by Sam Clemens
Laird sat down. “Yeah. I figured you’d ignore it, you know? You ignored all my shit. You even ignored me knocking.”
“Knocking?”
“Come on,” Laird said. “Last night. Don’t act like you didn’t hear it.”
Cosmo Hendricks shrugged. His robe hung open below the waist, revealing his milky inner thigh. “I meditated until just after midnight,” he said. “Then I started feeling better. I looked at my phone for the first time all night and saw all these missed calls from a number I didn’t know—like, twenty of them, dude—and figured it might be something urgent. Like an emergency or something. So I called back.”
“And it was Sadie?”
Cosmo nodded.
“And she offered to come over?”
Another nod. “Straight away.”
Laird smirked. It made him feel better, in some way, sharing this moment with his friend. Telling stories of triumphant evenings. A glimpse of what they’d always been. “Nice,” he said.
Cosmo tilted his head back and chuckled. “Honestly dude, it just kind of happened.”
“The ol’ cult leader banging his followers!”
“Dude.” Cosmo laughed.
“I’ve seen it a hundred times!”
“Shut up, dude,” Cosmo said, and they both laughed hard.
Laird left the apartment in improved spirits. He was still leery of this little episode Cosmo was going through—what kind of effect was this all having on him, anyway?—but the man had shown enough that morning that he could reasonably be expected to stay the course. He’d gotten laid, and that was always good for the mind.
Sadie. That little flooze.
Laird wasn’t sure whether she’d planned boning the boss all along—and thus had deceived him with her tale of crystal healing powers—or that had just sprung up organically along the way. It didn’t really matter; consenting adults and all that. Still, it made Laird feel like he was losing control of the situation, but he had to remind himself that Cosmo was the one who should be in control. And he was. Probably. Maybe. Who knew.
He dropped by the pizza place for an update on construction. Everything was on schedule—ahead actually—and Laird was amazed at how fast these tradesmen could whip up a restaurant. It made him feel good about the potential of their group. Many great things could be done with a boatload of people rowing in the same direction.
The lieutenant was reminded of his job then: to be the hand that moves subtly. To help guide their leader in the right direction, and to make it look like he got there himself. To clean up messes, but to avoid messes, too. To be—essentially—a puppet master; Laird had no intention of manipulating his friend, per se, but it was clear Cosmo needed some low-key guidance. That thing with him not showing up to the meeting last night? It’d been Laird’s fault, really. He’d known Cosmo was going into a questionable mental space, and he should’ve headed it off before it became a problem. That was his job. And Sadie, too. He’d given her Cosmo’s number. What’d he been thinking?
It was time for Laird to take full responsibility.
Twenty-Four
Pizza by Cosmo opened to considerable fanfare. Laird made sure every member of the congregation turned out, and the crowd expanded as passersby paused to gawk. The lieutenant himself gave a speech—a rambling ten-minute affair in which he thanked everyone individually for their involvement in the project and left many breaks for applause.
The climax of the ceremony involved Cosmo cutting a gigantic red ribbon with an even more gigantic pair of scissors. Laird’s idea—the restaurant industry was a fickle beast, and to give them the best chance of success, he figured he’d make the grand opening as big a spectacle as possible. And for the spectacle to be big, the props needed to be huge.
The path to acquiring these things had been tougher than he’d imagined, but the emancipator’s right hand man had been determined to get it done. There was a ceremony supply store in Denver, and the clerk had assured Laird over the phone that they had big ribbon and scissors for such grand openings. Laird had asked the man to clarify that the scissors were not only large but enormous—they had to be enormous—and with a chuckle, the clerk had confirmed.
The clerk proved a filthy liar. Upon taking the bus from Boulder, Laird arrived at the store to find the ceremonial scissors were, pathetically, not huge. The red ribbon was perfect for the occasion—bright and wide—but the scissors for sale were, at best, five times larger than a normal pair. Laird confronted and verbally abused the clerk with whom he spoke on the phone.
