Horse's Ass

  Chapter Five

  Mary grew up wearing kitten heels, the spoiled brat of a bit player in the Chicago political system. Equal parts potty mouthed princess and entitled diva, Mary was raised as a beauty pageant kid that segued to cheerleading when she started losing pageants, and eventually to music when she lacked the athleticism to make the varsity cheering squad. She was prone to bad thoughts, worse decisions, and came by both honestly.

  Mary’s daddy was a cigar chomping Chicago alderman who considered resort wear business casual. He funded his lifestyle, that of a muddling mid-tier crime boss, by taking bribes in exchange for zoning variances and tipping off restaurant owners before inspectors arrived thereby giving the restaurateurs enough time to sweep out the mouse droppings and rat nests that littered their larders. Liquor licenses, twenty four hour diners, sky scrapers, were within his control in neighborhoods that were historically zoned for elementary schools and single family homes. Daddy’s war chest was funded by the business interests of the rich who sought exploitation of, and, exemption among the masses. Never one to quibble with his constituents, he passed the variances late at night, and typically in smoky basements, as envelopes of cash traded hands when his signature adorned the required legal documents. His propensity for always saying yes, when the money was right, meant his elected post had yet to face a serious contender.

  Mary’s mother was a flight attendant who’d met Daddy while he was on a taxpayer junket to Vegas. While taxiing down the runway Daddy swatted the comely flight attendant on the ass with his newspaper and asked for a quick refill. It was his third gin and tonic since hitting the pleather, and Mary’s mother was smitten with this thirsty traveler sitting in domestic first class in his resort wear finery. This was the star she had looked to hitch on to since she’d dropped out of high school, taken this Godforsaken job, and slipped into irreversible debt by charging her new double Ds onto an already maxed out credit card.

  By the time the plane taxied to the gate Mommy was sitting on Daddy’s lap, had quit her job by telling the pilot to, “kiss her grits,” over the PA system, and had secured a vaguely worded marriage proposal. Not surprising, Mommy was also pregnant as she and Daddy stumbled off the plane. This being the time in air travel before September 11 regulations restricted the bathroom to one paying customer at a time. Arms around each other, drunkenly weaving down the jet way, Daddy and Mommy stumbled into the blinding desert heat. God bless Vegas, in no other city can you arrive unannounced, intoxicated, having known each other for less than 24 hours, and commit to a life of for better or worse, richer or poorer. They married that day, and Mary was born nine months later.

  Mary learned early in life, from her alderman father, that perception is reality and perception is controlled through image. She also learned a good handshake should pop knuckles and make them wince. From her mother, she learned to be no friend to the ugly. These life’s lessons were taken to heart, and beginning at an early age Mary worked tirelessly to surround herself with beautiful people and beautiful things.

  It first became evident that Mary’s moral compass was forged in the fire of Chicago’s political system when she orchestrated selective seating in her elementary school. Prior to Mary’s acceptance at the coveted magnet school (her father called in an outstanding favor), the kids at the school organized themselves during lunchtime by classroom and neighborhood. Kids who knew one another tended to sit together. Mary immediately and successfully sought to reorganize the lunchroom dynamics. Her vision was that of three tables; the popular kids, semi-popular kids, and unpopular kids, with popularity based on attractiveness. She knew her plan wasn’t perfect, it was more like five percent popular, fifteen percent semi-popular and the remainder unpopular, but the lunchroom was limited to three tables and math wasn’t her strong suit. Like Barbie said, “Math is hard.” Mary didn’t like the compromise, but felt her life’s work too important to wait.

  Once the kids were assigned the appropriate group Mary leveraged her plan to fund her growing clothes habit. She offered her classmates an opportunity to upgrade tables as long as her immediate seat mates remained handpicked. A daily upgrade was one dollar, while a week could be had for three dollars. She picked a couple of goons to enforce the rules and paid them a dollar a day to police the tables. The kids looking to upgrade offset the cost of the thugs and Mary pocketed a nice profit. From Mary’s perspective everyone won; the ugly kids had a chance to mingle with the beautiful; she made a tidy profit and was able to dictate those with whom she ate; and, the thugs were able to fund their growing slushy and cigarette habit at the Seven-Eleven.

  Mary also learned the art of profanity from her father, a noted and cunning linguist, whose skills were honed berating the immigrant workers he found throughout his ward as he shook them down. Mary swore like Daddy (and Mommy); without regard for grammar’s punctilious rules. Subject and verb agreement wasn’t required when you were in the zone, and it wasn’t necessary the adjective correctly modify the noun. Mary’s repertoire of zingers centered on the f-bomb she liberally sprinkled into almost every conversation.

