Only Americans Burn in Hell

by Jarett Kobek

  There was more small talk, with Fuller and Leroux explaining the magic of moviemaking to Celia and Rose Byrne.

  These efforts failed, as both men relied on the expectation that the women were conversant with Hollywood’s shared cultural history, which was an American religious mythos that had penetrated every recess of the globe except Fairy Land and some remote tribes in South America.

  Fuller’s bladder, which had dogged him for several years, again demanded voiding. He excused himself and went to the bathroom at the back end of the house.

  “Francis is older than he looks,” said Adam. “He gets tired very easily. People don’t realize how much these conversations take out of him.”

  “It is said that aging past usefulness is the worst thing that can befall a person,” said Celia.

  “He’s still useful,” said Adam Leroux. “He’s working on his memoirs.”

  “What is a memoir?” asked Rose Byrne.

  “His personal history,” said Adam Leroux. “He’s known some very interesting people. There’s a whole chapter about Joanna Cassidy.”

  The women of Fairy Land didn’t respond.

  “Francis is too kind to say it himself,” said Adam Leroux, “but you should probably get on your way. It’s close to his bedtime.”

  “We have nowhere to go,” said Celia. “We are newly arrived in Los Angeles.”

  “I don’t see how that’s Francis’s problem,” said Adam Leroux.

  “Are you telling us that my queen should leave?” asked Rose Byrne.

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

  Rose Byrne stood up from Francis Fuller’s shabby couch, took out her sword, and chopped off Adam Leroux’s head.

  He tried to defend himself but he was a mortal and Rose Byrne was an old hand.

  All his military training and killing of Muslims were for naught.

  He didn’t stand a chance.

  His head rolled around the living room.

  His body twitched out its last bioelectric moments of life.

  Rose Byrne stormed to the bathroom, where Fuller was sitting on the toilet with his penis tucked between his legs, struggling against age to void his bladder.

  She drove her sword into his chest.

  “Oh,” said Francis Fuller.

  Chapter Eight

  Gentlemen Prefer Blood

  On the very same day that Rose Byrne chopped off the head of Adam Leroux, HRH Mamduh bin Fatih bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was guest speaker at the Lunch Series put on by Harvard University’s Program for Constitutional Government.

  The title of the talk was this: “Teaching Foundational Classics to the Mid-East: What It Means and Why It Matters.”

  It was held in room K354 of the CGIS Knafel Building on Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was a satellite city across the Charles River from Boston.

  Harvard University was a hedge fund that masqueraded as an institution of higher learning. It was one of the places where the world’s upper classes enjoyed grade inflation as they became economic war-lords of the technocratic elite who mouthed platitudes about equality while crushing the global poor.

  The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield introduced HRH.

  Mansfield explained that HRH was an alumnus of Harvard, having received a Master’s in Public Policy at the Kennedy School before earning his Doctorate of Philosophy from the London School of Economics.

  Mansfield explained an initiative funded by HRH’s non-profit wing.

  It was a multi-disciplinary program that brought promising students from the Middle East and funded their undergraduate education at Harvard, with a focus on a broad liberal arts education and exposure to the foundational influences of Western thought.

  After Harvey Mansfield finished speaking, HRH addressed the room.

  HRH talked about education being the cornerstone of liberal democracy.

  HRH talked about the paucity of books in Arabic translation.

  HRH said that while a great many students from the Middle East were receiving educations in America, their focus was on STEM, and that this had left them disconnected from ideas underpinning the basic political philosophies of the Twentieth Century AD and Twenty-First Century AD.

  HRH talked about how it was impossible to expect events like the Arab Spring to resolve productively if people in the Middle East weren’t exposed, in advance, to a diversity of ideas about governance.

  HRH finished with this: “I am not an expert like some of the people in this room, but I am resolute in my belief that if human rights are to emerge, we must first educate humans, and then teach them what is right.”

  The audience applauded.

