The Failure

by James Greer

-I don’t know. There’s so many variables in both areas, but I do see your point.

  -That’s all I ask.

  -Lighting, film stock, exposure, on the one hand, not to mention the nearly limitless possibilities offered by digital manipulation of the image, whether moving or still. But the mirror thing … I do see your point. Plus, there’s no way of really knowing whether the mirror isn’t skewed in some way, like maybe it has an almost imperceptible flaw that produces a disproportionate distortion in the reflection. An unintentional funhouse mirror.

  -That’s as well as I could put it.

  -Actually, it’s much better than you could put it. But I think you meant it as a compliment and so I will take it as a compliment. Gracefully. With a graceful shrug that indicates both acknowledgment and gratitude. Without overdoing either.

  -That sounds really …

  -Articulate? Thank you, said Guy.

  -I like your thinking.

  -What does that mean, I like your thinking?

  -What do you mean, what does it mean? It means what I said: I like your thinking.

  -Score one for you on the tote board.

  -What’s a tote board? asked Billy.

  -Maybe just a dry-erase board, which could then be configured for multiple uses.

  -Can I ask you a question: are my eyes too far apart?

  -What do you mean?

  -I feel like my eyes are too far apart. Like weirdly so. Billy stared at his face carefully in the mirror on the passengerside sun visor. -Wide-set eyes look untrustworthy, I think. To girls, especially, he continued.

  -There’s also the fact that you’re a compulsive liar, replied Guy.

  Billy kept staring in the mirror. -No, I don’t think that’s it, he said after a while.

  31. GUY AND VIOLET DO DRUGS ON VIOLET’S BED, THE ONE NIGHT GUY WAS ALLOWED IN VIOLET’S APARTMENT, FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO

  She handed him the crumpled and perforated tinfoil, in the center of which was smeared “the dark blood of the opium,” as Guy liked to call the sticky brown tar that Violet had developed a serious habit of consuming, and which Guy felt duty-bound, as a way of protecting her from herself, to share.

  He held his lighter under the foil and breathed the smoke. This stuff has no effect on me, he thought, attempting to stand up and failing. I don’t see the appeal.

  Guy handed the foil and lighter back to Violet, who immediately took a long and deep drag.

  -Good stuff, she said, exhaling.

  -Yeah. So you want to go to this thing at the Gagosian?

  -Not really.

  -But it’s your friend, right?

  -I have lots of friends. And besides, remember what happened the last time we went.

  Guy remembered. He remembered that if you go to the Gagosian in Beverly Hills to see a Vanity Fair photographer’s exhibit you will encounter Damien Hirst, who does not travel light, entouragely speaking, and the exotic, swanlike Tilda Swinton, avec mari. Guy said let’s turn off all the lights at once but Violet would not let him. I know these people, she hissed. I know people here and that would be incredibly juvenile and immature and embarrassing. Guy was not drinking the free wine because he had temporarily stopped drinking, so he didn’t switch off all the lights, even though he still—to this day—believes that would have been better art than anything on display at the goddamned Gagosian.

  Because, and here you have to maybe allow for Guy’s immaturity and whatever Violet said, juvenility, but if art with a capital or even a small initial letter is meant to provoke a reaction from the spectator or audience or what-have-you—the rabble, right?—then turning out the lights when everyone is crowded together in their expensive clothes sipping cheap wine would create a small-time panic at the disco, at least, and wouldn’t last very long—you could put the lights back on, since you’re standing at the light switch panel in the first place, before the first ladies-in-waiting had begun to scream and the babble had barely begun to rise above a murmuration—and you could moreover walk away quickly enough from the light switches (which for future reference are right behind the stairway that leads up to the second floor) and stand a decent chance of getting away with it.

