I’m so sorry. I really do love you and wish you well. Perhaps one day, god, this all sounds so ridiculous, but perhaps one day we can be together again, or friends at the very least. I’ll be in contact soon, or if not me, then a lawyer. Again, I’m so sorry.
Love,
P
August read the letter once, then twice more. Afterward he built a fire, burned the letter, and crawled into bed, forever.
Part Five
Over four months had passed since Mr. Barreth died, and those four months had not been kind to August March. He’d hardly bathed, let an unbecoming beard take his face hostage, and sunk into a deep and slothful depression. Food, when it was consumed, was either excessively greasy or miserably stale, but more often than not it was skipped entirely, replaced instead with whatever nourishment can be gleaned from alcohol. August’s social life consisted of the few bartenders that hadn’t yet banned him from their establishments. Needless to say, this eclectic and modestly limited group of individuals was composed of characters who were not the sort of people one would introduce to one’s family.
August was frequenting an establishment run by one of the more revolting members of his acquaintance, a man called simply the Donkey. Most of August’s other friends had nicknames of this sort, but the source of the moniker was generally self-explanatory. One-Eyed Sue, for example, had one eye. The Mouth was a man who talked incessantly and loudly. August didn’t know how the Donkey came by his pseudonym, and for whatever reason, was terrified to ask.
It was just past two in the afternoon, and August and the Donkey were in the midst of a furious game of darts. Both were so drunk, however, that the game had devolved into a form of hide-and-seek, both parties searching for their lost darts, thrown violently into nowhere. Still, the players were treating the game with the utmost seriousness and were in a heated argument about who currently held the lead.
“It was a bull’s-eye, you bastard!” the Donkey slurred, though in his heart of hearts he must have known he was exaggerating, for the red center circle was empty, as was the entire dartboard.
“It may be a bull’s-eye,” August agreed, for reasons we will never know, “but you, my fine fuck, are a cheater! A cheater most foul!”
The Donkey swung a punch at August’s face that connected instead with a jukebox that stood fifteen feet from the intended victim. The Donkey howled while August doubled over with laughter. He was eventually shaken out of his convulsions by a stranger in uniform.
“Are you August March?” the shaker asked.
“Depends,” August answered, which was quite a clever retort, considering he was clutching a barstool as the freefaller might a parachute.
The man extended a letter. “I’ve been searching for you all morning, sir. I’m to deliver this letter to you and you alone.”
August took the letter, yet the young stranger remained. August stared at him blankly for half a minute. The young man coughed. August belched.
“A tip, sir,” the letter bearer eventually said.
“Of course, of course. Donkey! Can you tip this young man out of your till? Put it on my tab.”
Instead of lending August money, however, the Donkey delivered the punch he’d intended to land earlier, directly to August’s face.
The scene devolved. The messenger tried to help August up from the ground, but August was drunker than a dead fish and refused to be lifted. The Donkey, thinking the messenger was propping August up for another blow, pulled back his arm and delivered a second drunken punch. However, August’s dead weight was finally too much for the young man to bear, and he dropped August, so the Donkey’s swing hit the messenger instead of August. The messenger, now infected with the foolishness that comes from being young and virile, rolled up his sleeves and tackled the Donkey. Though the older man was hopelessly outmatched by his young opponent, he had the stupid strength of the drunk, and attacked back with quite a gusty show of force. Both men were drawing blood and losing teeth in equal measure, though the messenger would surely come out on top in the end, that is, if the Donkey didn’t use any of his concealed weapons, of which he had three.
Meanwhile, August was coming to on the bar’s grimy floor. He took one look at the messenger and the Donkey tussling like inexperienced but eager lovers and decided it was time he took his leave.
Limping back home, he fell onto his couch and into sleep, the letter clutched lightly in his hand, unread.
* * *
August awoke to stale darkness and set about his evening, which would be a continuation of his afternoon, meaning he was going to attempt to drink himself to death.
He didn’t notice the letter for hours, and when he finally did, he was almost too drunk to read it.
Through hazy vision, August saw that the postmark was from Paris.
Fucking Paris!
Had he been sober, he would’ve thrown the letter away instantly, or burned it and pissed on the ashes. But, drunk and rash, he ripped the envelope open, ready to curse and wail and add new fuel to the fires of his misery.
August read:
Dear Mr. March,
You are cordially invited to the demolition of the Barreth Hotel. The festivities shall begin on September 5 at promptly seven in the a.m. Your hostess regrets to inform you that she can’t attend but that she will most certainly be there in spirit.
Yours,
P.Y.
But what could this mean? August reread the letter once over, and his muddled brain finally derived its significance. Penny, sole heiress to the Barreth fortune, had ordered the pride of his empire to be torn down. August tried to stand but his legs were rubbery due to the contents of the letter, and he crashed into an end table instead.
On the floor, he read the letter again. September 5? But that was tomorrow!
August looked at the clock and saw that it was four in the morning.
Not tomorrow, but today! Sweet felicity! Praise every god dead and living!
