Our Frail Blood by Peter Nathaniel Malae

Author:Peter Nathaniel Malae
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2013-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

16

Johnny Benedetto Capone

Share of the Rosy-Flush Clip-On

January 8, 1981

He told his father don’t listen to them, what the hell do they know.

It didn’t take long after he hung up the phone to go on a mental rant against his family. From top to bottom, his siblings had always held him down. He had no use for them and the so-called leader, the bright son. When Richmond had heard about Johnny’s business proposal, he’d actually had the nerve to contact their father from a free-market symposium led by successful Princeton alumni. Johnny couldn’t believe the guy’s balls. Wasn’t even out of his business diapers yet. Still parroting some four-eyed nerd’s ten-cent theories in the peapod of the classroom. Yet he thought he knew, didn’t he, knew enough to make a phone call to California as if he were some big-shot boss on the East Coast, toss in his ten-cent theory on the viability of the Rosy-Flush Clip-On. Wannabe Carnegie, Rockefeller fuckup. The bottom line was that he, Bitchmond, not only had no say in the deal but he had no firsthand knowledge about the device. What kind of a leader was that? His call was the ultimate example of bad business. Pointlessness. Waste.

If Bitchmond had called Johnny, Johnny would have said, “How would you know about this deal, big sister? Don’t you go pee-pee sitting down?”

Because it was genius, pure genius. Johnny was amazed it had taken this long for his innovative countrymen to invent the damned thing. They came up with condoms, Johnny thought, they legalized abortion. They came up with VHS tapes. This one was just obvious. How many times did you enter a public restroom only to U-turn at the urinal, your nostrils annihilated by the sour odor of unflushed piss and gobs of blood and God knows what else? Some of those urinals were brown as a muddy football field. How many times did you just walk out and find a park bush to hide behind to relieve yourself?

Too many damned times to count, thought Johnny.

The device would sell because it relied on the one thing everyone could rely on. Human weakness. In this case expressed through indifference, even indecency. That’s what guys like Richmond never thought about. Their understanding of humanity was confined to the chamber of the heart where blood flowed cleanly, a current of goodness rushed to the needy body of the world. Their business imagination stemmed directly from this. They thought that money was made by some savior device conceived of altruism, sometimes even love.

“That prick thinks he can reverse the apocalypse.”

Short of manufacturing difficulties, distribution issues, matters of the appropriation of capital, and all the standard stuff that went into doing good business, an area of expertise that Johnny had not yet been able to adequately impress upon the country, let alone Los Angeles, the functional premise of the Rosy-Flush Clip-On’s success was no stretch for human psychology. Its salable feature was the low level of responsibility men felt toward their fellow Man.

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