Authors: Niccolo Grovinci
“It was for my little girl, asshole,” said the large man, visibly upset.
Albert immediately looked away.
“Hey, Barbie,” said the Doctor.
“Why don’t you be a doll and open the gate?”
“Ain’t my name, you sonuvabitch,” said the large man, and Albert sensed immediately that the encounter had gotten off on the wrong foot.
He also sensed that, given the bulge of the man’s biceps through his torn and tattered shirt, he could easily have snapped the two of them into neat, even pieces.
The Doctor, however, seemed unperturbed by the man’s unquestionable mass.
“Bad gorilla.
Just do your job now, and don’t get your panties in a wad.
Flamin’ Freddie wants to see me.”
“That’s Mayor Frederick McCheese yer talkin’ ‘bout”, the large man spat.
“Show the proper respect.”
“If you say so,” quipped the Doctor.
His expression grew suddenly serious.
“I’m expected.”
The man made a low growling noise in his throat, but offered no other reply as he grabbed the handle of the hind-most cart and pushed the rusty barricade aside.
The two men entered the fort.
“Mayor McCheese?” Albert whispered nervously to the Doctor.
“He’s not really the mayor,” the Doctor replied too loudly.
“He just thinks he is.”
The large man approached the Doctor menacingly, leaning forward so that their noses almost touched.
The Doctor feigned waving the man’s breath out of his face with a forced nonchalance, but his hand was shaking as the large man spoke.
“Shut yer pie-hole and foller me, shit-fer-brains,” he snarled.
“Before I snatch that smirk off yer face and wipe yer ass with it.”
The Doctor nodded with uncharacteristic earnestness.
The large man gave him a satisfied grunt, then led the two men away from the gate toward a square canvass army tent that squatted a few yards away, slightly to the side of the massive striped circus pavilion that filled the center of the compound.
Inside, the army tent was tastefully furnished with mismatched but elegant wooden tables and chairs.
A wooden coat rack stood to one side, decked with a long black coat and hat of a style worn only in old movies.
A wooden coffee table, topped with a vase of flowers – real flowers – rested in the center of the room.
It was the woodenness of it all that struck Albert.
Omega-Mart made nothing of wood.
These things came from a different time.
And there was something else about the place that struck Albert as funny, something entirely out of the ordinary, not just for Rooftown but for the planet as a whole; the lace doilies, the glass candlestick holders, the sweaty scotch glass resting delicately atop the polished surface of the coffee table.
This place had class.
As did the man seated behind the scotch glass.
He wore a satin crimson smoking jacket, tied loosely at the waist, and nibbled on the end of a smoldering cigarette holder.
A pair of absurdly small square bifocals rested on the end of his nose, above a thin and well greased dark moustache.
He considered Albert and the Doctor with a bored but not unpleasant manner.
Albert couldn’t help but notice that no tattoo decorated his forehead.
“So good to see you again, Doctor,” he yawned.
He crossed his legs in front of him, the right leg draped daintily over the left knee, his slippered foot dangling.
“And so
fairy
nice to see you, too, Freddy,” said the Doctor back to him, obviously hinting at some joke that Albert did not get.
Dr. Zayus flinched as the Big Man raised a meaty hand, but the mayor halted his henchman with an absent wave.
“I see you haven’t evolved at all since last we met, good doctor.
Speaking of which, I seem to remember that you’d come to me looking for a small loan, oh those many pleasant, Zayus-free weeks ago.
What was it?
Twelve cartons of cocktail sausages -- fifteen now with interest?
And what did you do with them?
Squander them at the ostrich races?”
The Doctor shrugged. “I’ve always been a sucker for a slow ostrich.”
The mayor smirked, and his eyes for a brief moment touched on Albert.
“And, at the risk of being indelicate, have you come to make good on that loan?”
“Well, I’m not here to get pounded in the ass, if that’s what you were hoping for.”
Albert could hear the steam whistling out of the Big Man’s ears behind him, but the man stayed put like a well trained dog.
The mayor pursed his lips.
“You are a singularly unpleasant man, Doctor.”
He turned in Albert’s direction.
“Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. --?”
“Er…, Zim,” said Albert.
“Albert Zim.”
He held out his hand as if to shake, but the mayor only dismissed it with a flutter of his eyelids.
“Mr. Zim.
So nice to make your acquaintance.
I try not to judge a man by the company he keeps, but your associate is a
singularly
unpleasant man, as you are no doubt aware.”
Albert nodded awkwardly at the man’s second use of the phrase.
“Watch out Albert – they’re all alike,” warned the Doctor.
“They lure you in with pleasant conversation, and the next thing you know, they’re trying to polish your knob.”
A brief flame leapt into the mayor’s eyes, and Albert worried for a moment that the Big Man would break his invisible leash.
“Ummm.
Am I missing something?”
The Doctor rolled his eyes.
“He’s a homo, Albert.
And I don’t mean
homo sapien.
”
“Huh?”
“He’s queer as a three dollar bill.”
“Wha-?”
“He’s wanted for ass piracy in twelve Quads.”
“You mean he’s g-g-gay?”
The Doctor allowed a moment for it all to sink in.