August took a celebratory shot of tequila, packed a quick bag of provisions (booze), and then was out the door and on his way uptown; he wanted to make sure he got a good seat.
It took August over an hour to reach his destination, not because of distance but due to the fact that he got lost on his way there and had to stop more than once to pee and more than twice to vomit. By the time his feet were planted firmly in front of the hotel, August was far less drunk than he had been when he set out, though he smelled far worse.
The wait was positively Mesozoic, but at last the wrecking balls arrived. Immediately August introduced himself to the demolition crew, who were confused as to who he was, but put their bewilderment behind them when it became clear that he was handing out free drinks, a practice he kept up all morning. Eventually, August had become so friendly with the crew that by the time they were ready to start the actual demolition, he was allowed to make a short speech.
He awkwardly shimmied up the side of a crane and settled atop the operator’s cab, holding the base of the crane’s lattice for support. Surveying the gathered team below, all gazing up at him with tipsy eyes, August knew the moment was a special one, and forced himself to take a deep breath and savor the weighty feeling of profundity before starting his speech.
“Friends,” he began, “today we witness the end of an era. An era of greed. An era of tyranny. An era when the senseless jaws of Commerce were allowed to rape and swallow the provocative goddess we call Art.”
The construction crew’s perplexity was nearly audible, but August was so solemn that they remained silent. A few even removed their hard hats and placed them against their breasts.
August continued. “Today, we make amends. Today, when the brick and mortar fall, we can celebrate as the Hebrews did when the sea crashed closed behind them, swallowing the Egyptians. As the citizens of Gondor and Rohan must have done when Barad-dûr collapsed. For today, justice prevails, and an unholy boil that festers on the face of our fair city will be lanced and expunged.
“Go to your deed, my
good men, and do it well. Do it with pride. For today, you aren’t but mere workmen. Today you are heroes! Legends! Gods! Destroy what evil has built and become forever immortalized in the pages of history!”
Most of the men present enjoyed their jobs, but never before had they thought it particularly significant or righteous work. August’s speech changed all that. The men cheered and cried and pounded their beating hearts and felt hot blood move through their veins. They ran to their equipment as men mounting warhorses and charged into their great and glorious cause.
The foreman, as alight with August’s speech as the rest, bellowed out the order to commence without the aid of a megaphone, and his voice was glorious; Gabriel’s trumpet.
When the first wrecking ball smashed into the side of the Barreth, August wept. Each boom was a Beethoven. Every crash a Tchaikovsky. The sounds of the smashes were finer than any Shakespearean soliloquy, and August was all delight and life. In his euphoria, he even allowed himself to forgive the sins of Penny York, for it was she who had orchestrated this blessed event.
Well, mostly forgive, anyway.
* * *
The Barreth’s demise pulled August out of his own. Such a massive building was not obliterated in a single morning, and visiting the site every day gave him something to do, a reason to get out of bed. He also enjoyed the companionship of the men working the job, bringing them snacks and sandwiches and bits of gossip and booze by the gallon. They were far better company than men like the Donkey, whom August hadn’t seen since their last encounter, the one that left him with a black eye. For their part, the demolition crew liked August, assuming he was an eccentric who owned the property on which the Barreth formerly stood. Not all rich people were bad, they decided as they drank his liquor and listened to his long unintelligible rants concerning people they’d never heard of and words they were sure he’d invented on the spot.
Delighted as he was to be kept busy, what August found truly satisfying was the experience of closure, a feeling that up to this point had remained most foreign. All the major events of his life had happened to him; he’d never had any control. Miss Butler died and was carted away; August hadn’t even attended the funeral. Sir Reginald had passed suddenly as well, and right when they were getting to know each other as adults. Though August had been present for Percyfoot’s service, the whole affair had been odd and disconnected, hardly a fitting finale to the most influential man in his life.
The loss of the Scarsenguard, being plucked from his life as a pickpocket, Penny flying off to Paris just when they might’ve gotten started; August had never had anything to grab. Life was smoke, a fog he kept trying desperately to clutch. The death of the Barreth, however, was something he could stick a flag into. Here was an ending, a fulfilling and definitive outcome.
Weeks passed, and the demolition site was no longer an exciting place to visit. All the pomp and circumstance was over. Now it was on to the quieter, more thankless tasks such as removing rubble and serious conversations about copper wiring and whatnot. August drifted away but wasn’t tempted back into his former life of the previous months. He hadn’t given up drinking, but he had cut back considerably, and he was consuming at least one square meal a day.
After receiving the tingly glow of contentment from the Barreth’s demise, August decided to rifle through his brownstone and sort through other aspects of his life, attempting to re-create the high brought on by closure. At the very least, he would throw out some of this old shit.
As it turned out, however, cleansing an apartment was not as exciting as watching a skyscraper crumble to the ground, so when his buzzer rang, August gleefully tossed aside the papers he’d been sifting through and fairly sprinted to the door. A messenger delivering yet another letter bearing a blasted postmark from Paris. My god, but these things were popping up with a frightening frequency. Signature given, August braced himself for the latest from France.
