5
The house is large but boring.
The six-room Donaldson house had more character than this massive mansion, Jason discovers, as each room here is perfect in its staleness. Bedrooms have a bed, a dresser, a mirror, and a nightstand. Conference rooms have a long table and books on shelves. Game rooms have a pool table and a bar. Studies have high-backed chairs, a fireplace, and a small shelf of books. The dining room is large and non-welcoming. The kitchen is filled with a one-woman staff that shoos him along. Only the butler seems the least bit interesting, and he spends most of his time looking down at Jason as if he was a bug the butler wanted to squash.
There is a basement but half of the things Francis says to him are, “Stay out of the basement, Sport.”
He asks Winton, the butler, about this and he says, “Ask your mother.”
He asks Sandra (Sandra insists he call her by her actual name and not “Mother”) about this and she waves her hand at him. “It used to bother me,” she says, taking a drag off her cigarette, “but Francis and I made a deal. I stay out of the basement and he stays out of the attic.”
“I’m not sure who gets the better of that deal, ma’am,” Jason says, finding “ma’am” a more comfortable thing to say than, “Sandra.”
“Well,” Sandra says, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray, “if you’re a good boy, I’ll show you the attic.”
“And Francis …?”
“You’ll have better luck getting that man to play catch with you than you will getting in that basement.”
Being 12, of course, Jason makes it his point to try to get into the basement, but while evading Winton is easy enough, he is rejected at every turn by doors with locks. One day, when he has the house to himself (himself and the new kitchen woman, but Sandra has made a point to tell Jason not to think of the various kitchen women that run in and out of their lives as actual people), he pulls up a loose floorboard in a never-used coatroom. He wants to climb through the floor of the house and drop in on the basement, but even though he makes his way through the floor and down to the crawlspace, he finds his passage blocked by hard metal.
He gets the idea that the basement is just one large box, and is determined to put that theory to the test, but then Francis surprises him with something called a “PlayStation” that Francis assures him isn’t even available in America, yet, “heck, won’t even go on sale in Japan for another few months,” and Jason forgets about the basement and starts thinking about Battle Arena Toshinden, Twinbee Taisen Puzzle Drama, and Captain Tsubasa J.
6
He is home-schooled. He does not like it, but Mother demands it and he has no say in the matter.
Tutors from across the world are brought in. His Spanish teacher jets in from Barcelona every other week aboard one of Francis’ private jet. His math teacher won something called the No Bell Prize. His Writing teacher isn’t seen for a month because he’s on a book tour.
During that absence, Jason still has more contact with Mr. King than he does with Francis.
7
Jason starts to wander the mansion at night. During the day, Sandra smothers him with attention. Not personal attention, necessarily, but there is an endless string of tutors keeping him busy from just after breakfast to just before dinner. He has a whole stable of physical education instructors. One of them plays baseball for the As. Another plays football for the 49ers. There is a tennis instructor who made it to the finals of Wimbledon a few years earlier, a cricket instructor who lives in New Dehli, and a squash instructor that insists squash is a sport.
They fill his day with lessons and Sandra is always there, sitting off to the side, sipping on some sugary drink and reading a magazine, as he and the instructors work out before her.
At night, however, he has the run of the mansion. Francis is almost never home, Sandra never leaves her bedroom, and Winton is sometimes awake, sipping on dry martinis, but he lets Jason have free roam of the mansion.
Jason has no idea what makes a martini dry, but it made Winton laugh when he asked, and from that moment on, the old butler and the new ward get along splendidly.
“We must make certain to only speak like this to one another at night,” Winton says one evening as they sit by the fire in the secondary reading room. “During the day, you will always be Master Jason and I will always be Mister Winton.”
“But Winton is your first name,” Jason says. “What is your last name?”
“Oh, push,” Winton laughs. “I have long since forgotten that name.”
“But why must we not act as friends during the day?”
Winton pats Jason’s hands. “Because this is a house of secrets, my boy, and in a house of secrets one must always play their role in the light of day.”
8
“Sandra thinks we should do something together,” Francis says one Saturday afternoon. He is clearly tired and has a black eye that he insists happened, “At work.” Jason has lived here nearly eight months now and understands that “At work” is Francis’ answer to almost any question his mother puts to him.
“Where is mother?”
“Eh? I don’t know. Winton! Where’s Sandra this afternoon?”
“She is having tea with the Governor’s wife,” the butler says, moving in and out of the kitchen quickly, but not before giving the back of Francis’ head the evil eye.
“Boring, that,” Francis says, smiling. “Say, let’s go to the club! How does that sound, Champ?”
“Um …”
“Splendid! Winton! Get the car, will you?”
9
The club is dreadful.
Jason sits in a chair that is too big, listening to men talk about politics and business and how politics are ruining their business. Francis seems particularly interested in asking about the “naughty” things other men are doing and he hears words like “bribe” and “kickback” and “government contract” quite a bit.
