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      I turned to Jack and asked him in a low whisper how he was doing but he just stared at the on going drama in his lap. I watched him play for a bit thankful that I could duck out of the conversation for a few minutes and try to regain my cool. Jack’s fingers moved in a blur and I was amazed at the smooth execution of jumps and high kicks and the awesome destructive power of secret weapons. There was an endless stream of pitfalls and monsters, but he eluded them all. Nothing touched him. 

      I thought back to Frank’s eerie “other business” comment and wondered if it was some kind of clue. It seemed more and more certain that sent me that damn e-mail. Just the sort of shit he would get up to. I tried to put the pieces together: we were here for something big. A business merger, perhaps? A new five star client? What ever it is, I felt like I have won a big victory and straightened up in my seat. I was cool again.

     The waiter arrived with another round of drinks and Jack’s Ice Age II cup with all ice cubes, no water. Already the heat was melting the ice cubes and little crackles and pops danced out of the cup and mixed with the beeps and zaps. Without looking away from his game Jack reached out and brought the cup to his ear, listening to the cracks and pops. He smiled. Then put the cup back on its coaster and resumed playing his game. My mother stared across the room fanning herself, dragon wings flapping, while my father and Frank were going on about Tiger’s chances at the Masters. 

      And the conversation swirled from golf to business to movie stars and back to business and I guessed this was us enjoying ourselves. I lost the thread again and zoned out on the Ice Age II cup and the large cartoon mastodon giving me a thumbs up and the winking saber tooth tiger and I had this vague thought about the improbability of two such territorial animals being pals. My mind drifted over topics of ice ages and secret weapons and how the world was tourist trapped. I shook these tangle of thoughts from my head and slipped my Blue Blockers back on and gazed out the window. A tour bus pulled up in front of the Jackson Memorial and a crowd of Asians jumped off the bus and huddled around it, reading the plaques, snapping their cameras, and then, within minutes, they were herded back on to the bus by the tour guide and it disappeared down the road burping and farting a trail of black exhaust.

      Our food arrived. 

      Fear, cold and substantial, sloshed through my bone marrow and a smile as limp as licorice spread over my face as the waiter placed the food in front of me. Everyone dug in. I took a few sips of my soup but could only choke down a few spoonfuls because the soup’s alien texture slipped down my throat in thick lumps like green cow snot, so I gave up. I turned to the duck salad but it felt like I was eating raw intestines and Gortex. I gave up and run my fork through the salad pushing the green peppers under the lettuce. I had visions of Hiroshima and a documentary I saw on the Discovery Channel of Ed Gein’s kitchen. Pools of sweat popped out on my forehead and beveled my upper lip. I chugged back a full glass of wine and tried to shake the horrible images when I noticed that no body was eating–they were staring at me with their jaws hanging slack, their forks and knives hovering over their food.  

      ”What is it?” I said my blood turning cold. I fingered the half bag of coke in my pocket and a cool wave of comfort tickled my spine. Everything was poised like a spring trap. 

      The ice snapped from Jack’s cup–crackled and popped. I jumped in my seat and let a loud, incoherent “Blurgghll!”

      The table next to ours turned and stared.

      I wiped my forehead, waiting.

      ”Are you okay?” my mother asked finally. “You don’t look so good.”

      ”Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” I said waving my hand. “Really. I got this ingrown toenail and the sucker is really biting into my skin.” I tried to deflect the conversation onto something else and I ordered two more glasses of Pernod and jumped up from the table telling everyone I needed to clean up a little, back in a sec. I wove my way through the tables of people primped up in their Sunday best and towards the restroom, which was empty thank fuck, and squinting against the bright white marble walls and the florescent lighting I slammed my way into a bathroom stall and break up three huge lines.

      And on three: one, two, three: Ahhh….

      ”You look better,” my mom said. 

       “Yeah, much better,” Frank threw in as he sat back and tossed his napkin on the table, huffing.  

       “Yeah, I feel better, I just needed to splash some water on my face, that’s all. The pain was horrible, but my toe is fine now. I bit that little hangnail bastard right off. And man, this damn heat isn’t helping either.”

     “Its not the heat,” Frank said pointing a thumb out the window. 

     “What is that supposed to mean Frank?” 

     “That it isn’t the weather that is your problem.”

      ”Yes it is. I’m hot. And I got this damn hangnail.”

      ”No, you…what are you saying?”

      ”That I am hot and feeling a little off.”

      ”Stop it boys,” my mother said but enervated with confrontational coke energy I turned to my mother and said, “No. Not this time. This isn’t going to stop until Frank tells me di-rect-ly what the fuck he means. So what is it, Frank? What do you want to say to me, Frankie? Big guy. You want to give me another pearl of wisdom? Another quote from some fossil from our past? Something about ‘If you can’t stand the heat then….”

      ”It’s you I can’t stand,” he said slamming his hand on the table. “Just look at you. You look like shit. Your clothes are not tailored and you in no way match. The ass of your pants is almost worn through for heaven’s sake–” 

       “That’s it Frank? My fashion offends you?”

       “–and that horrible excuse of a scent you’re wearing practically ruined my meal; you smell like a damn bum. And your eyes! Jesus Christ, what were you doing last night? Where you with…Pauley?”

       “And what if I was, Frank?”

       From the table next to me I heard the forks and knives clinking on bone china and I shot a look over my shoulder that told them, in no uncertain terms, to fuck right off. I snapped my head back to look at Frank, raising an eyebrow. 

      ”Oh, I dunno. Nothing really I guess, Nothing like a blue head for a friend,” he paused then squared his cufflinks. “It’s only one-thirty and you’ve slammed back five, six drinks already.”

