Two at a Time

March 31st, 1998 Posted in Short Stories

“Special Agent Cake?”

Special Agent Peter Cake snapped up suddenly from his coffee, which he’d been staring at suspiciously for twenty minutes. The cream had tasted somewhat rancid when he’d first tasted it, and he’d been pondering why that might have been while he sipped at it. It certainly tasted wrong in some way, anyway. His Special Agent instincts were pointing towards the cream as the culprit. He had started gulping it in large mouthfuls to get a better analysis.

At the sound of the voice calling his name, his brain jolted back to a state of keen alertness. In a matter of scant seconds, he deduced the voice to have originated from the woman standing in front of him, tapping her foot impatiently. Further scant seconds was all it took for him to ponder his next move.

“Yes,” he decided, feeling himself to be on relatively safe ground.

“Director Painter will see you now,” she said. “Follow me.”

He followed her out of the waiting room and through a series of doors, deep into the bowels of the building. The pair wound their way through a labyrinth of retinal scans, pass codes and simultaneously turned keys, until twenty minutes had passed and they were hopelessly lost. They retraced their steps, gambled with a right this time at the Dr. Pepper machine, and eventually arrived at a door with the words DIRECTOR PAINTER, FBI stenciled onto the glass.

Special Agent Cake, despite himself, began to feel nervous. He was about to knock when a thin and severe-looking man opened the door suddenly, motioning for Cake to enter.

Cake did so, and motioned back that he had walked through the door as per the previous motions. The severe-looking man nodded and motioned again, this time for Cake to sit down on one of the chairs positioned in front of his desk. At this Cake hesitated. Ah, but which one? he thought, cannily. Is this a test? He bent his brain to unlocking the riddle, and cannily found a solution.

“Is this a test?” he asked, cannily.

“No,” said the severe-looking man. “It is a chair. Sit down on one.”

Special Agent Cake did so.

“The left chair, eh?” exclaimed the severe-looking man. “Oh ho! I see.” He jotted down furious notes.

“It looked comfier, sir,” said Special Agent Cake, explaining his motives.

“It is comfier,” responded the severe-looking man. “The other is a cardboard break-away prop. You have a keen eye, Cake.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Special Agent Cake, settling into the padded comfort of the chair as it molded itself luxuriously to his buttocks.

“My name is Director Painter, Cake. I head up the FBI.” He leafed through a file as he spoke. “We’ve been watching your career with some interest. Excellent marks at the Academy, I see. Top of your class, with an aptitude for Defensive Tactics.”

“What are you getting at?!” yelled Special Agent Cake suspiciously. Also cannily.

“I was complimenting you, Cake.”

“I see, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll be blunt,” said Director Painter bluntly. “Do you see a future for yourself with the FBI?”

Special Agent Cake sat up in his comfortable chair. “I’ve wanted to be in the FBI my whole life, sir. My father was an agent here.”

“I remember your father,” said Painter. “Tall man. Giant blue afro. Instead of regular front teeth, just one giant tooth.”

“No, sir,” replied Cake. “My father was short. Brown hair. Two front teeth.”

“Hmm, I see. I have no idea who I’m thinking of then.” Painter paused to stare off into space for an uncomfortably long time.

“With all due respect, sir, I think I have what it takes,” said Special Agent Cake, eager to regain the conversational thread. “I think my qualifications speak for themselves. I’ve been a Breast Inspector for nine years now; five on a municipal capacity in Aurora, Illinois. In fact, I was instrumental in getting amendments to the Aurora Breast Inspection Safety Code, sir.”

“Which was that?” asked Painter.

“Ordinance No. 0-88-32. `All Municipal Breast Inspectors are to wear safety goggles or other apparatus during the course of inspection,’ sir. We had a lot of good men getting their eyes poked by nipples.”

Painter harrumphed. “Cake, let me tell you something. The Municipal Breast Inspectors are a bunch of pencil-pushing desk-jockeys. This is the big time. How many breasts did you inspect for quality in an average month?”

Cake thought about this. “About a hundred forty, sir.”

“We do a hundred forty breast inspections in a day here, Cake. Over one hundred passing inspection.”

Cake could not hide his surprise at these numbers. Suddenly he felt small and silly — a small-town breast inspector with quaint ways and, he worried, outdated inspection techniques. Did they poke here? Or cradle? He began sweating. As if reading his mind, Director Painter continued.

