Keep the Change

These rich people should pay for drinking lessons. Chocolate martinis, appletinis, pomegranate daquiris. We stock the best scotches known to man, whiskeys so strong you could run a truck on them, vodka as pure as melted glacier. And these clowns in their ten-thousand-dollar suits are ordering soda fountain cocktails with hard expressions like poker-faced teenagers hoping they don’t get carded. Mint flirtinis, passionfruit stone sours, ex-boyfriends with extra cherries. I heard these people were arms contractors. If the dealers of weapons of mass destruction drink like sissies then I guess the future is bright. A bigger threat than nuclear war is running out of wine coolers. Drinking while bartending is discouraged, of course, but I can’t resist taking sips off a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon just to make a point: I may be a young, urban homosexual, but I drink like a grown-up redneck. “Sex on beach,” one turbaned Muslim barks at me. In your dreams, pal.

Though it’s hard for me to feel good about the one serious drinker in the bar. Mr. Downward Spiral. He’s not making friends. An oily scientist with a thirst for single-malt scotch, he is running up a fast tab, sitting at a corner of the bar looking flat-out sick, eyes bloodshot, sneezing. He’s ordering respectable, top call drinks but not sipping.

I can hear the conversations. Plutonium, millions, collateral, neutron, laser-guided. “Bioterrorism is the most lucrative threat to the new century. The bug starts here.” There’s something dead in these people. Their eyes are stone, their breath foul, they either overtip or don’t tip at all. They don’t know how to be people, they’re just guessing.

The creep signals me to settle his tab: a McKinley is on the bar under his tumbler. It seems covered with some weird, dusty film. I give the guy a look and try to clean the bill with the towel I use to dry glasses, but the stubborn gunk puts a black streak in my bar rag. I put the bill in the drawer, and when I return with his change he has disappeared, leaving only some broken glass and an empty scotch glass. No way he tipped me three hundred bucks; he’ll be back, I think. I sweep the glass into the trash, leaving a plume of dust. When I snap out the towel, a smoky wisp hangs above the bar, drifting in the red lights. A few VIPs sneeze.

When I pop open the register drawer, it coughs a cloud of dust. I am glad when a rich Indian prick peels a Cleveland from a golden money clip to pay for his buttery nipple. Who are these motherfuckers? The five hundred dollar bill seemed to steam as I extracted it from the drawer and tucked it beneath the rest of Gandhi’s change.

A week later, the hotel is hosting a convention of school adminstrators.

Mike wants me to stay home. My eyes are bloodshot, but despite the coughing and sneezing I don’t feel that bad.

He says I’ll end up getting every school in the country sick, but I know he thinks bartending is beneath me, and I can’t afford to miss a night of work. The teachers are frugal drinkers and tippers, but they eventually loosen up.

They’re a friendly lot, at least. They strike up conversations with me. They tell the filthiest jokes I’ve ever heard, and pound cheap shots like nobody’s business.

“Calvin,” they say, “Let us buy you a shot.”

I am running a fever, I realize, and ought to lay off the alcohol, but it makes me feel a bit better.

By closing time we are passing around a bottle of J.B. It’s not my favorite, but I like these people.

A flight back to corporate headquarters in New Delhi.

Contact at the convention: U.S. congressman.

Invitation back to Washington D.C. the following week to discuss our products with some officials in charge of purchasing.

In New Delhi, met with the designers of the nuclear team, chemical, and biological team.

Armed myself with the latest brochures, tables of facts and specs.

Watched films of human specimens dying.

Acquainted myself with tectonic plates and fault lines.

Rehearsed my pitches in the mirror.

Noticed some redness to the eyes, watery mucous.

This exertion seemed to tax my system. Cold symptoms. Or flu.

Put together some large denomination bills of U.S. currency for my D.C. visit.

Mike is upset. I don’t know if we are breaking up. I can’t think straight. I might call in sick. I can’t remember. This makes me angry. So angry I am shaking and then I throw up. Why did he go to the opera when I am this sick? I need him to take me to the hospital. I’ve been sick for three weeks. This is not normal. Is it? I know it’s crazy, but I feel like I have monsters in me. Every part of my body feels off. I feel like I’m dissolving. And I’m very irritable. I’m like this thin balloon filling with blood and every sensation irritates me because any sharp object or noise or look might make me pop and start to leak. Having diarrhea for two weeks ought to make anybody unpleasant, especially when it changes color so much. Maybe I’ll just break up with Mike and spare him having to make up his mind. I hope he gets home soon. I miss him. I need help.

Met with a government panel interested in our proprietary nuclear devices that create an electrical effect designed to knock out the opponent’s electrical grid. Also the technology designed to cause earth tremors.

I had to excuse myself for coughing. Not professional. Not sure they noticed.

The sale appears that it will go through. This could be a lucrative contract for us.

They seemed uninterested in our other products. Our bioweapons, in particular, made them chuckle.

Must infer that the U.S. considers itself ahead of the curve on biologicals.

Nevertheless, our nuclear modifications were definitely of interest.

Expect to land contract.

Slept very deeply.

During the business meeting, when the waitress takes my salad plate away, I find a five hundred beneath it.

“Our way of thanking you for your time,” the smooth Indian arms merchant intones.

A paltry gift, not likely to influence my bid.

One of my advisors tells me that their technology is already used by the Chinese. That’s a concern.

Still, nice to have some money the wife doesn’t know about, I joke.

The gentlemen all chuckle knowingly.

