He snorted, countering with ‘If you were an Arab, they’d shoot you.’ Not to be outdone, ‘I’d claim to be a Syrian anti-government protester you know, because we all look alike to these Caucasians’. We laughed for a bit then he said he had a younger sister back in the homeland. I insisted I was immoral a wicked man.
‘Was I religious?’ ‘Only when it suited my purposes.’ ‘Would I consider converting to Sunni Islam?’ ‘Only if the girl was cute enough.’ He showed me her picture dammit, she had a really beautiful face. I got her name, his name and the name of his mosque. I considered it. Yahweh, Christ, Bacchus (wine, an orgy and ‘bull’ testicles long story) and Jehovah all had reasons to barbeque my butt already.
Why not add Allah to the mix, besides it being an incredibly stupid thing to do for a man in constant mortal peril like me? In theory, three of the four definitely had the possibility to be the same Omniscient and Omnipotent Galactic Being so the odds were I wouldn’t get too much more screwed.
I finished up my journey imagining Buffy in a burqa. That evolved into a vision of me being force-fed a burqa in private where no one could hear my muffled cries for help. Buffy murdering me made me horny. I am a sick puppy.
“Buffy,” I called her as I paid the cabbie.
“What huh are you okay, Cael?” Buffy muttered.
“Yes, I’m fine. I was dreaming of you and decided to give you a call,” I related in a sleepy voice.
“Oh…” she sounded affectionate.
“Yeah. In the dream you were murdering me. It was so romantic so you,” I related.
“Shit-for-brains, do you have any idea what time it is?” Buffy turned all savage in an instant.
“Hmmm… 11:45?” I offered up.
“Call me this late again when it is not an emergency and your dream will become a reality,” she growled.
“You know you sound so…” and she hung up on me. I called Nicole and warned her I was at her building, pursued by two FDIC investigators and could she please come and rescue me. She snickered, came down and retrieved me, but not before the NYPD stopped by for a casual conversation and I hadn’t even been standing there two minutes.
In my neighborhood you were lucky if you saw a patrol car every thirty minutes and short of offering them some crack cocaine, cheap nookie, or shooting a gun off, they never stopped. Was I my normally fuck-wad self? No. I told the man/woman team the truth. Some upper crust weenies I worked with dragged me off to Yuppie Hell. I hooked up with a lawyer who I screwed repeatedly in the Women’s bathroom and she was calling me for round 2.
Second question (the first one was name/ID/reason for being in this part of town dressed like I was)? Was she paying me? ‘No’. Was I practicing safe sex (female cop married even)? ‘Yes’. Was she the red-head at the door behind me? ‘Yes she was and goodnight.’
“What are you dressed like that for?” Nicole smiled.
In her mind she already knew the answer I had come here to fuck her raw and primal.
“Ballroom dancing was not on the itinerary you gave me,” I smiled. We went inside.
“My co-workers are still here,” she hinted seductively.
“Whoa now!” I protested humorously. “I am not here to pull a train girls only.”
Nicole nearly fell over laughing. She was so embarrassed by me and my attire, she dragged me straight to the conference room ‘her’ team was working out of. Everyone else was eating. Two of the lawyers were clearly the top dogs a man and a woman. The woman had a vague resemblance to one of the portraits I’d seen coming in a legacy.
The man screamed ‘serial killer’. It probably made him one hell of a lawyer, but spooky to live with, or work for. The other nine people in the room were in two groups. Two were obviously paralegals. They dressed in what must have started out as clean, starched clothing from off the rack as opposed to tailored.
The other seven were lawyers in their own dual set-up. My amateur guess was two different branches of law. This group was dressed in fine clothes now wrinkled from a long day’s work, plus it was a Sunday. They were not at their best yet they were still better than most of what I had. The most endearing part was how they looked at me.
Even the female contingent thought that I was trash. I had certainly given them the opportunity. Seriously, they should have paid more attention to Nicole, her intelligence, competence and tastes. Come on now; there was no way she’d bring some grease-monkey from Flatbush to her workplace. They needed to engage their brains and not their social bias.
A murmur slithered through the crowd. Amusement and condescension were the clear messages shot my way. I imagine the poor soul who delivered the food got less crap because he/she was providing a tangible service.
“Nicole, who is this?” the woman asked. Sex.
Outside of her being a soulless cancer on the hopes and dreams of mankind, she was an alluring forty-something.
“This is my friend Cael…” Nicole began, both her arms wrapped around my right arm.
“Cael Belafonte,” I interrupted. You could tell who the trial lawyers in the room were. Their expressions told me they knew I was lying.
“Fascinating Mr. Belafonte,” Mr. Serial-Killer droned on. “What do you do?”
“I am an Ichthyologist,” I met his gaze. “I’m involved in a twenty year study to determine the cause for the reduction in the size of Tuna fish scales.” That had them stumped.
“That sounds like yet another great waste of government funds,” a young male lawyer with more bravado than combat-sex experience fired off.
“Oh,” I shrugged. “Smaller scales, smaller full-sized Tuna, a spike in tuna prices and an eventual world-wide restriction on Tuna fishing, similar to the one currently covering virtually all whale species. Now, I doubt you know which people will decide who the recipient of those lucrative Tuna contracts will be, but I do. By all means mock what you don’t understand.”
“Government research project results will be in the public domain,” a woman joined the struggle.
“Yes and?” I asked in a bland tone.
“Your research will be available to all kinds of commercial concerns,” male asshat grinned.
“Your ability to show that you are as smart as any pre-law student must make someone, somewhere very proud,” I grinned back.
Confused looks. Nicole was struggling to keep it together.
“He never said he was in any manner part of the government, or a government program, Mr. Cherrie,” the female lead barracuda gave me her own hungry look. The guy looked pissed.
“Oh, Mr. Belafonte, are you a private researcher, or a government one?” she female junior lawyer asked. “Heather Pulaski,” she gave her name.
“Call me Cael, Heather, and I am in no way associated with any government, I barely know what an Ichthyologist is and I’m certainly not one. Rude, arrogant people annoy me when they treat my friends like they are stupid; especially when they should know better. I can rarely stop myself from ridiculing them,” I grinned.
“And now you think you are better than everyone else in the room for tricking us with this juvenile prank,” the Serial Killer sounded bored.
“No. The lives of strangers are not my concern,” I bantered back. “I did what I did to make Nicole smile. If my antics remind the rest of you what a hotshot lawyer she is so much the better.”
“Mr. and Mrs. DeYoung, Cael, Cael Nyilas, is a joker. He’s is also brilliant and just joined Havenstone Commercial Investments in their Executive Services Division,” Nicole bragged. She got points for the ‘Executive Services’ part. More smirks some people never learn.
“Havenstone doesn’t employ too many men, does it?” Mrs. DeYoung said.
Maybe she was looking for a Discrimination lawsuit.
“Five men to be precise and two of us are out of the country,” I enlightened her.
“So you are brilliant,” Mr. DeYoung seemed barely engaged and was Mrs. DeYoung’s Mr. DeYoung. “What are your insights on DNA ownership, Cael?”
“DNA ownership is a fallacy,” I stated. “People are not pigs, soybeans, or corn. You cannot create a financial liability for your offspring because that amounts to slavery and is forbidden by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. DNA is a person their blueprint. Only the person owns it and they can’t even sell it outright.”
“That is hopelessly naive,” he snorted.
“Not really. If you apply an accepted price tag to every human being on Earth, the anarchy will begin. Crimes like murder, torture and mutilation are based on the concept that human life has an unspecified value. Give something a value and you can trade in it.”