Grey by Jon Armstrong Read Free Book Online

at father. His hairdresser bent at the waist. When he straightened he smiled, rolled his eyes up in his amber lenses, and said, "I'm just so fucking smart, aren't I!"
    Father laughed. "Oh yeah, tell the world! Got to let them know. So, they're working hard to sell our stupid assets just so we can keep going."
    "My extreme pleasure!" said Xavid.
    "Meanwhile," continued Father, turning back to Joelene and me, "we look like the world's biggest idiots—like we can't even wipe our own asses— and instead of mkg and your dumb-ass Nora schmora from bitchora for the product show, we got tons of empty dick."
    "Stop talking about her!" I told him.
    "It was categorically not her fault," added Joelene. "Nor has mkg been implicated in any way. The family commission has exonerated them."
    Because it was poignant, fitting, and guaranteed to annoy Father, I quoted copy from Pure H . " Her sadness replenished ."
    Father slowly turned toward Joelene. "The day he started worshiping that stupid Pure Ham magazine, was the worse ever!"
    " Pure H ," I corrected.
    "No," he said, with a laugh, "the H has to stand for something. So maybe it's Pure Hell or Pure Halitosis!" Turning to Ken and Xavid, he asked, "You hear that? Pure Halitosis!"
    "Funny!" exclaimed Ken.
    "Witty," agreed Xavid.
    I thought about getting up and leaving since this was pointless.
    "Whatever one's fashion tastes," began Joelene, " Pure H is a remarkable fusion of influences with a brilliant and elegant sense of individuality."
    "Holy fuck!" he bellowed. "Shut up and hold onto your dicks!" Eying Joelene, he added, "Hold 'em real tight!" She stared back coldly, and it occurred to me that she had come to loathe him just as much as me. "We've got someone else." He winked at me. "Someone scorching hot!"
    I sat there and stared at him. It was like my brain couldn't make sense of the light and sound emanating from him. And even when he handed me a screen, I couldn't interpret the image.
    "Her name is Elle Kez," he said. "She's the granddaughter of Konrad Kez, the real estate gazillionaire. He died in that stupid blimp accident and his company went under, but she's all blue blood and all. Anyway, Xavid knows Chesterfield, her uncle and he's go experimental security-code model. It uses some micro-organic rrna chip thingy that is supposed to be super-stable and . . . then . . . it . . . um . . . " He threw his hands into the air and turned to his men. "It's real complicated and shit, right guys!"
    "Experimental!" called Xavid.
    "That's it! Anyway," he continued, "we can demo it at the product show and keep our biggest customers, like BrainBrain, slt, iip-2, and lettt from leaving. They're all calling me and freaked out because they're afraid a freeboot is going to jump out of their closet and shoot their balls." Father laughed sadly. "It's not easy to talk them off the ledge, but this will help. We need something new. You with me?"
    "Sir," said Joelene, "this seems quite rash. Are you sure?"
    With his upper lip curled, he asked, "Am I sure? I don't know! But we can't show any weakness now because we're just about dead." He turned to his crew to scoff at Joelene. "The guy who runs Ribo-Kool is Chesterfield Kez, and he's lard." He let out a breath. "Look," he began again, "even if Ribo-Kool's thing is a big ol' green turd, it's going to save us for the product show."
    The photo he had handed me finally turned into a discernable image. It was a girl who looked about my age. She might have been pretty, except that she was terribly over-done. She had fake, gold hair, green eyes with heavy pink mascara, and lips covered with thick, violet paint. Her nose was pointy and pinched, as if she were wearing an invisible clothespin on the end. Worse, she was laughing and had her mouth so wide open you could see a half-inch of gum above her white teeth, a glistening, golden, made-up tongue, and a uvula hanging in back. Dressed in a fluttering mass of polka dots, and what looked like a white