marble expanse of Duncan’s desk, watching his boss finger a floret carved from a Japanese radish. Behind him in the distance, through the polarized glass, Elliot could see the ghostly architecture of the nation’s capital glimmering in the twilight.
“Sorry to keep you so late,” Duncan said, nudging a plate of seaweed across the sleek desk with the lacquered tip of his chopsticks. “You sure you won’t join me?”
“No thanks, Duncan.” Elliot eyed the mound of dark, twiglike shapes, glistening in a muddy dressing and dotted with seeds. “I’m going out for dinner.”
“Gotta watch it in restaurants, Elliot. Never eat in them myself. Not unless I know the owners.”
“That’s very . . . careful of you.”
“Can’t be too careful these days. Never know where your food is coming from.” He lifted a ruffled leaf of lettuce to his lips. “Food is sacred, Elliot. Food is life.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Elliot watched his boss chew the leaf for what seemed like a very long time. Duncan was the junior partner in the firm. Wiley, the senior partner, was an old-school PR man. Duncan was the young eccentric, the wild card, the one Wiley counted on to think out of the box.
“Just got back from a raw retreat in Maui,” Duncan said when he finally swallowed. “Fantastic. All the food was exquisitely uncooked, but the power locked in those legumes! The purity! The unadulterated energy! It was life altering.” He bowed over a slice of avocado, then speared it with his chopsticks. “You really should go. I’ll have Sedona send you the contacts.”
“That would be just great.”
“It clears the head,” Duncan added. “Balances the yang. Equilibrium is the key, Elliot. It enables one to accept what the Universe offers.”
Elliot was trying to look open and enthusiastic. He didn’t quite know how to interpret the general direction the conversation was taking, never mind predict when Duncan would get to the point. The man had two methods, one a smooth shift into a higher gear, the other a sudden, clutchless grind into reverse.
“I’ve got some rather fortuitous news, Elliot.”
Elliot braced while Duncan took a sip of frothy green tea from a ceramic bowl. He watched his employer’s tongue flick quickly against the rough-glazed edge. Duncan had a large collection of historically important raku tea bowls, about which Elliot had learned much during his five-year tenure at Duncan & Wiley. Duncan liked to recount the provenance of each bowl, just before dropping a bomb. The most recent had been the merger of D&W with a prominent Japanese public relations firm, but this news Elliot had greeted with genuine enthusiasm. He’d always had a thing for Asia. He started dreaming of a transfer to Tokyo, maybe a meditation pond of his own.
“. . . a divisional reorganization,” Duncan was saying. “We’re beefing up our Cynaco task force in response to all the recent protests. What we had in mind was developing a proactive management strategy geared toward their NuLife Potato line.”
Elliot watched as Duncan rotated the tea bowl slowly in his hands, studying its pocks and careful imperfections. He tried to focus on his equilibrium, to quell the panic that was rising in his gut. He had a bad feeling.
“And this is where it gets uncanny, Elliot. We were casting about for the right talent for the job, when someone from Human Resources remembered that you had taught school in Idaho once upon a time. So we had her pull your file, and there it was. Liberty Falls. As I said to the guys from Cynaco, who would have thought that we’d have right here, on staff in D.C., someone who actually hailed from the Idaho heartland! Who’d actually lived among the People of the Potatoes. Who’d taught their children.”
“Duncan,” Elliot interrupted, “I appreciate your thinking of me, but I was only there for a year. . . .”
Duncan held up his hand. “A year? Or two? Or ten? A single minute, even? It’s all the same.”
“But what about Tokyo . . . ?”
“Tokyo is eternal, Elliot. It survived firebombing. It will always be there. But don’t you see? Tokyo is not your here and now.” He placed the tea bowl on the desk with the grace of a grand tea master. He rested the backs of his hands on the polished desktop so that his palms faced the heavens. “You’ve got to stay open, Elliot. Look at the signs. Old life. NuLife. Get it? How propitious that your past should so perfectly align you with this particular present.”
“What present?”
“Potatoes. Ironic, isn’t it? How the Universe provides. As long as you stay open.” He moved his hand over to a folder at the edge of the desk. “Of course, what she provides often proves challenging.”
He slid the folder across the desk to Elliot. Inside was a copy of the New York Times Magazine. Centered on a stark white cover was a demented Mr. Potato Head, with two bolts stuck in its neck and a badly stitched scar on its forehead. Perched on its head was a tin skullcap, attached to an electrical coil that spiraled off the top of the page. Its wonky plastic eyes were looking in opposite directions. The tag line read, “Fried, Mashed, or Zapped with DNA?”
Inside, spread out over two pages like a Playboy centerfold, was a long, plump, beautifully reticulated potato. Elliot scanned the article. The journalist had started off small, almost poetically, the tale of a man planting a new type of potatoes in his backyard garden, but the target of his attack soon became clear. The guy talked toxins. He named names.
The contents of the article looked bad enough, Elliot realized, but the title was genius. Printed across the tanned, genetically engineered skin of the centerfold tuber, in a pastel font, were the words “Playing God in the Garden.”
With its power to appeal to a broad-range demographic, that title was truly dangerous copy. Elliot sighed.
“Marvelous chance to travel!” Duncan was saying. “I can envision you spending time in the field. Stretching your legs. Breathing that fresh Idaho air.”
Elliot sighed again.
Duncan frowned. “I’m worried about your vitality, Elliot,” he said. “Show me your tongue.”
“Excuse me?”
“Come over here.” Duncan motioned across the desk. “Open your mouth.” He aimed the beam of a halogen desk lamp down Elliot’s throat.
“Hmm,” Duncan said. “Just as I suspected. Stagnant chi energy. Weak liver function. An excess of damp and wind.” He flipped the lamp away. “You really should pay more attention to your diet. You are what you eat, you know. Here, have a carrot.” Duncan dangled the vegetable out in front of him. It was blunt and smooth and a bloody reddish-orange color. “What you need,” he said quietly, “is time in the desert. The dry air will do you good.”
mr. potato head
Geek smiled and took a long, slow hit off the bong. Thrifty Foods was not the biggest supermarket in Ashtabula, but the megastores were too hard to infiltrate and control for a basic C-level action. It was all a question of checkout lanes and customer density. Over eight lanes got to be a problem, since you really needed to station an agent in every other one for maximum jamming. As a target, then, Thrifty Foods was practically perfect. It had ten lanes, but with Frank on board they could break out Mr. Potato Head, who was a sure crowd pleaser.
“Dudes,” Geek croaked, applying a throat lock to hold down the smoke. “Thrifty Foods’ gonna get its consciousness raised.”
Frank wasn’t sure about this. He knew a lot of the kids who worked at Thrifty Foods—the baggers, stock boys, and cashiers—and he wasn’t at all convinced they were ready to have their consciousness raised quite yet. Wages, yes, but consciousness? Frank sort of doubted they had any to begin with. He sat in the dinette nook next