  But no, this was at a time when Guy would do anything Violet asked. A time that, despite everything, never stopped existing, and will now exist forever, because Guy is in a coma, and while the best coma research sheds little insight into the actual mental processes of a comatose patient, we can assume that if Guy was in love with Violet (and despite what he would tell you, if he could speak, he was) pre-coma, then he is still in love with her now. Because he doesn’t know anything that happened after he crashed through the restraining barrier, flipped over three times, and lost consciousness forever.

  -You mean the nothing that happened last time we went?

  -I mean the thing that would’ve happened if you … God this stuff is strong.

  -Just admit you don’t want to go because you’d rather stay here and get high.

  -Will that make you feel better about yourself?

  -Can I ask you a serious question? said Guy.

  -Oh God, anything but that! Serious questions are so tedious. You know, Guy, for someone who claims to like things blurry and unstated, you’re really a constructivist at heart.

  -I don’t suppose there’s a chance you’re ever wrong about anything.

  -No.

  At that moment, the phone in Violet’s apartment rang. She leaned over to see the caller ID and groaned.

  -Who? asked Guy.

  -Just some guy who can’t take a hint. I may have to take out a restraining order.

  -You want I should, like, kick his ass?

  Violet exploded with laughter that quickly turned into a coughing fit. She reached for the tinfoil and took another deep drag.

  -The idea of you kicking anyone’s ass. Sorry. Too funny.

  -I suppose you’re right. I could hire someone to do it, though. I know people.

  -Oh, just leave the poor guy alone.

  -Does he know about me?

  -Most likely. He’s kind of the obsessive type. He probably followed us here and copied your license plate and put a trace on it.

  -What, he’s a cop?

  -No, he just knows how to do spy-type things. I don’t know how. He’s like some kind of tech genius. The kind who fancies himself an “artist.” Which explains, I guess, his fascination with me.

  -When did you dump him?

  -The night I met you. Except I didn’t actually dump him. We weren’t going out or anything. I never even fucked him. I don’t think. But you know how some guys can be … or maybe you don’t.

  -So he was there, at the Smog Cutter? What, you just left him there without telling him?

  -Pretty much.

  -Great. An enemy I didn’t even know I had.

  -He’s harmless. Borderline nuts, but harmless.

  -We’re all borderline nuts. Borderline nuts I can handle. I just like to know when I’ve made a new enemy, witting or unwitting.

  -What’s that mean?

  -It means … I don’t know. Pass that over here, will you?

  32. THE VILLAIN SVEN TRANSVOORT DESCRIBES HIS FIRST MEETING WITH GUY, SITTING COWARDLY IN HIS UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO

  What’s a little white lie between friends? I realize I’m assuming quite a lot, calling you my friends, but you see I have no others, just at the moment, and I could really use some.

  The white lie was that Violet McKnight was my girlfriend. I am many things in addition to a sociopath, but I am not delusional, at least not in a Humbert Humbert way. I’m not anywhere near that predictable. Or, to put it the way I twittered just ten minutes ago, I am the most interesting person you will never meet. I thought that was rather clever, given the 140-character constraints of the form.

  I was seeing her, yes, but only in the sense that one sees another person who might be described as a casual acquaintance. In fact, she was using me,
or more specifically using my connections in the art world, which are really no more than a function of the money my adoptive parents left me when they died (tragically, in a car accident, which some of my new friends, that is to say you, might find ironic). My father, unlike Guy’s, could never handle his liquor. And my mother didn’t know how to drive. But psychoanalysis will get you nowhere, my new friends, because I did not love my parents. Or, if you like, I loved them, but in the way one loves a favorite piece of furniture or an apartment. When the furniture is stolen, or you move, you’re sad at first, but you get over it fairly quickly. You don’t necessarily, with parents, acquire a new piece of furniture or move into a new apartment (please try to keep up with the extended metaphor, you in the back!), but you do move on. You forget.

