by Isaac Black
phone for the nearest Salvation Army, drove to it and dropped the envelope unopened in the mail slot.
“What are you doing?” Casper asked.
“Let me in,” Simon said.
“What if someone sees you?”
“Plenty of people see me, but since I’m not a hooker or a Kardashian, they don’t care. Chill out.” Simon walked into Casper’s apartment. When he had shut the door, Simon told him. “Rinehard gave me $10,000.”
“For what?”
“Cash. As a bonus. And he offered me a promotion.”
“He gave you $10,000 cash?” Casper asked.
“Yeah.”
“You took it?”
“Kind of. I gave it to the Salvation Army.”
Casper poured two whiskeys. They talked about the implications of Simon’s promotion, with Simon insisting that it meant nothing as Casper fretted stone-faced.
“I need to get out,” Casper declared finally. “Need some air.”
They risked being seen together leaving in Casper’s Nissan and drove into the hills. There was a conspicuous lack of wind, and Simon stared at the populace’s ceaseless exhalations spreading skyward. They decided as they drove that Rinehard was trying to bring Simon closer—allowing him to see him doing cocaine with a prostitute implied a level of trust, trust cemented by the $10,000. What they couldn’t be sure of was Rinehard’s motivation. They reasoned that it was very unlikely that Rinehard knew anything, though there was that email that Meghan had sent. It was a long shot. Simon decided he would take the promotion. Besides, it would put him in a better position to get information on Rinehard.
They parked the car at a gravelly turnout, sat on the hood and watched dust fall over the edge of the road.
“Do you have many regrets?” Simon asked.
Casper was quiet.
“I have a lot of regrets,” Simon admitted. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made as many right choices as I’ve made wrong choices.”
“What have you done wrong?” Casper asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his head. “I don’t know. What am I doing with my life, you know? How did I get here? I went to college, I studied Comms, I got a job. Just been coasting the whole time. Never had a serious relationship. If it all ended today, if I got killed by a stray bullet at a fucking 7-11, what is the point? Anything? Will anyone miss me?”
“Your family?”
“I guess.”
The air hung heavy on them, over the city. Simon looked at the bright lights that had called to him in his teenage boredom. He had found Treasure Island and was bored to his soul with it.
“A boy that I used to bully killed himself when I was 16,” Casper confessed.
Simon sat quiet.
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Simon finally said.
“He hung himself in his garage. No note. I don’t know. There were lots of rumors and not a lot of official reports. I think there was a note but the parents kept it secret. I can’t even remember the details straight. The gossip was so sensationalistic, not just in my school but even with the adults. People said he was molested, that he was clinically depressed, that he made a move on his sister and then did it out of fear that she would tell everyone.” He snorted archly. “It was because he was bullied. He snapped, I guess.”
Simon traced a line of red lights downhill far below them.
“It was spiteful. The way I bullied him. He bugged me, he really got under my skin. You want to know why? Because there was nothing wrong with him. He wasn’t fat, wasn’t ugly, wasn’t gay, nothing, but he was still a loser. He didn’t have to be. I felt bad for the fat kids, the kids with acne, that sort of thing, I really did. I would keep my friends from picking on them. I really would. But this one kid, I was ruthless to him. Just mean.”
“Yeah,” Simon said, just to keep him talking.
“I heard that he had a crush on this one girl. He didn’t have a chance with her. I mean, he could have, right, in a different world. But the way things were, no way. So I knew he liked this girl, and one day I saw him talking to her. I walked up behind him and pantsed him, and all the popular kids were there, and we laughed at him. He was wearing tighty-whities, and he had skid marks in the back. Well, I don’t know if he actually did or not, but we all called him Skid Mark. The girl was even laughing at him. He ran away, looking like he was going to cry. And, fuck.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“How much longer after that did he kill himself.”
“A couple of weeks.”
“Yeah.”
“Just long enough for me to wonder if I did it.”
“Suicide happens because of mental illness, Casper. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“I know,” he said, taking a deep breath.
