Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

“Why is it your business?”

“Darling girl. I’m trying to protect you. Don’t you want to be protected?”

“Are you serious? In this relationship, who protects whom?”

Randy shrugged. “Knowledge is power. These people are out to get you.”

“Are you familiar with the word buzz kill ?”

“Military term?”

“No, sweetheart. It’s what people my age say after they’ve made love to someone and they’re lying in their arms thinking soft, wonderful, dreamy, lilac-scented thoughts, and suddenly their lover announces that his private investigator and personal executioner has learned that some stepbrother they’ve never met and don’t even care to know has been kicked out of a college that they got into once without their asshole father donating ten million dollars to it and that the evil stepmother now wants the asshole dad to give huge amounts of money to a corrupt U.S. president so that she can become an ambassador’s wife. And suddenly she’s gone from warm and fuzzy to cold and trembling. Buzz kill. It’s in the dictionary, under B. You could look it up.”

“Good word.” He rolled toward her. “Can we…”

“What?”

“Go back to the buzz?”

“Yes,” Cass said, rolling back to him, “I like that part.”

The first meeting of the Commission on Transitioning and Tax Alleviation was gaveled to order.

There were several dozen commissioners, roughly the number required to satisfy every special interest group clamoring to have “input” into the question of whether Americans should be allowed to kill themselves in return for a tax break.

ABBA was of course represented, as were various other Boomer advocate groups: the National Organization of Baby Boomers (NOBB); the Association for the Economic Enhancement of Persons Born Between 1946 and 1964 (AEEPBB46-64, one of the more unwieldy lobby acronyms, but still not an organization to be trifled with). Also present were representatives of the Mortuary Association of North America (MANA); the National Association of Lethal Injectionists (NALI); the Reverend Gideon Payne of SPERM; the Association of Floridian Assisted Living Facilities (AFALF); the American Association of Actuaries; the Botox Institute; the Organ Transplanters Network of North America (ONTNA); the National American Body Part Exchange Network (NABPEN); the American Golf Cart Manufacturers Association, which had formed a kind of alliance with the Segway Owners of America (also present); the American Association of Expensive Estate Attorneys; the Canadian Association of Providers of Cheap but Not Altogether Reliable Pharmaceuticals, an increasingly powerful voice in Washington, despite being based in Ottawa; Senator Randolph K. Jepperson; and Ms. Cassandra Devine, representing the eponymous CASSANDRA. The chairman had taken care to seat her at the opposite end of the semicircular dais from Gideon Payne.

“Mr. Chairman,” Gideon said as soon as Randy had gaveled the first meeting to order, “may I be recognized?”

“Yes, Reverend Payne.”

“I move that we commence our deliberations with a prayer.”

“Reverend Payne,” said the chair, “I’m sure that we are all in our own ways prayerful that we will conduct our hearing in a-”

“That being the case, then may I proceed to ask Almighty God’s blessing upon our work?”

Cass raised her hand. “Mr. Chairman?”

“Yes, Ms. Devine?”

“I second the motion.”

“You do?” There were puzzled looks all around.

“Yes. If the gentleman from SPERM is in need of spiritual assistance, who are we to deny it to him? If I’d done the things he’s done, I’d certainly want the Almighty’s forgiveness-”

“Mr. Chairman!” Gideon, now the color of a canned Harvard beet, shouted, “I did not come here to be insulted by someone who advocates mass murdering to solve a budgetary problem!”

The chair tapped his gavel wearily. “Reverend Payne, Ms. Devine. Please. We have a great deal to do.”

“I demand an apology,” Gideon said.

“I apologize,” Cassandra said. “It was insensitive of me to bring up Mr. Payne’s past in such an insensitive manner.”

“Mr. Chairman! I will not be insulted!”

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. TAP.

“Please .”

SPARKS FLY AT OPENING SESSION OF TRANSITION COMMISSION HEARING

Frank Cohane was in no good mood. His private jet couldn’t land at Tweed-New Haven Airport because the runway wasn’t long enough, so his pilot had to put down in Bridgeport, half an hour from Yale. With the upcoming roll-out of RIP-ware, he had a thousand better things to do. Make that a thousand and one.

This was, needless to say, Lisa’s idea. Idea? More of an order. Go out there and tell them if they don’t take Boyd back, you’re taking your ten million dollars back!

Frank Cohane, billionaire, wizard of technology, hotshot entrepreneur, yachtsman, friend of and adviser to the president of the United States, future secretary of the United States Treasury, did not enjoy being given commands by a former tennis pro, no matter how good the sex was.

Why had he remarried? What possessed him? If he’d only waited a little longer, his dick would no longer have been in charge.

The president of Yale greeted Frank in his office in Woodbridge Hall. He was a mild, pleasant man, an economist by training, amiable, polished, at ease in any situation. When two men at the top of their various professions meet, they don’t waste each other’s time inquiring about the other’s golf handicap.

“Frank,” the president said, “this isn’t a question of blame. In the end, it probably wasn’t fair to Boyd to expect that he would-that it would work out for him here. He’d probably be much better off-much happier-at some other college.”

Frank nodded. “He’d be happier smoking marijuana twenty-four hours a day, playing video games, and downloading porn. But that’s not why I’m here.”

The president frowned. “Don’t sell him short. He’s a good kid. I think he’s just overwhelmed here.”

“How much?”

“How much…what, Frank?”

“To reenroll him.”

“I don’t think that’s”-the president sighed-“the right approach.”

“Another ten. Done?”

The president stared, mouth open.

“Fifteen, then,” Frank said. He rose before the president could let out so much as a croak and gave him a California grin. He thrust out his hand. “It’ll be wired to you by noon. Great to see you. Keep up the terrific work. I like your office. Fabulous ceilings.” And with that he was out the door, leaving the president of Yale speechless and, really, helpless.

Frank wanted to get back to the plane and wheels up without spending another minute there. He felt as though he had just pulled off some sort of crime and was eager to flee. But he knew Lisa would demand to know if he’d seen Boyd, and there would be a scene if he hadn’t. So he made his way to Boyd’s room in Jonathan Edwards College, one of the prettier residential colleges at Yale. He found Boyd putting things into cardboard boxes.

“You can put that stuff back,” Frank said. “You’re reenrolled.”

Boyd gave him a perplexed look. “But they-”

“It’s done. You’re back in.”

Boyd gave no indication as to whether this was good news to him. But then he was not a very expressive young man.

“Boyd…,” Frank said, noticing a colorful tubular plastic object on the table, with a mouthpiece at one end and a bowlful of dark, impacted ash on the other. The center of the vessel contained a quantity of liquid that might have been-he guessed-crиme de menthe, through which several hundred cubic feet of smoke had been filtered. “What is that?”