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advance. He almost shit himself—literally. He cut a nasty booze-fart then asked, “What?”
    “The Chinese guy paid for your room, up front in cash, sir.”
    The kid was smiling, like he knew. But knew what?
    “Chinese guy?” Max said. “What Chinese guy?”
    “He seemed like a friend of yours. He had his arm around you.”
    The kid gave another knowing, smirking look.
    Max remembered, when he’d woken up, feeling some pain in his rectum. He’d thought, hemorrhoids ? But was it possible that....
    Oh, God, Max didn’t even want to go there. If this wasn’t a wake-up call he didn’t know what was. From now on, no more mixing Scotch and vodka. He had to draw a line somewhere, right? And didn’t Chinese, like, wear off fast? Five minutes later, you wanted more? Holy shit.
    “Whatever, whatever,” Max said. “So the room’s paid through the weekend, right?”
    “No, actually, sir, you were supposed to check out today. The Chinese guy—that’s right, said his name was Bruce. Yeah, he took off early this morning.”
    Max was thinking, Bruce! Fuck, if that wasn’t a gay name, what was? Wait, Bruce Lee wasn’t gay. He’d had a kid anyway. And Bruce and Demi had had a whole litter, hadn’t they? There was still hope.
    “Look, here’s the bottom line,” Max said. “I don’t have any money, and I won’t have any money till Monday morning. So what I need you to do is front me.”
    “Sir, we can’t—”
    “Look at me, kid. Understand who you’re dealing with. I’m Maximilian Fisher. I’m a man of wealth and fame.”
    The kid looked confused. Shit, the missing tooth, the dirty wife-beater, and the farting wasn’t helping Max’s cause.
    Max went, “You’re not superficial, are you...sorry, what’s your name?”
    “Kyle,” the kid said. “My mom and dad, they were big Twin Peaks fans.”
    Not in the mood to hear the kid’s life story, Max said, “Okay, okay Kyle...Look, what I need y’all to do right now is look beyond what you see in front of you. Ignore appearances, ignore perceptions.” Max realized he was using big words; he had to dumb it down, keep it to one or two syllables, or the kid would get confused. Max went, “Just because I don’t look rich, don’t mean I ain’t.” Shit, that was too dumb. He didn’t want to offend the moron. Bringing the level of conversation back up, Max said, “Look, Kyle, I’ve dabbled in Buddhism, okay? I’m not a monk or anything like that, but I meditate, get into myself, you know? And what I’ve learned from my studies, I mean the bottom line of all of it, is that the real world is bullshit, it doesn’t even exist. What really exists is what doesn’t exist at all—the inner self. So let’s talk to each other, one inner self to the other here and—”
    “Sorry, Mr. Fisher, I can’t front you on the room.”
    Fuck Buddhism. Max wanted to strangle the dumb hick.
    “You have Web access at this shithole?” Max asked.
    “Yep, we sure do,” Kyle said, “but—”
    “Lemme show you a thing or two,” Max said.
    Max got behind the desk and went online. Although his company, NetWorld, had gone belly-up, the Website was still live. When Kyle saw the picture of Max sitting on the red Porsche with the two D-cup blond bimbos alongside him, below the company slogan NETWORLD OR BUST , his eyes nearly left their sockets.
    “You like those knockers, huh?” Max said.
    “Yes, sir, I sure do but—”
    “Would you like to meet these girls?”
    Long pause, then Kyle asked, “Are they here?”
    “No, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Max said. “Next time I’m in Alabama, I’ll bring Cindy and Bambi with me, and you can take them up to a room with you, and spend the whole weekend banging their brains out. How’d y’all like that, Kyle?”
    “That would be pretty nice,” Kyle said. “But when y’all planning to be in Robertsdale again?”
    Thinking, When fucking hell freezes, Max said, “Next weekend. I’m here on business and I’ll