A spark fired in Susan’s mind about a week after she saw the fox picture. It happened during a late Thursday afternoon as she leaned back in her office recliner, reminiscent and remorseful over her missing daughter. She was recalling the time she’d traveled to the East Coast to visit Marty during her junior year. That was the time Susan was shocked to learn the true nature of her daughter’s heart. Marty was going to be the queen of the junior prom at the neighboring high school. All the schools’ boys voted for her, and she was trying to decide which one should drive her back to her dorm after the evening’s parties. Susan tried to alter her daughter’s life course during that weekend, suggesting she join the Peace Corps.
“There are so many children in Africa who are starving to death. You could be a big help to humanity if you went there and worked with them in one of the villages. Help them learn how to raise crops and animals so the children won’t starve.” That was the gist of Susan’s parental suggestion. That’s when she heard the truth.
“Mother, don’t be ridiculous. After you spent our whole life pushing me away from you so you could have your precious career, now you want me to join the Peace Corps? Puh-lease! There’s no way I’d ever do that. Look at it this way. If we help them, they’ll just breed more until the world is full of starving children. They’ll overrun the rest of us. It’s never going to be possible to save all of them, and by saving a few you don’t make them stronger. You make them more dependent and weaken all of them. It’s better to just let them starve and hope the survivors figure it out.”
“You sound so heartless. I don’t like hearing you talk that way.”
“I’m just a realist, Mother, and I know who I am and where I want my life to go. Frankly, I care far more about which boys are next on my fuck calendar than I could ever care about some poor kids dying of starvation in Africa. I keep my priorities straight, Mother. I have no time for distractions.”
Susan had gulped and swallowed hard when she’d heard Marty talk that way back then, and she gulped and swallowed now as she recalled that afternoon. It was not possible for Susan to ever stop loving her daughter. She’d been missing for almost a year, but the lumps in Susan’s throat, her feelings of guilt from not being closer to Marty, had never left her. She remembered her daughter as the beautiful child she was, how curious and happy and full of life she was, and how Susan sometimes braided her hair into pigtails. That’s when dot number one sent off its electrical charge to dance with dot number two.
The plug of fox hair in the frame played upon Susan’s mind. Something about it didn’t make sense. Hadn’t she heard from David at one of the company parties held at his house a few years before that the coyotes were getting after his geese and had killed off all the foxes around his farm? If that were true, then how did a fox end up in his barn? A chill went straight down Susan’s spine. That was the fateful moment when she suddenly realized nothing would ever be the same.
No one stayed late at UGGA Universal, at least not during the in-between times, those times between when regulatory report deadlines and filings must be met. Susan lingered that clandestine night, waited until all the at-will hires left, walked the halls to be doubly sure, then made one of her supersleuth corporate secretary moves, the kind that set her apart from the worker-bee time clock punchers. She slipped into Bob’s office with her night tools, a paring knife, a screwdriver, and a small pair of cuticle scissors. In a few minutes, she’d removed the fox picture from its place on Bob’s wall, removed the backing, and snipped a small sample of hair from the underside of the plug. She reassembled the picture and hanged it in its original position. Inspecting her work, she satisfied herself that no one would ever notice the missing hair sample.
Then she left.
NO
After a few months, Bob thought less and less about the antelope hunt and The Others’ Place episode. Traveling, selling, keeping track of individual salespeople’s requests and idiosyncrasies, and making hundreds of flights on time focused his mind on the present.
David looked more toward the future. Since the antelope hunt, he’d hired two additional male employees. Their employment duties were more of the same farcical nonsense sorts of jobs that his previous two hires performed.
