The Perpetual Summer

by Adam Walker Phillips

  “Jeanette and the museum, of course, are the sole beneficiaries.”

  “I imagine that at some point your daughter and perhaps others were to receive a share?”

  “You are correct in that assumption.”

  “When did that change?” I asked.

  “Recently.”

  “How recent?”

  “Last month,” he answered.

  That seemed to coincide with the time that Jeanette disappeared.

  “Who knew that you changed your will?”

  “My former son-in-law.” He smiled.

  “But he’s known he’s been out for a while now.”

  “Correct.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  A long pause.

  “Yes.”

  “And Jeanette?”

  He shook his head. It was information that he didn’t have to share but felt compelled to.

  “May I ask if there was a reason that precipitated the change in beneficiaries?”

  “Because I’m trying to break the cycle,” he answered mysteriously.

  “Which cycle is that?” I probed.

  “The cycle of wealth.”

  “You’re going to have to help me out, Mr. Valenti. I am not familiar with that one, for obvious reasons.”

  “Everything is cyclical,” he began, “including wealth. The American fortune undergoes a lifespan very similar to that of the four seasons.” The passion with which he elaborated on his theory told me he had spent a good deal of time thinking about it. Spring was apparently the season of accumulation. There, the entrepreneur rose up out of anonymity and amassed a fortune from nothing. He was the risk-taker of a unique sort, for he truly had nothing to lose—monetarily, that is. He risked more fundamental things—ethics, pride, values—in a bid to grow the money at all costs. For a brief moment, I began to sympathize with the old man for no other reason than the fact that he was being honest even with uncompromising details. “I broke many men,” he said with neither pleasure nor regret. There was no pretense in the way he described his rise. That’s just what one did.

  “Summer is why you do this nasty work,” he went on. “Your children have been elevated to a social status that you were never able to get. Sure, toward the end I can buy my way into the neighborhoods and country clubs, but to the people there, I’m always the outsider. My children, however, were born into that class,” he said with pride. Summer was the full embrace of wealth and all it afforded you. The second generation was catapulted into a world of professionalism and prominence. They became the doctors and lawyers and politicians of our times, influencing society through both work and charity, and still enjoying all the comforts that massive wealth afforded them. “It should go on forever,” he declared.

  “Why doesn’t it?”

  “Because the third generation, my children’s children, get flabby with the wealth,” Valenti scoffed. “They take it for granted. They are too far removed from the actual creation of wealth to see what it took to amass it. And they have that aloofness that comes with entitlement. Environmentalists and social workers and teachers,” he rattled off with the disdain reserved for terminal diseases. “They feel the need to pay for the past sins that got them to this spot. But they don’t realize that I committed all those sins so they wouldn’t have to!”

  I could guess wealth’s final stage, winter. The fortune has not been tended to for some time. The erosion of capital worsens exponentially and is now hurtling down a certain course, where the only end is some dark and cold day in late February when it’s all over. The money is gone and the only thing that remains is the once-glorious name attached to it.

  “And they never see it coming,” Valenti explained. This self-absorbed generation put half-hearted attempts into careers in screenwriting and poetry. “They’re too dumb to see the drama unfolding before their very eyes,” said Valenti. “And that’s why I changed my will. Because my daughter is doing her damnedest to speed the whole process up. She’s already leapfrogged one season and the way she is going, she’ll leapfrog two. She always was old for her age,” he reflected after a moment’s pause, “though she’s fighting it every step of the way. Do you know she has two trainers? One for each arm.”

  He wanted a laugh out of me but got none. Then he seemed to realize the excessive cruelty in his words and took a moment to gather himself. He stared at the sun inching down toward the ocean’s horizon. “Jeanette is my last hope.”

  MORNING LECTURE

  I made an appearance at work the following day and popped into a few meetings in the morning just to be seen. On conference calls I was sure to be vocal so everyone knew I was there. And even though being vocal meant parroting what five other people had already said, it was necessary that I do it in order to keep my visibility at a level appropriate for someone about to interview for the role as head of the department.

  Echoing other people’s thoughts was a tried-and-true strategy in the corporate world. To challenge someone publicly, even if you thought you were right, was always a mistake in this passive-aggressive environment. But to agree with someone, even if you fundamentally disagreed with them, made one many allies.

  “I need to jump early,” I said to the five people in the room and to several more on the phone, “but before I do, I just want to echo what Bill and Walt have said about keeping the focus on the big picture. I have nothing really to add”—not that anyone would care if I actually did have something to add—“but I do want to say that I am in full agreement with everything that’s been said.”

  And with that, I rose from the table a good thirty minutes before the meeting was over and, having said nothing at all of any significance, I got the smiling nods of approval from the folks in the room, as if I had just imparted some great scrap of wisdom that would last for generations.

  “Thanks for all your help,” someone commented without even a trace of sarcasm.

