by Scott Carter
“Clearly Niles understands the appeal of the fable.”
“Or maybe he understands that all stories are didactic on some level, and that kids will listen to anything they like, whether it’s catered to them or not. Or maybe it’s not that complex. Maybe he just knew a kid who lived through his father leaving the family and based the book on how he dealt with it.”
Gibson looks at Barrett for a moment before breaking into a smug smirk. “Mr. Niles doesn’t have to be here for me to know he’d be insulted by that suggestion.”
Barrett wants to reply with something witty, but the words trouble him, so he waits for the lecture to continue and exits the hall.
On the drive home he thinks about putting in a day of writing. This isn’t guilt, this is greed. He loves this lifestyle and he’s well aware what pays for the luxuries.
Being rich isn’t about appearances for him, it’s about fun. Maybe it is a trait he inherited from a great-grandparent he never met, or maybe it’s a reaction to being raised by parents who were conservative and cautious with money, but once the riches started coming in, Barrett embraced the lure of compulsion. Instinct over analysis, lust over love, and a persistent and insatiable desire for more of everything. This is a man who still keeps his play money crumpled in his pocket.
What he needs to do is write, but as soon as he gets home he stretches out on the couch with a cucumber mask pressed tight against his face. Bed is never an option after a night of partying. Being so far off the ground feels wrong, so he always spends the afternoons after these nights on the couch with a football or soccer game on the big-screen and a carton of organic lemonade beside him on the floor. He’s finally managed to get to sleep when the front gate buzzer sounds. The pitch cuts through his haze but not enough to make him move until it sounds twice more. He pulls off the mask with a huff, gets to his feet, and stumbles to the video-intercom, where he sees a kid with a hat and a hood pulled tight on his head so that his face is a shadow.
“Hello?”
The kid’s voice is strong but young. “Delivery.”
“Hold on.”
He slips on a black terrycloth robe, steps out of the mansion, and walks with slow steps down the half-moon shaped driveway past the rose bushes, the Italian marble fountain, the magnolia trees, the ground sprinklers on timers and over the imported interlocking brick and the forty feet of heat panels below them that ensure nobody will ever have to shovel snow in the winter, until he sees that the boy is East Asian and no older than twelve.
As Barrett approaches the gates, the boy extends a swollen manila envelope through the bars. The boy’s face is stoic, and as soon as Barrett takes the package, the kid runs down the street.
“Wait …”
Barrett cranes his neck, but the boy is gone. He looks around to see if anyone is watching before examining the package to see TO BARRETT FULLER computer-printed on the label. He looks around one more time before walking back to the mansion.
Standing in his kitchen, he places the package on a granite island and takes a butter knife from a cutlery drawer. He slits the envelope from corner to corner and removes a typed letter. The first impressions are generic: Times New Roman font, black ink, and stock paper. He reads as quickly as possible.
Dear Barrett Fuller,
I know who you are. I know that despite the fact that you make millions of dollars entertaining children with stories about making the right choices, you are actually a pig of a man.
Flashes of Barrett’s favourite strip club take over his thoughts. A private booth, a bottle of vodka, and his favourite dancer, Jill, sitting beside him half-naked while a redhead with a tattoo of the sun around her belly button dances on the table.
I have proof that Russell Niles is your pseudonym and I have documented truths about your life that will ruin your career if I release them to the media.
Suddenly he thinks of a night when he had a nurse hook the two of them up to IVs so that they could drink copious amounts of alcohol while remaining hydrated.
In a Herculean twenty-one hour session, they drank enough to kill frat boys while she told him everything she knew about the weird shit she’d found in peoples’ blood and did her best to convince him that he could live a happy life without his arms and legs.
I am giving you two weeks to complete six tasks that will help you live up to the morals you currently prostitute.
The words remind him of a night when he fought a man at the local pub. In truth, fought is too romantic a word for such awkward movement. Scuffled is more accurate. The man, at least three inches taller than Barrett, took offense to an acerbic quip about his hair plugs, and a moment later the two of them were wrestling on the floor. For the next month, Barrett told anyone who would listen that he won a bar fight.
