“Another piece of pie?”
Duncan chased the remaining crumb around his plate and caught it. “Oh God yes please.”
Mr Evans smiled. He caught the eye of the waitress and made signals. She nodded.
“That pie is so good.”
Mr Evans smiled again. “Yeah, it has done rather well.” He gazed around the diner – it was much as it had been for the last twenty years: the red stools, formica-topped tables, stainless steel fittings. Nothing much changed here. He brought his eyes back to the man sitting opposite him. “So, Duncan, you come to a decision yet?”
Duncan began to reply but he was interrupted by the arrival of the waitress. She put a fresh piece of cherry pie down in front of him and grinned. “Enjoy.”
“Thanks. I will.” He took a bite, closed his eyes and exhaled happily. “Oh man, that is good.” He put his fork down. “Yeah, I’m all set to buy. Your price is fine, but I’m gonna need the recipe for this pie.”
Evans sighed. He’d expected this. Looked like he was going to have to do it. “Is this a deal-breaker?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
He thought for a while, then stood up. “Come with me.”
He led the way into the kitchen. “Hi Nina.”
An elderly woman was busy rolling out pastry. She looked up and nodded her head.
“Nina has been making pies for me for the last ten years.”
“Hi Nina. How do you keep up with the demand?”
“I have help,” she said. She took the sheet of pastry and with quick, efficient movements, pressed it into a dish and trimmed the edges off.
There was a large bowl of red pie filling on the table. “That the cherry?” Asked Duncan.
Nina nodded briskly.
Mr Evans put his hand on Duncan’t shoulder and guided him to the back door. They went outside and stopped. “You set to sign if I let you have the recipies?”
Duncan nodded vigorously. “Sure am. Got my pen in my pocket.”
“Ok.” They walked across the yard and into the wooden shack at the back of the diner. Mr Evans closed the office door and sat down behind the desk. The papers were already spread out before him. He took a pen and added a paragraph which entitled the new owner to all the diner’s recipes, then sat back while Duncan read it through.
“Looks good.” Duncan signed the papers and smiled.
Mr Evans gathered the sheets and stapled them together. “Congratulations. You’re the new owner of the Triple ‘D’ diner.” He gazed at the wall for a moment, then focussed on Duncan. “Ok. Now, let me tell you a story...”
“Duane? Duane! You come here this instant!”
Duane was fighting Martians. “Pow! Bzzzt!”
“Duane!! I won’t tell you again, young man!”
The boy sighed. He holstered his ray gun and stuck out his lower lip. She always managed to ruin the best bits. Shoulders drooping, he shuffled into the shack.
His mother was standing in her attack pose: hands on hips, chin out, fire in her eyes. “What do you call this?” On the floor at her feet was the wreckage of a pot plant which, until this morning, had been standing on the table.
Oh fuck. He’d forgotten about that. It had been a casualty in the fight between him and Zaff Bnloxxn. Bnloxxn had almost got away with the plans of Earth’s space defence network, but Duane had arrived in the nick of time and – with his superior speed and training – had blasted him to ashes. Single-handedly he’d saved the Earth from a Martian invasion, but even so, it had been a hard-fought battle.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“That is the third thing you’ve demolished this week – and it is the last. You are grounded for a week, young man. You will spend the time cleaning the shack – and the diner kitchen - from top to bottom. I’ve had it with you.” Duane was seventeen but he acted more like a twelve-year old sometimes, she thought. For heaven’s sake - ray guns at that age?
And so for the next seven days all the boy did was clean. And fume. His mother just didn’t understand, and she took every opportunity to spoil his fun. His eyes narrowed in determination: he’d get his own back.
But he had no idea how. Until, that is, he was in the kitchen one day, alone. It was late afternoon and they’d closed up for the day. Pop was asleep as usual, Mom was down the road shopping, Nina had gone home, and He was scrubbing the fridge half-heartedly, wishing he was out in the woods fighting the Martian army. Idly he opened the door. On the middle shelf was the big bowl of cherry pie filling. He put down the sponge and took a fingerful of the red mixture. Cold and uncooked, it didn’t taste very good, but the gloopy stuff felt nice.
