Malta Maykop: Part One [Workshopped]

She wouldn’t meet me in the lobby or buzz me up—rather, after parking in a designated grocery-store spot in the underground, surfacing at the roundabout and crossing over to Building 999, I waited to embed myself among the foot traffic passing through the condoland doors—imagining myself as one of those suckerfish hitched to a blue whale, but when my whale arrived it was a mouse-like international student and a breadstick-chinned grandpa. 

“I’m here,” I texted her, awaiting further instruction.

The consensus among guys I’d read and DM’ed on the BBS was that her entry process was hectic and paranoid, but worth it. I didn’t just answer ads willy-nilly for these kinds of unorthodox services but considered research as integral as pacing these halls. [IS THIS SATIRE? READER NEEDS CLARITY ON WHETHER THIS IS A TOXIC JOHN OR A QUIXOTIC DUMBASS DOING SOMETHING LESS ODIOUS BUT SIMILARLY STUPID. REMEMBER: SHOW, DON’T TELL.]

“Go past elevators to fire escape, right-hand siding. Sit in black chair, not blue. Then call.”

I followed the text’s instructions, passing the elevator in a hall with theatre-style wall lights and turning into the fire escape. A blue chair sat at the foot of the stairs with at least a dozen rolled-up newspapers like an old-man egg incubator. Under the stairs was the black chair, which I sat in as I dialed the number on my texting app and stood up from and sat down in again, as though testing an electrical current. 

“Are you Indian guy?” the voice said.

“No, I’m just plain mystery meat with a few hoppy notes. I mean, I don’t know. What’s the right answer?”

“Dear, come to third floor on stairs. Exit right and walk to end of hall. The door is ajarred.”

She cut the signal of her matronly, off-Balkan voice as a man in cheap rainbow-framed sunglasses came down the fire escape, saw me—I couldn’t tell a hobo from a pre-med, a hipster from a mentally mogged person—and exited.

I went up where he’d come from, combing my meta-labyrinths of desire for the real reason beyond the enjoyment of rarefied transcendental services I’d come here, which suddenly lodged like a popcorn kernel as the desire to discover Maxine’s—her alias’s—real name, which no one had ever shared beyond the initials M.M., but which was the source of banter and what unknowingly sad people called “shitposting” on BBS threads.

I wondered whether a nativity-type light would pool out of the ajarred door at the end of the hall, but the converse was true as I barreled [AVOID DUMB VERBS AND ADVERBS] down Maxine’s hall towards the ajarred door’s leaky anti-gravity light-sink greyness that I can’t be fucked to describe due to knowing nothing about physics. [REMEMBER: THE READER IS YOUR FRIEND; DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HER SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE NOR THE VALUE OF SPENDING A WEEK OF RESEARCH TO ENLIVEN EVEN A SINGLE PHRASE.]

The phrase “moment of truth” is soft-brained, but let’s double-click and zoom in on this moment. I pushed open the door of apartment 301 until it kissed a sparkly film of hippie beads, the eggplant-shaped white of my Hawaiian pattern shirt (exuding a spicy exoticism and openness) glowing tumescent. I closed the door and parted the hippie beads to espy [DUMB VERB] a woman with jet-black hair facing away from me—possibly, inexplicably towards a washing machine spinning at full torque.

“Maxine?” It came out pleasantly low octave.

“Zack?”

“Yes.”

Five seconds later, I said, “Are you going to turn around?”

“Is that part of the deal? People want to see your face so they know how much to hate you.”

I considered beelining through the hippie beads and closing the door on this cupboard of the universe and one-starring her to the BBS crew, but then she turned around—raven-haired, tanned, brachycephalic, vigorously eye-patched, containing a different great ape strain than anything in my genes, like something hatched from Gaddafi and his concubine. [THIS IS A PATENTLY ABSURD DESCRIPTION OF A WOMAN’S FACE. I AM OFFERING A VIDEO SERIES ENTITLED “THE RENDERING OF A FACE IN PASTEL IMPRESSIONISTIC HUES” FOR $99, EXPIRING TOMORROW. IT INCLUDES A COMPLIMENTARY ZOOM SESSION TO DISCUSS YOUR PARTICULAR CONCERNS.] She removed her eyepatch and said, “Just joshing.”