  Life’s lessons learned, and over a decade since dropping out of high school, Daddy didn’t really care what Mary did as long as she moved out of the house. As Mary headed into her thirties she was still sponging off her parents, struggling to hit the high notes, and mired in debt as she dressed in the finest Europe had to offer. Her unemployed, luxurious lifestyle was costing Daddy plenty, and not solely from a financial perspective. A serial cheater, Daddy needed Mary out of the house; not laying his best laid plans to waste or wasting his best lays. A half a dozen times he’d brought home some young bimbo only to have his adulterous plans derailed by Mary, who was hanging around the house. Infidelity in mind, Daddy decided to call in a favor and get Mary a job, thereby putting in motion a series of events that would culminate in her running G.O.D.’s Sales organization.

  Slick was a local music producer who had promised a sizable contribution to Daddy’s war chest in return for a zoning change to a residential property he owned. Slick wanted to open a night club, but the building he owned wasn’t zoned for commercial use and did not have a liquor license. Daddy indicated these were fixable problems, and re-zoned the property in return for the aforementioned contribution. Slick never paid up, and Daddy, rather than rezone the property with permissions consistent with that of a parking space, forced Slick to manage his daughter’s non-existent music career. To meet this new obligation, and avoid seeing his prized establishment become worthless, Slick booked Mary to play at his club.

  Slick was clear on the style of music the club featured, and Mary was thrilled her beauty would be accented by the Carhartt sporting patrons lucky to hear her golden voice. Slick’s club was a working man’s bar that favored heavy metal and the blues. It stunk of sour beer, vomit, urine cakes, and stale cigarettes. The patrons were discriminating. Robin Trower was okay. Joe Satriani was a douche bag. REO Speedwagon was always welcome. Rush sucked. There was no explanation for their preferences, it was best simply to memorize what they hated as the crowd could become violent at the least provocation. Slick told Mary she needed a ten song set list which should be centered on Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Aerosmith. Repeatedly, he warned her not to try any of that torch singer crap here. That was for later after she had a few gigs under her belt, and figured out how to hit the high notes.

  Mary was thrilled the songs wouldn’t require any D sharps above middle C, but refused to budge on her vision of herself as a torch singer. She saw herself as a chanteuse whose wily charms and good looks were inexcusably absent People and Hollywood Tonight. On her second, or fourth, drink of any given night she would exclaim with certainty that a reality show, or two, were in her future and she was sure to be America’s next idol. On the night of the show, Mary stood offstage and to the right, hidden behind the curtain. As Mary waited her debut, she watched Slick lambast the pregnant stripper with the broken leg who precede
d her.

  “For Christ’s sake, you need to bounce them Sister. Nobody’s getting hard watching your preggers pirate routine with those saggy ass water balloons.” Slick pressed his hands against the sides of his head. “What the hell? Are those kick ball nipples? Who hires a stripper with kick ball nipples?” he yelled in abject consternation at the disinterested barkeep, who shrugged as he wiped the bar top with a musty dish rag.

  To placate Slick, the stripper began to ‘dance’. Her broken foot fixed her to the stage as she moved in slow counterclockwise circles to a heavy metal ballad. She looked like an ox tethered to a pole grinding grain, her pregnant teen body bloated and saggy. Mascara ran as she tried, unsuccessfully, to hold back the tears.

  Realizing how desperate the situation was, Slick shouted at the stripper to watch how it was done. He pinched his nipples and tugged them up and down. His lesson was to no avail. The oxen like stripper continued to circle.

  The situation grew sadder. “Oh, for God’s sake you’re killing the liquor sales.” Slick watched an old man at the bar wave off a refill, declaring the show so depressing he’d rather go home and watch Nancy Grace. Several other patrons left with him. They all shielded their eyes, as they stepped from the bar’s dark cocoon into the bright sunlight.

  Slumping from the stage at song’s end, each hand covering a breast, the teen stripper hobbled past Mary whom she assumed was the next stripper and her likely replacement. “Good luck mama, it’s a joy working for Slick. Living the dream is what I’m doing.”

  Mary was thrilled to have been preceded by this tiresome troll, and stepped onto the stage in a silk blue evening gown, freshly lit cigarette in hand. The house band sat far to the right, partially obscured by the red velvet curtain she’d harassed Slick into providing. On stage, the microphone stood lit by a sole spotlight. The club was pretty sure she was a stripper given the last act and cheered heartily. “Show us your titties,” echoed off the walls.

