather less
predictable too, as far as that went.

The first thing that I always do when I first arrive at the office is
to check through the emails that have arrived overnight. While most
of my business directly concerns Sydney and its environs, my clients
travel extensively and their input can arrive at any hour of the day
or night. Its a rare morning where I don't get at least five or ten
pieces that need immediate attention, after the spam has been sifted
through. It was different, four emails, all showing up as having been
already read sitting forlornly in the in box. No spam. At all.   That
was so unlikely as to be impossible, you see I refuse to have
anything to do with the GB&A tech team, and their attempts at
filtration. I remove my own spam myself. After all, some of the stuff
I get only looks like spam to the untrained eye. It's amazing how
much information can be gleaned from the right "penis power"
email ... when you have exactly the right software.

For there to be only four boilerplate emails and no spam in my inbox
meant either that the internet was broken, or the dolts in tech
services had included me in another of their filtration attempts (in
which case I would have somebody's job). I was betting on option two
and mentally sharpening my teeth when the interoffice phone rang.

It was Tom Brogen's secretary.

That was really odd. Greibner and I were the early birds at GB&A, and
even our secretaries didn't show up before 7.30, for Tom to be on
deck at, I checked my watch, 6.53am, something must surely be
seriously up. For his secretary to be there too, whatever it was had
to be big, and liable to make a very loud noise should it come down
unexpectedly. It probably had something to do with the emails and
that could be bad. GB&A do somewhere over a billion dollars a year,
for us to be hacked could well be a disaster. I snapped, "OK" at the
Olga and headed towards the West corner office.

Don't get me wrong. I like Olga. She is a thorough going hardbody and
dresses like a super-vixen, but ever since she made herself clear on
where she stood on the subject of interoffice romance, I have kept
everything on a strictly business basis.  After all, she isn't my
secretary and Tom seems quite pleased with her work, even though I
think that he could actually do quite a lot better.

That early in the morning the corridors are empty of the crush of
staff who start arriving after eight am. It is a time of day that I
like rather a lot. I can hear my feet on the thick wool carpets and
the early morning sun makes very pleasant patterns through the
harbourside windows. The place just reeks of money. It looked like it
was going to be a very pleasant day. I nodded brusquely to Olga and
strode into Tom's office.

I was actually quite shocked. Tom was there, and so was Neville
Greibner. Last I had heard he wasn't supposed to get back from his
holiday in Turkey for another two weeks. Odder still than that was
that Norman Gallaher the head of legal was there and also turd Dick
Balston head of IT. Dick, bless his heart, looked like he had been up
all night and been having a hard time of it. His eyes were red rimmed
and what hair he had was sadly awry. I found the sight pleasing. He
just kept banging away on the desk terminal and only glanced up when
I came in.

"Good morning, Dick" I said and I smiled at the side of his head.
Life's little pleasures. "Neville. Tom. Norm. How are things?" I
looked around at the array of coffee stains and crumbs on the cedar
furniture. It looked like Olga was keeping the worst of the debris
from a long night at bay, but drew the line at wiping surfaces. I
didn't change my mind about the standard of her work. That said, I
didn't change my mind about how good her lips would look wrapped
around my cock, either.

It looked like the boys had made a night of it here in Tom's office.
I didn't much like that. After all, I was junior partner, and I
didn't like the idea that I could be excluded from important stuff.
That isn't the way to get rich. Then again, if it was a shitstorm,
the further from the drama, the better, is usually the case.

But no matter what is actually happening, it's always a good idea to
appear to be quick on the uptake.

"Where's Frank?"  I asked. I raised an eyebrow at the scene.

They looked at each other. Norm shifted his vast watery gut around in
his chair and stared at his feet for a while before raising his
bleary boozers eyes and staring at me with a fish like look in his
eye. He seemed to have been elected spokesman.

"Frank doesn't want to know you, Kyyle," he said.

I sat down.

There wasn't anything to say. So I just looked at Norm and waited for
him to continue.
"There's a problem Kyyle, " he said. "In fact, there are a few
problems. In fact," he sighed heavily and rubbed his hand across is
face, "In fact today is Monday and there are a truckload of problems,
and they are all yours."