“Do these look fucking enormous to you?” he seethed, pointing at the inadequate shears. “This is child’s play!” How was he supposed to make a ruckus in Boulder—a town in which a new restaurant opened roughly every nine days—with such mundane props?
The confused clerk stumbled with his words; he hadn’t expected such devotion to the size of ceremonial scissors from this short blonde man. “I, uh…I’d say they’re pretty enormous.”
“Horse shit!” Laird yelled, and began wiping entire shelves of novelty products to the ground.
Security was called, and Laird rode the bus across town in silence, where he had found a competing ceremony supply store. To his relief, this shop stocked acceptably huge scissors.
So Laird looked on with pride as his best friend Cosmo cut the red ribbon with five-foot clippers. The crowd of Cosmography members gave raucous applause, and a photographer from the Boulder Daily Camera snapped a photo.
Pizza production began immediately.
Retha and Roy quit their jobs at Copper Mine Subs without notice. They removed their aprons at the end of their normal shift and informed Abbot Phillips they would not be returning, and someone would come by in a week to pick up their final paychecks. The bald sub shop owner thanked them for their service and wished them well, and insisted on sending each with a complimentary chocolate chunk cookie as a parting gift.
The lovely old woman from the congregation had perfected her pizza recipes, and the Pizza by Cosmo menu debuted with ten custom topping combinations, dubbed “classic favorites.” Sizes included small (ten-inch), medium (sixteen-inch), large (twenty-inch), and at Laird’s insistence, mondo (thirty-four-inch and required at least a midsize sedan to transport). They served only hand-tossed crust, and if someone asked for a different variety, Laird’s instructions were as follows:
If they wanted thin crust, tell them, “We don’t technically do that, but our classic hand-tossed crust is light and crispy!”
If they wanted deep dish, tell them, “That’s not pizza, that’s casserole, idiot. Never call here again,” and hang up the phone.
The shop was one-hundred percent staffed by members of the congregation. With their chipper attitudes and total commitment to the cause, they approached Chick-fil-A levels of customer service; perhaps overbearing at times, but undoubtedly effective. The shop was full for the first week.
The cult meetings immediately moved to the new spot. Cosmo attended all of them, and was better than ever. His sermons were becoming more powerful, captivating the masses with elegant, girthy rhetoric that always left them buzzing. Donations flowed in. The leader had become so proficient in his performance that, if Laird hadn’t known better, he might start believing the things he was saying just a little.
The man was rejuvenated. Whatever episode he’d been grappling with was clearly in the past, and it was obvious to Laird that Cosmo had emerged on the other side an even better leader. Perhaps the late-night romp with Sadie had played a role—it never hurt to clean the ol’ pipes—and, Laird supposed, the tryst could be ongoing. He did his best to keep tabs on his pal, but they didn’t hang out as much as they’d used to, so there were parts of Cosmo’s personal life that remained a mystery. It didn’t matter, though; let the lovebirds get nasty on a daily basis if it played a hand in Cosmo’s resurgence. Maybe the touch of a woman was his performance enhancer.
The congregation grew. They pumped out pizzas and raked in cash. Six customers we
re forcibly removed from the shop for inquiring about deep dish. It was all happening.
Twenty-Five
Just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Laird got a knock on his apartment door. He was due at the pizza place at nine to look over the books.
It was early for any visitor, and Laird yanked the door open with annoyance. To his surprise, his friend Cosmo stood in the opening.
“Oh,” Laird said, his face changing. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Cosmo said. He stepped to the side and pointed to the parking lot behind him. “Got you something,” he said.
Laird saw it. Parked next to his neighbor’s shitty Pacifica, wrapped in an impractically gigantic red ribbon, was what appeared to be a gently used Toyota Prius.
“I was thinking about how you have to go so many places for the job,” Cosmo said, “and how you always have to take the bus everywhere. Figured you should have your own set of wheels.”
Laird approached the blue car cautiously and with reverence, as if it were a prized quarter horse. “For me?” he asked.
