And so when Rommel entered cardiac arrest and then died at home with his son, Tom knew that he had to simply follow the preordained instructions. He knew to simply go to the chosen spot and dig a hole, in which, sans casket, his father was to be buried. He was strangely calm. He had always assumed that his father would indeed die at home, because there was no alternative plan in the event that he was anywhere else, and he also imagined that he’d have no chance at saving him, since no set of procedures were set out for such an eventuality in the meticulous instructions that Tom’s father had provided for his demise.
After the burial, the story went, Tom was to leave Meycauayan and travel to the United States. But how, and for what purpose? His father had not explained anything to him, but the details regarding burial were so precise, and the preparations had been discussed for such a long time, that Tom barely even asked himself a single question about what he was meant to do after his father was safely beneath the ground. For a young boy provided with instructions for burying his father, all of this was theoretical anyway, so he never bothered to ask questions. Nobody, or almost nobody, expects their parents will die, until they do. But his father did die. Tom followed his father’s wishes, as had been ordained. The plan continued.
And so on the evening of his father’s death, Tom bore witness to the horror of it all as though he was witnessing a preordained event from afar, powerless. Tom watched almost impassively as his father grimaced and choked for air, because there was nothing to be done. Mercifully, the grasping and choking quickly gave way to profound calm. Tom stared at his father, he watched him die, and then he watched him grow rigid. He felt sadness, and he felt relief. This was the way it was supposed to be, the way he had been told it would be. This was part of the plan. Tom had tried to explain this to Ted and to Steve on numerous occasions.
“My dad died precisely as he was ordained to. I never had to leave him, because he left me, not even a month before I was supposed to leave him, to come to The States, to come,” he had paused, “to New York.” And now here he was, and the three of them, friends in college, were all there together. “And someday, I will go to Nashville.”
After the convulsions stopped, Tom had approached his father, bent down, and put his ear to his sunken chest.
Silence.
He took his wrist and pressed his thumb upon the spot where gushing blood could be perceived as a murmur and a pulsation.
Nothing.
A few moments later, Tom was obediently carrying the inanimate remnant of his own father upon his shoulders, as though he was an unwieldy sack filled with, what, bones? Flesh? Tom refused to feel, and chose instead to act. For suddenly his entire connection to this house, this town, this country, and to the past as he knew it, was now nothing more than the dead weight of his own father—dead, weight.
Tom went to the prescribed spot, hunched over as though he bore the very burden of his whole world upon his shoulders, and, when he laid his father into the ground, he released that weight and passed it onto the surface of the earth. For the first time he felt grief, and the misty evening blurred and drifted. Life as he knew it was forever changed, and two gigantic teardrops formed and plunged down his face to the waiting soil.
It was done. The earth was now ready to be entered.
Tom penetrated the spot that had been designated for this event, and with the force of youth and the duty of a son he began to dig, as the crumpled and stiffening form of his father observed him, motionless. Tom worked hard for his father, preparing the earth to accept his weight. He prepared a nest, a foundation, a crater, a wound in the earth’s own flesh as wide and deep enough as Tom’s maker, his family, the provider of his life, and the designated messenger for his burden and earthly toil.
Done.
And when it was all over, Tom left his father deep inside of a hole he had dug, under the faint illumination of a star-filled night sky. Tom saw his father off by giving him the peace of the soil, the engulfing soil, connected perhaps to the soil that held his beloved wife. And then Tom left that soil, and what he left behind on the following day was every thing, and every one, he had ever known. But Tom did not leave his father, or his homeland, empty-handed. In recompense for his father’s death, the earth had offered to Tom a token of exchange. There was no coffin for his father, no box, and where in the earth there should have been such a container for the flesh and bones and blood and guts of his father Tom found a different kind of box, almost as large and ornate as a coffin, that had been carefully placed within the small cavern his father had chosen for himself. Inside of that box, in the place of a corpse, Tom unearthed a treasure trove of diamonds and jewels that had made the next phase in his life possible. That treasure trove brought him to college, brought him to find Ted and Steve, brought him to this table to hatch another plan, but this time one designed for all of them, for everyone in America, for the world.
“It has been a long road here,” uttered Tom to Steve. Steve remained silent and took a sip of port. It tasted good. But would it lead to disaster?
The intoxicating liquids that pour through the veins of Fabergé Restaurant lubricate my destiny. How many eggs are fertilized with the inspiration of intoxication? I can but speak for myself, but based on my experience with oceans of champagne and prosecco, I would think that fertility flourishes in direct proportion to the quantity of bubbly intoxicants introduced to entice it.
Chapter 14
Elizabeth-the-Server took over for Tina and gracefully arrived with the order of caviar. Tom and Steve were in anxious conversation, punctuated only by their sipping the port. The two men ignored her arrival, and so she carefully maneuvered the plates onto the table, surprised to not be the cause for pause.
“There are some obvious problems with this approach,” Steve was saying as the tiny bowls of luxurious cargo was placed before and between them.