Tom seemed to be jumping out of his chair. He had crossed his legs
and was swinging his foot up and down increasingly violently. The
movement was exposing rather a lot of hairless pale calf and his
entire almost sheer black sock. His eyes had gotten beady, and he
looked like he was just about ready to burst with his won pugnacious
self-importance. If there was anything on earth that Tom liked more
than pillorying people I had not heard anything about it. It looked
like Tom had me over his open sights and I had no idea of what I was
going to be hit with.

Well, I had an idea but absolutely no suspicion as to how bad things
had gotten since Friday evening. How about that? All weekend, I had
been falling down an elevator shaft and didn't even know it. Now here
I was starting to get a good look at the sharpened spikes waiting at
the bottom.

Tom couldn't restrain himself any longer. "You're fucked Kyyle!" he
yapped. "We have been on the job since Saturday night, and we've got
you cracked open like the mollusk you are." I had seen him being a
spiteful prick before but never right in my face. It wasn't a nice
look. He was obviously just getting up to speed when Norm overrode
him with a short guttural cough. Tom sat back and looked slightly
chastened. It was never a good idea to be seen to be losing control,
after all.

He was right. It was fucked. To cut a long story short, and to remove
the worst of Brogen's crowing, Frank Arenba had pulled the chain on
me on Saturday afternoon. He'd rung Greibner and Gallaher on a
conference call and described shall we say, certain discrepancies in
matters relating to me. He had then collapsed in some sort of a
diabetic crisis and was now incommunicado in the private wing of
Saint Vincent's hospital. No visitors, condition serious, family
only, I was definitely not welcome.

These three fucks had not even had time to visit him yet. They were
still far too busy going over the books.  Gallaher had made a list of
the places where the Police were liable to be interested in my
activities. Well, more than just interested. Worse than that, the
talent less idiot Dick Balston seemed to have tumbled to the fact
that not all of the spam I received was actually spam. Worse than
that, he seemed to have the process half cracked. I wondered whether
he had someone who actually knew something about computers secreted
under the desk, or perhaps in a cupboard nearby. I wouldn't have
thought the idiot had it in him. If he actually worked that out
properly I would be completely and totally overcooked.

Suddenly, I felt queasy about exactly how safe those codes actually
were.
It got really ugly, then it got recriminatory, Greibner had to stop
Brogen trying to hit me. You get the idea. The whole shambles went on
until just after lunch. It was pretty loud, and I don't imagine that
much work got done anywhere on our floor that day. The bottom line
was that they had only found about one hundred and forty million of
the moolah that seemed to have fallen into my umbrella over the last
two years. They had missed the Caymans, but they had caught on with
the Luxembourg scam. I suppose I had Dick Balston to thank for that
mainly, I had thought that the Cayman's were as obvious as a nutsack
in a martini glass, but he had missed it. What with one thing and
another I should have thanked him, but it was pure dumb luck, mainly.
Even if I did jail time, I would be comfortable when I got out. If
you can call about 160 mill comfortable, that is.

Better than that, I knew a few places were I had a really bloody good
idea that the odd body might be buried. The way that Neville
practically spat in my eye when I casually mentioned the fact that I
(piously) had no interest in oil futures in the Ukraine made me sure
that I had him over some sort of proverbial pork barrel. Norm, well,
Norm and I had been out with a few clients. All I had to do with
Norma was ring his wife and tell her what a naught boy Norman was and
"Big Norm" would run out and punch a cop to get away from her.
Desiree Gallaher was not, repeat, not, a woman to be trifled with.
Brogen? Well, nothing really, but anyone that fucked up had to have a
guilty conscience. Anyway, when I started to rattle the bars of their
cages and they started to see sense. Old Tom got really quiet, and
his eyes got really round, and his adams apple started bobbing. So I
just ignored him. He looked grateful. All I can say is I hope the
stupid fuck gets involved in a few high stakes poker games.

The happy roundup?

No police, get out, never darken our etceteras, this town, blah blah.
This town, my arsehole. In this town, I thought, I am a fucking altar
boy.

So, hit the street, do not pass your office, get the fuck out, this
man is from is security, do not let the door hit your ass on the way
out. I was escorted out, wearing the clothes on my back, and hit the
pavement on Bridge Street at just after two. My head was spinning.
The footpath was crammed with office workers and fat American
tourists in search of lunch.

