Chapter 2: Christian Hallard

Chapter 2: Christian Hallard

 

            As usual for a Friday night, the Lotus had a line to get in.  This didn’t really matter since Widow had an inside guy that would let her past the throngs of morons.  With purpose she shouldered her way past the plebeians to yells of protest.  Pulling her SmartTab from her purse she walked up to the bouncer.  “Hey Flex, I need to get in.  Meeting someone,” she said with a flashy grin of perma capped perfect white teeth.

            Daddy couldn’t have his plaything looking like trash and braces weren’t his thing.  Instead, at the age of 14 he took Widow in to have all her teeth pulled and replaced with perfect implants.  She remembers how they felt plastic and unnatural in her mouth as she ran her tongue over them for the first time.  “Don’t let those perfect new teeth drag any,” he would tell her.  Incidentally, this made it a lot easier on her to have the switch put in for her HTC/Google mirror shades.  Unfortunately, she still got migraines from time to time where they fucked up the implant in the bone structure around her eyes.  Or maybe she was just a whiney bitch.  She hadn’t decided on one or the other.

            “Hey Widow.  Hmm…I dunno if $50 is gonna to get you in, this is a pretty long line tonight.”  Flex said with a nearly toothless grin.  He looked like a drooling troll next to her perfect white smile.

            “Don’t fuck with me Flex, just get me in the fucking door, ok?  I’ve been fucked with enough tonight.”  She said, cocking her hips.

            “Give me a drag off that nasty shit you cook up,” Flex said again with a big grin.  Widow rolled her eyes and handed over her eCig.  Taking a big drag, Flex held it for a moment and then let out a big sigh and he exhaled.  He was ugly as a wrecked truck but he could handle his drugs.  “Alright, alright.  $50 will cut it for sure.  You lookin’ for some suit tonight?”

            Snapping back her eCig and wiping the tip on her jacket to get Flex’s spit off the end, she looked at Flex with some finality.  “You big dumb fucker.  You know my business is my own.”

            “You’re gonna bang him, aren’t you?”  Flex said with a stupid laugh that sounded exactly as intelligent as he looked.

            “Maybe, but he’ll never be as cute as you,” Widow said as she tugged once on Flex’s cauliflower ear and then sauntered into the Lotus.

            To put it honestly, the Lotus was a shit hole that had paraded itself as avante garde for the last 60 years.  And for some reason, the mentally deficient populace allowed them to continue their charade by showing up every weekend.  The floors were dirty right after a stiff cleaning, the bathrooms perpetually smelled of urinal cakes and shit, the drinks were watered down and overpriced, and the DJs spun mediocrity like it was a fucking web made by a gigantic Disney Corp spider.  The whole place made Widow’s skin crawl but this is where her contact had insisted on meeting her.  The eyes of at least 20 semi flaccid cocks followed her as she strode into the bar as if she had a couple of high caliber pistols strapped to her legs.

            Widow waited for several moments as the bartender muddled through his previous orders.  A Vodka Cran here, a whiskey and coke there, a generic shitty beer called a “domestic draft” that really came from a town on the other side of the country while Portland itself was the world capital of microbrew beers…the mediocrity of the plebes made Widow want to vomit.  “Hey, asshole!  Is your name Judge Crater, or what?  I’m fucking dry down here.”

            “You’ll shut your cock holster or you won’t get served at all.  Ya read me?”  Yelled the bartender.  Twenty more customers and five waitress orders later, the bartender came over to Widow.  With a face full of smiles and perfect chin length hair with far too much product he said, “Alright, what can I get you?”

            Widow looked him up and down.  She turned her lips up in an I Love Lucy kind of way at his toothy grin and crispy hair.  “You’re a fucking homo, aren’t you?  Never mind, doesn’t matter.  Absinthe Motivation made with real Monster and don’t give me that fake crap.  And throw in a shot of N2O for some bubbles and fun.”

            Mixing the drink, the bartender looked up at Widow, “Wow!  You’re kind of a bitch aren’t you?”  He said.

            “Don’t get cute, you cock gobbler.  Mix the fucking drink, graciously accept your TIP, and stop looking at me like I’m a piece of veal to share with your boyfriend.”

            “Whoa!  Yes ma’am!”  The bartender said with a laugh.  Finishing her drink he spit in it and mixed it in with the straw.  “That’s going to cost you a dollar extra.”

            Stirring her drink and taking a sip, Widow looked him in the eye, “Tastes like cum.  Stop blowing your boyfriend before you come to work.  But there is enough alcohol in here to kill even your faggot germs.”  She said as she tapped her SmartTab against the payment kiosk and keyed in a $20 gratuity.  “For that much, I expect another and you better fucking spit in it again or I’m going to be pissed,” she said as she turned and walked towards the dance floor.