Simon looked at Casper. He was still staring over the bluff they sat on, his eyes blank.
“What kind of life do you have when you have to lie to yourself to make it through?” Casper asked.
Simon spat in the dust. “Doesn’t matter. As long as you’re alive,” he said, mostly to himself, unconvinced.
Rinehard pushed through Simon’s promotion a couple days later. In the editors’ meeting, Rinehard put his arm around Simon as he introduced him, placing Simon’s face uncomfortably close to his humid girth. That night Simon skipped the editors’ after-work drink to go to a different bar, dance with girls, joke to himself morbidly about Casper’s assassination, joke to other people morbidly about Casper’s assassination, and finally get so drunk that he called a cab after trying for five minutes to open the door to someone else’s car. He couldn’t get a hold of Casper for another four days, a fact he tried to ignore each morning.
He finally got a text from an unknown number on a Tuesday morning, saying “sorry. give me a call.”
Ardman Enterprises was the name of the land management company. It was a step-brother of the speaker’s wife that was CFO of Ardman; they had different names, which seemed to explain how the press hadn’t instantly made the connection.
“But I’m sure that Rinehard has a hand in keeping that quiet, too.” Simon said.
Simon brought sandwiches over to Casper’s apartment, where Casper had holed himself up doing extended bouts of caffeinated research and playing video games. “I have an idea of why they’re keeping the photos on the governor hidden,” he was explaining. “Republicans have all been delivering the same talking point about the governor being an obstructionist. They say he’s blocking their efforts to strengthen the economy. The Sun has been hammering away at that, too.”
“I work there. I know,” Simon said.
“Anyway, what they’re doing is making it so when the speaker introduces this bill, the governor will be afraid to make veto threats, because that will validate this case they’re making against him. So he’s playing the game right now, hoping to gather the votes and kill the bill that way.”
“So what does this have to do with not outing him?”
“See, if they bring out these pictures, or let anyone else, his chances at re-election are shot. Then he’s a lame duck, and he vetoes whatever he wants.”
“What if we take the poison pill and get those photos out there ourselves?” Simon asked.
“As a last ditch, I say that’s what we do.”
“What’s the other plan?”
“I like the governor, and he’s dead set against the bill. I say we avoid trying to take him down if possible. What if we try to get it into print that the speaker has ulterior motives in this business?”
“Then the bill’s dead?” Simon asked.
“It will put them on the defensive. Instead of making the conversation about this contrived obstructionist stuff, they’ll have to explain their total lack of ethics to a public who’s already wary of corrupt politicians.”
“And… can I keep my job amidst all this?”
“I say we stay focused
and deal with all that as it comes,” Casper said with the utmost sincerity.
“You think these sandwiches pay for themselves?” Simon said.
“Listen. All we have to do is give a tip to a different newspaper that the speaker’s brother-in-law is going to be bidding for a government contract. Then, we flirt with an intern at the speaker’s office and get her to go on record saying that the speaker has been getting gifts from that company. We line up the pieces, and the story’s out and our hands are clean.”
“But we can’t publish a story about a bill that hasn’t even been introduced. Any idea when that’s going to happen?”
“No telling,” Casper said. “There isn’t even talk yet of a co-sponsor for the bill.”
“You know, I’m hoping that Rinehard somehow resigns in shame as a result of all this. Sooner than later. He smells like a strip club.” Simon said.
“You working with him more often now?”
“Yep,” Simon admitted, trying to hide his apprehension. “He keeps tabs on me.”
“Maybe it will end up being a good thing. Maybe you’ll be in a better position to get information.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll smash an intern. Good times all around,” Simon said, pinching some crumbs out of a potato chip bag. “You’re a decent guy, Casper. It’s funny, I thought the whole ‘relatable millionaire’ thing was a political myth.”
“Don’t be an asshole. I’m not a millionaire.”
“Good one.”
“I made my mom write me out of her will. I don’t accept any money from them.”
“Well, you’re a liar, because all you do from what I can tell is think about ways to overthrow the