Suddenly, I had nowhere to go, and nothing much to do.

No. Scratch that. I had to get to a computer and make absolutely sure
that...

"Mr Dunelands."

I looked up. The speaker was about six inches taller than me, sharp
face, and white blond hair in a short crop. Designer sunglasses.
Oakley's. This season. The face of someone who will strangle their
mother for a surprisingly small amount of money. Nice coat. Camel hair.
"Mr Dunelands, you will come with me, please."

I couldn't really place his accent, and that was one of the many
reasons that there was no way in the world I was just wandering off
with him. This guy was creepy. I suppose that he saw the growth of
rebellion in my face. He motioned slightly with his head and suddenly
I was completely surrounded in a wall of camel hair overcoats. And
hats. And sunglasses. About a second and a half after that I was
sitting in the back seat of a plush mini bus with George Street
moving past, murkily, outside the deeply smoked windows.

Mainly, I was relieved. There was no way that this mini bus was the
police. Far too classy for the New South Wales wallopers. No. This
bunch were something else. I spent most of my short trip in that van
in a state of slight embarrassment that I was not wearing a camel
hair overcoat and sunglasses. I felt like I had committed some social
faux pax that no one had ever lived long enough to invent a name for.

There was one thing that I was completely sure of. There was no way
that these hired goons, and they were definitely hired goons, there
was no way that they were local. They didn't look dumb enough, and
they were showing no desire to talk about cricket with each other, in
fact, they showed no desire other than to watch me, which was
undoubtedly what they were being paid to do. Definitely not local.
About the time that I was seriously considering starting to smart
off, the mini bus made a silent smooth left and started down the
ramps to the parking garages under the biggest apartment block in the
downtown area. I was interested by this. You see, I had actually been
down this ramp before, about six months earlier, when they were
building the place. My tunneling rights, well, they were still my
tunneling rights, well they were someone's tunneling rights, it was
hard to keep up with exactly whose tunneling rights they were,
started about five feet the other side of that... WRENCH. The van
turned hard down the ramp. Correction, started the other side of THAT
concrete wall.  We turned twice more before the van came to a stop in
the deepest level of the private section of the garage. The place
echoed to the sound of our slamming doors and the air still smelled
grittily of fresh concrete. I was somewhat surprised that we all
fitted in the lift at the same time. But I wasn't scared, much.

After all, it was obvious that someone wanted to speak with me, and
that that someone was as rich as fuck. I racked my brains trying to
remember names of people who owned property in this block, and
simultaneously laughed at myself, the really rich only have names
when they want them. Each floor the lift went up, I was more
impressed and more interested. Money, you see has a way of rubbing
off, and I was already way down on this morning. Maybe things were
starting to look better.

The lift stopped at the penthouse. I should have expected it. After
all, in situations like this doesn't the lift always stop at the
penthouse?

Very nice. Heavy European corporate. Thick rugs, recessed lights,
smoked glass, the odd gold wall, what looked like a couple of busts
by Epstein in some sconces in one of the walls. I shook off the
overcoats and walked closer. Yes. Given their surroundings they were
almost undoubtedly originals. One of Bomber Harris and one of Paul
Robeson.  Odd. Either my host had a thing for big bull necked men, or
some quite odd political theories.

"Why, Mr Dunelands, how nice to finally meet you!" The voice was
cultured, smooth and almost devoid of an accent that I couldn't quite
place. As accents go, it went with the face, and I couldn't place
that either, and I hate to be a social disadvantage. He continued
before I had a chance to say anything.

"They are an odd doubling are they not, the singer with his heart in
his throat and the man who drove the whirlwind."

He seemed taken aback for a second. "How apt. Both in their way moved
quantities of air, but in rather different ways." He laughed. "As I
do too! How rude of me to prattle on without us being properly
introduced, it was simply that I was pleased to see your interest in
those two. Somehow I had expected... rather less." Suddenly he became
far more serious. "Allow me to introduce myself, I am Imre Tradenko."
he held out his hand. It was large. It was real.

My brain struggled to keep up.

