“That’s up to Harvey and Johan. Johan gets this place anyway, if Harvey wants he can leave him his, now it’s just up to Johan to make a goddamn profit out of his wild plants. Either way I can stop worrying about it now. You need to persuade Johan to have a son already, he’s getting a bit past it to be single.”
“I’ll try, George, I’ll try.” Johan’s mother wondered gloomily if she knew any amazing women that could distract Johan from his amazing wild plants.
The evening sunlight streamed into the airy bedroom from the horse paddock. Joe was packing for his trip to the Swartz ranch. Hilary wasn’t going.
“What are you going to do about the letter?” Hilary was perched on the lilac coverlet she currently favoured on the bed. She didn’t like being away from Joe at all, but it was only a week, and the baby, in addition to the horses, needed her.
“From Dwayne White? Nothing, we don’t need to do anything.”
“We don’t have to give a definitive ‘no’ at some point?”
Joe turned to look at her. He was dreading leaving Hilary for one second, never mind a week. “The only downside of getting that letter was that it means that we can’t ever float the company. We are stuck with a very successful company that we weren’t planning to sell anyway. It’s not a problem, sweetpea.”
“I can’t help feeling that he won’t leave it there.”
“He won’t do anything this week, he’s in Hawaii until September. Besides, Dwayne isn’t exactly Mr Hardcore businessman. His valuation was like totally massive, someone else will bite his hands off.”
“That’s what worries me. Why is a White so interested in the health food business?” Hilary was troubled.
“It’s nothing we have to worry about this week, babydoll.”
The driver called from the main room. Joe zipped his bag, hugged Hilary and made for the door.
“I’ll call you when I arrive.”
“OK.”
Annette looked at herself in the full length mirror with some satisfaction. Hold up stockings, new knickers, tight skirt. That should cover it. Sam was in town. She gave her hair an extra brush.
When she arrived at her office, she was unusually unpleasant to her receptionist before entering her office and checking that the key was in the lock. She checked her hair again and settled down to run through her duties for the day. Eleven am was the only appointment that mattered.
Sam arrived at the office looking particularly irritated. He smiled at the receptionist and walked straight in. Annette was at her desk.
“Hi Sam,” she pouted and rose from her seat to greet him, “Do sit down.” She licked her lips.
“Hello. I hear you’ve lost me $43,000. Then there is that tent at the festival. I am not happy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, that woman seemed crazy. Rambling on about all this academic bullshit. What would she want you for?” Kira, irate as usual, had made a video in fury at not being able to wave her artwork goodbye for no apparent reason.
“I said I’m not happy.” Sam cut across her sneering. “I think you had better fetch two towels and a glass of ice cubes, oh, and a cushion, and maybe some tape.” He did his best to look furious. “And for the record, I don’t know what she wants either, she keeps making these random films yelling at me for no reason. She can’t be a very good researcher if she doesn’t know about my rap sheet. Anyway, she’s a nobody. Who cares? Go and get what I asked for.”
Annette rose and slithered out of the office to fetch the items. With great satisfaction she stood in front of his chair and laid them out on the desk, enjoying the audible effects on Sam’s breathing of the skirt and slightly overtight underwear. She then followed her usual routine and locked the door.
“Give me the tape and then show me your hands.” He proceeded to tape her wrists together in front of her, then briskly removed her skirt and dropped her knickers to her knees. “Turn around and bend over.”
After examining her fabulous rear end, he gave her a resounding spanking, audible in the office outside, where the typists giggled and whispered to each other “At least she’ll be in a good mood today.” When it had reached the pleasing rosy pink he favoured and she had stopped flinching he figured that was probably satisfactory. He was getting a little bit bored with this, but she seemed to like it. He picked up the glass of ice and inserted two cubes of each into each orifice before pulling her panties back up and cutting the tape from her hands. She looked stricken. Over already?
“Put your skirt on and put the towel over the cushion on your chair before you sit down.” This was new, thought Annette. She didn’t protest, however, which she regretted later that day.
They talked business for a while, until Sam figured from her ability to sit still that the ice had melted. “You can get up now, and turn around.”