“Cake, the Federal Breast Inspection unit is the real deal. We’re the first, last and final authority for all breast inspections conducted in the U.S. That’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. Do you want to consider what happens if a pair of breasts slip through our nets? Just one pair, Cake. Out there. Uninspected, or worse, inspected poorly. Think about that.”

“I think I understand, sir.”

“Do you?” Painter leaned in on his desk, fists balled and firmly planted on either side. “Do you know what it’s like being in a dark alley, staring a loaded breast in the face? Do you have any idea how it feels, not knowing if you’re ever gonna see your wife and kids again, because maybe today’s the day something goes wrong?”

Cake was silent. Painter leaned in.

“You know what it’s like to cradle your partner in your arms while he gasps his dying breath? Because it’s not pretty.”

Cake nodded. As the silence crept on and became more dramatic, he began to suspect something more was expected of him and broke down sobbing, his large frame wracked with sobbing. Painter eased off, happy at the response. His demeanor softened as he reflected.

“Back when I was an agent, Cake… my partner, Special Agent Wooltop — he took a WonderBra strap right in the eye.” He walked to the office window and, leaning against it, looked out of it as melodramatically as possible. Luckily, the sun was setting. Shadows played off Painter’s face. He tilted his head a little, where they played a little better.

“It could have happened to anyone. It was just a routine breast inspection, Cake. C cup, dark nipples — strictly by-the-book. Then it just… it just all went to hell.”

Cake waited politely for Painter to finish his dramatic pause. To pass the time he thought about billiards.

“The straps were supposed to hold, Cake. They’re built to hold, goddamnit, of course they are, but — but there was a sound, Cake. Like a gunshot. I saw the strap coming right at me. Suddenly Wooltop, he was pushing me out of the way. Even as I saw what he was trying to do I couldn’t stop him, the brave, stupid bastard.”

More pausing from Painter. More billiards for Cake.

“Right in the eye, Cake!” Painter exploded. “Damn those breasts! They sat there and did nothing! Nothing. I’ll take that image with me to my grave.”

“That’s horrible, sir,” admitted Cake, who did find it horrible. “Did he die?”

“On the way to the hospital.” Painter’s eyes welled up with tears at the memory. “I was with him the whole time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said Cake. “Um. How?”

“Eh?” Painter looked up in confusion. “Oh. I don’t know. Natural causes, I think. He was extremely old.”

“That’s horrible, sir.”

“Yes,” Painter agreed. “My point is, Cake — when you take on that badge—”

“There’s a badge?”

“Yes, there’s a badge,” snapped Painter, irritated at the interruption. “Anyway, when you take that badge, you sign your life over to breast inspection. Morning. Noon. Night. You have a choice, Cake, so make it now. You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You want a wife, a family. Do me a favor and walk out that door right now. Get yourself a nice nine-to-five. You don’t want to know what this job does to you.

“Living out there on the edge — I’ve seen good men get lost, Cake. It gets to you. It wears you down. You see two too many breasts. Saggy breasts. Drooping breasts. Unevenly sized breasts. Unnaturally large-nippled breasts. Men’s breasts, Cake. We don’t play favorites here.”

Cake nodded politely. He hadn’t known he would be getting a badge, and was excited about it.

“But at the end of the day, Cake, goddamnit — you know you made a difference. You were out there. In the shit. Inspecting boobs. For quality — and weight, Cake. Bounciness. Firmness. You give up a bit of yourself every day. But, Cake - you do make a difference.”

Painter laid a badge on the desk, alongside the official Federal Breast Inspector hat, card and novelty whistle. “What’s it going to be, Cake?”

Special Agent Cake stared at the badge. He stared and he thought, for what felt like hours.

Hours later, Painter re-entered the room with dinner and sat back down again. Cake had not moved.

“Well?” said Painter, unwrapping a sandwich.

“I’ll do it,” Cake said, picking up the badge.

“You poor bastard,” laughed Painter, with no small amount of respect. “Listen, we just got a call from Hornberg. He works for the CIA. Their agency collects intelligence on—”

The phone rang. Painter gave Cake a smile. “Work with Hornberg. Crack this one. And welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cake, picking up the phone and discussing the details of the case with Hornberg. Painter sat down to his lunch and messily devoured his sandwich. Out the window of Painter’s office, against the dying light of a Washington sun, a city of breasts slept, uninspected. That would change. Two breasts at a time.