The first hire, Lester, was a man David found greatly to his liking. The man was malleable, always agreeable to any suggestion David made, had no moral center, and was totally devoid of ethics. He had feminine mannerisms, but not their cleanliness or neatness. His shirt was often unbuttoned by three front buttons, his trousers were dirty, his fingernails were grimy, his hair was greasy, his teeth were yellow from smoking, and his halitosis was so vile that the ladies often gagged when they conversed with him. He often sought the camaraderie of the women in the office, but was shunned and went uninvited to any of their gatherings. His savior for companionship was David, who spent ever increasing after-hours times with Lester and soon gave him a prominent role in the firm. Lester was assigned to be the office observer, which was a nice way of describing someone hired to snoop on everyone else. The office women had a code name for Lester, calling him ‘Slurp.’
The second hire, Charles, was given the official role to substitute. He was instructed to sit in the lunchroom each day, every day. His job was to eat lunch slowly, extending a normal lunch hour into an eight-hour food fest, and to always remain in the lunchroom to report directly to David any conspiratorial conversations that might take place. Officially, he was designated on regulatory reports as an assistant employee and carried on the fund’s expenses. Although Charles knew absolutely nothing about the company or its various employee duties, reporting, and record-keeping requirements, David deemed him intelligent enough to learn the other employees’ job functions by listening to them talking in the lunchroom.
Charles, or Chas, was the most obese employee UGGA ever hired, perhaps the most obese employee in all of Plaintown. Fat rolled off his face and chin, and his arms and legs. His stomach and backside were so huge he could not fit into a chair—which was a good thing, for if he were to ever sit upon a normal-sized chair with normal-sized legs, it was a near certainty that his weight would crush the chair and he would likely injure himself. Chas wore specially constructed trousers, made by stitching together two normally large trouser pairs and repositioning the zipper. He had a very fat face with huge lips and an ever-present smile. He was partially bald, although he was only in his late twenties, and combed what little hair he had forward over his dome so it looked as if there was some sort of splattered mural effort above his eyes. A special oversized sofa was constructed for him and placed in the lunchroom. The office girls soon had a nick name for Chas also, calling him ‘Sub,’ as in subpar. They pitied him for his obesity and openly speculated that his real job skill was giving the other men superlative blow jobs.
Susan’s girls, led by Mrs. Rodriguez and Barbara, continued to do the work of the office. Now the ladies had plenty of male combinations to quip and laugh about. They devised a man pool, similar to males’ football pools. Each woman picked a numbered ticket from a bowl which matched male combination pairings, as well as a jackpot number which represented the total number of verified male pairings that occurred the previous week. Each ticket cost one dollar. There was a winning prize for which number picked the most winning male combinations. There were rules to determine what the males were deemed to be doing based upon who arrived at work with whom, who stayed late with whom, who went to lunch with whom, who was seen behind closed doors with whom, and who brought gifts for whom. When one male was spotted rubbing his hand over the ass of another male, there was a bonus wild card noted in the female logbook. Those two males, if they appeared on the winning ticket, earned the ticket holder a double bonus, and all other women not holding the ass rub combo on their tickets had to pony up an additional twenty-five cents each to the winner. Each combination of male incidents had to be verified by two women, and each male combination pairing was given a point ranking for total jackpot points.
; Pool ticket pairs included Sub Slurp, Man Muscle, Slurp Man, Muscle Slurp, Sub Man, Muscle Sub, Chas Man, Sub Chas, Slurp Chas, and Muscle Chas. Each ticket had three different pairings. As the weeks rolled by, the log entries lengthened and the pots were paid out. It was obvious that some pairings repeated more often than the others, and there developed a marketplace for certain pairings which sold at a premium. The women developed their own private exchange trading place. Suspicions grew amongst the males when one of the ladies would encourage a male to rub the ass of another in front of two other female witnesses, especially when the two would-be rubbers were likely to be a winning pair.
Barbara was especially keen on this plan. She soon had a standing premium pay offer for certain likely winning pairs and then, once she had her likely winning tickets, she would challenge her pony pairs, as she called them, to rub asses. After a time, the other women began to lose interest, as Barbara was winning far too much of their money. But it was all good fun while it lasted, except when a shareholder was present in the office. Watching grown men walking about rubbing each other’s asses didn’t sit well with some of the older investors and they pulled their money. David eventually caught on to the games being played and issued one of his edicts forbidding office betting. No edict was issued forbidding ass rubbing.
