“That makes no sense. That BurgerTown—they’d been in that location for forty years.”
“I know—weird, right? To just lose business so suddenly—volatile market—I guess you’d need a degree and a bunch of logarithms from Wharton to figure out why. Good news is they’re going to open another new nonunion BurgerTown a couple blocks away in a few months. All new staff—everyone Deuce ‘helped’ is now jobless. Some hero. C’est la vie. But there was a drive by the Rancho Cucamonga Historical Society to save the original sign, so that monument to American small-town values will remain! Love it.”
Maya wanted to spit at Malouf, strangle him, but she knew he was like one of those sci-fi creatures in a schlock Hammer film that feeds off anger and grows stronger. So she swallowed her outrage for now. Malouf seemed almost disappointed that she didn’t lunge at him from across the desk. He sighed and continued, “Pearl Powers is enrolled in Juilliard, a year early as well. Pearl and Deuce are success stories, and I guess they have you to thank for that, partially. The lawsuit against Hyrum and the Powers family by the Ruiz family will be dropped. The evidence on the phone video is too damning. I’m thinking of countersuing the schmucks who brought the case against us—seems their lawyers knew about the existence of the phone all along and tried to suppress it. Hate-crime this, assholes!” He made an absurdly lengthy, elliptical jerking-off motion with his right hand.
“Nine men are dead,” she said. It sounded like the refrain to a ’60s protest song when it came out of her mouth: Four dead in O-hi-o.
“I’m getting to that, sunshine.”
“You’re getting to it?”
“I am buying the entirety of Powers’s estate for a song, a penny on the dollar. I don’t know what I will do with it, but it’s a billion-dollar deal. You brought me a unicorn.”
Maya smirked. That had been her dream; so much for dreams. Malouf continued, “When Joshua Tree stops burning, I’ll drill down into its mineral worth, and its oil, and I’ll look into casino licenses—you were right, there’s a lot of Indian sovereignty out there to be bartered for, also zoning for residence, commercial, at the very least entice the warehouse-hungry Walmarts and Amazons out of San Bernardino, spas, golf courses. What Michael Milken is trying to do in Reno, I’m gonna do in ’Dino—that’s what we’re … how we’re gonna rebrand San Bernardino—the ’Dino. Kicky, right? You like that?”
Maya could taste the acid bile rising in the back of her throat. She consciously slowed down her breathing and tried to relax the clenching muscles of her jaw. “The Mnooch got those opportunity-zone tax breaks passed in 2017, and you brought me the opportunity. Oh man, did we get taught a lesson in 2008—we learned how to do it even better this time around. Tom Price got the ball rolling, and Zinke did some great groundwork at the Department of Interior, we just need some roads—infrastructure! And DJT, visionary that he is, supports America being returned from the government back to the people, where it belongs—he’s opening up Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante over in Utah, and the trend is our friend. All this National Park land that’s going to waste; it’s a shame. Trump is handing it back to where our Founders wanted it, with the people, to use it. It’s the only way we’re gonna beat back the yellow peril. You know the Declaration of Independence originally read, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of property,’ don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you do, Miss Ivy League. Property and happiness were synonymous to the Founding Fathers.”
“That’s not what that means.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“No, let’s just disagree.”
“Yeah, agree to disagree,” he said.
“I’m not agreeing to anything,” she said.
She shook her head quickly from side to side, to shake herself out of that dumb back-and-forth. She had to stop herself from saying more. She wouldn’t be baited by his ostentatious racism or vintage sexism; she couldn’t be pulled into quibbles and semantics now, and murky side issues. That’s what he wanted. He waited. She waited.
He shrugged and continued, “I’ve set aside a small chunk of happiness for the Powers kids. They earned it—you’ve put them through enough. I want to make sure they’re comfortable. They can live there, or they can sell it back to me at fair market for a nice nest egg.”
