“It’s Landon LeSeuer, my old boss.”
“LeSeuer has increased GERD medication consumption on every continent but Antarctica,” Agent Hardman remarked. “We’re looking for him now but he’s somewhere in Mexico.”
Dane thought he had exhausted his anthology of tales of corruption, yet the agents stared at him implacably, expecting something more and different. Dane had no choice. He gave himself a mentaloscopy, an exhausting purge of his proverbial guts, full of unfiltered, free-associating verbiage, hoping to provide the unsuspecting lawmen the answers they demanded.
His interviewers appeared to witness Dane’s mentaloscopy with discomfort. When he started to describe how an account director and product manager misappropriated the Grovil campaign budget to pay for their sexcapade, Agent Hardman, whose eyes had shut, slumped in his chair.
Dane was first to notice since Agent Dempsey’s eyelids were also lowered.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Dane pleaded. “I’m getting to the good part. With all the sex…”
Agent Dempsey, now awake, tried rousing his slumping partner, Agent Hardman, whose unresponsive body tumbled to the floor.
“He needs medical attention!” Dempsey said.
The agent pulled out a special phone and an ambulance arrived within five minutes. Now Dane was genuinely afraid. Agent Hardman had suffered a heart attack while hearing his story. As paramedics wheeled away the fallen agent, Dane was a jittery, jabbering mess, profusely apologizing to Agent Dempsey for his partner’s distress. Agent Dempsey tried easing Dane’s mind but did not have enough time for such an undertaking. He thanked Dane for his cooperation, handed him his card, and said he would call if he had more questions.
It sounded like a cordial conclusion but Dane worried.
“Do you think I’ll be charged with anything if he’s seriously ill or dies…like obstruction of justice, attempted murder or involuntary manslaughter?” he asked Becky.
“Honestly, Dane, you see something negative in everything. What did you have to do with his being sick?”
“He had a heart attack while I was talking. Doesn’t that implicate me?”
“You’re a medical writer and should know better! Who has a heart attack or stroke from listening? The worst that could happen to someone listening to you is mental exhaustion. You did your duty. His genes and diet did the rest!”
“I’d better check my umbrella insurance policy to see if it covers this.”
When Dane discovered that his umbrella policy had lapsed during his long lay-off he had another nervous collapse. Only a long session of Becky’s “winner therapy” eased him back to functionality.
Over the next few weeks there were no calls or visits from law enforcement agencies. Dane relaxed, which allowed his imagination to run rampant. He speculated that he had initiated a case against drug company corruption that would result in broad and lasting reform. He would be a star witness and whistle-blower, like Daniel Ellsberg or John Dean. While he awaited his subpoena to a congressional hearing like it was a black-tie invitation, Dane imagined the statement he would make and the grilling he would face. He would speak at a long table in a credible and monotonous voice, taking measured sips of water from a tall glass, while attorneys whispered urgent messages in his ear.
“How could you, a smart and educated man, do such a stupid thing?” the bilious committee chairman would badger him in a selfrighteous drone.
“Sir, I wanted to make a difference for millions of people who need drugs but don’t even know they’re sick. I was misled.”
“And why should we believe a word you say, Mr. Bacchus, when you admit that you lied for years about the efficacy and safety of medications millions of Americans take?”
“I always wrote the truth, sir,” Dane said. “Others may have changed my words but every medical statement I wrote was fully referenced by reputable medical sources.”
At this point another member of the committee would intercede.
“I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, how impressed I am with the eloquence and candor of this witness. Mr. Bacchus, you are a credit and inspiration to every sell-out writing hack who ever lived.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When the hearings were over, the media would gush over Dane’s poise and swimmer’s physique. Articles would reference his erudition and dignity, his baldness and his ponytail. He would sign a six-figure book deal to write a cautionary tale on the dangers of prostituting one’s talents. It would be optioned to Hollywood; a major motion picture star would win an Oscar playing him and would thank Dane, his wife and his agent.
No agents from Washington contacted Dane and he received no subpoena.
The federal government passed on Dane’s knowledge of bloated medical advertising spending. Congress and the White House concluded that the billions spent on medical advertising had minimal impact on health care costs; hospitals and drugs were reasonably priced; and health costs were out of control because too many people wanted care and premiums were too low.
“Why didn’t they call me?” Dane asked forlornly. He could not shake the feeling that he had done something wrong and missed another opportunity.
“You should be happy,” Becky said. “You’re in the clear. You did nothing wrong.”
“Yeah, right,” Dane replied.
Nothing wrong! Becky’s innocent words sprang on him to twist in his mind and taunt his heroic delusion. How could he be a hero when he was possibly a murderer? Was Patricia Holmes dead or alive? He did not know. When the federal agents left without asking about the woman in the dumpster, Dane was so relieved that he experienced a remission from guilt, as if acquitted of a crime that might have never happened. The local police were also strangely disinterested in Dane’s assault. Weeks passed and no one called Dane or knocked on his door to ask suspicious questions. Was law enforcement lulling him into complacency before pouncing on his guilty ass when he least expected?