David’s income waxed fat from the sales improvement, despite the added expenses of two additional office drones. Money had a major effect on his behavior. Although David already had a lot of money, his attitude and outlook on life were affected by whether his monies were increasing or decreasing. The addition of Bob to the firm resulted in a quadrupling of firm cash flows, and for David personally, a ten-fold leap in income. A swelling of his ego and sense of self-importance took place the more riches poured into his fold. Suddenly, the idea that he was a business genius overcame David. Every decision he made, he believed, turned into gold. He resented any challenge to his authority and believed himself invincible.
Bob was in Plaintown enough to notice that the office was a playpen for homosexual males and a source of friction for the women relegated to do the work. And he told David as much. He made clear his opinion that David’s drones were a hindrance to getting work done; that they were an unnecessary, even if affordable, cost which should be eliminated; and that while David always exhorted Bob to do better, it was time for him to look into the mirror, for Bob asserted that David could do better as well.
David rebuffed Bob. The way the firm was structured made perfect sense to him. He never sought to be a large investment firm, just a comfortable one. He always had a hankering to meddle in the lives of others and watch their reactions to his meddling. He liked abusing people as much as he’d liked abusing insects as a child.
After Bob rejected David’s advances, his adoration of the younger partner turned to contempt. He held all straight men, including his late father, in contempt, and he learned to disguise it very well. He regarded Bob’s business acumen with contempt as well. He reasoned anyone gullible enough to trust him was merely a fool to take advantage of. As much as he tried to enlighten Bob about the joys of homosexuality, Bob remained impossibly rigid in his moral persuasions. He ascribed Bob’s prudish morals to his Christian mother’s influence. Estella and David met once on a visit the woman made to Plaintown. He’d instinctively hated her, although he masked his feelings well. He also correctly surmised that she instinctively hated him as well.
David chafed at his self-inflicted predicament with Bob. Deeply hurt by Bob’s rejections and resentful of his junior’s opinions about his manner of managing the office staff, David held the man’s very persona in contempt. He tried to disguise his contemptuous feelings from Bob as best he could, but there was a change in his demeanor toward Bob. There was a chill that hung in the air between the two men, like a late fall day’s penetrating coldness that will not warm away, even after the sun has risen high.
Bob was dismayed over David’s decline into squalid behavior. Perhaps his father figure, his sniveling, sobbing mentor who begged him to become a homosexual lover, had finally found some men who acquiesced to sucking him off, body odors notwithstanding. Bob had no understanding of male homosexuality and never sought to delve into those behaviors. The notion of a gay father figure was hard for him to stomach at first. His initial feelings were that of revulsion of David and all his drones, but then, after it was clear that this was the life David was choosing for himself or the life he was born wired to live, Bob was able to compartmentalize the older man’s personal sex life as a personal dimension of David that he would just simply ignore. And he did.
But Bob’s appeasement with David, who no longer acted like a partner, who sought to change the fundamental nature of their relationship from business partnership and personal friendship to homosexual lover, was not enough to satisfy David. It is said that it’s impossible to change the spots on a leopard. It’s a saying worth heeding, for the leopard is masterful at camouflage and disguise. It is a stealthy animal that sneaks about in dark shadows, intent upon ambushing its prey. It always has the upper hand when it strikes, and it’s the rare prey animal that escapes the leopard’s attack and survives to live beyond it.
There comes a time when even the greatest fraud artists must reveal themselves, for to complete the fraud they must dispense with their part of the bargain they made with their intended victim. The art of fraud is, in essence, to cajole, coerce, or falsely promise an action or a deed to be performed later in return for the mark’s earlier performance. Frauds can range from the simplest, such as promising a child a piece of candy in return for a quarter but then not delivering the candy, to the most heinous, such as telling Jews they are going to a resettlement camp only to pack them into a gas chamber instead.
