Super Meals: Part Fifteen

They were in the parking lot.

Doctor Ralph was looking at a spreadsheet on his tablet computer perched on the steering wheel and Bethany was pouting.

“I thought you meant something nice,” she said. “Seriously, if you’re just gonna buy me some greasy fast-food, you’re not getting any special treatment from me.”

Doctor Ralph said “Oh, believe me, this is going to be unlike anything else you’ve ever tasted.” She snorted, and he continued “Just gimme a sec, I’m checking up on their secret menu.”

Bethany perked up a bit at this and said “Oh yeah? This one of those places where they got weird shit that they don’t advertise but you can order anyway like I read about on the Internet?”

Doctor Ralph said “Yeah, something like that,” and went back to his spreadsheet. Bethany leaned over to read it, saying “Like what? Lemme see.”

He pulled the tablet close to his chest and angled it away from her, saying “Oh, no, I can’t let you see. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when I worked there and if it ever got out, I’d get sued or something.”

“Oh,” she said, sinking back into her seat. It was a good lie, thought Doctor Ralph, because it was partially true. He flicked his finger up the screen and fiddled with the columns for another minute and asked, “I don’t suppose you know your blood type, do you?”

“B-negative,” she said, taking a file out of her purse and working on her nails. “They always ask when I go to the clinic to get checked, so I just memorized it.” Doctor Ralph paused in his work for a moment, and she continued, “It’s cool, I’m clean. I got checked just last week, so you know it’s good, baby…” She leaned over and kissed his cheek as she finished her sentence and he had to stop himself from shooing her away. He was happy to hear she was clean, but he had no intention of having sex with her. He’d found the rest of the test subjects with B-negative blood-types, filtered out all male subjects, and created a new slot for Bethany within the new list. 

Female – age ~35 – ~5’9” – approx. 140 lbs. – Type B- - chx+guac+let+wheat

            He left the seventh column empty for the moment, as he figured he could simply record the details after the experiment was complete. Then he folded the tablet closed and pulled into the drive-thru.

            “So what am I getting?” asked Bethany.

            “It’s a new sandwich they’re test-marketing in the Midwest, but they’ll make it anywhere if you order it right,” he answered. In the drive-thru line they were greeted and halfheartedly welcomed to the restaurant by a broken speaker and a cracked screen that was supposed to display your order as you placed it, but right now it read “404 ERROR – CONTACT WINDOWS ADMINISTRATOR.”

            “Yeah, can I please get the new signature chicken on whole wheat with just guacamole and lettuce?”

            The screen didn’t even blink but the response, while unintelligible, was positive sounding, so Doctor Ralph assumed that meant that they got the order. After a brief pause the speaker blurted something else in a mixture of static and muffled voice, and Doctor Ralph said “No, thank you, that’ll be all.”

            “Can I get a coke?” asked Bethany.

            “What?”

            “A coke. I’m thirsty.”

            “So I’ll get you some water at the hotel.”

            “Are you kidding? I don’t even like showering at that place, I’m not going to drink the water there.”

            “Then let me get you a bottle of water on the way, I…” he had to think about it for a second, but finally said “…just want to make sure you get the full flavor. I don’t want to ruin the sandwich for you, I just want to watch you eat it.”

            It’s important to know that Bethany had seen some weird shit.

            She’d had men pay to watch her shower with Fun Bubbles bath soap (nothing dirty with the cartoon mascot bottle, mind you, just shower and use the extra-foamy cream). She’d had men pay to watch her stimulate herself while watching television (everything from South Park to Downton Abbey to the NBA Playoffs to congressional hearings). She’d had plenty of sex as well, of course, but it was always the guys who didn’t actually touch her that stood out in her mind. Something about taking money from guys that, to her, she didn’t really do anything with always bugged her.

            In high school she was raped, and almost her entire family didn’t believe her. Only her sister Jane, who grew up to the family favorite because she was the county coroner now, believed her story and demanded justice. Nothing came of it, of course, because the word of two middle-class white girls against a middle-class white boy in a small town that prided itself on how peaceful and safe it was didn’t mean shit.

            But Bethany decided that she would forever be in charge of her own body, her own sexuality. After she ran away from home (helped by Jane), she started hooking. She enjoyed the power of picking and choosing her clients herself, and any time she ever felt unsafe, she left. More than a few men were abandoned, mid-stroke, when they said the wrong thing or crossed the line, but Bethany didn’t care. She was in charge of her life and her body, and fuck anybody who tried to say otherwise.