“Nine men are dead. How do we atone for that?” She immediately regretted saying “we.” She felt a physical aversion to being enjoined with this man in any way, even in theoretical contrition.
“The Joshua Tree Fire started by the Bronson house arson and explosions is still raging, forty percent contained as of this morning; still threatening more populated areas of San Bernardino County; it’s estimated that it will have cost untold tens of millions of dollars in damage before it’s done. My thoughts, thanks, and prayers go out to the heroic first responders and those threatened in the neighboring communities. I feel for them because I own land there, too, now I do, in the ’Dino.”
He smiled, pleased with himself. “I’ve already made sizable contributions to the PAL, who lost some men as you know, and also to the San Bernardino school system. As one of the area’s largest landowners I intend to make a lot of friends, do a lot of good, help a lot of kiddos.”
“And nine men are dead.”
“Sammy Greenbaum got a green light from Sony Pictures to remake Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. He’s writing and directing. Sensible fifteen-mil budget. Can’t lose. We’re in talks with Nicole to produce/star. Sammy’s making the villain Canadian. Jack Ripperwell’s a Canuck! How smart is that? The reanimation of Hammer horror by Praetorian is under way!”
“And nine men are dead.”
They stared at each other. “But how can I help that?” Malouf asked, feigning helplessness.
Backlit by the sun setting over the Pacific behind him in the window, he seemed like a hologram to her, a weird, inhuman color; a trick of the light lacking depth or dimension. She rubbed her eyes as he continued, “What’s done is done. This was your game, and the game proved deadly. That’s on you. Now, I don’t have to buy your silence, I think you know. But if I hear you so much as accept a lawyer’s card, believe you me, I will crush you and make the rest of your life a living, litigious hell, and you don’t have the mental or financial wherewithal for that, we both know. Prison time for you would not be out of the question, but I will protect you as long as I can, as long as you play nice.”
Maya sat in silence; she felt hapless, weak, without muscle. The man across from her was willing to fight her every day for the rest of her life. She could only marvel at his perverse stamina, his evergreen lust for competition and destruction.
Malouf smiled. “But why should we part like this? I prefer to part as friends. You were mistaken about yourself. You thought you were something you’re not. Not so very uncommon, just a little sad. You didn’t have what it takes to make it here at Praetorian, but that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“You’ll never hear from me again.”
“Attagirl. I’m gonna cut you a check.”
“I don’t want your money. You still owe the San Bernardino school district a hundred grand. Why don’t you write that check?”
“Meow. Don’t be silly. It’s not my money, it’s just money; it goes from my pocket to yours and presto, it’s your money. Five hundred K. It’s not much, but it should give you some time to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I’m going to have two hundred fifty K deposited directly into your account, think of it as severance, and a friendly reminder, in addition to the NDA you signed with your last contract, not to even gossip about me. It’s our own little green new deal. You can do with it as you please. Spend it on clothes, get more tattoos, fuck more married men, cover your Wharton student loans, give it to charity like a fool if you want, it doesn’t concern me.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all from me. I’m sure you have a lot
to say, but I don’t want to hear it. I’m pretty sure I know what it is, and I don’t want you to feel bad later about hurting my feelings, so let’s spare us both, shall we?”
He turned in his chair, his back to her, to face the ocean. The sun was about to dip into the sea at the horizon, as if it wished to extinguish itself in water, as if it were tired of burning this day, too.
“Parasite,” Maya heard herself say.
Her lips remained slightly parted, stuck in a kind of sneer, the tip of her tongue holding against the back of her top front teeth in surprise that this particular word, not one of her everyday go-to epithets at all, had flown out of her. She hadn’t even formed the word in her mind before it took shape in her mouth and escaped, like a fugitive, into the room.
Malouf swiveled back to face Maya, and his eyebrows arched so hard and high that they seemed to momentarily disappear over the top of his smooth head. “Parasite? You call me a parasite?”