All that was inside, however, was the deed to a plot of land on West Forty-Third Street with a note attached:
Take it off my hands?
So the Barreth was his. But it wasn’t the Barreth anymore. It was nothing. So nothing was his. Leave it to Penny.
August went on cleaning out the brownstone, not bothering to make any decision about what to do with his strange gift from Penny. He really didn’t care what happened to the land now that the Barreth had been destroyed. A little diner might be nice, but he had no desire to work in a restaurant. Truth be told, he had little desire to work at all. He wasn’t good at much except scaling buildings, and he was beginning to think that talent might be fading with age. He’d proved time and again he was no great master criminal, just someone who could pick a lock and pass as somebody else if there was enough makeup involved. Now that Penny was gone, he hadn’t really thought about what he was going to do with his life. She was everything; all his plans were wrapped up in her. What to do now that he was simply August March?
Upstairs one afternoon later that week, he was combing through a sitting room he hardly entered. He was practically upending a desk, throwing nearly all its contents into the trash, when he came across a letter from Sir Reginald, locked away in the bottommost drawer.
It wasn’t long, and though there was more to it, one particular paragraph struck August fierce as lightning:
You are a child of the theatre, August, and in some capacity there you must stay. The plays you staged at Willington were truly stupendous for someone so young. You were born in a theater. You were raised in a theater. You belong to it as much as it belongs to you. I hope you find happiness in whatever it is you choose to do, but I know you’d find happiness near a stage.
Damn these letters! They always caused one such trouble. How could paper and ink hold so many landmines?
When the door buzzer bleated, August was weeping, holding the letter to his chest for fear of smearing the writing with his tears. Whoever it was would have to wait while he got ahold of himself. Hadn’t he waited long enough for a life of his own?
For that was why August was crying. There were many reasons, of course. But the principal contributor to August’s unexpected outburst was that he was suddenly certain of his future. He knew now what he would do. He supposed he’d always known, but it took the splashy, overwrought penmanship of Sir Reginald to remind him.
August was going to build a theater.
* * *
As it turns out, building a theater, or any structure in New York City, was difficult. Or, to put it a bit more eloquently, a goddamned pain in the ass. Never in his life had August imagined that every day, people sat at long tables and traded mind-numbing monotonies concerning codes and regulations and standards and compliances and god knew what else. Whenever possible, August avoided these meetings, but at times he was forced to attend so he might scrawl his signature across some dreaded document that gorged with humdrum. Really the whole thing was wretched, the stuff of nightmares.
Then, once every single person in New York City was satisfied that a theater should be built, there was the drama of finding an architect worthy of the job. Most wanted to cut corners and use cheap substitutes instead of the genuine authentic materials. Linoleum for tile, that sort of thing. No matter how often August assured them that money was no issue (Penny was funding the operation through her team of high-powered, soulless lawyers), they insisted on shortcuts, until August was sure that every building constructed after 1960 was made solely out of cardboard, held together by chewing gum and prayer.
When August finally found a man excited by the prospect of building a glorious, honest-to-god theater, there was no small amount of horror when he discovered the architect to be a Frenchman. His famously prejudiced upbringing aside, Penny running off to Paris without explanation not once but twice hadn’t raised the country’s flag any higher in August’s heart. Still, the man was a genius, no doubt about it, and August supposed he might set aside old national animosities for the sake of creation and beauty.
Alas, the
collaboration was not an easy one.
“I will not arrange the stage in such a manner,” complained the architect in a thick French accent. He might as well have been slurping down escargot. “It is hideous.”
“It is not hideous,” snapped August as the pair pored over what must have been the thirty-seventh draft of blueprints. “This way plays can be performed standardly on a proscenium or, if the director chooses, on a thrust stage, an arrangement I personally find far preferable.”
The point was conceded, at least momentarily, but new complaints were instantly lodged.
“Why do you insist on all these, how do you say, nooks and crannies everywhere? They do not make sense!”
“In case a young boy needs a place to hide! My god, man, don’t be daft!”
“It is impossible. I will not attach my name to it.”
“I’ll double your pay.”
“Perhaps something can be arranged.”
A blueprint satisfactory to both parties was eventually settled on, and construction on the theater began in earnest. August visited the site daily and tried to become as close with the construction crew as he had been with the team who tore down the Barreth, but it was not to be. A perfectionist, August couldn’t resist giving what he thought to be helpful tips and advice, like how the men should hold their hammers or the best method for sawing wood. Needless to say, his presence was barely tolerated. August couldn’t help it; he needed his theater to be a masterpiece. To combat his rather overbearing personality, August lavished gifts upon the crew so that even though they could hardly stand the sight of him, they still wanted the job done right. August wasn’t completely out of touch; he knew that people are better employees if treated fairly and equitably, and he was never skimpy when handing out compliments or bonuses for men going above and beyond. Now if they would only put a little more thought into how they laid the floorboards.
The process was painstaking and glacial.
The Astonishing Life of August March Page 21