She shifted crablike 90 degrees, wearing a black synthetic kimono tied loosely to show the teeth of a corset. [I’M LEGITIMATELY GRATEFUL YOU DIDN’T DESCRIBE HER BREASTS.]

“Can I see your menu?” I asked.

“But of course.” She handed me a vibrantly photoshopped laminated sheet. “Can I fix you drink? A little pick-you-up? Creatine? No, no, your arms are lumbering already! Did you eat your Wheaties this morning?”

“I don’t eat Wheaties, ma’am.”

1. Brazilian manscaping getaway with hot wax and razors – melt into my hands – get ready for any podium – $200 / MALTA$0.001
2. Reiki with Swedish and craniosacral – I fix your skull, melt in my hands – $180 / MALTA$0.0009
3. Rooftop poolside cocktail photoshoot [advance booking requirement!] – $250 / MALTA$0.0013
4. Personal coaching, marketing… I fix your life in 20 minutes, I teach you to believe from your heart – $300 / MALTA$0.0015
5. Personal twist / Pandora’s box [limited availability] – you need it, trust me – $350 / MALTA$0.0017 

“Can I get a quote for 2, 4, and 5?”

“But of course, sir. As you like it. Only, I’ll need to know currency of payment and to see driver’s license.”

“What if I don’t have a driver’s license?”

“Your passport.”

“What if I don’t have a passport?”

“Sir, do you think I waste my time with men who don’t travel to foreign soils or operate 

vehicles? My dear, I come from a land of checkpoints and heavy machinery.” [READER MIGHT NEED TRIGGER WARNING REGARDING MALE FANTASY.]

From under an expired library card that lightning-rodded dyslexic memories, I peeled my driver’s license.

She took it and swiped it in a card reader until it beeped: “I’ll tell you this for free before the execution of coaching contract. Don’t pry into the why of things for its own sake.”

She rotated and fingered the driver’s license like it might contain a secret door. “But of course, as you like it, uh,” squinting at my name, “Zackary Shmuel Morris, let us tabulate your quotation.”

She whispered numbers, carried digits with her finger, traced figure 8s with her eyes: “$830 or 0.0064 Malta coins.”

“What in the blue cornflower fuck is a Malta coin?”

She gasped and screwed up her eyes.

I hoped that was all, but she pressed a button on her watch: “Emergency!”

Bronze ceiling sprinklers switch-bladed open and spun lukewarm water. 

“No! Sprinkler off! Guard!”

I wiped mist from my chin as an alarm rang and projected cherry-sized balls like a disco. A garage-door-esque compartment opened on the wall and a crystal ball projected a holographic headless bomb-armed suicide cultist sprinting at me like it was ticking. 

The hologram spoke robotically: “Stand down! Security alert. Hands in the air.”

I raised my hands like an innocent trucker in an IHOP shootout, knowing I should say sorry for whatever, but I was dead inside. Nothing could raise my hairs or heartrate. If you’re not bashing in my head, then get away from me. 

The suicide cultist hologram kept conjuring bomb-throws: “Cease to exist! Keep your hands in the air. Say sorry!”

The lasers in Maxine’s eyes animated her like a doll thinking two chess moves ahead, two knight moves. I suddenly found her attractive. I wanted to tell her. 

“Maxine, I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m sorry. I want you to coach me. I find you very attractive. Tell me what I did wrong. [DUDE, YOU CAN’T INSULT WOMEN AND THEN COMPLIMENT THEM LIKE THIS. NO ONE WILL BELIEVE THIS—UNLESS YOUR CHARACTER IS A CLOD, BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO WRITE A CLOD? REMEMBER: THE READER NEEDS SOMEONE TO ROOT FOR.]

“It was, how do you say such thing, dreadful blue cornflower remark.”

“Please don’t take it out of context. I don’t understand the financial system of the island of Malta. I’m a divorced real-estate broker. I’m very insulin-resistant.”

“No! You don’t understand. Malta is me, Malta is my world, my sensorium, my pearl.”

I stroked my chin villainously: “I have no prejudice against Malta as a currency union, a world, or any other entity.”

