by J. M. Porup
This is a major criticism I have of France, by the way. I visit your cities and I have yet to see a single food house. It feels so—I don’t know, ferrn. It is a mark of our great virtue—the righteousness of the United States of Air—that some people are unable to compete. Without the poor, the needy, the addicted and the insane, how would those of us who have everything be able to appreciate what we have, if not on the backs of their suffering? But don’t worry. Once France bans food, you too will enjoy all the best our country has to offer.
So now, as I stared through the broken glass window of the house, trying to decide what to do, the Prophet appeared on the television screen. He wore a bandage over his nose. Looked like a press conference from earlier in the day. The running tickertape at the bottom of the screen read: “Coalition of the Fasting destroyed. Fatso at large.” I hung my head. It was all my fault.
A family of four stumbled out the front door, glazed looks on their faces, hands caressing their bellies. The girl was five or six, the boy not much older.
“That was great!” the girl said, her blond curls bouncing as she skipped along the path. “Can we do that again sometime soon? Pweeze, Daddy, pweeze?”
The man spotted me blocking the path, my hands on my hips, glaring at them. He shushed his daughter.
Poisoning children from such a young age. Unbelievable. As the junkie dad passed, I hissed, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, eyes cast down at the ground. He shepherded his children into a new Mercedes and drove off.
Some naturopath. Just another skanky parasite corrupting our young, enticing them with candy, then—wham! Addicted. Charge whatever he wanted after that.
Eat it. I had no gun and no badge, but I was going to turn this scumbag upside down. Make a citizen’s arrest, if I had to. I strode up the path, lowered my shoulder and charged the door.
I stifled a cry of pain. For a moment I thought I’d broken my arm.
“It’s not locked!” a voice called out.
The doorknob turned easily. I stepped into the room. The silent TV cast flickering light over ripped sofas covered in broken glass. The carpet was blackened in places, where food addicts had made cooking fires. Broken plates covered a coffee table and spilled onto the floor. Junkie food paraphernalia. Typical.
“Soup’s on!” the voice sang out from the back of the building.
Soup. Addictive caloric substances in a base of hot water. A cloud of Twinkies surrounded my head. They sang:
Soupy-doopy dooper,
don’t be a party pooper.
Have some soup!
It’s full of goop.
And don’t forget about your son…
he needs to eat—
he’s not the only one.
The doubt returned. What if I was making a mistake? Were the Twinkies right? Did I really need to eat? Was it possible my whole life—the Prophet forbid—was a lie?
I shooed the Twinkies away and advanced down the dark hallway, glancing into each room as I passed. Empty. The sound of running water came from up ahead. Dishes clinked. I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the corner.
It was a food lab, all right. Spotless, compared to the front room. A huge vat simmered on the stove. A refrigerator hummed to one side. A man in a tall white chef’s hat stood at the sink washing dishes. His hat scraped the ceiling. I put on my battle face. This must be “Doctor” Stummick himself.
Karate Chop Suey Attack: No. 17 on menu of Kung Yum Chop martial art tactics. Effective even without chopsticks as weapons. I employed it now. I leaped into the room, my hands harassing the air, and shouted, “ATFF! Don’t move! You’re under arrest!”
Stummick turned. “Chop Suey No. 17,” he said. “I’m impressed, Agent Frolick.” He grinned, and twirled his waxed mustachios. “Welcome to my humble soup kitchen.”
I started at that, and accidentally cleaved an oxygen atom in two. “How do you know my name?”
“Agent Green has told me much about you.” He laid a clean place mat and spoon on the table. “I guessed the rest.”
“The rest of what?” I demanded. I karate chopped the air again. “What can you possibly know about me?”
“I know you love your wife and child. That you don’t want to lose them.” Stummick ladled soup from the vat into a bowl. “I know that you’re hungry for the truth.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The truth. And only the truth.” I stared at the steaming bowl. Danger! Danger! Twinkies alighted on the rim of the bowl and dipped their forked little tongues into that noxious broth. “Nothing else.”