Annette dutifully showed him the large wet patch on the back of her skirt. “Either you find me very, very exciting, or you’ve peed your pants. Unbutton your blouse and show me your breasts.” Annette had realised by now she was not going to be able to stand up in the office today and would be the last to leave, but this was what floated her boat. Sam tried to look as bored and irritated as he could and tugged nastily at each nipple before getting up and moving towards the door. “Thanks, I’ll see you in six months.” He didn’t bother waiting for her to cover herself up before he unlocked the door and left the office, door as wide as Annette’s shocked eyes.
“Job done.” He flashed an angelic smile at the blushing typists as he left for his next appointment. He was more bothered about the tent than the $43k artwork. Kira was a nobody anyway, it didn’t matter about upsetting a nobody, and ‘can’t lose what you never had’ was his personal mantra as far as the valuation of the artwork was concerned. Nicely primed for his next appointment with Sharifa the tantric goddess, he bounced down the stairs and out into the street.
Zeb’s helicopter landed at the back of the Swartz ranch, too far away from the house but within sight of the lodges. He used his mobile to dial Malcolm and got the pilot to carry his bags to his new home for the month. Looking over at the house, he saw the preparations for the Diabetes Festival and frowned. “Is there some sort of event going on?”
“It’s not until next week but yes, a diabetes meeting.” Malcolm was a little nervous. Zeb was a big name, big spending client, for the next month anyway.
“Interesting, mind if I sit in?”
Phew, thought Malcolm. ”No, no, we’d be honoured, Mr Toledo.”
“Great. Call me Zeb.”
He looked around his lodge house. No cooker? No TV? No computer? What on earth was he going to do for the next month? This would drive him crazy. There weren’t even any books worth reading on the small bookshelf. All divine hippy nonsense.
He had brought a couple of zingy bestsellers, but they wouldn’t keep him going long at his usual speed reading rate. “Uh, Malcolm, what is it that I am expected to actually do for the next month?”
“Relax?” offered Malcolm, with a slight sense of amusement. “You can help in the garden, walk, meditate, and we do offer classes here, but no stress. If you want to hand your phone in, we’re happy to take it.”
“Whoah this is hardass relaxation, Malcolm, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Malcolm laughed at this admission of potential failure from the great Zeb.
Peter was now fully back on his feet and bike. Lovely was very happy. He was losing the weight he had gained rather slowly, but he could not enjoy the eleven to twelve hour cycling days he had been used to before the accident. So it was that a still rather beefy Peter addressed the fans to explain what had happened and announce his new book.
It initially went down like a lead balloon. Peter hadn’t considered that he was now going to appeal to completely different people. Instead of ‘angry young vegans with nothing better to do than soil sports clothes’, he was now in the ‘hopeless yet determined people who had actually had a life’ category. Whilst he got many rousing cheers from his old fans, the numbers gradually dwindled on his videos. Lovely would have to take the lead with the old crowd whilst he searched for the new ones. Peter put Lovely’s coaching rates up and his own down and started yet another youtube channel for his inspirational recovery videos. This met with some small success, but so many people had known Peter from his previous incarnation, running down every other health spokesperson with his insistence on mammoth quantities of fruit and exercise, that he ran into a lot of opposition.
Lovely was still not happy with her increased waistline, and so the new videos were somewhat more sedate. She was happy to be considered more valuable, by Peter and fans alike, but she still wasn’t all that happy with the bikini videos. She pondered the difficulty of losing three inches once you had them, and looked around for a solution. Peter certainly wasn’t the devil-may-care driven cyclist he used to be. She decided that the answer was to enter a race herself. It wasn’t as if they were going to have children, she reasoned, Peter had very strong views about population control, she might as well devote herself to sport.
Kira had now released her novel, too. ‘The Raw Scandal’ was not an instant success, but judicious reinvestment in marketing ensured that at least in terms of numbers, it was sufficiently successful to attract a large publishing house for her next release. Kira was not rich, but she was at least now defined as something, even if it was a scandalmongering author.
She was in London, at a publishing event in a horribly large function room, in her best brown velvet dress, on the phone to Aldous.
“I really hate this. I wish you had come. All these positively hideous and very annoying authors keep expecting me to want to have brief incompetent sex with them. I don’t think they get out much. I wouldn’t mind but they all seem to want to pretend they are terribly erudite and witty. I wish I hadn’t put quite as much sex in the book now.”
“Ha ha, the sooner you are in demand the better. Have you found a publisher for the academic book yet?” Aldous knew from experience that ‘All these authors’ probably consisted of two being a bit over friendly.