            The dance floor was crowded with the usual group from the University of Portland.  A bunch of white kids that danced like they were having a seizure while doing too much meth and acting important because they were part of a fraternity from a school that nobody literally gave two shits about unless the stop light on Broadway turned red.  Widow resisted the urge to pull out her SmartTab and video a couple of morons grinding on a girl that had obviously hacked her ident to be in here and had no clue what she was doing.  It wasn’t that the girl was under aged that stopped her, it was that YouTube and FaceBook was inundated with whores doing exactly the same thing and the news was choked every day with the same girls claiming rape.  It was an absolute joke.

            Striding through the crowd of assholes, Widow walked up to the girl and grabbed her arm with one hand while holding her drink in the other.  “Have some goddamned respect for yourself, you little whore.”  She said, as she then turned and continued to the back corner tables of the dance floor.  “Goddamnit its darker than a stack of black cats back here.  Lowlight.”  She whispered.

Her sub auditory implant whispered in her ears with a light feminine voice and in perfect surround sound, “Enhancing.”

            The dark blobs turned into light green and she could see a grey figure in the corner wearing an obviously bad suit.  “Open | Bio: Christian Hallard,” Widow whispered.

            “Accessing.  Please wait,” said the metallic feminine voice in her ear.  “Thank you for using Suise Linux Penguin Search.  Christan Paul Hallard.  Son of Nethanial Johnathen Hallard of the Hallard Pharmaceuticals Corporation based in Beaverton, Oregon.  Age 40 years old, but appears 28 due to gene therapy.”  A readout and full color picture filled Widow’s HTC/Google mirror shades.  “Status: Living.  Tax Status: Single.  Do you require further information?”

            “No, that’s him.  Close browser.”  Widow said.

            “Closing.  Again, thank you for using Penguin Search, would you like us to update your SmartTab to Penguin Search 12.0 today?”

            “No goddamnit.  And quit spamming me with that shit.”

            “Upgrade cancelled.  If you would like to upgrade in the future, just say ‘Upgrade’ into your voice activated augmented reality browser.  Good day.”

            “Fuck I hate spam,” Widow said under her breath as she attempted to curb some of her confidence.  Placing her drink on the table, she looked at Christian Hallard and said, “’sup.”

            Squinting his eyes in a vain effort to see in the darkness, Christian looked up at Widow.  “Uhmm….can I help you?”

            “You better fucking be able to help me!”  Widow said with a laugh.  Then in a little girls voice with a pouty lip she said, “Or daddy-kins is going to be in deep motherfucking shit.”

            “SHHHH!  Be quiet!  Sit down!”  Christian said as he pulled Widow into the booth.

            “Oh Jeebus tits, chillax.  These drunken fucktards couldn’t understand what we’re talking about, let alone hear us over the tripe that the dipshit is spinning at speaker splitting levels.”  Widow said with a wave of her hand as she sipped on her straw.

            “Did you get it, like you said?”  Christian asked her nervously as he sipped on a soft drink and half nibbled on a cold plate of shitty French fries.

            “Of course I got it, n00b.  Right out of a recycle file and backed up with a good old fashioned dumpster dive to the Walmart/Gresham Metroplex Sprawl.  Fucking 2058 and the retards in corporate management still allow people like me to come in through a digital FAX line and then they print it out and shred it.  Who said print is dead?”  Widow asked as she sucked garbly air around her straw.  “Fucking shit.”  Grabbing a passing waitress by the arm she said, “Bring us two more Absinthe motivations, real Monster, shot of N2O.  Bring them fast and there’s a $20 spot for you personally.”

            Nodding, the waitress sauntered off.  Christian looked at Widow, “But I don’t drink,” he said.

            “Shut the fuck up with that shit.  You ARE drinking tonight.  You need one.  For fuck’s sake, look at you.  What’s with the Macy’s off the rack suit?  You’re a wreck man.”  Widow said as she pulled out her eCig pack.  She started to offer the other battery to Christian but remembered that she had given it up to the piggly cop.  ‘I hope he’s fucking high as shit and clawing his eyes out.”  She said under her breath.

            “Excuse me, what did you say?”  Christian said to her.

            “Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Take a hit of this and fucking relax, will you?”  Widow said as she passed her eCig to the visibly shaking Christian.  As if by magic, the waitress appeared with drinks as Christian started to cough.  “It’s not real smoke, stupid.  How much do I owe you?”  The waitress pulled a SmartTab from her pocket and showed the amount.  Widow keyed in an additional $20 and tapped her ‘Tab to hers to pay the amount.  Smiling, the waitress thanked her and walked off.

            “Ok, let’s get down to business, Mr. Hallard.  It seems Daddy’s company has produced an anti anxiety drug that the Gresham Metroplex has been adding to their water supply and has now caused twenty five people to go monkey shit insane.  The Metroplex is attempting to cover it up and daddy wants it to stay that way.  That’s why you contacted me when I put it online and you’re paying me to shut up.  Well, the amount isn’t cheap.”  Widow said as she ritualistically tipped a non-existent ash from her eCig.

            “No Miss Walker, you misunderstand.  I have the chemical code for a cure for that madness.”