  As for our other Forget, if Hannah Arendt was right about the banality of evil, and I see no reason to argue the point, then my subsequent encounters with Guy Forget represented probably my first encounter with pure evil. I am not equating Guy with Eichmann, I’m simply saying that had Guy been in Eichmann’s place he probably would have acted similarly. He had no appetite for questioning received wisdom, no apparent talent for original thinking whatsoever. In this he was, of course, not all that different from anyone you might meet at any time in any place or especially watch run for elected office, but what distinguished Guy, what snapped my head to attention, was his self-awareness.

  He walked into the after-party like he was walking onto a yacht. I should first explain that I almost never give parties in Los Angeles, not anymore. I should secondly explain that I am aware when I am paraphrasing or even stealing old song lyrics. There is intentionality to everything I say or do. There is will. There is almost always execution.

  I gave this party because Violet asked me to, though it’s true I had in fact manipulated her into asking me to, because as part of my elaborate revenge plan I had “let slip” to Violet about my spurious Internet coding breakthrough, which I knew she would not fail to determine could be a useful thing for Guy to try to exploit. I pretended to give the party, therefore, under protest, with a bad attitude, determined not to have fun, determined to sulk in a corner slumped against a wall or if possible glowering in an easy chair with my legs outstretched so that people would either have to step over them or trip. As you can imagine most people tripped, because most people are incredibly unaware of their surroundings even when sober, but after two or three drinks my legs acquired the kind of invisibility I’d dreamed about as a boy.

  Drunk as he was—and he was—self-absorbed and arrogant and entitled and rangy and tall and good-looking in an ordinary way, as he also was, he looked down as he approached, with a drink in both hands, and saw my legs. And stepped over them. And then turned, or gavotted, almost, and looked me directly in the eye.

  This was, whether he or I knew it at that second, a crucial moment in Guy Forget’s life. It was the moment I could have turned back, forgotten the elaborate revenge plan, decided he was an okay guy, or Guy, and let the whole thing drop. Instead, it was the moment that confirmed to me in the core of my being that I was doing the right thing. He should not have turned. He should not have looked me in the eye. He should have tripped over my legs like everyone else and spilled his drink, and laughed the whole thing off. Had he done so, I firmly believe, I would have let him be.

  I waited a few minutes and then approached him. Almost immediately I began my well-planned counterplot, spurred on—had there been any lingering doubts in my mind before the after-party—by blind rage at his insipid manner, at the way he had of talking down to me, to me, whose IQ on any measurable scale towered above the collective IQ of the entire houseful of tweeting and tumbling deadheaded mannequins like the snow-capped peaks of the volcanic range of mountains in the Puy-de-Dôme serenely keeping watch over central France.

  You know how sometimes you just develop an instant antipathy toward someone? Instant and unexplainable but deep and ineradicable as a vein of fool’s gold in (for instance, to pick a random example) volcanic rock? That’s what happened—over and above walking out of the Smog Cutter with a girl he in no way deserved, that’s what provoked his end. He did enough to warrant that end, I suppose. He dug his own hole. But I filled it in.

  I’m not confessing for any particular reason other than the thrill of confessing. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m just saying let’s work out what’s worth saving and what’s not in this crazy two-bit town called life.

  33. GUY AND BILLY DISCUSS VIOLET BEHIND HER BACK, SITTING IN THE BAR TWO DAYS BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO

  She’d been crying, is what I’m trying to tell you.

  -She does that. Not cry, but pretend to have been crying. It’s one of her most effective tools.

  -You’re absolutely heartless.

  -Me? I’m full of heart. If my heart were any bigger we’d have to find a larger booth.

  -Then why are you always putting her down?

  -Listen to me, Billy. No one on this greenish-blue earth loves or cares for Violet more than I do. No one, in fact, loves or cares for her half as much as I do. I’m not really sure how you quantify loving and caring for someone, but “half as much” is not meant as a precise measurement. Don’t trap me with words, Billy. I know the twists of your sophistry. You could make me believe the opposite of what I say or mean with a few well-turned questions.

  -I could?

  -There you go! Damn you!

  -I didn’t know you had such strong feelings.

  -About Violet?

  -About anything.

