FF (April 2012) Bill Orton - Hope for a Change ... But Settle for a Bailout

SUMMARY -- "HOPE FOR CHANGE, BUT SETTLE FOR A BAILOUT" is an absurd comedy that starts with the lead character, Larry van der Bix, winning the lottery, posing the question: "Does it change you?" Best friend Lori Lewis never strays from what is truly important. Nor does Miss Milkshakes, a bombshell web-diva who can't get enough of Lori. The novel speaks to the gap between rich and poor, the collapse of the financial system, and is wrapped in a lesbian love story, a tale of the London Olympics, and how one retains honor and dignity in hard times.

THE STORY -- Larry van der Bix, sole heir to a broken family, wins the lottery and faces the question: "Does it change you?" Gov. Jerry Brown hands an oversized check and off goes Larry, in a rented stretch Lincoln, a bundle of hundreds in his shorts pockets and a portable safe welded into the limo's second refrigerator.

Best friend Lori Lewis never loses sight of what's important and together they set out to bring home Larry's new-won millions. Larry recruits Miss Milkshakes -- a hypercurvy web diva -- for the drive up California's great central valley. Lori and December fight throughout the trip, until coming to blows when Lori enters their hotel suite to find Larry passed out, with a scantily-clad December straddling him. After ensuring her best friend is alive, an epic battle between jock and diva is streamed live over December’s site, winning fans and sparking a desire that grows into warmth and love.

The novel finishes with Lori putting in a gritty performance in women's freestyle swimming, trying to earn a spot at the 2012 London Olympic games. In her quest, she wins much more than medals, learning that what is in one's heart matters most of all.

FEATURES -- Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danish Dogme filmmakers, a pistol-packing open-carry crowd, a brutish and well-endowed fisherman's son, models, singers, actresses and a girl locked for decades in an elegant tower.

CAUTION -- Contains a scene in which Cheetos are stuffed up a character's nose. No junk food was harmed in the actual creation of the novel.

(303 Pages)

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Sample

CHAPTER ONE
Showdown at Bucksters

“Perhaps not since the great influenza epidemic of 1918 has the flu brought greater doom to the people of London…. There is no horrific death toll as in 1918, but public health officials say as many as a quarter of the people in London are sick with this rare late- summer flu bug… but ask a Brit about real agony and it is that local girl Rebecca Adlington, one of the world’s greatest female freestyle swimmers, is so hobbled by influenza that Team GB’s doctors won’t allow her to compete in these London games. The Brits, down seven athletes to the flu just today, did gain one bubbly reason to cheer, as moving Baljinder Gill up to the number one freestyle slot has meant that Gill’s baby sister, Jazz – who tells everyone she’d rather be swimming the Mersey with her best blokes – earned the second slot for Jolly Old England… and a jolly time it’s been indeed for those fabulous Gill sisters, who are spinning water into gold. Only an American army sergeant in her mid-30s, in her own long-shot first Olympic appearance, has been able to keep up with those fabulous Gill sisters.”


.

“L-O-R-I-!” Larry van der Bix waved his arms and ran towards the tall blonde slowly riding a beach cruiser down 1st Street, towards Belmont Shore. “Lori!”

“Hey, Larry, on my way to work,” said Lori Lewis, a pair of cloth tote bags hanging from her handlebars. A multicolored sock drooped over the edge of one bag.

“Can I bum five bucks from you?”

“Aw, man,” said Lori. “That’s all I got till work. Can’t you hit me up after my shift, when I’ll have some tips?” Lori leaned forward and tucked the wayward multicolored sock into the bag.

“Oh,” said Larry, dejectedly, “sure.”

With a deep exhale of breath, Lori reached into her jeans and pulled out several crumpled dollar bills and a handful of quarters. “Please, Larry, don’t just blow this,” said Lori, dropping the money into Larry’s outstretched hand. “Buy some actual food… from the store.”

“I will,” said Larry. “Promise.”

“Don’t just drop it on the lottery.”

“It’s how I know I’m still alive.”

.

As Lori approached Bucksters Coffee on the retail stretch of Second Street that cut through the heart of Belmont Shore, she had to slowly navigate a maze of police cruisers that had pulled up to the coffeehouse at such sharp angles that traffic was forced to merge left to pass. On the sidewalk, officers and gawkers – their faces glowing alternately red and blue – hovered near the entrance, as Lori locked her bike to a parking meter. Looking at the officers, she unlocked the bike and walked it to the rear of the building, locking it to a pipe. Alongside her bike was the district manager’s red convertible, parked in the sole space designated as staff parking. Around a license plate that read “CA-FA-N8D” was a frame that declared, “It’s Good to be the Boss.”

