Chocolate Chocolate Moons (7 page)

Breezy leans in closer but can’t hear.

“When do you want us to leave?” Pause. “Done deal.” He lies down on the bed, smiles, and breathes in the Menthe.

Breezy gets off the bed and holds up a black lacy gown. “Bet it was Rocket, right?”

“Right.”

Breezy turns her back and pretends to stick her finger down her throat. “You know, my father and Rocket go way back. They used to be partners. But Rocket cheated him out of the patent for his orange-blossom spray in Las Venus, and they had a bitter falling-out. Did I tell you this?”

“Yeah, like every time Rocket’s name comes up. Enough, okay? Your father got rich from that spray. Who would have thought that human flatulence contained vitamin C? And who would have guessed it could be converted into a spray with an orange-blossom smell? Your dad still holds all the patents, right?”

Breezy walks over to a night table. She opens a drawer, takes out a pink can that says “Decibel Point’s One and Only Orange Blossom,” and squirts Pluto. “Need I say more?”

“How is Daddy Decibel Point? Has he lost any weight? Or does he still stand out like a zero in a room full of ones?”

Breezy thinks and then based on past conversations decides to say nothing.

“Well, he’s a brilliant chemist,” Pluto continues. “Four-flame winner of the Bunsen Burner prize, but I’m not surprised that Congress Drugs keeps him under wraps and behind the scenes. People would go nuts if they learned that a fatty invented Congress Drugs’ Freedom Plan foods, which he never ate himself. And his new anti-flavonoid project at Congress Drugs? The one he told us about at the Milky Way Bar last week? What’s that all about?”

“Beats me,” Breezy sighs.

Breezy picks up a nail file and begins to move it back and forth against her thumb. Pluto grabs it from her hand.

Breezy yanks the nail file back. “Could we talk about something else, Pluto?”

He rubs her back and spots her latest tattoo, a rose with wings. “I like the new tattoo. Matches the rose one on your pinky.” He takes her hand and puts her pinky in his mouth, runs his tongue around it. Sucks and sucks.

Breezy pulls her hand away.

“Look, Rocket has a job for us at the Culinary Institute in Pharaoh City. It will be nice to get out of New Chicago for a weekend. Besides, this is too easy and too good to pass up.”

Breezy’s eyes widen. Her lips purse. “Really, the Culinary? What does he want us to do?”

“Rocket just wants us to have a good time. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Well, as a matter of fact…”

“We can eat at the Quantum Corner Café and shop at the Flying Saucer Supermarket. What could be better?”

“Yeah, right. And what else?”

“You’re always putting Rocket down. I’m telling you, he wants us to enjoy ourselves. Have a little vacation. All expenses paid.”

“So far ‘all expenses paid’ is the only interesting part.”

“We’ll say we’re on our honeymoon, stay in the honeymoon suite, and take the tour of the Candy Universe. Consider it honeymoon practice.”

“That’s a new one. What do you think we’ve been doing, Pluto?”

“Look, what Rocket wants takes one brain cell and one moment.”

Pluto lets the idea marinate. He draws her close and smells her neck.

“Breezy, sweetheart, it’s a piece of cake.”

“Yeah, but with how many calories?”

10

I
LOVE MY
job as a security guard at the Culinary Institute. My partner who was assigned to me is a woman named Jersey. She is also my best friend. Like Flo and practically everyone else on Mars, Jersey is much taller and thinner than I am. We’re nicknamed “Mutt and Jeff” after an ancient cartoon strip where one character was short and fat and the other tall and thin.

When Jersey was a child, she was in a bad accident. The only detail she will reveal is: “I lived.” Doctors implanted transparent liquid crystals into her eyes. Now she can see from microscopic to telescopic and from ultraviolet to infrared. They look like two sharp targets. She wears pink-tinted glasses to soften them. Her indifference to food is so great that I always wonder why she works at the Culinary Institute, a place where open kitchens send irresistible aromas of fresh bread, grilled meats and melted chocolate wafting through the halls.

The Culinary Institute is beautiful. Major food companies and wealthy individuals donate millions to have their names put on its jeweled glass walls. There are eight public restaurants, linked to the main building by Tuscan-like bridges. Glittering chandeliers imported from Venice on Venus, make every building sparkle including the Flying Saucer supermarket famous for produce like the poton, a hybrid of a potato and an onion that grow in long ovals because of Mars’ lower gravity than Earth.

The Candy Universe is the Culinary Institute’s most popular building. It’s where Chocolate Moons are made. The inside combines the design of a Las Venus casino with Sephora, an ancient store on Earth that sold makeup. Clients entering Sephora were lured to the right by indecision and lured to the left by insecurity contributing to the sales of the most esoteric brands, most of which now reside in Mars’s Makeup Hall of Fame. It took me over a month to learn how to walk from front to back without swaying or straying. Jersey insists I still haven’t mastered the chocolate area.

