It’s true that I’m plotting to gimpli the public at large, but my plan is to fool the dim and unpleasant, or at least people I don’t know, and I’m not seeking to divest them of their lifetime savings. I’m just asking for a large number of people to reach into their wallets and take out one bill for me. One modest donation for Tyndale, and I believe I’ll be offering something in exchange: a jolt of hope.
G
One of my neighbours was a guitarist. I’d say he was the best guitarist in the world. You could spend a week arguing about what best is, and whether I’m qualified to judge what’s the best, which, of course, I’m not. But he probably was one of the ten best guitarists in the world. His father had been a guitar teacher and he’d started at the age of four. I’ll tell you how good he was.
Several professional guitarists stopped playing after seeing him: his superiority despaired them so completely they couldn’t go on.
They gave up because they could see how good he was, and how, despite this, he was playing in small clubs to small audiences. It wasn’t that he was unrecognized, he was recognized, 198
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but not enough. He had record deals, he went on tours abroad, he had some of the trappings of success, but not the success.
He climbed on the ladder, but couldn’t get off the bottom rung.
Being good isn’t enough: the world has to know you’re good, it has to be explained.
G
“Looks like we’re out of business,” says Sixto showing me a newspaper article about a huge drug swoop in Colombia.
Thirty-five arrests, four shot dead.
“Us?” I ask.
“Us.”
“Maybe they’ll get lawyered up and get off,” I suggest.
“No,” says Sixto. “It’s a business where you might not get arrested, but once you’re arrested and once you’re on the front page, you’re finished.”
Should I mention to him my suspicion that my bad luck has brought down a ruthless, long-established, major multinational criminal organization? There are certain things about yourself you don’t like to admit, but I think I have to admit it: I am bad news. I was in denial for too long. I do a few odd jobs on the peripheries for this cartel and, suddenly, they’re behind bars. Would Sixto be upset if I told him? I worked for the old lighting company in the country. True they fired me, but a year afterwards, they were liquidated. The rot had gone too deep.
Sixto isn’t bothered. “I’d had enough anyway. And this means we get a very nice bonus.”
Sixto thinks that, with the head decapitated, the whole network will simply dissolve. And that the money that should have gone up the pipeline will stay with us.
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“We’ll do nothing for a while. See if anyone turns up asking about the accounts. If they do, we pay up like good boys. If not, keepers keepers. I’ll make sure you get a cut. But I’m selling this place soon, whatever happens. Time to move on.”
Some money would be nice. It could help me help someone.
The only good thing about misfortune is that it can provide an opportunity for kindness. Without trouble there would be fewer opportunities for kindness.
G
“Look, I’ve got to warn you, about Napalm,” I say to Dave as we draw up. “He really does look very funny.”
“Belongs in a circus does he?”
“I’m just warning you. So you don’t react when you meet him.”
“Tyndale. You’re a good friend, but I’ve got tell you, you do talk garbage sometimes. What do you think I’ll do, shout out
‘You’re the ugliest fucker I’ve ever seen’? What you must think of me.”
We get out of the car. Napalm comes down the driveway. Dave doubles up with laughter. He’s laughing so hard, tears brim.
“The baby-in-the-blender joke,” I say to Napalm, referring to a joke he told me a day earlier. Dave’s still laughing so hard he can’t shake hands with Napalm. “Sorry,” he gasps. “Sorry.”
We go to two places I don’t even notice the names of. Dave is very charming to Napalm, introduces him to several women, but I can see my idea of taking Napalm out on the town is a non-starter. A barmaid brings her friend over for Dave to pronounce on. “It’s amazing. He just knows what you’ll like.”
Dave holds her hand and pronounces: “Mose Allison. King 200
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Pleasure. Rammstein.” The two women regard Napalm as if he were our pet monkey.
When Napalm goes off to the toilet Dave turns to me:
“No one’s ever going to believe me. And it’s hard to describe.
I mean, it’s not classic fright-night ugly.”
“No.”
“It’s more weird. Somewhere between weird and funny. There’s not much he can do is there?”
“No.”
“Plastic surgery? Worth a try.”
Dave promises to stock some of Napalm’s waterskis. We go outside.
“What’s next?” Dave muses. “Tyndale and I usually like to round off the evening by getting mugged.”
As Dave says this, a hooded figure walks up behind him and pulls a gun. This time we aren’t in a dark parking lot, but in a brightly lit street.
“Gentlemen, I’m offering you an investment opportunity. I only need two hundred dollars.”
“Wait a minute, are you mugging us?” asks Dave.
“No, this is an exciting investment opportunity.”
“So what are we investing in?”
“Me.”
“And what do you do?”
“I sing.”
“And what do we get for our money?”’
“Double.”
“How do we collect?”
“When I’m famous you can write me and I’ll send you your money. My name’s Slow Joe.”
“Why can’t you admit you’re mugging us?”
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“Because this is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity, nothing else.”
“I warn you,” interjects Napalm. “I have a photographic memory. I’m making a detailed description of you and I’m willing to use it in a court of law.”
“If it’s not a mugging, why the gun?”
