Oliver Benjamin
immune to its charms.
“Colin, please stop hugging me,” Sprout groaned, “I’m trying to
serve the coffee.”
“Mmm. Sorry. Can I play with somebody?” he asked.
“Go play with yourself,” she said, as kindly as possible.
“It’s no fun,” he whined.
“You’re not doing it right,” she laughed, “Can someone please
show Colin how to play with himself?”
“I will,” the Crystal Ship manager said. But Sprout had been
joking and the manager hadn’t. Before anyone could object, she
grabbed the extremely affectionate young man by the hand and
pulled him inside to a more private place. Considering Colin’s mental
state one might consider this statutory rape, but no one stopped her.
They hoped it might help him escape this difficult second childhood.
Bennie looked down into his cup. “What the hell you put in this
stuff?” he said.
“Pure love,” said Roy.
Yak was helping out too. He was keeping watch. Watching was
what he did best. Mostly, he was watching Sprout.
No one at Undergrounds heard the news. They had been
insulated from the outside world those few hours. It was the police
who informed them, a group of detectives and a riot squad and a
fistful of search warrants.
“You guys here for the coffee?” Bennie said brightly.
Without anything else to go on, the members of the high-profile anti-
Biddenbrooks organization were immediately identified, collectively,
as suspects number one. Having announced to the world that they
sought nothing less than the destruction of the megamonopolith,
their faces might as well have been warpainted. Their big fiesta
seemed nothing more than a sinister celebration and the media
showed up in full force to report on the sacrificial bonfire. Alex Bard
was among the most vociferous in disparaging them.
“It is all too easy to point our fingers down the long corridor of
history, to say once again how idealism tends to overstep ethics,” he
said into the camera. “But point we must. If indeed these are the
culprits of today’s tragic attack, then they join the ranks of savage
ideologues the world over. Only where those fanatics have normally
fought for religion or territory, these have chosen to wage war over
something ridiculous as different brands of coffee. Yet it could be a
333
 |
 |
 |
 |