The man chuckled and set the bowl on the table. “Not even for soup?” He pulled back a chair. “Please. Bon appetít.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I didn’t come here for that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No? Then what did you come here for?”
“As a favor to Green. He asked me to pick up a shipment for his family. Whatever it is.”
The chef indicated a burlap sack in the corner. “Rice and beans. Help yourself.”
“What do I owe you?”
I had brought five thousand in used bills. It was my Twinkie money, in case of severe depopulation. I hoped it would be enough.
“Put your money away, Agent Frolick,” the man said with a laugh. “I do not charge for food.”
Same old strategy. Hook new clients, get them coming back for more. Wasn’t going to work with me. Crazy junkie.
“In that case,” I said, “I’ll be on my way.”
I grabbed hold of the sack and heaved, and sat down abruptly on the floor. It must have weighed five pounds. “Now what am I going to do?”
“Maybe if you eat some soup, you’ll have the energy you need,” the chef suggested.
I stood up. The Twinkies sang and danced around the bowl. I put my fingers in my ears, but they only sang louder. Step by lead-footed step I clomped toward the table. They were calling to me, demanding I obey.
“There is no shame in obeying Twinkie-Baal,” my god boomed. “I am your master and you are my slave.”
“No!” I shouted. “I will be a slave no more!”
I grabbed a rolling pin that lay to one side and smashed it down on the Twinkies’ heads. The soup bowl exploded into fragments, splashing me with hot liquid calories.
“Take that!” I shouted. “And that! And that! And that!” The Twinkies hid themselves in the soup vat. I overturned the twenty-gallon pot, flooding the floor with hot liquid. I splashed through the deluge, hunting down every last flying Twinkie in that room until their cakey skulls oozed brains onto the sopping floor.
When I was finished, I stood there, panting, and finally let the rolling pin slide to the ground with a splash. For the first time ever, I had conquered my Twinkies. A warm glow of success filled my empty belly.
Stummick cleared his throat. I looked up. My host was a big man. A food terrist. And I just smashed up his laboratory equipment. Now what was he going to do?
“That soup was for members of La Résistance,” he said. “To give them strength to resist their oppressors.”
I cheered up. “In that case, I’m glad. They’ll have a chance to eat some air.”
“We are not the enemy you think we are,” Stummick said. “We can help you.”
I snorted. “How’s that?”
“Suppose I told you there was a way to eliminate supply. Nail Fatso and decapitate the Food Mafia.”
“But you’re a food terrist,” I objected. “Why would you want that?”
The man removed a pack of Gauloises from under one armpit. “I am not just any food terrist, monsieur,” he said. “I am a French spy.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Where’s your stripey shirt?”
He unbuttoned his chef’s smock. There they were—the tell-tale horizontal navy stripes.
“Gimme your phone,” I said, looking around. “I’m calling the SS. Maybe it’ll get me my
badge back.”
The man lit a cigarette. A cloud of blue smoke surrounded his head. “I don’t think you heard me, Agent Frolick,” he said. “I can help you catch Fatso. Then you’ll get your badge back, plus a promotion.”
I laughed. “You’re going to help me find him?”
A Gallic shrug. “Mais oui.”
“May we what?”
The chef/spy/naturopath blew smoke at the ceiling. He gazed at me from under hooded eyelids. “We put Fatso in business,” he said. “He was an agent of ours. One of the best.”
“Then you admit it!”
“But now he has gone, how you say? Rogue. Turned in many of our networks to the SS.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “All you Frenchies want is to see us stuffing our faces.”
“Fatso now is making hundreds of billions of dollars a year. More than he ever made before. Guns? Racketeering? Gambling? Prostitution? Who cares? These things are just play now, a handful of dust compared to the Food Syndicate.”
“So why do you want to get rid of him?”
The man pulled a beret out from under his other armpit and swapped it for the chef’s hat on his head. “Let me bare my soul to you, Agent Frolick,” he said. He held a hand over his heart. “Our farmers of France are crying out for help. To sell once more their tinned escargot and frogs’ legs in this country. What we want is to legalize food. But in order to do that, we must first eliminate supply.”
