Farmer Bob

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Previously:

1. The Department of Regulated Industries vs. Everything good and decent in the world. Plus: how Jill overcame a phobia (hint: it was by passing out.)
2. In which Jill gets in trouble with a temporary staffing service. PLUS: Chico gets hired. ALSO: Paintings of the walking dead.
3. A Season of Baby Ashley
4. Terminal Fatigue
5. Sexxxy
6. Andee is a Genius
7. The Midwest Food Expo, Part 1

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2001
7:31 a.m.

The ostensible reason for our tax-deductible junket to Chicago is the development of a menu for an expanded Cup and Saucer restaurant. As it turns out, Mark Brooks disappeared 24 hours previously on a Segway and has apparently gone feral, opportunistically preying on cooking demos and product presentations for commercial kitchens.

At the moment, I’ve ducked behind a bank of pay phones in the convention center to hide from some security guards who want to question me about Mark. I put on my Tom Clancy disguise, which consists of a U.S. Navy ball cap with the insignia of the U.S.S. Constitution and a pair of amber-tinted shooting range glasses.

I need to rescue Amy from the designer impostor perfume sales team that has essentially kidnapped her and dragged her on an interstate peddling spree. Looking through the glass doors of the convention center, I can see Two-Fry Johnson’s minivan heading toward the exit gate.

I step out the door on the assumption that something will occur to me. The minivan is waiting in line behind several other cars. I walk over to the gate with the intention of telling the booth attendants that Two-Fry’s Dodge Caravan is occupied by terrorists.

Before I can say anything, the gate attendant sees me and yells, “Tom Clancy!” She comes running out, waving a copy of Debt of Honor and a ball-point pen. “You’re my favorite arthur!” she tells me.

“Who should I make this out to?” I ask.

“Bernadette Tubbs, Tom Clancy’s Number One Fan!” she says. I hastily write, “To Bernadette Tubbs, Tom Clancy’s Number One Fan,” followed by several exclamation points, followed by my signature, followed by scratching out my signature and forging Tom Clancy’s. As a flourish I think Bernadette Tubbs will appreciate, I append six exclamation points to the signature.

Traffic is backing up, and a few people are honking their horns. The minivan door slides open, ejecting Amy and several of her parole-violating coworkers. Two-Fry has them working the backed-up cars, tapping on windows with bottles of counterfeit Sean John. I hand the book back to the gate attendant. “Thanks for reading Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor,” I say.

I walk toward Amy, amid a gaggle of perfume-selling degenerates she works with, trying to look important and Tom Clancy-like. “Excuse me,” I say. “Are you selling a knock-off version of White Shoulders brand perfume for old ladies?”

“No, I’m afraid not — but I believe the real White Shoulders is available in convenience stores,” said Amy.

“Amy!” yells Two-Fry. “Quit talking to Tom Clancy and get in the damn mini-van!” I would later learn that the group was selling counterfeit bottles of Tom Clancy’s signature fragrance, Tom Clancy’s Jumpsuit™, which smells like Old Spice and muscle-rub, and for one panicked minute, Two-Fry thought I was there to bust them.

I pull my amber-tinted lenses down and said, “Amy, it’s me, Chris!”

Amy thinks for a minute and says, “I believe my continued employment with the company despite my lack of advancement has become what economists call a ’sunk cost,’ and the time has come to leave my position.”

“Oh, really?” I say. “I mean, are you just making conversation? Or drafting an articulate resignation letter out loud?”

“Quit talkin’ to my peddler, Red October!” Two-Fry shouts. At this point, I grab Amy’s hand and start running. Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite on-board with my hauling-ass strategy, and I yank her violently to the ground. “OW!” she yells, clutching her shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I say, helping her up. “RUN!”

We run back into the convention center. Two-Fry has jumped out of the mini-van and rallied his prison-tattooed staff, and they enter the convention center in pursuit.

“STOP YOUR ASS, TOM CLANCY!” Two-Fry shouts.

Amy and I run through the main hall. “It’s Tom Clancy!” someone yells. Suddenly, we’re being chased by techno-thriller fans as well as Two-Fry and his crystal-methamphetamine-amped team of high school dropouts. I am just thinking how closely Tom Clancy’s life maps to A Hard Day’s Night, when I run headlong into a cardboard display of myself — that is, a cardboard display of Tom Clancy standing in front of an Ohio class ballistic submarine, and holding up a copy of his cookbook.

“Tom Clancy! Finally!” says a woman with a clipboard. We’re standing outside of an auditorium. “You’re ten minutes late, but the crowd is totally amped. In fact, maybe we should wait another half-hour.” Amy and I are quickly hustled into a green room, as Two-Fry runs past.

Apparently, Tom Clancy is scheduled to appear and demonstrate the preparation of a meal from his cookbook, Tom Clancy’s Meals Ready to Eat. While the woman is explaining the demo’s agenda, I look over the book. Each of Tom Clancy’s recipes yields a single-serve meal consisting of 1200 calories. Furthermore, each of the meals can withstand a parachute drop from 380 meters, and short-term temperature extremes of -60º to 120º Fahrenheit.

At this point, I am introduced and I step out on the stage to a standing ovation from a variety of Soldier of Fortune subscribers, survivalists, twitchy backwoods paranoids, and obese camo -clad basement-dwellers. It’s a real cross-section of the audience that paid for Tom Clancy’s several boats, and I feel strangely humbled.

I introduce Amy as my “assistant,” and we begin demonstrating the preparation of a recipe called “Pork Patty with Boiled Potato.” It goes pretty smoothly, with Amy calling out each step of the recipe, and I’ve just gotten to the point where I turn to the oven and explain that we’ve got a finished entree that we’d prepared earlier, when someone shouts, “GET HIM OFF THE STAGE!” I look to the back of the auditorium and see the actual Tom Clancy’s Tom Clancy, with his entourage of teenage models and commercial freezer-sized bodyguards.

So we take off running again. I drop the components of my Tom Clancy disguise on the floor. Tom Clancy and his bodyguards are coming up right behind us; we duck through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, but Tom Clancy is fleet of foot; he catches me in a flying tackle, and starts working my ribs with his fists. I’m screaming and gasping for breath, and suddenly, a large blur passes overhead, knocking Tom Clancy off of me. It’s Two-Fry Johnson, and he’s shouting, “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY SALESGIRL, TOM CLANCY!”

Two-Fry knows how to box, but he may have underestimated the author of The Cardinal of the Kremlin, who is absorbing Two-Fry’s blows without a flinch. Tom Clancy’s bodyguards come flying through the door, take one look at the fight, and dog-pile Two-Fry while Amy and I run back into the convention hall and blend into the crowd.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2001
8:30 a.m.

Amy and I spend the night at the airport, since Jill won’t let me ride with her in the limousine anyway. We manage to sell off Amy’s remaining supply of designer impostor perfumes for enough cash to get her on a standby flight. Amy’s been on her phone, and she already has a job lined up at a newspaper back in Missouri. Later, as I board my own flight, I have to pass through First Class again, and I see Jill for the first time since Friday. She doesn’t see me as her eyes are covered by a cucumber-oatmeal compress, and she’s talking on the seat-back phone with her accountant. “Really?” she’s saying. “Is it my job to make your life easier? Because I thought it was the other way around!“

The flight arrives at KCI without further incident. The following week, thanks to some kind of homing instinct, Mark arrives in Kansas City via Jill’s Segway. I have an outstanding warrant in Illinois, and will have to stay out of the state for seven years. Tom Clancy has become my sworn enemy, and if he ever finds me, I’m in big, big trouble. I am also so gay for Amy C. at this point that people can’t stand to listen to me.

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