Rubber Babes

2. Keppelhoffer's Diagnosis

2

Keppelhoffer's Diagnosis

I did not pick my assistant, nor did she pick me. When I made the national news by being hired at age twenty-three as the youngest director of a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation, she came with the package. My landing the job was easier than you might think, and Felicia and I were able to buy the house in Simi largely on the strength of my new employment contract. My career as a radio deejay had flamed out, but I'd gained name recognition among potential donors in showbiz. Then, too, megastar Monica LaMonica owed me a big favor, and she had more than a little pull with the organization.

Before I accepted the job I was cautioned by the executive recruiter that the previous director's assistant would have to be retained. No reason was given. Her name was Valerie Valhalla. "Call me Vivi," she had said tersely on my first day, seven months ago. "Not Val. And no jokes — not Val –Val and nothing about Teutonic Gods or pneumatics." (If she had only known how much trouble pneumatics had gotten me into in a former life!)

So I called her Vivi, faithfully. And then, unfaithfully.

My predecessor, one Sidney D. Engelbreit, an emeritus professor of humanities with an impressive string of letters after his name, had passed away quite unexpectedly at fifty-six. Before I had met Vivi and could only imagine her from a job description, I pictured her as a library-science type, both prudish and prunish, highly efficient, dedicated to her work life (and to him, probably), and having an attitude so sour as to make her virtually unemployable elsewhere. Nasty, knowledgeable, and fiercely loyal. Why else would it be mandatory to keep her on?

So when I actually laid eyes on darling Vivi — my vision — not only were my preconceived notions dispelled at a glance, but also I immediately surmised the reason for poor Sid's demise: I bet the putz expired while trying in vain to satisfy her physical appetites.

Her sinewy legs looked to be as long as some women are tall. And on a shorter woman, her ample breasts and buttocks would make the person appear unattractively chunky. But hung on a frame of her stature, the result was Wonder Woman. More ego-piercing than a speeding bullet. Able to leap onto tall erections at a single bound.

In the base language used by males and then only in the restricted safety of the locker room, Vivi's legs went all the way up to her ass. Now, if you know the expression, you know it's enough said. Those gams were remarkable and shapely, inviting the beholder to imagine rapturous entwinement, as the subtle, sinewy python embraces the ardent, blissfully heedless missionary.

And crushes him to death!

But all legs go from the cracks in the floor to the crack in the peach, and therein lies the difference that defies description. Her legs did indeed stretch all the way up there, to that sweet summit proudly shoved back at the slightest provocative angle, the main reason God took centuries of intelligent design to create the high-heeled shoe.

As she bent over the coffee machine that morning after my fateful tiff with Felicia, I calculated vivacious Vivi was approximately a foot taller than me. Which meant any face-time with her would put my nose in her cleavage, my mouth at the level of her n*****s. Polite conversation would be awkward, I realized, unless we were both seated. But in view of the marital discord that had resulted from my recent inept attempts to make small talk with Felicia, any impediment to conversation with a woman seemed at that moment to be a big plus.

I can't speak. I have nothing to say but oh so much to express! Just let me grab and squeeze, and we'll see what comes up.

She made me want to be dominated. I suppose I was looking for some sadistic maternal attention, considering the coolness and distance of my relationship with my own mother. Even as I toyed with thoughts of groping VV as she towered over me, I had no intention of being unfaithful to Felicia. I was simply refusing to be in unrealistic denial of my spontaneous urges.

This is healthy. This is normal. It's what males do.

But, as that astute observer of human nature Hannibal Lecter said to the quivering Clarice Starling, we begin to covet what we see every day, especially if we think we can't have it.

Vivi was bright, she was efficient, and — to her great credit — she was no temptress. Her work attitude was consistently positive, and I figured she'd be eminently employable anywhere. So I was back to being mystified about why she had to stay. Granted, the Keppelhoffer Foundation paid her handsomely, and it was clear she'd always been given full responsibility to perform her functions any way she saw fit. But most days the place was a crashing bore. There were just the two of us, the phones, her computer, the high-volume copier, and the fax machine. (Back then, it was hands off computers for me, for reasons that will become clear.) The office was light and airy, decorated French Empire to convey conservatism and wealth. In short, the office was about as quiet, unexciting, and faux-classy as a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon's waiting room. Vivi and I waited for the money to come in via mail, courier, or electronic deposit, then we waited some more while our board of directors decided how to spend it. As administrators, we kept almost none of it — just enough to pay our salaries, which were more than generous for what we did, and expenses like rent and the occasional unneeded cleaning of the Persian carpets and the watered-silk drapes.

My job was to solicit donations — big ones starting in the six figures. It didn't take me long to realize this is exactly the right profession for a recently faded celebrity. You know who is still hot, who is making deals, who might be looking for a fat write-off with a vanity boost. I didn't need academic qualifications to make solicitation phone calls, just the same nerve and lack of taste that had made me such a success behaving like an i***t on the radio.

I could ask for million bucks with a straight face, and I had no problem with that. The fact that I understood nothing at all about the nature of this disease mattered not at all. (In fact, I got the distinct impression no one wanted to discuss it.)

