Long Tale Press

Piping Rock Country Club

Ashley hated going to the junior dances up-the-club. With the world as it is, a corsage-pinned debutante was (and is) an anachronism for the twenty-first century.

And tonight it was a Halloween dance. Mercifully costumes were optional.

Ashley would have preferred to spend her Friday night reading The Fountainhead. A novel that details an innovative architect’s artistic, intellectual and spiritual war against the cloying, myopic and mediocre masses. The tome hit a particularly sincere spot in Ashley’s heart/brain. She was convinced that the battle written about in the book-was a struggle that any book-reading intellectual fights day in and day out.

Ashley had stayed up until three in the morning reading the passage in which Howard Roark, the maverick architect, repairs Dominique’s bedroom mantle piece. What had started out as intellectual banter between the two had led them to become two cerebral beasts burrowing into one another under the canopy of Dominique’s bed! Rand deemed sex not only physical but intellectual as well. It was the carnal manifestation of two minds meeting.

Ashley admired and aspired to all things Ayn Rand. Ashley adored the first tenet of Objectivism. Facts are facts. Reality of the situation is its essence. She even employed the elements of Rand’s Objective Philosophy especially in regards to herself.

When Ashley studied herself in the mirror, she focused on how mature she looked. The wise eyes and the bags beneath them gave her a dignity. She was hardly the prettiest girl in the class. Nonetheless, her creamy complexion was distinctive and lady-like like a portrait by John Singer Sargent. She had a pristine and intelligent nose. Her gaze trailed down the contours of her full fifteen-year-old figure. Despite the reigning teenage aesthetic that mandated that every girl be a waif, Ashley admired if not righteously defended her womanly body.

Her mother, Dolores, was concerned. Ashley was a far cry from the gregarious socialite that Dolores was. Ashley had no ebullient mirth that Dolores had used to mastermind marrying the most promising and ultimately the most prosperous bachelor on the North Shore. Dolores gazed at her cocktail. She contemplated it like Aristotle contemplated the bust of Homer. Dolores ruminated how Ashley could be so unlike her and so like her father Edwin.

Ashley was incurably analytical, pragmatic, and methodical. Edwin had used these traits to his advantage. He was the CEO of a subsidiary of PigCorp. He ran United Corn, Soy & Fodder Inc -that was once renowned as the nation’s largest purveyor of grain. As impressive as all that might sound around a tray of cocktail hors d'oeuvres, things were not so rosy in the corn, soy and fodder markets; the spring and summer’s erratic rainfall affected both the yield and quality of the crops. It was obvious to everybody-even the inebriated Dolores- that Edwin’s division wasn’t making the money it was supposed to.

Dolores sipped her drink and the booze welled up inside her with insight. She surmised the only difference, excluding age and sex, between father and daughter was Edwin’s ulcer.

Ashley, nonetheless, was such a source of happiness and hope. Ashley was brought up “the only child.” Dolores loved the color of bourbon especially when it was in her glass. She knew it was sick to love booze. How else does a woman deal with a loss of an infant? If her little boy had lived, sighed Dolores, maybe I would have been different. Why does booze have to be a depressant?

“But Mother, I hate those dances. The kids are just so stupid. They act like they are in some stupid music video. I don’t want to go!”

“You’re going. It will be good for you to socialize.”

“Socialize with who? They all are so lame.”

“So?” said Dolores with a “that will be that” inflection. Dolores twisted Ashley around and marched her into her room. “Pick out something nice to wear.”

Ashley wanted to scream. But didn’t. Ayn Rand wouldn’t scream at this petty bullshit. Ashley decided to wear something as severe as Ayn Rand’s ensemble. A pressed satin creme blouse. A pleated black wool business skirt. Flats. A string of white pearls. A dark gabardine cloak. She was going to the dance as Ayn Rand. Free Enterprise’s Grand Dame!

Ashley inhaled. She mediated on one of the great truths of the Ayn Rand universe: Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

Ashley exhaled as she mentally readied herself for the dance. She was doing what actors do as they put on their costume; Ashley was getting “in character.”

