by Jonathan Dee
I’ve shot video before, Dex said. I have no prejudice against it.
He looked down and started scraping with his fingernail at some sort of stain on his shirt. Fiona and I watched him.
Well then, she said. What’s your fucking problem?
Dex looked distractedly around the walls of my office. He winced a little, as if thinking something over, but at the same time he was pretty unruffled.
I’d rather not say, he said.
The room buzzed with silence for a few seconds.
Yo, Bartleby, Fiona said. Why are you even here?
You know what? I said, smiling, rising from my seat. I think maybe it’s time to bring Mal into this.
WE MET IN the fourth-floor alcove at the small oval table where Mal has breakfast – where he and I sometimes get together to discuss things before the business day has started. Benjamin was just putting coffee out when Dex and I arrived. Mal had told me to leave Fiona out of it. He knows what kind of a temper she has.
Mal’s own face was slightly red, but not out of anger – his manner was quite friendly, expansive really, as if he were pleased to come upon this situation where his intervention was required. He also seemed a bit out of breath. You would have thought he’d just come from some sort of exercise, were it not for the fact that Mal – trim as a twenty-year-old – never exercises in any form. Maybe he ran up the four flights of stairs.
Dex, Mal said, I’m going to get right to it. You’re our guest here, you’re not an employee, and of course you’re as free to do what you like inside this house as you would be out of it. But even in all the time we’ve spent together the last week or so, I’ve sensed that we’re doing a little dance – not just you, understand; you and me both – in terms of what we discuss and what we don’t discuss. That’s kind of exhausted itself by now. Wouldn’t you agree?
Dex pursed his lips. I suppose it has.
I know Palladio has its detractors. And I know that, as a general rule, when an angry young man like yourself wants to make a film about something, it’s not to praise it, but to discredit it, to knock it down. See, I’m torn here; because the very thing that makes me admire you, as a person and as an artist, is also the thing that I have to protect this place against.
You have to be protected against me? Dex said. A smirk, of sorts, was beginning to emerge on his face.
Well, no, I guess that’s not it exactly. I mean, I love it that you continue to hang around here because you think that if you can just manage to snow me about your true intentions, I’ll relent and let you film here. But your presence is starting to disrupt the equilibrium of this place, and for that reason, I’m honor bound to tell you that there is absolutely no way I will ever allow you inside this place with a camera, ever.
Dex nodded. He picked up his china coffee cup and put it down again without drinking.
So I think your visit here has to come to an end now. And that makes me sad. For one thing, I think you could have done some excellent work here, we have all the facilities and you could have had carte blanche in terms of what interested you; but more than that I mean that on a personal level I’m going to miss having you around. Anyway, I’ve had my say. It’s only fair that before you go I let you have yours as well. Because I get the strong sense that you’ve been censoring yourself all the time we’ve been together, and the strain of that is beginning to show.
Dex tapped his fingers on the polished tabletop for a while. When he looked up, he did, in fact, as Mal predicted, appear to be in some way relieved.
My own view of this place, he said somewhat breathlessly, is that it is the absolute epicenter of corruption, and I would never do any work for you guys in a million years. You know? I mean, back before you got started, whoring was whoring; if you had to abandon your art for a while to go shoot a Coke commercial at least everyone knew what that was all about, and even understood how maybe it was necessary from time to time. But look at these people you’ve hired. They’re brainwashed. They don’t even know what it is they’ve been brought here to do. My film wouldn’t have condemned anything. It would have exposed this place, that’s all. That would have been enough.
Exposed it to whom? I said. We’re not exactly keeping ourselves a secret. We’re more popular now than we’ve ever been.
Dex shrugged, as if to say that he was baffled too.
Mal, I said, looking at my watch. What time’s your flight?
Shit, Mal said, and stood up. He was on his way to Bilbao for a board meeting. Dex and I stood with him. On the landing, he turned and put his arms around Dex and hugged him – a backslapping hug, a quick, masculine sort of hug, but
Dex could not have been more surprised – before continuing down the hall to his bedroom, to finish packing. Dex and I walked in silence down the stairs. Halfway down the hall toward my office, he started talking to me, without turning his head.
You know, he said in an intimate tone, you’re the worst of all. You’re the perfect toady. You bring nothing to all this that I can see except your eagerness to please. You make it all possible, so they never have to deal with him, and he never has to deal with them. So everyone stays in the dark. You would have made an excellent Nazi.
I just kept pace beside him, until we came to the door of my office. I sure did enjoy fucking your girlfriend was one thing it occurred to me I might have said to him. But that’s not me.
* * *
I CHECKED THE window on the third-floor landing periodically until I saw them loading up the car. I hurried downstairs; out in the driveway, there was nothing to help them with – they’d only packed enough, originally, for a stay of two or three days – so I waited until the trunk was shut and then I put my hands on Molly’s shoulders. She smiled at me, warmly, not concealing anything from anyone; her eyes did look a little red, but I didn’t know what that might be about.
I felt like I knew just what I wanted to say. Dex was on the other side of the car, staring at the mountains, but I didn’t particularly care if he overheard. I knew this would happen, I said to her. I knew I’d see you again someday. I did want it. I’m glad we had a chance to talk.
