City of Truth by James Morrow

my experience, though, if you're not a liar by now, you never will be." With a directness rarely found in Satirev, Lucky looked William in the eye. "What do pigs have, son?"
    "Huh?"
    "Pigs. What do they have? You've been dealing with pigs lately — you know about them."
    William stared at his half-eaten cheeseburger. He pondered the question for nearly a minute. At last he raised his head, closed his eyes tightly, and issued the sort of delighted yelp an Age-of-Lies child might have voiced on Christmas morning.
    "Pigs have wings!"
    "What did you say?"
    "W-w-wings!" William leaped from his chair and began dancing around the table. "Wings!" he sang. "Wings! Pigs have wings!"
    "Good job, William!" Ira shouted, his face betraying a mixture of envy and anxiety.
    Lucky smiled, ate a fry, and thrust his fork toward Ira. "Now — you. Tell me about money, Ira. Where does money grow?"
    Ira took a deep breath. "Well, that's not an easy question. Some people would say it doesn't grow at all. Others might argue..."
    "Money, son. Where does money grow?"
    "On trees!" Ira suddenly screamed, grinning spectacularly.
    "On what ?"
    "Money grows on trees!"
    "And I'm the Queen of Sheba!" said William.
    "I'm the King of France!" said Ira.
    "I can fly!" said William.
    "I can walk on water!" said Ira.
    "God protects the innocent!"
    "The guilty never go free!"
    "Love is eternal!"
    "Life is too!"
    Lucky laid his knobby hand on my shoulder. "Tell me about snow, Jack," he commanded. "What is snow like?"
    The appropriate word formed in my brain. I could sense it riding the tip of my tongue like a grain of sand. "It's ... it's..."
    "Is it hot, for example?" asked Lucky.
    "Snow is h-h-h—"
    "Hot?"
    "Cold!" I shrieked. "Snow is cold," I moaned. William shot me an agonized glance. "Jack, you've got it all wrong."
    "Don't you remember that blizzard?" asked Ira.
    I quivered with nausea, reeled with defeat. Damn. Shit. "The stuff they make here is a fraud ." Jack Sperry versus Xavier's Plague — and now the disease would win. "It's not snow at all."
    "Snow is hot," said Ira.
    "Snow is cold!" Rising from my chair, I stumbled blindly around the Russian Tea Room. "Pigs don't fly! Dogs don't talk! Truth is beauty!" I left.
    The hotel lobby was dark and pungent, suffused with the Jordan's sugary aroma. The night clerk slept at his post. Franz sat in a wicker chair beside a potted palm, his long face shadowed by a Panama hat.
    I staggered to the front door. It was locked. But of course: one left Satirev pumped full of either lies or scopolamine, illusion or amnesia; there was no third path.
    "Treatment isn't taking, huh?" said Franz as he approached.
    "I'm beaten," I groaned.
    Franz removed his Panama, placing it over his heart — a gesture of grief, I decided, anticipatory mourning for Toby Sperry.
    "You have a visitor," he said.
    "Huh?"
    "Visitor."
    "Who?"
    He led me past the sleeping clerk and down the east corridor to a steel door uncharacteristically free of catches, bolts and locks. The sign said VIDEO GAMES. Franz turned the handle.
    There were no video games in the Video Games Room.
    There was a blood-red billiard table.
    A print of Picasso's The Young Women of Avingnon .
    Martina Coventry.
    "Hi, critic. We had a date, remember?"
    "To tell you the truth, I'd forgotten."
    "'To tell you the truth'? What kind of talk is that?" Martina came toward me, her extended hand fluttering like a wondrous bird. "You look unhappy, dear."
    "I'm no Satirevian." I reached out and captured her plump fingers. "I never shall be."
    Martina tapped the brim of Franz's Panama. "Mr. Sperry and I require privacy," she told him. "Don't worry, we're not going to have sex or anything." Though convulsed with misery and self-loathing, I nevertheless noticed how Martina was dressed. If employed as a lampshade, her miniskirt wouldn't have reached the socket. The strap of her madras bag lay along her cleavage, pulling her LIFE IS A BANQUET T-shirt tight against her body and making her