With Atlas Shrugged, Rand wrote the treatise for all belligerent intellectuals. She redefined the virtues of avarice and spelled it out for all to read in the bristling Philosophy of Selfishness. True to herself all the way to the end, she typified our great economic system by having a dollar sign comprised of gladiolas lovingly placed by her casket during the viewing. She lived and died as Capitalism’s most outspoken and less apologetic philosopher.

“You’re going to a dance, not court,” remarked Dolores.

“In either place, I am going to be judged,” snorted back Ashley with a clever sneer.

The crisp evening reminded everyone that winter was coming. The back door to the mini-van slid open and Sherman Peterson’s three teenage boys dressed as “The Three Stooges” bounded across the clubhouse green. “Close the door, Cubby!” growled Sherman as he noticed Ashley walking slowly across the flagstone walkway.

Sherman smiled at Ashley’s impeccable “put upon” gait. Ashley was intuitively so old style: debonair and bored. That demeanor is the quintessential opposite of the current hormone humming hip-hop hedonist.

Ashley reminded Sherman of the young girls of his youth. What an interesting costume! The white pearls and the white kid gloves. Ashley was a righteous proponent of the “untouched.”

Sherman knew then that he had to fuck her.

Orlando, Florida

Mohammed and Faruuk had to do what they were told to do. When they moved from one furnished room to another, upon arrival the first thing they did was to take down the framed paintings for the duration of their stay. Mohammed would turn the paintings toward the wall and then let them lean against it. When Mohammed and Faruuk were assigned to leave, they would re-hang those “putrid images” back on the wall. Mohammed mentally grumbled at the despicable framed idolatry of the ubiquitous Infidel monkey and swine! Mohammed saw no charm in the landscapes that depicted the thatched cottage in a verdant glen. Nor was he enchanted with Walter Keene’s virgin-whore with hyperthyroid eyes and closed lips. What repulsed him most of all were the seascapes of breaking waves at dusk. His mind was under siege with the audacity that a banal sunset harbored! To dare mimic one of the greatest of all Allah’s creations!

Mohammed found it hard to pray purely in a room that had a wet bar, cable television and draped curtains. It was impossible for him to meditate simply and purely within the contrivance of tangerine, cream and beige. How can one transcend in a room that had limited natural light? Mohammed could not chant when the praises are underscored by the ambient sounds of the mechanical inner workings of central air. God’s organic nature was not in the motel room that was as self-contained as Tupperware. It was despairing how both Mohammed and Faruuk could not find the solace of Allah in a Comfort Inn.

To praise Allah Mohammed needed a room empty of everything but him.

All Mohammed needed was a blank white wall in front of him to meditate and a prayer rug beneath him to elevate and fortify his present to the future.

Mohammed was constantly nudged by the tip of Allah’s finger propelling him from one continent to another, from one city’s cell of brothers to the next. He surrendered to wherever he was sent. To learn what he was told to learn was Allah’s will.

They had come to Orlando to learn the intricacies of certain disciplines. At Cairo University, Mohammed studied English. In Germany, he was chemistry major, but in Orlando he was directed to get a license as a carpenter, electrician and plumber. His partner, Faruuk was learning to drive a big rig. Neither of them knew the goal to why they were to take these classes. Mohammed was told to focus on the pivotal points in both the plumbing and structure which configure a building. Faruuk was instructed to concentrate on the finesse needed to parallel park a rig as close to a wall as possible. They never knew the grand design of things. Only Allah knew that.

Nonetheless, Mohammed wondered why Allah had sent him here to Orlando.

Mohammed though it was no coincidence that he was there. Wedged between the talons of Walt Disney World.

A burning righteousness filled Mohammed’s spirit when he reviled in the pervasive and gut wrenching “Disney Version.” He abhorred how the Crusaders sentimentalized or slandered any foreign people or civilization that fell with their sights. Mohammed was clenched in the frustration of not being able to fight their sanctified slander legally because Disney was, in fact, the law.

Omnipresent Corporate and International Law!

How, he wondered could he implement Allah’s law?

Mohammed was willing to die for what is righteous. At an Afghanistan recruitment camp, Mohammad had befriended the cousins of the martyrs who died blowing up an U.S. embassy on that blessed August day in Kenya. Mohammed took it to heart, that he was just one scant relative away from eternal greatness. Mohammed relished at the thought of the man who killed so many is prospering in God’s greatness now and for eternity! That was the life after death that Mohammed hoped to revel in.