If you fail to complete these tasks or ignore my demands I will expose your lifestyle to the media, ruin your credibility and end your career. In order to avoid humiliation and save the money train you call Russell Niles, you will prove that you have embraced each opportunity by creating a website titled Once Upon a Hypocrite and entering the required proof upon completing each demand.
The letter should provoke a response. Fear, anger, or at the very least acknowledgement that it’s creepy. But all Barrett can think about is a night three months back when he got so drunk, he let a husband and wife shave his testicles at a penthouse party on the lakeshore. The sun was rising with a beautiful glow of possibility, and there he sat on a deck chair with pubic hair in his lap and a double D bra as a bib.
You are likely questioning my legitimacy, so I’ve sent your agent a package addressed to you that will provide evidence of my seriousness.
Seeing the words “agent” and “package” conjures up memories of last Christmas when he and Sidney delivered a truck full of gifts to a homeless shelter.
Feeling good about themselves, like they’d bought a little time with karma, they celebrated by drinking a twenty- two-hundred-dollar bottle of Coley Porter Bell Scotch in Sidney’s office. They’d talked about how corrupt they thought pharmaceutical companies were and about politics and ordering Russian escorts. Barrett spent the night on the floor holding a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the way children hold stuffed animals.
As Barrett leaves the kitchen and walks down a hallway decorated by a wall-sized tank of miniature sharks, the letter’s anger sets in. He stops moving for the first time since picking up the package and reads it on the spot.
Demand number one is in that package. You have twenty-four hours to complete it and upload the proof or the world will know that Russell Niles is actually a low-life alcoholic, a drug addict, a womanizer, and a money-hungry liar.
Barrett places the letter on the kitchen island, picks up his cell phone, and calls Sidney.
Each ring drags on until Sidney finally answers with a distracted hello. Barrett steps through sliding doors onto a back deck that overlooks his pool. “Did a package come today in my name?”
“I’m your agent, Barrett. Packages come here every day in your name.”
“Not for Russell Niles, for me.”
“I don’t know, I left earlier for a few hours. Let me see what Molly has.”
Barrett picks up the extortion letter, leaves his house, and heads for the Audi. With his earpiece in, his mouth struggles to keep up with his thoughts. “We need to meet right now. I’m on my way over.”
“I have a meeting in ten minutes.”
“Then cancel the meeting. This is serious.” Barrett swerves through traffic like a skilled cab driver.
“Okay,” Sidney says. “I’m with you, just breathe.”
“Just be in your office.”
Barrett flicks off the phone and honks at the mini-van in front of him.
On the elevator up to Sidney’s office, he looks at the three people riding with him like any of them could have sent the extortion letter. A middle-aged black man, an up-and-coming suit with a brush cut, and a woman on the verge of retirement. The faces don’t make any o
f them more or less guilty. All of them work in the building, which makes all of them suspects. He steps off the elevator and walks with purpose. He walks by an open door and turns into Sidney’s office as fast as possible. The office is larger than some one-bedroom apartments, and with two leather couches, a wall-mounted flat-screen TV and an espresso machine, it’s more comfortable than most cafes.
Barrett locks the door and turns toward Sidney, who sits behind his desk with a smoke burning in an ashtray filled
with butts.
“How did you get the letter?” Sidney asks.
“An Oriental kid dropped it off through the gates.”
“A kid?”
“I know. He had to be delivering it for someone; he wasn’t more than ten or eleven.”
Sidney looks like he’s holding back the urge to vomit and points to the flat-screen with a controller. “You need to see this.”
“Okay.”