“I only carry it for protection. You won’t believe the jealousy my talent stirs up.” I watch a police car drive by, quite slowly.
“Look,” says Dave. “I’ll give you fifty if you fess up that it’s a mugging.”
“It’s fifty each, minimum. Investment. That’s the best I can do.”
To my amazement, Dave reaches into his pocket and counts out three fifties. Slow Joe leaves us with a disc of his songs.
“What happened there?” I ask.
“I’m tired,” says Dave. “I don’t suppose you wanted to disarm him? I used to get trouble every six months or so. Now it’s every week. This city is getting safer, statistics prove it. Everyone says so. You may be unlucky with lines, but I’m the mugger magnet.”
I’m beginning to think he’s right.
“I’m willing to testify,” says Napalm.
“Here,” says Dave, giving him Slow Joe’s music. “Take it. I’m afraid I might like it.”
G
It makes me angry.
The injustice of Napalm’s lot makes me angry. My being angry about it makes me angry. Being angry about Napalm being Napalm doesn’t advance my mission one inch. Anger, like most emotions, is a waste of time.
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My getting this worked up about it is probably another sign of my cracking up. One of my neighbours who went mad spent the weeks before the padded cell obsessing about squirrels eating the nuts in his bird-feeder instead of doing something about his business going bust. Getting concerned about the problems of your fellow man is one way of fleeing your own. There are so many strictly legal, free ways of disregarding your doom; preventing squirrels getting at the nuts, watching television, s
leeping, marathon-running, playing the harp, being concerned about others.
Sixto gives me some cash.
“All quiet on the where’s-our-money front,” he grins.
I resolve to make a gift to Napalm. To give him something that will last his lifetime: a great memory.
I decide to consult Dave, but as I drive along Biscayne Boulevard I see an obviously street-walking streetwalker. I had been considering an escort agency, because anyone working a street corner isn’t at the successful, sophisticated end of the market, but the girl has a cute air about her, and indeed her average looks make her more plausible… and laziness always wins.
Our eyes lock as I lower the window.
“How you doing?” I ask, because it seems like an uncon-troversial gambit.
“How am I doing? I’m out on the street letting creeps fuck my butt for small change so I can buy smack. How the fuck do you think I am?”
I raise the window and drive off.
Stopping off for a coffee on Lincoln Road, I find a paper which carries an ad for Gold Starr Girlz:
“We only work with the most beautiful and high-class girls, the champagne-minded elite who have glamorous and chic lives, 203
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at ease in luxury hotels or exclusive nightclubs. Our beautiful escorts, whether models or distinguished scholars, are waiting for high-class gentlemen to take them to superior, internationally known, celebrity-flooded restaurants.”
With a powerful feeling of futility, I enter the premises of Gold Starr Girlz. I sense my mission to enhappy Napalm will fail. I strive to shake off the doom, but it remains.
They are extraordinarily friendly at Gold Starr. They show no disappointment or amazement as I ask for a one-hour outing.
I doubt they would ever show disappointment or amazement whatever I asked for. When I see their prices, I swoon. I came ready to be fleeced – this is a top agency in a city awash with money, but I can’t believe even the rich would pay these prices. With these prices they have no choice but to be extraordinarily friendly.
As I flip through their catalogue, despite the glossiness and the thoughtfully lit curves, there’s something sad about it. Do what you want, earn your money however you want, but there’s a sorrow lurking here. I really wonder whether the clients are that eager for friction, or whether it’s the company. Who would pay these prices for an emission, when you can have a historical re-enactment in your fist for free? I know many of my colleagues ended up paying not because of the ooohhh, but because they were bored in a strange city.
But not with these prices. There’s only one way to deal with sharks asking ludicrous prices.
“Don’t you have anyone more expensive?” I ask.
“We could double our charges if you prefer?”
“Nothing personal, but I need someone higher-class.”
Trying to fix Napalm’s life has wasted half my day and I have got nowhere. Should I quit? Everything is a gamble, and generally when I gamble I lose.
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“Why are you asking me?” snaps Dave when I call him for advice. “Any form of depravity is my province? I’m the spawn of Satan, am I?”
Nevertheless, he recommends the Dreamery and, when he hears that I’m on the case for Napalm’s benefit, offers to make a contribution.
The Dreamery’s brochure: “We welcome you to an unhurried uniting of nations. Ideal for any event, high-school reunions or the opera, our well-interviewed, good-looking beauties can confidently and confidentially flesh your dreams. Our watch-word: anything to anyone.”
I can’t believe the prices. I’m in the wrong business. The beaches here are littered with single women whose first thought is fun. This agency can’t be about emission either. I’ve often suspected that paying a high price is more to do with the sheer pleasure of paying rather than what is purchased.
My goggle eyes betray me.
“We do have a girl du jour.”
I’ve gone too far to back out now. I book an hour with Shy.
Shy is petite, wiry and wears an admiral’s cap which is too large and almost hides her face. Her clothes, however, would function nicely on a six-year-old in a hot climate, so most of her severely tanned body demands inspection. “I’ve got other outfits; if you want I can change?”
We sit down at the News Café.