  The ring leader of the hecklers was a ponytailed, forty something biker whose sleeveless jean jacket, worn over a flannel shirt, was covered in motorcycle club patches. His pockmarked face sat veiled beneath a long, unkempt beard, and, on his head, he wore a sun tired, faded red bandana. With his eyes hidden behind cheap sunglasses, he pointed at the object of his desire. “Lemme see them titties! Lemme see them titties!”

  Mary stared at him long and hard, and expressed no emotion as she took a hearty drag on her cigarette. The embers burned at over fourteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. With no thought given to the consequences of her actions, Mary expertly flicked the cigarette at him. A quick, violent motion in which the lit end brightened with the rush of oxygen before it struck its target. Off the forehead of the ringleader an audible, “thunk,” rang out, and glowing embers showered him. On his clothes, which were soaked in flammable solvents from his work release mechanic’s job, a dozen small fires instantly sprang up.

  “Oh my God! Help me! Help me!” He cried like a little girl, thinking his immolation eminent as he frantically swatted himself.

  To save him from the blossoming fire the barmaid dosed him with a pitcher of beer. Disgusted by his spinelessness, she shouted in his face, “Man the fuck up!”

  Bitter and defeated he sat down, and mumbled about revenge while he stared coldly at Mary.

  Mary’s victory wouldn’t last. Her performance broke bad before the first verse ended, and her career as a torch singer slammed to a halt with her misguided attempt to sing AC/DC’s, You Shook Me All Night Long, in the style of Ethel Merman; staccato, theatrical, and with a New Yorker’s nasal accent. With the right light, and angle, you could still see the letters, ‘udweis,’ where she’d been struck in the head by a quart bottle of the king of beers on her debut.

  As Mary lay unconscious, and sprawled on the stage, Slick braved an onslaught of half empty bottles and dragged her to safety. It was Slick’s interest in self preservation that forced him to save her. Slick had already betrayed Daddy once. The second time might have him swimming with cement shoes in the sanitary canal that was touted as the Chicago River.

  Waking in the backroom of Slick’s, with a pounding headache and a creepy roadie from the house band feeling her up, Mary swore vengeance. Her immediate plan was to become a Chicago cop wherein she would be gifted with a pistol and Billy club, the perfect tools with which to exact her revenge.

  More pissed than she was twelve hours earlier, Mary showed up the next morning at the police station unannounced and demanded to know if they were hiring. Fortune smiled upon her, and she was asked to fill out a simple questionnaire. More luck, if she had a minute they’d have somebody talk to her and get the process underway.

  As she walked around the main counter on her way to the interview, with all eyes upon her, Mary thought her career as a cop promising. She liked standing out as the best looking person in the room. Given enough time she reasoned she could run this place in the style of Charlie’s Angels. She immediately saw herself commanding a force of Victoria Secret’s underwear models; a purse for every cop and a gun for every purse, as they drove the ugly from Chicago.

  In the interview room, a bald moderately overweight white man in his fifties, dressed in a cop uniform over which he wore a black leather cop jacket, and a thirty-something black women similarly dressed, albeit absent the leather jacket, sat behind a small conference table. The officers removed their Billy clubs, and set the clubs on the table to make it easier to sit. They offered Mary a seat, and readied their questionnaires.

  Before either cop could begin Mary spoke, “You get the Billy club when you become a cop, right?”

  Befuddled, the cops nodded in affirmation and glanced at each other. It was clear they had a wacko on their hands.

  Looking at the club, Mary realized this might be the most aroused she’d ever been. Her heightened state had nothing to do with the phallic nature of the club since Mary was asexual by nature. It was the promise of using the tool as an instrument of violence that moved her so. Mary went on excitedly, “I mean, you got to be careful not to confuse the violating end with the handle, but for fuck’s sake you could beat the fucking ugly out of somebody with this. Service to mankind is what I’m talking about.”

  Before the cops could secure the clubs and return them to their holsters, Mary picked one up and spanked it quietly into her open palm. “Fucking A, you could violate the shit of the perp with this thing. What is it twenty four inches? That’d make you talk.” Mary jerked the club violently back and forth while she stared into the distance and spilled corrosive, masochistic sentences into the air.

