“It’s only a fraction of what we made with the Reagan deficit,” muttered Whitlock to Ngm.
“What?” I asked.
“In the words of Augustine,” said Ngm, “do not seek to know more than is appropriate.” I didn’t think it appropriate to reveal that I had heard that same quote on Jeopardy the night before.
“This is only the executive committee of the board of trustees. The full board is meeting next Monday at 10:00 a.m. to vote on several strategies regarding the President’s new national health insurance proposal. Try to come on time and look sharp,” Whitlock called.
“But Dad, you still have to finish the last detail of the test, remember?” said Amy.
“What’s that?” I inquired.
“The return of the money.”
“Oh, gee, it’s late,” Whitlock said, checking his costly wristwatch.
“Now Andrew, it’s imperative that you see this thing to its end,” said the holder of the double-headed eagle cane.
“We are very particular about the rules here,” Ngm added.
“Very well, son. Let us seal the final bonds of this contract.”
“So be it,” said Amy.
A limo was waiting for us downstairs. Dad, sis, and I got in.
“Actually,” I said, “this really does make complete sense.”
“It does?” asked Dad.
“Sure, this is what was missing from my life all along. A strong, supportive father. We could be one of the great father-son teams in history, joining the ranks of Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great; William Frederick I and Frederick the Great.”
“How come the fathers are never great?” he responded.
As we drove, Dad and Amy discussed details of my ascendancy to the throne. While they talked about where I should live, who my support team would consist of, and a possible news conference announcing my mighty elevation, tears started coming to my eyes. Amy must have noticed the watering, because she commented, “You know those blue pupils you’ve got? They’re actually extra-fine, extra-soft contact filters. You can take them out.”
“Contact filters?!” I replied aghast.
“I’m sorry, but I was terrified at the thought of being mauled by my own brother,” she replied meekly.
“I’m ashamed of how I acted before.”
“Actually, the sex surrogate said you were wonderful,” Amy replied.
“Did she really?”
“She absolutely did.”
“God, I feel almost ashamed when I think about it.”
“Well, all is forgiven.” At that point, I noticed Dad gritting his teeth while staring out the window.
“Any problemo, Pop?”
“It just disgusts me that you have to go back to that shit-hole another night. Ngm should have provided you with better living conditions. Amy, I want you to get Joe a room at the Waldorf tonight.”
“Will do.” She was on the phone immediately.
“Joe, after a lifetime of stress and strain, I have one question to ask you.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Are you happy?”
“Truth?”
“Truth, son.”
“I’m still in disbelief. I just can’t digest all this.”
“Well I wish there was something I could do.”
“Well there is,” I replied.
“Just say it.”
“Do you have any money on you?”
“Well, not much on me,” he replied, and opening his wallet, he offered ten freshly minted twenty dollar bills. Taking them out, he asked, “What do you want to get?”
“Nothing.” I took the money and flipped down the window.
“What are you doing, son?”
“Something I always wanted to be able to do,” I replied, and as we slowed down at an intersection, I looked around for homeless, but could only spot middle-class swine.
“Hey!” I yelled out to the bourgeoisie, “Grovel, you pigs!” I tossed the money out the window. It swirled in about a million different directions, and they didn’t seem to notice at first, but finally one noticed and then the next. Looking through the rear window as we headed north, I watched a crowd scrambling and scratching.
“Now I believe it,” I replied. Whitlock’s bloated and bloodless face was fixed in comic horror.
“Relax,” I counselled.
“Well, anything for you, hon,” Amy replied. “After a life of destitution, I would have done the same thing.”
“Hey, I don’t care about the cash,” Whitlock replied. “If you want, you can take the suitcase of money we’re getting and toss it off the top of the Empire State Building.”
“I’d like that,” I replied gleefully.
“Fine, we’ll do it,” he ratified.
The limo pulled up in front of my place, and out we zipped. It was strange as I climbed the steps, six at a time, thinking, I left here a pauper and I’m returning a prince. My gal, or sis, and pal, or pop, were fast on my heels.
“Hurry, and let’s get out of here. Go somewhere and celebrate,” Dad said.
Racing into the bathroom, I pushed the toilet aside to reveal the sacred hiding place. As I pulled out the cash-filled briefcase, I noticed Sis and Pop standing in the bathroom doorway, staring at me.
“So it was here all along,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“God, we searched the place looking for it. Who would have thought of a movable toilet?”
“Yeah, well. Here is most of it,” I replied. “Let’s go hurl it off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.” Grabbing the suitcase, Pop punched me in the solar plexus. I went down hard.
“Sorry, my friend, this is where it all ends.”
“Ba…da…da…”
“Don’t be absurd, you little shit.” Whitlock hit me again, a chop to my neck. I heard something inside snap like a rubber band.
“All right, we got the money. Let’s get out of here,” Amy appealed to him.
“No, after what he did to you, I want you to hit him, too!” Whitlock barked, and grabbing both arms behind my back, he shoved my head forward, a punching bag for free slaps.
“I’m not hitting anyone.”