He rose from his chair, ceremoniously, it seemed to her, slowly inhaling to full height. “Amazing. And what have you done, big shot? What have you made in your life, Miss Wharton? Huh? You did your little homework assignments and got a free pass into the white man’s capitalist slipstream—bravo. You got the random luck to be born in a country at a time in history when women, vaguely, comfortably ethnic women like you, are put on second base and told they hit a double—yay, everybody gets a trophy. You got that affirmative action. How’s the view?”
“What view?”
“The view you have standing on my fucking shoulders.”
She had the urge to giggle—this change had come over him so suddenly, like a switch thrown, like a practical joke. Sure, she was expecting some kind of attack, but this harangue had come scattershot out of left field and turned so nasty and offensive so quickly that Maya found herself checking out a bit in mild shock and idly wondering what the feminine version of ad hominem was—ad feminam? Her Latin had ended in seventh grade of Catholic school.
“And what did you make of your golden ticket?” he continued, his voice rising, seething sarcasm. “You made straight A’s. Wow. Congratulations. Gold star, smiley face, good girl. You know what I made? I made myself!”
He pounded his chest with both cupped palms like a silverback gorilla. Again, Maya thought she might scoff aloud at the cliché of the gesture if he weren’t so serious and pissed off. He was looming over her now. “Out of nothing. Ex nihilo. I made all this!” He spread his arms wide in an embrace of the room and its fabulous furnishings, the floor-length offices of Praetorian, but he might as well have been referring to the entire world outside his window—Santa Monica, America, Earth. Robert Malouf made it all.
Maya felt nailed to her seat by this eruption, which was authentic, and scary, the self-righteousness and spittle sparking out of Malouf. “You think I’m a lowlife—a Vichy Republican, a mini-Trump con artist, a malignant narcissist, a bald, ugly, toxic old man with a tan—stop me if you’ve heard this one! Holy shit, you’re right! Guilty! All of the above.”
He laughed, as if that string of condemnations had made him lighter. “What choice did I have? What did God give me? What? I’m not white like you, not really, no. You ever been called a ‘sand nigger’ during a real estate negotiation? Doubt it. You think I don’t know half the motherfuckers who work for me call me ‘Sirhan’ behind my back? Not sir—Sirhan. Get it? The guy who shot Robert Kennedy. So fucking clever. Why aren’t you laughing?”
Maya shook her head slightly. She might feel sorry for him, but he was in the way, feeling sorry for himself, blocking any genuine goodwill she might have, taking up all the light and air. The only pity he could feel was self-pity, and it was bottomless. He continued eviscerating both of them, turning himself inside out in a rage.
“I ain’t pretty like you, you beautiful, entitled bitch. I don’t have a nice wet pussy to get me free dinners. I can’t dance or sing or act or fight or hit a baseball or write books. I have no inheritance like your boy, Bronson. God gave me shit! A shit hand. And I took it and bluffed it into a royal flush. All. By. My. Fucking. Self!” He pointed at the heavens. “No money, no beauty, no talent, nothing—the Almighty gave me nothing!”
Malouf lowered his hand and his eyes, in shame it seemed, and sat back down. Maya thought he’d exhausted himself, but he hadn’t. He looked up and met her eyes, and in a much lower, softer voice spoke with what could pass for religious conviction. “Except for one thing.” He held up that ghost index finger. Maya imagined it extended upward. “God gave me one thing, and he gave it to me bigly.” He paused for effect. “Can you see it?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking—could she see his finger? Could she see where his finger used to be, what it used to look like? He looked as proud as a little kid who’d stumped his mom with a riddle. She sure hoped he wasn’t talking about his dick. “It’s hard to see,” he said, still waiting for a guess from her. Maya tried to arrange her face into an expression that conveyed total lack of interest, but she was curious; she had no clue what he was about to say and he knew it.
“Emptiness,” he finally said, touching gingerly at the air before him like a blind man walking in an unfamiliar world, like it was a tangible thing, the dark presence of an endless absence. “Yes. Need. I want. And my want is infinite. I want everything.”