Perhaps Allah sent Mohammed to Orlando to fan Satan’s flames to consume the gleefully rounded Disney idols? Those over-fed smiles and bodies constructed from interlocking rounded oblongs and circles. The orb-eared rodent emanating double halos side-by-side like a Hindu deity. Oh! The sweet release to blowing that image to smithereens! What a blessed delight to witness hordes of blue-eyed children bubbling up tears and lamenting at the sight.

Mohammed need only to cite the Koran to justify this act: show us the wrath of God, if you tell the truth.”

Maybe Mohammed was sent to Orlando to specifically obliterate the Disney portrayal of his revered culture. The insidious “Carpets of Aladdin” ride. Pods fashioned as carpets rotate around a gilded magic lantern hub. How lovely to see that swallowed up in an exploding fireball!

And then there was the other attraction. What divine strike it would be to obliterate the “Agrabah Bazaar.” Here, the Infidel “Imagineers” bring the “flavor of the Middle East” by recreating an open air market “as seen in Aladdin.” Turban topped vendors man patched canvas stalls. The market is rife with Disney DVD’s, and trinkets. Trinkets are revered as small relics. Those hateful statuettes of the fabled mouse, the duck, the dog, the puppet and the princess, all bagged and ready to buy. May the chubby Infidel child swallow and choke on them all!

Mohammed imagined himself posed as a mouse-eared cripple bumping and bouncing about on a red little Power Chair. He would be benign and pitiful sight as he wheeled the vehicle stoked with hidden explosives in to the emporium. He would roll into the middle of this bazaar and detonate himself everybody and everything up! Arms, eyes, heads, bellies, flung up in the air launched by hate. Bodies riddled with hot burning shrapnel. Most certainly Mohammed would then bring “the flavor of the Middle East” to Orlando!

Mohammad was tickled at the idea of hurting this massive corporate monster. If you damage one, he thought, you damage them all. He snickered-like a line of dominos they would all fall-even the mighty PigCorp!

This imagined scene was just a piffling to what he had endured. A brother and mother engulfed by a miss-fired Patriot missile in Hofuf. A fellow comrade beheaded by a guard in an Israeli detention camp. The mere presence of the Western Infidels in their homeland renders a steady and endless river of indignities to all Believers!

These were the lessons learned. These were the images floating like platelets in his blood and memory. They went around and around and were not to be forgotten. They fed his strength. Those memory images that swirled within him were to be acknowledged, remunerated and redeemed in blood.

The totalitarianism of the Koran bracketed Mohammad’s brain. It took only a shadow of the oppressor to spark his mind to spew silent scripture: “So when you clash with the unbelieving Infidels to battle, smite their necks until you overpower them, killing and wounding many of them. At length when you have thoroughly subdued them, bind them firmly, making then captives.”

Mohammed was led like a camel on a path no matter how treacherous or complicated. As intricate a design as on the woven edges of a Kazak. Mohammed and Faruuk were the fortunate few to serve Allah by acts of righteous vengeance.

They were advised to travel south to Miami.

Reading the daily update on Bin Laden’s website, a passage from the Koran was cited that, once decoded, was the missive ordering them to leave Orlando. Immediately.

Obediently they re-hung the pictures and left on the evening of September tenth.

Beverly Hills, California

“You can’t imagine my humiliation I felt when my best friend, Evelyn Sykes,” began Hillary Chipps. “The Evelyn Sykes,” Hillary silenced for a moment so that Mike could process the full potency of that not so casually dropping such an important and powerful person’s name. Hillary’s lips tightened over her bucktoothed bite in anticipation of the embarrassment that would surely follow the upcoming disclosure. The lines around her eyes deepened as did the crevices around her mouth. Under different circumstances those crannies testified to her proclivity for fun and laughter, but now these same lines exemplified a serious situation. Hillary dressed in a simple but expensive manner.

Mike McDonough purposefully did not react to the name Evelyn Sykes. Mike leaned back in his chair and said nothing as to let Hillary Chipps continue, as would any therapist. However Mike was not a therapist, but at times, he did use their techniques.