“Some of them are pretty obvious, Steve, I know it. But fuck it’s all we’ve ever talked about. Steve, it’s here, so now we need to figure out what may not be obvious. At this moment the cat is about to be let out of the bag and,” he paused, “it feels like a fucking catwalk to me.” Steve winced.
“You know what I mean, Steve, I’m ready to start tomorrow.” Tom paused to taste the ocean’s eggs, nodding his approval as they swam through his mouth and down his throat. “Actually, we have no choice. Not anymore.”
Tom ended his sentence with a sip of the port. It really was spectacular stuff, but he knew the joy of its wood-infused, aged, ground-kissed depth was entirely lost on his friend, who was probably much more concerned with whether it would make him sick, or whether their plan would ensure that they’d never have such dinners again as long as they live. Steve was the technocrat, the façade of beauty, the unfeeling overseer of the shining mechanism that would bring this city, and the country it represented, to its knees. Ironically, though, a sip of porto could bring him down, and they would be brought down in most of the scenarios they had planned.
“I have 345 tons of the fiber cotton, and it’s all in the warehouse,” said Steve. He then took a bite of the bread, sans caviar. It was dry, and made to be somewhat bland in order to bring out the flavor of the caviar. He took another sip of port and looked straight into Tom’s eyes—defiantly.
“Jesus Christ, Steve,” said Tom in admiration. “Now that came out of nowhere! 345 tons? Honestly?” Tom looked straight into Steve’s gaze.
“This is actually going to happen,” Tom thought to himself. He gently scooped sufficient caviar onto his own slice of bread to make up for whatever Steve was missing. He did so for himself, and for Steve, thinking, as he always had, that some small action he might someday commit would awaken the flesh that had to lie beneath Steve’s perfect, Asian skin. He did not at that moment think about Tina, but Tina, from afar, was thinking, from a rather different perspective, exactly the same thing. Tom suddenly stopped chewing and looked angry.
“Wait a second. Are you speculating, Steve?” He knew that mere o
wnership of the materials wasn’t necessarily tantamount to using them for the purposes they’d planned. Steve had multiplied his millions many-fold by cornering and then flooding markets, and so fiber cotton might just be another product to add to a list that included everything from aluminum to zeolite powder.
Steve looked up, knowingly. “Tom, it’s in the warehouse.”
“You can still resell it, Steve.”
“I am not reselling it.” He said it in an accusatory tone.
“You could! You bastard!” Tom hadn’t considered that possibility before. Were they just rehearsing another delay on their long-awaited plan?
“Of course I could sell it all, Tom!” Steve again looked straight into Tom’s eyes. “But I am not reselling it,” he said forcefully, motioning towards the port. He thought the better of it, but then, sensing Tom’s gaze, picked up the tiny glass and gingerly drew the warm liquid into his mouth. This time he seemed surprised at its soft, sweet flavor.
Tom looked carefully into Steve’s face, awaiting the kind of reaction he’d witnessed all those years ago in their college dorm.
“And I have the nineteen intaglio printers, working. We tested them. Me and Ted,” continued Steve.
“You bought those intaglios? You did it? And you fucking had them tested! You prick! And?”
Steve settled back in his seat and studied his hands as they stroked the table. “Theoretically, Tom, well, materially, actually, yah, they work perfectly, the tests were positive. We can do it. The bills look really good,” he paused, recalling previous conversations about what really mattered in counterfeiting paper money. “And they feel good. They feel really good.”
“Then let’s get fucking going, Steve. Let’s start now. What the fuck?”
“What the fuck,” concluded Steve, looking down at the table.
Tom didn’t like that look. “They released the resin, did you see that?” asked Tom.
“Right on schedule.”
“Yah, by the very worst predictions on schedule. They really were worried. Plus, they needed to do something before the election.”
The federal election was looming, and the incumbent, who remained popular, had a rather long list of promises he hoped to fulfill, to preclude accusations of inaction that had plagued him even before he took the oval office. He had been similarly badgered as governor, but people, nonetheless, liked him, if only because he always seemed the best of a bad lot. Besides, he didn’t do much, which for most Americans was seen as a positive—most of the time. But when it came to protecting greenbacks, international and national reputations were at stake, and the banks had made sufficient hoo-ha to raise public awareness, which caused undue instability in the markets.
“I told you that they were worried,” said Steve, now looking at Tom, accusatorily.
A newspaper article, overlooked by most people inside Canada and virtually ignored by media beyond its borders, had jumped out of the Toronto Globe and Mail and into the consciousness of Tom one Sunday afternoon. After a brunch in a New York café that featured not only an array of coffees and donuts, but also a collection of foreign news sources to help nourish, or ruin, the weekend, Tom and Steve became aware that the scenario they had described to one another, and to Ted, for all those years in and beyond college, was coming true. On the front page of the Globe’s “Business Magazine” section there was a story, sanctioned and probably even encouraged by the Royal Canadian Mint, explaining the decision to wean the country off of paper bills, in favor of the plastic that already accounted for most transactions.
