Rubber Babes E-Book

Gerald Everett Jones

• Herausgeber: LaPuerta Books and Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 347

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Marriage, corruption, and rubber babes — Rollo Hemphill’s life just went from awkward to illegal.
Rollo Hemphill thought he’d won the jackpot — married to the woman of his dreams and newly minted director of a suspiciously generous charity. But bliss turns to blunder when his assistant proves both too beautiful and too helpful, and his “philanthropic” work at the Keppelhoffer Foundation turns out to be a front for a baffling international scam involving erectile dysfunction, Big Pharma, and dirty politics.
As Rollo fumbles through marital meltdowns and seductive office encounters, he also begins to uncover a dark corporate secret that could land him in prison — or worse, in therapy. His growing paranoia is justified, especially when he realizes he's the fall guy for a billion-euro money-laundering scheme disguised as medical research.
With his signature blend of clueless charm and accidental brilliance, Rollo stumbles, gropes, and hacks his way through a mess of sex, lies, and scandal. Rubber Babes is a biting comic romp through the absurdities of modern masculinity, marriage, and nonprofit corruption. Fans of Woody Allen, Nick Hornby, or Larry David will laugh, cringe, and maybe even cheer as Rollo tries to stay out of jail and in someone’s good graces.
In the end, it’s not about whether Rollo will win. It’s about how he will cope with continuing to fail ever upward!
This is the hilarious sequel to My Inflatable Friend and the warm-up to the disastrous Farnsworth's Revenge.

“Gerald Jones takes puerile to new levels. Just when you thought Rollo was deepening into a rich and thoughtful character, he reminds us exactly what he's made of. "Rubber Babes" is a clever, hysterical, and fun romp which you can read fast, and enjoy secretly. Just don't tell your feminist friends.”
-- Magdalena Ball, The Compulsive Reader http://www.compulsivereader.com
“Rollicking Rollo is back in action! He's a walking, talking warning about the pitfalls of being a genius. As you follow his merry way into and out of absurdity, you will find yourself looking in a mirror. Learn from Rollo--the only fun teacher of life lessons you will ever meet.”
-- Thomas Page, author of The Hephaestus Plague
“This is a very funny book by a skilled and confident author. The further adventures of Rollo Hemphill are a welcome respite from the real world but one definitely gets the impression that Jones is making a lot of it up.” -- Morrie Ruvinsky, novelist/screenwriter/film director
“Woody Allen meets Nick Hornby in this hilarious beach read. Gerald Everett Jones, who is every bit as clever as Larry David (and has more hair!), has created a witty, literate George Costanza for us to savor. NBC, are you paying attention?” -- Paula Berinstein, producer and host of The Writing Show podcast, http://www.writingshow.com

Leseprobe

Rubber Babes

FURTHER MISADVENTURES OF ROLLO HEMPHILL

GERALD EVERETT JONES

Copyright © 2008 by Gerald Everett Jones

Excerpts: Preface © 2022, Boychik Lit © 2013, Farnsworth’s Revenge © 2014

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

LaPuerta Books and Media 

Email: [email protected] 

Fan blog: geraldeverettjones.com 

The characters and events of this story are fictitious; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

TRADEMARKS: The author has attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by following the capitalization style used by the trademark owner. Any product trademarks, service marks, and registered trademarks appearing herein are the properties of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged. 

EPUB ISBN: 978-0-9794866-6-1

LaPuerta softcover print edition ISBN: 978-0-9794866-4-7 

Editors: Michelle Moore, Jason Letts

Cover design by Blinky 100covers.com

LaPuerta is an imprint of La Puerta Productions https://lapuerta.tv, Santa Monica, California, USA

To Dick Creyke

Contents

Preface

1. In the Valley of the Happy People

2. Keppelhoffer’s Diagnosis

3. Zitts

4. Felicia’s Other Life

5. Insert A for Arlen

6. The Shadow Knows

7. Rubber Babes of Yesteryear

8. Divorce, Italian Style

9. Inspiration Point

10. Private Communications

11. Field Work at Essanem

12. Sucked In

13. Payoffs

14. Stepping Once More into the Ganges

15. Detergent for Dirty Deeds

16. Art Appreciation

17. The Horndog Gets Roasted

18. Hot Breath on My Neck

19. Crusty

20. Felicia Goes Down, and So Does Rocky

21. Zitts Holds Forth

22. Home Is Where the Hard-On Is

23. Goof Lesson

24. Pugsley Cracks Wise

25. Accounting to Vivi

26. Perceptions of Reality

27. Hectored

28. Insert B (by A. Pugsley)

29. Sue Hsu, a So-So Babe

30. The Tangled Skein Begins to Unravel

31. Der Zauberberg

32. Arlen Weighs In (Again)

Now Read the Sequel - Farnsworth’s Revenge

Boychik Lit

About the Author

Also by Gerald Everett Jones

You may also want to read…

Preface

When the notion of reissuing Rollo Hemphill’s misadventures floated past in my stream of consciousness, my next thought was, Hey, those stories are evergreen — why not?  But more practical considerations of the publishing marketplace prevailed, necessitating this explanatory note.