“Kind of like spotting a unicorn, huh?”
Albert’s eyes darted to the dapper man in the chair, then down to the floor.
“I didn’t vote for Gay Apartheid,” he stammered.
That was a lie.
Back in 2022, after decades of futile experiments designed to isolate and destroy the gay gene, the government turned to a simpler solution.
It rounded up all known homosexuals (as well as countless metrosexuals who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) and shipped them off to a place once known as Western Europe, a place popularly recognized as their ancestral homeland.
Billions of tax dollars were spent to construct a massive wall “for their protection”, separating the refugees from the rest of the citizenry.
Despite the inconvenience, the stalwart immigrants endured; Gay Europe, with its capitol of Gay Paris, upheld itself as a bastion of good taste, impeccable color coordination, and
the
most outrageous costume parties until the year 2027, when the entire region was scheduled for atomic testing.
The testing was a rousing success, as all testing of that sort generally is, and the dream of Gay Europe died along with a good twenty percent of the world’s population.
A lot of people felt very guilty about the whole thing, particularly because almost all of them had an aunt or cousin or brother who’d died as a result, and so they denied having ever voted for Gay Apartheid in the first place, which they most certainly had.
“Really, I didn’t,” said Albert.
Really, he had.
His knees wobbled at Mayor McCheese’s obvious skepticism.
“No matter,” sighed the mayor, finally.
“We can’t dwell in the past.
It’s the future I’m interested in, Mr. Zim.”
“Ummm?”
“What kind of future, you ask?”
He hadn’t, but Albert nodded anyway.
“A
gay
future.
A future where every man’s shoes matches his belt, where a man can carry a European handbag without scrutiny, where a public museum or library or botanical garden isn’t just another place where some homeless person can squat to do his business, but where art and literature and opera and beauty can live again, and where
men
can appreciate it.
The theatre – my God – the theatre is
dead
!
Nothing but wild shooting and car chases and mayhem on a big dead screen, like a giant hand waving a string in front of helpless kittens, not
men
, full of all the sophistication and humor and knowledge and turmoil and complexity that comes along with being a
man
.
Let me ask you, Mr. Zim, Have you ever attended a play?”
Albert thought back.
“I was in a play once, in the third grade.
I was a tree in the Wizard of Oz.”
Mayor McCheese looked knowingly at him.
“Then you understand.
You understand what it is to be a young thespian, to perform on stage, to feel the admiration of a live audience flow through your branches, flutter your leaves, tickle your trunk!”
“I guess so?” Albert ventured.
“I knew,” said the mayor, mysteriously narrowing his eyes.
“Somehow, from the moment I met you, I knew that we were alike, as if I had an antennae, nay, a kind of radar that delved into the secrets of your soul.
We are one and the same – kindred spirits.
I never doubted from the very first that I would find a little bit of
me
in you.”
Albert considered several facets of this statement that made him uncomfortable, and squirmed.
He almost bolted for the exit as the Mayor started to his feet and extended his hand.
“Come, Mr. Zim – together we will make the arts
live
again.”
“I really have to go.”
The Mayor smiled and threw a dainty arm over his shoulder.
“Go?”
He chuckled as if it were the most absurd statement ever uttered.
“Don’t be silly, Albert – we’ve only just begun to rebuild this sad, tired old world.”
His eyes rose loftily to an imagined horizon.
“I’ll make you a star, Albert.
A big star.
In
my
play.
Didn’t I tell you about it?
It’s a very bold, much overdue endeavor -- a stage adaptation of an American movie classic.
You’d be perfect for it.”
He gently caressed Albert’s cheek.
“You have such nice bone structure.”
“Uh.”
“Besides which, I own you now.
You can’t go.”
Albert stiffened.
He turned to consult the Doctor, but found no Doctor there.
“Show him.”
At the mayor’s request, the Big Man fished his own battered copy of Postelwaithe’s Guide out of his back pocket.
He pointed to the open page.
There it was in black and white.
Fifteen cartons of cocktail sausages.
Exactly equivalent in value to one middle aged man in fair condition, slightly wrinkled, bald and overweight.
“Congratulations, Albert, you’ve just been traded.”
The mayor looked him up and down, licking his lips in anticipation.
“And I know just what I’ll do with you….”
****
Mayor Frederick McCheese stared passionately into Albert’s eyes as the perspiration dribbled from both their sodden foreheads.
“What do you want to hear, man?” the Mayor pleaded of Albert.
“That sometimes I think about eating a bullet?
Well I do! I even got a special one for the occasion, with a hollow point, to make sure it blows the back of my goddamn head out, and does the job right.”
He lifted the invisible bullet from inside his shirt, where it hung from an invisible gold chain, and held it up for Albert to witness, pondering it grotesquely as if it contained the source of all his pain.
“Every day I wake up and think of a reason not to do it.
Every single day.
And you know why I don’t?
This is gonna make you laugh.”
Albert shrugged.
“The job.
Doing the job.
That’s the reason.”
Black shoe polish streamed from Albert’s cheeks, pooling under his collar and dripping down his chest.
He read woodenly from the script in front of him.