            She kept a .22 pistol in her purse, and had used it once. A client crossed the line, she got up to leave, and he tried to stop her. He was so enraged and engrossed in stomping on her that he didn’t notice her reaching into her purse and getting the gun out. When he reared back for another kick, she swung around, planted the barrel firmly against his dick, and pulled the trigger.

            Such a small gun made barely a POP when it went off, and the guy himself screamed even louder as he fell backwards, clutching at his crotch. She stood up and tried to walk away, but he lunged for her again.

The second time she pulled the trigger, the gun was level with his face.

The bullet entered the corner of his eye and never exited the skull.

He died instantly.

The owner of the hotel called the cops and gave them a bullshit story about some midget hooker that he’d never seen before with dark hair and huge tits that sent the cops on a wild goose chase well away from Bethany.

Bethany never asked him about it, and he never talked about it, but she knew that the hotel was a safe place for her, so she nearly always ended up there with one of her clients.

Doctor Ralph was driving her there now.

But out of all the weird shit she’d seen and done, she had never been paid by a client to watch her eat a sandwich.

“Okay,” she said. “But make sure it’s some of the good bottled water. None of this generic, gas-station brand bullshit.”

They pulled through a gas station next to the fast-food place and he bought her a liter bottle of fancy water that was (according to the label) naturally filtered through a volcanic layer of sediment from the French Alps, and Bethany was happy with it. Doctor Ralph knew that it was actually pulled from a reservoir in Cleveland, Ohio, but he didn’t say so. He wanted to get Bethany back to the hotel and fed.

He wanted to know what would happen when she ate the sandwich.

They pulled in and she led him to the front desk. The tired front desk clerk said “Evenin’ Beth,” when they walked in. “Got a new friend, I see.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need a room for a little while, if you don’t mind.” She responded.

“Sure thing, you know the drill,” he said, sliding a clipboard towards them. “Print your name and address, then sign next to it. Rooms are $75 per hour or $150 for the whole night.”

Doctor Ralph balked at that. “Excuse me?” he said. “That’s a little extravagant, don’t you think?”

Bethany slapped her face in her palm and the man behind the counter tensed. “Sure thing, pal,” he said, pulling the clipboard back. “Tell you what, why don’t you head down the street to the Holiday Inn, where they’ll ask for a credit card and identification, and everything is stored and saved and backed up and shared with corporate on a nightly basis. You want cheap? Fuck off to Cheers where everybody knows your name. You wanna get handsy with my friend here? You pay up and I don’t ask questions. You got it?”

Doctor Ralph thought about it for a second and realized how much of a deal this really was, and handed over two $100 bills. As he did, the man started to slide the clipboard back across the counter and Doctor Ralph paused, saying “No. You get this, you keep the change, and I don’t fill out a goddamned thing.”

The desk clerk looked at Bethany, who nodded, and he slid the clipboard back under the desk. When Doctor Ralph put the two bills on the counter he slid them straight into his pocket, then turned and took an actual physical room key off a pegboard and tossed it on the counter. “Beth, your usual room’s clean. Head on over.”

“Thanks,” she said, picking up the key.

She took Doctor Ralph’s hand and guided him out the door, down the row of identical doors, and into room 110 at the end of the hotel.

Super Meals: Part Fourteen

“Bullshit,” said Mimi. Walter had just finished telling her about his afternoon, starting with the special order cheerful meal and the feeling of lead in his stomach when he finished eating and then how he’d ripped the door off his car (at which point he paused to consider that he’d left his now-doorless car at the restaurant and by now it had almost certainly been vandalized, stolen, sexually assaulted, or all three) and then ran to the wrecking yard and was chased away by dogs and then found the hobo camp with the bloodstains which grossed him out and made him throw up before he passed out on the swing-set and woke up to a good kicking from a bunch of guys who he could only assume were gang members before Mimi found him and saved his life.

Mimi didn’t want to believe him, so she said “Bullshit.” It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, he knew enough about the hobo camp and the bloodstain that at least that part of the story was true, but she didn’t want to think of the super strength.

The super strength made her think of the super hearing.

The super hearing made her think of Jane.

Jane made her think of happier times that were well in the past.