My concern isn’t that the characters won’t be relatable or their follies any less funny in the glare of freshly fired-up high-wattage attention. No, the problem is one of perceived technological obsolescence. The first novel in the series — My Inflatable Friend — was released in 2007. To some of you in the shivering audience for whom first impressions can be cool if not downright cold, that era might not seem so long ago. But to others, the crusty tale might as well have occurred just before the undocumented end of the last Ice Age. (There have been more than one, I’m told. Hence the rush to print again, lest the next big freeze overtake us. Hmm. Some in fire, some in ice. We probably don’t get to pick.)

When the first novel in the series was released, cell phones existed but weren’t yet what you’d call smart. Email was a thing, surely, but social media had not yet turned the world’s great newspapers into ezines for old folks.

Some Luddites still clung to their fax (facsimile) machines, especially those who insisted that electronic signature was an oxymoron.

Some movie crews who were filming were still actually using film. Likewise for shows taping.

Into this latter-day Age of Innocence schlepped poor Rollo, whose challenges getting attention from females, then avoiding journalists and G-men, could no doubt have been helped by the option of sending the occasional exculpatory text message. Emojis wouldn’t have hurt his cause either, and an amusing animation, especially if cloned onto his bodily image as a wisecracking avatar, might have put him right over the top. (Or on the bottom. At the outset, positional advantage was far from his foremost concern.)

Back then, climate change could have been mitigated — or didn’t exist — depending on which talking head you credited. In fact, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it was mostly a worn-out sci-fi theme, hardly a topic of almost unremitting daily conversation. A pandemic was a post-WWI episode, not feared to be repeated because threats such as Ebola and AIDS had presumably been contained. The James Bond movie franchise was still going strong because male guilt, belatedly dredged up by #MeToo, had not yet made it necessary (spoiler alert!) to kill the legendary rapist off.

And — perhaps most significant for the sake of Rollo’s first episode — lifelike robots designed for intimate uses may have been in development but were certainly not yet ready for the likes of Rollo.

Mind you, Rollo’s stories need not be read in sequence. Rubber Babes exists in its own quirky paranoid reality, and Farnsworth’s Revenge is no less sweet when not saved for last, but the through-line of Rollo’s lurching character development does flow in a bobbing chronology through these books. Wise readers will know better than to regard him as a role model. Rollo’s problem — if you insist on calling it that — is paradoxical: No matter what scheme he tries or how it fails — he persists in falling ever-upward.

I could wonder, though, whether male-centered comic humor can be written anymore. Men seem more pathetic than funny now, as do some who oddly claim to be both white and marginalized. Satire might still be a useful term, but nowadays its connotations tend to be political. Rollo does get enmeshed in complications on an international scale — but he has no agenda other than self-preservation.

My original inspiration for these novels was my admiration for the novelist and poet Peter De Vries. In the mid-twentieth century, his male-centered comic novels ridiculed religion and extramarital sex — often in the same book. However, the whiff of controversy, so delicious in his day, has not aged well, and some would say positively reeks. In Forever Panting (my favorite), an out-of-work actor divorces his wife and marries his mother-in-law, continuing to lust after his ex. In Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, a female high-school teacher carries on an affair with her tender-aged male student.

Such themes are not exactly fodder for popular humor these days.

Lest you think I’m preoccupied with peters, I’ll confess that the works of Peter Lefcourt also influenced me. The Woody is brilliant, and by virtue of its inside-the-Beltway setting, it qualifies as legitimately political satire. (Alas, whether Lefcourt was satirizing Gary Hart or Bill Clinton or both is a question not likely to be explored by any contemporary book club.) And he wrote Eleven Karens when it was still possible to bestow the name on a newborn girl.

As well, when I began to stir the pot of silliness on my own, the publishing business had finally been taken over by women — along with the belated recognition that, for decades if not since Gutenberg, the most avid readers have been women. The genre chick-lit had come full flower. Appreciating the polar opposites such as De Vries and Lefcourt, I coined the term boychik lit as a lodestar for sinking ships helmed by ill-fated peters.

