The Dead Celebrities Club

by Susan Swan

  Her talk soon devolves into a long-winded explanation about her approach, a technique she calls the mixed method. It means questionnaires for the four hundred men in my workshop, followed by interviews with a smaller group.

  Just as she seems to be winding down, she spends twenty more unnecessary minutes spraying around sociological terms like recidivate (an unfriendly Latinate word), capture (an absurdly trendy verb), and carceral (I rest my case).

  My turn. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. I mount the dais and stand behind the ancient wooden lectern that someone has dragged in from the chapel. My name is Dale Paul, I begin. And today I am going to talk about a club of specially selected celebrities, and you are going to bet on their lives.

  A few of the men hoot in derision, but the rest of my audience looks genuinely interested.

  I’ve come up with something that will teach you how the financial markets work, I say. And slowly, carefully, I explain c-coin, going over the handicaps of the celebrities and rhyming off their illnesses: Mickey Rooney, the former child star who takes drugs and drinks too much; Zsa Zsa Gabor and her list of Job-like ailments; the ancient Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner, rumoured to be studying the science of cryonics; Queen Elizabeth II and her intermittent bouts with the dangerous norovirus; Stephen Hawking, a victim of the disease that makes fast work of its victims. We’ve also added Earl Lindquist, whose notoriety and advancing age make him a suitable candidate.

  I imagine I hear a shocked intake of breath at the mention of Earl’s name but when I look again, most of the men’s faces are lit up with smiles. How could I forget the way losers detest the winners among us? How fiercely those who fail long to pull down those of us who prosper? Possibly, envy of the rich and famous is worse now than at any other age in history; certainly, the animosity I sense to Earl and most of the celebrities is a revelation. It explains the resentment I experienced when I made a for-tune selling hedge funds.

  The rest of the names are on the admin bulletin board, I add, and I remind them they can also bet on our mystery celebrity.

  To my surprise, they clap loudly when I point this out. John clearly knows our clientele. The noise makes it impossible to talk, so I hand the scofflaws in the front row some c-coins. They erupt in disbelieving laughter at the c-coin with Leonard Nimoy’s name. Their faces sunny with glee, they pass it on to the bug-eyed men sitting in the next row.

  How does c-coin work? a man shouts.

  Everything depends on how you trade it. If you want to win, you need to pick the celebrity who is going to die first. That means you will be checking our weekly bulletins on the health of the deathbed ten. Their health will change, so the value of your c-coin will go up and down. Like American currency, or a Chinese banknote. I pause. Of course, we won’t be giving out health reports on the mystery celebrity. Then they wouldn’t be a mystery, would they?

  The men laugh. John Giaccone catches my eye and smiles. I square my shoulders, blow out my cheeks.

  Winners will get five bags of coffee from Starbucks. And we’ll give five tins of mackerel to the runners-up. So, let’s have a hand for Mr. Nathan Rickard, who has graciously supplied our jackpot.

  The men cheer, and the warden gives me a pleased look.

  How many winners will there be? a scofflaw yells.

  It’s hard to say. Maybe two. Maybe fifty. Mr. Jack will work out the percentages in your stake, depending on how many of you end up with the name of the celebrity who is the first to go through the pearly gates.

  It beats trading postage stamps, a man cries.

  Dale Paul, my man! someone else shouts.

  The lounge grows so quiet I imagine I am able to hear the snow falling outside the windows. Now I’d like to invite Bailey and Derek to come forward. I point at my bunkmates. Our tellers will let each of you randomly pick twenty c-coins.

  This is quite the experiment, Trish Bales calls amid the rumble of chairs. Are you worried how it will turn out?

  Good lady, I expect there will be glitches.

  Oh, you will know how to fix them, she replies, widening her eyes. The admiration in her voice stops me dead. Surely she isn’t interested in an old croc such as myself, a penniless man with a lame excuse for a heart? I give her a fatherly smile and walk off.