“Are you kidding? All these people care about is numbers. I’ll need to punt a few more scandals before I can get someone to take on an academic book. This is frankly embarrassing.”
“Hurry up and get rich and famous.”
“I’ll do my very best. Oh cool, David Mitchell is here. He really is erudite and witty, and he won’t want any sex. Speak to you in a bit, I’ll go and see if I can chat him up.”
A ping on her phone told her something had sold from her embroidery store online. She stitched whilst she wrote. It didn’t bring in much, but she felt more in balance working that way. She was working on an ebook about embroidery, not really for the money so much as the sheep farmers.
By the end of the evening, Kira had managed to secure herself a guest spot on a popular comedy panel show by amusing a young up and coming type from a fairly minor TV channel. The travelling up and down from Scotland wasn’t really her idea of fun, but she supposed, the publicity would be OK.
Gary had arrived. Really arrived. He was on the Swartz ranch with some of his favourite Raw food authors. Sam was due to arrive in a day or two, fresh in from a hot-tubbing speaking tour of Canada. Zinca was floating around looking diaphanous and lovely, Joe was collapsed in a hammock in the garden of the newly refurbished outbuilding they had been allocated for the week. A sea of tents stretched into the distance on Malcolm’s land. There was, somewhat incongruously, a smell of cooking coming from some of the newbies’ tents. Johan patted Gary on the back.
“So I hear you are quite the tantra connoisseur these days.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Malcolm wants me to discuss that though. I probably have to talk about weight loss and discovering your spirituality again.”
“I don’t know, Malcolm loves his yoga. I’m not sure what I’m doing here, to be honest.”
“I think we’re supposed to put on classes and stuff as well as the speeches. Encourage them to take an interest, basically. We should probably draw up a rota or something.”
“I guess he will come and talk to us later.”
“I guess.”
Malcolm appeared, quite late and flustered from the number of questions he had been asked by the demanding diabetics. Quite a few long term raw-food-recovered diabetics had come just to show support for the speakers, so there had been a lot of socialising to do in addition to making sure they all had what they needed. It was going to be a long week.
“OK we’ve set you up a marquee if you want to organise anything in there, and there is a stage built for the main event with loudspeakers. Have you got everything you need until it kicks off tomorrow?” They did.
“Right if you can decide amongst yourselves what you want to do in the marquee or maybe set up stalls or something. Really whatever you want to contribute is fine. We will be doing our usual classes during the day and they have a list of those and they can check availability in the marquee as and when you want to do anything. Sam, as you probably know will be flying in from Canada in a couple of days too. We have a big rally planned for Friday’s finale, and you will all want to do something for that. It’s the afternoon, so you need to figure out what order you want to go in. I’ll call back in this evening after the gratitude meal.”
“OK”
Dwayne pulled up at the lush Oceanside property he called home and pulled two of the four bags from the trunk of the car. He was tired and the month long parking at the airport had cost a fortune.
Grumpily he went inside, dumped the bags and grabbed the enormous pile of mail from the cage at the side of the door. Throwing the ‘duds’ to one side, he found what he was looking for.
He was now the proud owner of another very large health company. Siren Shout foods was his. No word from Joe, he really wanted that one, too. He wondered if he should call? No, too keen. It was a good offer, he couldn’t be seen to want it too badly.
Anastasia and Dmitri were now living in the first building of their mystic village. Destined to be the main public area, it was a bit large for daily living, but they had everything they needed. They were sleeping on the backstage in the theatre, curtained off from draughts. Anastasia couldn’t help feeling a little lonely away from the town, but she was proud of what they had managed so far, and a few of her customers had built small huts in the surrounding fields to spend weekends with them, which could only be a good sign. They were renting them small plots to garden and put temporary shelters up. She and her sister would prepare enormous lunches for them in the future cafe, which brought in enough cash to get by, whilst they sought investors and help for the next building on the plans, their hostel.
Both money and the schedule were tight, but they were confident they could persuade enough people, both online and off, to provide the cash they needed, and they were, for the most part, happy with progress so far. Anastasia had had another two trips abroad, and several ‘gifts’ from her many male admirers had helped keep them positive about the future despite a fairly low bank balance. If Anastasia had any doubts, she didn’t let Dmitri know about it.