So, by way of further explanation — as if any more of my rants were needed to cheer you on to root for Rollo — I append my essay “Boychik Lit” at the end of this volume.

Thank you for the use of the genre. If Rollo’s exploits bring a smile, you needn’t tell anyone.

Gerald Everett Jones

Santa Monica - June 2022

Chapter1

In the Valley of the Happy People

The happily ever after lasted about three weeks. If we’d had a honeymoon — I mean, if we’d gone somewhere on a real vacation — perhaps we could have extended our bliss by a finite number of expensive but mindless days. Instead, we bought a house in Simi Valley and went right back to work, practical romantics so in love no thrill of travel to exotic locales could conceivably add to the joy of our everyday experience of each other.

We started down the slippery slope of mistrust and discord on a Tuesday morning. It must have been about 7 a.m. Our mistake? The topic of our breakfast-table discussion shifted. Prior to that portentous moment, the content of our exchanges had been almost entirely and intensely personal. She would express a reason for delight, I would affirm it aroused the same in me, warmth would flood our forebrains, and, more often than not, our more sensitive body parts would swell — any excuse to hump as if every day was Wednesday. Or, she would express a cause for discomfort, however mundane or minor, and I would scurry to alleviate it: Fetch the aspirin, scratch the itch, linger with the foreplay, order dessert with two forks. I could do no wrong!

But this fateful morning we departed from that regime.

We talked about the weather.

“Think it will rain today?” she asked, setting down her favorite teddy-bear mug, meticulously prepared by me with Mocha Java knowing her digestive tract would absorb the caffeine, increase her heart rate, stir her circulation, and bring a sexy pink flush to her extremities. (The edge of a rosy nipple peeked out from the terrycloth of her bathrobe, confirming the Java effect and making me want to take her back to bed, of course.)

“It never rains this time of year in Southern California. You know that.” I thought my tone was manly, congenial, helpful.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she said dismissively, apparently deciding to ignore the counsel of the morning paper as she laid it aside. “I thought there was something just as the radio came on this morning. I was still in a sleepy fuzz, didn’t catch it.”

“No doubt another instance of the media manufacturing news to boost ratings,” I surmised sagely. “Any amount of rain would be a big story in this drought.”

The downpour started at 2 that afternoon. No innocent drizzle this, pleasant as a surprise shower in a leafy glade in New England. It was one of those continuous Raymond Chandler Big Sleep drooling rains, a Los-Angeles-class monsoon that soaks the thirsty desert for days at a time, washing countless thousands of Starbucks cups down the storm drains and out to sea, and reminding the residents they live in the city that invented Mickey Mouse and film noir in the same era with scarcely a clue as to the irony of their historic coincidence.

When she stumbled in the door that evening, she was drenched—about as attractive as your proverbial drowned rat and with the disposition of a rabid rodent to match.

“You’re so fucking sure of everything!” she spat out, as she shucked off her wet clothes in the laundry room.

“What did I do?” I asked dumbly, my shields down, not realizing a call to battle stations would have been the wiser posture.

“You said it wouldn’t rain” was her truthful statement of the obvious.

“Obviously, I was wrong,” I admitted generously, naively assuming that pleading nolo would get me off without a trial.

“You were so sure of yourself” was apparently the nature of my crime.

“Okay, I was wrong. Do you have to do everything I say?”

“Not after this, you can bet,” she vowed, now provocatively naked as she peeled off her damp undies, a gesture that did nothing to help me maintain the attention span I needed to stay on message.

“I’m sorry it rained. I’m sorry you got soaked. But it wasn’t my fault.”

“You know, just once, if you know there’s a chance you’re wrong, why don’t you say something like, ‘You know, I’m not sure, but there’s a remote possibility it might rain. Maybe you should take an umbrella. I worry you’ll get wet.’”

“Anyone will tell you, if you want to be a leader, you should always make all your points in a firm —”

Land mine!

“You’re not my leader!”

A long, icy silence ensued as she donned her luxurious, fabric-softened robe for the second time that day, tugging it closed at the neck to snuggle in its warmth or perhaps to make damned sure no part of her luscious flesh could protrude to inspire my lust.

Was I looking for disappointment? Sure. More precisely, I’d been on the lookout for it since that day we took the vows. Nothing in my life had ever gone according to plan or worked out as advertised or exceeded my wildest expectations. So, not so long ago (as loveless mortals reckon time) when Felicia had smiled sweetly and finally accepted my second modest proposal of marriage, part of me was suspicious right away. Yes, this was something I’d planned (indeed, plotted for, as you might well know). And wasn’t it the juiciest end to be desired — didn’t all the glossy magazines advertise it to be the thrill of a lifetime? Certainly, if that promise had proved even partly true, our marriage would have far exceeded my wildest expectations.

