by Steve Toltz
“So what?” I said.
“So what?”
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get it?”
“Stop repeating everything I say.”
“It’s the answer, Jasper.”
“It is? I’ve forgotten the question.”
“How to fill your dad’s emptiness. It’s simple. We go out and find one.”
“Find what?”
“A golden ear,” she said, smiling.
VII
That night, on my way over to Anouk’s house, I thought about her plan. The golden ear she had decided on belonged to the head of Reynold Hobbs, who, in case you live in a cave that doesn’t get cable television, was the richest man in Australia. He owned newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, movie studios, and television stations that recorded sporting events that he broadcast through his cable networks. He owned football clubs, nightclubs, hotel chains, restaurants, a fleet of taxis, and a chain of record companies that produced music that he sold in his music stores. He owned resorts, politicians, apartment buildings, mansions, racehorses, and a yacht the size of the Pacific island of Nauru. Half the time Reynold lived in New York, but he was so secretive, you never knew which half. He was the rare sort of celebrity who didn’t have to worry about the paparazzi because he owned them. I tell you, Reynold Hobbs could take a shit off the Harbor Bridge and you’d never see a picture of it in the paper.
I don’t know how long Anouk had been planning this unpromising mission, but she showed me an article that said Reynold and his son, Oscar, were going to be in the Sydney casino that night to celebrate their purchase of it. Her plan was for us to go to the casino and try to convince Reynold Hobbs, Australia’s richest man, to meet with Dad, Australia’s poorest.
At this time Anouk was back living with her parents in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice cul-de-sac with a nice park next door and lots of children playing in the street and neighbors chatting over fences and big front lawns and big backyards and swings and a nice comfortable family car in every driveway and dogs who knew where to shit and where not to shit and in nice symmetrical piles too, like a Boy Scout’s campfire. It was the kind of middle-class exterior people love to peel back the layers of, looking for worms—and the worms are there, sure. Where aren’t there worms? And yes, Anouk’s family had a worm. They had a big worm. A worm that wouldn’t go away. It was Anouk. She was the worm.
Her father was working in the garden when I turned up. He was a healthy man in his fifties, so healthy that the sight of him always made me resolve to do fifty push-ups every morning. Muscles bulging, he was bent over the flower bed ripping up weeds, and even his workman’s crack was taut and glowing rosily underneath strong, virile tufts of bum hair.
“Hey, Jasper, what are you all dressed up for?”
“Anouk and I are going to the casino.”
“What the hell for?”
“To break the bank.”
He chuckled. “You can’t beat those corrupt bastards. They’ve got it rigged.”
“There aren’t many corrupt bastards you can beat.”
“Too true.”
Anouk’s mother, a beautiful woman with streaks of gray through her thick black hair, came out with a glass of water that she might have intended for her husband but that she gave to me.
“Here you go. Hey, am I shrinking or are you still growing?”
“I think I’m still growing.”
“Well, don’t stop now!”
“I won’t.”
I liked Anouk’s family. They didn’t make a great effort to make you feel welcome, they just looked at you as though you’d always been there. They were honest and earnest and enthusiastic and cheerful and hardworking and never had a bad word to say about anyone. They were the kind of people it’s impossible not to like, and often I’ve felt like marching them up and down the street, daring people not to like them.
“Where’s Anouk?”
“In her room. Go on in.”
I walked through the nice cool house, up the stairs, and into Anouk’s bedroom. Anouk always returned here after unsuccessful outings into the world—usually after jobs or relationships went bust. They kept it for her. It was strange to see her here in her family home, and in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl. Let’s be clear—Anouk was now thirty-two, and each time she moved out, she swore she’d never return, but things always had a way of going sour for her, and she was never able to resist going back for a while, to take a breather.
I had been to several of Anouk’s apartments, and she was always in the middle of throwing out a man who’d disgusted her, or washing the sheets because a man she’d been sleeping with had been with someone else, or waiting by the phone for a man to ring, or not answering the phone because a man was ringing. I remember one who refused to leave; he’d tried to invoke squatter’s rights in her bedroom. In the end she got rid of him by throwing his mobile phone out the window, and he followed closely behind it.
When I went in, Anouk was in her walk-in closet getting changed.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
I snooped around. There was a photograph beside her bed of a man with a square head and dark sunglasses and the kind of sideburns that killed Elvis.
“Who’s this horror show?”
“He’s history. Throw him in the bin for me, will you?”
I had considerable satisfaction tossing his photograph in the bin.
“What happened with this one?”
“I’ll tell you what happened. I have no luck. My relationships always fall into one of two categories: either I’m in love with him and he’s not in love with me, or he’s in love with me and he’s shorter than my grandmother.”