“Look, I know it sounds like bullshit, but I swear it’s all true,” said Walter. “I don’t know how it happened, really, but now I’m afraid of what’s going to happen the next time I eat there.”

“So don’t eat there,” said Mimi.

“But what if it’s not the food? What if there’s something wrong with me?”

“I doubt that,” said Mimi. She was about to add something about the hobo, his super hearing, and the fast food remains that had been found with him, but she stopped herself. Legally-speaking, the details of the case were available to the public, but she wasn’t about to volunteer anything. “I mean, everybody knows that the food at these fast-food joints are just processed chemicals and nobody else is getting super strong from eating there. We’d have heard about something like that, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so…” said Walter, but his heart wasn’t in it. He knew what he’d done and how he’d felt and what had happened to him, he just didn’t know why.

Frankly, the idea terrified him.

“But what if…” he continued. “What if it happens again? What if I eat something and…I dunno, my biceps explode? Or I end up hurting somebody?”

They’d reached Walter’s apartment building and Mimi pulled up to the curb. “Here,” she said, fishing a business card out of her pocket and handing it to him. “I tell you what, if you eat there again and you get more super strength or laser vision or you get a Cajun accent and start throwing playing cards or some other gay super power, call me. I’ll come over and shoot you.”

“What!?”

Mimi smiled. “I’m kidding, I’d only shoot you if you proved a harm to yourself or others…although with super powers like those, I’m absolutely certain you would be a harm to yourself and others, so I could, technically, shoot you and it would be ruled justifiable. But really, I’ll come over and talk you down or whatever.”

“Really?” asked Walter.

“Sure,” Mimi sighed. “Now get out of my car, I’m tired and want to go home, myself.”

“Thanks,” said Walter. “And thanks for saving me earlier, I appreciate it.”

Mimi gave him a salute as he climbed out of the car and shut the door. She watched him walk up to his apartment, unlock the door, and give a wave from the front door before going in, then pulled away and headed for home.

His bag of food was still on the floor of her car.

Super Meals: Part Thirteen

           Doctor Ralph had time – it was still early evening, after all, and the hotel kitchen had prepared for him an excellent meal, which he had eaten alone in his room while listening to an instructional audiobook on how to speak German.

            Doctor Ralph had money – as the “Head Chef” of a major global fast-food chain, he was amply paid in both salary and stock options. Domestically, in liquid assets, he had roughly $8.2 million. If you were to factor in his offshore accounts, overseas holdings, Panamanian dummy corporations, and myriad investments, he was worth almost ten times that much.

            Doctor Ralph had curiosity – he was fascinated by what he referred to as “this laboratory called Earth.” It was what led him into chemical engineering as a profession in the first place, and he thought of himself like a modern day Nicolas Flamel (who was a real person and not just a Harry Potter character). He didn’t believe in alchemy in the traditional style, but he knew science, and he knew that you could mix together the building blocks of life and matter itself to create wholly new things.

            What Doctor Ralph did not have, however, were answers. At least, not enough answers.

            Through his studies, meticulously recorded on his custom spreadsheet, he had discovered the answer to the question “How do you give a man bulletproof skin for 20 minutes?” He did not, however, have the answer to the question “How do you give a man bulletproof skin for 20 minutes without his stomach eating itself and ejecting his intestines through his bellybutton?”

            So he needed more research.

            He was currently trying to pass bills through the state legislature of several bible-belt senates, but was having trouble getting things finalized. While the deep south had absolutely no problem whatsoever giving him permission to conduct experiments on prisoners that were almost guaranteed to be lethal, the legislators he had bribed or bullied into helping him were greedy to a man (Doctor Ralph knew better than to ask a woman to help him, not that there were any in the governments of the southern states). While he had meticulously planned and crafted his bills after months, if not years, of research so that they would be passed without question, his chosen vehicles of delivery were apparently trying to see exactly how much of a raise they could give themselves as riders to these bills.

They would tack on a suggested pay raise to Doctor Ralph’s proposed law, and it would get voted down.

They would tack on a one-time bonus for themselves, and it would get voted down.

They came very close to getting a profit-style share of the state’s revenue if it exceeded a certain amount, but that, too, was voted down.

So Doctor Ralph could not experiment on prisoners.

Back at the home offices of the fast food megacorporation, Doctor Ralph had done a remarkable job of cleaning up the streets of the city by selectively pulling crackheads and homeless people into his laboratory and experimenting on them. Social engineers and urban developers were baffled at the drop in panhandlers and junkies that once roamed the streets, but Doctor Ralph simply smiled to himself and thought of his spreadsheets.