In short, when we wed, my head was spinning with the thought I’d be slipping it to this delicious creature every chance we got, my righteous ardor inducing only squeals of joy. But deep down, where fear alone could penetrate, I was sure I’d be the one to get the shaft in the end.

Satan is an old bugger, they say. But no educated person, least of all Rollo Hemphill, gives the beast any credit these days. Evil, we postmoderns suspect, is simply the absence of God, who like a kindly but demented parent goes missing often enough but can’t be blamed for creating the toxins that ooze into the abandoned void. But the way things play out, the way events on this human plane unfold and entangle, you gotta believe either God has a fiendish sense of humor or, as Plato and a few other crustaceous dudes believed, He’s got an adversary who is more than worthy, subject to certain POM-dependent variables. (Sorry for the jargon. Phase-of-the-Moon-dependent variables are factors we code cowboys invoke when we’ve run out of all rational causes for software failure.)

So I don’t believe in Old Nick for a minute.

I just wish he’d leave me the hell alone.

Why, indeed, does strife exist in the world? If we know what happiness is, and certainly if we’re lucky enough to find some of it, why can’t we embrace it, hang out there, hit that note, and play a long, languorous sostenuto until the Big Coda?

Maybe it’s just that God likes a good story. As my crusty English teacher used to grumble, “Drama is conflict, you knuckleheads! No one wants to read The Village of the Happy People.”

So don’t worry. That ain’t what we got goin’ here.

Chapter2

Keppelhoffer’s Diagnosis

I did not pick my assistant, nor did she pick me. When I made the national news by being hired at age twenty-three as the youngest director of a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation, she came with the package. My landing the job was easier than you might think, and Felicia and I were able to buy the house in Simi largely on the strength of my new employment contract. My career as a radio deejay had flamed out, but I’d gained name recognition among potential donors in showbiz. Then, too, megastar Monica LaMonica owed me a big favor, and she had more than a little pull with the do-gooder organization.

Before I accepted the job, I was cautioned by the executive recruiter that the previous director’s assistant would have to be retained. No reason was given. Her name was Valerie Valhalla. “Call me Vivi,” she had said tersely on my first day, seven months ago. “Not Val. And no jokes — not Val–Val and nothing about Teutonic gods or pneumatics.” (If she had only known how much trouble pneumatics had gotten me into in a former life!)

So I called her Vivi, faithfully. And then, unfaithfully.

My predecessor, one Sidney D. Engelbreit, an emeritus professor of humanities with an impressive string of letters after his name, had passed away quite unexpectedly at fifty-six. Before I had met Vivi and could only imagine her from a job description, I pictured her as a library-science type, both prudish and prunish, highly efficient, dedicated to her work life (and to him, probably), and having an attitude so sour as to make her virtually unemployable elsewhere. Nasty, knowledgeable, and fiercely loyal. Why else would it be mandatory to keep her on?

So when I actually laid eyes on darling Vivi — my vision — not only were my preconceived notions dispelled at a glance, but also I immediately surmised the reason for poor Sid’s demise: I bet the putz expired while trying in vain to satisfy her physical appetites.

Her sinewy legs looked to be as long as some women are tall. And on a shorter woman, her ample breasts and buttocks would make the person appear unattractively chunky. But hung on a frame of her stature, the result was Wonder Woman. More ego-piercing than a speeding bullet. Able to leap onto tall erections in a single bound.

In the base language used by males and then only in the restricted safety of the locker room, Vivi’s legs went all the way up to her ass. Now, if you know the expression, you know it’s enough said. Those gams were remarkable and shapely, inviting the beholder to imagine rapturous entwinement, as the subtle, sinewy python embraces the ardent, blissfully heedless missionary.

And crushes him to death!

But all legs go from the cracks in the floor to the crack in the peach, and therein lies the difference that defies description. Her legs did indeed stretch all the way up there, to that sweet summit proudly shoved back at the slightest provocative angle, the main reason God took centuries of intelligent design to create the high-heeled shoe.

As she bent over the coffee machine that morning after my fateful tiff with Felicia, I calculated vivacious Vivi was approximately a foot taller than me. Which meant any face-time with her would put my nose in her cleavage, my mouth at the level of her nipples. Polite conversation would be awkward, I realized, unless we were both seated. But in view of the marital discord that had resulted from my recent inept attempts to make small talk with Felicia, any impediment to conversation with a woman seemed, at that moment, to be a big plus.

I can’t speak. I have nothing to say but oh so much to express! Just let me grab and squeeze, and we’ll see what comes up.