Or did Patricia Holmes wake up and resume her hateful life?
As time passed, with no work and no committee hearings in Washington to distract him, Dane fixated on Patricia Holmes in the dumpster. He asked himself repeatedly, “Is she alive or dead?”
The lapse between crime and punishment did not comfort him. It was the perfect growing environment for his guilt. He replayed the elevator scene repeatedly and asked himself why he had done such a stupid thing. He might have taken a life, ruined his own and destroyed his family. He could not live with, speak of, or act upon what he had done. He was immobilized by a deepening sense that he was unfit to live in this world.
Dane’s days were quiet but his dreams were full of law enforcement, sirens screaming, roof lights spinning, his door bell ringing. Dane found himself watching reruns of “Law and Order” episodes. He did not leave the apartment, even to go swimming, which had been his only means of exercise and relaxation. Becky saw him deteriorating but did not want to sound alarms. With all that happened in the past year, she was afraid to ask Dane what he was going through and why. She told herself he was undergoing posttraumatic stress and watched for signs of improvement—which did not come. Finally, she broached the matter.
“What’s wrong, honey? You’ve been acting very worried. Why should you be? You’re off the hook.”
Dane looked at her with terror. “No, I’m just on a different one.”
He told her about Patricia Holmes, the dumpster, how he impersonated a woman with amnesia impersonating a Chinese takeout delivery person.
“So, there was no record of you being in the building?”
“No.”
“And we haven’t heard anything on the news about a grisly midtown office murder? Or a missing pharmaceutical writer?”
“No.”
“Well, those are good signs,” Becky said.
“But I still don’t know. And I don’t know how to find out.”
“Let me call the agency and ask to speak to her. Then you’ll know for sure and we’ll go from there.”
Case 7-G
LIVING YOUR DREAM VS. DREAMING YOUR LIFE: PERSPECTIVES AND PRIORITIES
18. FATHER KNOWS LESS
At his worst moments in advertising, Dane swore he would gladly walk away from the business if he found a way out of his troubles. Now that his problems were behind him, he accepted those terms. During despondent months of unemployment he reminded himself, “At least you’re not being sued or in prison for attempted murder.”
Crisis-free, he faced a slow alternative to annihilation—joblessness, loss of savings and the prospect of never again earning an income. Society was fast to expel people from the workforce. For years Dane was told he lacked maturity and experience. Now he struggled against the perception that he was old.
“So you’re not in the Advertising Hall of Fame and you’re not a Hollywood caliber whistle-blower,” Becky said. “You’re still a wonderful husband, father, and writer. Why don’t you appreciate those gifts?”
Dane heeded his wife. Advertising had fed him and could starve him, but it could not stop him from being a husband, a father, and a writer. He should enjoy his family. This was the time to start.
One afternoon, Dane, Becky and Iris went on a rare family outing to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It was summer and Iris had no dance classes, homework, community service or friends to be with. For the first time in years, 589 Dane and his family had time to be a family
Iris was sixteen. College was a year away. Seated on a cushioned bench in the 20th century gallery, Dane watched his daughter’s profile as she sketched from a painting she admired just as she had done in elementary school. Ten years before, as a tiny prodigy, Iris’s hypnotic focus on her work endeared her to adult museum goers. They crowded around to see what line she would draw next, as though watching a six-year-old make art were a mini-tour of Lascaux, drawing them closer to the mysterious core of the creative process.
Now Iris was almost a woman, yet her face remained soft and full. She could still summon the rapture of a child as she coiled over the sketchpad and moved her fingers nervously over her drawing.
“This is nice,” Dane thought. “This is what I have been missing.”
However, even nostalgia, presumably nailed to the past, would not be still for Dane. While he watched Iris reenact her old pastime, his mind strayed to the raw day before her sixth birthday when he and Becky bought her a crimson dress for a party he could not afford. Iris’s joy and excitement had crushed him then because he knew the insecurity of her happiness—on his account. He had vowed to support her and promised that if he found a job, he would work at it for twenty years until Iris was an adult. Only ten years had passed and Dane had come up short. Yet, he had paid the bills and kept the family going. They thrived; his work was not in vain.
Now, ten years later, Dane suddenly felt disoriented, like he had been dropped among strangers.
Dane had met men who traveled extensively and did not know their families. Dane was not like them. He came home nearly every evening. He was no traveling salesman, sailor or astronaut, yet he might as well have stepped in from a space station—he saw his wife and daughter in the museum gallery as if for the first time in years.
Becky had changed although her refined beauty was intact. The machinery of age had not altered her skin and muscle, and despite a few character lines, no signs of struggle marred her features. She and Dane were rarely apart, yet he barely recognized his wife.
“Where have you been?” he muttered to himself.
As Iris drew on the floor, a man in a trench coat and goatee approached. He looked over her shoulder and commented. Was this a famous artist, like the Russian master who once told Dane and Becky their six-year-old was a prodigy? The Russian master spoke through a woman translator but this man was alone. He squatted close to Iris and continued to smile and chat.
