The rich landowner’s daughter sat next to her father and smiled as the Founder ordered a Guiness for himself and the landowner, a limoncello for the landowner’s wife and a fizzy water for the daughter. The daughter had blond hair, greenish eyes and a strong jaw. She could be from Minnesota, the Founder thought. She …
Separated at Birth? Legal did not like the mandatory Wednesday poker games that the Founder instituted after the Bull requiring Dirtlease staff to return to the office went out. The faux swinging doors and tinny player piano music grated. He did not like the smug look on the Founder’s face or the way Marketing chattered …
Rent Control, Sex Workers, Economists and Lady Poets Read More »
A representative of DOPE visited the Founder in the bughouse recently. The Founder was wrapped in a straitjacket, sitting in his padded room, looking through the bars of the window at the Hudson. ‘It’s a lovely view’, he told DOPE. ‘I can’t see this this from my home. Do you remember the joke about Jesus …
At Dirtlease headquarters, the morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the smell of New Jersey in the air. In the break room, the bean bag chairs were occupied, the red lights were at their dimmest, and someone had taken all the fidget spinners from the bucket near the door. Sharp objects and …
. On the trading floor, a young guy shouted, ‘Clayton at the figure! Fill or kill! Clayton at the figure, Fill or Kill!’ The head of a heavy Indian trader with a double chin popped up above the warren of monitors. ‘Whose buying man’, he shouted. ‘Paper’, the first guy said. ‘Fuck off’, the second …
When Legal and the Founder woke up in the drunk tank, Legal said, ‘This is worse than the time we were abducted by aliens’. ‘The first time or the second time’, the Founder asked. He didn’t like the way Legal kissed his ass, but when he looked at the large tattooed man leaning against him …
Hoeper Loses Umlaut, Land Lease Community Owners Suffer Read More »
The Ninth Circle ‘Are we in Minnesota’, the Founder asked Vergil. They had walked down the slope that extended from the berm that shored up the final bolgia on the Eighth Level. As the rocks that line a river in northern climes will be covered by ice on a winter day, a narrow strip of …
The Eighth Circle A man with slack facial skin, a paunch, blond hair, blue eyes, a square jaw and a ski-jump nose stood smiling and rubbing his hands together next to a row of hang gliders perched on top of a cliff. A reptile tail protruded from the seat of his pants. ‘What the fuck’, …
The Seventh Circle At the entrance to the next section, an officious-looking woman with a Canadian accent asked Vergil and the Founder if they were carrying any weapons. They were not. Did they know what a weapon was, the woman asked. Knives, firearms, pepper spray, brass knuckles, ice picks, cattle prods, bear repellant, e.g. This …
The Sixth Circle The boatman had a thin face, a dewlap and a pencil-thin moustache, and he paddled his boat with a Greenland stick. When he saw Vergil and the Founder standing on the bank, he whirled the paddle and made a wake that oscillated off both banks of the river. But when he saw …