As she entered, she saw seven or eight officers looking sternly at the customers in the shop. Lori stashed her tote bags in the employee break room, tied on her apron with its, “Hi, I’m Laurie” name badge, and approached the register. “Clearly not a caffeine and starch run,” she whispered to a tall, late-20-something redhead in an apron and tie, standing behind the counter by the register.

When Lori turned to the first customer in line, she saw metal glinting at belt level.

“Gun!” Lori immediately crouched, and, with no one else showing panic, she stood slowly. Half-a-dozen other customers were also openly displaying firearms.

“Hey there, Missy,” said the customer. “I’m here to get me some coffee.”

Lori kept looking around, to the officers and then again to the customers carrying guns, who were, for the most part, in their 50s or 60s, somewhat overweight and each seemingly delighted with their day.

“I’m thinking about shutting the store,” said the redhead.

“You can’t do that,” said Lori. “I just got here. I need to work today.” Lori looked at the man at the front of the line, waiting patiently. “Why are there a bunch of people with guns in the store?”

“This is open-carry, Missy,” said the customer. “And I’m still looking for some coffee… to go along with my Second Amendment freedoms. Do we live in a great country, or what?”

“Look, mister, nothing personal, but I don’t like civilians with guns,” said Lori.

“Oh, these aren’t loaded, Missy,” said the customer. “We abide by the law.”

Lori turned to the redhead. “Can I please throw them out?”

The redhead flinched, but said nothing. Lori turned back to the customer. “Again, nothin’ personal, but I just can’t serve you.”

As though Lori had lit a fuse, the officers stood ever-more erect, their heads now moving slightly left-to-right, eyes scanning. The customer at the head of the line looked intently at Lori, who stood leaning slightly forward, with both hands gripping the register.

“We’re not violating any laws,” he said. “I came for coffee and I want my mocha latte, Missy.”

“Sorry,” she said. “No shirt, no shoes, carrying a firearm… no service.”

“Are you refusing service because I’m exercising my Second Amendment freedoms?” The man pointed to the officers with a sweep of his hand. “Bet you serve them.”

Lori turned to the redhead. “Can I please throw them out? I mean, if we need help doing it, we don’t have to wait for the cops.”

“Missy, that’ll be a….”

“No!” said Lori, cutting the man off. She looked pleadingly to the redhead, who silently nodded. “Yes!” Lori said, clearing her throat. “May I have your attention? I want everyone with a gun – who’s not a cop – to please leave the store. You can come back unarmed, but guns are not welcome here.”

The customer straightened his posture and narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t heard the last of us, Missy. I’ll be back for my mocha latte.”

As the last armed patron exited the shop, several people seated in the comfy recliners clapped and the officers stood a bit more casually. Two cops approached the register, one of whom bore a star on his collar, and the other wearing captain’s bars.

“I’m Captain March, miss. Long Beach Police Department. This is Commander Walker. That was incredibly brave. A little foolhardy, but definitely brave.”

“They’ll be back, you know,” said the commander, to the redhead and Lori.

“Not to…,” said the redhead.

“… Shoot up the place? Naw,” said the captain, who looked to the commander. Both shook their heads. The captain turned back to Lori and the redhead. “Naw, but they’ll be back.”

“Probably soon, and probably with media,” said the commander. “We can’t advise you what to do, but this young woman is now the face they’re going to look for.”

“You should go,” said the redhead.

“I can’t go,” said Lori, insistently. “I just got here. I need these tips… c’mon, I was U.S. Army.”

A commotion at the door erupted, as the customer from the front of the line came back in to the shop. The officers within the shop stiffened. Mr. Mocha Latte walked directly to the register and looked closely at the name badge on Lori’s apron. “Laurie….” He walked out again.

“Oh, shit,” said Lori.

The commander pulled out his wallet and put a ten-dollar bill into the tip jar. “Miss, you’re brave, but army or not, you shouldn’t also be very stupid.”

The captain, fishing for his wallet, pulled out a five and dropped it into the tip jar. “Thank you for your service.” He then lifted his hand above his head and pointed towards the door. All of the officers inside the shop headed towards the entry. As officers moved out, several customers who had been watching from their comfy chairs got up with their porcelain mugs to seek refills. The tip jar began to fill with singles while Lori and the redhead whispered back-and-forth.

With the captain and commander at the door, silently watching the officers exit, the redhead spoke from behind the register. “I have… an… announcement,” he said. “As District Manager, I’ve hired a new assistant manager for this store,” indicating with his hand to Lori. Two of the refill customers stopped doctoring up their coffee to applaud, before returning to adding half-and-half and sweetener to their cups. The captain and commander each nodded, and exited. “She will not be working the remainder of this shift, as I am sending her on vacation, before her training.”