I mean, I had expected rich. Given the goons, rich was a given. I had
expected powerful. I was about to shake hands with a league that made
rich and powerful look like the hired help. I was about to shake
hands with the man who basically owned the oil fields in the
Caucuses. His career was shrouded in mystery. Came from nowhere,
first appeared as a minor party official in the far East of what used
to be the Soviet Union, was next seen attached to the still
relatively unknown Gorbachev, next appeared right after the breakup
of the Soviet Union. In a few short years he had gone from being a
reasonably minor crony to being filthy stinking rich and powerful. It
appeared that if anyone had made money out of the ten long years of
butchery in Afghanistan that had broken the back of the Soviet Union,
it had been Imre Tradenko. His power, and his money had grown
exponentially, every year since then and about two years ago, when
Pietr Rushenko had hit a hill in the Urals in his 747, as far as
mother Russia went, Imre Tradneko was "Mr Petrol." Hell. From what I
had heard, that went for a good proportion of Eastern Europe as well.
And China. Hell. If our beloved Prime Minister had known that this
guy was in town he would even now be scratching at the door offering
head jobs. Simply, Imre Tradenko made the Texan Oil barons look like
pump attendants. This guy owned about half. Of everything.

What do you think I did? I shook his hand.

Vigorously.

"Mr Tradenko" I smiled, "you look younger than your photos."

He laughed merrily. "Oh, Mr Dunelands, there are no photos. No photos
at all, and certainly none in the media. I am quite sure of that. But
I had heard that you were a charmer and I am pleased to see that my
sources have not been proven wrong." He dropped my hand. "And I am
also surprised to see that you are cultured." He gestured towards
bust of Harris. "You recognised both of those instantly. I am pleased
to see that those years in Scots College and Oxford were not passed
in an idle dream."

Point taken. He had done his research and the small talk was now over.
He continued. "I had expected rather less of a real estate man in
this benighted backwater."

And I had better watch my fucking step. Check. Point taken.

He seemed pleased that we were communicating. He took the lead and we
passed through several equivalently luscious rooms until we found our
way into the central core of the building in a windowless sparsely
furnished office. Chrome steel desk, two Braques (They were real. I
restrained myself.)  He sat on one of two low leather couches. When
he motioned at me I sat on the edge of the other one. He motioned
again and instantly the blank white wall in front of us lit under the
beam of a video projector. The image was somewhat grainy and dark
enough to be murky, but it was quite familiar to me. It showed the
couch in the living room of the Presidential suite at one of Sydney's
more exclusive boutique harbourside hotels. Right in the centre of
the frame, in the middle of the couch sat I. Myself. I was naked
except for a Swans baseball cap. A young lady who was shortly to
become royalty was sucking my penis. She was naked too. The girl was
drunk and sucked industriously. I raised my face up and stared into
the camera. My eyes met mine. I raised a thumb in salute and mugged
drunkenly out of the screen.

This film had come out of my home safe. Other than that, the cog
wheels in my brain seemed to have jammed. A soft voice issued from
hidden speakers somewhere in the room. "Images were captured using a
Toshiba 60326 digital video head secreted in the grill of the hotel
air-conditioning duct. Camera delivered images via standard cable to
a security hard drive system secreted in the ceiling cavity of the
hotel unit's second bedroom."
Almost instantly the scene changed. Same hotel, but now the bedroom.

I was on the bed, pounding away at the young lady in question. She
was on all fours facing the camera. It looked like I was banging her
ass and that she was screaming in pain or ecstasy but I could
remember the way that I was her cunt and not getting enough in the
way of friction to be really maintain my erection. After all, I was
pretty drunk. I know I was. I was still wearing that baseball hat,
but now it was on sideways, and I smiled crazily at this camera too,
and made a thumbs up before I started slapping at her ass in time
with my thrusts.

The voice returned. "Same model camera, same connections, to the same
recording unit. Matched by cameras similarly placed in the spa area,
the bathroom and the Southern end of the balcony. Fingerprints found
on equipment and connections throughout the system match those of
Kyyle Dunelands. Hard drive recovered from safe in bedroom of Kyyle
Dunelands." There was a faint almost imperceptible click. The
microphone in the hidden projection box had just been turned off. I
felt that we were rather more private, but I could sense that we were
being watched from many angles with cold and minute precision.  The
room was quiet except for the slight sound of what sounded like a
quite high breeze buffeting balcony French doors somewhere outside. I
remained silent.

Mr Tradenko looked at me.

"The young lady, is, of course, my daughter."

