Early December. Late afternoon. Brown and yellow leaves scatter beneath Honda as he walks through a forest of deciduous trees and approaches what at first appears to be an abandoned space colony. Heavy-duty tents connected by a corridor of plastic sheeting. White appliances stripped of their parts. Mounds of plastic tubes and rubber pipe jacketed with clasps. Fifty-five-gallon drums. A rusted COSCO shipping container with shiny padlock. Soggy fiberglass insulation. Fresh lumber. The fuselage of a single-prop airplane. Two cylindrical transformers that appeared stripped from utility poles and dangling heavy wires, deposited here at the end of heavy tire tracks. And a tarpaulin, beneath which Honda uncovers a gasoline-powered generator while filming. On the edge of all this there is a hillock of black soil, freshly dug, which Honda approaches, climbs, and from atop of which he films an empty open pit with no discernable purpose other than an illegal dump or mass grave.
I stood behind my desk staring at the computer screen, recognizing the failure-induced paranoia with which I was too familiar, from before my migration east to the city in search of more and finding less, but escaping the toxicity of blame and fear and the debilitating toll they exacted: lack of vigor, lack of affect, lack of effect. “Maintenance is preservation.” Those were the words my father tacked above his workbench, where with persistent energy and focus he would spend his weekends and evenings refinishing and repairing the possessions of his home: household appliances, wooden bookshelves, automobile transmissions, rifles, especially rifles—“because there’s God in a rifle”—handguns, remote control cars, power tools, coating them with paint or grease or lacquer or oil or WD-40, ball-peen hammering the dents, planing the splinters, tightening the bolts and screws, preserving that which must be maintained. Until the personal and financial losses set in around him, losses like white-tipped mountains that he couldn’t pass, not even him, and then the stagnation, with its buildup of bile and decay and righteousness, from the inside out, followed by an all-consuming fear: of phantom enemies foreign and domestic, scapegoats, barcodes, black helicopters, the IRS, commodity markets, race wars, the future itself. “Bunch of niggers or Muslims shoot up someplace and you want to take my guns. I don’t think so.” As that which was unknown became that which was not to be trusted. And so the future belonged to the fearful and armed.
This case was different, I told myself, staring at Honda’s menu of surveillance, and this was just the first course. Embers of empathy and disgust rose and glowed, brightening the higher they floated. As if the embers were liberated from the laws of physics to waft higher and higher into a starless black night. Swirling empathy and disgust for Thomas. For who he once was and what he allowed himself to become, white and sniveling. So quintessentially un-American. With my finger pistol, I took a shot at WorldScore One. At the gilded cherub atop the prewar high-rise of municipal government. At the computer screen. At the skyscrapers capped with industrial cubes of translucent light. Cubic zirconia of finance, their electric, rectangle moons illuminating the solitary tango of a tiny janitor twenty-five stories below, positioning his yellow teepee signs of piso mojado and pushing his four-wheeled bucket through the hardscaping of 1 Chase Plaza like a mop.
“It’s as simple as this,” Fleeger said, standing in my doorway, a hand on Whitey’s shoulder. “Some of the partners are going to get what they want and be fine with it. And some partners are going to be upset and get over it. That’s all there is to it.”
“You’re right, Robert,” Whitey replied. “You’re right.”
Whitey entered Attika’s office and closed the door behind him and Fleeger gestured for me to follow him to the conference room, held open the door for me to walk through, and took a seat at the conference table. I sat next to him. On the table before us a glossy photograph of Thomas dressed in Mossy Oak 3D camouflage and hunter-orange cap, platinum-blue eyes and a steady hand dialing the brass tang sight atop the barrel of a Kentucky rifle. I knew the gun. My father had one.
“Celeste, Stephen is here with me,” Fleeger said, leaning into the three-pronged conference phone splayed on the large wooden table.
We exchanged hellos.
“So Celeste, what do you make of this surveillance footage Honda sent us today?” Fleeger asked. He looked at me. “Go,” he mouthed.
“That we got him good?” Celeste asked.