It strikes him that he doesn’t even know what Francis does “at work.”
Francis leaves Jason for long periods of time and when Jason complains that this is so boring he’d rather be studying, Francis rolls his eyes and says, “Well, you can come to the sauna, I suppose. But do be quiet. These are important men.”
Jason sits in the sauna with old, withered men who don’t bother with towels.
It makes him uncomfortable, but he keeps his mouth shut.
10
“Come here and tell me about it,” Sandra says the next day when Francis is, once again, “at work.” She sends Winton away because, “Now you can tell me everything without it getting back to Francis. That man does love his secrets. Tell me about the sauna. Leave nothing out.”
Francis tells her about “bribe” and “kickback” and “government contract.”
And about the lack of towels.
“Why, that is dreadful!” Sandra exclaims, pulling the boy to her.
Jason finds her body warm.
“Let’s play a game,” she suggests. “Whenever Francis takes on one of these dreadful excursions, I want you to tell me all about it. The more details you can tell me, the better.”
“What do I get out of it?” Jason asks, already bored with the PlayStation.
“Why,” Sandra sparkles, “you get to see the attic.”
11
Jason is not a stupid kid but he does not love the constant state of instruction he lives in, and when Sandra dismisses him for the day, he cannot wait to get outside and play. The back of the mansion consists of a large lawn that eventually gives way to a cliff that serves to keep the Pacific Ocean at bay.
Perhaps because he is 12, or perhaps because he is something of a daredevil, he enjoys walking at the edge of the cliff.
It is a cloudy, but warm Thursday afternoon in November. The rocks are slick.
12
It is Francis who rescues him, though Jason had thought his adopted father was “at work.”
Later, while he lies in bed, recovering from what Fran
cis has diagnosed as a small concussion, Jason will think it odd that Francis rescued him from the side and not from above because he swears he remembers that.
He remembers a door in the cliff wall, too, and a tunnel and a large metal room with … vehicles of some kind. Big, black vehicles, each with a red “R” on them somewhere, and there is something about the “R” he finds familiar …
Winton was there, too, waving some kind of round, gold amulet in front of his face, he’s sure of it.
He tells his mother all of this when she comes into his room but she doesn't want to hear it.
“You are lucky your father came home at just that moment!” she says, scolding him through tears. Jason finds her outburst of emotion strange because she has been a largely cold woman since his arrival. “What would I do without you?” she asks. “That damn Francis!”
Jason sits there, his brain and body aching from the fall. He is aware that he is lucky to be alive, and he says something he has never said since arriving.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, “for adopting me.”
Sandra smiles at that. “So like your father when he was younger.”
“My …”
“Francis was always such a handsome boy.”
“Ma’am, I …”
“I told you, call me Sandra,” she says, and her had reaches under the covers of his bed.
13
“Look at the amulet, Jason,” Winton says after Sandra is gone and the weight of the day seeks to crush the 12-year old boy. “Look at the amulet and listen to my voice. You will listen to my voice and look at the amulet that rocks, rocks, rocks back and forth.”
14
Over the following week, only Winton comes to Jason’s room.
The amulet is always with him.
15
On December 6, Jason leaves his room for the first time since his fall. Francis is nowhere to be found and Sandra stays in her room, drinking heavily and tending to her broken arm.
No one will tell him how she broke her arm.
It is a lonely Holiday season in a very large house.
He ascribes his memories of all that happened on the day he fell off the cliff to a dream, and does not see the amulet again until April 19, 1996.
PART
FIVE
2001
1
Nancy Cathall listens to her station manager’s introduction of her and revels in the applause of her new colleagues. She has decided not to return to UNLV for the spring semester, parlaying her successful reporting of Kid Rapscallion and Fake Out into a job at one of the local network affiliates, and this is her first day on the job. It is January 18, 2001, and her life has never been more successful or conflicted.
There is no guilt evident on her smooth, polished face, but there is great turmoil beneath the surface. As she listens to her list of accomplishments, she is aware that none of these stories — not of the Kid Rapscallion/Fake Out incident last August, not of the chemical spill down in Spring Valley, not of the rise of a new super villain organization that calls themselves the 20-Sided Dice — would be possible without her relationship with Kid Rapscallion.
Before her relationship with Jason Kitmore (who was not a poker player of any kind, it turned out), she would have gladly agreed to become a hero’s go-to reporter in order to climb the ladder. She would also have gladly agreed to have plenty of sex with said hero, given that he looked as hot as Kid Rapscallion did.
What did surprise her was how she felt about it now and how little it has to do with Jason.
Lazlo.
Did he hit her once?
Yes.
Had she forgiven him?
What was their to forgive?
