How to Succeed in Evil - 02

by Patrick E. McLean

  Excelsior orders the cheapest bottle of champagne and some oysters. Cindi with an “i” doesn’t like oysters, so Excelsior orders her some french fries. The waiter nods and says “Pommes frites,” with a judicious balance of agreement and contempt. What a jerk. Excelsior doesn’t want frites. He wants fries. But after a few drinks, a few oysters, the evening is almost agreeable. He seems to be making progress with Cindi with an “i”.

  Then the pager goes off.

  When he’s not in costume, Excelsior often gets teased about carrying a pager. “Call me old fashioned. It works,” is what he says. But works isn’t the half of it. The box clipped to his belt will receive a signal anywhere on the globe. Not only does it work under 300 feet of solid rock, it works when 300 feet of solid rock is trying to crush it. It will even receive a signal on the moon. Excelsior is pretty sure he can destroy it, but it has to be the toughest man-made object he’s ever encountered. In a perverse way, he’s proud of the device.

  Excelsior has never consciously considered that the pager is the wrong end of the leash, but once he dreamed that he threw it into the furnace of the sun. Even in his dream, the pager went off. It called him away from its own destruction.

  When the pager goes off, it means that he has to go. Whatever is on the other end of that vibration, it is important. If he doesn’t go, right now, people will die. They may be brave men struggling for their lives, or innocents and children, but whoever they are, they are in danger. To be fair, they never use this thing frivolously. And isn’t it a privilege to carry this pager? To be able to help? Then why is he so angry?

  For all her faults, Cindi with an “i” is there. She is ready, willing and eager. As she leans forward, Excelsior wonders if her bare thighs are pressing against the leather of her seat. He wonders if she is wearing panties. He uses his X-ray vision to look through the table and answer his question.

  Again the pager vibrates like the soulless, unforgiving thing that it is.

  As the smug waiter passes, Excelsior grabs his arm. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to bruise. “I need a shot of bourbon and the check.” The waiter winces in pain, but still the corners of his mouth drop in contempt. Excelsior gives the arm another little squeeze. He can feel the bones grinding together. “It’s important,” says Excelsior, “and it needs to be the very next thing you do.”

  The blood drains from the waiter’s face and he nods. Excelsior releases his arm.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Cindi with an “i”.

  “I’m sorry baby. Daddy’s got to go,” Excelsior holds up the pager, “important business.”

  “You’ve always got important business. What about me? Aren’t I important business?” She leans over the table and showcases her breasts. Surely they are some of the finest that money can buy.

  “I’m sorry. This kind of business doesn’t wait.”

  “Whatever. I think you’re gay.”

  “I am not gay.”

  “We’ve been on what, three dates? And you always run off before you have to take care of the most important business!”

  “Look, my work is complicated.”

  “Your work. Your small penis.”

  “But...”

  “And you never have any fun. And you never buy me any cocaine.”

  “What?”

  “You’re no fun,” pouts Cindi with an “i”.

  “This conversation is over.”

  “You bet your small penis it’s over. Don’t call me again.”

  She storms off. Excelsior will have to look for true love elsewhere. The waiter sets the check down and leaves quickly. Excelsior does not look up at him. If he had caught even the slightest hint of a smile he would have burned the waiter down in front of everybody. His eyes grow hot again. Sometimes it comes out as lasers, sometimes as tears. Either way, choking back the emotion is the smart thing to do.

  Excelsior knocks back the drink and throws money at the check. He thinks it’s ridiculous that he should have to pay the check. How many times has he saved this city? And what thanks? I mean really, a key to the city? A key that opens no doors.

  As he wings his way out of town, the question rattles around in his head: Does he wear the costume, or does the costume wear him?

  Chapter Eleven

  Edwin Dresses for Dinner

  To Edwin’s way of thinking the ultimate end of formal dress is to show the human form in its best light — to present one’s self to advantage. And, to that end, any garment should lend authority, gravity and dignity. It should minimize weakness and vice, maximize strength and virtue. And to fully focus the force of personality through the lens of fabric, a man requires a tailor.