David’s fraud was a sordid, disgusting matter which took place over an eleven-year period. It resulted in a great diminution of Bob’s career potentials and vast unjust enrichment for David. Based upon misplaced trust and false friendship, it was designed from the outset to be a knockoff of the will game that some men play with a mistress. The woman may perform favors for years or decades based upon the promise that the man will leave her well provisioned when he dies, only to discover afterward that she is left with nothing.
While Bob was on the road working his hardest to build long-term relationships for a business he was, by agreement and will, to inherit, David was secretly on the telephone having conference calls with potential buyers for the UGGA complex. Despite David’s dismal, cellar-scraping investment results following the halcyon years enjoyed because of Bob’s gold stock picks, Bob’s dogged sales efforts resulted in substantial growth of assets under management, and the worth of the operating companies had grown from a quarter-million to over thirty million. David was no longer content with his million-dollar annual compensation. Now a paunchy aging man in his mid-sixties, his libido and interest in playing office games with his staff were both waning. He wanted to take the entire worth of the business for himself and leave Bob nothing.
The grip greed held on David’s soul was selective and discerning. It was not a universal grip that held any group, tribe, or nation state’s membership entirely within its grasp. The greed grip selected its wearers well. Slighted by his circumstances, hated and reviled by his mother from infancy, shunned and shunted away by his ambitious father, David learned to resent everyone he encountered who was handsome or beautiful, readily accepted, or loved by another soul. The nurturing and bonding that others drew strength from, that centered their character, simply wasn’t there for him. He learned as a child that he was an object of derision and felt so rejected that he learned to loath himself. And he learned to mask his self-loathing very well.
He learned to be the jovial friend, the shoulder to lean upon for those he barely knew. He wormed his way, using his bubbly obsequious wife as the entryway, into the homes of the socially prominent. Then, when confidence was gained and the hapless new friend needed a loan to weather a rough spot, he was there with the cash, b
ut at a price of a first deed of trust upon the friend’s home. Just for tax reasons, nothing else he always assured his quarry. Once documents were signed, he surreptitiously moved heaven and earth to create obstacles which made it hard for his debtor to repay him. If the man was an accountant, he would learn the man’s clients and seek out another accountant to underbid his debtor. Once the debtor’s revenue stream was diminished and payment could not be timely met, David pounced. Collateral worth a million on a loan of one hundred thousand was seized. Litigation followed, and either an exorbitant settlement was extracted or the collateral fell into his hands.
Many employees mortgaged their homes to David, who was very liberal with advances and credit to them against their future salaries. Once he held their first deed, their employment mysteriously came into jeopardy. They were suddenly no longer performing up to par. Their pay was docked until they fell behind on their payments; then their emotional distress was deemed too disruptive to the firm and they were let go. Legal action followed and these employees lost their homes, unless they agreed to increase their incomes with a side business opportunity financed by David.
One fast friend owned a chain of liquor stores worth three million. David loaned the man three hundred thousand to help him past a tough divorce, but the stores were put up for collateral. Predictably, David took actions to impair his debtor’s ability to repay him. Young teens were hired to defile the stores with spray paint and throw bricks through the windows. The disruptions mattered and had their desired effect, and David settled for one of the stores. A loan of three hundred thousand returned a million when the store was sold a few months later. David discovered that providing ready liquidity for those in dire straits was a way to make outrageous returns quickly. With the cash flow from the firm servicing his expanded bank credit lines, David became the go-to guy for cash. He was the proverbial cash rich, ever liquid, friendly but ugly frog that would throw out his tongue, snap up hapless flies, and swallow them whole. He was waxing fat on debtors as well as his swelling income from the firm.
When The Butterflies Come Page 35