“But that makes no sense!” I protested.
The cigarette flashed through the cloud of smoke. “Au contraire, mon ami,” he said. “We believe that when no food is left here in Les Etats-Unis de l’Aire, the people will rise up, and, led by our trained fighter-chefs of La Résistance, remove the Prophet from power and repeal the Amendment.”
I listened to this speech with growing amazement, and finally laughed out loud. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “When Fatso is gone, the people will dance in the street, hugging each other, sucking down the sweet air of liberty.”
A smile tugged at the French spy’s lips. “We agree to disagree, then. Do we not?”
The man had cured my doubt. I hadn’t even asked him for a consultation. I felt alive again. I pounded my fist on the table. “I could not agree to disagree more. What’s the plan?”
NINETEEN
Stummick lit a fresh cigarette. “Tomorrow is your, how you say? Day of Giving Thanks?”
“That unholy Thursday,” I groused. “What about it?”
Maybe Fatso had something to celebrate at his Thanksgiving banquet this year. I sure didn’t.
“What you do is simple,” Stummick continued. “Go undercover to this feast. Sneak into the kitchen. Poison the soup. Voilà! No more mafia.”
A makeup artist and member of La Résistance had joined us in the kitchen.
“Tonight you shall be Alberto Caponey Baloney of Chicago,” the man told me, holding up the mask of the ugliest and fattest member of the Food Mafia. Boils sprouting hairs blistered the man’s forehead. A thick scar meandered across one cheek and severed the nose in two.
“But what about the real Baloney?” I asked. “Isn’t he going to be there? Rather awkward if we both show up.”
The makeup artist sighed. “Alberto, I am sorry to say, suffers from high cholesterol. Si triste, non? His favorite food is pig dick on a stick, deep-fried in pig fat. A Chicago delicacy. His doctor has been warning him for years to cut down. Sadly, he refuses. It will come as no surprise to anyone when he is found dead due to a heart attack. Naturally, the body won’t be discovered until Saturday or Sunday at the earliest. La Résistance will see to that.”
I tried on the fat suit and mask. It itched.
“Whatever you do, don’t scratch,” the makeup artist warned.
“How do I walk? How do I talk? How do I hold myself?” I asked. “I’ve never met Baloney in person.”
“With that I cannot help you, monsieur. You will have to, how you say? Improviser.”
I turned to Stummick. “These are real live human beings we’re talking about,” I said. “Addicts and food terrists, sure. But otherwise people just like me. How can I assassinate hundreds of my fellow creatures?”
Stummick puffed on his Gauloise. “They are guilty, are they not?”
“They are innocent until proven guilty,” I scolded him. “Who am I to take the law into my own hands?”
“You’re the law,” he said. “You’re ATFF. Remember?”
“That’s true,” I said. “I am the law.” Although his argument left me unconvinced. “Why don’t I call Cap, then?” I suggested. “Have the fatty wagons ready. We can round them up. Put them in Fat Camp.”
“Non! Monsieur.” The spy stubbed out his cigarette. “You must speak of this to no one. Fatso has spies everywhere. Even in your department. One little phone call, and—poof! You will never see Fatso again.”
Reluctantly, I agreed to his plan. In the meantime I decided to visit Judge Oscar Meyer-Weiner, ask his advice. I know, I know, Stummick said to tell no one. But if you can’t trust a Food Court judge, who can you trust?
TWENTY
The next morning, I slipped into the courtroom and sat in the back—and worried. Had Meyer-Weiner heard about my suspension? What would he say? Would he still be willing to give me the advice I so desperately craved? I chewed my fingernails—and swallowed, cursing myself for my lack of faith—and waited for him to finish with the current defendant, a seventy-eight-year-old food terrist from a nearby nursing home.
“It was just a cracker,” the old woman said, her voice wavering. “I was so hungry. Just a little cracker. That was all.” She looked around the gallery, looking for allies, but found only accusing stares. “Does no one else feel hunger anymore?” she cried out. “Am I the only human being left who remembers what it’s like to eat and feel full?”