  The cops looked at each other, and the male cop stood and slowly reached out and grabbed the club. Exiting the trance, Mary was temporarily confused on her whereabouts. The female cop extended her hand and thanked Mary for coming. She winced as the bones in her hand made an audible pop under the crushing force of Mary’s handshake. Hoping to move Mary along, the male cop skipped the handshake and nodded enthusiastically.

  Mary returned thanks, one more question on her mind, “They sell those in the gift shop?” She pointed at the Billy club.

  The lady cop sighed in resignation, “Honey this is the police department. They used to sell them behind the front desk, but that was when Burge ran the show. He’s in the pokey now, though.” Burge was a Chicago commander convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. The convicted felon is also alleged to have tortured hundreds of criminal suspects.

  “Burge. Oh, I’ve met Burge. I know him quite well.” Mary exaggerated having seen Burge once with her father. Mary was a firm believer in the transitive properties of celebrity, and saw fame as a commutable resource in which knowing a celebrity entitled you to share in their fame. Rarely a day passed Mary didn’t loudly mention her association with a famous politician or celebrity.

  After Mary left the male cop opened a, “file in waiting,” titled Mary SMITH. He wanted credit for seeing this one comin
g. The lady cop rubbed her hand and tried to make the hurt go away while she watched him fill out the paperwork.

  At about the time the unruly patrons were hurling half empty quart bottles of beer at his daughter, and screaming for her to take her shirt off, Daddy was being served with a federal subpoena. Daddy’s long list of those with whom he bartered late night zoning changes for political contributions proved to be an unfortunate paper trail. The quid pro quo documentation and Mommy’s agreement to testify against him proved to be his undoing.

  In the criminal world you want to face State charges. States have a parole system within which you rarely serve even half your time. The Feds aren’t keen on early release. Daddy’s speedy trial ended with him sentenced to eleven years in a Fed pen for racketeering, where he’d join like pillars of the community Ryan and Blagojevich. As the inevitable became obvious, Daddy called in his second favor in as many weeks.

  Alan, G.O.D.’s CFO, owed Daddy big time. Year’s before Alan had approached Daddy for a zoning variance to install an in-ground swimming pool at his spacious Lakeview neighborhood home. Daddy’s war chest was spilling cash and Daddy had just finished watching The Godfather. The result was the understanding that Alan owed Daddy a favor that some time in the future Daddy might, or might not, call in. Alan didn’t give a damn about being in Daddy’s pocket. Alan liked swimming since regardless of how tall you were only your head floated above water. Alan routinely held pool parties in which the guests arrived to find him in the pool for the entire party. Alan was world class at treading water, and the activity suited his duck-like personality – floating calmly, while kicking like a maniac. With the feds knocking on the door, Daddy called Alan and made it clear that Mary needed a job that paid very well. Daddy also let Alan know that, at this point in his political career, he wouldn’t hesitate to spill the beans. By the end of the call Mary was VP of Sales.

  This turn of events did not thrill Mary, but with her singer career and cop aspirations gone to hell, Daddy in the pen, Mommy missing with some young barista, and the family home repossessed, it seemed the only option. Mary had never worked in a corporate environment. In fact, other than infrequent babysitting and her recent disastrous stunt as a singer Mary had never been employed. Mary reluctantly took the job and decided it was time to find a husband. She wasn’t keen on intimacy, but, damn it, someone needed to pay the bills.

  Mary knew she didn’t have time to waste chasing losers in bars looking for Mr. Right. She went to the bar to get good and drunk, not flirt or dance with frat boys. The other problem Mary faced, chasing her soul mate via the club scene, was her persona non grata status at a half dozen of the choicest bars off Clark Street. She was known as an instigator and had a reputation for starting bar fights. History had established her proclivity for sucker punching unsuspecting bystanders that crowded her personal space and kneeing poor bastards in the balls that leaned in to ask her to dance. Daddy had sent his car numerous times to pick her up at the bar’s service door, typically in the alley, to keep her from being arrested. It was an old school tactic that still worked to keep her out of jail.

  To find Mr. Right, Mary figured she’d rely on a tried and true method – the dating service Daddy used. Christ, until his recent incarceration he was scoring like a pinball machine. Mary met with the service, filled out the forms, and made it clear from the get go that looks were paramount followed closely by personal wealth. She had principles, and there wasn’t a chance she was to be seen with anyone who wasn’t pleasing on the eyes. She made it clear, she was no friend of ugly. She didn’t trouble herself with specifics on his personality, including whether he had a personality, and was almost one hundred percent that they wouldn’t be sleeping together. The woman at the agency leaned back in her chair, took a drink from her Mountain Dew, and heard Mary out. Then, in a thick Russian accent, as she tipped the ash from her cigarette onto the floor, she proclaimed, “I avv exactly vot you need. Its vot vee all need.”