  -She’s misunderstood by everyone except me. I put her down out of love, you see. I don’t fall for her tricks because she’s better than her tricks.

  -I don’t know …

  -Anything. You don’t know anything. That’s the Socratic method at work, old boy. Good for you. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, you’ll have me believing that pornography is immoral. You’re amazing!

  -All I’m saying is that she’s very unhappy about Plan Charlie. She doesn’t want us to go through with it. And I don’t like to see her unhappy. I guess I have feelings for her too.

  -Of course you have feelings for her. Feelings of brotherly love, complicated by irresistible incestuous urges. We’ve all been there, old boy.

  -Why do you keep calling me old boy?

  -It’s just … I really like that movie, Old Boy. And you remind me of the main character before he gets locked away in his hotel-room prison for twenty years or however long. Which, by the way, is absolutely not going to happen to you. I promise you, no matter what happens before, during, or after Plan Charlie, you will pay no price. I have carefully rigged this whole setup so that if anything goes wrong, Guy Forget and only Guy Forget will take the fall.

  -What I want to know is when we get to meet this driver, this Sven dude.

  -I already met him. You don’t get to meet him until the day of the job.

  -That makes me uncomfortable.

  -I’m sorry, Billy, but surely you can see this is for your own good.

  -I do see that, and I appreciate it, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I like to know the people I’m working with.

  -You mean like Gregory?

  -That’s not fair.

  -Who said anything about fair? Look, you want to meet Sven, you can meet Sven. I just don’t see the point. It’s an unnecessary risk, for both of you. If there was a way you could avoid seeing him on the day of the job altogether, I’d jump at it. In the meantime, the less you two know about each other, the better for both of you.

  -I guess you’re right.

  -You guess right. I am.

  -How much does Violet know about any of this?

  -I have no secrets from her. I probably should, but I somehow can’t. Maybe it’s all the drugs. And, of course, there’s you. You can’t shut up about anything.

  -She makes me nervous. I have to say something. I try not to talk about anything, you know, about this. I do try.

  -You have a way
of speaking volumes of sense amid libraries of nonsense. Some kind of freakish gift.

  -She asks me all the time, but I don’t tell her much. I swear. I can tell from her questions that she knows what’s up.

  -And she can tell from your answers what’s up. It’s like Mrs. Parker’s vicious circle.

  -You already told me you’ve told her everything. What’s the point? I’m as discrete as I know how to be.

  -I know. I’m sorry. I should give you more credit. You’re a smart kid, old boy.

  34. THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO, FINALLY, TOLD IN A STYLIZED MANNER THAT AT ONCE EVOKES AND MOCKS THE ABSURDITY OF THE SITUATION, WITHOUT STRAYING TOO FAR FROM WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

  They entered the store, Guy and Billy, Billy and Guy, wearing their baby-blue ski masks and brandishing obviously fake pistols, and the tellers, counting money behind their cages, barely looked up. One supposes that they see this sort of thing on a regular basis, maybe even with baby-blue ski masks. It’s difficult to say, just as it was difficult to read the expression on Charlie’s face as he stared at the masked duo from behind Window 3, frozen with what could be shock, but looked enough like shock that Guy actually double-checked his watch to make sure they were on the right day and time. Which of course they were. Guy went up to Charlie’s cage, and in his best menacing whisper, which by the way is not very menacing, he said, “Hand over the cash in your drawer, punk.”

  Charlie shrugged, looked down at his drawer, and after a moment’s hesitation that Guy thought, at the time, was a magnificently ad-libbed piece of acting, removed it from his register and handed it through the slot in the Plexiglas window. Obviously the drawer itself would not fit through the slot, so he started removing bundles of cash and pushing them through the slot, where Billy stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag. Which is when Guy noticed that something had obviously gone very, very wrong. There was nothing like $100,000 in Charlie’s drawer. There was more like $12,000, the amount that’s normally supposed to be there, but not this morning, the morning of Guy and Billy and Charlie’s elaborately worked-out plan.