Cosmo nodded.
“It’s beautiful,” Laird said, nearly a whisper. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say thanks,” Cosmo said.
“Thanks.” Laird ran his fingers across the Prius’ roof trim. He turned to Cosmo. “Was the ribbon necessary?”
Cosmo shrugged. “We had a bunch left over from the grand opening. I thought it’d be funny. Like one of those commercials.”
“Yes,” Laird said, eyes not moving from the car. “Where the husband gives his extraordinarily hot wife a car on Christmas morning. Well, Cosmo, I’ll tell you what: I feel like a trophy wife right now.”
“Good,” Cosmo said with a smile. “I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate everything you’ve been doing. All that with the pizza place? Impressive, man. I know I don’t always express it, but, well, there it is.”
Laird looked at him. “Where’d you get the cash?”
“You seen the accounts, dude? They can spare a little for a monthly payment on a gently used Prius.”
“The accounts?” Laird asked. There was wonder in his voice. “I’m the treasurer on the accounts. How did you—”
“Laird,” Cosmo said, tilting his head in a parental way, “I’m the CEO of this weird group. You know I have access to the accounts.”
Laird nodded.
“But yeah, you are the treasurer,” Cosmo added. “I hope you don’t mind I used some petty cash to get you these wheels.”
Of course Laird didn’t mind. He thanked his friend and they embraced. There was a pause, and Laird saw an opening for questions.
“You getting one of these for yourself?” he asked. “Or maybe a Charger or something? That’d be badass.”
Cosmo shook his head. “Nah. Sadie offered to be my driver. Seems wrong for a cult leader to drive himself, no?”
“Right. So you’re still seeing her?”
Cosmo rolled his eyes. “It’s complicated, man.”
He said they’d hooked up a few times. That he liked her, but wanted to keep things relatively casual. He thought it was good to develop an official role for her, since so many other people in the group had one, with the pizza place opening and whatnot.
“Yeah,” Laird said. “That makes sense. Yeah man, get a driver, for sure. You can roll around and be, like, reading spiritual books in the back and shit.”
“Right,” Cosmo said, laughing. “Oh, that’s another thing. I’m writing a book.”
Laird stared. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s no big deal or anything, but like, just putting down a lot of the stuff I’ve been saying at the meetings. Figure it’s good to have a record of all the tenants of the belief and all that.”
“Tenants of the belief.”
“Yeah,” Cosmo said. “You know, like an official text. I don’t know; we’ll see where it goes. Don’t tell anyone. Only you and Sadie know.”
“Me and Sadie,” Laird nodded.
“Plus dude, here’s the main thing: it’ll give me a new closer. Like a closing phrase? I’ve been using ‘for the cause’ and ‘take the journey’ and all that, but they’re getting stale.” He widened his stance and put his hands parallel. “Check this out: it is written.”
“It is written,” Laird repeated. “Yeah, nice.”
“It is written, and so it shall come to pass.”
“Bitchin,” Laird said. “Sounds biblical.”
“Right on.” We’re all part of one cosmic religion, right?”
“Right.”
“Cool man, good talk. I gotta head,” Cosmo said, and he disappeared through the hedges.
Cosmo Hendricks was losing count of the numbers. At each meeting, a few new faces seemed to crop up, and he was thankful they’d moved locations to the extra-accommodating confines of the pizza joint. A small crowd came through the front doors every Wednesday and Sunday night, and Cosmo wondered when their neighbors might begin to notice.
He hoped Laird was doing okay. The little fella had seemed flustered for some time now, and Cosmo couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Perhaps the weight of the enterprise was beginning to stifle him—as the group grew, so did Laird’s responsibilities. But he’d done so well; the pizza place was off to a galloping start and just about every one of Laird’s ideas—from distributing pamphlets to hiring thugs on a freelance basis—had gone swimmingly. The guy had a real talent for being a right hand man. It was hard to see how so much prosperity would put a man in a funk, but then again, even success came with its own unique pressure.