Unfortunately for Doctor Ralph, though, word had spread on the streets about the men and women who approached the vagrants and vagabonds offering free fast-food care packages in exchange for just a few hours of their time, and they had all gone to ground or moved away.

So Doctor Ralph could not experiment at home.

It was fortunate, though, that Doctor Ralph, as the “Head Chef” of a major global fast food chain was called upon to travel quite extensively throughout the world. He made sure that whenever a new product (he never referred to their wares as “food”) was launched at a new location, he was always on-hand to observe the festivities and take notes on how well the products were received.

And if a few locals went missing and were never heard from again, well, nobody would ever expect Doctor Ralph Quinlan, holder of several PhD’s and “Head Chef” of a well-known and highly respected (to some) fast food chain.

He did have to curtail his research a bit, though, when even he started noticing that whenever his employers made page five of the local newspaper (it was never a big enough story to warrant the front page, but a new product or a new location got at least some mention), there was inevitably a missing person story on page nine.

So when Doctor Ralph came to this particular small town to investigate the death of a transient, nobody from the local population knew he was coming, and his presence would go entirely unreported while he was there.

This was the perfect time to conduct research.

Doctor Ralph called a local rental car company and ordered a car. He had one, already, but it was in his name and rented using a company credit card, so he couldn’t use it for his experiment. A robotic voice answered the call and prompted him through the order process until it said that there would be a car delivered in 20 minutes and hung up. He was uncertain if he had ever spoken to a real person throughout the call.

19 minutes later, Doctor Ralph got into the elevator, went down to the lobby, and exited just in time to see a green-shirted young man running towards the front desk with keys in-hand.

“Excuse me!” called Doctor Ralph. “I believe that’s my car?”

The young man stopped, looked at the tag attached to the key, and asked “Mister Robert Afett?”

“Bob, please,” said Doctor Ralph, extending a hand. “Call me Bob.”

The young man shook his hand and said “Okay Bob, here’s the car,” and handed over the keys (and also breaking protocol by failing to check the ID of the recipient, but this was exactly what Doctor Ralph had counted on). “There’s about a half-tank of gas in there now, and if you return it with less than that you’ll be charged for gasoline at the highest price in the area, so you’ll want to make sure it’s gassed before you bring it back.” The young man leaned in then and lowered his voice, saying “The cheapest gas in town is down on 2^nd, just past Morton Street.”

“Thank you very much!” said Doctor Ralph, beaming. The young man smiled and nodded, gave a wave, and ran back out of the hotel where he jumped in a car that was waiting to drive him back to the lot.

Doctor Ralph got into the car he’d rented under the false name, a plain, beige sedan, and drove away from the hotel.

It was dark now, the sun long gone, but it was a small town so Doctor Ralph didn’t take long in finding the seedier side of it. Men and women dressed almost laughably stereotypically roamed the sidewalks and loitered on streetcorners. Every time he stopped at a red light or stop sign, a dozen eyes looked up expectantly, hoping he’d roll down a window and call out to one of them.

It wasn’t until he turned North on 13^th street that he made up his mind.

At an intersection he spotted three women lounging on the corner. Doctor Ralph rolled down the passenger window and the tallest of them walked over to his car and leaned in. “You looking for some company, stranger?” she asked, smiling.

Even Doctor Ralph would have to admit that she was beautiful. Angular features and a crooked little smile that made him think of the Japanese term “Wabi-Sabi,” or “the beauty of imperfection.” She wore glasses, and from this angle he couldn’t decide if they were prescription or merely decorative.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Bethany,” she replied. “Wanna buy a girl a drink?”

“Dinner, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Sounds like a deal to me,” she said, opening the door and climbing in. “I haven’t eaten in a while and could definitely go for a bite. Where’d you have in mind?”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m on a bit of a schedule, so it’ll have to be some fast food.”

“I’m okay with that. You got a place for us to go after we eat?”

“Not yet, do you know a place?”

“There’s a cheap place on 9^th, just past Main. They rent by the hour and don’t ask questions. They’ll even take cash if you don’t mind kickin’ a little extra to the guy at the front desk.”

“That sounds perfect,” said Doctor Ralph. “I’ll get us some food and we’ll sit down together and eat, then see what happens next…”