      ”Seven.”

      ”And you haven’t done anything, anything, on the Faber account in months. And that was an easy gig. Jesus. Just tell the truth–you haven’t done a damn thing to help us out. You’re just out to help yourself.”  

      ”Oh, so that is what this is all about, is it? Getting credit for the Faber account? Go ahead, then, Frank, take all the credit. What do I care?”

      ”Exactly, what do you care about?”

      ”What does that matter, Frank? You just want all of the credit…”

      ”Well, ‘Giving credit where credit is due is….’”

      ”Oh Jesus, Frank. Go to hell.” 

      Frank spun in his seat and faced my father, “This is stupid; a waste of our time. Enough of this trying to be nice crap. Just give it to him.”  

       Silence fell over the table. I looked at my mother but she was gazing out the window and fanning herself. My father was drinking his Perrier. Jack beeped and zapped. 

       “What? Give me what?” I said looking around the table.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

       “That’s not like Paul,” my father said, crunching his eyebrows into a steeple. He ran his hand through his black to greying hair, combing it over like a slab of pavement and even though the news was bad, he remained eerily calm. His skin was unseasonably smooth, a fact, he maintained, that was due to his strict diet, Pilates classes, and robust sex life. This last one, my old man’s sex life, was a well known topic in the company and among the richy rich gossip circles. I imagined my father the hero of hen parties. But, whatever. The truth was that the too taut angles and hollow cast of his cheeks gave away the multiple plastic surgeries he had done in high end chop shops in Europe. I started to zone out on his stubble when he snapped up straight in his chair, the steeple crashing. I jumped back into my seat, a little too on edge. He pointed a pistol shaped hand at me and I shot my hands up around my ears in the “I surrender” position, he seemed not to notice and cruised the pistol passed me and pointed it at Frank. “Call Cheevers and tell him Paul’s done. That’s it. Fired. We’ll go with Steve.”

       “Good call” Frank said, banging the table with one hand and pulling out his cell. With lickedy split finger action the text was written and sent. 

       “Steve?” My head swung wildly between my father and Frank. “Come on, man. Steve isn’t half as good as Pauley.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I felt the cold slippery cod slap of guilt, a blow that was both ancient and officious, but, like the cod stocks, dwindling in modern times. Why? I had just left Pauley crashed out on my couch watching The Discovery Channel’s “Inside North Korea” with a whale sized pile of blow in front of him, his teeth grinding down to pebbles. “I mean come on. That’s weird for Pauley. Give him another shot.”

      ”Too late, son. This business waits for no one. You know that. Paul is out. Period.” 

      ”But, Pauley is a good guy…”

      ”Listen. We want good workers, not good guys.” He had that anchorman delivery: a nail gun staccato which hammered everything home as if it was a sturdy unchangeable fact. Butt fuck fags, right? I meant, but fuck facts. Ah. Losing it. 

       “But….”

       “Listen,” he said. “Period.’ Steve is in. Paul is out.”

       “Darling, we’re going with Steve,” my mother said snapping the dragon shut. She plopped a blue veined hand on my wrist and I knew that it was useless to push it any further. She reached over and fixed my younger brother, Jack’s, black hair. Jack didn’t even flinch; he just stared at his Gameboy Advance, bottom lip twitching occasionally, a series of zaps and beeps wafting up from the machine to do his talking for him. 

       “Well then let me deal with it, will ya’?”  

       “Like you dealt with the Faber account?” Frank asks.

       I turned to face him but the sun flashed through the window, blinding me momentarily. I hissed like a vampire and brought up both arms to cover my eyes. I yanked my Blue Blockers out of my inside pocket and shoved them on. “Look, Frank, I told you already, Faber….”

        ”Listen. That is enough of that Faber account crap,” my father interrupted. “The account is in the bag; it’s ancient history now.”  

        Frank nodded along. “That‘s right. As Dwight D. said, ‘Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.’”

       “Quite enough,” my mother said punctuating the point. She reached over the table and pulled off my sunglasses placing them next to my wine glass. “Let’s have a toast. To the future.” 

       “The future” dad said raising his glass of Taittinger.

       “The future” Frank said. A wide crocodile grin ate up his face. He didn’t move his head, but I think I saw his eye slither towards me in its socket. “And besides, we got other business to attend to.” 

        I raised my wine, but said nothing about the future. The fucking future? my mind spat. The thought of it made me want to lash out at someone and I turned towards Frank to resume my defense of the Faber account, but my rant was scooped out of my mouth and slapped to the floor as the waiter materialized at my side, pen nib poised on notepad. The sight of him sent a shiver through my body and I repeated to myself: Breath. Try. To. Act. Cool. Without thinking I ordered the wild mushroom consomme garnished with a pate a choux pastry stuffed with morels, chantrelles, and truffles. For my main course I got the gourmet smoked duck salad that my father recommended and which the waiter suggested showcased the fall colors, wherever they had disappeared to in this infernal heat. My father and Frank kept it simple and ordered seared cajun lamb chops with a side dish of fresh steamed vegetables and garlic smashed potatoes with sautéed onions and peppercorn gravy. My mother ordered a Waldorf salad with all organic vegetables and followed this with sushi wrapped avocado and a bowl of jasmine rice. Jack got a cheeseburger and fries, which my mother ordered for him. And a glass of ice cubes, no water, put in an Ice Age II: The Meltdown cup that Jack had brought with him from the Cinema 12. The cup had a cartoon picture of a large but friendly looking Mastodon who was winking and hugging a cocky looking saber toothed tiger. The tiger was giving me a thumbs up.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]