  Harvey Mansfield opened the event to questions from the audience.

  The first question was familiar.

  The questioner told HRH that she had Googled him and found his interviews refreshing and unexpected. Then she asked: “I was wondering if you could speak about the reaction of the Saudi government to your more provocative statements?”

  HRH smiled.

  His bridgework was fucking fantastic.

  “Madame,” said HRH, “I was raised in the hotels of Europe and America. I hold citizenship in Malta. I do not speak as a member of my family. I speak as an inhabitant of the world.”

  The next question was also familiar.

  It was being asked on every American campus by people who were terrified of college students.

  “I don’t know if you’ve followed any stories,” said a man in a suit. “There’s been a thing happening where the students at our universities have been asking for safe spaces. If you’re not familiar with the term, and I wasn’t until a few months ago, a safe space is a place where the students can be coddled away from hearing ideas that they don’t like, and it’s disguised under the idea of oppression. You’re from a region beset by conflict. I tell my students that there are no safe spaces in Aleppo. Do you have an opinion on this phenomenon?”

  HRH smiled.

  His bridgework was fucking fantastic.

  “I always err on the side of generosity. If people require safe spaces, then I see nothing wrong with providing them, as long as the institution tempers their presence with a robust environment of educational rigor.”

  When the questions were over, pleasantries were exchanged.

  HRH texted his manservant Dmitri Huda.

  “HEY NONNY HEY, ARE THINGS IN ORDER?????” asked HRH.

  “Yes, Dennis,” texted Dmitri Huda. “I’m downstairs.”

  HRH’s father Fatih bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was the second-richest man in the Middle East. He built a fortune after being exiled from the Kingdom.

  This exile followed the parking-lot execution of Misha’al bint Fahd bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

  Fatih bin Muhammad was a convenient scapegoat for the assassination.

  It was said that he encouraged delusions of romance in Misha’al.

  He was given the riyal equivalent of $200,000.

  He was kicked the fuck out.

  He traded off the family name, got into construction and concrete, and used that money to diversify his holdings. When he had established his fortune, he decided to do what all people do when they want to legitimate their place in the hierarchy of global evil.

  He wrote a book.

  First published in French as Le chemin du conquérant arabe: les leçons d’un prince saoudien, an English translation appeared in 1999 AD under the title The Conqueror’s Path: Business Lessons from a Saudi Prince.

  It was a CEO-style autobiography married, awkwardly, with Fifteen Lessons that Fatih bin Muhammad had learned through the ups and downs of doing business on an international scale. Each lesson was expanded with historical parallel and floating anecdote.

  Il Principe meets Trump: The Art of the Deal.

  It sold in small numbers until references began appearing in the songs of well-known hip-hop artists, who adopted the book’s maxims of worldly success
into anthems of global capitalism.

  Sales exploded.

  Fatih bin Muhammad became The Conqueror.

  One of The Conqueror’s Fifteen Lessons, present in Le chemin du conquérant arabe, was the idea that a successful businessman, particularly if he comes from a place unfamiliar to his potential financial partners, must take up stratagems to evoke comfort in others.

  Following this advice, HRH had adopted many names in different languages.

  In Chinese, HRH was called 野生花卉, which meant Wild Flower.

  In Spanish, HRH was called el Diablo árabe, which meant The Arabic Devil.

  In Turkish, HRH was called Küçükkutsaldağ, which meant The Little Holy Mountain.

  In German, HRH was called Der Meister der Weltschmerzes, which meant Master of the World’s Sorrows.

  In English, HRH was called Dennis, which meant Dennis.

  Dmitri Huda had commandeered a surface parking spot on Cambridge Street.

  HRH came out of the Knafel Building.

  HRH walked towards the car.

  Dmitri Huda jumped out of the driver’s seat and rushed to the rear passenger door of the gun-metal 2016 AD Bentley Mulsanne.

  “Dmitri! Play not the dogsbody!” cried HRH. “What do you take me for? Have I too lost the ability to walk? Must I next crawl?”

