Warren Murphy: American Obsession

"Give me a dozen beef tacos with double guacamole," Chiz said. Then he thought better of it. "No, wait a minute. Hold the tacos. I'll take a couple of quarts of that, instead."

The taco bender seemed irritated as he used what little was left of his pencil's eraser on the order pad.

Looking up, he said, "Que quieres frijoles, menudo?"

"No. Dime la grasa."

Chiz's unusual request confounded the seasoned counterman.

"Yeah, you heard me right," Chiz assured him. "I want the deep-fry oil. Pour it in a couple of those jumbo drink cups. Make them to go."

Puma scowled at her husband when he returned, practically empty-handed. "Where's the tacos? You were supposed to get tacos!" She wasn't just disappointed; she was furious. And venting her fury, she seized handfuls of the back seat's gray Corinthian leather, which parted under the points of her long red fingernails like so much pebble-grained tissue paper.

Chiz would never have admitted to actually being afraid of his better half. Such a thing ran counter to his image, public and self. After all, it was he who had carved out a celluloid career by battling armies of terrorists, mutant zombies, hair-shirt barbarians, and it was he who had whipped their evil butts, all by his lonesome. But of late, whenever Chiz considered thwarting Puma's expressed wishes, he thought about it long and hard.

He handed her one of the big cups. "Try this instead."

Puma tried to sip through the straw and got nowhere-it was already soundly plugged with congealed grease. She took off the plastic lid, cracked the white film of beef fat with a long nail and daintily sipped at the brownish picadillo-spiced oil underneath.

The sip quickly became a gulp.

"I figured, why not cut to the chase?" Chiz told her as he raised his own cup to his lips.

They were licking away their fry-oil mustaches as the limo climbed the 405 on-ramp, heading for Hollywood. Two exits from Sunset Boulevard, they passed a freeway billboard advertising Chiz's new action flick. The movie's title, Big Bore, was supposed to refer to weapon caliber, as in elephant gun. That no one had caught the unfortunate double entendre until after the picture was in distribution was a prime example of Murphy's Law.

The billboard's airbrush painting showed a threetimes-life-size Chiz stripped to the waist with a massive chromed Magnum revolver braced on his inner thigh. The yard-long, vent-rib barrel was raised in a highly suggestive fashion. Across the top of the billboard, huge letters proclaimed Tougher ...Bigger... Harder. Beneath the banner, a row of infinitely smaller type credited the review quote to Nigel Plimsole, of the Agoura Weekly Advertiser.

As the billboard zoomed by, Chiz couldn't help but recall the strain of getting into shape for Big Bore. Prior to the filming, he'd spent six hateful months with personal trainers and holistic-diet consultants. It wasn't just vanity that drove him to buff out for his movie roles. His fans expected it of him. His fans and his producers. When your bare ass was up there on the screen, twenty feet tall, you'd better be able to bounce quarters off it, baby.

The problem was, Chiz Graham was slipping into his mid-thirties. Forget about bulking up-it took more and more effort just to keep in shape what muscle he had. Between films, he had taken to hiding his burgeoning layer of flab under loose shirts and baggy slacks.

No more.

A shit-eating grin spread over the movie star's internationally recognized, square-chinned mug. His flab-hiding days were done. Tonight all he was wearing above the waist was a custom-tailored red leather vest with extralarge armholes designed to showcase his deeply tanned and monumental biceps and lats. Thanks to a miracle of modern science, without having lifted so much as a finger, Chiz was totally megabuffed. His body fat was under ten percent. Muscle mass up by thirty percent. Strength more than doubled. And it all came from a two-by-two-inch adhesive patch. Which, as far as he was concerned, was worth twice its million-dollar-a-year price tag.

Chiz wasn't wearing the drug-dispensing bandage stuck on his bum, where it would certainly have shown through the skintight seat of his red cycling shorts. He'd applied it below the shorts's waistband in front, where it blended nicely into the gridwork of his abs. Puma wore her patch as high as possible on the inside of her right thigh.

The dark-haired screen queen sat there, alternately flexing her arms, transfixed by the pop of her own sleek, powerful muscles. After the quart of warm taco grease, Chiz could almost see his own biceps growing in size, too. He felt the pleasure-pain burn in the core of the muscle, like he'd just done 150 reps of dumbbell curls.

A few minutes later, the limo pulled up in front of the Venom Club. On the marquee, a pink-and-green neon rattler coiled and struck, coiled and struck every few seconds. At Tinseltown's newest in spot, it was said, the creme de la creme could let their hair down among their own kind. The assembled paparazzi and crowds of fans on the sidewalk were kept behind a velvet-rope cordon by a phalanx of bouncers.

The nightclub's ponytailed head of security opened the limo door for them. In his trademark black leather trench coat, leather pants and cowboy boots, Pismo Pete quickly ushered Chiz and Puma through the entrance, beneath a huge banner that said Oxfam Benefit Gala.

Inside on an elevated stage, under a huge rotating glitter ball, tall, thin and beautiful people boogied to retro seventies rock. The main body of clubgoers surrounded the long buffet table in the center of the room. Chiz and Puma said their hellos, waving, air kissing cheeks, moving quickly through the mob to the front of the food line.

Without bothering to pick up a plate or utensils, Puma plucked a big sticky gob of blue cheese from the top of a spinach-salad mountain. She only had it in her mouth a second before she spewed it back over the heaped greenery. "What was that crap?" she gasped, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

A guy in a white uniform and chef's hat scurried over at once. "It's Virtual Gorgonzola," he told her. "A cheese-flavored tofu product. Not to worry. It's completely fat free, like everything else we're serving here tonight. So, just enjoy..."

But Puma's attention-and her anger-had already wandered.

Chiz looked over his shoulder and saw whom his wife was staring at with such focused malice. Vindaloo.

The tall, blond, former world-class model turned movie actress was Puma's only real competition for global box-office supremacy. The baby-smooth Swede had piled her plate high with a rich-looking chocolate dessert. When Vindaloo smiled at Puma, there was no-fat mousse cake all over her perfect white teeth.

Right off, Chiz knew there was going to be trouble.

Chapter 4

"The illustrious Emperor beckons," Chiun announced as the scrambled link to CURE's headquarters continued to chirp. The Reigning Master of Sinanju made no move to get up to answer the phone himself, even though he was closer to it. With his words, Chiun was just pointing out the existence of the irritating noise, on the off chance that his one and only pupil had somehow failed to notice.

From decades of experience, Remo knew there was no purpose served by standing fast. His butt cast in concrete, Chiun wasn't going to budge from the La-Z-Boy, even if the phone rang all week. Remo crossed the smoky room and turned on the speaker phone. "What's up, Smitty?"

Without preamble, a very distraught Dr. Harold W. Smith said, "Turn your television to 'Friday Night Football.'"

"Exalted One," Chiun warbled, "it is already our privilege to be witnessing that glorious contest."

"Then you saw what just happened to the Maine quarterback?"

"If you ask me," Remo said, "it was a little over-the-top, even for sweeps month."