  23

  FLUSH WITH MY triumph, I am writing a letter to Davie in the computer studio, where several men sit staring silently at their screens. I want to humblebrag about c-coin. When I am satisfied I won’t be interrupted, I begin to type.

  November 15, 2012

  Dear Davie:

  I am writing to you in good faith and with the hope that you’ll read my letter when you come back from wherever you are. In the meantime, the warden has given me permission to teach financial skills to the men at Essex. I’m sure you’ll be glad to know I am doing something to help the other prisoners.

  In order to explain the basic principles of economics, I’m using a fake currency called c-coin. Each man has been given twenty c-coins to trade with the other prisoners, and each coin bears the name of one of ten old or sick celebrities. As the health of each celebrity changes, the worth of each c-coin also changes — its value going up or down like a junk bond on the stock market.

  The symbol for our currency is the stylized letter c sprouting dollar signs. We have hand-stamped the c-coin symbol on the receipts we get from the prison store. In my workshop, the men will trade these slips of paper for sessions with a trainer or haircuts.

  Of course, I am aware that c-coin may sound bizarre or ugly to you. Nothing could be further from the case. C-coin gives my comrades something useful to do after they finish their tedious prison jobs. And for the first time in months, I wake up each morning eager to get on with my day. I don’t mean to imply that I am a different man from the one you knew. I am still the same old Pater who loves you.

  I add a postscript:

  When you come back from wherever you are, you may continue to hear unpleasant things about me. Please shut your ears to the evil that others say. Everything I have done has been for you because I wanted you to have an inheritance. I still wish it for you. That is why I am going to redouble my efforts inside the BOP so I can return to you what the Department of Justice has stolen from me. One day you will receive the funds to which you are entitled. And then perhaps you will think more favourably of your old Pater.

  Naturally, I long to confide that John has encouraged the inmates to tell their families to bet on c-coin. The only difference between the bet in the prison and the bet on the outside is the jackpot. The winning scofflaws will be given bags of Starbucks coffee while John’s clients will get a sizable share of our Bitcoin account.

  However, Davie might not understand that gambling is creative play, a life-giving distraction that contributes to your well-being just as the academic studies in the law library have pointed out. And, in the end, if all goes well, Davie will draw a modest dividend from the scheme.

  I fold up the letter and put it in an envelope to send to Meredith. It is important to maintain the conviction that Davie will read it one day when he returns from where he is living, fruitfully, I hope, and well. For now, it is enough to jot down my thoughts so my boy will realize I don’t deserve to be where I am. Yes, sooner or later, Davie will come to under-stand that if you don’t go for your shots, you’re not going to win.

  PART THREE

  HOMECOMING

  1

  Tim Nugent

  TIM HASN’T HEARD from Alexis in months. She has a reputation for going MIA on a writer, although she has never disappeared on him before. It makes him feel demoralized. Doesn’t she know what her silences can do to the self-esteem of wordsmiths like him?

  She’s like a famous brain surgeon, a writer friend tells him. There’s a lineup a block long to get into her office but once you’re there, she’ll shine a light on you that will make you feel like the most famous writer in t
he world. So, chum, the wait is worth it, the friend adds. Or did the friend say chump? Writing a book remains one of the few long processes in modern life. Like giving birth to a child, or making a film, another friend says. Tim has never had a child or made a film, but he finds this advice comforting. As if he is participating in an ancient mystery school that does secret, valuable work.

  He opens a new email and starts to read Dale Paul’s latest installment.

  2

  Dale Paul

  A furlough is not an entitlement. Neither is it a reward for good behavior or successful programming, nor a means to shorten a criminal sentence.

  — FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, INMATE

  ADMISSION AND ORIENTATION HANDBOOK

  I HAVE NEVER thought much about Mother dying. Her death always felt like a distant event, the way I used to think about graduating from college when I was a boy. But she is sick with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a degenerative neurological illness. There is no cure. The warden has given me permission to go home for two days because she is at the crisis stage.

