The Last Stoic
Page 9
“He’s an angry man.”
“You’d be best to keep your distance.” Gus took a draught from his goblet. “Are you coming to my Ludi Plebei feast?”
“I suppose.”
“It will be fun. Besides, I have a surprise for you.”
Marcus frowned.
“Surprise?”
“You’ll see. At the Ludi Plebei.”
ELEVEN
A giant, black as a new moon, emerged from a billowing curtain of fog. A round visored helmet obscured his face. Leather greaves protected his shins. Metal scales glittered along the length of his right forearm and a large oblong shield covered his left. Muscle undulated from his neck, shoulders, arms and chest. He clenched the hilt of a bright sword in his gourd-sized fist and pounded it against the shield.
At the opposite end of the arena, from another mass of curling smoke, stepped a second colossus. His skin was pale and his eyes clear. Ropy yellow hair coiled at his shoulders. He wore large plates of metal along his right arm and right shoulder. In one hand he gripped heavy, oiled netting. In the other he raised a long harpoon.
They paced towards one another slowly, probing and evaluating. Only twenty yards separated them. The teuton hoisted his harpoon. His eyes narrowed and he launched. As the missile spiraled through the air it morphed from wood and iron into brown leather. It became a football. Mid-flight it disappeared in an explosion of fireworks.
“The gladiators! The coliseum! Glory for one! Crushing defeat for the other! Stay tuned! Superbowl XXXIX up next!”
“Kick-ass!”
“They’re gonna get destroyed.”
“Nah. I’ve got a thousand on the Titans by 3.”
“The commercials are supposed to be good this year.”
There were about twenty others in the room with Mark, mostly men, watching the game on the sixty inch plasma television filling the wall. Mark arrived an hour earlier and had already downed two neon-coloured martinis, layered according to the colours of the teams contesting the Superbowl. The martinis washed down the slim pink pills Gus had given him. His extremities were tingling. His appetite was sharpened.
Mark slid forward on the buttery, lambskin couch in which he lounged. From the various platters arrayed along the top of a long cherry wood coffee table he loaded up a plate with chicken wings, oysters, rainbow-coloured nachos, three healthy dollops of salsa, guacamole and queso, and a half-dozen enormous marinated shrimp. As the plush confines of the sofa re-embraced him he marveled at the surrounding affluence. Gus was a relatively young man, vice-president of the regional firm for only a few short years. Mark wondered if he might attain a fraction of these riches in his time with the company. He fantasized about returning home a tycoon.
Everything in the house was conspicuously larger, wider, louder, crisper, plusher, more vibrant, more lavish than anything Mark had ever seen. But there was a freshness. An untarnished gleam. It was as though earlier that morning, Gus had an army of movers and decorators storm the house and outfit it from top to bottom. He imagined if he looked carefully at the frame of the television or the speaker cabinets he’d find one or two stray Styrofoam packing peanuts. Mark would learn later that Gus himself was a guest. This was the senator’s house. Gus had befriended his young wife.
The game continued. A general din of cheers and jeers filled the room. Mark didn’t know the score and didn’t really care. A giddy disregard had taken hold of him.
The boss’ wife, Emily, swept into the entertainment room like a warm gust, the sort of suffocating blanket of air that precedes a tropical thunderstorm. A yellow, patterned sun dress enveloped itself around the smooth slope of her broad shoulders, the luxurious arc of her breasts. A pair of sandals bound the perfect arch of her feet and slim, leather straps snaked up the flesh of her rounded calf. She held a Titan-coloured martini in the slender fingers of her right hand. Emily was oblivious to his staring. She breezed out of the room as easily as she’d arrived.
Mark was surprised to feel hungry again. He levered himself off the couch, following Emily, in search of another drink.
“Mark! How the fuck are you?”
Gus leaned in close to Mark with his chest thrust out. He was grinning broadly but his greeting sounded more like a challenge.
“Great,” Mark said after he had recovered from his surprise. “You have an amazing house.”
“I call it home. Where’s your drink?”
“I was just on my way to find one.”
“Come on this way, I’ll set you up. Anything catch your eye?”
“You run with an attractive crowd,” Mark replied, thinking of Paul’s wife.
“Maybe we can hook you up tonight.”
“Ok.”
“We’re glad you’re here,” Gus said, handing him another martini freshly made by the bartender.
“Thanks.”
“Not just tonight. But we’re glad you’re with the firm. We think you’ll become a key part of the team. We want you to think of us as family.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
Gus handed Mark another pill.
“I’ve got to go get me some of that,” he said. Before Mark had lowered his drink Gus was gone, trailing a slim woman in tight-fitting shorts and a halter top. Mark studied the pill in his hand. He felt euphoric. He probably didn’t need it. What the hell, he thought, what’s good for Gus…
He stumbled down the hallway looking for the lavatory, giggling, poking his head in to the recreation room, guest rooms, the weight room, and the sauna. When he finally found it, he didn’t bother to knock.
“Jesus Christ!”