Poor Anouk. She couldn’t stand being eternally single and she couldn’t stand that she couldn’t stand it. Love was tantalizingly absent from her life, and she was trying her best not to conclude that she was three-eighths through an eighty-year losing streak. She was humiliated to have joined the legions of single women obsessed with trying not to obsess about their singular obsession. But she couldn’t help obsessing. She was now in her thirties and single. But it wasn’t a question of the biological clock. It was a question of the other ticking clock—the clock, the Big Clock. And while she was always looking deep into herself for answers, just as the sages advise, what she came up with wasn’t one single reason, and it wasn’t as if she were stuck in a vicious circle, but rather in a pattern of several conjoined vicious circles. In one, she always singled out the wrong type—either “bourgeois yuppie bastards” or just “bastards,” or, more often than not, a “man-child.” In fact, for a while she seemed to be meeting only men-children in various guises. She also had a habit of being the other woman and not the woman. She was the kind that men like to sleep with but not have a relationship with. She was one of the boys, not one of the girls. And I don’t know the psychology behind it, but anecdotal evidence proves it: she wanted it too much. But because no one seems sure how it works, you just have to go about trying to beat this mysterious force by pretending not to want what you really want.
Anouk stepped out of her closet looking spectacular. She was wearing a diaphanous green dress with a floral print and a black slip underneath. It looked like she had bought it two sizes too small on purpose; it showed every curve of her body. They were hairpin curves. My God, she was voluptuous, and if you had the right kind of imagination you couldn’t think of anything other than sleeping with her, if only to get her off your mind. I admit I’d enjoyed masturbatory fantasies about her from the age of fourteen onward, ever since she had tired of her phase as shaven-headed, Doc Martens–wearing, pierced angry girl. The green eyes were still shining, but over the years she had grown her black hair out so it was long and flowing. She removed her piercings and went from stick-thin to spongy and now sauntered around like a promiscuous cloud in a tight dress. Even though I was there to help combat my father’s depression and encroaching suicide, I couldn’t help bu
t think: Maybe it’s high time Anouk and I slept together. Should I try to seduce her? Can you seduce someone who’s seen you go through puberty?
“Maybe you should give relationships a break for a little while,” I said.
“I don’t want to be celibate, though. I like sex. I’ve slept with a lot of men and I want to keep sleeping with them. I tell you, whoever talks about the carnality of human beings and excludes women should come by my place one night and see me at it.”
“I’m not saying you should be celibate. You could find a lover, like they have in France.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea. But where do I find a nostrings-attached lover?”
“Well—and don’t say no straightaway—what about me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re like a son to me.”
“No, I’m not. We’re more like distant cousins secretly checking each other out.”
“I’ve never checked you out.”
“You should think about it.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“I think she’s falling out of love with me. You see, I need a confidence boost, and I think if we became lovers, that would do it.”
“Jasper, I don’t want to.”
“Is that any reason?”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you ever slept with someone as a gesture of goodwill?”
“Of course.”
“Or out of pity?”
“More often than not.”
“Well, I don’t mind if it’s a charity fuck.”
“Can we drop the subject?”
“I never knew you were so selfish and ungiving. Didn’t you volunteer one year with the Salvation Army?”
“Collecting money door to door, not screwing the down and out.”
We were at an impasse. Well, I was at an impasse.
“Come on, stupid,” she said, and with Anouk leading the charge, we made our way to the Sydney casino.
Let’s not mince words: the interior of the Sydney casino looks as if Vegas had an illegitimate child with Liberace’s underpants, and that child fell down a staircase and hit its head on the edge of a spade. At blackjack tables and sitting in front of poker machines were tense and desperate men and women looking like droids, who didn’t seem to be gambling for pleasure. As I watched them, I remembered the casino was famous for having its patrons lock their children in their cars while they gambled. I had read a news story about it, and I hoped all these sad, desperate people rolled the windows down a little while they put their rent money in the pockets of the state government, which rakes in huge profits and then puts half a percent of it back into the community for counseling services for gamblers.
“There they are,” Anouk said.
She pointed to a crowd of paparazzi, businessmen, and politicians. Obviously Reynold Hobbs, a seventy-year-old man with square wire-framed glasses and a perfectly round, bald, Charlie Brown head, had taken some advice that it might be good for his public image if he tried to pass himself off as an “ordinary guy just like you,” which was why he was hunched over the $10-minimum blackjack table. The way his shoulders were slumped, it seemed as if he’d lost his posture in the last hand. Anouk and I walked up a little closer. He might be Australia’s richest man, but it didn’t look like he had got there by gambling.
