The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror (3 page)

When they got back a month later, things were better in our house. She apologized, and I felt sure I had cured her of her addiction. There’s a lesson here. Hard-core food terrists look and talk and act just like you and me. They could be a friend, a relative, even your spouse. But deep down, in the blackness of their diseased souls, these poor creatures—like my wife—hunger for their drug of choice, and nothing you say or do can help them see the truth.

Other than that, it was a good time at the ATFF. I brought my partner Harry Green with me. When I got promoted, I made sure he got promoted too. Loyalty counts for something in this world, I figure. Harry was a friend. Together we led the way in busting illegal grow-ops in the D.C. area—from huge warehouses full of hydroponic vats growing beans and corn, wheat and rye, down to the grungy college student with a sun lamp and a couple of tomato plants in his closet. It didn’t matter. We busted them all.

It was around this time we got the first inkling of a growing menace in our society. Cross-border smuggling soared, flooding our streets with that vilest of drugs, the crack cocaine of food: polished white rice. How did they get it into the country? There were border checks, air-eating sniffer dogs at every port of entry, customs officials whose sole job was to look for and confiscate food. On top of it all, the sniffer dogs died of some unknown wasting disease. For a long time we weren’t quite sure what had happened. Then we realized: the dogs had been poisoned.

We detected a master hand at work. Behind all the grow-ops, the smuggling, even the network of Supper Clubs we’d been hearing about, stood one man: Fatso, the Godfather of Food. As head of the French Food Mafia,
la chôse notre,
Fatso controlled 120% of the black market. My partner and I worked feverishly to build a case against him, but time and time again that greasy mafioso slipped through our fingers.

What’s that? Supper Clubs are a network of exclusive food labs run by the mafia. Rich connoisseurs get high by candlelight on course after course of elaborately prepared illicit confection. I have to say, I don’t get it. Why do addicts pay so much money for this stuff? A calorie is a calorie, and in my book, they’re all bad. What’s more, these bizarre assemblies require formal dress—black tie for men, evening gowns for the women. Can someone please explain to me why wealthy food terrists wear tuxedos while consuming addictive caloric substances? Is powdered cleavage necessary for the consumption of these mind-warping and soul-destroying meals? Not to mention the fifteen-piece orchestra. Do heroin addicts insist on chamber music or light jazz in the dark garbage-lined alleys where they shoot up?

You don’t have an answer for that, do you? I didn’t think so.

How do I know all this? Because I busted a Supper Club once. Got a tipoff from a snitch. Sent a hundred food terrists to Fat Camp, including half a dozen Congressmen. Boy, that was rough. Finding out that not all our honorable gentlemen on Capitol Hill are pure air-eaters rattled my faith in our political system. Thankfully, I soon realized it was an isolated incident, and my enthusiasm for the American way of life—I mean, the Airitarian way of life—soon returned to its full measure.

So we barged into this Supper Club, Laxafiers drawn, my TWAT team bringing up the rear. (That’s Thin Weapons And Tactics, in case you were curious.) Rumor was Fatso himself would be present. The food terrists gasped when they saw us. The women shrieked. They tried to escape, and would have outrun us, too, what with the performance-enhancing calories they consume. We’d anticipated this, however, and blockaded the exits with ATFF fatty wagons.

I remember staring around that ballroom in shock. Lobsters stacked like firewood on every table, the floor littered with their crunchy husks. Buffet tables sagged under the weight of food. Calories on every plate but one.

Fatso’s.

He reclined in a corner, like some malevolent, clean-shaven
maître d’
in evening attire. Over his head hung a large tapestry of the Battle of Hunger Hill, one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War. Not a shot had been fired. Union forces had starved to death a Confederate garrison that refused to surrender. If only the rebels had known then what we know now about eating air.

In front of the Godfather of Food sat an empty plate. Not even a trace of a calorie. I bagged his plate and silverware as evidence. The lab found nothing. Next to the plate was a glass of water, untouched. An amused smile flickered across the man’s lips.

“Zo yoo air Agent Froleek,
monsieur,”
he said, his accent strong, like a smelly contraband Roquefort blue cheese.