The woman was fully naked, lying on a towel, stretched along the length of the black marble countertop. A bald man, rotund and naked from the waist, hunched over her, his face obscured by her thighs. Mark thrust the door open and it clattered against the wall. The woman sat up to look over her shoulder. The man between her legs stood and turned. A short, silver straw waggled from one of his nostrils.
“Occupied!” cried the man as he ripped the straw from his nose and fumbled for his glasses. He turned back to the woman. “I told you to lock it!”
The woman slid from the counter and attempted to cover herself. A drift of white powder snowed down from below her belly button and dusted the floor and toilet bowl.
“Fuck! You stupid whore! Do you know how much this shit cost?!”
She shrugged dumbly. The man fell to his knees and began to rescue the cocaine. As Mark closed the door he saw the man, head in the toilet, vacuuming the walls of the bowl.
He felt like he had entered an alternate reality. Who are these people? Were the company parties like this when grandfather was at the firm? Mark found another lavatory and returned to the entertainment room, gathering a bottle of beer along the way. He found his original place on the lambskin couch, heaped up another plate of hors d’oeuvres, and laughed until he was wiping tears from his eyes.
The Superbowl had entered the fourth quarter and the Titans were up by nine. It was almost over. Mark noticed he was now alone. He heard a cheer rise up from a distant part of the house. And another. And another. Faint, but unmistakable. Mark imagined that in this remote room there must be a gigantic, high-definition screen showing the game, with duodeca-phonic sound and arena-quality amplifier stacks. Or maybe the game was playing in a custom-built IMAX theatre. He stood up and pointed himself in the direction of the cheering, careening down the hallways, bouncing from room to room, turning back when the noise quieted.
Finally he came to a doorway. Inside, people stood shoulder to shoulder, laughing and clapping. Mark scanned the dim room. There was no screen. There was no television and no high-tech sound system. It was the games room, with a number of vintage pinball machines, arcade games, a shuffle board, antique fairground contraptions like a fortune telling machine, and a mechanical wild turkey shooting game. In the middle of the room, on a large, very expensive looking snooker table, a man and a woman engaged in vigorous intercourse.
Mark briefly sobered. He’d never before seen a naked woman, nor a naked man for that matter, let alone a pair of them together, copulating, on a billiards table. Exhaling jaggedly, he averted his eyes and they alighted on Paul Cornelius, his boss, standing near the fortune-telling machine. Paul talked and gestured to a tall man wearing jeans and a golf shirt. Before Mark could turn and duck out, Paul noticed him and waved him over. Mark hesitated. He noticed that Paul wasn’t distracted by the exhibition at all. It could have been just another football game.
“The application will be completely dynamic,” Paul was saying as Mark approached.
“Uh-huh.”
“Employees, customers, administrators, developers,…”
“Uh-huh.”
“…everyone will login through the same completely customizable portal…”
“Yeah.”
“… and create, update and maintain content through the graphical interface, without any more code being written.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You see what I’m saying?”
“That’s awesome.”
“It’s the ultimate content management system.”
“By the sounds of it.”
“No-one, not Microsoft, not Yahoo, not even Google for fuck’s sake, has anything like that.”
“You’re right there.”
“It’s going to be ten years ahead of its time.”
The man in the golf shirt nodded, replying with just enough enthusiasm to mollify. His eyes darted from Paul, to the snooker table, and back rapidly, almost imperceptibly. Paul was talking business.
“Yup, it’s remarkable Paul, I just wonder if you guys can pull it off.”
“Oh, we can pull it off, the project is well underway. The technology’s no problem.”
“Right.”
“We just need to make sure we have the funding to keep the talent.”
“Right.”
At the word ‘funding’, the man directed his full attention to the snooker table.
“Here’s one of our rock stars right here,” Paul continued.
“Stu, this is Mark, our latest recruit. From Canada, actually. He’s one of our database specialists. A fucking wiz.”
The man shook Mark’s offered hand without taking his eyes off the table.
“This is Stu Townshend, CEO of SmartSource and principle of the Gabriel Group of corporate angel investors.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“I was just telling Stu about our portal project. Can you tell him about the recursive XML content engine piece you guys are prototyping?”
Stu Townshend looked completely uninterested in recursive XML content engines. Mark looked over toward the snooker table and back to Paul, apologetically. Paul grinned.
“He’s really having a go, isn’t he?”
“Who are they?”
“That’s Mrs. Ornstein. Her husband bet against the Titans. She was the stakes.”
“He’s just the first of the syndicate,” Mr. Townshend added, laughing, “there are two others waiting their turns.”
“That’s unacceptable!”
Paul was shouting.
“Fucking unacceptable!”
“We don’t want to go down that road!” he continued, “we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, do we?”
Mark stared, puzzled. Mr. Townshend peered over him toward the pair copulating.
“Failure is not an option. How long do you think it will take?”
Paul grew quiet. He looked blankly at the wall behind Mr. Townshend. His face contorted as if he was in pain. Catching sight of Mark he cupped his left hand over his lapel and leaned in.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” he whispered, his right hand pointing to an ear-piece buried in this right ear.
