A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

  “So how do you want to tackle this?” I asked Anouk.

  “We should attack on two fronts. One of us takes the father, the other one the son.”

  “This is never going to work.”

  “You want to try Reynold or Oscar?”

  “Neither, but I suppose I’ll try Reynold. I want to ask him something anyway.”

  “OK. But what should I say to the son? What kind of opening do you think will work?”

  “I don’t know. Pretend you met before.”

  “He’ll think I’m trying to pick him up.”

  “Then insult him.”

  “Insult him?”

  “Dissect him the way you always do. Tell him what’s wrong with his soul.”

  “How do I know what’s wrong with his soul?”

  “Make it up. Tell him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”

  “No, that’s no good.”

  “All right. Then tell him he’s so rich he’s cut off from reality. That’ll get him going. Rich people hate that.”

  “But he is so rich he’s cut off from reality.”

  “Anouk, believe it or not, financial hardship is not actually the one official reality.”

  “Let’s not argue. Let’s just get going on this.”

  “OK. Good luck.”

  I went over to the table where Reynold Hobbs was hunched, but there were no empty seats. I stood around, breathing on the players’ necks. A security guard eyed me suspiciously, and with good cause too. I was acting suspicious, muttering to myself, “What the hell am I going to say to this media giant? How can I convince him to see my father? As an act of charity? Reynold Hobbs is a famous philanthropist, sure, but his is the kind of charity you phone in.”

  A reporter sitting next to Reynold finished an interview, stood up, and shook his hand. I took the opportunity and squeezed in beside him. Reynold smiled cordially at me, but I immediately sensed his discomfort. Some people are just no good talking to anyone under twenty years old, and the closer you are to zero, the greater their discomfort. He turned away from me and became instantly engrossed in a conversation with his lawyer about the average point size of small print in a legal contract. Reynold wanted to put in some clause in Times New Roman but drag it down to four points. His lawyer was debating the ethics of the proposed move, and argued that any print needs to be no smaller than seven points to be “all aboveboard.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hobbs?” I said.

  He turned slowly, as if to say “Everything I breathe on turns to gold, so I’m doing you a big favor just facing in your direction,” and when his eyes reached me, they did so with an infinite stillness that told me in no uncertain terms that despite our proximity, he was inaccessible.

  “What is it?”

  “You own some of our newspapers, don’t you?”

  “And?”

  “Well, I thought power was supposed to corrupt, Mr. Hobbs. But what you do isn’t corrupt- selling diarrhea isn’t corrupt, it’s just a baffling waste of power. With all the influence you exert, with the infinite choices you have up your sleeve, you could print anything, and yet you choose to print armpit sweat. Why?”

  Reynold didn’t know what to say. I looked over to see how Anouk was doing. She seemed to be faring better than I was. Oscar had an embarrassed look on his face. I wondered what she was saying.

  Reynold was still ignoring me. I said, “OK, you want to sell papers. I get it. You sell fresh phlegm because the public has an indefatigable taste for fresh phlegm. But can’t you make your papers a little bit liberating? What about sticking in a quarter page of Tibetan wisdom between the rehashed headlines and the daily horrorscopes? Would it kill sales?”

  The security officer’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s OK,” Reynold said, without taking his eyes off me.

  I pushed on. “Take the shamelessly sensationalist rehashing of the Frankie Hollow story. You don’t have any more insight than you had on the first day, but you plop it on the front page anyway, turning it round and round, now from the point of view of the turd in the hotel toilet, now that of a bird flying past the window. Honestly, Mr. Hobbs, it’s like reading dick cheese. How can you live with yourself? You must hire someone to look in the mirror for you.”

  “Listen to me, sonny, whoever you are. A newspaper is there to report, not to enlighten men’s souls. Tabloids are sensationalist because men’s lives are not sensational. That’s the long and the short of it. The death of a celebrity is the best paper-seller we have. Do you know why? Because it’s as if the headline reads: ‘Gods Die Too.’ Do you get me?”

  “Sure. Can I borrow thirty thousand dollars?”

  “What for?”

  “To wander aimlessly over the whole earth. Ten thousand would get me started.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You shouldn’t be looking for handouts. You should be inspired to do it on your own.”

  “There’s nothing inspiring about minimum wage.”

  “Yeah, well, I started on minimum wage. I never got a handout. I worked for what I have.”

  “That’s a good speech. It’s a shame you can’t give your own eulogy.”

  “OK. My patience has run out now.”

  He nodded to the security guard, who helped me to my feet by squeezing my neck.

  “One more thing!” I shouted.

  Reynold sighed, but I could tell he was wondering what I was going to say. “Make it quick,” he said.

  “My father wants to meet with you.”