I’m sorry, John, she said. I’m so sorry for hurting you. You didn’t deserve it.
I shook my head. You don’t need to say that, I told her. That’s history. It’s all forgotten. I’m just glad I got the chance to see that you’re (I almost said that you’re still alive, but I caught myself), that you’re doing well.
She put her face against my chest, and I held her for a minute. Dex looked over at us with a modicum of interest. I can’t say it felt like old times, holding her like that; but there was something, some kind of phantom reminder of what had more or less enslaved me to her way back when: that shroud of silence, that incommunicable need, that sense that you could do whatever you could think of and still never get close enough. We said our goodbyes. I nodded to Dex, who ignored me, then I watched until their car had disappeared up the driveway.
That was that. I meant it when I told her that I knew we’d see each other again, and get the chance to fill in the blanks, solve the mysteries, hash it all out at a sane distance from our own youth. Fate is a word I don’t like; it’s more like logic, an aesthetic sort of logic, the logic of beauty. The logic of the story of us.
* * *
NOT MUCH NEW this week. Elaine found her director, chartered a plane, got about a half-hour permission window from the Port Authority to take off and land at Newark Airport – every time I see her she’s shouting into a cell phone. Mal was supposed to be back from Spain by now, but he called Colette to say he was staying over in New York for a couple of days: someone put him on to the fact that there’s an auction of Thomas Jefferson memorabilia at Christie’s on Tuesday. He says maybe he can pick something up and donate it to Monticello. He’s donated a bunch of money already; they love him over there.
Then this afternoon there’s a knock on my office door, and it’s Jean-Claude Milo. I hadn’t seen him in two or three weeks, even though
we’re living in the same house. He doesn’t look well: he’s pale, and exhausted, a little more spectral than usual, though all of us around here are used to seeing him like this during periods when he’s working hard.
I have a favor to ask, John, he says. It’s a money thing.
Have a seat. Listen, you want anything to drink or anything? I can have Tasha go downstairs –
He waved me off. Thanks anyway, he said. No, so there’s this thing I need.
Silence.
How much does this thing cost? I said, trying to prompt him.
He held up his hands. No idea.
Well, so what is it?
He shifted in his chair, staring at the Jim Dine that hangs behind me. It’s a deep-red-and-white abstract (I’ve always thought it looks a bit like a bloody heart), and for a moment there Jean-Claude seemed so engaged by it that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard what I’d asked him. Then he gave his head a little shake and returned his attention to me. The thing is, I need a refrigerator, he said; not like one of those huge ones but a small one. To go in my room.
I put my hand over my mouth so he wouldn’t see me smiling at the solemnity of this request. Jean-Claude truly seems to have no grasp of money and how it works – the kind of item he described could have cost five thousand dollars for all he knew. As it was, he could easily have gone to P.C. Richard right in town, brought one home, plugged it in, and expensed it. I wouldn’t have cared. This way, though, at least I got to have my curiosity satisfied.
What do you need it for? I said.
What do you mean?
I mean, just for eating in your room? I know the kitchen staff goes home at nine, I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit with your own hours –
No, it’s not that. It’s for work.
Work?
For this thing I’m working on. I need a place to store some of my, uh, my bodily fluids I guess is the expression. Oh, and it needs to have a freezer, I forgot to mention that. Is that okay?
Sometimes I wish I had someone around to help me make sense of stuff like this. But in the end, all it came back to was the question of justifying an expense of maybe a hundred and fifty dollars for artists’ supplies; and I didn’t even have to think about that one. I told him I’d have it delivered to him tomorrow.
* * *
ELAINE WAS OUT for a late-night run; I was lying on my bed, still fully dressed, trying to read a collection of new and selected poems by a reasonably well-known poet (if I’ve heard of her, she can’t be too unknown) who’s applying for a spot here, when I heard footsteps in the hall, footsteps that came closer and then halted. No knock; instead, the whisper of a folded piece of paper being slipped under the door. It was a note from Colette. Mal was back from New York; he wanted to let me know that he was in his office right now, in case I had anything urgent for him.
I didn’t, but I went anyway. The rooms on the ground floor were so dark I guided myself across to the east wing by the red lights of the burglar alarms. There were voices floating up from the basement, fading to silence as I took the stairs up to the third floor. Mal’s office door was open; the light spilled into the hall.
You’re back.
Mal smiled. Master of the obvious, he said.
He was looking through the drawers of his desk for something. On his desk was a small packing crate, from which he had removed the lid.
How was Spain?
Dull. But on the plane back to New York someone tipped me off about this Jefferson auction, at Christie’s. I couldn’t resist. I had to stick around for it.
You bought something?
Mal straightened up for a moment from his search through his desk and slyly folded his arms. He pointed at the crate. Have a look, he said.
I took a step forward and looked inside. Nestled in the straw-like packing material was a small pot, with a very narrow opening, set in a rectangular marble base. I wasn’t sure what it was.
Can you believe it? Mal said. That’s Jefferson’s actual inkstand, originally from Monticello. Been in private hands for more than a century. He wrote part of the Notes on Virginia with that inkstand. Lift it.