She made me want to be dominated. I suppose I was looking for some sadistic maternal attention, considering the coolness and distance of my relationship with my own mother. Even as I toyed with thoughts of groping VV as she towered over me, I had no intention of being unfaithful to Felicia. I was simply refusing to be in unrealistic denial of my spontaneous urges.

This is healthy. This is normal. It’s what males do.

But, as that astute observer of human nature Hannibal Lecter said to the quivering Clarice Starling, we begin to covet what we see every day, especially if we think we can’t have it.

Vivi was bright, she was efficient, and—to her great credit—she was no temptress. Her work attitude was consistently positive, and I figured she’d be eminently employable anywhere. So I was back to being mystified about why she had to stay. Granted, the Keppelhoffer Foundation paid her handsomely, and it was clear she’d always been given full responsibility to perform her functions any way she saw fit. But most days the place was a crashing bore. There were just the two of us, the phones, her computer, the high-volume copier, and the fax machine. (Back then, it was hands off computers for me, for reasons that will become clear.) The office was light and airy, decorated French Empire to convey conservatism and wealth. In short, the office was about as quiet, unexciting, and faux-classy as a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon’s waiting room. Vivi and I waited for the money to come in via mail, courier, or electronic deposit, then we waited some more while our board of directors decided how to spend it. As administrators, we kept almost none of it—just enough to pay our salaries, which were more than generous for what we did, and expenses like rent and the occasional unneeded cleaning of the Persian carpets and the watered-silk drapes.

My job was to solicit donations — big ones, starting in the six figures. It didn’t take me long to realize this is exactly the right profession for a recently faded celebrity. I would soak up all the gossip on who is still hot, who is making deals, who might be looking for a fat write-off with a vanity boost. I wouldn’t need academic qualifications to make solicitation phone calls, just the same nerve and lack of taste that had made me such a success behaving like an idiot on the radio.

I could ask for a million bucks with a straight face, and I had no problem with that. The fact that I understood nothing at all about the nature of this disease mattered not at all. (In fact, I got the distinct impression no one wanted to discuss it.)

And it didn’t hurt that Monica LaMonica, once the most famous pair of tits in Hollywood, had put me up for the job right before her own sudden, but not unplanned, demise. I was one of a very few people on the planet who knew it was only a highly realistic rubber replica of her that lay in quiet repose under the ground at Forest Lawn — and that a reconstituted Louise Jones had retired happily to a triple-wide mobile home in rural Tennessee with her not-so-secret lover, a failed politician who now goes by the name of Thelma. (The homage implicit in their new first names was apt enough, except I hoped they had no plans to go over a cliff together.)

So I had something on Monica. And because I had come out of my hacker’s retirement long enough to craft a new digital identity for her, she had more than sufficient reason to see I was rewarded. Back when her Nielsens were as huge as her boobs on The Edge of Endlessness, she’d probably been the biggest single contributor to the crusade to cure Keppelhoffer’s. She’d exercised her pull to get me a good job after our pretend relationship was over, and, as I’d done with her many times, I happily let myself be pulled and went along for the ride.

And the fact I’d been expelled from Exeter didn’t seem to matter much in my current job situation. (My criminal record was sealed because I was seventeen when I got into serious trouble for saving Audrey’s sweet ass from the credit-card companies.)

For a time, I’d been a celebrity with a following, and apparently those credentials were all the foundation’s anonymous selection committee cared about. I didn’t have to understand the intricacies of nonprofit corporations. We had more than enough handsome attorneys and accountants on handsomer retainers. And I didn’t even need any special knowledge of medical research. Our board of directors included deans of medical science, who sat cheek-by-jowl with captains of the biotech industry. Because there were so many prestigious names on our letterhead, the list had to be set in five-point type just to fit on the page. (An outside firm had built us a website showing this list of hotshots, a mission statement, and not much more — not even a description of the syndrome we were supposedly out to conquer.)

No, all they required of me was to rake in the bucks. Vivi accounted for the revenue, and then she disbursed it to whatever research hospital or 501(c)(3) our board judged to be most deserving at the time. (Mind you, I was never involved in these decisions, but I had no doubt experienced hands were steering the ship.)