  Philbert was as queer as a three dollar bill but built like a gymnast. That is if gymnasts were six feet four. A part-time Calvin Klein underwear model, his inheritance rested on him getting married. His parents had issued an ultimatum a year ago, and he was down to the last seventy hours before the seven million dollars he was scheduled to inherit upon his parent’s death was gifted to a right wing Christian association whose mission statement included, “the eradication of the abomination that is gay love,” and redefinition of the words santorum and palin. Santorum being the slang used to describe the fecal foam that forms on the penis, and around the rectum’s rim, during vigorous, unprotected anal sex. Palin being the populaces’ name for the bolt gun used to euthanize cattle.

  Mary and Philbert met later that afternoon and surprisingly Mary figured this could work. She had a background check run on him, drove him to the clinic for testing (blood and urine), and then took him to the gym for a body fat analysis. On retainer, Mary kept the names of a group of University of Chicago graduate students that had developed optical recognition software that quantified facial symmetry. Seven million dollars was enough money to skew the mind’s eye, and Mary wanted to make certain she wasn’t misreading the situation and marrying someone who’d later prove grotesque in certain lighting. She wished she had more time to assess the health of the parents. Mary could only confirm they were religious zealots in their early 70s that lived an active lifestyle and had yet to experience a traumatic health event.

  Philbert’s lab tests and BMI were acceptable, and his face was nearly symmetric with ratios that rivaled Denzel Washington’s. Even though she was bitterly disappointed in the likely longevity of his parent she decided they would marry at City Hall. Immediately after the civil ceremony, in which they both fumbled to remember each other’s last names, Mary renamed Philbert, Adonus. It wasn’t presented to Philbert as a suggestion or a question. She figured with his black wavy hair and perfect olive complexion she could pass him off as Italian. It would also help explain his effeminate nature and delicate mannerisms.

  After they married, Mary had Adonus pull all the legal documents to make certain she garnered all rights duly owed her as the daughter in law. Unmentioned, but clearly stated in the legal documents that bound Adonus to his parents, was a clause in which the seven million dollars jumped an extra three million if he had a son.

  “What the fuck!” she screamed, as Adonus cowered in the corner, his arms held in front of him defensively, “you withhold this detail? It’s not going to take three million bucks to raise a fucking kid. This is a money making opportunity!”

  Mary stomped away only to circle right back. She leaned over, inches from his face, “And where do I send your parents the invoice for my wedding present?”

  Since was a child, looking at the pages of Life magazine, Mary had associated glamour and fashion with wild cats on leashes. To that end she purchased herself, as her wedding present, an extremely expensive bengal kitten; a domesticated house cat bred for the exotic markings on its coat. It wasn’t an African wild cat but would serve as an entry point, a gateway pet.

  The next day Mary drove to the local IVF clinic to discuss the procedure with which she would be inseminated by Adonus. In the back of the car, intently flipping through the stack of gay porno magazines he kept hidden in an old suitcase, sat Adonus. Two weeks later to the day Mary confirmed she was pregnant, and nine months later Romulus was born.

  Physically perfect, as if Michelangelo had drawn a precious angel from heaven, the child, Romulus, was inhabited with a wildness in which the simplest impulses could not be controlled and the word, ‘containment,’ became a central theme in his upbringing. As a mother, Mary became a ready conscript of the, better parenting through alcohol movement, and often kept Romulus tethered on a leash as she walked down Wells Street in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago; gin and tonic splashing from her red Solo cup; a lit Benson and Hedges pinched between her painted lips; and, tall heels wob
bling unpredictably on the sidewalk. Adonus trailed behind, batting cleanup, and issuing the required apologies.

  At the time of Alan’s jump, Mary was forty four years old, stood a little over five and a half feet tall, and kept her suicide blonde hair asymmetrically bobbed. Profane and vain, she is known for her meticulous dress, crushing handshake and venomous tongue. In keeping with her parent’s mores, she routinely had enough Botox to paralyze a small village injected into her face, and kept a set of hand grippers in the glove box of her sporty European sedan.

  Mary’s absence of moral compass, insatiable appetite for wealth, and sense of entitlement present a formidable challenge to Cuddy’s claim on the throne. Mary sees herself the star in a world built on aesthetics and needs control of G.O.D. to make her dream a reality.