The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (22 page)

Cap grinned. “Go on. Open it.”

I popped the glove compartment. Inside lay a Twinkie. My Twinkie. The Twinkie the wardens had confiscated. The pastry sang out in recognition when it saw me.

Cap must have seen the horror on my face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The windows are tinted. No one can see. You must be hungry.”

I gritted my teeth against its attack. Rape me no more! I slammed the glove compartment shut. “Get it away from me!”

Cap stared out the window. “You know,” he shouted. “Sometimes it’s OK to have a snack.”

I made a noise of disgust. “What makes you think I’d want to eat
that?”
Strange ideas people have about Twinkies.

“This isn’t a test, Frolick.”

“I know it’s not,” I said. “It’s a very serious matter. I wish I knew what to do about it.”

Could I ask Cap to arrest the Twinkies? But were they even subject to our laws? And then they’d take their rapist proclivities into prison with them. No. I couldn’t let the other prisoners suffer like that.

He pounded the steering wheel with an open palm. “I’m telling you—no, I’m ordering you—to eat that Twinkie.”

Then I saw what he was trying to do. To suspect me! Of food terrism! And telling me it wasn’t a test. “It’s OK,” I said, and patted his knee. “You can tell Internal Affairs I passed.”

He hung his head. For a moment I thought he was going to veer us off the road. “I like you, Frolick,” he said at last. He didn’t look at me. “You’re a good man. I pulled a lot of strings to get you out of jail. Don’t let me down.”

“But what did I do that was so wrong?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed. “I know you don’t. So I’m going to give you a choice.”

“What kind of choice?”

“One: you can conform. You can cooperate. You can eat. Food.” He waved away my interruption. “Or two: you can go into exile. You’ve heard of the Underground Food Road?”

I made a rude noise. “Illegal emigrants,” I said. “A conspiracy to funnel food terrists to Canafooda.”

We pulled up in front of my house. Cap put his lips close to my ear. “I got friends in the Food Road. They can get you out. What do you say?”

The brown stain on his chin throbbed. He was serious, I realized. I pulled away.

“I love this country, sir,” I said. “I worship the ideals she was founded on. Let me finish, sir. Please.”

I passed a hand over my forehead. The siren was giving me a headache. “I will overlook this indiscretion. But if I
ever
hear of you pimping for rapist pastries again, or worse, proposing illegal emigration to a subordinate—it will be my duty to arrest you and put you in Fat Camp.” I paused for breath. “Is that clear, sir?”

Cap regarded me for a moment. He killed the siren, and reached across me and opened my door.

“You’re off-duty until further notice,” he said. “An ordinary citizen. Nothing more.”

“But what about the Prophet and the Coalition of the Fasting?” I exclaimed. “We’ve still got to catch Fatso.”

“Drop it. You meddle in matters that don’t concern you, we’ll see who puts who in Fat Camp.”

Eighteen

Back and forth I paced outside the bungalow. A sign on the door read, “Dr. Full Stummick, Naturopath.” Dead weeds covered the yard. Garbage spilled from a bin. Through the broken front window, a television glowed soundlessly. Rain spattered the sidewalk at my feet. Should I go in? Or should I go home?

Home meant Chantal and her incessant demands for food. A horde of Twinkies had chased me from the house, screaming,
“You’re killing your son! He’s going to die because of you!”
Maybe the doctor could help me cure my doubt. I had slunk into Georgetown after dark, looking for the address Green had given me.

Besides, a promise is a promise. I owed my partner. But this was no doctor’s office. It was a run-down food house, no doubt full of junkies getting their fix. What was Green doing hanging out here?

This is a major criticism I have of France, by the way. I visit your cities and I have yet to see a single food house. It feels so—I don’t know, ferrn. It is a mark of our great virtue—the righteousness of the United States of Air—that some people are unable to compete. Without the poor, the needy, the addicted and the insane, how would those of us who have everything be able to appreciate what we have, if not on the backs of their suffering? But don’t worry. Once France bans food, you too will enjoy all the best our country has to offer.