He came to this country—and by “this country” I mean the US of Air, not France, even though I’m currently in France—fifteen years ago and still couldn’t speak English good. He had introduced
le hamburger à la Nancy Reagan
on the menu of his five-star restaurant here in Paris, only to have a mob of angry chefs attempt to lynch him. The State Department granted him asylum and—worse for us—citizenship. We couldn’t even deport the food trafficker.

His grin widened. “I haf ben lookeeng fore-ward to meeteeng yoo,
non?
Zay say yoo air zee best
agent
zee ATFF haz.”

“Tell it to the judge,” I said, and pulled out my handcuffs.

All around us my TWAT team fired laxative darts at stampeding fat people. Where the food terrists fell, an unusual perfume arose. Their poo-poo and pee-pee seeped through their evening clothes and mingled with the still-warm lobster casings. But Fatso seemed uninterested in the scents of justice. In a gesture of unconcern, he interlaced his fingers across his belly. Or tried to. They didn’t quite reach.

“Yoo air not a seek-air aft-air zee playzh-air,
mon ami,”
he said, his grin still natural and easy. “Zat I admi-air. Yoo air not like zeez uzz-airs.” He waved a hand at the diners in their finery, piled one upon the other like beached whales at a Japanese barbecue. “I seenk not,
non?”

“Save your breath,” I said, and snapped the handcuffs in his face. “Now get up.”

He rose slowly to his feet and held out his wrists. “Wat eez eet yoo dezi-air most een zees world, Agent Froleek?” he asked. “Eet eez not zee playzh-air. Eez eet,
peut-être,
pow-air? To make zees world a bett-air place?”

“My desire,” I said, “is to put you in Fat Camp.” I struggled to loop the cuffs around his wrists.

Fatso’s eyes twinkled with mocking amusement. The handcuffs would not click shut. “Now zat yoo haf cot mee,” he asked, “wat weel yoo doo?”

I slammed the cuffs back onto my belt. “I, along with three hundred million other Americans—I mean Airitarians—will celebrate your demise.” I drew my weapon. “Now don’t move.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, unmindful of the chaos around us. “Yoo seenk eet weel make a
difference?”
he asked. “Arresteeng mee, I want to say?”

I lifted up the back of his tuxedo jacket with the tip of my Laxafier. “Where is your tail? Your horns? Your cleft hooves?”

He laughed. “I am not zee deveel, Agent Froleek. I am a man, like yore-self. A man on a die-et. I try not to eat zo much, yoo know. But eet eez very deefeecoolt.”

“You dare compare yourself to me?” I stared him down, my face inches from his, until his laughter died. “No,” I said. “You are Satan Incarnate. You peddle your illegal substances to children. Children! I hope you never learn to eat air. I hope you starve to death in Fat Camp.”

Fatso looked at me for a long moment. He nodded. Almost sadly, it seemed. “I am sorree I laf,” he said. “Only zat yoo remind me of sum-wun I know.”

Suffice it to say, Fatso was out of jail twenty-four hours later. We gave him the standard dose of laxative when we booked him, but his bowels were as clean as a canister of brussel-sprout-flavored air after I’d finished with it.

I was there on the courthouse steps when we released him.

“Froleek!” he said, beaming at me in the spring sunshine. “Sank yoo for zees opportooneetee to meet yoo. I want to tell yoo, eef yoo and yore fameelee ev-air haf zee hung-air—”

“We’ll eat air,” I said. “Now get lost, Fatso.”

“Eef yoo ev-air change zee mind—”

“I won’t.”

He climbed into his limo. “Een zat case, I weesh yoo,
bon appetít.”

“
Crêpes suzette
and
beef bourgoignon
to you too,” I said hotly. “Whatever that means.” The limo pulled away from the curb. “You can’t run and you can’t hide either!” I shouted after him. “You’re too fat! You hear me? I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I ever do! Besides dying, that is.”

That was a year ago. I hadn’t busted a Supper Club since, much less found a crumb of evidence we could use against him. I could only dream of Thanksgiving.

Long since outlawed, Fatso still celebrated that unholy day on the usual Thursday in November, when all the mafia dons came to D.C. for their annual convention. What a coup it would be to interrupt that little shindig! I had been working the streets for months, just trying to find out the location of this year’s gathering, but no luck. My snitches didn’t know, or if they did, they weren’t telling.

But Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Air-Eating Happiness went on as usual. Fatso alone was not enough to stop us. Together we, as a nation, continued our unstoppable rise toward the final stage of human evolution, the destiny the Prophet ordained for us in
Food-Free At Last.