“I’ve got a special job, if you’re interested,” I say.
“Everyone’s job is special.”
I haven’t met many pros. They’ve tended to be vinegary or victimy. Shy, apart from her clothes, is more like a banker or an engineer. I’m looking into the eyes of someone calm, invincible.
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“It’s a job which perhaps your employers don’t need to know about.”
“OTB, huh?”
“OTB?”
“Off the books. We can talk about that.”
I study her shoes. I know nothing about shoes, but they are so perfect, the leather so lush, they must cost more than my car.
Shy’s twenty-one and I have no doubt by the time she’s thirty she’ll be rich. Her heart has been discarded or maybe was never installed. Not caring about anyone really frees you up.
It’s interesting sitting with Shy. The other customers look at me like I’m something, because I’m sitting with Shy: she’s so unmistakably one of the elect. Whether she’s my daughter, my friend or my purchase, my status is raised. The admiration of idiots isn’t worth much, but it’s pleasant, like a warm breeze.
“I have this friend,” I begin. I outline Napalm’s barriers to progress, and the scenario I want her to act out for me.
“Okay, the GFE.”
“GFE?”
“The girlfriend experience.” Of course: you believe you’ve come up with something new but it’s long been someone’s acronym.
I stare at Shy’s breasts as we construct the plot, because they insist. There is such beauty about young flesh. Is my staring an old habit, or the return of an ageless folly? Mind you, if I want to hide myself in women again I won’t be starting with Shy, who has the warmth of a chopping board.
Some of the successful people I’ve known have struck me like that: intelligent individuals who at a young age assessed life as awful, and never wasted time on happiness. They weren’t unpleasant, indeed they were good company, but you couldn’t 206
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imagine them being greatly upset about anything: one of their family dying or their wife leaving them. They were emotional amputees. Shut-downs. Unexpecters.
I can’t imagine Shy caring about anyone, not even a cat.
Unfortunately, deep within me the desire to be happy still skulks. Who’s the mistaker here? Are decency and love simply masks for arrogance and selfishness? Is rectitude a pledge that eventually we will get something in return?
We construct a plot. Napalm meets Shy, a meek librarian from Iowa on her last-but-one day of holiday. Shy falls for Napalm, spends night with him, but before leaving explains that her fiancé, with whom she split up just before her holiday, has got in touch and begged her to come back and, although Napalm has taken her to undreamt ecstatics, Shy has been through so much with her fiancé that she has to give him another chance, blah, blah, blah. So dumped, but dumped lovingly, wistfully.
Napalm gets a memory of astonishing wriggling and gasping that he can cherish and build on.
“Do you have the right gear?”
“You’d be surprised how often I play the librarian. Everyone wants to do a librarian. CIM.”
I don’t ask. I produce a picture of Napalm.
“You weren’t exaggerating,” she comments. As we renego-tiate the price, I observe her breasts and it occurs to me that the appeal of youth isn’t entirely the tenacity of flesh, it’s its unsoiled quality (not in Shy’s case obviously); when we hit the forties it’s hard not to be a sack of poison, ears dripping disillusion.
We agree a price, a price I wouldn�
�t have agreed to if I hadn’t already invested so much time in the project. Shy takes the down payment with a minimum of courtesy.
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Back home, I fall to my knees and pray hard. I see no hope. Is that because there is no hope, or it’s just out of sight?
G
I arrange to meet Napalm in an internet café that afternoon.
Shy can engineer contact when I fail to show up.
“You can pretend to be having trouble with your computer, or—” I suggest.
“Hey. I have it under control,” Shy assures. I am worried however. I’m worried that even a toned-down Shy will be too good to be true. That like all of us Napalm’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime. He won’t believe he can board.
It’s a grim morning. I’ve been asked to conduct a memorial service for one of the congregation’s brother. Heavy traffic caused by a suicide made me late. A guy jumped off the tenth floor of a hotel with his four-year-old son: a lawyer in good health.
That’s what makes it especially sad: someone healthy, well-off.
If you’re old and ill, why not check out at your convenience? But otherwise it’s probably lack of someone to back you, to listen to you, to say to you with sincerity “fuck ’em” and give you a hearty slap on the back. It often is that simple. Just as the right drug can stop an ailment dead, so a few words from the right person at the right time can save a life.
You can’t understand it when you’re younger. But as you age you do understand how you get tired: your existence might not be that awful, but you just get tired. And you understand how you might get so disillusioned that you’d want to protect your child from that.
The memorial service is for Wilson’s brother. I was reluctant to accept the commission because I wasn’t sure Wilson had 208
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ever attended the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. I didn’t remember ever seeing Wilson at the services, but he claims he was. He probably, like most of us, is a crisis worshipper. I agreed, probably because it was easier to say yes than no.
According to Wilson, his brother didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs. He was a keen swimmer, mostly vegetarian and he helped out at a shelter for stray dogs once a week. He was twenty-three and he collapsed changing television channels. Just like that. It’s the sort of incident that makes you feel you should be out raping, robbing, stubbing out cigarettes on kids, because patently there’s no benefit in living sensibly.
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