Elimination Night - By Anonymous Page 0,85

me in a helicopter—this helicopter? Certainly not Len. David seemed to have ruled out Bibi, pretty much. Two Svens? Unlikely, given that he could see me whenever he wanted to at work. Joey? No, he hated helicopters—they made him nervous. And it couldn’t be Sir Harold Killoch, because he was still in Germany. Besides, what possible reason could the Big Corp CEO have for this kind of ego display?

It took perhaps five or six minutes for us to reach the ocean. The aircraft banked. For a moment, I felt suddenly light-headed. Then we turned up the coast—ocean to one side, the lights of Highway 1 to the other. For the first time, I felt wind buffet the cabin. We seemed to be descending, somewhere near Malibu.

Static in my headset.

“Can you see it yet?” asked David.

I looked out of my window. Ocean everywhere now—the color of poured concrete in the moonlight. We must have been a mile or two offshore. Then spots of white in the gray vastness, gleaming brighter as we lost altitude. Was it an island? A boat?

More static.

“He named it The Talent and the Glory,” announced David, answering my question. “Took delivery last week. If you believe ShowBiz magazine—which I don’t, personally—it cost fifty million bucks. The guys I work for say it was more like twice that.”

“Damnit, David, tell me who he is,” I said. By now, I had a pretty good idea, of course.

“Four hundred and four feet long,” he continued, ignoring me. “Forty-eight thousand horsepower. Maximum speed: twenty-eight knots. What we’re about to land on is the basketball court, which he installed especially for his good friend, the president of the United States. Prez was out here on Monday, actually. Amazing the kind of company you can keep when you own a boy’s toy like this.”

The deck was right below us now. Any moment… any moment… bab-da-bump.

We were down.

David climbed out.

My door slid open.

Slowing rotors. Floodlights. Salt in the breeze.

It took me a second to recognize the figure standing there, waiting. Dark sweater, canvas pants… sockless feet in tasseled loafers. Not the usual open-shirted attire. Even the hair threw me off: It was loose and floppy, entirely devoid of product, like he’d just come out of the hot tub or shower. The voice, however—well, the voice was unmistakable. Somehow both oily and hoarse. It brought to mind gin cocktails, dutyfree cigarettes, and carpeted bedrooms from 1985.

“Well, this isn’t quite Hawaii,” it crooned. “But we could sail there in a week or two from here.”

“Nigel Crowther,” I said, dumbly.

“Oh, the pleasure’s all mine.”

25

El Woofaleah

I WAS SURPRISED AT HOW tiny and ancient Nigel Crowther appeared when he wasn’t on camera. He couldn’t have been much younger than Len, in fact. There was also an unsettling… femininity about him. Something to do with the tone of his skin—as though the outer layer had been peeled away—plus of course those infamous twin protrusions from under his sweater. It was extraordinary that Crowther’s nipples were visible at all, given the thickness of the fabric that covered them—which made you wonder if it were somehow deliberate. The breasts, too, were unavoidable: great swollen mounds, not quite of Mia Pelosi dimensions, but large enough to make his belly seem almost modest in comparison.

“I, uh… I like your helicopter,” I said, not sure of the etiquette in such a situation.

“You’re quite an awkward girl, aren’t you, Sasha?” replied Crowther, who’d noticed me staring at his chest. I hadn’t meant to be so obvious. “That is your real name, isn’t it: Sasha? I never approved of the way Len turned you into Bill. How dehumanizing. Then again, it’s the only way Len knows. They gave him a terrible time at school, y’know, especially when he took up tap dancing. Imagine that: Chiswick Technical School, west London, just after the war—and there was Len, a sickly kid with curly hair and a passion for musical theater. There were toilet plungers in Chiswick which spent less time in the bowl than he did. Created a monster, if you ask me. And yet not a very effective monster, judging by those abysmal ratings. Anyway, come on inside.”

He paused.

“Oh,” he added, handing me an iPad with a stylus attached. “And if you wouldn’t mind signing this. Standard nondisclosure agreement. Can’t have you telling anyone about this little meeting, I’m afraid. But I think you’ll want to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Squinting, I tried to read the words on the display, but there was too much glare from