No Contest

“His name is Romeo, and the women can’t keep their hands off him! You won’t believe which of the world’s biggest stars will fall under the spell of The Ladies’ Man!”

Chiun filled the Airstream with a shriek, and Remo Williams knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep. Not today. Maybe not ever.

Chapter 21

Sherman MacGregor hated Romeo the ladies’ man.

“He’s hogging the publicity,” he growled. “The average Joe’s got only so much attention to devote to world events, and he’s taking all of it.”

Sherm MacGregor’s mother shrugged and said nothing.

“I know it’s just one day, but all day. That’s all I’ve heard all day is Romeo this and Romeo that. On the plus side, the public is tuning in to see just the advertisements for Romeo the ladies’ man, so our spots are getting a hell of a lot of extra viewership.”

His mother wasn’t buying it.

“Yeah, okay, so nobody cares about us with all The Ladies’ Man excitement. How could I know this’ would happen? I never even heard of this jerk until I turned on Good Day U.S.A. this morning. So get off my back.”

MacGregor turned away from the life-size portrait and used a tiny rake to make patterns in a little sand box. It was some Japanese thingamajig that was supposed to make him feel more calm.

“I don’t want to be calm. I want things to happen!”

There was nobody there to respond to this, so he summoned his receptionist.

“What’s up, Mac?”

“I want a report from Sydney.”

“Sidney in human resources?”

“Sydney, Australia,” MacGregor snapped.

“Sure, Mac.”

Steph Mincer was his receptionist from way, way back. Back in the old days he had encouraged people to call him Mac. Back then he was a different kind of man and MacGregor Biscuit Company was a different kind of dry-goods operation.

In the 1980s, MacBisCo was a smooth-running business that produced and sold economical foodstuffs in supermarkets across the United States, Canada and Mexico. They made pancake mixes and microwave popcorn. They manufactured butter-flavored crackers and were a leading supplier of par-baked dinner rolls. And they made breakfast cereal by the truckload.

Oat rings and marshmallow pieces and peanut butter balls and fruity-flavored little chips, they made them all. Half the supermarkets in America sold their own brand of value-priced cereals from MacBisCo.

Meet General Generic, proclaimed a trade magazine in 1997, with him on the cover as their man of the year. “Who else could make such a success without having a single branded product on the market?”

“Yawn,” said his wife as she packed her bags. “Trouble is, you are General Generic, Mac. There’s nothing exciting about you. Not your looks, not your opinions and for sure not your personality.”

She told the divorce court that MacGregor was such a monotonous personality that living with him amounted to emotional cruelty. The courts agreed to the tune of $2.9 million annually.

“She’s right, you know,” his mother told him on her deathbed. “All you ever cared about was money. You never did anything new with this company.”

“Except make it profitable,” MacGregor protested. “When Dad died it was almost insolvent.”

“Very mundane, Sherm, to insult my dead husband as I’m about to die myself.”

“Mother, you don’t mean that.”

“Oh, Adam,” said his mother to herself, “why weren’t you my son instead?”

Adam. Adam Fence. Cousin Adam ran the competing cereal company up the road.

Fence Flour Company and MacGregor Biscuit Company were launched by two half-brothers in 1887. Battle Creek, Michigan, soon became the breakfast-cereal capital of the world, and new companies came and went.

In the 1890s Fence Flour Company became the biggest of them all on the success of a special new variety of corn flakes that took the country by storm. Celebrities like Mark Twain and President William McKinley were enthusiastic eaters of Fence Patented Premium Corn Flakes with Sorghum.

But Fence had stolen the formula for this brilliant innovation from his half-brother, Gerald MacGregor. A patent-infringement suit achieved nothing for the MacGregor Biscuit Company, and a family feud lasted decades. It took World War II to bring about a hesitant reconciliation.

MacBisCo never quite made a name for itself, but was known as the place to go for cheap knockoffs of popular foods. It depended on periodic infusions of cash from the Fence family to keep it from closing its doors. Then Sherm took over and turned MacBisCo into a thriving business.

Somehow, he never felt appreciated. The Fences were the real stars in the family, even to the MacGregors. The Fences had the looks, the huge corporation and the hundred-room mansion. MacGregor’s family home had only twenty-six rooms.

Sherm MacGregor was irritated by it all. Then frustrated. Then angry. He carried around his anger for a lot of years until his mother laid on the last straw.