Free Mangled Meat by Edward Lee Page A

day. His underlings ran the booth while he wandered the showroom, pretending to be checking out the competition’s new products— pretending because his mind was surely elsewhere. He wended through the crowd, oblivious and still shaken; he scarcely even noticed the human eye-candy that some booths sported: stunningly beautiful women in bikinis and high-heels, handing out brochures. Additionally, when competitors he knew personally bid him a greeting he could only wave back or nod in the dimmest fog. Flood felt like a single bug in a haystack.
    Walking around for several hours didn’t clear his head as he’d hoped. I should have called the police immediately, or the security desk—something, anything. But what did I do instead? I stood there and jerked off because I haven’t been able to come since Felicity left me. I witnessed a girl getting beaten, and instead of doing anything about it...I JERKED OFF! What the hell is WRONG with me? It didn’t matter that it was just a few belly-punches; it was brutal and it was sick. It was a criminal assault. The situation had been easy enough to figure, nearly a cliche: “Leon” was obviously the pimp, “Oscar” the lieutenant, and Jinny the prostitute. She’d been holding out on Leon, working on the side behind his back—a supreme no-no in the field. Flood’s id kicked in a plea to rationalize: Okay, yeah, sure, she got beat up, but that happens to dishonest whores. It’s part of the turf and she knows it. She’s a whore, and prostitution is illegal. Leon and the bald guy are panderers, and pandering is illegal. They’re all a bunch of criminals, so why do I feel guilty? I’M not a criminal. If they saw someone beating ME up, would THEY call the police? Fat chance. So I’m not gonna let myself feel like shit because a girl who had it coming to her got her ass kicked...
    Flood felt better for all of five minutes, then slumped again when he admitted the falsehood.
    By three, the convention center had become a hive; he thought of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the only difference being that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange didn’t have voluptuous women in bikinis prancing about. That voluptuousness, though, only depressed him more. It was for every one else but...
    Not for me. Never for me .
    Last night was an anomaly; he knew he was back to square one. His penis felt like a flap of numb skin in his trousers.
    I don’t need to be here, he realized. Let the young guys have at it. I think I’ll go get drunk.
    “How’s business, fellas?” he asked his sales staff back at his company’s booth.
    “We’re kicking ass,” said Farris, their Tom Cruise lookalike technical rep, who then held up a clipboard, “and taking names.”
    “Good work,” Flood said, impressed by the list of possible buyers. “You guys are hauling them in.”
    The sales rep, Nathans, looked more like John Candy than Cruise. He glanced up just as a competitor’s ad girl walked by: hourglass figure bursting out of a vermillion string bikini, the top of which hoisted what must have been 38 double-D’s. A big Colegate grin flashed behind the sign she held, advertizing network-user docking stations for palmtop computers. The sign read DOCK WITH ME!
    “We’re hauling them in, all right, boss,” Nathans remarked. “But I wouldn’t mind if we had a couple ad-girls like that.”
    “We don’t need tits and ass to sell our peripherals,” Flood said. “Ours work, theirs don’t.”
    “Yeah, but still...”
    The leering grins of both of the younger men followed the sultry woman. From behind, the tanned rump jiggled, cellulite-free, each perfect buttock totally nude, divided only by a t-back strap.
    “How’d you like to plug something into her USB, huh, Nathans?” Farris asked under his breath.
    Nathans made a ludicrous pelvic gesture. “Yeah, seven and a half gigs of RAM.”
    Everything is sex, came Flood’s dismal concession. At least he was conditioned now—yes, last