Lori and the District Manager went back to whispering. Moments later, the redhead slid a key from his own ring and handed it to her, with a plastic card he had pulled from his wallet. He poured out the tip jar contents onto the counter and handed her all of the bills, which Lori crumpled into a wad and stuffed into her jeans pocket. She left out the back door, carrying her two bags, which she put into the passenger seat of the red convertible parked next to her bike.

.

Lori lurched to a stop in front of Larry’s apartment and, attempting to back the convertible into a parking space, popped the clutch and stalled. She threw on the emergency flashers, engaged the parking brake, grabbed the keys and ran into the courtyard, where she found Larry laying in the sun on a wooden lounge chair, surfing on a tablet, two burritos on a plate on the table next to him, alongside a glass of ice water.

“Thought you were working….”

“I need your help,” said Lori, breathlessly.

“Now?” said Larry. “I’m in a chat with Miss Milkshakes.”

.

The distance from where Lori dropped off Larry so he could get her bike was less than a block from Bucksters and barely half-a-mile from his apartment, but fifteen minutes later, when he rode the Schwinn up the slight hill to his building, he looked as though he had been riding for hours.

“You look like shit,” said Lori. “My bike has gears, you know?”

“So what do you wanna do with it? Leave it in my apartment?” asked Larry. “I mean, I love ya’, but there’s no way I am riding this thing to north Long Beach.”

“Here’s fine,” said Lori. “I’m not ready to go home yet.”

“Let’s go to my grandma’s,” said Larry. “My dad will be there later, but if we go now, we can blow out before he gets there.”

.

Standing at an ornately-carved, heavy oaken door, Larry knocked for almost a minute, sometimes in complex patterns, while Lori stood, carrying her two cloth bags. The colorful sock poked its nose over the edge of one bag. A finely-uniformed, highly-attractive servant answered the door and, upon seeing Larry, smiled thinly and turned, letting the two walk in freely, closing the door behind them. Larry and Lori worked their way through a long hallway, lined with framed photographs and newspaper clippings, showing the Old Man and Carl van der Bix or Larry’s father, Calvin. They passed through a main foyer, with a dark-wood stairwell rising to the second and third floors and lit by a sparkling glass chandelier. They continued through a formal dining room, with its long banquet table piled with toys, children’s books and art supplies. Three children suddenly sped into the room, past Lori and Larry, one of them bumping into Lori, falling, appearing stunned momentarily, and then springing up to resume the run, towards a turn at the opposite end of the hallway. The sound of an object smashing onto a distant floor produced flinching from Larry and Lori, as they reached a heavy, plain door with three bolts and a locked doorknob.

Larry drew a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked each bolt and swung the door open, to reveal the grand stairway of white marble that climbed four stories to the Scandinavian’s suite, the marble cloudy for not having been polished in years, but still aglow with a dull elegance in the light and colors streaming in from tall, wide crystal panes and a ceiling skylight of stained glass.

“In all the time I’ve know you, Larry, has that thing ever worked?” said Lori, pointing to the electric chair lift that hugged the banister of the stairwell.

“In middle school,” said Larry, taking the steps slowly, puffing. “Just before we met.”

As the two walked up the stairs, the middle portion of the stone railing bore the improvised erection of mounted Plexiglas panels parallel to the chair lift’s track, entrapping the unit in a wall of plastic that rose upwards to the second level. On the inner wall of the plastic were lines of a dried, flaking substance that appeared to be, and had the earthy smell of, long-dried human excrement. The stairs opened into a wide landing at the second level, where a single plain door was set into the unadorned foyer that offered the only direct access onto the stairwell from the mansion.

Larry and Lori made their way past photos of the long-ago Long Beach elite. Reaching the fourth floor, the stairwell opened onto a wide foyer, at the center of which was a sculpture of pink stone, of a naked woman glancing downward. Sunlight streamed in from windows and skylights, bathing the work by Bertel Thorvaldsen so intensely in light as to make the figure of a dancer glow with a pink aura, like a flesh-toned ghost. Above the door in a wide mounted wooden display case was the American flag presented to Carl van der Bix by General Pershing when the head of the Expeditionary Force gave flags to each of the aviators in Carl’s unit and the red-and-white Dannebrog that Astrid Ullagård waved on board her ship when she arrived in Long Beach.

Larry stood next to Thorvaldsen’s pink dancer and panted.

“Larry, you really ought’a see a doctor,” said Lori.

“Don’t have health insurance,” said Larry.

“Your family’s rich and you can’t go to the doctor?”

“W’ull… tell it to my dad,” said Larry, pulling out his keyring and unlocking the double doors to the suite built to convince his great-grandmother, the Danish ballerina, Astrid Ullagård, to leave her European dance troupe and come to Long Beach, California, a city then just 30 years old. Long ago stacked away were the 90 matching chairs that Astrid and Ca