Somewhere in Ottawa, Sam was sharing another hot tub with some friends after another successful day on his speaking tour. He had wowed these fans with a heroic speech about organic Canadian farming and keeping your dreams alive. He was feeling a little jaded. He looked around the large tub, and realised he had already had sex with five out of the six other occupants on previous visits. He enjoyed his evening without bothering to close on any deals that evening, and went to look at the internet.
The usual abuse from Peter’s fans, the usual hero worship from his own fans, his number one fan and self-proclaimed ‘Redwoodess’, Claire, who Kira had always thought was Sam himself because she was so unspeakably dull, was as usual inexorably boring the pants off the devotees on his facebook page: ‘Sam does not like soy. Sam likes to take his tea hot, black and without sugar.’ There was nothing for him to do at all. He made up some victorious sounding sentences for his status updates, and decided to go to bed with some chocolate. Then he saw an advert for ‘The Raw Scandal’ and decided to buy it. In only an hour, he was more incensed than he had ever remembered being in his life. Enraged, he checked the sales figures. Ignoring the time, he called his brother, Domenic, the lawyer, to discuss action.
“This bitch says I have satyriasis! This book is full of lurid scenes of me and random women. She says I need black willow and a camphor locket.”
“Do we really have to discuss this now? It’s late, and it must be even later for you. What is satyriasis?” Domenic yawned.
“Some sort of old fashioned European term for sex addiction. I looked it up.”
“I think you should maybe just take that one on the chin, Sam. No such thing as bad publicity. Has she at any point suggested that you’re bad at your job or that your products are bad?”
“No.”
“Well it doesn’t affect your income then, unless you include upwards. Do you really want to be suing some fat, lonely and according to you, repulsively ugly woman for writing a slightly racy novel that isn’t even definitely about you? She probably doesn’t have anything for you to sue her for anyway. Does she actually have any money Sam? I think I should also point out to you as your lawyer that she did try to talk to you for months before she did it.” Domenic had watched a few of Kira’s videos, and felt quite sorry for her trying to deal with his brother. He knew from experience how difficult that could be.
“I want you to hurt her. I don’t care how. A letter or something. Why should I talk to her? She’s a nobody.”
“If she’s a nobody there’s nothing to sue her for. Give it up Sam. Have you actually finished the book yet?”
“No.”
“Let me know how it ends. I’m going back to sleep. Try not to get too uptight, now, won’t you?” Domenic had always been led to believe that his brother’s diet, meditation and general regime was supposed to render him laid back. He wondered when that was going to happen. “What’s the name of the book again? I must get a copy for mom.” He smiled at his brothers puffing at the other end of the phone.
Thanks to Peter’s extensive experience and relentless coaching, Lovely had won her first endurance race. She was happy. Peter was also happy, and managed to quell the inevitable feelings of slight jealousy with feelings of intense pride. To make things even better, she almost had her waist back.
Peter’s inspirational channel was starting to do a little better thanks to some heartfelt ranting, and his book started to sell on his new website. He had learned to drive, and was had started speaking tours in hospitals. He was offered a place coaching for the Paralympics. They had now financially recovered from the accident as a result and moved nearer the city, to a bigger house with a pool.
“It almost makes me feel a bit religious, Lovely. I think we’re going to be OK.” Peter was preparing to take Lovely to see a new cycling shop.
Lovely smiled. No more vomiting required either. She was getting leaner and leaner thanks to her training programme, and the fans seemed to enjoy the increased bikini video output without Peter. She put on a dress, for a change, and they went shopping.
Sam arrived at Malcolm’s in a small plane he had chartered. He walked the other five miles across the scrub land to the main house. He had finished Kira’s book. He wasn’t quite so angry now, but he was going to see if he could persuade the other ‘characters’ to sue. He tried to figure out why she had done it, and couldn’t understand it at all. Some people were obsessed with fame, he guessed. He did not, of course, consider that his being polite for five minutes could have averted the entire situation.
Directed into the building housing the rest of the speakers, who were taking a break from mingling amongst the campers, he walked in, spreading his arms in characteristic star mode.
“I’m here!” The others looked up, drowsy from the heat. “Good to see you, Sam.”
Sam thought he would wake them up a bit “Have you seen this?” He waved his Kindle.
“Oh that, yeah.” Joe yawned “I don’t get to do anything very exciting really, do I? You seem to have all the fun in it. I’ve never played tennis though, I don’t know where she got that from.”
“What is it?” Johan squinted at the cover page. “Wow that’s one big piece of embroidery.”