Almost as soon as the shaker hit his hand, thirty-thousand white granules sprinkled down to coat a combination of hamburger, fries, and the drooping garnishes they always piled up on the side of the plate but nobody ate. A bunch of white specks announcing that it was time to eat.
Slumped over another steaming, greasy lunch at the Capitol City Grill, Stephen contemplated the many growth industries specks have spawned over time. Salt -- white death. Makes fries go down better, anyway. How the fuck do you eat fries without salt? Cocaine. The CIA still says it's never smuggled it to buy guns for guerrillas. Dandruff. Stephen was definitely a Selsun Blue kind of guy, though lately he'd been trying to up his image with Aveda products. Did Aveda make a dandruff shampoo? Didn't know. Snow. Got our balls busted in a mother-fucker snow storm last year. Almost died trying to rescue that bitch from a certain three-day solitary confinement in Richmond. Fuck. Whore.
All the speck industries are image industries. Dust. How many people has dust employed over the course of time. Granted, you'd never make 70K, unless you were importing spics straight from the border to suck up your specks for less than minimum wage, no bennies, and zero social security. Remember Zoe Baird? Ha.
Even the white speckled hairdoos running around the Hill were another kind of growth industry. Stephen didn't have it yet, but if he hung around in policy purgatory long enough he wouldn't be able to resist. Dye the hair a dark brown to convey youthful seriousness; add the white highlights to convey wisdom and concern. Play that game long enough and you might even end up as President before fucking fifty. Shit. Playing concerned grandfather when you're a child yourself.
The funny thing was, he thought, working this town makes you a grandfather without you even knowing it. Stephen was serious, just like all of his other serious friends. They did and said serious things. Nothing happened without a serious reason. People here knew what was going on -- they weren't fooled about real stuff; didn't need the light diversions people played with in the hinterlands.
Stephen thought about his other friends, the ones outside the Beltway, and how serious they were about their own lives. His ex in L.A. boning a guy while she got some feminism grad degree. An old drinking friend working in Japan trying to get an M.B.A. His buddy in Ohio getting a PhD. in directing music. Another friend playing starving growing artist with a bunch of avant-garde pot-heads up in Boston. The one in Chicago becoming a chemist and getting married to a killer intellect with great tits. So confident. So happy. So naive. None of them knew the real show -- here in the Beltway everybody was giving head to the whole story, playing the real game as they bilked an entire populace out of 30% of their gross take. Everybody else thought they had their slice of heaven. Stephen smiled thinly, grimly, thinking about puking as you sucked down the whole pie.
After lunch a double scotch always appeared to force the food down. Even hunkered with his face almost in his plate six people still showed up to bug him while he ate. You could locate them in the policy constellation by his reactions to their overtures -- one kiss ass that barely got a gruff hello, two competing colleagues that got a wry smile, handshake, and inside joke, two senior administration people that each got a warm hello and back slap (one of the fuckers owed him $50K on a non-competitive contract; the other benefited from a $25 million floor amendment Stephen pushed through the last budget cycle), and a Senior Senator from Illinois. Stephen was a kiss-ass to the Senator. They both knew it. Stephen stood up and got in the Senator's face. The Senator gave him a cold, indifferent smile, a vacuous hello, and an immediate brush-off. Serious business.
Once upon a time the dry air of that lunch room would have left Stephen feeling cold and lonely. Remembering when winter evenings were spent about friends and getting laid, not conspiring to pull more money from the teeth of the federal government. He put back the rest of the scotch, dropped a twenty and pushed away from the table. He wanly thought about the last speck growth industry, the one growing in his fucking veins as those hamburgers and fries started congealing around his heart. This was the speck industry that would put him and all his serious friends away in the end -- when the luck would run out and all the scotch and fries and hamburgers and seriousness would come home to roost.
Stephen knew you needed luck in this serious town. Even dropped down on your knees sucking you needed it. He scooped up some of the loose salt from the table, cupped it in his hand, and tossed it over his right shoulder as he headed out the door.