“Sis! Pa! Wuh?”
Grabbing me by my hair, Whitlock pulled me up. When I tried to turn to take a swing at him, he tripped me backwards into a bunch of boxes.
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt him,” Amy pleaded.
When I struggled to my feet, he punched me in the face. He seemed to be holding some kind of tube in his fist to intensify the blow. When I collapsed backwards on my bed, I realized it was all a fraud. He wasn’t my father, she wasn’t my sister. Then I felt it: the cheap handgun under the pillow. When I pulled it out and pointed it at my pseudo-Dad, his face turned white.
“It isn’t real,” Whitlock uttered.
“Please, let’s avoid that cliché. It’s real, and I’ll use it if I have to.” Amy and Whitlock stared at me.
“Get on your fucking fascist knees,” I commanded both of them.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
My nose was bleeding. Many little things were shattered and in pain. I ached as I walked. I was penniless, title-less. And things made little sense.
“How did you get Ngm to participate?” I asked, bewildered.
“People will do anything for the right sum of money,” Whitlock replied.
“That’s not true. It’s not what you think,” Amy cried out.
“If you hurt me, I’ll have you killed,” Whitlock swore.
“Then I better kill you.”
“If you kill me, there are people who have instructions to torture you for the rest of your natural life.”
“I have nothing,” I replied. “I had it all, then lost it in a matter of minutes. My life matters little.”
“Let it all end here,” Amy appealed. “Let us leave with the money, and you’ll never see us again.”
“I plan to kill him, and rape an
d kill you,” I revealed, and added as an afterthought, “Maybe I should rape him, too. Then I’ll leave you alone and never see you again.”
“All right, just listen,” Whitlock said, rising to his feet.
“STAY DOWN!” I screamed. He fell nervously to all fours and talked out of the side of his mouth. I walked over and put the nose of the pistol to the back of his skull. Leisurely, I cocked the trigger. “Pray!”
“Oh my God!” Whitlock started weeping. I saw that I was standing in a puddle of piss; the man had urinated on the floor. The man was worth in excess of a billion, and I had him on the floor in his own urine. Holding the power to end his life in my hand, I felt good. But I couldn’t murder him. It wasn’t a question of morality (killing certain people is moral), but I wasn’t prepared to end my life there. As poor as I was and as rich as he was, I still wasn’t prepared to make that trade. (Besides, at that moment I remembered that the gun didn’t work.)
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at him. He rose, thanked me, and scrambled out the door, curiously mumbling, “Keep the tramp.”
“Out! It’s all over now,” I said to the tramp.
“Let me just explain what happened here,” she replied nervously.
“I killed my father and raped my mother. Spare me the bullshit. Just leave.”
“Fine, neither of us have anything to gain or lose. I just want you to know we did fuck that night. You were supposed to fuck the body double, but…”
“Bullshit.”
“Whitlock planned all this long ago. He wanted to drag you along much further. He wanted to get deep inside your head. He had a screenplay writer working on this. Planting clues and stuff. He wanted to string you along for years.”
“Bullshit.”
“What he didn’t anticipate was that he’d fall in love with me, and even more, he didn’t anticipate that I’d fall for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit. But all that despair he went through for me, that was real. And that night you and I fucked, that was real.”
“More bullshit.”
Without a word she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled down the upper part of her right bra cup. There it was, my rodent-tooth brand, the love-hickey I implanted in a passionate frenzy.
“Do you want me to tell you what else you did to me? Do you want me to tell you why you repulsed me and why I’ll never be interested in you anymore?”
“Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to…”
“I liked you. I fell for you. And you took advantage of me.”
“I didn’t meant to, I just thought humiliation and pain were necessary parts of truly great lovemaking,” I replied, slowly seduced into her crap.
“Bullshit,” she replied. “Anyway, that body double told him that you fucked me instead, and he went nuts. That’s when he paid to get me back. Then when he ransacked your place and couldn’t find the cash, he realized he had to pull the plug on this early. He was planning to continue this delusional torture for years.”
“He’s worth billions!”
“He’s worth millions, not billions. He lost a lot by the end of the ’80s. Hell, he can’t afford to just throw away a million. Besides, the rich are misers. Didn’t you see his face when you threw his two hundred bucks out the window? He was prepared to jump out after it.”
“How did he get to Veronica?”
“He didn’t. She just got sick of you.”
“How about Mr. Ngm?” He couldn’t have gotten to him.
“He half-bribed and half-extorted him. Don’t be hard on that poor guy. He was very worried about you. Whitlock really worked on him. He made him all these promises: he’d free your transcripts, not have you arrested for larceny, and so on.”
“You better leave,” I replied. “I can’t bear hearing any more of this.” When Amy started to leave, I spotted the briefcase of cash. “Hey, take that. He’s just going to send his thugs to get it. You might as well give it to him.”
Amy picked up the briefcase and was about to walk out the door when she stopped and put it down. Taking out her checkbook, she scribbled something. She handed me a check for ten thousand dollars.
