by Steve Toltz
“What is it?”
“I think it’s Jasper.”
“So?”
“So don’t you think we should keep this between us?”
Anouk studied my face for a long time. “Why?”
Somehow I knew he’d take it badly. I was terrified that his hysterics might prejudice Anouk against me, might turn her off the whole idea. She might conclude that sleeping with me wasn’t worth the trouble. That’s why a couple of days later I went about the bizarre, unenviable chore of interfering in my son’s love life. A part of me knew that no matter what I did, no matter how honorable or dishonorable my intentions were, it would inevitably backfire. Well, so what? It’s not like I’d be breaking up the world’s most rock-solid couple. Isn’t their incompatibility evident by the mere fact that she has risen to the moral challenge of acquiring a lover and he hasn’t? I’m rationalizing, of course. The truth was, I preferred his storming furiously out of my life to the prospect of Anouk slipping out of my arms.
I couldn’t call the girlfriend up, and there was no way of asking Jasper for her phone number without his taking out a restraining order against me, so one morning I woke early and staked out his hut, waiting for her to leave, and when she did I trailed her. The frequency of their relations, if not the seriousness, I was able to ascertain by the adroit way she navigated through the labyrinth. I walked behind her, watching her curvaceous body swing this way and that. As I followed her, I wondered how you go about addressing someone’s treachery. I decided you just come out with it.
“Hey, you!” I said.
She turned quickly and gave me the kind of smile that can really castrate a man. “Hello, Mr. Dean.”
“Don’t give me that. I have something to say to you.”
She looked at me with all the sweet, innocent patience in the world. I launched right into it. “I saw you the other day.”
“Where?”
“Kissing someone I didn’t father.”
She let out an uncertain gulp of air and lowered her eyes. “Mr. Dean,” she said, but that’s all she said.
“So what have you got to say for yourself? Are you going to tell Jasper, or am I?”
“There’s no reason to tell Jasper. The thing is, we used to go out together, and I’ve had a hard time forgetting about him, and I thought…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, but he doesn’t want me. And I don’t want him anymore. And I do love Jasper. I just…Please don’t tell him. I’ll break up with him, but I won’t tell him.”
“I don’t want you to break up with him. I don’t care if you’re my son’s girlfriend or not. But if you are, you can’t cheat on him. And if you do, you have to tell him. Look—let me tell you a story. One time I was in love with my brother’s girlfriend. Her name was Caroline Potts. Hang on, maybe I’d better start at the beginning. People always want to know what Terry Dean was like as a child. They expect tales of kiddie violence and corruption in the heart of an infant. They imagine a miniature criminal crawling around the playpen perpetrating acts of immorality in between feedings. Ridiculous! Was Hitler goose-stepping all the way to his mother’s breast?”
“Mr. Dean, I have to go.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I said, and as she walked away, I couldn’t work out for the life of me what we had cleared up, if anything.
Later that night Jasper walked in on Anouk and me in bed. He flipped out. I don’t know why it caused him such profound embarrassment—maybe the Oedipal project is most effective in broken families such as ours; the son’s desire to kill the father and fuck the mother is less repulsive an idea if it is the mother-substitute the boy desires to sleep with. As if to confirm my revolting theory, Jasper acted very hurt and even furious. I suppose at some point in life we give in to a senseless outburst that serves to rob us of all credibility, and this was Jasper’s. There was no logical reason why he should oppose this occasional physical and sweaty union of Anouk’s and mine, and he knew it too, but the next thing he came and told me was that he was moving out. We stood in silence for a minute. It was a large minute, not long but wide and cavernous.
I smiled. I felt the weight of my smile. It was exceedingly heavy.
His exit threatened to last a century but was over surprisingly quickly. After he said, “I’ll phone you,” I listened to the furious song of his footsteps retreating and I wanted to call him back and guilt-trip him into staying in contact with me.
He was gone.
I was alone.
My presence weighed as heavily on me as my concrete smile.
So! He’s left me in my dark crevice, in my solitary whirlwind. Children are a complete failure, aren’t they? I don’t know how people can derive any lasting satisfaction out of them.
I couldn’t believe he was gone.
My son!
The sperm that got away!
My failed abortion!
I stepped outside and looked at the stars tattooed on the night sky. It was one of those magnetic nights when you feel everything is either drawn to your body or is repelled by it. All this time I had thought my son was striving to be my mirror opposite, but he wasn’t—he had become my polar opposite instead, and that had sent him careering away.
A week later I felt lost in a dark and heavy cloud. Anouk hadn’t turned up for a couple of days and I sat in her studio, surrounded by plaster genitalia, feeling deeply ashamed because I was bored. What right does a dying man have to be bored? Time was killing me and I retaliated by killing time. Jasper was gone; Anouk had abandoned me. The only person I had left was Eddie, but I really could stand him only for short bursts. It’s a shame you can’t go out and see people for just ten minutes. That’s all the human contact I need to carry me through life for three days—then I need ten minutes more. But you can’t invite someone over for ten minutes. They stay and stay and never leave, and I always have to say something jarring like “You go now.” For many years I tried the favorite, “I won’t keep you any longer,” or “I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” but that never worked. There are far too many people who don’t have anything to do and have nowhere to go and who would like nothing better than to squander their whole lives chatting. I’ve never understood it.