As soon as school groups roll through the triple arches of the Culinary, few look at the fields of golden wheat, orange groves, apple orchards and rose gardens that produce seven-inch blooms. Nor do they think about the bioengineering that created a paradise of greenery on a planet of dry rock and sand. All anyone is thinking of is being the first to spot the red-and-white-striped stack that spews holographs of swirling candy and start chanting, “Candy! Candy! Chocolate Moons!”

Victor and Hugo are among thirty children, age ten, who are in excellent health when they go on their class trip that starts at Mars Disney and ends at the Candy Universe. No one fidgets and no one punches his neighbor as they pile off the bus and make two straight lines. They march erect and silent into the lobby of the Candy Universe, take one deep chocolate-scented breath, and swoon as they wait for the large bronze door in front of them to open.

Then a trumpet fanfares. A blinding white light makes eyes snap shut. And when the doors open, more shapes and colors than anyone has ever seen ripple and reflect into infinity.

A giant wheel of fortune made of jelly beans plays carnival music. Chandeliers sway beneath pink clouds of cotton candy, swings twist on taffy ropes, a chocolate malted river circles the room and ends in a bubbling waterfall, and everywhere transparent cases overflow with mouthwatering, tooth-cracking, jaw-breaking, calorie-and cholesterol-loaded pleasures.

I watch some tilt their heads, mouths open, tongues extended—trying to catch freeze-dried ice cream flakes falling from the ceiling. But, just as I begin to salivate when hands are loaded with lychee-ginger jam, raspberry-apple, cinnamon caramel, butter cream, and for the brave, habanera pepper chocolates, Jersey says, “The head of the security office wants one of us outside to monitor broccoli. I monitored sugars and spices last week, so it’s your turn.”

I exit the building vexed that Jersey, who doesn’t appreciate the subtleties between sugars, spices, and everything nice and, say liver, has that job while I get broccoli.

When I finish and go back inside, I see students and teachers in an opiate state blind to anything but the taste of candy. Then I see Victor and Hugo wander behind the Chocolate Moons counter, reach in, take a handful and down them. A moment later they sway forward, fall to the ground, and shake in a convulsive seizure unconscious in the fetal position, their backs swollen like hunchbacks.

The boys are flown to Pharaoh Medical Center, a place that has very tight security and holds no fond memories for me. Before I was let up to see a sick friend, I had to register. A stone faced woman asked so many questions I was so stressed that I ate all the chips and dips reserved for dying patients’ last meals out of the vending machines.

Five minutes later Flo calls from Tasters and Spitters Inc. and screams, “You never should have taken that job as a security guard! Remember when I told you I felt sick after sampling their Tootsie Targets? And I didn’t even swallow!”

“How did you get the news so fast?”

“Everything has been ringing off the hook. Believe me, the tongue knows.”

“What that’s supposed to mean?”

“Gotta run. Bye.”
Click.

Jersey grabs my arm and yanks me toward the other security guards, who buzz with theories but don’t have a clue. I need some quiet so I find a seat away from them. Then I remove my i-Chip from my side pocket, and type
therapies tried on comatose patients. Sensory Dynamics
pops up. I read the article and wave Jersey over. “I think I found something.”

“Sweet or savory?”

“This isn’t about food. Not everything I find interesting is about food.”

Jersey tilts her head, gives me one of her looks, and then begins straightening the buttons on her jacket.

“Ever hear of Sensory Dynamics, new offbeat therapies that have been tried on comatose patients?”

“No. So, what happens?” Jersey stops fiddling with her buttons and puts a hand on a hip, signaling
sounds like a blind alley to me, so make it short.

“Patients are bombarded with cultural stimuli. The most successful have been those who use French culture. The patient’s room is filled with French perfume while Edith Piaf’s voice wafts over linguists arguing about the pronunciation of French vowels. The cancan song plays when bedpans are emptied.”

“You’re kidding. I love the cancan.”

“No one understands why this works faster than the smell of chicken soup and the sounds of Jewish mothers wailing guilt-loaded philosophical questions like
Have a nice day? Who am I to have a nice day?
And
Why will it be any different than any other day?

“All that is known is that upon awakening, 49 percent of the patients’ first words are
I’ll have a glass of white wine,
another 49 percent ask for red, and 2 percent said they should of had a V16.”

“I wonder what they’ll say when the V32 hits the stores.”

“Stay focused, Jersey.”

“When they tried the paradigm of an Irish pub, three people who regained consciousness immediately asked for a beer.”

“What kind of beer? Light beer is healthier.”

I ignore the question. “All the products that they used had a very short expiration date, which made testing difficult. I wonder if they were organic. Organic products have no preservatives therefore a shorter shelf life. That could be significant.”

“I love preservatives, because I can’t throw anything out.”

“Well, I can’t go further without a scientist’s advice. Your husband, Trenton, is a brilliant scientist and he works with the Mars Yard forensics. Mind if I ask him?”

“Just give a call.”

I check the time. “We better collect the security cubes and start our scans. Detective Lamont Blackberry and his partner, Sid Seedless, are on their way.”

11

L
AMONT AND
S
ID
are half-brothers, related to the wealthy Melon family. They are descended from the branch whose mothers belonged to the Flying Cantaloupes, a circus group known for girls who had “big ones.”