Taking the long view, I continued to fall upward, careerwise — from hacker to car jockey to phony gigolo to deejay to big-charity pimp. The Peter Principle, a management theory hatched when I was in diapers, holds that a manager gets promoted until he reaches one rung on the corporate ladder above his level of competence. I’d always assumed the eponymous peter referred to the male member and the principle applied mainly to aspiring princes of commerce. Historically, women had fucked their way to the top. These days they’re still fuckers, often having to show they’re meaner than any man to get ahead. All things being equal, which obviously they’re not, talented women have to follow a parallel but separate path — only to be abruptly stopped in their ascent by the Glass Ceiling, which is typically installed one rung lower than the level to which the female candidate might reasonably aspire, given her experience, level of education, and zeal for demonstrably self-sacrificing overwork and/or sucking middle-aged cock.

Is that why Vivi has no inclination to sell her talents elsewhere? I wondered.

Indeed, my healthy curiosity often got me into some decidedly unhealthy situations. For example, I suppose it would have been natural to ask the selection committee:

What is Keppelhoffer’s Syndrome? And why should we care?

However, I hadn’t, assuming I would not understand an answer containing multisyllabic biochemical and pharmacological jargon, including some terms invented only last week by researchers working on the edge of whatever it was that was bleeding.

But the question bothered me like a pebble in a hiking boot, and one day while Vivi was slaving over a hot copier, I came up behind her.

“Do you mind if I ask a question?”

“Personal or professional?” she said without looking up.

“Oh, professional — technical, even.”

“I live to serve, you know that,” she said as she flashed a thousand-watt smile in my direction.

I paused for some necessary throat clearing, then blurted out: “Just what is Keppelhoffer’s anyway?”

Her calm expression remained unchanged. “It has something to do with the penis,” she said. I waited for more, but that was the end of it.

“Some form of ED?”

She shrugged, innocent as a schoolgirl, it seemed to me.

“You’re not curious?” I asked.

“Why should I be?” she said simply.

In my tormented mind now swirled a shitstorm of worrisome complications.

What exactly is it about the penis? What have I gotten myself into? And why don’t you care? Do you fear for your job? Who could possibly mind if you asked? Or don’t you like penises? (That might explain her imperturbable air of aloofness.)

“All I know is the drug companies are very interested,” she said quietly, and she spun on her heel and walked briskly back to her desk with her sheaf of copies.

I suddenly felt like the new kid at school, standing wet and naked and without a trace of pubic hair in the middle of the locker room, with no one caring to point out where they keep the towels.

Quite coincidentally, that evening over a plate of spaghetti Alfredo, Felicia asked, “What is Keppelhoffer’s anyway?”

“It’s technical” was all I could think to say and took a huge gulp of Pinot Grigio.

I would have to find out. I’d had plenty of practice looking (and acting) like an idiot, but I didn’t want to blow this classy gig just because I didn’t know why millions (maybe billions) of dollars were desperately needed to fix a few unlucky dicks.

And besides, there had to be some reason Vivi was so dedicated to her work, especially since she apparently had no clue as to its ultimate purpose.

Or perhaps she was playing me for a fool.

Nah.

Chapter3

Zitts

I might not have ever gotten to the bottom of Keppelhoffer’s (or gotten into any of the trouble that later befell me) if I had not been paid a visit at the office one bright morning by what the shopworn editors of Reader’s Digest would call “My Most Unforgettable Character.”

“Zitts is here to see you,” Vivi said, waltzing in and out of my private office.

Close behind her was a tall, pizza-faced man with close-cropped black hair in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie. He was probably not a day over forty, but he walked with the slight stoop of a much older man, and he had a discernable limp.

As I rose from my chair to greet him, he thrust out his hand enthusiastically. “Doctor Dieter Zittpopper,” he said with what I thought was a thick German accent but which could have been Austrian, Dutch, or Swiss.

“Vivi seems to know you,” I said, gesturing for him to sit. She’d already bestowed on him a steaming cup of her syrupy Nigerian dark roast, which, of course, he took black to match his clothes.

“Ah, we are old buddies,” he said as he made himself comfortable (not for the first time in this office, I guessed from his relaxed manner). “She teases me, and I love it.” He added a wink to convey he knew I didn’t mind her teasing me either.

Right away, I assumed he was a medical man — sucking for bucks, no doubt.

I should learn not to assume.

“Looking for grant money?” I asked.

He took a moment, set his cup down on my desk, and pulled an earlobe pensively.

My God, he’s an ugly man.

But his smile had charm, and his eyes sparkled as though he was about to tell you the best dirty joke you ever heard.

“Do you know the story of Martin Luther?” he asked slyly.

“Luther as in Lutheran?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Do you know that when he was a young man in the seminary, Luther claimed to have had shit-fights with Satan?”

A chill ran up my spine. I was sure it was a bizarre coincidence, but I had only recently been wondering why the devil, in whom I conferred not a shred of belief, would be picking on me. Now here was this guy playing a modern-day movie version of the same.

