The Teratologist (3 page)

“
Boy, for a guy who complained about his drink being too stiff, you sure downed that in a hurry,” the barmaid observed of Westmore’s empty glass.

“
May I have a Corona Light, this time, please?” Westmore asked. The bad scotch scorched his stomach.

“
Isn’t that also the name for the end of a penis?” she brought to mind, then put an opened bottle in front of him.

“
That’s on the house, right?” Westmore asked.

“
No but it can be on your head if you like.”

Bryant ordered an orange juice; when she gave it to him she said, “Now
that’s
on the house.”

“
It’s my karma,” Westmore excused. “But I don’t care. I’m a Kierkegaardian existentialist.” This was what Westmore always said because it was easier and less humiliating that saying
I’m a fuckin’ social failure and it doesn’t bother me any more.
“So, what? Farringworth’s meeting us here?”

“
His people are picking us up and taking us to his house in Bloomfield Hills. It’s the highest per-capita-income community in the world. Iacocca lives there, John Ford, Trump’s got a house, plus any CEO of any car manufacturer.”

“
What else you know about Farringworth?”

“
He did his undergrad at Cornell, then got his MBA in international finance at the Wharton School, started at Fidelity as an investment analyst, studied under Peter Lynch. Rose through the ranks, got promoted to fund manager. They make a couple million a year. Everything after that was his own creativity. Took him five years in the field, and then—“

”
Then he’s a billionaire.”

“
I agree, it’s a little unusual for a guy to get that rich that quick.” Bryant shrugged. “But it happens.”

“
I guess some guys are just lucky,” Westmore said.

“
But not you, I’ll bet,” the barmaid chimed in. “I’ll bet you
never
get lucky.”

“
I got lucky today, didn’t I? I met you.”

The barmaid rubbed the corner of her eye, with her middle finger.

“
You’re right,” Bryant agreed. “It’s your karma.”

Westmore didn’t argue. “All right, there’s some historical info available about the guy, we know how old he is—oh, and I heard he wasn’t married.”

“
Nope, never been. No kids, no rumors about girlfriends, stuff like that. A year ago there was an unauthorized biography. The hack who wrote it claimed he interviewed lots of people who went to school with Farringworth, and they all said they never saw him with a girl.”

“
Maybe he’s a balls-across-the-nose kind’a guy,” Westmore eloquently suggested.

“
No, because no one ever saw him with a guy, either.”

“
If I had Farringworth’s loot I’d have every girl in the Atlanta Cheetah Club living with me, but this guy’s never even been
seen
with a chick?”

“
Odd. The guy who wrote the bio said he dug back further but found nothing about his family background, either. And there aren’t any photographs of him. College graduation pic says photo not available.”

This perked Westmore up. “So I’ll be the first—“

”
The first guy to officially take his picture for any public forum.”

“
What about the book? Weren’t there any pictures of him in that?”

“
Nope.”

“
Shit, I didn’t even there
was
a book about the guy.”

“
Well, there wasn’t, really. This is just stuff that the author told me, some old putz down in St. Pete.”

Westmore was confused, a fairly familiar condition. “Fill me in. There was a book or there wasn’t?”

“
This guy wrote one, got a contract for it but when Farringworth heard about it, he paid the publisher ten times their projected net profits to
not
publish it. At least that’s what the writer said.”

“
Farrington sounds like some kind of gunned-up Howard Hughs, recluse to the max. Then all of a sudden he agrees to be interviewed for our magazine?”

“
Change of heart, who knows,” Bryant said, “or cares?”

“
Yeah, and—Christ.” Westmore looked up dreamily. “I’ll be the first to get a picture of him. Why me?”

“
Maybe it’s your karma,” Bryant alluded. “And as for the details, I guess we just sit here and wait till his people pick us up.”

Westmore looked at his K-Mart watch. “I can’t wait too long. I want to get this done quick. My flight out is at eleven, and I want my bad-karma ass right back in this bar by seven-oh-five.”

“
Seven-oh-
five?
” Bryant questioned.

“
The Yankees play Boston tonight. Come on, man, get with it. The
Yankees,
the
Yankees
.”

“
Yeah, but look what’s playing now.”

On the TV in the corner, a CNN newswoman was reciting the day’s lead story: “—when pictures of Father Thomas Corelli arrived in the mailboxes of every registered member of St. Simon’s Church. Corelli was a well-regarded pastor at the largest Catholic Church in Texas when he took a leave of absence early last month, according to diocesan authorities. However, police authorities say that the pictures depict Father Corelli engaged in various sex acts, though they wouldn’t comment further, nor would the Diocese…”

“
Looks like the Cat-Licks are taking on the chin again,” Westmore said.

Bryant added: “Not just the Catholics. Last week there was that report of sex videos being delivered to a local TV station in Tennessee. The videos showed a guy sodomizing a collie, and the guy was a big wheel minister for the Baptist Church.”

Westmore gaped. “You’re shitting me.”

