He staggers aboard his barge, a monstrous construction in gilt and pink and blue with sails of purple velvet. He is dressed in a preprosterous naval uniform covered with braid and ribbons an medals, dirty and torn, the coat buttoned in the wrong holes. . .A.J. walks to a huge reproduction of a Greek urn topped by a gold statue of a boy with an erection.He twists the boy’s balls and a jet of champagne spurts into his mouth. He wipes his mouth and looks around.
” Where are my Nubians, God damn it?” he yells.
His secretary looks up from a comic book:” Juicing. . . Chasing cunt.”
“Goldbricking cocksuckers. Where’s a man without his Nubians?”
” Take a gondola whyncha?”
“A gondola?” A.J. screams. ” I put out for this cocksucker I should ride in a gondola already? Reef the mainsail and ship the oars. Mr Hyslop. . . I’m gonna make with the auxiliary.” Mr. Hyslop shrugs resignedly. With one finger he begins punching a switchboard. . . The sails drop, the oars draw into the hull.
” And turn on the perfume whynche? The canal stinks up a breeze.”
” Gardenia? Sandlewood?”
“Naw. Ambrosia.” Mr. Hyslop presses another button and a thick cloud of perfume settles over the barge.A.J. is seized with a fit of coughing. . .
“Make with the fans!” he yells. “I’m suffocatin!” Mr. Hyslop is coughing into a handlekerchief. He presses a button. Fans whir and thin out the ambrosia. A.J. instalss himself at the rudder on a raised dais. “Contact!” The barge begins to vibrate. ” Avanti, God damn it!”