So now, as I stared through the broken glass window of the house, trying to decide what to do, the Prophet appeared on the television screen. He wore a bandage over his nose. Looked like a press conference from earlier in the day. The running tickertape at the bottom of the screen read: “Coalition of the Fasting destroyed. Fatso at large.” I hung my head. It was all my fault.

A family of four stumbled out the front door, glazed looks on their faces, hands caressing their bellies. The girl was five or six, the boy not much older.

“That was great!” the girl said, her blond curls bouncing as she skipped along the path. “Can we do that again sometime soon? Pweeze, Daddy, pweeze?”

The man spotted me blocking the path, my hands on my hips, glaring at them. He shushed his daughter.

Poisoning children from such a young age. Unbelievable. As the junkie dad passed, I hissed, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, eyes cast down at the ground. He shepherded his children into a new Mercedes and drove off.

Some naturopath. Just another skanky parasite corrupting our young, enticing them with candy, then—
wham!
Addicted. Charge whatever he wanted after that.

Eat it. I had no gun and no badge, but I was going to turn this scumbag upside down. Make a citizen’s arrest, if I had to. I strode up the path, lowered my shoulder and charged the door.

I stifled a cry of pain. For a moment I thought I’d broken my arm.

“It’s not locked!” a voice called out.

The doorknob turned easily. I stepped into the room. The silent TV cast flickering light over ripped sofas covered in broken glass. The carpet was blackened in places, where food addicts had made cooking fires. Broken plates covered a coffee table and spilled onto the floor. Junkie food paraphernalia. Typical.

“Soup’s on!” the voice sang out from the back of the building.

Soup. Addictive caloric substances in a base of hot water. A cloud of Twinkies surrounded my head. They sang:

Soupy-doopy dooper,

don’t be a party pooper.

Have some soup!

It’s full of goop.

And don’t forget about your son…

he needs to eat
—

he’s not the only one.

The doubt returned. What if I was making a mistake? Were the Twinkies right? Did I really need to eat? Was it possible my whole life—the Prophet forbid—was a lie?

I shooed the Twinkies away and advanced down the dark hallway, glancing into each room as I passed. Empty. The sound of running water came from up ahead. Dishes clinked. I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the corner.

It was a food lab, all right. Spotless, compared to the front room. A huge vat simmered on the stove. A refrigerator hummed to one side. A man in a tall white chef’s hat stood at the sink washing dishes. His hat scraped the ceiling. I put on my battle face. This must be “Doctor” Stummick himself.

Karate Chop Suey Attack: No. 17 on menu of Kung Yum Chop martial art tactics. Effective even without chopsticks as weapons. I employed it now. I leaped into the room, my hands harassing the air, and shouted, “ATFF! Don’t move! You’re under arrest!”

Stummick turned. “Chop Suey No. 17,” he said. “I’m impressed, Agent Frolick.” He grinned, and twirled his waxed mustachios. “Welcome to my humble soup kitchen.”

I started at that, and accidentally cleaved an oxygen atom in two. “How do you know my name?”

“Agent Green has told me much about you.” He laid a clean place mat and spoon on the table. “I guessed the rest.”

“The rest of what?” I demanded. I karate chopped the air again. “What can you possibly know about me?”

“I know you love your wife and child. That you don’t want to lose them.” Stummick ladled soup from the vat into a bowl. “I know that you’re hungry for the truth.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The truth. And only the truth.” I stared at the steaming bowl. Danger! Danger! Twinkies alighted on the rim of the bowl and dipped their forked little tongues into that noxious broth. “Nothing else.”

The man chuckled and set the bowl on the table. “Not even for soup?” He pulled back a chair. “Please.
Bon appetít.”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I didn’t come here for that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “No? Then what did you come here for?”

“As a favor to Green. He asked me to pick up a shipment for his family. Whatever it is.”

The chef indicated a burlap sack in the corner. “Rice and beans. Help yourself.”

“What do I owe you?”

I had brought five thousand in used bills. It was my Twinkie money, in case of severe depopulation. I hoped it would be enough.

“Put your money away, Agent Frolick,” the man said with a laugh. “I do not charge for food.”

Same old strategy. Hook new clients, get them coming back for more. Wasn’t going to work with me. Crazy junkie.

“In that case,” I said, “I’ll be on my way.”