“
No, don’t you watch the news? There’ve been several things like that going on the past few months. Another one in South Carolina, too, some Evangelist guy. Mpegs showed up on the internet. Same deal with all of them, they’d all either gone on vacation, or had a leave of absence. Organized religion is going to hell in a hand basket and fast.”

It’s a fucked up world,
Westmore thought.

The next news-clip announced that the U.S. Air Force had dropped an 18,000-pound “daisy-cutter” bomb by mistake on a UN food storage facility in Afghanistan.

Yeah. Really fucked up…

“
Mr. Bryant, Mr. Westmore.” The voice was crisp, enunciated, and it took them by surprise. “I trust you haven’t been waiting long?”

The pair turned quickly. Westmore stood up.

“
I’m Philip Michaels, Mr. Farringworth’s personal adjutant.” Slim, short dark hair, sharp dark suit. “If you’ll be so kind as to follow me, I’ll take you gentlemen up to the house.” Westmore fumbled for his camera bag, was about to leave, when the barmaid reminded, “Hey, dad, that’ll be ten-fifty for the drinks.”

Ho! At least kiss me first, honey! Remind me not to drink in airports…
Westmore hurriedly paid, left her a buck tip, was about to pull off again, but then she said, “Don’t forget your receipt. For your taxes. Never give Uncle Sam a break is what I say.”

Yeah, yeah—
He took the receipt and half-trotted out of the bar. When he went to stuff the slip of paper in his pocket he noticed that the barmaid had written her phone number on the back of it.
Well how do you like that?

Maybe his karma was improving.

He caught up to Bryant and Michaels as they were exiting the doors at the baggage. The writer and “adjutant” were conversing casually. Westmore couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he paused to wonder a possibility:
Maybe Farringworth’s from England,
because his assistant, Michaels, had one hell of an obvious British accent. He leaned in closer to hear what Michaels and his partner were talking about.

“
So what’s Farringworth like anyway? What’s it like working for the guy?”

“
Those questions, unfortunately, I cannot answer. You will have to see for yourself.”

“
Are you serious?” Bryant asked, with his eyebrows raised suspiciously.

“
Quite. I am under contract.”

“
So you can’t tell me anything?”

“
Well, I can tell you that if you are interviewing him in the hopes of finding some new business strategies you are wasting your time. Farringworth is somewhat of a savant.”

“
You don’t just make over 300 million in your first year of trading, double that the second year and every year thereafter, without a solid grasp of the global market.”

“
Uh huh. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Mr. Farrington’s trading methods are mostly instinctual. He’s like a good tennis player. He has a feel for where the ball is and where it’s going to be the minute it’s served and he only has to get himself into the right position to benefit.”

“
Yeah, it may sound simple but we’re talking about multiple millions of dollars maneuvered through a constantly fluctuating global economic structure. It’s not as simple as eenie meenie minie moe.”

“
Well, it would seem that for Mr. Farrington it is that simple.”

“
Hold on! Hold on one second!” Westmore spoke up, “Are you saying that we’re not going to get anything from this guy? You mean we came all the way out here to get an interview so boring and unenlightening that the minute we get back to the office our editor will just toss the whole thing into the trash?”

“
You may not get the interview that you were hoping for, but I assure you that it will be neither boring nor unenlightening.” Michaels replied and the way he grinned made Westmore’s skin suddenly feel as if it was too loose on him and a draft had slipped beneath it. They rode the rest of the way to the estate in silence. Michaels never stopped grinning.

(II)

Farringworth rose from the pool and stood naked on the marble tiles watching the droplets of water cascade over his thin, athletic physique, yet another thing that he barely had to work at. He had the metabolism of a teenager. Each drop of the heavily chlorinated water traced the outline of his perfectly defined musculature as it raced toward the floor. He flexed and the venous striated muscles became more pronounced like the “Anatomical Man” charts of the human muskuloskeletal that hung in hospital exam rooms.

John Farringworth was beautiful and he knew it. He was a flawless example of God’s perfection, but he knew that creation was far from perfect. Betty smiled at him. Her dazzling diamond blue eyes sparkling out of a tragically pretty face attached to a monstrously malcrafted body. He watched the obese legless, armless thing glide through the water and he knew that God made mistakes. Betty was Farringworth’s physical antithesis. A perfect example of God’s creativity gone awry.

Unlike many severely deformed people who had been left to rot in hospitals with so little mental stimulation that their brains had turned to oatmeal, Betty was a near genius. She was Farringworth’s secret weapon in the world of economy. A vast Intellect encased in a near useless overstuffed sack of flesh.

The young billionaire sat down by the edge of the pool and watched as the morbidly deformed “Walrus woman” that he’d rescued from a Russian freak show, undulated her girth through the water towards him. She had never been allowed much exercise in the circus save for her walrus tricks, balancing balls on her nose, catching fish in her mouth, and blowing horns. When his people discovered her, her circus handlers had her displayed in a shallow pool that Betty seldom entered for fear of drowning. Her inactivity had led to an excess of adipose tissue that put her weight well over 350lbs. Without arms or legs the extra fat gave her the appearance of giant water balloon.