When I heard Anouk’s voice calling my name, a gust of pure joy blew through my heart and I shouted, “I’m here! In the studio!” and I felt the pulse of sexual desire fire up. At once I had the imprudent notion that I should take off my clothes. I hardly even remember peeling them off, I was in such a fervor for union, and by the time she came to the doorway I was fully naked, beaming at her. At first I didn’t understand the frown on her face; then I thought about how I’d been lurking in ambush among the world’s largest collection of genitals, and my own, by comparison, didn’t compare. In my defense, the genitals around me were not to scale.
Then she said, “Um, I’m not alone.” And who should stick his impeccable head through the doorway but Oscar Hobbs.
In a testament to his unshakable coolness, he launched right into it. “I have some news for you,” he said. “I’d like to help you realize one of your ideas.”
I felt about to either shatter or freeze into a solid block. “For God’s sake, why?” I said briskly, then, “Which one?”
“I thought we’d discuss it. Which one would you most like to see realized?”
Good question. I had no clue. I closed my eyes, took a long breath, and dove into my brain. I swam down deep, and in the space of a minute I must have picked up and discarded over a hundred silly schemes. Then I found the one I wanted—an idea with handles. My eyelids sprang open.
“I’d like to start making everyone in Australia a millionaire,” I announced.
“Smart choice,” he said, and I understood immediately that we understood each other. “How do you intend to do that?”
“Trust me. I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Trust you?”
“Obviously, since you’re a major player in a multinational conglo
merate, I can’t trust you. So you’ll have to trust me. When it’s time, I’ll tell you the details.”
Oscar gave Anouk the briefest of looks before his eyes returned to me.
“OK,” he said.
“OK? Wait a minute—are you serious about this?”
“Yes.”
In the awkward silence that followed this improbable turn of events, I noticed how the customarily expressionless Oscar was looking at Anouk as if he were struggling against something in his nature. What did it mean? Had Anouk promised him sexual favors? Had she made some strange, unpleasant pact for my benefit? The niggling suspicion compromised my sudden success. That’s how it always is—you never get a complete victory; there are always strings attached. Still, I didn’t hesitate to accept his offer. That was followed by another unexpected slug in the guts, the crushing look of disillusionment on Anouk’s face, as if by accepting Oscar’s offer I had proved myself to be less than she imagined. That I couldn’t understand. This was her idea, wasn’t it?
Anyway, I had to accept it. What choice did I have?
I was time-poor.
Chapter Two
We went straight into battle mode. First there was the publicity; we had to whet the public’s appetite. Oscar was smart; he didn’t mess around. The very next day, before we’d even properly discussed how this ludicrous scheme was going to function, he put my picture on the front page of the daily tabloid with the headline “This Man Wants to Make You Rich.” A little clunky, not very elegant, but effective. And that was it for me. The official end to my life as the invisible man.
There was the briefest outline of my idea, without specifics, but most infuriatingly, I was introduced to the Australian public as “Brother of Iconic Outlaw Terry Dean.”
I tore the newspaper into ribbons. Then the telephone started ringing and the lowest forms of human life were on the other end—journalists. What had I gotten myself into? Becoming a public figure is like befriending a rottweiler with meat in your pockets. They all wanted details on how I planned to do it. The first to pick up on the story was a TV producer for a current affairs show, wanting to know if I would be interviewed for a segment. “Of course not,” I said, and hung up. This was just reflex.
“You have to publicize your scheme,” Anouk said.
“Fuck that,” I said weakly. I knew she was right. But how could I speak to these journalists when all I could hear in my head, drowning out their questions, was noisy echoes of an old rage? It turned out I was the kind of person who could hold a grudge for a lifetime. I was still fuming over how the media had relentlessly harassed my family during Terry’s rampage. What was I going to do? They called and called and called. They asked me about myself, my scheme, my brother. Different voices, same questions. When I walked outside, I heard them calling from somewhere within the labyrinth. Helicopters circled overhead. I went inside and locked the door and climbed into bed and turned off the lights. I felt my whole world was on fire. I’d done this to myself, I knew, but that didn’t make it any easier. It made it worse.
The current affairs show ran the story anyway. Oscar Hobbs gave an interview. Apparently he wasn’t going to let my misanthropy ruin everything. To my horror, they dug up footage of me from the time of Terry’s rampage; because I wasn’t watching television then, I’d never seen it. There it was: our town that no longer exists, that I’d burned down with my observatory, and right there on television everyone was alive—my mother, my father, Terry, and even me! Even seventeen-year-old me! It’s impossible to believe I was ever that young. And that skinny. And that ugly. On the television I’m all skin and bones and walking away from the camera with the steady steps of someone moving toward a future he doesn’t know will hurt him. I instantly formed a love-hate relationship with my former self. I loved me for moving so optimistically toward the future, and hated me for getting there and fucking it up.