“What’s this?”
“That is some of what I made on this assignment. You have my work number, you can call me if you have any further problem with Whitlock.”
“What are you, a private detective or something?”
“Hell no. In fact, you picked me on this one. You picked everything.”
“I picked what?!”
“When Whitlock saw you had a crush on me, he brought me in on this. Then he developed a crush on me, then I went for you, but now I’m back with him.”
“More bullshit.”
“We weren’t supposed to screw. That’s why you became blind and I was mute, but things don’t always turn out as they’re supposed to, do they? Anyway, you picked everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“All the bullshit that this was built on was bullshit we heard you say. Bullshit that we knew you’d have a weakness for.”
“What bullshit do I have a weakness for?”
“Like the tendency to believe in complex and ridiculous conspiracies. Also, your belief that beneath all the iconoclastic garnish, you are a chosen son, waiting for some powerful person to pull you out of your rut in life. Do something with yourself. No one’s going to rescue you but you.”
Without reply, I saw the only woman I ever loved take the briefcase, which held the only thing I ever loved, and head downstairs to join the only person and thing I ever truly hated.
For a long time, I sat amongst the ruined and renovated, and felt an incredible sense of loss. So I really did make it with her; that was small consolation to losing possession of the world.
Suddenly I heard someone scrambling up the stairs. I feared the worst—Whitlock or one of his infernal agents coming to extract final revenge. With broken-gun in hand, I ducked behind the door. Mr. Ngm entered.
“Mr. Ngm, freeze!” I said, still regarding him more as an enemy than a friend. Mr. Ngm ignored my command and grabbed me, giving me an angry shake.
“Are you insane!” he screamed.
“Fuck you!” I punched him in the face. He kicked and punched, and I kicked and punched back.
“You’re an inscrutable idiot!” he yelled.
“You’re a fucking cold-hearted reptile!” And on the insults flew, back and forth, as blows were exchanged.
When we were both exhausted, we each crawled away, like two fought-out alley cats just sitting, panting on the floor.
“How did you meet a madman like that?” Ngm finally asked.
“At least he wasn’t dead inside like you.”
“Look, I gave what I had.”
“How the fuck could you do that? How could you play along with him?” We both went to the kitchen sink and washed and bandaged ourselves among the dirty dishes.
“This Whitlock man approached me quite suddenly and said that my son was in deep trouble. He said you stole a large sum of money from him. He said that his attorney was pursuing a warrant for your arrest. He implied that he was going to do something terrifying to you. I tried to call you, but your phone was disconnected. Your mother was worried sick.”
“So she wasn’t dead? She didn’t get sick and wasn’t replaced?”
“Of course not! In fact, I kept trying to say things that were deliberately outlandish so you would eventually see the ridiculousness of it all and come to your senses! But you didn’t! You just kept believing that nonsense! How could you be so gullible?!”
“Everything you said was something I had doubts about.”
“That explains it,” he said.”Whitlock gave me a list of ten lies that I was to repeat and play a role in.”
“He did that?”
“We actually rehearsed it several times. He had a theatrical director, and I had an acting coach. They were unemployed, non-union actors.”
“I can’t hear this an
ymore. I’m getting vertigo.”
“Joe, I had no idea that you felt that way about me. I mean, I thought the whole thing was so absurd that you would never believe it. Did I really raise such a susceptible child?”
“YOU DIDN’T RAISE ME! YOU TREATED ME LIKE A GODDAMNED PLANT.”
“But I’ve treated plants very well. They’ve been the very center of my existence.”
“You weren’t a Dad! I never saw you!”
“I tried teaching you self-reliance!”
“Do I seem self-reliant? The very first memory I have was you and mom saying that you adopted me to fill a parenting urge. What the hell was I supposed to think? Who were my real parents?”
“I have the file at home.”
“You what?!”
“They were a young couple from the midwest somewhere. They were killed in an auto accident.”
“They were?!”
“You weren’t in the vehicle,” he explained.
“Why didn’t you tell me this long ago?”
“You didn’t ask. If you like, you can have the file. You can check it out.”
“I believe you.” I paused, letting it all sink in.
“Joe, what will you be doing now?” he finally asked.
“Piecing together my shattered life.”
“I didn’t know you…I had no idea you had lost your grant to graduate school. Would you like to finish your education?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Well all you had to do was tell me. You’re my only son, you know. A child’s education is his parent’s final responsibility.”
“I appreciate that.” And then I tried to explain my mindset of the moment: “After all the histories I read, I came to realize that fate picks a handful of men who guide and decide for all others. Tonight, for about twenty minutes or so, I really thought I was one of those men—Bane Whitlock. I really thought I was someone consequential, truly corrupt.”
“Yes, and so you were rich for that short time, and that’s a feeling few people can know, even under deception. It should carry some value, some wisdom.” He started walking around Amy’s half of the apartment.
“But…”
“This apartment is nice,” he called from Amy’s room, “but why did you only have it half-renovated? And how could you afford it?”
Manhattan Loverboy Page 18