What?
Pick it up.
I did; though easily grasped in one hand, it was extraordinarily heavy.
Amazing, I said, replacing it in the crate. And I wasn’t just indulging him; it actually was amazing, to be in the presence of an original object like that, to think for a moment about the past from which it had emerged, the other hands that had been where mine now had been.
But in the meantime Mal had found what he was searching his desk drawers for: a roll of scotch tape. He picked up a stack of paper from his desk and set about taping individual sheets to the walls of his office, at eye level, a foot or so above the molding. They were color xeroxes. I only had to look at a few of them before I realized they were all works by or about that group out on the West Coast, CultureTrust.
I got them off the Internet, Mal said, following my gaze. I had some spare time in Bilbao.
I saw The Trend Is Near, of course, along with their appropriation of our famous mirror ad: a similar Mylar sheet, only with the word SUCKER and an arrow pointing downward, written in a kind of faux-lipstick, across the top. Apparently the Mylar technology had improved since we popularized it. I couldn’t help but smile.
It’s not bad stuff, is it? Mal said. I’ve been reading up on these guys. They actually have a lot of good things to say.
I sat down in the chair opposite his desk; he finished his circuit of the room, his back to me, rounding out the miniature gallery satirizing us, among others.
I mean look at this one, Mal said excitedly, taping it to the wall and standing back from it. It was a CultureTrust parody of one of Apple’s Think Different ads: the image was a photograph of Karl Marx.
The only problem here, Mal said, is how different is this from one of the real ads?
Not too different, I admitted.
So I was looking at it and I thought, you know, if they really want to parody this campaign they should use the same words over a picture of Steve Jobs with a knife sticking out of his head. And that’s when it hit me: I could help these guys! In the end we’re really all after the same thing!
And that rather startling idea hung in the air between us for a minute, until Mal stood and lifted the inkstand out of its crate again. Seeing him glance around for a spot to put it down, knowing how heavy it was, I jumped up and moved the crate on to the floor. He set the inkstand down and settled back into his chair again, with a happy sigh; and we sat there and contemplated the solidity of the thing, its disinterest, its promise to outlast us.
* * *
CALL CAME TODAY from the Committee to Reelect the President. That’s fallen through, it turns out; I’m told they opted for a more traditional approach. I thought Mal would be disappointed, and maybe he was, but he said that, fun as it was to think about, it was the outcome he had expected.
They’re not willing to turn over the control of content, he said, putting jelly on a bagel. They’ve got all these high-paid consultants, those are the guys doing the hiring, not the candidate himself, and those guys are unwilling to take risks or cede control because then their boss might suddenly wake up and ask what they’re doing to earn all that money.
As if content really mattered here, I said.
He nodded vigorously, still chewing. It matters less in this instance than most, he said. At the same time, because the differences between the candidates are so negligible, so superficial, the ads, the quality of the ads, is really all that matters. And when you take into account that every public appearance, speeches, conventions, whatever, is all so heavily scripted, it amounts to advertising as well. You could make the argument that people are really electing the makers of the ads.
We were sitting in that little breakfast alcove up on the fourth floor. It was about six forty-five in the morning.
You should run, I said.
He laughed. Why not? he said. It makes perfect s
ense.
But I could tell he was joking. Mal just isn’t that comfortable in the limelight.
* * *
SO I FLEW out to Spokane; and when I got there, the CultureTrust defendants refused to see me. Their lawyer was more polite; he called my hotel room with addresses, times, room numbers so that I could at least attend the opening day of the trial. A quick jury selection, he said, then state’s witnesses probably right after lunch. His name was Bill Farber, he was right around my age, and I was kind of touched, actually, by his excessive friendliness; I got the sense that he didn’t meet a lot of people in Spokane who came from the outside world, and he was reluctant to let me go. He had been just two months out of Penn law school, in his first job as an associate with some white-shoe firm in Philadelphia, when his parents were killed in a car crash. He took a three-week leave from the firm to return home to Spokane and take care of affairs, make arrangements to sell the house, et cetera. That was five years ago.
Spokane is another one of those cities where you might as well be anywhere. Starbucks, the Gap, some sort of ugly new convention center – it all looks like some sort of traveling exhibition that might pack up and move on the day after you do. And yet if you were to jump in your car in the middle of downtown Spokane and drive twenty-five miles in any direction, you’d be so deep in the woods as to be pretty much off the grid: in fact, you’re not too far at all there from the Idaho border, militia country, Unabomber country. Bill Farber offered me a tour of the Spokane River Valley after court was adjourned for the day; though I was sorry to hurt his feelings, my mind was on the business at hand, and so I begged off.
Even the courthouse looked like it had been put together after a recent trip to Home Depot, what with the dropped plasterboard ceilings and shadowless fluorescent lighting. There were six or eight people scattered along the benches behind the rail; one young woman held a notepad. If she was indeed a reporter, I just hoped Bill in his gregariousness wouldn’t tell her who I was. The judge was a thin, imposing woman of late middle age, with sparse, teased white hair, and she sat on a riser beneath the seal of the State of Washington, facing me across the heads of the lawyers and the two defendants.