Carol O'Mealy was pouting like a bitch. She was pouting like a bitch because this is what the photographer, Emmanuel D'Souza, was demanding of her, and the only thing Carol O'Mealy liked better than pouting like a bitch was being told to pout like a bitch by a man wearing leather pants and a scarf for a belt. And she liked it even more when the pout-demander was a stallion like Emmanuel, a swarthy stallion like ... or more like a panther, come to think of it, Emmanuel was a strong and lean panther, all sinew and stealth, soft paws and dangerous claws. Carol O'Mealy liked her men forceful and big-cat-like and swarthy, as long as they weren't overly ethnic-looking or stupid or French. Emmanuel would do just fine -- she would give him a try later tonight, use that new chair she'd bought, and find a use for that scarf of his, but for now she wanted to give him a taste of the perfectly honed attitude that awaited him if he dared and if she could get her husband, Marshall, out of the house for a few hours. She pouted the bitchiest pout she could muster.
"I like this pout," said Emmanuel, who had stopped shooting and was now pouting himself. "But I am not convinced it is real. I am not convinced that this is the pout of a bitch. It looks more like the pout of a nice lady who is upset with her doggie. Her doggie who peed on the leg of her Hepplewhite chair, you see?"
Carol injected more venom into her pout, thinking of her mother. Emmanuel wasn't satisfied.
"No ... This is the pout of a nice lady whose copy of Family Circle came through the mail kind of -- how do you say? -- soggy. She cannot read the recipes. This is not the right kind of pout."
Carol straightened her back, squinted her eyes and threw hatred into her pout. Emmanuel still hadn't taken the camera off his shoulder.
"No, no. This is the pout of a Bikram yoga instructor who finds her nice hummus salad half-eaten in the communal refrigerator. She is sad about this for now she must go to the Whole Foods and get a new salad. This pout is not the right kind of pout."
Now Carol was unhappy. Emmanuel, this dirty eel-like man, no doubt Sicilian, was upsetting Carol O'Mealy, radio talk show giant, bestselling pundit and now presidential candidate, and she rarely got upset unintentionally. She greatly disliked those who brought on her ire when she was not on the radio being paid to be pissed.
This photo would be the cover of her next book, her sixth this year, and this one, which she'd started a week before, was already many days behind schedule. She had to respond, quickly, to the charges made in the last tome by Frank McFadden, the sloppy Irish pederast with whom she was engaged in a very profitable game of mutual destruction. Eight months so far she'd danced with McFadden, former longshoreman, Olympic shot-put thrower, suspected boy-toucher and now liberal author of the breakaway bestseller "Like, What's Going on in My Country? I Think It's, Like, in Trouble!?"
She'd responded to that phenomenon -- the book had somehow been made into a TV movie starring James Brolin and Frankie Munoz -- with her own treatise, "Right This Way!" which had sold 1.2 million copies in hardcover and twice that in paperback. It featured on its dust jacket a photo of herself thumbing a ride on an Arizona highway while wearing a leather miniskirt and a stars-and-stripes halter top, looking both defiant and demure and carrying a stack of law books, to underline the fact that in 1992, she'd passed the bar in Kentucky. This salvo had been answered by Frank McFadden's "Right This Way? How About, Like, Wrong This Way? Know What I'm Saying, Lady?" a line-by-line rebuttal of every claim made in O'Mealy's book. O'Mealy then published "I Meant What I Said in My Last Book, Right This Way! And I Mean It Even More Now, Two Months Later, When America Needs to Hear It More Than Ever," featuring a photo of herself in a leather halter top and stars-and-stripes hot pants, holding a riding crop (in a jolly but deeply threatening way) while straddling a child's stuffed donkey.
Each of O'Mealy's covers in some way featured the American flag, a small pile of law books -- for she had been a lawyer for many weeks (in the hitchhiking shot they were set on the roadside, in the donkey shot they were in the saddlebags) -- and just enough leather to make older men, whose breath she shortened, feel submissive. McFadden's books, on the other hand, all looked eerily similar, with him standing, shlump-shouldered, in a white T-shirt, jeans and 1986 high-tops, always holding a shot put and inexplicably making, with his left hand, a Hawaiian "hang loose" kind of gesture. Together, in eight months, her books and McFadden's had sold a total of 17 million copies. No one could explain who was buying all of these books, or if anyone was reading them, though it was evident that both were wildly popular in Germany -- McFadden for his trashing of the sitting American government, O'Mealy for her harsh Teutonic look, her leather and pouting, and for the fact that on her third book, "A Thousand Years of America: Looking Forward Forever Unabated," she was straddling, in fishnets -- next to a small pile of law books wrapped in the American flag -- a giant sculpted eagle seemingly ripped off the Reichstag.
In most of her book jackets, she was straddling something, and in this new one, while she tried to perfect her pout, she was straddling a man on all fours. The man was about 50, bearded, wearing a tie-dyed shirt and a peace-sign necklace. He was crawling on the ground, and Carol was sitting atop his back, the stiletto heels of her thigh-high pleather boots digging into the backs of his hands. In reality the hippie she was riding was her accountant, Barry, who seemed all too happy to play the part. He'd asked to be gagged and wearing a saddle, but Emmanuel had thought it too much.
"Now," Emmanuel said, taking his camera off his shoulder, "you pout for me good. And bad. If you know my meaning when I say these things." He peeked behind his camera and winked.
Carol tried to concentrate on her pout, listening for inspiration. Instead of disco music to set the mood in the studio, Carol had brought tapes of her radio show, with the callers edited out. She heard her own voice filling the white studio walls -- stern, sassy, outraged, fun-loving (everything she loved about herself) -- and grasped for something pout-worthy.
"Listen," her voice was saying, "there are winners and losers in every facet of the animal kingdom, every facet of the world and everything God created. He made animals that eat each other, he made huge mammals that unwittingly step on insects and rodents. There's no equality in the solar system! Even the very fact of life on earth was a matter of winning! There's only one planet that got life, and that was ours. The rest are cold, desolate, made of gas and rock. Let's remember that, people. The very land we live on is unequal! It's full of mountains and valleys, the oceans are full of trenches and tidal waves. There's no inherent equality in any inch of this beautiful planet, so let's be careful about defying everything God worked seven long days to give us."
Inspired and impressed by her own wisdom, though disappointed she hadn't made the veiled comparison -- which she'd even written in her notes! -- between immigrants and weeds, she pouted.
"Hmm. This is getting close," Emmanuel whined, "but still it feels more like the woman who shows up late to the Planned Parenthood rally and finds out Ani DiFranco already played. She missed nice Ani and now she is sad."
Carol had not heard of Ani DiFranco but she sounded like someone who would spell her name with an "i," not a "y," and this she despised. She injected more blood into her pout and tightened her thighs' grip around Barry's neck. He moaned with bliss.
"No, no," said Emmanuel, "not like you are biting someone. More like, you are dissatisfied with the size of a package you have just opened, you see? Yes."
Carol now thought of taking the president, J. Junior Inferior -- whom she found terribly attractive, particularly when he wore his jodhpurs -- throwing him down, ripping off his shirt and then pants and finding inside not a mighty python but a sweet, suffering tadpole. A tadpole representing everything soft and shrinking and spineless about his administration. This was disappointment. This was dissatisfaction, and this was the pout she now gave to Emmanuel.
"Ah! Perfect. Like you are inspecting the smallness of a president! Now move up on the Barry-hippie. Like you will choke him between your strong thighs because his beard is unclean and he does not love Mr. Sharon like you do."
Carol squeezed. Emmanuel gasped. Barry let out a moan that sounded like release.