  And not just any tailor. What is required is a remarkable man. An artist working faithfully in a rapidly disappearing art, deeply rooted in a tradition that stretches back through the centuries. A tradition that includes countless suits, crafted to fit countless numbers of men — gentlemen and rogues, saints and killers — the just and the unjust alike. When viewed at this level the tailor’s art encompasses not merely needle and thread, scissors and fabric, but the whole cloth of mankind in all its shapes and sizes. And this is exactly the altitude from which Mr. Giles, Edwin’s tailor, considers his craft.

  Mr. Giles is descended from a long line of Saville Row tailors. So the material he has measured most carefully is the cloth of his own life. Each suit he has made has taken over 1,000 stitches. Each stitch has been made by hand. With measuring, fitting, and adjustments these thousand stitches absorb about 100 hours.

  So 100 hours per suit, divided into perhaps 50 working years, makes 20 suits a year. A few allowances for quality, tuning up old suits, having a nice weekend, and working at a reasonable pace — this is, after all, a marathon, not a vulgar sprint — and Mr. Giles has calculated the span of his own life. He believes he will live to make 1000 perfect suits.

  Fortunately, Mr. Giles has no modern ideas about retirement. Many, many people have worked hard to make him the craftsman he is. And he is happy to be absorbed in a long and honorable tradition. He will work until he can no longer maintain the standard. And his fervent wish is to die in the harness, on the job, with the feel of the fabric between his fingers. When he lets go his grip on this world, the last thing he wants to feel is a fine worsted wool slipping between his fingers as he goes.

  The suit that Edwin lays out on the four-poster bed is suit number seven hundred and twenty-one.

  When this particular suit was fitted, Mr. Giles explained to Edwin that cloth that he had selected, or spoken for (and hence the term “bespoke” tailoring) was the last of a very old fabric. A fine fabric, and one that he had used to cut a suit for Edwin’s father. At this mention of his dead father, Edwin had stiffened slightly, causing the cuff of his pants to rise 1/32nd of an inch by Mr. Giles’s measurements. For Mr. Giles, this 1/32nd of an inch was a vast gulf filled with meaning. The good tailor quickly changed the subject to silence. Edwin had not thought of his father since.

  But now, alone in a strange land and confronted with the fabric again, Edwin’s thoughts turn to his father. He remembers him only in fragments, but always with a wry smile and an air of feckless joy. Happy, that is it, he remembers his father as being happy.

  Edwin looks at the fabric carefully. It is a light grey wool with subtle flecks of green throughout. The fabric is remarkable in itself, but nothing when compared with the garment complete. To fully appreciate the suit, one has to note how it slides effortlessly over the canvas of fabric that forms the structure of the jacket. It has not been bonded together with chemical glue as mass-produced, off-the-rack suits are. No, this suit moves and rolls, flows naturally like skin. It is not an exaggeration to describe this garment as being alive.

  Mr. Giles has cut several other suits for the younger Mr. Windsor. Although Mr. Giles enjoyed Edwin’s father’s custom for many years and came to know the man, he never again spoke of him to Edwin. It had been such a tragedy for a young boy. And, if the tr
uth be told, it had hung his frame with a certain melancholy so that the suits Mr. Giles cut for Edwin were impossibly elegant. Wrought with a sadness, cast in the light of a great house in decline. And for each suit, when he had taken the measurements, he had heard something sacred and sad in the proportions.

  With a deft hand Edwin throws a full Windsor knot into the silk tie. Two tugs and the knot is perfected. He folds the collar, double folds his shirt cuffs and inserts cufflinks. The links are nothing ostentatious or outrageous, just delicate circles, complete in themselves. Socks, pants, shoes, belt. Then he slides into the jacket and tugs his shirt cuffs free. Edwin takes a moment to admire the cut of the suit in the mirror. How diminished the suit had been without the wearer. But now, it is complete. And Edwin is completed by it. The art of the tailor is in the intersection, in the dance of fabric and occupant.