  Dmitri Huda returned to the driver’s side door.

  “Do you behold this complex, Dmitri?”

  HRH pointed to a series of drab buildings on the other side of Cambridge Street.

  “This august institution is the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.”

  “I see,” said Dmitri.

  “It is notable for its alumni,” said HRH. “Most prominent are the actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Followed only by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, who together orchestrated the bombing of the Boston Marathon. When news of the blasts reached my ears, it evoked salad days misspent in Cambridge. I sensed in my inner heart that the perpetrators would be revealed as local yokels. Only the trite provincialism of a Bostonian would suggest the Marathon as a target. Dmitri, if you wish to further your spiritual development, you should consider the occult principles of this complex. It always produces its monstrosities in pairs.”

  HRH climbed into the back seat.

  Dmitri Huda returned to the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  “You know the location?” asked HRH.

  “It’s in satnav.”

  HRH opened the refrigerated bar.

  Inside there was a vaporizer and a bag of marijuana.

  “Is this indica or sativa?” asked HRH. “I will not suffer the mellow vibes of indica. Not tonight. I must invigorate with the lush and vibrant caress of sativa.”

  “It’s sativa,” said Dmitri.

  HRH vaped sativa.

  HRH pressed a button, which deployed a bespoke Android tablet embedded in the reverse of the front passenger seat.

  HRH engaged with the bespoke Android tablet.

  HRH opened the YouTube app.

  HRH streamed “Dark Avenger” by the American heavy metal band Manowar.

  “Dark Avenger” played through the Naim audio system.

  “Drive on, Dmitri,” shouted HRH over the 1,100 watts of pulsing metal power. “Bring me to my destiny!”

  HRH’s destiny was an old factory in Waltham that had been gentrified into offices and loft apartments.

  For a solid century, the building had manufactured watches. Now it crafted the aspirant lives of the haute bourgeoisie.

  Dmitri Huda navigated the Bentley from Cambridge to West Cambridge to Watertown and through the other suburbs. It was that New England experience: the transition between multiple disparate landscapes in less than forty minutes of travel. Dense urbanity giving way to small-town life to post-industrial decay.

  When they arrived at the old factory, Dmitri Huda idled in the parking lot.

  “Remain here,” said HRH. “I am sure to stride forth, triumphant in my victory.”

  HRH emerged from the 2016 AD Bentley Mulsanne with a rattlesnake suitcase under his arm.

  Here’s something that Harvey Mansfield didn’t explain in the CGIS Knafel Building: HRH had been hipped to the possibility of a Doctorate in Philosophy at the LSE by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

  Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, famous for being the son of a lunatic dictator who blew up a passenger plane over Scotland and was beaten to death after hiding in a drainage pipe, had demonstrated how this possibility worked.

  The vampire of the LSE sucked blood money.

  Its conscience was soothed with paid holidays for the administrative staff and faculty, all the better to generate white papers and editorials in the Telegraph.

  In terms of education, the metropolitan area was lousy with debauched Eton boys who would handle your coursework and dissertation.

  They only asked what anyone asked.

  Lucre, filthy lucre.

  One needn’t spend much time in the Old Smoke, but it did help to make the occasional appearance. Besides, as Dr. Johnson had told Mr. Boswell, when a man tires of London, he tires of life.

  And if, during his salad days, the stout erections of HRH’s penis had carried any information, it was that his corporeal form had yet to tire of life.

  HRH managed his way through the old factory until he came to the fourth-floor apartment.

  HRH knocked on the door.

  A sex worker, who held a lease on the apartment, opened the door. “You must be Dennis.”

  “Madame,” said HRH. “You have identified me with utter precision and laser focus.”

  The sex worker moved from the doorway.

  HRH passed into the apartment.

  The sex worker led HRH down a small staircase to the apartment’s lower level, which housed a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living/dining space.