“Almost,” I said. “But not quite. I think we need to see more.”
“Yes, but what about that thirty-pack of beer?” Celeste asked.
“That’s what she said.”
“Seriously, Robert.”
“There’s no wincing, no visible pain as he carries it, no limping,” I said. “It partially refutes some of his allegations about his back and shoulder pain.
“But at the end of the day it’s only a case of beer.”
“Exactly,” Robert said. “I’d like something more physical.”
“I totally agree with you both. I’ll have Honda keep at it.”
“Celeste, don’t give Lazlis anything for now,” Robert added. “Let it ride for a bit. No reason to make any hasty decisions.”
“I love it when you’re engaged, Robert.”
“I can’t lie, Celeste. I am personally offended—personally chuffed—by this hairy asshole.”
Fleeger held the photograph of Thomas the hunter.
“Yes, but what about today’s agreement in court that we start paying Thomas some modicum of compensation now as we litigate the case?” Celeste asked.
“I haven’t seen any order on the docket signed by the judge commanding payment. Have you seen a formal order, Stephen?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither,” Fleeger added. “We’ll pay when we’re ordered to, and right now there’s no order. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will fall through McKenzie’s giant crack. What are you doing tonight, Celeste?”
“Why?”
“I’m taking Stephen out for dinner. Want to join us?”
“Robert I don’t think I can handle another one of your dinners anytime soon. But I appreciate the invitation. Next time, I promise. Anything else? Stephen?”
“I think we should undertake a fact-finding mission to Pennsylvania,” I said.
“Why?” Robert asked. This confused him. He looked at me, displeased that I hadn’t vetted this with him before making the suggestion.
“Lazlis today produced a mental health evaluation by a VA psychiatrist named Dr. Spectrum. In the report Dr. Spectrum notes that Thomas is subject to a family court order in Pennsylvania banning him from being alone with his daughter. We should get a copy of that order.”
“I still don’t see how that’s relevant, Stephen,” Fleeger said, punishing me for springing the surprise suggestion. “What do the family court records have to do with his alleged injuries?”
“They attest to his present state of mind and to his motivation. He needs the money because of his daughter.”
“He needs the money to survive,” Fleeger added.
“Yes, but it’s more than that with this guy. There’s something else. More primal. And the more facts we have about him, and what’s really motivating him, the more forcefully we can impeach him at his deposition.”
“Pennsylvania approved,” Celeste said.
Robert concurred, so long as Celeste was onboard. We said our goodbyes and ended the call.
“Dude, I don’t like surprises.”
“I know. I meant to bring it up earlier. Didn’t have a chance.”
“Even still, you’re doing a great job on this case. Celeste is very pleased with your work product so far.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Sure you have. She’s following your recommendations. You handled yourself well in court today. But most importantly, she likes you. And that’s a very good thing. Probably the most important thing to keeping the client. So keep it up.”
He stuck out his tongue and made a ghoulish sound and shook me by the shoulder.
“You’re becoming a real bast
ard, Stephen. Good work.”
I didn’t know how to respond and let the comment pass. We agreed to leave in fifteen minutes. Fleeger squinted his eyes, pulling them into tight slits, and commenced speaking pure Wuxi.
“Love is the inspiration,” he said.
“Progress most divine.”
He slapped my back.
“Attaboy.”
9
THE HYBRID TAXI TRAVELLED north beneath an elevated highway, past fifty-five-gallon drum fires ablaze inside the protesters’ camp and African peddlers arranging silver jewelry and DVDs beneath blue plastic tarps and food vendors roasting chestnuts and kabobs beneath red-and-yellow umbrellas in the glow of spinning rainbow-bright LED.
HALAL.
FRESH.
DELICIOUS.
Robert whisper-spoke into his phone with Tara or another potential slay and a song came on the radio.
“You like this band?” the driver asked me in the rearview mirror, dangling Muslim worry beads tapping against the windshield.
“They’re famous,” I replied.
“This song is called ‘We Are the Champions.’”
