Moby Dx: A Novel of Silicon Valley - Volume 1 Max Ebb

Chapter 23 The Pigout

Max’s clothes had been laundered and were in a neat pile beside his bed when he awoke late in the afternoon. He began reflecting on Number One’s bored-vixen role-playing and how it had tantalized him, and left him satisfied like no other whoring he’d ever had. D2 had picked up the tab for them. The girls were a gift, but they were worth a tip. He knew that. The thought had nagged at him, but he wanted the gift to be pure, unadulterated by any payments. He’d feigned sleep when they got up to leave, just so he wouldn’t have to tip them.

His friends had returned from the Hotel Holiday and were back at the pickup spot when Max went there at six. They exchanged notes, and Max promised to see what he could do about getting them a room at the casino hotel. After he retrieved his chips from the cage, Wendy appeared as if she’d been notified. She comped the boys a room to share, not in the Macau Golden Group, but nice enough, and then she shooed them away. She showed Max to a private clubroom off the main hall. There were only three tables, with minimums of 1,500, 5,000, and 10,000 HKD. All tables were being played. Along the wall were food platters from the hotel’s best restaurants, an open bar, and pretty girls to look at. Private bathrooms obviated the last reason a guest might ever need to leave.

Sitting at the 1,500 HKD table, Max was immediately, stunningly aggressive. Aggressive and on fire. Of course he’d been brought there to lose, but luck was against the casino that night. D2 came by, congratulating him, and encouraging him to bet more, bet more. He moved to the 5,000 HKD table. D2 let his friends in to watch as he weathered downpours and soaked up sunshine, as the hours rolled by, as strains built up. Through the hot and the not, he amassed a pile of chips worth about 100,000 HKD, and he was no longer tired, he was drained. He begged to be released from the table, his head full of percentages and odds and some simple tricks that might not qualify as card counting. His two numbered girls were back in his suite and they tried to service him again, but he was crisped. The girlfriend experience they’d offered the night before was not working for him the second time around, and he wanted sleep, only sleep. They asked for a tip anyway, and he handed them about 200 HKD each in chips. Taking it from him, One dug her fingernails so deep into his palm that he squealed, “Fuck me!” as it gushed red. “You pig,” she whispered loudly at him. From the bedside, she swept a handful of chips into her little purse, the other did the same, and they left Max to tend to his wounds.

The flight home wasn’t until the next day. He was worn out, deep in the black, and wanted to go home. The other boys from nus were still enjoying the largesse the casino had shown them. What they hadn’t spent on girls they had lost at the tables. A couple more meals, a night’s sleep, and they’d be at the airport the next day. Max decided to cash his chips in and play out the clock with them, but D2 had other ideas.

Max had done too well and she needed to recover some of his winnings. She spoke to him beside the cashier. “I have gift fo you,” and she handed him keys to a larger suite. “And this time, girrs speak Engrish. You have nice dinner in city and come back lata,” she said.

It would be convenient, Dear Reader, if it had been the Year of the Pig, because then some of the stranger aspects of what I’m about to tell you would seem slightly more plausible. Alas, it was not, and if I told you otherwise, it would be too easy to prove false. Then you’d question the veracity of other elements of this tale, and possibly reject it, reject even me as only fiction.

Max warmed to the girls waiting for him. Wendy’s idea of “speak Engrish” was not exactly his, but they could converse in more monosyllables than “You pig!” and that was an improvement.

“Handsome boy. I no fuck you. Rike fucking girr.”

“You know girr rike this?” Max said to her, putting pulling her hand between his legs.

“I stirr no fuck you. You sprit me rike a chicken!”

 He let them lead him on a tour of some of the Chinese New Year decorations, and then they found him a magnificent Portuguese-French restaurant. As they headed back to the hotel, they wandered into a district where the celebratory decorations were sold, along with masks and costumes for the celebrants. In a costumery there were animal masks for all the creatures of the Chinese Zodiac, pig included, and not just masks, but also tails smooth and furry, long and short.

When the hotel guards walked into his room much later that evening, their excuse was that guests had called Hotel Security, complaining of loud and insistent animal-like squealing emanating from Max’s suite. They claimed to have knocked and entered only after receiving no answer. Max—wearing his pig mask and nothing else but a squiggly tail drooping down the crack of his ass—was backed against one of the luxurious fabric-covered walls and was being fellated by a goatess on her knees, naked except for a brassiere. Beside her, leaning in to the wall, stood Mrs. Pig, in whose bush Max seemed to have lost most of his right hand, and in his ass she seemed to have lost most of her left. Squealing and shouting, oblivious to everything around them, they might have missed the knocking on the door, if indeed the guards did knock.

Their appearance took the edge off of Max’s enjoyment, and soon the girls had dressed and left for the night.

When Max went to retrieve his chips and exchange them for cash the next morning, D2 was there again. She was holding a videocassette. In perfect English that chilled and caught him by surprise, she said, “It’s very embarrassing, Mr. Frood.”

“You’re blackmailing me?”

“Too many people know. They’ll say what they want. It’s not my decision.”

“All of it?”

“I can buy silence for you and leave you 4,000 HKD, just like you came in with. It’s a good deal for you. You had girls, you had food, drinks, the hotel, fun. It’s a good deal for you!”

“Fuck me,” and he slid his chips to her.

She took no offense, but she pushed them back to him. “You go play and lose them all. It will look better to your friends.” Then she slid over the tape and 4,000 HKD. Max returned to his members-only room and sat at the 10,000 HKD table. There he promptly went broke before his friends and their open mouths. Shrugging it off, he told them as they walked to the Hotel Lisboa to meet up with the nus ladies, “Heh, it was a good deal for me. I had girls. I had food and drinks. I had the hotel. I had fun. And I still have what I came in with. It was a good deal for me!”

Denouement

On the shuttle to the airport, the girls carried bags full of animal masks to give as gifts to their friends back home, and they talked non-stop about the visual and culinary delights, the art, the shopping, and how they had altogether avoided the cesspool of smut they’d been expecting. They felt indebted to the boys for persuading them to come along and witness the celebration. As a gesture of gratitude, they gave masks to the three boys, delivering a little speech with each. On Max they placed the mask of the metal pig, a zodiacal variant that comes around every sixty years. The mask was indistinguishable from the one he’d been wearing when the hotel guards walked in.

“Max,” one of the girls said, “you are metal pig. According to legend, he runs from discord, has an army of friends, and loves big parties. Metal pig is virtuous, loves justice, and is always straightforward with words. He is sometimes stubborn, but always persistent and self-reliant. We see at least half of that in you, Max.” Then, to the sounds of clapping and laughter, and while embracing him, she placed the mask of metal pig on him. Max himself was speechless.