  There is something terribly appropriate in dressing for dinner, Edwin reflects. Composing one’s self in order to be with others. For whatever faults Iphigenia Reilly might have (and misplaced lust is surely one of them) she did retain a sense of propriety. Of gracious living, if that were a phrase Edwin could use. And as long as a sense of this, a vestige of style and sensibility remained in the world, all hope could not be lost. Progress could be made.

  Edwin leaves the room with a spring in his step.

  Chapter Twelve

  Empress Josephine?

  For years Edwin has guarded himself against the weakness of optimism. He has often seen false confidence punished in others by the relentless and unforgiving world. He has often heard cries of, “I’m invincible!” quickly followed by smaller, less forceful statements like “please, stop, don’t, I have a family.” But if you could ask him, as he descends Iphigenia's ostentatious antebellum staircase, he might admit a certain — well, not hope, you understand, but let’s just say Edwin is prepared to believe that a glass exists. And further, that this glass holds liquid.

  A servant directs Edwin towards the dining room. As Edwin walks he tugs a shirt cuff back into place. He has no real hopes for the cuisine, but he is hungry. At least his lower nature will be gratified.

  The doors to the dining room swing open. And once again, Edwin realizes what an absurd emotion hope really is. As a younger man Edwin had often wondered why the progress of the human race was so slow, inconsistent and easily reversed. Why did the great minds not make the obvious leaps sooner? And why, when these leaps were made, did the great mass of men refuse to accept them? How, in any god’s name, was the library at Alexandria allowed to burn?

  Before him is the answer to these questions. In the center of the room, on a raised dais, being fed fruit and fanned by well-oiled young men in loincloths is Iphigenia Reilly. She is dressed, Edwin can only assume, as the Empress Josephine. A different man would be surprised, would break stride, gasp or perhaps even be struck blind from the sheer absurdity of it all. Edwin grinds his molars together and presses on.

  “Why, Edwin dearest, how nice of you to come throw yourself at my feet. I’ve even saved you a cushion. Isn’t that thoughtful of me?”

  Edwin does not throw himself anywhere. Instead, he walks to the table and seats himself with great care. His size makes the low surface and delicate Louis XIII chair awkward and uncomfortable. But it is no matter. This is obviously a room in which dignity does not stand a chance.

  “Where,” Edwin asks, “is the boy?”

  Iphigenia's laughter echoes in the high-ceilinged room. “I thought we could find some time to be alone together. To share our thoughts and speak of our feelings. Our feelings as adults.”

  “I appreciate that. But I am here in a business capacity.”

  “Oh, Mr. Windsor, never mind about the boy, I’m the REAL villain in the family.”

  Edwin says nothing. He even tries to think nothing. He merely looks at Iphigenia, and let’s the silence work on her.

  “Mr. Windsor, do you know what it is to be a woman in the South? In Lower Alabama? Raised and reared through the times I have known?”

  Edwin doesn’t even move.

  “Of course you do not. But mine is the sex which is born to suffer. And the very blood that flows in my veins is born to misfortune. Is it so unreasonable that I would resist my fate? Would you not do the same in my shoes?”

  In spite of his best efforts, Edwin blinks.

  “Mr. Windsor, my husband was a dim, oafish creature. And I poisoned him myself. Does that surprise you? That evil should have such a beautiful and deceptive countenance?”

  This does not surprise Edwin. In fact, it rather bores him. This is now a colossal time suck. Edwin is short on money. Which, of course, means that he is short on time. Better to cut his losses now.

  Edwin removes the napkin from his lap, folds it and places it on the empty plate in front of him. “I take this monologue to mean that dinner is not forthcoming.” He stands and buttons his jacket. “Madame, I will require your car to take me to the airport.”

