Cass was sprawled in a lavish yet
stubbornly unaccommodating cream leather chair—rather NASA in feeling—behind a
vast Victorian mahogany desk, a desk so heavily worked with dark clusters of carved
fruits and heavy sprays of flowers, it seemed to breathe and heave with a
fervid vitality stylistically foreign both to Cass’s space-age swivel chair,
and to the porcine mass of his body—which he now struggled to lift up as a
courteous gesture to his stunningly beauteous caller. Cass raised himself about eight inches from the NASA chair
and, with a breathy “whouff!”—like
air hissing from a punctured inner tube—fell back again into the embryonic
position he had assumed before Coal was ushered into his office.
“Is there anything I can get you, your
Worship,” his aide asked, “while I’m here?”
Cass thought for a moment or two.
“You know what would be good?” he replied, glancing at Coal and
winking. “A big container of white
chocolate ice cream!”
The aside scurried away and Cass turned to
Coal.
“A hot day!” he said to her, apparently unresponsive to the room’s temperature controls, that
modulated the mayor’s surroundings into an approach to conventional comfort.
“Ice cream will cool us off.”
“Oh no, really, none for me,” said Coal
quickly. “But you go ahead.”
Cass nodded.
“Joy tells me you’re a model.”
“Much of the time,” Coal told him.
“A High fashion model?”
“As high as possible.”
Cass roared with laughter.
“And the rest of the time?” he asked her.
“Oh I get interested in different
things….”
“Like death threats against the mayor?”
Cass asked her.
“Things like that, yes,” Coal replied.
“Did Joy show you some of the death
threats?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, they’re very skillfully made. The drawings are exquisite. The messages are perhaps not quite as
charming.”
The mayor exploded with rage.
“Not quite as charming?? Charming??’ Whoever sent them to me calls me a side of beef
and wants me slaughtered!!”
“There’s some strange mention of gravy as well,” added Coal softly. “Which seems to imply that the sender
has some odd culinary interest in
you as well, Mr. Mayor.”
“The sender is a cannibal!” Cass gasped.
“Oh I doubt that,” said Coal.
“More likely a chef,
wouldn’t you say?”
All this talk of captive meat was both
distressing for Cass and, at the same time, vaguely arousing. He made a second attempt—a more
successful one this time—to rise from his chair and, having attained a sweaty
and approximate verticality this time, lurched around the end of his Edenic
table to stand too close to Coal’s chair.
She shrunk back slightly from his massive nearness—but only slightly.
“You,” Cass said, “are a very beautiful
woman.”
“Yes,” smiled Coal, I’ve heard that.”
“I love beautiful women!”
“So do I.” said Coal.
Cass was rather taken aback. “You like women?”
“Of course,” Coal replied.
“I mean like sexually—like in bed.”
“Are you asking me if I’m a lesbian?”
“Well…yeh. “
“What do you care, Cass?”
Cass thought about this for an overheated
second or two.
“Well, if you’re straight, I can fantasize
about you in the usual way, and if you’re a lesbian, I’ll have to fantasize
about you in a different way! So which is it?”
“How about you don’t fantasize about me at
all,” Coal suggested.
“You’re too beautiful. I can’t help it.”
“Then I can’t help you,” Coal told him, rising from her chair and turning to
go.
Just at that moment, there was a
perfunctory knock at the door and the aide tiptoed in bearing a bucket of ice
cream on a silver server.
“Perfect,” said Coal to Cass and his aide. “Now you can effect a titillating
relationship with your stupid ice cream.
Which I feel certain excites you more than women do,” she added, striding across the carpet to the
already open door.
“And say hello to Joy for me.”
Cass watched Coal’s exit and then looked
down at the ice cream. He turned
helplessly to his aide.
No spoon,” he said sadly. “You forgot to bring me a spoon.”