The only thing that I could think of was a Boeing 747, packed with
business rivals, missing a wing and spiraling into the side of a
snowy mountain in the Urals. I found myself trying to remember the
final death toll of that one. Forty? Sixty? All I could remember were
the "Flying Palace Carnage" headlines in the newspapers and the
hammering the markets had taken over the next week or so. The 747 was
a good example of the Tradenko business technique, apparently, though
the Australian newspapers seemed to think that mother Russia was a
long way off, even here the disappearances and torture in the "Oil
business" were common knowledge.

I was numb. Even my numbness was numb.

"Of course, we do not share the same name. She is the issue of an
early experience of mine. I had no..." here he looked away from me
and stared vacantly at the empty white of wall that had recently been
a screen. "I had no, share, in the raising of her. Her mother took
her, she said, as far from me as she could. On the way of course,
they passed the finest finishing schools and made sure that they made
the right friends." He looked at me. "I find that I am in a quandary."

"Until a few minutes ago, the plan was exceptionally simple. I would
have a short conversation with you, and then you would leave here and
go home and get busy with committing suicide." His eyes had as much
expression as a fishes. "Via a short experience downstairs in the
parking garage with some of my men." He sighed heavily and rubbed at
his face as if it was made of thick foam rubber.

"The mother. If the mother should see you, she would kill you
herself. The daughter still loves you in the way that young women do.
She is going to be married, and she still cries over you. She was
very, very angry about that tape," he nodded at the wall, "then she
asked me not to hurt you." He shook his head. A man of the world,
still befuddled by the ways of women. "The mother though, the mother
has changed. She left me because she could not stomach the things
that I had to do to become the man I had become. She said that I was
a monster." He smiled ruefully at that. "Now I find that all this
fine living, and good company seems to have turned her into a monster
in her turn."

"And time seems to have mellowed me, in some ways." I looked closely
at him, and saw that he looked as sad as any man I have ever seen,
and more tired than I could believe. For a moment his face was
nothing but jowls. The face of an old pit bull, remembering the pit.
For the shortest moment I saw superimposed on his both the face of
Bomber Harris and underneath that, struggling to get out, the face of
Paul Robeson. Suddenly, I was almost sorrier for him than I was
scared of him.

"The mother wants you burned. First she wants to ... cause you great
pain... and then she wants you to burn. While still alive. Make it
like an accident, she says. Make it like an accident."

He shook his head, a bemused man of the world, astonished at the ways
of women.
"But this is not just. You have killed no-one. And my daughter too,
is not entirely without moral blemish."

This was true. I mean, aside from me. He went on.

"You have been watched, most closely for the last three weeks.
Everything that you have seen or done, or touched, has been watched,
and recorded, and studied. If you had shown the slightest interest in
spreading these images..." he waved at the empty wall, and one thick
gold cufflink winked heavily at me, "... you would have been stopped.
And dealt with."
There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind what that meant. But it
didn't really interest me that much, my tastes have never run in that
direction. It was as if he was reading my thoughts.

"None of this though, smacks of blackmail, or of anything except some
sort of youthful desire for a souvenir. A garter to hang from an
aerial. A ..." he thought for a while. "A...keepsake." He didn't look
entirely happy at the idea but the esoteric nature of the word seemed
to appeal to him. "My psychologist tells me that it is likely that
you would use this video as an aid to masturbation, and also as a
proof to yourself that you are a man. His study of you tells him he
says that the chances of you using the images as blackmail are less
than three percent, and that the chances of you going public with the
images are less than five percent."

"After looking at you, I agree with him. This is good. I do not like
public embarrassment and I like blackmailers even less. But you have
exposed me, and my family, to an unacceptable risk. According to my
security people there is about a two percent chance that you may have
a hidden copy of the video stream. That you may have secreted the
video on a thumb drive or some such and passed it to a confederate
under the noses of my security. This means that there is about a ten
percent chance that you are a serious security risk after all."
He was staring at me. His pupils of his eyes were like gimlets. After
a few seconds both of us seemed to start breathing again. He spoke.