“Evelyn called and said that she had just seen my husband Justin Chipps with his little whore cavorting in front of the Rodeo Collection, according to her, and she is my best friend, they were practically fornicating… on the hood of his Cadillac for the whole world to see.” Hillary stopped. The wattle in her throat was shaking as were her hands. A wet sheen emerged over her eyes, as Mike grabbed for the Kleenex and placed the box before her. In brisk moment, she batted the package off the tabletop. The box bounced off the olive green file cabinets and on to the floor “I don’t need any more fucking Kleenex!” she roared. “What I fucking want is to have this thing handled discreetly.”

Again, Mike did not react to outburst. “So as I understand it,” he said, “your husband is having an affair,” he said simply. Just stating a statement of fact. He wiped his nose. His eyes remained opaque and uncaring. For that was, in fact, his job.

Hillary’s fingers plowed through her gold tinted hair on her bowed head. For a moment, Hillary could not look at Mike. The pearls around her neck remained decorative and impervious to the emotion that they were circling. “You can see that I am under a great deal of pressure,” she said in a sudden weak voice. Mike could not ascertain if this was feigned or not. “Because after all, when your best friend’s husband has carte blanche with the President. The repercussions of this tawdry affair would not only be embarrassing to my friends in Washington but affect the programs the President wants to implement!”

Hillary looked away at Mike only to return to his gaze. Betty Ford is right, living in the White House is like living in a fish bowl.” She straightened up and she gazed directly at Mike. “Yes, my husband is having an affair.”

“He has been having an affair for years,” said Mike in a dryly.

“Yes,” said Hillary offended. “How did you know?”

“People talk, Mrs. Chipps,” said Mike wearily. “Beverly Hills is a small town.”

“Don’t I know it! ”

“People know,” said Mike. In a tired tone that implied all this was after the fact.

“So do you know who his Little Whore is?”

“No, but I know people who do. Gossip is a big part of my business,” said Mike.

Hillary looked around the nondescript office. A space tucked away in the backend of a downtown Beverly Hills building. Green file cabinets and soft gray walls. An oak desk and an old computer complete with a television-like monitor. A tarnished bowling trophy topped with a bent figurine swinging a ball was the only decoration. A diploma from the Police Academy hung limply on the wall. It was a deliberately bland looking room.

“Gossip is a big part of your business,” repeated Hillary.

“Yes,” answered Mike.

“Concealing it?” queried Hillary,

“Using it and then concealing it from the tabloids,” qualified Mike.

“Good,” said Hillary, “You have to understand that there is so much at stake here. What I don’t want is a public scandal.” Her eyebrows rose.

Mike nodded: understood.

“My grandfather along with the Dohenys took a bean field decades ago and created Beverly Hills. My husband revolutionized business when he started…”

She stopped waiting for me to say it.

Mike didn’t have to say it nor either did she. A name that is the foundation of how business is done today. Justin Chipps had revolutionized the use of credit cards. Prior to the 1950’s, credit cards were used to buy gasoline only. Justin’s big and brilliant idea was to expand this convenience with restaurants. He created “The Eat And Receipt” card. And then one inspired morning, he envisioned a card to be used for all purposes and purchases. From there a true and substantial fortune was made, Justin’s card in year after year yielded a revenue larger than the Gross National Product of most Third World countries. An enterprise so lucrative that only a conglomerate as big as PigCorp had the balls and the money bags to buy it.

“As you know then, my husband sold it ten years ago because of his heart problem and believe me, we took a real bath on that one.”

“Well, it was a six hundred million dollar bath,” said Mike with irony.

“I beg your pardon, “ said Hillary with a full breast of air. “It was much much less than that.”

“Actually, it went for a bit more than that.”

“It was a bath,” she said. “Compared to what it is really worth. It’s pin money. Speaking of which how much is this going to cost me?”

“As much as it takes,” said Mike.

“I want more than just information. I want you to stop it!”

“Stop it?”

“Stop it,” she reiterated. “I don’t want it going on any longer than it already has.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how that is what I am paying you for!”

“Listen, Lady!” barked back Mike, “I’m just a guy for hire. I can’t keep your husband from seeing his little…”

“Whore,” said Hillary drawing on the “o.” “His Little Whore!”