“Shit fights?” I asked.

“Yeah. He wasn’t being metaphorical. In the middle of the night in his cell, they were literally throwing shit — we can only assume it was Luther’s shit — at each other as they screamed their disgusting insults.”

“Nasty” was all I could think to say.

Zittpopper chuckled. “Those frat boys, what do they know? Puke and ejaculation. They probably won’t believe Satan exists, much less try to take him on.”

“Young men can be foolish,” I agreed, fearing this fellow could well be a big contributor, albeit some religious nut-job, to be respected and indulged. I was praying his stay would be short.

Why didn’t Vivi brief me? (Where are those friggin’ towels?)

“Those arrogant boys should understand Satan stands behind their pranks, motivates their little swinish urges, and animates the ups and downs of their little pricks like a puppet master jerking them off.”

Whew. “Doctor Zittpopper…”

“My friends call me Zitts. I assure you it’s totally okay,” he beamed.

“What, er, can we do for you?” I glanced at my watch meaningfully.

“Ah, my dear boy, it is what I can do for you,” he replied in all seriousness. Then he smiled again. “I see that vixen Valerie has shared nothing with you. She is having her fun, as is her way.” He cleared his throat importantly, and then added, “I am a paid consultant to your foundation.”

“You’re involved in research, doctor?”

“Not at all. I took my doctorate in theology. I’m chairman of the department at Spaulding Putter University.”

“Known for its academics or its golf?” I asked, hoping he didn’t mind my making a joke of this prestigious-sounding institution I’d never heard of.

“Both, of course,” he said, looking enormously pleased. “Are you a golfer?”

“My father was a player,” I said, not suspecting he would know how true that was. “Can you actually take a degree in golf?”

“Sure. Although we recommend a double-major with religion,” he said with a straight face. “Think about it. To move comfortably in the corridors of power in this country, what skills do you need? You must speak the language of the Neocons — political science and religion — and you must be able to seek them out where they live — in their country club estates!”

“So you move comfortably in those social circles?” I asked.

“I do,” he said humbly.

“So would you say you are an advisor…?”

“Let’s not mince words,” he said, shooting me a stare. “I’m a lobbyist.”

“I’m not aware of any legislation pending regarding Keppelhoffer’s Syndrome,” I said, trying to sound knowledgeable.

“No, not at this time. It would be premature,” he said and laughed, unexplainably. “Of course, influencing the government is not just about getting laws passed. There is agency oversight, industry regulation, funding of programs — so much work for us to do.”

“Do you mean it’s premature because we don’t know much about Keppelhoffer’s yet?” I hoped the question might lead to an explanation, since he seemed to know all about everything we were up to.

“Oh, Keppelhoffer’s is no mystery,” he said and chuckled again.

“I thought there was still a lot of research yet to be done.”

I mean, what’s all that money for?

“Perhaps, but that is not our — your — worry. Big Pharma will have to take care of business. It’s their mess. Let them clean it up.”

“Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, help?”

Zitts sat back and studied me for what seemed a long while. Then he said, “You don’t have the faintest idea what Keppelhoffer’s is, do you?”

“It involves the penis,” I said confidently.

“Of course. What about it?”

I had no answer.

He smiled, as though he was about to explain the facts of life to a tween, which was pretty much the situation.

“The underlying condition of chordee has been well understood for quite a long time — kor duh ee. Erection of the penis downward. Fairly rare. Can be temporary, can be chronic. When chronic, appears in boys, genetic defect, fixed with surgery. Basically, a plumbing problem. Get a vascular guy in there, snip-snip, reroute the blood supply, no worries.”

“And when it happens to an adult…?”

“Ah. Now it gets interesting. You’ve heard about the erection that lasts longer than four hours?”

“Yeah, side effect of some ED drugs. I can’t see why it would be a problem!” Now it was my turn to chuckle, but Zitts went all serious.

“No joke, my dear boy. Blood pressure builds and keeps building down there. You don’t get help, you could hemorrhage. It’s a major plumbing problem, and you need help quick.”

“And that’s Keppelhoffer’s?”

“No, but similar. Keppelhoffer’s, regrettably, is worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“Not chronic chordee. Permanent.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Turns missionaries into pile-drivers, wives and hookers into acrobats. Bloody painful too, or so they say.” Serious as he’d been, he seemed to be amused.

“And the drug companies want to develop a pill to cure it, of course.”

“No, my dear boy,” Zitts said in a low voice. “They want to stop causing it.”

Gulp.

“It’s extremely rare, you understand,” he said. “Only a few hundred cases ever, in millions of doses. But it’s a side effect, sure. Every one of the poor fuckers had taken the same stuff about an hour before onset.”