He stood up again, reenergized, patting his polo-toned belly. “I want what He has. I want what you have. I want what they have. I want. I want. I want! It’s my one gift. I’m a genius of want. That’s what God gave me—a fucking hole the size of the world.”
He pointed to where his heart must be. “Parasite. Yes! Thank you! Right on! All I am is a mouth, eyes, asshole, and a cock—seeing, eating, talking, taking, buying, shitting, fucking, and making money. One of God’s ugliest, simplest, most perfect creatures. A parasite farming out the grunt work of living to the host. All it does is feast. And fuck you, by the way, you took this job because you wanted to be just like me, learn from the master. You wanted to use me for your host—a parasite in training. So fuck your sudden righteousness.”
“Fair enough.”
“Fair enough is right. I’m the more moral one here. At least I know what I am. You were my host for a year. You thought you were sucking on my tit. Wrong! I was sucking on yours. I took your vision, your dream, your unicorn and I curled up inside it—suckling and waiting—eating away at the fairness—sucking out the humanity, fucking your empathy in the ass—forget about your kumbaya, win-win fantasies—life is zero sum, you ignorant little shit. Oh, I sucked—until nothing was left of your dream idea except the husk, the land, and now your dream is dead, but the land remains, and it’s all mine, the land, and I’ll suck that dry, too. And you, poor thing, pushing thirty already, huh? You’re drying up, too—uh-huh, don’t blink, baby cakes, you’ll miss it.”
He exhaled heavily and his skinny shoulders sagged. He looked spent at long last, and like he might cry. He seemed as surprised at what he’d just said as she was. He smiled, almost apologetically. “You think I’m the bad guy, the villain of your story—call me in twenty years, when you’re fifty—I’ll take your call, you’ll want to tell me you got it all wrong—you’ll want to tell me I’m the hero.”
Maya smiled, too—sincerely this time. Because Malouf had finally drawn back the curtain of his friendly, even obsequious persona; he had let her into the control room behind the mask. She smiled, also, because she understood now what had drawn her into an orbit around these two powerful men, Bronson and Malouf. In very different ways, in their vehemently anti-psychological worldviews, they were both throwbacks to men of earlier times. Bronson had tried to leapfrog the human, the messy twenty-first-century human, with his primate-centric vision of a monkey-like man who needed the yoke of the Law to bend him from a beast into a king-saint. Malouf perceived man as regressed even further back in geologic time, further than even his beloved Pavlovian dogs, telescoping back a billion years to the earliest microbes that joined together for protection and
efficiency in the primordial soup to form more and more complex beings. His was a brutal, predeterministic, robotic vision of man as a kind of parasite-haunted zombie (thank you, Hammer films—it was all of a piece, suddenly, all connected) doomed by the ancient, self-preserving demands of his chemicals to make preconscious choices with only the illusion of free will. Malouf Man was relegated to life as a flesh automaton by encoded mitochondrial, chromosomal desires and selfish genes to do deadly battle where only those soft machines would win who were not hamstrung by such weakening notions as empathy, integrity, neurosis, guilt, shame, penance, contrition, or spiritual love.
Both restless men found majestic power in one-dimensionality—the monolithic, animal presence of an apex predator or lowly parasite, built to do one thing, to move, to act, not to dither or prevaricate; built to win unencumbered by the second guesses of conscience and psychology. She had been blinded by their heat and simplicity, by their charm and her own projections, mistaking intensity for integrity. But now her eyes had been washed by blood, razed by fire, cleansed and cleared by death and destruction; she could see the true shape of things. She could see herself. She wasn’t sure who she was, but she was beginning to see what she was not. She was guilty, yes, of many sins, but she was not what they were. Not quite. Not yet. She was released. She felt aglow, an immense gratitude suffusing her insides in a sweeping, narcotic warmth. “Thank you,” she said, without a trace of irony.
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