“OK. OK. His Little Whore!” said Mike with a full gale of air as if to match Hillary’s histrionics. “All we can do is gather as much information as we can. Maybe find out something we can bust her for. Make her life miserable. Make her move away. Even make her do some time. Separate them.”

Joy and glee flooded Hillary’s face. “Now we are talking!”

Varvarka Street Moscow, Russia

“It is the culmination of the little things that trigger a revolution.” Vladimir wasn’t sure who said that-it could have been any of them: Tolstoy, Lenin, Mao, Chekhov, and H. Rap Brown. Perhaps none of them said it. For all he knew, maybe he thought of it. “It is the culmination of the little things that trigger a revolution.”

As Vladimir was walking to the office, he noticed the numerous broken window-panes in Moscow. The multi-paned windows reminded Vladimir of randomly punched out squares on a teacher’s template.

For the most part, wood panels were placed in the window frames. In the instances where wood was lacking, people plugged up the windows with filthy rags that in more prosperous times, would have been discarded.

It was obvious that neither private enterprise, the government nor the Mafia couldn’t procure the necessary glass for the city’s buildings.

The windows’ spotty condition, Vladimir surmised, is part of the price Russia is having to pay for freedom.

It was a cold and damp day in May. A snowfall in the first weeks of October heralded the arrival of the frigid winter which remained in Moscow for what seemed a lifetime. The initial racket of hail sounded as Vladimir mounted the steps to the government building. Sheets of bee-bee sized ice beads crashed on the marble stairs, exploding and spewing into frozen spit.

The granite facade of the building remained grand but worn. Even though it was the building of Administrative Culture, there were a few window panes lacking that were fitted with wood. Vladimir walked between the Georgian columns and into the building.

Inside plaster and paint peeled from decades of steam heat. In the corridors and offices prominent spots exposed the under-paint on some of the walls. These blemishes indicated where Communist-themed brass plaques were once pinned to the wall.

These blotches were all part of the New Russia, which in many ways is very much like the Old Russia. Yes, the Black Market is now an open market. Luxuries are now more readily available; however, in both eras these products are as high-priced as ever. Only the rich and the slippery can buy them.

Vladimir walked into his office and took off his coat. He shook it and placed it on a hook. He strolled over to his desk and sat down. His appointment book was opened. But he didn’t have to check his appointments; he knew what was on today’s schedule.

Today was going to be an important day.

The Stolichnaya marketing and event planning coordinator was coming in at ten.

Vodka is the country’s demise and salvation simultaneously. Vodka is processed in more Russian livers than any other product. It is the liquid villain that robs the people and the country of its productivity. Hangovers are a daily morning epidemic.

Yet it is the salvation of the country as well. In a nation in which life is chronically miserable, vodka is the only way to take it.

Piping Rock Country Club

The music was dissonant and loud. “Fuck this! Fuck that! Rat-a tat-tat!” The swirling lights moved and speckled across the dance floor and the jiggling dancers were disorienting. It was a hideous hurtful environment that was supposed to be fanciful and fun. A disgusted Ashley left the ballroom.

She waddled down the hallway to the club’s book room. She plopped herself down on a plaid-upholstered reading-chair and began perusing through a Forbes magazine. She was happily and peacefully reading “The Market News Bulletin.”

“Ashley!”

“Mr. Peterson.”

“Why aren’t you...?” Sherman gestured down the hall where the music was muffled but still felt.

“Please. Mr. Peterson, all that ruckus! All that sweat! All that stupidity! I don’t know why some people look forward to such things.”

Sherman laughed in agreement. “You’re preaching to the choir. I was the same way. I hated those dances.” Sherman’s jowls squeezed into his neck as he swung his head in remembrance. “I hated those dances in that very same room.”

“I am glad I am not the only one.”

“Oh! no, dear, you’re not!”

Ashley smiled at Sherman and Sherman smiled back. Sherman had a spry ambiance. He had a winning smile and a sparkle in his eye. He had most of his sandy blond hair and the bald patch on the top of his head was considered “charming.” He was a good-looking forty three year old and he knew it. Ashley gazed down at the magazine.

“So, how’s your mom?” asked Sherman.

“Fine,” said Ashley with an accompanying yawn.