Now, one year after that news broke, the mint was looking beyond credit cards and into the long-term production of plastic currency. Indeed, the Royal Canadian Mint’s decision to do away with the current version of the Canadian currency and replace them with plastic bills seemed like a reminder to consumers that at the end of the day, they would have no choice: it was plastic or plastic. And because this was Canada, and not, say, the US or Germany or Switzerland, they planned to phase out national use of the “paper” bills in six months, an unprecedentedly short turn-around period in peacetime. Banks around the world were instructed to accept the currency, at least for the moment; but after that initial six-month period they weren’t going to be considered legal tender for the purchase of goods in Canada. This would allow the mint to rapidly flush out bills currently in circulation, exchange them for the new version, and then incinerate them. And it would allow for unprecedented oversight of currency in circulation, and of those bringing it there.
There had been efforts to integrate plastic into currency before, but these new plastic bills were revolutionary. They allowed for microchip implants that made it virtually impossible to forge them, partly because it allowed for an unprecedented control over the numbering and ordering of the currency, but also because it made the task of making bills formidably complex and, moreover, simply too expensive to be worth the effort. This plan, to create bills that cost more than their net worth, also made it easy to discontinue them, which meant that even if forgeries could be made, there was a good chance they’d be obsolete by the time they hit the market. And in this era of tracking and tracing, the bills also offered the as-yet unutilized possibility of tracing them, which for individual bills was of little value. But if tracers were set to track huge hordes of bills, which could be captured on satellite feeds, then the production or shipment of bills would be immediately visible to authorities. And finally, and even more ominous for any counterfeiter, this move was aimed to seed the eventual discontinuation of “cash,” because credit cards, check cards, pre-paid plastic cards, and all the rest of those products shifted the burden of lost, stolen, or forged currency into the private hands of the banks and insurance companies, and, moreover, to the consumer. This latter point wasn’t the gist of the article, but for Ted, Tom, and for Steve it provoked their current call to action, almost a quarter of a century after they’d started talking about forging US bills.
“I know what they are doing in Ottawa. Oh, and incidentally, it’s not out yet, but the Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese are doing the same thing. And Ted says that they’ll out the paper even faster.”
“Obviously.”
“Yes, obviously,” agreed Steve. “But it won’t happen here, not for a while. It’s like the two dollar bill, or the dollar coin. We are saved by imbecile nostalgia.”
“So we have time to dilly-dally some more?” asked Tom, looking angry.
“That’s not what I said. Actually, we can’t wait.”
“Good!”
“I mean that. They’re discontinuing the paper-based product and moving towards a cotton-polymer weave to get Americans used to the new feel.” Steve was speaking as though they were already producing the bills they’d so long dreamed of.
“Discontinuing?”
“Yup.”
“When?”
“They are making the announcement on Monday. Presses change over next month. New bills are going to start feeling different by early May. And then really differently when they go to plastic, November 2, right before the election.” Tom allowed the warm, liquid port free rein over his palate and down into his gorge.
This really was news. Discontinuing. This single word was music to Tom’s ears, Tom who had pressed Steve and Ted for all these years, as though this was to be their collective life’s work. He felt a wave of excitement run through his very veins.
“I told you, I don’t feel like getting into the rag-and-paper business,” interjected Steve, “and if we don’t use this shit now, then I’ve got a few hundred tons of stuff I could never sell.” He looked up and straight at Tom. “You have wanted this all along, Tom. And so have I. It’s payback. They killed half my lineage for colored beads? I’m going to kill them back with their own fucking medicine.”
Steve was seldom this animated. Ted called this “Cherokee pride,” even though Steve wasn’t even entirely sure that his lineage was indeed Cherokee. But he had adopted it, and it drove him, it motiva
ted him, it gave him passion as strong as Tom’s made-up past and invented future.
“I’m ready for it,” he paused, and then looked right into Tom’s eyes. I’m ready for TSP.” He smiled, suddenly and broadly, at the recollection of a common experience they’d shared, amongst roommates, a kind of secret code. “Ted’s Stimulus Plan! TSP! TSP!” Now he really brightened up with memories of the conversations the three of them had and about the plan they eventually dubbed TSP. He even took another sip of port.
Tom was elated, and a bit worried about the port coming back to the table, undigested. “Just like we always said, Steve!” He was exuberant, his growing energy fueled by the circumstances, the warm liquid in his body, and salty caviar. “We’ll make so much of it that they’ll think it to be the greatest stimulus plan that ever was. Until it’s not.” He laughed, and then laughed louder, almost uproariously. “Until it’s not, Steve!”
Tom felt that tingling in his very scrotum that accompanied plans of great amplitude, and a euphoria in his brain that made him as dizzy as when a girl accepted to peel her clothing off before him. His head, and his very sex were reeling at the thought of TSP. It was going to happen, it was finally, finally, finally going to happen. Without asking, he reached over and took a long sip of Steve’s port, right to the bottom of his glass, and then, as a kind of afterthought, gathered all of the caviar onto his fork and plunged it into the waiting bath of sweet liquor that he’d created in his mouth. It was his college class on The Canterbury Tales all over again, replete with a tradition he’d initiated, with Ted, to eat from Steve’s plate and drink from Steve’s glass whenever possible. It was a method of destroying Steve’s will to preciousness.
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