She was drunk and being a bitch and he was drunk and being an asshole and she said the wrong thing at the wrong moment and —
“And I am proud to announce,” the general manager says, “that we will be nominating Nancy for a Bernitzer Prize for her deeply personal and moving reporting on domestic abuse, which included deeply personal accounts of her own experiences. Or will include, once the stories run. But trust me, when you see these reports, you will be blown away. While I hope none of you have to live through such a horrid event, I do hope that if you do, you are able to do as Nancy has done, and transform your experience into a moving story that makes Las Vegas a better place for all kinds of victims.”
2
Nancy uses a towel to clean him off her face.
“Oh my god,” Jason says, running a hand through her hair as he stands over her, “you were incredible tonight! I’ve never … I mean, really, you’ve never let me … just, wow. Wow. You’re incredible. God, your face is so fucking hot.”
“I love you,” Nancy says, but she says it in a low voice and with her eyes pointed down and the towel over her face and when Jason asks her what she said, she lies and says, “I loved it.”
Guilt needs more than a towel to be wiped away.
3
“I loved it, too, babe,” he says, smiling.
“Do you have to go out tonight?” she asks, pushing herself off her knees to sit back on her sofa. “I was thinking maybe we could just have a night in.”
“I do, yeah,” he says. “Sorry. It’s what they pay me for. Don’t you have to cover a story or something? First day and all.”
She shakes her head, wondering if she should tell him about her domestic abuse stories. “It’s just orientation this week,” she informs him as he absently looks around for his costume. “You’d think the new star reporter wouldn’t have to sit through endless hours of learning where the coffee was kept and how to file an expense report, but …”
Nancy lets her voice trail off, and Jason doesn’t pick up the conversation. Instead, he asks, “Any leads for me to follow up on?”
She doesn't tell him about the stories and he doesn’t notice when they run.
4
It wasn’t until October of last year that Jason had come clean on the full version of his relationship with Fake Out, and she thinks about that night now, as Jason takes a shower without her. Nancy was pissed at first, of course, realizing that he had been using her, but Jason has a way of smiling an apology at her that instantly wears her down.
“I had to test you,” Kid Rapscallion said, explaining why he’d been lying to her for nearly two months. “I had to make sure our relationship worked for both of us, that we could come to an understanding.”
“You fucking used me to spin the public!” she yelled at him.
“Ugh, you sound like your fucking professor,” Kid Rapscallion snapped. “Look, this is how it works, Nancy. There’s ten reporters I can put you in contact with that will tell you the same thing — there’s things the public can’t know because it undermines their confidence in what we do.”
“You self-serving prick!”
“Fine, write a story saying that Fake Out spent two months as my assistant,” Kid said. “Write that I fucked her. Write that she’s got a chemical additive she can add to food and drink that can cause people to hallucinate. Yeah, go ahead, Nancy, write that story. Hell, I’ll give you the recordings she made of me doing coke and fucking her and fucking my hand instead of her pussy even though that’s what I thought was going on. Do it. Do all of it. And what then? Huh? How many capes do you think will talk to you after you do that? I’ll tell you. None. Fucking none. Do you want a career as a reporter? Then this is how you play the game, Nancy. Jump in or find another career. Maybe you can go back to your dad’s business. Oh, that’s right, that company declared bankruptcy. What are you going to do, ex-rich girl?”
Nancy’s memories are interrupted as Jason steps out of the bathroom, dressed as Kid Rapscallion. “Gotta go,” he says, then touches his face. “Damn, where did I put my mask?”
Nancy points to the top of her television. He takes it, fastens it to his face, and then gives her a nod and a wave before exiting her apartment as if it were a perfectly normal thing for him to do.
5
Nancy rises from the table in the coffee shop and shakes the hand, and Carol joins her at the table after removing her gray coat. “Have you been to New York before?”
“First time,” Nancy says, spinning her spoon in her cup of cold coffee.
“Did Kid pay for the plane ticket?” Carol asks.
Nancy nods.
Carol smiles. “Good. Let him pay for everything he wants to pay for. Let me get right to the point, Nancy. I don’t mean to be curt with you but I have a mall opening to cover at 11:30.”
“You’re covering a mall opening?” Nancy asks. “But you’re Carol Porg.”
“You’re sweet,” Carol says, pointing at Nancy’s cup of coffee when the waiter arrives.
“You won two Pulitzers!”
“Would have been three if it wasn’t for those Woodward and Bernstein assholes,” she smiles. “Anyway, let me give you the brief history of me: during the Vietnam Conflict, I was in college. UVA. After ‘Nam, I was working for a paper in Arlington. I was doing okay but not as good as this other new reporter, Bernard Bish.” Carol shakes her head and laughs. It is a beautiful but cold January morning outside the cafe. Nancy has taken Jason up on his offer to put her in touch with another reporter who has sidled up to a costume. “He was a political reporter, but he kept missing out on these stories that should have been on his radar. Big stories. Political stories. Stories that went to other papers first. He was on the line, about to be fired … but then he started getting stories on a new hero in town.”
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 8