Something odd about the bill. I sniff it to see if it has curry on it.This merchant had been eating too much spicy food apparently. He sneezes a lot. It’s a diseased, overcrowded third-world country, but
they make damn fine nukes.

A bartender displaying unsual symptoms has been checked in to intensive care. As best as I can determine, a new disease is overwhelming his immune system. He is in great pain and bleeding from mouth and genitals. I anticipate publishing a paper on this. I have questioned the man who claims to be the patient’s housemate. I presume the disease is spread among homosexuals—a new form of AIDS, more virulent. The patient seems to be undergoing some kind of internal liquification so pronounced that blood sprayed in my eyes when I inserted a hypodermic in his artery. I’ve begun a light regimen of anti-viral drugs.

I have started to make more aggressive inquiries.

By selling to our client’s enemies, we maintain the global balance of power. This makes us responsible global citizens, we tell our shareholders, and doubles our profits.

I dislike dealing with Saudis at least as much as I do Americans, but they always provide luxurious accommodations, anything I request, and female companionship as a matter of course.

I have started to step outside the usual parameters to secure more contracts. I have let the Chinese know that the Americans have their secret.

What the missus doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Candy says I am running a fever. I say, all for you. Blow my nose, I say. Then blow my mind, just like in the song. I put a five hundred in my mouth and lie down on the bed. She knows what to do.

We get crazy and I don’t have to pretend I love her. It’s honest is what it is. Free enterprise. Made this country great. There’s blood in my semen, she says. Better get that looked at.

All for you, I say. I’m an old politican falling apart. I got blood in all my fluids I bet. Running a country is hard work.

She laughs.

How embarrassing to sneeze during my daughter’s performance of “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.”

Some of the other parents glance over to where I sit in the corner of the gymnasium. Well, I’m lucky I haven’t caught something even worse, given the clients I seem to attract.

I excuse myself and try to get out of my metal folding chair and make it down the aisle without too much distraction.

In the bathroom mirror, I see that my nose is bleeding.

In the silent morgue, a rustle, a crackle, a drip. A tentacle of blood has wrapped around the leg of a gurney and is slithering toward the ground. It meanders across the floor, a red sludge with black specks, crawling away from the drain in the floor, reeking of pestilence, excrement, death. A shoe lands in it and walks on by, tracking it into the corridor outside, each footstep spraying microscopic droplets.

A wealthy Indian with mutliple passports collapsed in a hotel and was brought in. The police seem to have records for a couple of the people he is claiming to be. This raises eyebrows. We don’t know what is wrong with him, but we don’t like the looks of it.

Before the day is over, some Indians in suits arrive to take him away. They have a CIA escort, so we release the victim without having had a chance to run tests.

I don’t like the way the gentleman from Utah is dragging his feet. We have a war on, moron. We can’t quibble over pennies. I stumble to my feet. I seem to watch myself do this, as though I too were in one of the seats. It appears I am going to raise a filibustering objection, speaking out of turn. Instead I vomit more than I would have thought I could, splattering such profuse black regurgitation that several of the others wipe flecks from their hair and glasses.

I am a bit feverish when I stop off at Jason’s. I’m not doing well. But a little cocaine ought to bring me around in time for the PTA meeting. Not for the first time, I look for an exit from this merry-go-round, and hope the peace of mind I’ll get from the rush will help me find it. He’s willing to do business on a barter basis, so I can save a little right there. I don’t tell him I’m sick as I kneel before his chair.

I roll up a five hundred and inhale a rail. I always think the hundreds work better. They’re usually fresher, less wrinkled, they’ve passed through fewer hands.

But not this one.

The cocaine sticks to the bill. I scrape it off and cut it into dime bags.

It takes a bit of effort but I manage to get the bill clean enough to deposit.

Luckily, I know the banker, so it’s all good.

I had asked for a complete autopsy. I wanted the results delivered just to me. Unfortun-ately, word got out and the health inspectors wanted to get involved. Now they are accusing me of stealing the bodies to protect my research. Great idea, but I didn’t think of it.

The bodies have gone missing. There’s nothing but a paste under those tarps.

When one of our people dies, or gets gravely ill, we must keep the affair confidential until we can determine the cause. It’s not unheard of for people who work near weapons of mass destruction to get ill from one cause or another. Canisters leak, shielding cracks, viruses escape. This makes the body of our lead salesman our property, you see, until we can determine that his cause of death involves no proprietary secrets.

All this I observe from outside or above: my railing from a subway platform. My collapse after these theatrics. Being stretchered and ambulanced to a hospital, where I am received like a nobody. They don’t have my wallet, I must have dropped it. They don’t know I’m a federal official. I am shunted into a side room where lights steadily fade. I think the hospital is flooding, and warm fluid is rising around me.

She had serviced a number of soldiers before we found her in bed. She had bled to death from many places. She had worked for me for over a year. I knew she had a young daughter in grade school. One of my bodyguards was instructed to put her in her car and leave her where she would be found. There was no better way. She would have understood.

At the bank, my friend greets me with an open office door, a broad smile, and takes my hand in both of his. In the office, I, VIP, push a fat envelope for deposit across the desk with a smaller envelope on top as a gift for my friend. A gift of cocaine. Nobody will be alerted to the large cash deposit, as usual. All very positive, professional. We work together to keep the city happy and productive, everybody feeling good.

Maybe I am allergic to money. The sneezing has gotten worse and worse. And I am afraid too many late nights at the club have been causing nosebleeds.

Sneezing blood into a customer’s face, after all, is less than professional.

As I pick up the phone to call the doctor, the lights go out. The manager makes an announcement for all cutomers to leave the bank.