The following morning I made my way to the Hobbs building, a hushed, seasonless fortress in the city center, seventy-seven floors of soundproof, smell-proof, and poor-proof offices. As soon as I stepped into the lobby, I knew I had grown old inside my nanosecond of eternity. The people racing past me were so young and healthy, I had a coughing fit just looking at them. This was a new type of working man and woman, wholly different from the breed of worker who waits in a fever of impatience for five o’clock to release him from bondage. These were pathologically stressed-out consumers who worked all the time, in industries called new media, digital media, and information technologies. In this place, old methods and technologies were not even remembered, and if they were, they were talked about fondly, as if discussing the death of embarrassing relatives. One thing was certain: this new culture of workers would have baffled the hell out of Marx.
Contrary to expectations, neither Oscar’s nor Reynold’s office was on the top floor, but somewhere in the middle of the building. Entering the stark yet stylish reception area, I was all ready to put on my waiting face when the secretary with cone-shaped breasts said, “Go right in, Mr. Dean.”
Oscar’s office was surprisingly small and simple, with a view of the building opposite. He was on the phone with someone I assumed was his father, who was giving him an earful and doing it so loudly I heard the words “Are you completely stupid?” Oscar raised his eyebrows, waved me in, and motioned for me to sit on a beautiful and uncomfortable-looking flat-backed antique chair. I went to his bookshelf instead. He had an impressive collection of first editions—Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche (in German), Tolstoy (in Russian), and Leopardi (in Italian)—that called to mind some lines of the last’s uplifting poetry:
What was that acid spot in time
That went by the name of Life?
Oscar hung up the phone with an expression that was not entirely clear to me. I launched my attack. “Listen, Oscar, I didn’t give you permission to start bandying around my brother’s name. This has nothing to do with him.”
“I’m funding this scheme. I don’t need your permission.”
“Hey—that’s true. You don’t.”
“Listen, Martin. You should be thankful. Your brother, while he was, in my opinion, a dangerous maniac that Australia has no business celebrating—”
“That’s just what he was!” I shouted, thrilled to my bones. For it’s a fact that nobody had ever expressed this very obvious opinion.
“Well, blind Freddy can see that. The point is, he is plain adored by this country, and your close association with him gives you the credentials you need to be taken seriously.”
“OK, but I—”
“You don’t want us to go on and on about it. This is your scheme, this is your turn in the spotlight, and you don’t want your long-dead brother overshadowing you from beyond the grave.”
“Mate, that’s it exactly.”
“After this first week, Marty, you’ll come into your own, don’t worry.”
I had to admit, Oscar Hobbs was a real gentleman. In fact, he was charming me more each time I met him. He seemed to understand me right away. I thought: Maybe people need to grasp that nepotism doesn’t necessarily mean the ascension of an idiot.
“Anyway, let’s get into details. What’s your scheme?”
“OK. It’s simple. Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“OK. Listen to this. With our population of roughly twenty million people, if everyone in Australia mailed just one dollar a week to a certain address and that money was divided by twenty, every single week of the year twenty Australian families would become millionaires.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it!”
“That’s your idea?”
“That’s my idea!”
Oscar leaned back in his chair and put on a thinking face. It was the same as his regular face, only a little smaller and a little tighter.
The silence made me uncomfortable. I gave him a few more details to fill it.
“Now what if, after the first week, the people who have just become m
illionaires from the previous week put in a one-time payment of a thousand dollars as a thank-you. That means after the first week we’ll always have a weekly budget of twenty thousand dollars to support the administrative costs of the enterprise.”
Oscar started nodding rhythmically. I pushed on: “So by my calculations, at the end of the first year 1,040 families would have become millionaires, by year two 2,080 millionaires, by year three 3,120 millionaires, and so on. Now 3,120 new millionaires in three years is pretty good, but at that rate it would still take roughly 19,230 years for every Australian to become a millionaire, not even factoring in the rate of population growth.”
“Or decline.”
“Or decline. Obviously, for the number of Australian millionaires to grow exponentially, we need to increase the payment each year by a dollar, so in year two we put in two dollars a week—that’s 40 millionaires a week, or 2,080 millionaires for the year; year three we put in three dollars—60 millionaires a week, or 3,120 millionaires for the year; and so on until every Australian is a millionaire.”
“That’s your idea.”
“That’s my idea!”
“You know what?” he said. “It’s so simple it might actually work.”
“Even if it doesn’t,” I said, “what else are we going to do with this acid spot in time that goes by the name of Life?”
“Martin. Don’t say that in an interview, OK?”
I nodded, embarrassed. Maybe he didn’t recognize the quote because I didn’t say it in Italian.
That night Eddie turned up at the house in his usual freshly ironed pants and wrinkle-free shirt with his face that made me wonder if they have Asian mannequins in Asian department stores. I hadn’t seen him in a while. Eddie was always disappearing and reappearing. That’s what he did. Seeing him, I suddenly remembered my idea that all along he’d hated my guts. I watched him closely. He wasn’t giving himself away. Maybe he’d been pretending to like me for so long he’d forgotten that he didn’t. Why would he pretend to like me anyway? For what sinister trap? Probably none—to soften up his loneliness, that was all. I suddenly felt sorry for the whole lot of us.