  Martino is driving me to Long Island, and the four-hour trip will give me the chance to reflect on what lies ahead. Time to think and fret about whether my friends and family will greet me with god-knows-what vengeful thoughts in their hearts. There is Meredith, who will be looking to see if I have repented. And Caroline. (What am I to make of her infrequent letters and phone calls?) There is also Esther, who hasn’t seen me since Davie disappeared, as well as Dieter and Irene. Yet they are all minor hazards, and Meredith and Caroline can be brought around. The person I dread seeing again is none other than my neighbour, General Theodore Rigby.

  He isn’t the sort of fellow you’d expect to be a four-star general, even though he came from a long line of military men. A tall, mild-mannered man with a grey Hitlerian tuft beneath his nose, Ted served in Afghanistan under General Petraeus, who relied on him before Petraeus’s affair with his biographer became public.

  I met Ted the night Esther invited our neighbours home, along with several lifeguards, from the Plandome Country Club. She told Irene to throw white crème de menthe into the blender along with cracked ice and my best brandy. Ted’s wife, Sofia, a dark-eyed flinty matron, and Ted, tall and reedy and wearing his weary, pained expression, sampled a few before I poured Ted a Laphroaig in my study and didn’t correct him when he congratulated me on attending the Canadian equivalent of West Point.

  More than a century and a half before, Munson Hall cadets fought against a group of American Fenians who wanted Britain to give Ireland its independence. When I mentioned the battle, Ted egged me on. In the army, he had been known as the listening general. By that, I mean Ted gathered information for his superiors. So that night, I found myself talking non-stop about the Battle of Ridgeway near Niagara Falls.

  Ted smiled his pained smile. And the battle tally, he asked.

  Seven dead and twenty-one wounded, I replied. One of the dead was a Munson Hall student.

  By then, Ted and I had moved on to Armagnac, and he was explaining how the army tried to placate him after the failure of his promotion under Petraeus. When he retired, he was made director of the army pension funds. His official title was deputy CFO. He managed the stocks with two other senior military people, and their low returns brought him a great deal of dissatisfaction.

  How on earth could they make a good return, he wanted to know, when they weren’t allowed to invest in stocks that yielded more than three percent? The other two board members were unconcerned. Their lack of receptivity, the failure of their imaginations, these attributes greatly troubled and irritated me, although at first I didn’t say so. I let Ted complain without offering a solution. Years before, Pater had told me it’s better to hear the other person out before you jump in with your ideas on how to fix things. They won’t listen otherwise.

  We took our drinks outside and sat on the patio. I was feeling mellow. Fireflies glittered in the humid ocean breeze blowing through the rose garden, where Meredith was pushing Mother in her wheelchair. They had gone there to gather a bouquet for our dinner table, while in the kitchen Esther was force-feeding brandy stingers to her lifeguard pals. In a lowered voice, I began to tell Ted about the money I was making. Ted seemed astonished. He’d never heard of a fifteen percent return. Of course he hadn’t. Not when he was dealing with low-yield government bonds. Naturally, he asked for my help.

  Good sir, isn’t there a rule against investing in high-risk stocks?

  I haven’t mentioned this to anyone, but there may be a loophole. Cone of silence, Dale Paul?

  Cone of silence, I agreed. I’d sown the seed. Now it was up to Ted.

  3

  I MET THE other members of Ted’s troika, and they were just as I feared: sloth heads, slow thinking and suspicious. They were the American version of the boys I met at Munson Hall. Quick to scoff and disapprove. Slow to grasp the brilliance of a new possibility, too suspicious to open their minds to the inevitable. You have no idea how much they depressed me.

  Ted told them I had gone to a military college in Toronto, and that it had lost a cadet or two defending the honour of British Canada. The military men sat up and listened; after all, they’d seen me on CNN talking about the bailout of AIG.