And it didn't hurt that Monica LaMonica, once the most famous pair of t**s in Hollywood, had put me up for the job right before her own sudden, but not unplanned, demise. I was one of a very few people on the planet who knew it was only a highly realistic rubber replica of her that lay in quiet repose under the ground at Forest Lawn — and that a reconstituted Louise Jones had retired happily to a triple-wide mobile home in rural Tennessee with her not-so-secret lover, a failed politician who now goes by the name of Thelma. (The homage implicit in their new first names was apt enough, except I hoped they had no plans to go over a cliff together.)

So I had something on Monica, and, because I had come out of my hacker's retirement long enough to craft a new digital identity for her, she had more than sufficient reason to see I was rewarded. Back when her Nielsens were as huge as her boobs on The Edge of Endlessness, she'd probably been the biggest single contributor to the crusade to cure Keppelhoffer's. She'd exercised her pull to get me a good job after our pretend relationship was over, and, as I'd done with her many times, I happily let myself be pulled and went along for the ride.

And the fact I'd been expelled from Exeter didn't seem to matter much in my current job situation. (My criminal record was sealed because I was seventeen when I got into serious trouble for saving Audrey's sweet ass from the credit-card companies.)

For a time, I'd been a celebrity with a following, and apparently those credentials were all the foundation's anonymous selection committee cared about. I didn't have to understand the intricacies of nonprofit corporations. We had more than enough handsome attorneys and accountants on handsomer retainers. And I didn't even need any special knowledge of medical research. Our board of directors included deans of medical science, who sat cheek-by-jowl with captains of the biotech industry. Because there were so many prestigious names on our letterhead, the list had to be set in five-point type just to fit on the page. (An outside firm had built us a website showing this list of hotshots, a mission statement, and not much more — not even a description of the syndrome we were supposedly out to conquer.)

No, all they required of me was to rake in the bucks. Vivi accounted for the revenue, and then she disbursed it to whatever research hospital or 501(c)(3) our board judged to be most deserving at the time. (Mind you, I was never involved in these decisions, but I had no doubt experienced hands were steering the ship.)

Taking the long view, I continued to fall upward, careerwise — from hacker to car jockey to phony gigolo to deejay to big-charity pimp. The Peter Principle, a management theory hatched when I was in diapers, holds that a manager gets promoted until he reaches one rung on the corporate ladder above his level of competence. I'd always assumed the eponymous peter referred to the male member and the principle applied mainly to aspiring princes of commerce. Historically, women had f****d their way to the top. These days they're still fuckers, often having to show they're meaner than any man to get ahead. All things being equal, which obviously they're not, talented women have to follow a parallel but separate path — only to be abruptly stopped in their ascent by the Glass Ceiling, which is typically installed one rung lower than the level to which the female candidate might reasonably aspire, given her experience, level of education, and zeal for demonstrably self-sacrificing overwork and/or sucking middle-aged c**k.

Is that why Vivi has no inclination to sell her talents elsewhere? I wondered.

Indeed, my healthy curiosity often got me into some decidedly unhealthy situations. For example, I suppose it would have been natural to ask the selection committee:

What is Keppelhoffer's Syndrome? And why should we care?

However, I didn't, assuming I would not understand an answer containing multisyllabic biochemical and pharmacological jargon, including some terms invented only last week by researchers working on the edge of whatever it was that was bleeding.

But the question bothered me like a pebble in a hiking boot, and one day while Vivi was slaving over a hot copier, I came up behind her.

"Do you mind if I ask a question?"

"Personal or professional?" she said without looking up.

"Oh, professional — technical, even."

"I live to serve, you know that," she said as she flashed a thousand-Watt smile in my direction.

I paused for some necessary throat clearing, then blurted out: "Just what is Keppelhoffer's anyway?"

Her calm expression remained unchanged. "It has something to do with the p***s," she said. I waited for more, but that was the end of it.

"Some form of ED?"

She shrugged, innocent as a schoolgirl, it seemed to me.

"You're not curious?" I asked.

"Why should I be?" she said simply.

In my tormented mind now swirled a shitstorm of worrisome complications.

What exactly is it about the p***s? What have I gotten myself into? And why don't you care? Do you fear for your job? Who could possibly mind if you asked? Or don't you like p*****s? (That might explain her imperturbable air of aloofness.)

"All I know is the drug companies are very interested," she said quietly, and she spun on her heel and walked briskly back to her desk with her sheaf of copies.

I suddenly felt like the new kid at school, standing wet and naked and without a trace of pubic hair in the middle of the locker room, with no one caring to point out where they keep the towels.

Quite coincidentally, that evening over a plate of spaghetti Alfredo, Felicia asked, "What is Keppelhoffer's anyway?"

"It's technical" was all I could think to say and took a huge gulp of Pinot Grigio.

I would have to find out. I'd had plenty of practice looking (and acting) like an i***t, but I didn't want to blow this classy gig just because I didn't know why millions (maybe billions) of dollars were desperately needed to fix a few unlucky d***s.

And besides, there had to be some reason Vivi was so dedicated to her work, especially since she apparently had no clue as to its ultimate purpose.

Or perhaps she was playing me for a fool.

Nah.