“Come on, dude. Do we know this song?” Fleeger asked, now off the phone. “They play it at every Ranger game.”
“Yes. Big everywhere,” the driver said. “The band is called Queens.”
“Queen,” I replied.
“Yes, Queens,” he said.
“You’re both wrong. The band is called Kings.”
“No, Queens,” the driver said.
“I know, buddy.” Fleeger smirked. “Just fucking with you.”
The taxi climbed onto the highway, switching from battery propulsion to internal combustion. Now above the East River and traversing between the three bridges and around the city of halogen lights, reflecting long and conical across the blackened river, playground of kraken and leviathan. We exited at Houston Street and the taxi stopped at a red light. With a sharpened pinky nail, the driver dug inside his ear. He spotted me watching him and continued digging while staring back at me in the mirror. Fleeger thumbed his phone, through more images of more women, mainlining dopamine.
Now past jewelry shops flaming with gemstones beneath jade chandeliers. Red-enameled casino shuttles. The vulcanized tires rolled north on Bowery, flushing away precipitation, echoing the shapes of the buildings and cars we passed. Yellow black red black yellow black red. Tangerines stacked inside infrared pagodas to please the ancestors and pitch-black runics scorched to the brick face above the fire escapes. IXXI IXXI IXXI IXXI IXXI. By the people of forever who are not afraid.
Fleeger paid the driver and we exited the taxi and entered the restaurant, passing beneath a sign of neon-blue kanji, both of us bathed in aqua-blue light as Robert confirmed our reservation and we followed the Asian hostess into the loud, dark dining room. A thousand points of candlelight. The hostess wore a sleeveless dress, each arm tattooed with an AK-47. Thomas’s kind of girl, I thought. She pulled back curtains as we entered deeper into the restaurant with no discernible name in English. “Domo arigato gozaimasu,” the chefs yelled in unison while focused on the careful work of plating food.
I spotted her first, watching from a dark corner as Robert pushed through the crowded dining room, occasionally knocking into chairs. She saw me and bit her lip, coated in hot magenta, and said something to a man I didn’t know who turned around and so too did Soncha, Kath’s old, dear friend. Whom Fleeger once nicknamed Hezbollah. The three of them conspired while watching us follow the hostess.
Kath’s hair was darker than the last time I saw her. More burgundy, less Fanta. She had dusted the space around her eyes with silver and cobalt particulate. Before she was confectionary, like one of those swirly lollipops you buy as a kid at the boardwalk and display on a shelf and never lick. Now, watching us and tearing at a licorice fingernail, she looked like a Givenchy model in a Penthouse ad. Separating from Robert had revealed something unctuous and black. The hostess motioned for us to sit. Robert looked at me.
“What?”
I nodded in Kath’s direction.
“Fuck.”
“You have to say hi to her.”
It was only right, it was the adult thing to do, I said. Fleeger approached Kath’s table and kissed her cheek while she remained sitting and he told his almost-ex-wife it was good to see her.
“Jesus, Robert, I’d never expect to see you here.”
Kath waved her arm around the dining room, making circles above her head.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Because you hate these types of places. All of this. He even hates chopsticks,” she said, addressing Soncha and pointing at Fleeger.
I leaned in and kissed Kath’s cheek. I wanted to tell her to behave.
“It’s my fault,” I said. “I dragged him here.”
“Stephen. Are you still defending Robert all the time? He’s a big boy. He can handle me. Is it just you two?”
Robert told her it was.
“Good. Then come sit with us. We’ll make room. Stephen, come sit next to me. We’ll get cozy.”
Fleeger hesitated.
“What are we going to do, Robert? Sit here in the same restaurant and pretend we don’t know each other?” Kath walked to our reserved table, burgundy heels and a black poufy skirt that deemphasized the flatness of her hips, and lifted a chair not quite above her head as the diners and the waitstaff watched her. She was half-drunk.
“I hope you’ll have enough room, Robert,” she said. “I know how proud you are of your big thighs.”