“And any of the ED drugs can do this?” I demanded, resolving to clean out the medicine cabinet as soon as I got home.

“Not all,” he said, “just…” and he recited several trade names I’d never heard of.

Then, as if to explain but only muddying the issue more, he added, “…and mostly in France.”

Chapter4

Felicia’s Other Life

When I took this job, they said a car would be one of the perks, even before I had a chance to ask. I’d imagined going to the showroom to pick one out, something I’d never done. The make and model had to be high-toned, of course, in keeping with my executive position, and yet progressive, forward-looking — a planet-friendly testimony to the ideals of nonprofit philanthropy. I imagined a hydrogen-powered Beamer sedan or a Lexus hybrid. So I was a bit surprised when a car was delivered to the house. It was the biggest, heaviest, gas-powered Mercedes-Benz made, what the Brits call a “black bedpan.” If the Rolls I’d taken for joyrides when I was a valet at Wuthering Palms had been a banker’s fuckmobile, this sleek high-tech job was a hedge-fund manager’s wet dream.

As I slipped into its buttery calfskin at the end of that very day I’d encountered Zitts, I wondered as I had in the Rolls whether it had a notorious history. For, you see, the reason I didn’t have my choice of automobiles was because this one had been Engelbreit’s and the lease still had a year to go. So, for all I knew, he’d screwed Vivi in the backseat. That thought, combined with the purr of the engine, the feeling of roaring power under tight restraint, and the seductive glow of the panel lights in the twilight got me sexed up on the short but luxurious ride home. I wondered idly whether those crafty Germans mixed pheromones into their manufactured new-car smells, because by the time I’d reached my front door, Rocky was a rock and I was ready to give my bride a randy screwing.

As you can imagine, I was more than a little disappointed to find the house empty and dark. Felicia hadn’t said anything that morning about going out, and she hadn’t called me at the office at all that day, which I hadn’t remarked on at the time but now realized was a bit unusual.

As I flipped on the recessed lighting in our living room, I was struck again by how quickly we’d assembled our little three-thousand-square-foot love nest. It’s amazing what an interior decorator can do when you simply give her a genre like “Chinese modern,” and tell her how much you’re willing to spend per room.

Throwing my briefcase down, which had yet to hold any papers of importance, I gave Felicia a call on her cell. It took her several rings to pick up.

“Where are you?” I asked, hoping my voice had no hint of consternation or panic.

“At my studio,” she said, as if I should have known. I paused dumbly, and she repeated the address on Old Topanga Canyon Road. “Come on over,” she insisted, catching her breath. “I’m going to be awhile.” Then she added, “Todd’s here,” as if his being there had to be noted but was not particularly significant.

I gritted my teeth as I pocketed my phone. I dimly remembered Felicia’s shoving a document under my nose a week ago, explaining something about space she wanted to rent, and I signed. Certainly I should have paid closer attention, but signing documents and checks was a repetitive chore I did all day without much thought. Valerie would place a folder full of them on my desk, and I would flip through and sign, scarcely bothering to notice names, let alone scan the legalese. For example, I’d been signing retainer checks to Zitts with regularity, not having the slightest idea — until today — who he was or what he did for us. In Felicia’s case, she’d wanted a place to paint, although there was ample room in the house. She could have taken over one of our unused bedrooms for the purpose, but she claimed the fumes of thinners and varnishes were too toxic, hazards from which she would spare me and the children (she spoke as if we already had kids, and her assumption startled me). Okay, I should have remembered about the studio, but she’d only moved in there last weekend, and I’d never seen the place. All she had were a few art supplies and an easel — no furniture — so she hadn’t asked me to help with the move.

I was sure she was proud of her workspace, no matter how bare and stark it might be at this point. She’d be eager for me to see her installed there, surrounded by works in progress. But it would take at least a half-hour depending on traffic to get there, and I was as ravenously hungry as I was horny. I thought of calling her back and begging off, but I suspected she wanted to give me the tour. The idea of picking up Thai take-out on the way occurred, but then there was that other unknown — Todd. I didn’t want to give him an excuse to hang around any longer than necessary, and it would be rude to walk in with the steaming stuff and not invite him to share it.

Ah, yes. Todd Melman. He was her art instructor at the Moorpark College extension program. I had met him just once before when we ran into him sniffing and palpating the organic vegetables at the local supermarket. The guy was so pretty I first assumed he’d be gay, but I was beginning to suspect he was just pretty. He looked like Dermot Mulroney, and his sculpted body made his raggedy jeans and tee shirt look like a fashion statement.