  “Who’s your father?”

  “Martin Dean.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “I didn’t say he was famous. I just said he wants to meet you.”

  “What about?”

  “Why don’t you let him tell you in person?”

  “Because I don’t have time. My plate’s full right now.”

  “You’re rich enough. Buy a bigger plate.”

  Reynold nodded again, and the security officer dragged me from the table. Someone took my picture as I was “escorted” outside. I waited for Anouk on the casino steps for an hour, and to pass the time I swung by the car park to check for suffocating children. There weren’t any.

  I came back up just as Anouk was coming out. I had never been flabbergasted before, so I didn’t know what it felt like to be flabbergasted and I didn’t even really believe people could be flabbergasted outside of books. That said, I was flabbergasted. Following closely behind Anouk were Oscar and Reynold Hobbs.

  “And this is Jasper,” she said.

  “We’ve met,” Reynold said, with an ephemeral sneer.

  “Nice to meet you again,” I said, and I threw Oscar the warmest smile in my smile repertoire, but his eyes didn’t find my face worth dwelling on, so he missed it.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Anouk.

  “They’re coming with us,” she said, making her eyebrows wiggle.

  “Where?”

  “Home.”

  VIII

  In the stretch black limousine, both Reynold and his son spent the ride staring out their respective windows. Oscar’s three-quarter profile had me transfixed most of the way. What a burden, I thought. Imagine being filthy rich and impossibly good-looking. For all that, he exuded a sadness I was unable to account for.

  “I’ve seen your picture in magazines,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “And you’ve always got some gorgeous model hanging off your arm.”

  “So?”

  “So where do I get an arm like that?”

  Oscar laughed and looked at me for the first time. His eyes were coffee-colored and motionless.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Jasper.”

  He nodded, apparently agreeing that my name was Jasper.

  “So how does it feel to be always watched?” I asked.
>
  “You get used to it.”

  “But don’t you feel restricted?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t miss the freedom?”

  “Freedom?”

  “Let me put it this way. You couldn’t take your penis out and wave it on a public train without it being front-page news. I could.”

  “Why would I want to wave my penis on a public train?” Oscar asked me. It was a good question. Why would anyone?

  Reynold Hobbs coughed, but it was no mere lung-clearing exercise. That cough was meant to put me down. I smiled. You may have all the money in the world, Mr. Hobbs, I thought, you might own the whole universe and its particles thereof, you might gain interest on the stars and reap dividends from the moon, but I’m young and you’re old and I have something you don’t- a future.

  ***

  “I’ve heard about this place. It’s a labyrinth, isn’t it?” Reynold said as we hiked through the dense bush.

  “How did you hear about it?” I asked, and he looked at me as though I were a shrunken head in an Amazonian exhibit. To him, my question was the same as asking God how he knew Adam and Eve had taken the apple.

  “Your dad’s sure going to be surprised,” Anouk said, smiling at me.

  I didn’t smile back. I was dreading a scene. Normally Dad didn’t like surprise guests, which ordinarily was fine because he never once had any, but there was no way of knowing how he was going to react. What Anouk didn’t understand was that just because Dad had once written in a notebook that he wanted to whisper ideas into an enormous golden ear didn’t mean that he hadn’t forgotten writing it two minutes later or that ten minutes later he didn’t write in a separate notebook that all he wanted was to defecate into an enormous golden ear. You couldn’t know.

  We went inside. Luckily it wasn’t a disgusting mess, it was only mildly vile: books, scattered papers, a couple of days’ worth of rotting food, nothing too off-putting.

  “He really is a genius,” Anouk said, as if preparing them for the type of genius who goes to the toilet on the coffee table.

  “Dad!” I called out.

  “Piss off!” came his throaty answer from the bedroom. Reynold and Oscar exchanged a silent dialogue with their eyes.

  “Maybe you’d better go in and get him,” Anouk said.

  While Reynold and Oscar made themselves uncomfortable on the couch, refusing to recline into the cushions, I went to find Dad.

  He was lying on his bed, facedown in the starfish position.

  I said, “Reynold Hobbs and his son are here to see you.”

  Dad turned his head toward me and gave me a pretty sneer. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not kidding. Anouk thought you were going into another suicidal depressive phase and was worried about you and so she went through your journals and found the bit about you wanting to whisper big ideas into an enormous golden ear and so she convinced me to go with her and find the biggest, most golden ear in the country and amazingly she pulled it off and now they’re waiting for you in the living room.”

  “Who’s waiting?”

  “Reynold Hobbs and his son, Oscar. They’re waiting to hear your big ideas.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope. Take a look for yourself.”