“And your dad? How’s my subsidiary treating him?”

“Crazy busy always,” said Ashley looking up at Sherman. “You know what that’s like.”

Sherman was on the CorPig’s executive board, the conglomerate that Ashley’s father worked for.

“Do I ever,” said Sherman. “It never stops.” Sherman was in the business of business. No one knew exactly what. He had a Ph.D. in economics and was also a lawyer. He had the title of “vice president.” His position did yield power and prestige. CorPig was one of the largest conglomerates working in today’s frazzled economic system. CorPig owned and operated a variety of institutions that distributed a variety of products from food to shoes to show biz. There was talk on the street that CorPig was getting too big for its trough. There were rumors that one arm of the corporation had no communication with the other arm and sometimes there were instances of working at grievous cross- purposes.

Ashley returned to her article. Her eyes furrowed into two trenches. “Those Chinese are such pigs!” she exclaimed. “They want it all! They are so sheepish! They started that war between India...”

“Hold on, young lady,” said Sherman. “That has only been implicated no one knows for sure.”

“All you have to do is read between the lines in the newspaper,” Ashley exclaimed.

“Well I am not so sure,” said Sherman playing the Devil’s Advocate.

Ashley eyes narrowed with a well-thought out rancor. “How can you say that, you of all people!”

“I have done business with them and I have...”

“Who hasn’t done business with them in the last few years? Dad says they are just as diabolical as the Japanese were in the last century.”

“But the difference is the size of their market and the resources.”

“Duh!”

“And it’s huge. I mean huge, but there is no doubt in my mind that we won’t be able to...”

“And to think they were once a communist country.”

“They still are. Officially.”

“Or are they as totalitarian and focused as when Mao whipped his people into a splendid submission and to say nothing of his wife and her gang who would have continued to do so if they weren’t disposed.” Ashley’s voice lowered to a sorrowful tone then.

“My, my, my, you certainly know your history.”

“Any thinking person does,” said Ashley. “History is so important. It is the past in the present.” Ashley shook her head. “The world economy works on new totalitarian system. It’s a Corporate Communism. ”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“But honestly, Sherman, isn’t it funny how the capitalists have become communistic. Free enterprise is a myth, really?”

Sherman said nothing. He was thinking of how he would maneuver himself into her panties.

“Well isn’t it really?” Ashley paused but she couldn’t stop this train of thought. “ All you have to do is read the trades to see it.”

“What?” said Sherman who was silently obsessing over her teenage snatch.

“Like Variety or Hollywood Reporter to see how all the major studios are inter-related for they all share certain projects, media outlets and interests. “

“If you say so,” commented Sherman wistfully.

Ashley clenched her fists, she was going to make a very pertinent and important point. “For example, Disney owns ABC and if ABC broadcasts a show produced by Twentieth Century Fox (or any other studio in town) then there is a common ground. If the show does well, all the giants reap the benefits. Consider the corporations that sponsor any show broadcast on ABC. Automatically Disney shares interest with such mega-giants as General Foods. General Motors, Bristol Myers and whoever advertises with them.” Ashley was doing everything she could to impress Sherman. “All of them passing lucre amongst themselves creates a network made of money. All these extended arms moving and churning like cogs around one another in one infinite engine. All of them keeping one another alive to feed one ultimate power. One happy, satiated and thriving colossus. It’s incestuous. All the corporations are second cousins to one another.” Ashley smiled. “Once you know that-then you know how to work it. The system does work! And I can’t wait to be old enough to work it!

Sherman laughed. “I would hire you.”

“I just may take you up on that!” said Ashley already seeing that her future career as a business mogul was in grasp.

“You know where you can find me,” said Sherman. There was no doubt in his mind about what he was going to do.

The music continued to boom. The dance was going to be endless.

“Hey, I haven’t had dinner yet,” offered Sherman, “Why don’t you keep me company?”

The matter of logistics and worry swept across Ashley’s face. “My mother will pick me...”

“I’ll get you back in plenty of time,” said Sherman in an “its no big deal” tone.

“Sure.”

“How about Chinese ?” Sherman could not help smile. “Your choice.”

“Chinese! “ exclaimed Ashley.

“ Great food and even a greater market,” added Sherman.

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