I grabbed hold of the sack and heaved, and sat down abruptly on the floor. It must have weighed five pounds. “Now what am I going to do?”

“Maybe if you eat some soup, you’ll have the energy you need,” the chef suggested.

I stood up. The Twinkies sang and danced around the bowl. I put my fingers in my ears, but they only sang louder. Step by lead-footed step I clomped toward the table. They were calling to me, demanding I obey.

“
There is no shame in obeying Twinkie-Baal,”
my god boomed.
“I am your master and you are my slave.”

“No!” I shouted. “I will be a slave no more!”

I grabbed a rolling pin that lay to one side and smashed it down on the Twinkies’ heads. The soup bowl exploded into fragments, splashing me with hot liquid calories.

“Take that!” I shouted. “And that! And that! And that!” The Twinkies hid themselves in the soup vat. I overturned the twenty-gallon pot, flooding the floor with hot liquid. I splashed through the deluge, hunting down every last flying Twinkie in that room until their cakey skulls oozed brains onto the sopping floor.

When I was finished, I stood there, panting, and finally let the rolling pin slide to the ground with a splash. For the first time ever, I had conquered my Twinkies. A warm glow of success filled my empty belly.

Stummick cleared his throat. I looked up. My host was a big man. A food terrist. And I just smashed up his laboratory equipment. Now what was he going to do?

“That soup was for members of
La Résistance,”
he said. “To give them strength to resist their oppressors.”

I cheered up. “In that case, I’m glad. They’ll have a chance to eat some air.”

“We are not the enemy you think we are,” Stummick said. “We can help you.”

I snorted. “How’s that?”

“Suppose I told you there was a way to eliminate supply. Nail Fatso and decapitate the Food Mafia.”

“But you’re a food terrist,” I objected. “Why would you want that?”

The man removed a pack of Gauloises from under one armpit. “I am not just any food terrist,
monsieur,”
he said. “I am a French spy.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Where’s your stripey shirt?”

He unbuttoned his chef’s smock. There they were—the tell-tale horizontal navy stripes.

“Gimme your phone,” I said, looking around. “I’m calling the SS. Maybe it’ll get me my badge back.”

The man lit a cigarette. A cloud of blue smoke surrounded his head. “I don’t think you heard me, Agent Frolick,” he said. “I can help you catch Fatso. Then you’ll get your badge back, plus a promotion.”

I laughed. “You’re going to help me find him?”

A Gallic shrug.
“Mais oui.”

“May we what?”

The chef/spy/naturopath blew smoke at the ceiling. He gazed at me from under hooded eyelids. “We put Fatso in business,” he said. “He was an agent of ours. One of the best.”

“Then you admit it!”

“But now he has gone, how you say? Rogue. Turned in many of our networks to the SS.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked. “All you Frenchies want is to see us stuffing our faces.”

“Fatso now is making hundreds of billions of dollars a year. More than he ever made before. Guns? Racketeering? Gambling? Prostitution? Who cares? These things are just play now, a handful of dust compared to the Food Syndicate.”

“So why do you want to get rid of him?”

The man pulled a beret out from under his other armpit and swapped it for the chef’s hat on his head. “Let me bare my soul to you, Agent Frolick,” he said. He held a hand over his heart. “Our farmers of France are crying out for help. To sell once more their tinned
escargot
and frogs’ legs in this country. What we want is to legalize food. But in order to do that, we must first eliminate supply.”

“But that makes no sense!” I protested.

The cigarette flashed through the cloud of smoke.
“Au contraire, mon ami,”
he said. “We believe that when no food is left here in
Les Etats-Unis de l’Aire,
the people will rise up, and, led by our trained fighter-chefs of
La Résistance,
remove the Prophet from power and repeal the Amendment.”

I listened to this speech with growing amazement, and finally laughed out loud. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “When Fatso is gone, the people will dance in the street, hugging each other, sucking down the sweet air of liberty.”

A smile tugged at the French spy’s lips. “We agree to disagree, then. Do we not?”

The man had cured my doubt. I hadn’t even asked him for a consultation. I felt alive again. I pounded my fist on the table. “I could not agree to disagree more. What’s the plan?”

Nineteen