“No! You’ll never understand. Unless I start from beginning.” She pressed a button on her watch: “Guard, the crisis is over, but stay close.”

The suicide cultist hologram lowered its bomb-arms and perched against the wall, arm over crotch.

“My name is Malta Maykop. I’m emergency physician in my country. Honey, I have in–out, in–out privileges at 200 hospitals there. If you have emergency here, I’ll revive you, as you like it.” She smiled: “Malta coins are brand-new delegated proof of stake currency revolutionizing financial system. Here, love, show this QR code to enlightened convenience-store clerk. They’ll reimburse you price of eggs that day, whether it’s $3 or $30 million—you’re covered, as you like it. All I ask is they do quick 20-minute KYC. To hell with other customers. Remember that convenience-store lives don’t matter. Plus you’ll earn Malta rewards as Malta ambassador. Welcome to your ambassadorship.” 

“Great.” 

Malta Maykop winked like Sailor Moon. “If you know someone’s name and face then you’ve basically killed them. You’ve basically killed me.” 

“It’s true.” She’d killed me too, but I said nothing.

“I shall close the loop on your request, as you like it, and return to currency question. Malta coins or dollars? A little disclaimer, honey, that converting naked dollars to Malta coins incurs approximately 59% transaction fee according to conditions on ground. But I have two carrots for you, as you like it. First, I’ll lop off 5% as welcome gift. Second, staking unused Malta coins will unlock a world of rewards that even I cannot fathom. Sometimes I catch my eyes in mirror in wee hours, as you like it, and ask myself, ‘Ms. Maykop, why do you give such stupidly generous rewards—incentives that young men describe as “giga-retarded”?’ But then I remember the man in the machine, as you like it, and the loss of control, the depersonalization, if you like, he would suffer under the watchful eyes of his dead ancestors if I pulled the plug!”

I understood nothing and wanted to know nothing and almost said, “I’m happy for you, or maybe I’m sorry for you, whatever the right answer is,” but instead I just blinked at her.

“Anywho, dear, please penetrate machine with your credit card.” She held up two closed fists. “Choose 830 normative fractional reserve dollars that yield not even my worst efforts,” she opened a fist face-down as though throwing stardust into the trash, “or choose 1,278.20 dollars equivalent of Malta coins and thereby choose life, choose ambassadorship, choose destiny, choose lifetime of searing, toe-curling rewards,” she opened her other fist like it overflowed holy light, “choose service and begin to correct lifetime of mistakes since you flopped out of your mother’s kangaroo cunt, you beast! You vile beast!”

I could have done without this turn of phrase in Malta Maykop’s sales pitch, but the suicide cultist kept watch and I was dialed in to fate—not destiny as much as a circumcision of options. Leaving or paying fractional reserve dollars could trigger a second crisis. I would pay to play in Malta’s world, my chequing account more swimming with excess than my gut. 

“I choose destiny with one stipulation in the contract. That that anti-social freak image isn’t with us now or during the session.”

Malta Maykop frowned, muttered something, and said, “Is this, how you say, anti-social freak image in the room with us right now?”

I looked to see it no longer leaning on the wall, no trace left, the mini-garage-door-type compartment closed.

“As you like it,” she said, running her tongue along her front teeth. “You’ll become the man in the machine if God decrees it.”

[FINAL THOUGHTS: THIS IS A COMPLETELY BIZARRE AND IMPLAUSIBLE MALE FANTASY THAT COMBINES BAD COLLOQUIALISMS, A LACK OF LIKABLE CHARACTERS, AND A SURFEIT OF TELLING RATHER THAN SHOWING. ECHOING MS. MAYKOP’S TWO OPTIONS, I PRESENT TO YOU THE FIRST OPTION OF SIMPLY ABANDONING THIS PROJECT AND THE SECOND OPTION OF SENDING ME $1000 ON VENMO TODAY TO PERFORM OPEN-HEART EDITORIAL SURGERY TO MAKE THIS PIECE PRESENTABLE TO THE LOWEST OF PUBLICATIONS. TO ANYTHING ELSE, I SAY: THIS AIN’T IT, CHIEF.]