Iris turned to her parents and Dane received the cue that this man was no Russian master but a middle-aged pickup artist, or worse—a sex trafficker! Was Iris appealing for help?
Dane was jolted from timeless fatherhood to the gritty present. Iris was no longer a precocious six but sweet sixteen. This was a new, potentially sordid situation to which he must react. He could give The Virgin Spring a happy ending!
Dane shot up from the padded bench and approached the man.
“She’s sixteen. Get lost before I call the guards.” The man fled.
“Daddy, he wanted to buy my drawing.”
“That’s not all he wanted to buy,” Dane said.
“You’re exaggerating, Dane,” Becky said.
“I’m protecting my child,” he said.
“She doesn’t need a bodyguard.”
Dane felt hurt because his good intentions were misunderstood until he realized his intentions were incoherent.
“I guess I suck at this,” he concluded.
“At what?” Becky asked.
“At this. Everyday father stuff.”
“You don’t suck. She needs you as her father.”
Dane thought Becky was being kind. Other people in the gallery stared at him as if he did not belong in a civilized place. As the defender of his teenage daughter, he was more pariah than the art buyer/pervert. He strived to be a caring and attentive father but was clearly ill-equipped and poorly prepared.
19. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR MEET GENERAL RELATIVITY
Dane’s attempt to save his daughter at the museum masked a wider chronic problem. He believed his mundane life was a hoax and a grander destiny lay beyond. He felt just as surely that fatherhood would not lead him there. He shifted his focus to writing.
For ten years he yearned to return from advertising Babylon to creative writing. His longing was portrayed in sepia images of a distant home; it flashed before him at a book store and triggered cognitive cacaphony. Advertising was exile. How far had he strayed? Would he find a way home and would a home still be there?
Now he could live out his destiny as an artist, his true self and write his novel, free of constraints. Each day he hoped to regain the passion for work that made all else, including money, insignificant.
Dane had discipline but he missed the essential. At his keyboard he waited for inspiration. It was a process whose sequence he knew by rote: compression, frustration, and explosion. But inspiration did not come. “I’ve lost it!” he whispered to himself.
While he bravely sat vigil for his muse, he reflected on the museum outing, how Iris sketched Millet’s farmers, only to slam shut her sketchbook in frustration—like she had done as a child. She was still a child—and would need his help for the foreseeable future.
He still had a purpose as a father and a husband. From that thought, the wish to be the old-fashioned dad he had been for years grew in Dane. While he waited for genius to appear like an Aztec god, his role of father, husband and colleague grew more real to him than the “true self” behind them.
Although he was awkward in day-to-day parenting, he might still excel as the stereotype 1950’s father who disappears by day, returns at night and does errands on weekends! Peering down at his old manuscript, he longed to be the breadwinning dad again. It made him feel needed—and he needed that.
If only he had that pride and contentment again! But first his 592 attitude toward work had to change. Dane always believed a job was a nuisance. He wanted to be left alone to save time and energy for “what mattered.”
Now the job mattered. He must find one and hold on to it. But to do this he must change. He did not need to become a sycophant. All he needed was a professional attitude.
These cravings for a work routine sent Dane’s mind on a tour of his job history. His longest stop was the time he collaborated with Goldfarb. Dane recalled the afternoons above the rooftops of Soho, seeking inspiration by staring at water-towers.
He saw Goldfarb perched on a window sill, soaking in the warmth. Beyond the brainstorms, client meetings and trips, he saw Goldfarb as the epitome of professionalism—someone who did not expect praise, a raise, or respect and who did not backstab or lie—but just came into the office everyday and did his job.
Dane phoned the number he had for Goldfarb. In the middle of the first ring, Goldfarb answered, “Hello!” in that hard and weary voice that expected the worst and was ready to deal with it.
“Hey, there, it’s Dane. How’s it going, man?”
“Dane, so how are you doing? You working?”
“Sort of.”
“Oh. Freelancing, right?”
“Yeah, what about you?”
“I’m still here. It’s hard to believe. I’m just waiting to be fired.”
“That’s what you said five years ago.”
“It’s still true. I blend in with the walls. They probably don’t know I’m here.”
“You’re too modest. You’re an amazing survivor, like the Chinese dragon.”
“Yeah—speaking of Chinese, you want to meet for lunch sometime? There’s a good Sichuan restaurant down the street.”
Dane was enthusiastic. The restaurant was located near Goldfarb’s office, which had moved to the fringes of midtown, near the river.
“It’ll take me awhile to get down there,” Dane said.
“Aren’t you working in midtown?”
“No. I’m home.”
“Look, don’t bother, Dane. We’ll meet when you’re working again, okay? Something will turn up. It always does.”
The brief conversation with Goldfarb only increased Dane’s longing for a job and a commute—the whole, tiring, miserable life he used to hate.
Did Dane crave re-entry to the work cycle due to a perverse desire for what he no longer had? This was Becky’s interpretation. It was sound but not entirely correct.
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