  Ted’s loophole was the clause telling the troika to maximize investment income. The troika had failed pitifully in this regard, so they agreed to let me try something more enticing. It would take two to three years for the auditor to question our investments. And by then, our stocks would have done so well the army would be glad they had given me some wiggle room.

  There’s a lot more I could tell you about Ted and his trusting nature. I’m not sure additional details will be helpful. What you need to understand is how much everyone resents government. How oppressed and overwhelmed we feel over the way government takes our hard-earned dollars. Ted is no different. He’d already experienced a bump with the General Petraeus affair. And between us, he was never good at managing money. His wife, Sofia, who worked for the FDA, had been left a modest inheri-tance, and she used it to buy the handsome mansion a few doors down from us on Half Moon Lane.

  I admire Sofia’s taste. She sets her standards and lives by them — just as I live by mine. Ted is another matter. He is an unlucky person. Yet let it be said that Ted tries hard, although it is always someone else’s fault if something goes wrong.

  4

  I’M JOLTED OUT of my half-slumber by the sudden glimmer of Long Island Sound. I am back on Half Moon Lane and there’s my house on a tranquil grassy slope. My home, my refuge. I take in its wraparound veranda, the blackened hydrangea blossoms in Esther’s old flowerbeds, the dull twinkle of late November sunshine on the glass of the solarium. The only thing I disliked about the property had been the asphalt road in front cutting our lawn off from a sand beach.

  It was a minor flaw, and minor flaws aren’t worth trifling about when your grounds evoke Mrs. Rockefeller’s country garden.

  Martino pulls into the driveway, and my cousin hurries out the back door and down the stairs, her maidenly braids flying. She calls out a greeting while Martino uncuffs me, his vacuous eyes fixed resolutely on the ground. When I point out that prisoners in transit are obliged to ride shackled, Meredith’s mouth falls open, and she gives me a hug, her substantial body sagging against my chest like a dead weight.

  Well, you’re home now, she murmurs.

  Soon I’ll be an orphan like you.

  I know, she replies.

  She treats Martino to a polite smile and makes the necessary social noises when I explain he’ll be my escort for the next two days; then she half turns and grins at someone. Caroline is hurrying through the moon gate, a bouquet of Mother’s late-fall sedum in her arms.

  Dale Paul, you’re terribly thin! She exclaims as she hugs me.

  While I stand in a half-swoon, over Caroline’s shoulder, I notice the For Sale sign on th
e lawn. My house is being sold! And nobody consulted me.

  Meredith shakes her head sadly when she sees where I’m looking. Malcolm de Vries said we had to pay off your legal costs.

  That dimwit told me the house would be secure. Why doesn’t Caroline’s brother pay you what he owes me? When I think of the money I gave that mouth-breather …

  Now really, Dale Paul, Caroline says. Charles is broke from paying his medical bills.

  Oh, don’t bother Charles right now. Meredith sighs. We’ll muddle through somehow. Maybe we can borrow from Googie’s trust.

  Meredith, I would wait on borrowing money.

  You don’t understand how hard up we are, Dale Paul. She levels a stern look my way. Your mother is upset. Losing her home is hard for an eighty-six-year-old woman! And I’ve had to let Dieter and Irene go. Don’t you want to say you’re sorry about our situation? I suppose you think it’s like crying over spilled milk.

  Something like that. I smile vaguely. One day there will be discoveries made. The discoveries will be discombobulating, and the known unknowns will come leaping and bounding out of their hiding place and shatter those near me. One day but not now.

  5

  CAROLINE SQUEEZES MY hand as we stare down at the old woman thrashing about in her sheets. Who is this strange, irrational creature trying to free her arms, which appear to be tethered to the aluminum guardrails of her hospital bed? And where did my own mother go?

  For god’s sakes, do you need to keep her trussed up like that? I whisper.