  I did have a legitimate conflict that kept me from staying the entire hour. I had an appointment to meet a Mr. Li in Chinatown. The previous evening, Valenti impressed upon me the importance of setting up some time with him, as he was convinced Li had a hand in his granddaughter’s disappearance. Exactly what kind of role he played was hazy.

  “You can do anything you want,” he told me after leading me back to the car to see me off. “You can dig into my past if that makes you feel better. You can talk to any and every one remotely connected to me. But do me one favor—talk to Li first.”

  I promised him I would. What I didn’t promise was that I would do it with Hector. The knife-wielding tattletale was a nuisance and as such, unnecessary to the investigation. I instructed Hector to meet me at the office at eleven but left for the meeting with Li at ten.

  The sign for the Society for the Preservation of Chinese-American Culture and Heritage wasn’t wide enough to hold all the words and had to be laid out in two rows. The narrow storefront masquerading as its headquarters literally sat in the shadow of Valenti’s proposed new art museum. The glass display windows were wallpapered in “Yes on 57” posters and created a dizzying collage of red and gold.

  I entered the small office and felt like I had stumbled upon a miniature version of the Eighteenth National Conference of the Communist Party of China. The narrow room was lined on each side by about a dozen chairs occupied by middle-aged Asian men wearing near-identical suits and ties. No one said anything but all eyes were on me. At the far end was the unassuming “chairman,” who was about half their age and looked like a former skate urchin from Huntington Beach. It was the same man I’d run into outside Jeff Schwartzman’s office. He rose from behind a long table to greet me.

  “Mr. Restic,” he said and pressed his hand into mine. “I’m Gao Li. Thank you for reaching out.”

  “Well, thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “Please have a seat,” he said and motioned to a chair in front of the long table.

  I casually glanced behind me to see if anyone
else was going to join, but no one made any such move. I reluctantly took a seat with my back to the rest of the room. What at first resembled a conference now felt more like a tribunal.

  I sat down before Li’s penetrating gaze. For a man in his late twenties, he exuded a lot of confidence. Li spoke first.

  “Mr. Restic, I am a proud man,” he began. “And I come from very proud people. Ours is a story of struggle. And Chinatown is the living proof of that struggle.” I shifted uncomfortably in the hard chair. One thing the corporate world had taught me was to recognize when a long speech was coming. This one promised to exceed even my worst expectations.

  Somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark I added an “I understand” even though I understood very little. They were the words of the village elder in a trite, period-piece movie spoken by an American kid in a baggy sweatshirt. He spoke about present-day Chinatown like it was a cultural jewel of Chinese history. He didn’t mention that half the restaurants were Vietnamese and the other half served Chinese food but were owned and operated by Vietnamese. The migration of the Chinese out of Chinatown was decades in the making. Alhambra and Arcadia to the east were where the real Chinese-American community resided.

  “But we will never forget the road we’ve taken to arrive here,” he further explained. “Nor the treatment we were subjected to along the way.”

  I was then forced to listen to the entire history of the Chinese struggle in Southern California culminating in the “holocaust” of 1938, when the city decided to build a train station in Chinatown. To make room for the new structure they “tore at the fabric of the Chinese community” and “ripped families from their homes” and “dropped them in a desolate spot in the city,” the current location. Left unsaid in this narrative of Chinese diaspora was the Italian community the Chinese displaced in settling in the new neighborhood. Also left unsaid was the money made during the whole affair by men like Mr. Li’s grandfather. Valenti had coached me on this part of the young man’s narrative. And although I didn’t want to be the old man’s pawn in some disagreement between profiteers, I didn’t appreciate being spoken to as if I were one of the perpetrators behind said holocaust.

  “Was your grandfather active in real estate at that time?” I asked innocently enough. I achieved a cessation of the lecture, but was then subjected to its opposite form of torture—the silent treatment. “I apologize if I offended you,” I told the young man.

  “A wise man makes his own decisions,” he lectured. “An ignorant man follows public opinion.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I snapped.

  Li was taking the “village elder” role too far. He could spout Confucian pearls until he was blue in the face but no punk kid was going to call me an idiot to my face. And no one, and I mean no one, was going to trade pithy one-liners with a corporate hack like me and expect to come out on top.

  “It is better to conceal one’s knowledge than it is to reveal one’s ignorance,” I countered. “And you never answered the question about your grandfather.”

  From Li spewed forth a litany of threats to me and all white people, threats that were interspersed with hollow excuses that attempted to absolve his bloodline of choices it had had to make. His head was a muddled mess of ancient Chinese philosophy, Marxist slogans, and self-help validations. He was living proof of another gem of the corporate vernacular: he had just enough information to make him dangerous.

  “On the phone you mentioned Mr. Valenti suggesting we meet,” he said curtly. He was back in his village-elder persona. He seemed able to switch back and forth with ease, perhaps because he didn’t realize he was doing it. “Can we jump to the matter at hand?”

  “Of course,” I answered. But not sure exactly what matter he was referring to, I remained silent.

  “Is there a new development that you’d like to discuss?” he asked, trying to tease it out of me.