Fleeger took his seat, palms down on the table, looking over his shoulder as Kath rubbed the booth dictating me to sit next to her. This was a bad idea. Her green and gold hoop earrings rested on the shoulders of her black cashmere sweater. I kissed Soncha on the cheek. The girl with forty braids, penciled in tonight behind eyes of Ra. She belonged on a palanquin, in jesses and bells, with dinars threaded through her hair. And she loathed Robert.
“Good to see you too, Stephen,” she said.
The new man and I shook hands. His neck possessed extra degrees of rotation, an attribute that became more manifest as he struggled to comprehend the new dining arrangement.
“OK, so now we are five,” he said. He was French and perturbed, because he no longer had the two women to himself. Because the Americans had arrived.
Fleeger placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands in front of his mouth while Kath rearranged napkins, wine glasses, and cutlery in a futile effort to make us comfortable. I asked her how she was doing.
“Really very good, Stephen,” she said. She touched my arm and looked at me. “Very busy. And very good.”
“And you, Soncha?” I asked.
“I’m good,” she said. Answering me sideways. “The same.”
“Soncha and I were just discussing our upcoming trip to India,” Kath said.
“Cool,” I replied, bobbing my head. Still bobbing my head. Bobbing my head too many times.
“And I’ve been shooting a lot of film and photography of the protestors and the protest camp,” Kath said. She exuded the confidence of a woman utterly finished with the man she had married and ecstatic about the new life she created for herself, free of burden. The way women almost always can be and the way men almost never are, except for maybe Robert. “I’ve been much more productive since leaving Robert.”
“Maybe I should try the same,” I said.
Kath punched my arm and smiled and Robert grunted and hailed the waitress to get over here. He and I ordered bottles of Okinawa pilsner and the Frenchman ordered a pomegranate juice and seltzer and the girls ordered refills of shiraz. Kath opened a small tin of moisturizer and placed it under my nose.
“Do you smell it?”
“Smells like weed.”
She sniffed the tin. There was a fresh tattoo on her forearm, , beneath the symbol for Black Cat Fireworks.
“I love the smell of marijuana,” Kath said. A bit too much already. “And
the THC bonds with the lipids to replenish the dermis.”
“You can’t bring that in here,” Fleeger protested.
“And why’s that?” Kath asked.
“Because we’ll get arrested.”
“Jesus, Robert. It’s moisturizer, not a joint,” Soncha said. “And besides, no one even cares anymore. It’s practically legal. Everyone knows that.”
“So,” Kath said, flipping her hand to indicate her and Soncha. “I have an announcement to make. We’re planning on going to the Kumbh Mela in a couple weeks.”
I looked at Robert. He didn’t know what Kath was talking about and he didn’t want to be here.
“You have visas?” I asked.
“We need visas?” Kath asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll get visas.”
“You’ll need to act quickly.”
“How do you know this, Stephen?” Soncha asked. “Why do we need to act quickly?”
“I just read it takes a couple weeks to get Indian visas. And that a lot of people assume it can be done in a day or two when it takes weeks. It’s like the world’s biggest bureaucracy.”
“What is?” Soncha asked.
“The Indian Foreign Ministry.”
I felt foolish saying this. Now I was involved and I didn’t want to be involved in their plans. I needed to pivot.
“But that doesn’t apply to me, Stephen,” Kath said. “I’m American. Then again, I know I’ll get sick. So I guess there’s a bright side too. We can just focus our creative energies here instead of India. Oh, I don’t know what to do. Stephen, what should I do?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Stephen.” She punched my arm. “I need more than that.”
“You must drink charcoal,” the Frenchman said. “The carbon will coat your intestines and protect them from harmful bacteria.” He dropped a line with his hand down his thorax.
“So what Kath? We get sick,” Soncha said. “It’s the experience that matters.”
“I want to film the pilgrims wading into the Ganges,” Kath added, excited again about the journey ahead. “And then juxtapose the footage of the Sadhus with the images of the protestors downtown living in the camps and fighting the cops. One side religion. The other side protest. Which is kind of like a religion, right?”
All the Beautiful People We Once Knew Page 9