Mark took advantage of the interruption. He nodded to the two diverted men and departed. In the hallway, Mark took a second to collect himself. Away from the noise and activity of the games room, the flow of adrenaline slowed, and the fog of intoxication returned. He chuckled giddily to himself as a warm feeling of indifference spidered through his body, re-numbing his limbs. For a moment, he considered slipping away, returning to the sanctuary of his apartment, before the evening took another, stranger turn and he lost control, before something regrettable happened, something that might jeopardize his standing in the company or, even more importantly, his dignity, that precious commodity that he’d newly won and that he felt he should jealously protect. He began to look for the exit.
Gus clapped him on the shoulder. The pupils of his eyes were dilated, his eyelids were unblinking, and he was grinning madly.
“Come on,” Gus said, handing him a flute of champagne, “there are some people that want to meet you.”
Gus strode away, leading Mark back through the villa to the entertainment room where he had started the evening. Mark followed. Gus should know that he can be relied on, that he is part of the team. That he is one of them.
This time, he heard the room before he saw it. The Superbowl had been switched off and a thumping, thudding R&B was growling out of the muscular sound system. Stepping into the room, Mark noticed that the lights had been turned very low, with lava lamps casting polymorphous shapes of crimson and indigo along the floor and up the walls. The air was thick with the oily aroma of marijuana. On the giant plasma screen, with all of its otherworldly resolution and high-definition, an enormous erect penis wobbled like a drunken sailor until it was seized by a pair of scarlet lips. Arrayed around the room, on the various sofas, floor cushions, love seats and overstuffed recliners, couples and threesomes petted and stroked, caressed and fellated.
“Mark, meet Maria,” Gus said as a young, petite Hispanic woman with dark brown hair, chestnut brown eyes, and a very bright, warm smile appeared from the shadows, shook Mark’s hand, and rubbed his shoulder.
“And Tiffany.”
Another young woman, with yellow hair and unnaturally green eyes, emerged next to Maria, smiling. She folded her hand into Mark’s when he extended his to shake, and she put her arm in the crook of his elbow.
“Mark is new to town. I thought maybe y’all could get to know each other a bit better.”
Gus turned to go and Mark laughed after him loudly, like he was braying. Before he had a chance to retreat, or feign fatigue, Gus had already moved on. He turned to the women, bowing his head, unsure of what to do next. Maria and Tiffany led him to an unoccupied section of the leather couch. He downed his flute of champagne and set it on a side table.
When in Rome, he thought.
The women weren’t much for small talk. They pressed their warm bodies against him, their slender fingers tracing paths along his chest and down his thighs. They whispered hotly into his neck and ear, brushing their lips across his cheek. His head swam as the booze swirled and the testosterone surged. Hyper-real images of straining, pliant, contorting flesh flared from the plasma projector. The boundary between the sweaty gyrations unfolding on screen and the humid groping taking place on the couch began to blur. As his new companions continued to wander across his body and his hungry hands wriggled beneath belts and probed under straps, Mark could no longer distinguish between the tangle on screen and the writhing on the couch.
He scanned the room breathlessly. Was anyone watching? No-one was. They looked bored.
Someone nearby groaned. Loudly. Not with pleasure. With disgust.
Mark raised his head and opened his eyes. He yanked his trousers up. Maria and Tiffany peeled themselves from Mark and sat upright, bewildered. The rest of the Bacchanalians also paused to assess the situation. Mark peered through the c
rimson-tinged gloom.
“Ugghh!”
It was Chantelle, the young woman Mark had met at the Oasis with Gus when he first arrived into town. They stared at each other. She was holding a book against her chest. Mark blinked. She groaned again.
“You think this is funny?” Chantelle demanded of Gus, who had just pirouetted into the room.
“You’re late. I didn’t think you were coming,” he replied.
“I had some errands to run. I stopped off at a bookstore to pick up this.”
She thrust out the book she was holding like it was a pointed stick. It was a paperback edition of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
“I thought you might not have got your copy yet,” Chantelle said to Mark severely, “so I picked one up for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Forget it. Were you in on this together?” She turned to Gus. “You invited me to a fucking orgy!?”
She waited for a response but there was none.
“Good bye,” she said turning on her heel to vanish as quickly as she had appeared.
Mark looked up at Gus who shrugged.
“I invited her and told her that you were really looking forward to seeing her again. When the game finished and she still wasn’t here I figured she must have changed her mind. Bad timing.”
Mark looked at Maria and Tiffany and smiled sheepishly. They weren’t the least bit put off. Mark lay back again and took a deep breath and attempted to digest this latest unexpected event. He erupted into a fit of giggles, and when they gradually subsided, he passed out.
TWELVE
A shake at the shoulder roused Marcus from his alcohol-fuelled snooze, laid out on the lectus. He propped himself onto an elbow and ground his fists into his eyes. His stomach reeled. Another prod, this one to his midsection, forced his eyes open.
“What is it? What do you want?”
“Our money.”
“We have to go.”
Female voices. Familiar voices. Voices that were hot and sweet not long ago. Now icy and harsh.
“Wake up!” A tug at his ear.