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Is there something we need to discuss regarding our…disagreement with Mr. Valenti?”

  And then the roomful of low-level party hacks suddenly made sense—they thought I had come with an offer to negotiate on the museum deal. Given the overall instability of this young man in sneakers, I didn’t want to break the bad news to him.

  “This is definitely awkward,” I told them. “But I don’t have an offer.”

  The gang began to murmur.

  “You said you are working for Mr. Valenti,” Li tried to clarify.

  “Yes, I am but—”

  “And that Mr. Valenti suggested we talk.”

  “—but I am working with him on an entirely different matter. Not the museum.”

  The murmuring behind me grew louder. Word spread quickly that what was once victory for the cause was not that at all. A couple of them got out of their chairs and spat words at me before shuffling out of the room.

  “You can’t push us around any longer,” Li shouted over them. “While you’ve gotten fat and lazy with your entitlements, we have risen to our rightful place.” He prattled on about the rise of New China and the fall of the West. It was tired prose. But behind it was an anger that went deeper than some riff over racial inequality. “We fucking own San Marino, dude!” he finished with a flourish.

  They were the first honest words out of his mouth. And he was right. New Chinese money had poured into the tiny enclave just south of Pasadena, much to the chagrin of the old-wealth residents. In a community that once escorted anyone with a skin shade darker than alabaster to the city limits, the sight of so many Asians gobbling up properties must have made residents’ blue blood boil. And made men like Mr. Li extremely happy.

  I needed to extricate myself from this situation before it got out of hand. For the first time, I regretted my decision to leave the knife-wielding magician behind. I rose from the chair and faced off with Li.

  “Is there any message you would like me to deliver to Mr. Valenti?” I asked with all the formality of a Foreign Service officer.

  “Yes,” Li stammered, “yes, there is. Tell Mr. Valenti this.” Li then pulled out another of his proverbs:

  “Man’s power is only as strong as what he cherishes most.”

  As I walked out of the office I couldn’t help but think what a curious choice of words given the circumstances. I wondered what Valenti cherished most—his museum or his granddaughter.

  “Gao?” Claire laughed. “His name is Jimmy.”

  We met for lunch at a place between our respective offices. It was one of these small-bite restaurants that were all the rage in downtown. It featured two-chew plates that ran upward of fifteen dollars per bite. The casual decor and “hey guys” wait staff were meant to eschew pretense but succeeded in doing the opposite. It was the kind of place my ex-wife loved.

  I initially resisted reaching out to Claire. She and I hardly spoke anymore. After the divorce there was some communication, mostly around mundane questions about the sprinklers and forgotten passwords for old accounts. Eventually even those petered out and with them went the last scraps of our relationship and the feeling of being needed. I let her dictate the silence between us, something she was all too willing to oblige. But now I needed her for some information and made the first move and asked her to lunch.

  “He was Jimmy for twenty-five years of his life and only recently became Gao,” she explained. “He’s managing his brand.”

  “Which brand is that?”

  “The kind that caters to new Chinese money.”

  Claire explained how, after the housing crisis, California was inundated with overseas money, as mostly Chinese investors pounced on attractive buying opportunities to enter the real estate market. For a while it was assumed that every cash offer in the state had its roots in the Far East. “Jimmy—now Gao—got in tight with that investor set.”

  “Seems like a smart move.”

  “He’s done very well for himself. He has a big house in San Marino.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  Claire
was closely tied into the real estate development world in Southern California. Her law firm specialized in corporate contracts and securitization and her main client was Valenti. Career often came first with Claire.

  “How’d you get involved in talking to Jimmy?” she probed.

  “Valenti asked me to,” I replied.

  “He approached you?” She was just as surprised as I was when the old man called me. “What for?”

  “He wants help on a private matter.”

  This about sent her spinning off her chair with curiosity.

  “And you accepted it?” she asked with her face buried in the menu. She played it off casually.

  “I could use the extra money,” I explained.

  “You still have it in for him, huh?”

  “I could use the extra money,” I repeated. I wasn’t ready to tell her the real reason Valenti approached me, not because I thought she would use it to her advantage but because I held onto some vague notion of client confidentiality. I steered the conversation back to Li. “What is going on with the museum and this cultural heritage proposition?”

  “I’m biased, but it’s safe to say that the proposition has nothing to do with protecting some fragile cultural heritage.”

  Proposition voting was a particularly maddening aspect of California politics. After years of gridlock in Sacramento, citizens began putting propositions on the ballot, which allowed voters to set the course for their state. If approved, the government would have no choice but to abide by them, despite how unfair or fiscally reckless they were. These quickly became the tool of every special interest group within and even outside of California to advance a cause.

  I could never decipher what exactly I was voting on with these propositions and thus defaulted to voting no on all of them. I must not have been alone because the writers of these propositions began wording them in a way in which a YES vote was actually a NO vote and vice versa:

  Are you in favor of not stopping a halt to the court-ordered decision to cease automatic funding for firefighter relief trusts?