His son, Oscar Hobbs, was a few meters away, trying his luck at a poker machine, holding himself upright as only a celebrity can—a man that can be photographed at any moment, that is, a man not picking his nose or shifting his genitals. I quickly gave myself a stern warning: Don’t compare your life to his! You haven’t a chance! I looked around the room for a comparison I could live with. There. I saw him: old guy, not many teeth, not much hair, boil on his neck, nose like a conch shell; he would be my anchor. Otherwise I’d be in trouble. There was no way I could stand comparison to Oscar Hobbs, because it was a matter of public record that with women he was the luckiest son of a bitch alive. From my furtive readings of tabloid magazines I had seen his string of girlfriends—a long, beautiful, enviable string. If you saw some of the honeys he’d been intimate with, you’d eat your own arm up to the elbow. Fuck. I can’t even stand to think about it. He wasn’t a social-butterfly kind of heir apparent; you’d never see him at art openings or A-list bars or movie premieres. Oh sure, every now and then you’d see the corner of his chin in the social pages of the Sunday papers, but even from the way the chin was looking out at you, you’d just know he’d been caught unawares, like a thief surprised by a security camera in a bank. But the women! After seeing photos of them, I’d go back into my bedroom and tear at my pillow savagely. More than once I tore it to shreds, literally to shreds, and it is very hard to actually tear a pillow.
“So how do you want to tackle this?” I asked Anouk.
“We should attack on two fronts. One of us takes the father, the other one the son.”
“This is never going to work.”
“You want to try Reynold or Oscar?”
“Neither, but I suppose I’ll try Reynold. I want to ask him something anyway.”
“OK. But what should I say to the son? What kind of opening do you think will work?”
“I don’t know. Pretend you met before.”
“He’ll think I’m trying to pick him up.”
“Then insult him.”
“Insult him?”
“Dissect him the way you always do. Tell him what’s wrong with his soul.”
“How do I know what’s wrong with his soul?”
“Make it up. Tell him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”
“No, that’s no good.”
“All right. Then tell him he’s so rich he’s cut off from reality. That’ll get him going. Rich people hate that.”
“But he is so rich he’s cut off from reality.”
“Anouk, believe it or not, financial hardship is not actually the one official reality.”
“Let’s not argue. Let’s just get going on this.”
“OK. Good luck.”
I went over to the table where Reynold Hobbs was hunched, but there were no empty seats. I stood around, breathing on the players’ necks. A security guard eyed me suspiciously, and with good cause too. I was acting suspicious, muttering to myself, “What the hell am I going to say to this media giant? How can I convince him to see my father? As an act of charity? Reynold Hobbs is a famous philanthropist, sure, but his is the kind of charity you phone in.”
A reporter sitting next to Reynold finished an interview, stood up, and shook his hand. I took the opportunity and squeezed in beside him. Reynold smiled cordially at me, but I immediately sensed his discomfort. Some people are just no good talking to anyone under twenty years old, and the closer you are to zero, the greater their discomfort. He turned away from me and became instantly engrossed in a conversation with his lawyer about the average point size of small print in a legal contract. Reynold wanted to put in some clause in Times New Roman but drag it down to four points. His lawyer was debating the ethics of the proposed move, and argued that any print needs to be no smaller than seven points to be “all aboveboard.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Hobbs?” I said.
He turned slowly, as if to say “Everything I breathe on turns to gold, so I’m doing you a big favor just facing in your direction,” and when his eyes reached me, they did so with an infinite stillness that told me in no uncertain terms that despite our proximity, he was inaccessible.
“What is it?”
“You own some of our newspapers, don’t you?”
“And?”
“Well, I thought power was supposed to corrupt, Mr. Hobbs. But what you do isn’t corrupt—selling diarrhea isn’t corrupt, it’s just a baffling waste of power. With all the influence you exert, with the infinite choices you have up your sleeve, you could print anything, and yet you choose to print armpit sweat. Why?”
Rey
nold didn’t know what to say. I looked over to see how Anouk was doing. She seemed to be faring better than I was. Oscar had an embarrassed look on his face. I wondered what she was saying.
Reynold was still ignoring me. I said, “OK, you want to sell papers. I get it. You sell fresh phlegm because the public has an indefatigable taste for fresh phlegm. But can’t you make your papers a little bit liberating? What about sticking in a quarter page of Tibetan wisdom between the rehashed headlines and the daily horrorscopes? Would it kill sales?”
The security officer’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“It’s OK,” Reynold said, without taking his eyes off me.
I pushed on. “Take the shamelessly sensationalist rehashing of the Frankie Hollow story. You don’t have any more insight than you had on the first day, but you plop it on the front page anyway, turning it round and round, now from the point of view of the turd in the hotel toilet, now that of a bird flying past the window. Honestly, Mr. Hobbs, it’s like reading dick cheese. How can you live with yourself? You must hire someone to look in the mirror for you.”
“Listen to me, sonny, whoever you are. A newspaper is there to report, not to enlighten men’s souls. Tabloids are sensationalist because men’s lives are not sensational. That’s the long and the short of it. The death of a celebrity is the best paper-seller we have. Do you know why? Because it’s as if the headline reads: ‘Gods Die Too.’ Do you get me?”
“Sure. Can I borrow thirty thousand dollars?”
“What for?”
“To wander aimlessly over the whole earth. Ten thousand would get me started.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“You shouldn’t be looking for handouts. You should be inspired to do it on your own.”
“There’s nothing inspiring about minimum wage.”