  Iphigenia laughs so loudly she startles one of the well-oiled men who is fanning her. “Really Mr. Windsor, you surprise me in your naiveté. It is one thing to reject my sweet tea, it is entirely another to reject my hospitality.”

  “I have neither talents nor time to waste.”

  “Really now. And what else would you waste your time and talents on?”

  “Something, anything that would show a profit.”

  “I do not lack money. Do you think I have any scruples?”

  Edwin considers carefully. “No.”

  “Then scheme a scheme for me Mr. Windsor. That is what you do isn’t it? Scheming schemes, never taking action.” She looks lasciviously at one of the young men fanning her. “Seems terribly, what’s the word I’m looking for, impotent?”

  “Do you have any special gifts or talents I should be made aware of?”

  “Other than my feminine wiles?” She bats her eyes at Edwin in a hideous fashion, “I have a tremendous amount of money and no scruples. Surely that is as thorough an ingredient list as you need for evil. And I am bored Mr. Windsor. Terribly bored.” She holds up her hands. “These are far too idle. Be the devil for my playthings won’t you?”

  Edwin can’t help himself. Distaste wells into his face like a bruise. Iphigenia does not react well to this.

  “Alabaster! See that he has what he needs.” The large black man moves to Edwin’s side. “And relieve him of his cellphone. We wouldn’t want him to have any distractions.”

  Edwin unbuttons his coat and produces his cellphone. “I have never cared for the devices,” he says, as if all is right with the world.

  As Iphigenia watches Edwin leave the room, there is no question in her mind that she has done the right thing. If her idiot son can be a villain, then she can be ten times the villain. This Edwin Windsor will merely be the tool, a technician in her employ. Besides, she does so enjoy making him uncomfortable.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Following the Protocol

  Topper is missing his tall friend. Perhaps friend is not the exact word we are looking for here. Edwin doesn’t seem to have friends in the usual sense of the word, but Topper likes him all the same. There is no denying that Edwin is a source of fascinating clients.

  What Topper can’t understand about Edwin is how a guy who is surrounded by such interesting people and opportunities can be so dull. Edwin never lets himself go. Never lets it all hang out. Surely Edwin must have urges? Topper has urges. And if there is one thing that Topper believes — one firm principle amid the shifting quicksand of the little lawyer’s moral life — it’s that you have to enjoy yourself. Topper believes that repression causes thin lips, sexless women and cancer.

  Topper doesn’t think it’s wrong that Edwin pours so much of himself into his work. It’s good to like your work. In fact, Topper is having a great day at work. As a negotiation tactic, he has just thrown a chair through the side of a 500 gallon reef tank. Clearly, Topper enjoys his work. But at the end of the day, when the work is done, a man needs s
omething else. A man needs vices.

  The way Topper sees it, that’s how the whole system works. If you don’t have vices, then you save money. And a man who saves money — who doesn’t gamble or drink or do drugs or spend money on professional female companionship — well, in Topper’s mind this is a man who will always be less creative and productive than a man who is profligate in his ways.

  Why would a Puritan need to work hard? Early to bed, early to rise. Whatever. But get yourself on the wrong side of a loanshark or develop a serious jones for a real high-quality, first-class, expensive bender: these are the urges that inspire a man to greater efforts. You work hard to have the expensive extras. And you work even harder to pay them off before your legs are broken. This is the spirit that has made America great. This and the time-honored principle of sticking it to the other guy.

  As Topper enters the lobby he says to Agnes, “Hey toots, how’s tricks?”

  Agnes does not look up from what she is reading. “Deceptive, I should think. And no substitute for a sound strategy.”

  “Work, work, work. That’s all it ever is up here. C’mon, what say you and me take a break? Hit the strip club for lunch?”

  “I am afraid I will have to politely decline your revolting invitation.”

  “So, is he back yet?”

  “No,” says Agnes. She still hasn’t looked at Topper.

  “When is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Topper asks. “You know everything about him.”

  “He hasn’t called,” Agnes says with an air of great boredom.

  “He hasn’t called?”