“Counsel!” Meyer-Weiner exploded from the bench. “Control your client!”
Her lawyer stood up, an obvious air-eating virtuoso. He stroked his glistening waddle with a manicured thumbnail. “Mrs. Jenkins has been a food terrist all her life, Your Honor,” he said. “At her age it is difficult for her to make the adjustment, to learn the heavenly secrets of atmospheric consumption. As even a short stint in Fat Camp will likely prove fatal, we therefore throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.”
“Understood,” the judge said. He lifted his gavel. “In that case—”
“I do nothing of the sort,” the woman said, her voice rising in a screech. “I eat, and I like to eat, I don’t see anything wrong with eating, and I’m going to keep on eating just as much as I feel like. Or should I say just as much as I can get my hands on these days.”
“French propaganda,” Meyer-Weiner thundered. “You undermine this great nation when you repeat such obvious lies. Think of the damage you to do to our troops, who are fighting and dying in the Global War on Fat to keep this country safe.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, young man,” she said, and wagged a finger at the judge. Meyer-Weiner was in his sixties. “That Prophet of yours, too.” She shook her fist at the portrait of our Divine Leader, a massive oil canvas that hung behind the bench. The artist had rendered him with a halo and wings. “Eat air,” she scoffed. “Next you’ll be telling me to drink gasoline and shit petunias.”
“Madam,” Meyer-Weiner said, and pointed his gavel at her head. “If you do not refrain from this sort of behavior, I will be forced to—”
“I will refrain from nothing!” she shrieked. “It’s about time someone gave you people a piece of her mind. You’re the ones who killed my grandchildren. Jacob six and Andrea eight and Justin three and a bunch of others I can’t remember now. Skeletons! That’s all they were when we buried them. Bits of skin and bone delivered in a pine box from that Fat Camp of yours. And draped in a flag! As if that makes it all better! Well I got nothing left to lose. I’ll scream until the Prophet himself hears me! Let me go!”
The bailiff grabbed her a
round the waist and lifted her off the ground.
“Guilty,” the judge intoned. Smack of the gavel. “Thirty days. Sixty more for repeating French propaganda. Ninety more for blaspheming the Prophet. Get her out of here.”
“Let go of me!” she hollered, and struggled in the bailiff’s arms. Her lawyer followed her out, pushing his client’s walker ahead of him, his jaws chewing on something almost imperceptibly.
“Next case!”
I stood up. “May it please the Food Court.”
Meyer-Weiner squinted into the gallery. “Special Agent Frolick!” he said. He waved his gavel at the crowd, and gestured at me. “A true Airitarian hero. What brings you before the seat of blind lady justice?”
Oh thank the Prophet. He hadn’t heard about my suspension after all. Still, I was reluctant to speak freely in front of so many people.
“Perhaps a fifteen-minute recess would be welcome by the court?”
The judge nodded. “Fifteen minutes.” He banged his gavel and swung down off the bench. I followed him into chambers.
I’d known Meyer-Weiner since my days on the D.C. force. Back then the press had dubbed him Judge Hang M. High, or Hangnail for short. He liked the nickname so much he asked all his friends to call him that.
Together we’d sent thousands of marijuana users to prison for life. “Half a joint?” Hangnail used to say. “Let ’em get ass-raped for the rest of their lives and die of AIDS. They deserve no better.”
“Now, now, Hangnail,” I’d scold him, over a late night all-you-can-eat buffet, plates piled so high we could no longer see each other. “I find it hard to believe that the other prisoners would ever do such a thing.”
“Nothing like a good back door gangbang to teach a man the true meaning of justice,” he would grunt, and sneak outside to smoke a funny-smelling cigarette.
Our late-night buffets ended when the Prophet came to power and revealed the far greater menace lurking in our midst—food itself. Meyer-Weiner had the highest conviction rate of any Food Court in the country. What was even more amazing, he was just as obese now as he was when I first met him.
