Bruce Sterling - Distraction

The red-faced man bustled headlong into the restaurant, his furry house slippers slithering across the tiles. “HEY, Y’ALL!” he shouted, his voice booming like a kettledrum. “It’s ME!” He waved both arms, pajamas flying open to reveal a hairy belly. “Sorry for the mess! Offi-cial business! Y’ all relax! Ever’thing under control.”

“Hello, Governor!” someone shouted. “Hey, Huey!” yelled an-other diner, as if it were something he’d been longing to say all his life. The diners were all grinning suddenly, exchanging happy glances, skidding their chairs back, their faces alight. They were in luck. Life and color had entered their drab little lives.

“See what the boys in the back room’ll have!” screeched the Governor. “We’re gonna look after you folks real good tonight! Din-ner’s on me, everybody! All righty? Boozoo, you see to that! Right away.”

“Yessir,” said Boozoo, who was one of the bodyguards.

“Gimme a COFFEE!” boomed Huey. He was short, but he had shoulders like a linebacker. “Gimme a double coffee! It’s late, so put a shot of something in it. Gimme a demitasse. Hell, gimme a whole goddamn tasse. Somebody gonna get me two tasses? Do I have to wait all night? Goddamn, it smells good in here! You folks having a good time yet?”

There was a ragged yell of public approval.

“Y’all don’t mind me now,” screamed Huey, casually hitching his pajama bottoms. “Couldn’t get myself a decent meal in Baton Rouge, had to fly down here to take the edge off. Gotta take a big meeting tonight.” He strode unerringly into the depths of the restau-rant, approaching Oscar’s table like a battleship. He stopped short, looming suddenly before them, hands twitching, forehead dotted with sweat. “Clifton, gimme a chair.”

“Yessir,” said the remaining bodyguard. Clifton yanked a chair from a nearby table like a man picking up a breadstick, and deftly slid it beneath his boss’s rump.

Suddenly the three of them were sitting face-to-face. At close range the Governor’s head was like a full moon, swollen, glowing, and lightly cratered. “Hello, Etienne,” Greta said.

“Hallo, petite!” To Oscar’s intense annoyance, the two of them began speaking in rapid, idiomatic French.

Oscar glanced over to catch Fontenot’s eye. There was a two-volume lesson in good sense in Fontenot’s level gaze. Oscar looked away.

A waiter arrived on the trot with coffee, a tall glass, whipped cream, a shot of bourbon. “I’m starvin’,” Huey announced, in a new and much less public voice. “Nice mudbug you got there, son.”

Oscar nodded.

“I dote on mudbugs,” Huey said. “Gimme some butter dip.” He pulled his pajama sleeves up, reached out with nutcracker hands, and wrenched the tail from the carapace with a loud bursting of gristle and meat. He flexed the tail, everting a chunk of white steaming flesh. “ C’ est bon , son!” He stuffed it into his mouth, set his teeth, and tore. “That GOOD or what! Gonna BODY-SLAM them Boston lobsters! Bring me a menu. My Yankee friend the Soap Salesman here, he’s gotta order hisself somethin’. Tell the chef to put some hair on his chest.”

Their table was now densely crowded with waiters. They were materializing through the ranks of state cops, bringing water, cream, napkins, butter, hot bread, panniers of curdled sauce. They were thrilled to serve, jostling each other for the honor. One offered Oscar a fresh menu.

“Get this boy a jambalaya,” Huey commanded, waving the menu away with a flick of his dense red fingers. “Get him two shrimp jam-balayas. Big ol’ shrimp. We need some jumbo shrimp here, the Child Star looks mighty peaked. Girl, you gotta eat something more than them salads. Woman can’t live on chicken salad. Tell me somethiri’. You. Oscar. Man’s gotta eat , don’t he?”

“Yes, Governor,” Oscar said.

“This boy of yours ain’t eatin’!” Huey crushed the crawdad’s boiled red claw between his pinching thumbs. “Mr. Bombast. Mr. Architecture Boy. I cain’t have a thing like that on my conscience! Thinkin’ of him, and his pretty wife, just wasting away up north there on goddamn apple juice. It’s got me so I cain’t sleep nights!”

“I’m sorry to hear that you’re troubled, Your Excellency.”

“You tell your boy to stop frettin’ so much. You don’t see me neglectin’ life and limb because the common man can’t get a decent break up in Boston. We get Yankees like y’all down here all the time. They get a taste of the sweet life, and they forget all about your goddamn muddy water. Hungry Boy needs to lighten up.”

“He’ll eat when those soldiers eat, sir.”

Huey stared at him, chewing deliberately. “Well, you can tell him from me — you tell him tonight — that I’m gonna solve his little problem. I get his point. Point taken. He can put down his goddamn cameras and the apple juice, because I’m gonna do him a favor. I am taking proactive executive measures to resolve the gentleman’s infrastructural contretemps.”

“I’ll see to it that the Senator gets your message, sir.”

“You think I’m kidding, Mr. Valparaiso? You think I’m funning with you tonight?”

“I would never think that, Your Excellency.”

“That’s good. That’s real good. You know something? I loved your dad’s movies.” Huey turned to gaze over his shoulder. “WHAT’S WITH THE BAND?” he bellowed. “Are they DRUNK? Put the band on!”

The musicians rapidly reassembled and began playing a minuet. The Governor slurped a demitasse, then returned his attention to the monster crayfish and lit into it savagely. He snapped and devoured both claws, and then sucked hot spiced juice from its head with every appearance of satisfaction.

The waiters began laying out fresh platters of Cajun delicacies. Oscar examined the steaming feast. He had rarely felt less like eating.

“What about you now, darlin’?” Huey demanded sud-denly. “You’re not saying much tonight.”

Greta shook her head.

“You gotta know what the Soap Boy here is up to, right? Dougal is out, the FedDems are in, it’s s’posed to be somebody else’s pork now. What do you think? Nice little lab up on Route 128? Some kind of promise, I guess.”

“He doesn’t make many promises,” Greta murmured.

“He better not, because he can’t promise Boston beans. I got two boys in the Senate who can sit on his Senator’s neck from here to Sunday. I built that goddamn laboratory! Me ! I know what it’s worth. Up in Baton Rouge, we just put a new bill through the Ways and Means Committee. A big expansion for ‘Bio Bayou.’ Maybe my lab ain’t as big as yours, but it don’t need to be big, if you don’t have to feed every pork-eatin’ lawn jockey in the fifty states. I know the goddamn difference between neuroscience and them sons of bitches who are cataloging grasshoppers. You know I can tell the difference, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know, Etienne.”

“It’s a cryin’ shame, you fillin’ out them federal grants in quintu-plicate. A woman like you needs a free hand ! Let’s just say that you fancy workin’ on… blocking the uptake of methylspiropedirol in extrastriatal dopamine receptors. Might sound kinda funny to the layman, but that’s all the difference between sanity and total schizophre-nia. I defy you to find a single elected federal official who can even pronounce them words! But that’s the coming thing. Digital… biological… and now cognitive. Plain as the nose on my brain. You think we’re gonna sit here in Acadiana, as the only nonnative people in America ever subjected to forced ethnic cleansing, and watch a bunch of POINTY-HEADED FAT CATS tryin’ to OUT-THINK US? Out-goddamn-THINK us? In a pig’s eye, sister!”