  Dad lifted himself off the bed and peered around the corner. If he thought he’d do it without being seen, he was wrong. Reynold turned his head slowly to us and scratched himself listlessly- who knows if he was really itchy or merely playing a part?- and as we approached he shaded his eyes with his hand, as if Dad and I were glowing apparitions too bright for the human eye to bear.

  “Hey,” Dad said.

  “Hey,” Reynold said back.

  “Anouk’s been telling us you’ve got some great unrealized ideas you thought we’d be interested in,” Oscar said.

  “We’re not wasting our time here, are we?” Reynold asked.

  “No, you’re not wasting your time,” he said. “I swear on my son’s life.”

  “Dad,” I said.

  “Just give me a minute to get my notes together. Um, Anouk, can you come in here for a sec?”

  Dad and Anouk went into Dad’s bedroom and closed the door. I wanted to follow them inside, but I didn’t want Reynold and Oscar to think I was afraid to be alone with them, even though I was afraid to be alone with them. We all kind of nodded at each other, but nodding gets old after a few seconds. So I said, “I wonder what’s keeping them?” and I went into the bedroom, where Anouk sat on Dad’s bed while he knelt on the floor, bent over a collection of old black notebooks, frantically turning pages. It was a disturbing sight. I could hear him hiss: he was leaking anxiety. Anouk made a face at me, a face overloaded with dread.

  “What are you standing there for?” Dad snapped at me without looking up.

  “Are you ready?”

  “He hasn’t picked an idea yet,” Anouk said.

  “They’re waiting.”

  “I know!”

  “You swore on my life, remember?”

  “All right,” Anouk said, “let’s everybody calm down.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Turn off the light!” Dad whispered to me urgently.

  “Dad, they saw us go in.”

  “Why do I care anyway? This is foolishness.”

  Dad picked up a handful of notebooks and went out into the living room. Anouk and I followed. Dad sat on the armchair, leafing through one of his notebooks slowly, making clicking noises with his tongue. “So…yes…the idea…I have a couple that I thought you’d be interested in…”

  He shuffled through to the last page and snapped it shut- seems the idea wasn’t there after all, because he pulled out another black notebook, identical to the first. And again, flying through the pages, clicking his tongue, eyeballs sweating. That notebook also failed to produce. Another pocket held a third small black notebook. “I just…oh yeah, this is something you’ll- no, probably not…Hang on…just one more second…one more second…I swear…five seconds- five, four, three, two, one, and the winner is…um, just one more second.” A tiny worm of a smile slid onto Reynold’s face. I wanted to stamp it out with the foot of an elephant. At the best of times I hated watching my father squirm in a hell of his own construct, but in the face of derision from outsiders, it was unbearable. Dad was in a frenzy trying to break out of this paralysis of indecision, when Reynold snapped his fingers. Twice. That must be how rich people get things done, I thought. It worked. Dad stopped and immediately read what was written on the page he happened to have open at that exact moment.

  “Idea for a cannibal-themed restaurant- every piece of food is shaped like a part of the human anatomy.”

  The idea hung in the air. It was idiotic. No one responded, because there was no reason to. Dad’s eyes dove back to his notebook and continued to search. Reynold didn’t snap his fingers again. He didn’t have to. Dad started anticipating the fingers and would stop randomly at an idea and read it out loud.

  “Drug education- have schoolchildren spend a week living with a junkie in a falling-down squat. Child will watch junkie shoot up, vomit, steal from his own family, break out in sores, and finally overdose. Child will write a report of five hundred words and read it at junkie’s funeral, which will be part of the daily school excursion. Every time a junkie dies, the class has to bury him, until association of heroin with death is embedded in the unconscious minds of the children.”

  He wasn’t thinking. He was just spewing out ideas. And none of the good ones.

  “Introduce conscription for community service where we let the homeless live in the homes of bankers and take the mentally ill off the streets and let them shit in the bathrooms of those in the advertising industry.”

  “Next,” Reynold said quietly.

  “Electronically tag celebrities like cattle, so when they’re walking down the street-”

  “Next.”

  “Based on car emissions and usage of water, sp
rays, and nonrecyclable materials, calculate how much damage each individual is doing to the environment and record it against that person’s name and sentence him or her to spend an equivalent in hours or money in doing something to repair the environment.”

  Reynold’s eyes flickered just enough to let you know he was thinking. “How do you make money on that?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Next.”

  “Make every man, woman, and child in this country a millionaire.”

  Reynold didn’t say anything, and he said it with his eyes. His disdain became another entity in the room. “Even if you could do that,” he said, “why would you want to?”

  It was a fair question. Dad was about to answer when Reynold said, “OK, Martin. We’ve heard you out. Now I want you to hear us out- is that fair?”

  “All right.”