Pepsi Bears and Other Stories Read Online Free

exiled as long as himself might find this young American hard to take.
    He is wrong. Salman becomes an uncle to Tommy John. Alone together as they are, with their bodyguards lifting ever greater weights in the basement and their cook in the kitchen suffering a Jekyll and Hyde metamorphosis between cheeseburgers and the multi-fanged cuisine of the Hindu Kush. They begin to discuss literature and to tell each other of stories they plan to write. Each steals ideas from the other, though Tommy John isat a disadvantage in this. Being awestruck by the great man he tends to squirrel away any spitball tosh Salman utters as if it were gold. Salman guesses Tommy John is stealing his stuff and begins to feed him stream-of-consciousness nonsense, tales so uninteresting he puts himself to sleep in the telling.
    Later in the day when he retires to the privacy of his bulletproof room to write, Tommy John scribbles them down in his journal, figuring he will be out of here first, he will publish first, he will be a big, big hit using Salman’s gold. And knowing all writers are liars and thieves and shitbags, Tommy John doesn’t even feel bad stealing Salman’s stuff because he figures Salman is just as likely in his bulletproof room right now copying down the stories Tommy John told him.
    But stories don’t come easily to Tommy John. Lately, after Salman has delivered some wan rave and asked Tommy John to reciprocate with a story of his own, he has begun to steal the work of Cervantes, to tell tales of Don Quixote as if they were from his own half novel in which the Nike bears first appeared.
    One day they are sunning themselves, nude on their towels on the beach beneath their safe house on the outskirts of the town of X. Norfolk pines dot the shore, for those who must have detail. Salman has been telling a story which veered dangerously toward eroticism until he remembered they were both men nude in public, whereupon he nipped this excitement in the bud with a car crash. Lying there on his stomach he says sleepily into his armpit, ‘Go on, Tommy John, it’syour turn. Give me more from your half-novel. Semi-regale me.’
    â€˜Okay.’ Tommy John wracks his brain for a snippet of Cervantes. ‘Okay. In Pennsylvania there was this Amish hog farmer named Nevetus Levitus. And Nevetus Levitus was in love with a non-Amish girl, Betsy. Now, the non-Amish girl, Betsy, was the daughter of a rich electrician and the rich electrician …’
    â€˜If you tell the story this way, Tommy John, repeating everything you say twice, we’ll be here forever. Tell it to me like I’m a man with a normal lifespan, not a bloody immortal.’ Salman has been coaching Tommy John in the art of storytelling, though he knows lately all his stories are stolen from Cervantes.
    â€˜But this is how they tell stories in the Amish tradition.’
    â€˜All right, tell it the long way. As fate has trapped me in this godforsaken fatwa with you, I suppose I must endure it.’
    â€˜Okay. Cool. So, this Nevetus Levitus was in love with this Betsy. And she was fat and slutty and looked like a dude because she had a little moustache.’
    â€˜Do you have any stories containing attractive women?’
    â€˜Salman, we are two men in exile, nude on a beach. The women in my stories are going to be pigs. Okay?’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜Anyway, while Nevetus Levitus loved Betsy she ignored him and ran around with other guys and treated him like shit. Naturally enough, after months ofthis, and with the whole Amish community talking her down, his love died and he began to hate her. Well as soon as he began to hate Betsy she fell head-over-heels for him, though she only ever considered him a shocking dweeb when he loved her.’
    â€˜Mmm, good,’ murmurs Salman. ‘Just like a woman. They despise the man who loves them and love the man who despises them. Go on.’
    â€˜So Nevetus Levitus is herding his hogs