"I think not. You seem to me to be soft, and spoilt, but I am a good
judge of character. More than that, you have a... " he paused. "You
recognised the two busts in the other room. Not just the sculptor,
any peruser of art might have done that, but you recognised the
subjects.
Then, when I entered you looked at me with interest." A frown crossed
his face. "No. That is not right. Kinship?" He seemed to be trying
words in his head. "English is not my first language. The word does
not matter. In that look, you convinced me that you have a mind, and
a spirit.  These are rare things in this world."

"So. You get to live. You get to pay a fine, and you get to live. We
have taken... one way and another... half of everything you own. We
keep that. You get to remember that we know we can take the rest of
it, should we wish to. That is your fine. However, we need insurance
too. "

So here I am.

In a minute or two, Hank will run out of steam and his attention will
turn back on too matters in hand, specifically, the fact that until
about three quarters of and hour ago, he was hanging around outside
the Matthew Talbot Hostel in Darlinghurst and now he is approaching
stardom in the porno industry, or so he thinks.  It appears that Imre
Tradneko has a sense of humour. He is paying for ten of Sydney's most
deserving homeless to get their cocks sucked and perhaps, should they
wish, to dip their dicks in my virgin ass. He is also feeding them,
and providing them with enough alcohol to lower their inhibitions,
but not enough (regrettably) to cause brewers droop. In short, Mr
Tradenko is throwing a little revenge party, and I am the main course.

My job is simple. If they want it, I do it. I get filmed doing it. I
have to look like I like what I am doing, or Tradenko Enterprises
goes to plan "B." As far as I am concerned, that would be a bad
thing. Plan "B" you see, is me, suddenly vanishing, perhaps while on
fire, perhaps not. The vanishing is non negotiable though.

It has been an odd evening. I was expecting to attend a banquet at
the Royal Sydney Golf Club, in honour of the sixty - fifth birthday
of an ex-premier of New South Wales. Instead, I spent the early part
of the evening shaving my body as well as I could and then dressing
myself in some rather cheesy and scratchy female lingerie. I think I
did a pretty bad job. All up, I know I look pretty frightful. Just
now I saw a patch of quite thick blackish hair on the inside of my
left forearm. It was in a roughly squarish shape and reminded me of a
film I saw once called "Satan's Skin" which said that those in the
control of Satan have a patch of thick rough skin on them. It is the
way that they are marked. Seeing it made me feel rather sick. Mind
you, I already felt rather sick as the rather large half hard penis I
was sucking on at the time smelt a lot like a mixture between
Parmesan cheese and wet dog.  And fish. The penis in question
belonged to a fact and half mad man named Kevin, aside from farting a
lot also smoked a great many cigarettes. Even his sperm tasted of
stale tobacco smoke. I swallowed every drop, too, like I was told to.
There was lots.

I am sure it will make a great video.

After half mad Kevin, there was the really angry half Aboriginal guy
whose name I did not catch, who swore all the time and who tore my
cheap blonde wig off and threw it away and then there was the old guy
who looked like he had been carved out of blue vein cheese. He just
couldn't come. He didn't seem to mind though. He just kept cackling
like a mad prospector in a film. And now there is Hank, and he seems
to be ready from my service. After him there seems to be only about
two more before the mini bus load is dealt with, then I get to go
home and get some sleep and get to remember that should a copy of
that video ever get out, or even be seen by anyone else, then I get
to be painfully dead, and have the movie for the world to remember me
by.

It's a good incentive. I sowed the wind, and now I am reaping the
whirlwind. I have learned my lesson. I guarantee it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Hank is ready for his head job.

alice dee
19 July 2005

***

AfterWord
This short story was somehow inspired by poem 97 of Catullus.
I quote it here, in full, out of a mixture of hopeless pedantry and
happy spite.
alice dee

***
Gaius Valerius Catullus
84-54 BC

Poem 97

As God is my witness where is the difference between
the smell of Aemilius' mouth & that of his arse?
The cleanliness of one equals the filth of the other. Actually
his arse is probably the cleaner and the nicer of the two:
there he is without teeth, while the teeth in his mouth
are half a yard long, stuck in the gums like an old wagon
behind them the cleft cunt of a she-mule pissing in summer
And this being copulates.

A dolt fit for the treadmill,

Considers himself an object of elegance.
Whatever woman handles this man is equally
capable of licking the arse-hole of a leprous hangman.

Translated Peter Whigham
The Poems of Catullus
penguin Books 1966

-end-