Slowly, a smile appeared on his face. He lifted the bowl down onto the floor, and knelt by the side of it. He pulled his shorts down to his knees, and – with a few strokes – wanked himself off into the pie filling. Spurts of white spunk landed in the red mixture, marbling it nicely. Quickly he pulled his shorts up again, stirred it with a spoon until there was no sign of the additional ingredient at all, and put the bowl back into the fridge.
A little later, he repeated the process. With a wicked grin, he closed the fridge door, put out the lights and went back to the shack. Revenge is sweet.
The next day Nina arrived, made the pies in the morning, and they were on the menu by lunchtime.
They sold out of cherry pie in a couple of hours.
Duane grinned to himself. It seemed the new recipe was a winner. He waited until closing time, went into the kitchen and put two loads of spunk into the new batch of cherry pie filling.
The pies sold out in half the time the next day.
This went on for the rest of the week. And word seemed to be spreading – people started to come from all over the place just for cherry pie and coffee.
It was on the Friday evening that Duane got caught.
“What the fuck are you doing…?” Mom stood, white faced, at the door, her shopping dropped at her feet, watching in horror at the boy beating himself off into the pie filling.
It took a lot of explaining, but in the end the facts couldn’t lie. The pies were selling like there was no tomorrow; Nina couldn’t keep up with the demand.
Pop looked at Mom, and shook his head. “Look at these figures. They love those pies. We could make a fortune with this.”
Mom pursed her lips. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s money.”
She had no answer to that.
In the end Mom came round to the idea (the possibility of fur coats and jewellry was persuasive...) and it was decided that they would expand. Obviously it would all have to be very hush-hush, but it could be done. Duane was instructed to cum into a small bowl as often as he could. This was mixed into the cherry pie filling (they tried it with the other pies but it didn’t work at all – it seemed there was something about the way cherry and spunk worked together) and the pies flew off the shelf. The Triple ‘D’ diner was acquiring a reputation for the best cherry pie in the country. It even made the local news channel briefly.
“Nina is complaining. She’s doing nothing but making the pies now and still she can’t keep up with the demand.” Mom was nibbling a cookie.
Pop stared thoughtfully at his wife. “Hmm. And Duane is producing as fast as he can. But we need to expand again.” He played with his coffee cup. “I have an idea...”
Mr Evans put the stapled contract into a brown envelope and straightened it on the desk.
Duncan was sat with his mouth hanging open.
“Here...” Mr Evans pulled a keyboard towards him and tapped on it for a moment. The monitor at the back of the desk came to life. The screen showed a view of a strange room. It was sectioned off into eight stalls, each with a narrow bed in it. Each bed had a teenage boy on it, and each boy was watching the porn films that were playing constantly on screens above their heads. Duane walked from bed to bed carrying a glass jar. He would take a boy’s cock in his hand and milk it into the jar, mark a tick on a clipboard, and pass on to the next.
“The boys get paid a small amount for their… contributions. They’re told it’s for scientific research. We’re registered for that, so nobody asks questions. We shift two hundred pies a day – that’s in the diner and also whole pies by mail. Customers all over the country.” Mr Evans sat back. “So, that’s our secret.”
The expression on Duncan’s face was one of total and absolute disbelief. He said nothing for a long time, then took his notebook out and did some quick calculations. His expression slowly changed, and one side of his mouth began to lift. He stared at the notebook in concentration, then lifted his eyes to Mr Evans. “I’m thinking machines. Milking machines. Much more efficient. And more beds. Many more beds.” He closed the notebook with a snap and pointed his pen at the older man. “This could be big. This could be very big.”
Pop Evans smiled. He opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a plate of pie. “Some cherry pie to celebrate?”
Duncan looked at the pie. He knew what was in it.
But it was so very, very good.
“Why not?”