Then something happened, something so extraordinary that it threatened to bring down everything we built, evict the Prophet from the Thin House and return the food terrists to power. Looking back, I see the hand of the French Secret Service at every step.

It began with a murder.

Three

Not just any murder, either. A food dealer got whacked in LaOmelette Park, across the street from the Thin House. And get this: he had a whole pizza with him when he was killed. Can you imagine? A whole pizza? The street price of your basic pepperoni pie these days is what, close to half a million dollars?

Smarty pants. Maybe you can get a genuine Neapolitan just around the corner here in Paris for twenty Euro. That is
not
something to be proud of. For that matter, you should be ashamed that people walk the streets of this city openly consuming addictive caloric substances. Putting food in their mouths—and chewing it! Swallowing it, even! You might as well have sex in public!

Oh no. You poor thing. Are you really going to eat that? That croissant? Right here, in front of me? Let me ask you something, sir. Like the Prophet always says. How can I be thin if I’m surrounded by fat people like you?

But we can’t “live and let live,” as you put it. We’re the United States of Air. Every time a ferrner eats some food, our national security is threatened. Food terrist masterminds like yourself—well, we’ve got a special program to help cure your addiction. It’s called “extraordinary rendering.” They fly you to a special Fat Camp overseas, tie you to a long rotisserie pole and hold you over an open flame, until the fat melts off your body.

Help! Somebody help me! Get him off! By the Prophet’s useless colon! Now do you see? This is exactly the kind of behavior caused by food terrism. Anger. Rage. Uncontrollable emotions. All those calories make you crazy. And you can quit your squirming. My bodyguards are going to handcuff you to your chair. That’s all. It’s for your own good. I can’t let you hurt yourself anymore with that crescent-shaped piece of flaky, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth pastry. Corporal! Incinerate this. Make sure no one else suffers because of this Frenchie’s addiction.

Now. Where was I? A murder.

The murder that started it all.

It was three in the morning when the call came through.

“Get the Twinkie out of your ass and get down here, Frolick,” the voice growled.

That’s how Captain Brownnose Lickit talks. Same guy who recruited me. You remember. He got promoted.

The first time Cap made a crack about Twinkies, my heart nearly stopped. I thought he knew about my secret shame. But then I realized he talks that way to everyone. With Green it’s “Get the Slim Jim out of your ass.” With a couple of my colleagues it’s “Get the frozen lasagna out of your ass.” There’s even a new recruit, Cap says to him, “Get the whole wheat bread with tuna fish and olive tapenade out of your ass.” Cap’s just funny that way, I guess.

“I got time for breakfast, sir?” I asked.

My wife Chantal groaned and covered her head with a pillow. “That’s right, baby,” she said. “You go eat some air.”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Not now, Oxy,” I said. Her pet name is Oxy. Short for “oxygen.” The sweetest gas that man has ever tasted.

In my ear Cap was saying, “Roll your window down and munch some air while you drive. I’m calling Green now.”

“What we got, Cap? Is it bikers with chocolate chip cookies again?” I asked. “Or maybe students with some ramen noodles?”

“Neither. Got a murder for you.”

“Whoa,” I said. “We don’t do murders. You know that.”

“You do now. Park across the street from the Thin House. Agent Erpent will fill you in.”

I frowned in the darkness of our bedroom. “Don’t know any Erpent, sir. He ATFF?”

“Skinny Service. You know what that means.”

The two words made my heart go thud. “The SS?”

“Like I said. Move.”

I moved. I drank a glass of water and chewed some air while I got dressed. Two pairs of long underwear against the November chill, the midriffs cut away. Then my regulation khaki trench coat and white tape measure, as tight as it would go. Promotion in the ATFF, as at all levels of government these days, was based on waistline. Cap was a sixteen, the Under-Secretary for Food Enforcement was a twelve. The Prophet himself was rumored to be a ten.

Before I left, I sat down on the bed. I put a hand on Chantal’s shoulder, but she jerked away. “Make sure Nathan says his air prayers this morning before school, OK?”

“Go bust some food terrists,” she said in a tone of voice she’d been using more and more often these days. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“And don’t forget to send him off to school with a big air lunch, and an air snack in case he needs a little something extra in between meals.”