Or maybe, Cosmo supposed, it was the other thing. The emancipator had never known his friend to be sentimental, but he did seem to be oddly short every time Cosmo said he couldn’t hang out. It was true they didn’t get drunk and eat frozen pizzas and watch the game and generally shoot the shit for hours as much as they used to, but this was no one’s fault. It was a natural byproduct of operating a false religion. Each man had new responsibilities—how could their lives be the same?
For Cosmo, his current responsibility was to be the best pretend cult leader he could. This was important for two reasons: one, maximum believability, which was obviously necessary to give their enterprise the best chance of success. But the second reason was the nagging accountability he’d begun to feel to those who’d chosen to follow him. Real or not, these people were giving Cosmo Hendricks their time, money, and faith—didn’t he owe them something in return?
The further they went, the more the line blurred between the ruse and reality. Some days, Cosmo didn’t know what to think. But he maintained his grounding by remembering what he really was: a scraggly-haired kid from Indianapolis who didn’t know shit about fuck. He’d just have to accept his followers as an odd coincidence or, at best, a delightful mystery. Cosmo wasn’t anyone special. He and Laird both knew this.
The thought comforted him as he sat down to write the definitive text of his new religion.
Twenty-Six
Cosmo wrote the book in three days. He’d expected it to take months, and when he sat down to work, he only intended to write a few paragraphs before stopping for contemplation. But the words came fast and furious, as if they were being written not by him, but a celestial deity indeed, and Cosmo was but a vessel for their transcription. So he went on a three-day writing bender, stopping only for food, lapsang souchong tea, and the occasional blowie from Sadie. She came by periodically to check in.
At Sunday’s meeting, Cosmo Hendricks arrived red-eyed and gaunt, with the vigor of a year-old puppy. He’d traded in his robe for a matching linen ensemble; dirt brown pants and one of those shirts with a little rope fixture where the buttons on a polo would be. Cosmo held the loose pages of the manuscript in his hand, declaring it the first copy of the bible of Cosmography. The cover page displayed the title of the tome: The Book of Cosmography: The Way Everything Is (And Why It Is That Way).
“This, my friends, will usher us into the new era,” Cosmo said, displaying the stack of paper
s at eye level. “The divine light has been shown down on all of us, and has manifested itself in the pages of this document.”
Cosmo hadn’t spoken to Laird in more than three days. He saw him that night in his usual spot in the corner, ready to bounce in with announcements or a call for donations when the sermon was finished. Tonight, Laird’s lips were pulled tight, and his eyes were narrow. Butt hurt, Cosmo thought, that he hadn’t returned his calls. Surely Laird must’ve understood, though—he’d been holed away, writing. It took single-minded focus to finish such an ambitious project. He hoped he understood.
“Rejoice!” Cosmo shouted. “For the maker has laid the path out before us.” He promised to share the wisdom contained in the text in proper time. But for now, he said, they should rest easy knowing that the emancipator had received the prophecy.
The crowd gave him a standing ovation. Seven people wept. A man in the front fell to his knees.
During the fellowship hour that followed the meeting, Cosmo found Laird. People around them mingled over pizza.
“Dude,” Cosmo said, keeping his voice low, “sorry about the last few days.” He motioned to the stack of papers in his hand. “I was, you know, busy.”
Laird remained tight-lipped. “Of course,” he said. “No worries. Pretty impressive. You do that all yourself?”
“Yeah dude, it was crazy. I kind of can’t believe I wrote so much.”
“I remember when you had trouble putting out a five-page essay,” Laird said.
Cosmo smiled.
Laird shifted his weight. “So you didn’t have any visitors? Just you in your apartment for three days? Must’ve gotten lonely.”
“Well,” Cosmo said, “I didn’t say that.”
Laird looked him in the eyes for a moment, then broke the contact. “Yeah,” he said. “Right on, whatever.” He moved closer to speak. “Did you meet our new recruit?”