  “You will please to remind me,” said HRH. “Did my assistant forward the funds through Venmo? Or must I be discreet in my placement of the requisite white envelope on your granite countertop?”

  “We got the money,” said a male voice from the living/dining space.

  It was the sex worker’s bodyguard.

  He was a large man. He was wearing a blue-and-silver sports jersey advertising his avowed fandom of the New England Patriots and the team’s star quarterback Tom Brady.

  The bodyguard was sitting in front of a television. The bodyguard was watching the television with its speaker muted.

  He was reading the closed-captioned subtitles, which conveyed the story of an attack on a casino resort in Manila. Thirty-seven people had been shot and killed.

  “I was unaware that another soul would be present,” said HRH.

  “Is that a problem?” asked the bodyguard.

  “My dear fellow,” said HRH. “I flourish on company. What a stout, robust lad you seem! Shall you too join us in our deluge of flesh and avarice? I should like very much to see and feel that frame of yours in its bounding action. What thighs you have, my liege!”

  “I’ll pass,” said the bodyguard.

  Above the bodyguard’s head, there were three clusters of helium-inflated balloons, tied together in a haphazard fashion to create letters from the Roman alphabet.

  The balloons said:

  HRH walked over to the exterior wall of the apartment, placing his hand on its exposed brick. Its windows looked out over the Charles River.

  “Fear death by water,” said HRH. “As my manservant drove me towards this monolithic structure, it occurred to me that perhaps my father had some hand in its conversion. The Conqueror is consumed with a smothering love for Boston and its environs. The redevelopment of Boylston in the Fenway was his own initiative.”

  “Let’s get going?” asked the sex worker.

  “Wunderbar, my dear lady!” cried HRH. “To the stables!”

  In the bedroom, two other sex workers were waiting.

  HRH and the original sex worker entered.

  Each of the sex workers had been picked by D
mitri Huda via an arcane process that began with The Erotic Review, which was the Internet’s top community of escorts, hobbyists, and service providers.

  The Erotic Review’s vast userbase was comprised of people who fucked sex workers and then went on The Erotic Review and reviewed the performance, looks, and personalities of recently fucked sex workers.

  The Erotic Review offered its reviewers the option to confirm whether or not a recently fucked sex worker provided specific sexual activities during the recent fucking. These included: (1) cum in mouth (2) touch pussy (3) lick pussy (4) two-girl action (5) more than one guy at a time (6) multiple pops allowed.

  After Harvard University invited HRH to be a guest speaker, Dmitri Huda had contacted a sex worker whom he’d procured several years earlier using The Erotic Review.

  The sex worker wrote back. She wasn’t available. She was working in Dallas.

  She recommended a friend, who got Dmitri Huda in touch with an agency that sometimes did cross-over work with people from FetLife.

  The agency said that it could satisfy HRH’s demands: three girls, athletic, Ivy League educated, very bi, 420-friendly, unafraid of BDSM, and willing to go anal.

  Dmitri asked the agency to procure helium-inflated balloons.

  The balloons were HRH’s way of making sure that his requests had been fulfilled to the utmost. Past experience had demonstrated that if the balloons were not present, then other requests would also be ignored.

  HRH had learned this trick by reading about Van Halen’s tour rider.

  HRH put his rattlesnake suitcase on the bed.

  “Good day, ladies,” HRH said. “We meet now in this temporality but I believe that we have known each other always.”

  HRH opened the rattlesnake suitcase and extracted a vaporizer and a small, clear plastic bag that contained an off-white powder.

  “First, mes chères amies,” said HRH, “You shall watch as I consume dimethyltryptamine. Fear nothing, my sweets, for the effects are not long lasting. This ease of use has earned the substance a wonderful soubriquet. They call it The Businessman’s Trip.”

  HRH sat in a plush chair purchased from IKEA in Stoughton.

  HRH vaped DMT.

  HRH’s eyes went blank.

  HRH’s breathing became labored.