Sidney presses play and footage of a factory appears on the screen. A female voice speaks over the footage with all the showmanship and dogma of an award-winning newscaster. “This Indonesian factory where the American company, Blast, manufactures its energy drink is currently under investigation for child labour use.” The woman’s voice fades and an amateur header appears on the screen. BARRETT FULLER OWNS 20% OF BLAST INC. BARRETT FULLER ALSO WRITES THE MIL BENNETT BOOKS UNDER THE PSEUDONYM RUSSELL NILES. HIS IDENTITY CAN BE IDENTIFIED AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WHERE THE COPYRIGHT FOR THE RUSSELL NILES BOOKS IS UNDER SANFORD CORBETT, WHICH IS A COMBINATION OF HIS FATHER’S FIRST NAME AND HIS MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME. Sidney pauses the image on the screen. “And you need to read this.” He passes Barrett a letter.
Barrett unfolds the paper and looks at the title, which is centred on the page. OPPORTUNITY #1: SACRIFICE. “And Mil learned that day that things are just things and that no possession is more important than people.”
Barrett holds up the paper. “This is from my first book.”
“Keep reading.”
Barrett’s eyes return to the letter.
My connection between you and the copyright will give the press enough fodder to expose you completely, and if you are revealed as being connected to a company that is under investigation for child labour, your career will be destroyed.
So, to avoid the end of your career, you will donate the equivalent you have invested in Blast to the Child Labour Project and the local Big Brothers centre equally, tomorrow, from your yacht, dressed as Sindu the starfish from Mil Bennett’s imaginary world or I will release all my information to the press. You will also invite children from youth centres around the city to your yacht, where you will announce that you are donating the yacht for sale with the proceeds to be divided evenly amongst youth centres across the city.
He reads the letter twice more, and the words make him wish for five minutes with the extortionist, five minutes to hit him until he didn’t feel like a threat anymore.
“What can this really do to me?”
Sidney’s not used to seeing concern on Barrett’s face. The expression prompts a painful exhale.
“What can it do to us? Well, we could claim the link between you and the name Sanford Corbett is a coincidence, but it’s not, and the press could care less either way, because it’s enough of a story to be red hot, so they’ll push until they expose more and more links. Eventually the connection will be undeniable. And then we’ll be tainted. Parents buy books for their kids, and they want anyone associated with their kids to be good people. A kid’s tutor may very well be an alcoholic, but if the parents find out, he’s fired. A kid’s soccer coach may very well cheat on his wife, but if the parents find out, they don’t want the kid on his team. If this extortionist exposed your investment in a company associated with child labour, then your reputation as a humanitarian would be ruined, which means in addition to stopping any future books, the backlist would be worth next to nothing. And there’s no way the toy companies will be associated with someone tied to child labour, so you can say goodbye to the bedsheets, video games, action figures, and every other spinoff we have.”
And there was the truth. A reflex response to the question, but one that illuminated Barrett’s real fear. This wasn’t about protecting an image or a career, this was about protecting his income. Barrett’s never heard Sidney so stern. Images flash through his mind of headlines calling him a monster, parents throwing out his books, whispers about him being a train wreck and aspiring writers laughing when they hear his name.
“I wouldn’t be writing under a pseudonym if I was a role model, but I don’t want millions of people looking down on me.”
“I won’t let that happen, but you’re going to have play along until we catch this asshole. How much do you have invested in Blast?”
“Two million.”
“Can you cover that?”
“Yeah, but I’ll have to sell off some property to build that cash flow back up.” Barrett lights a cigarette, and a deep drag calms him enough to continue. He points at Sidney with his smoking hand. “Who would want to punish me like this?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“What do you mean who wouldn’t?”
Sidney leans his weight on the windowsill. “The paparazzi, any woman you’ve dated that feels used....”
“Or Evan.” Barrett waves a finger in the air like he’s closed the case. “That fuck could have caught wind that I’m going with another artist on the next book.”
Thoughts of the artist’s smug smile leave his face flushed, but Sidney doesn’t allow time for contemplation.
“Any number of interns that you’ve treated like shit, a rival publisher.…”
“Or it could be Sheryl Orange,” Barrett interrupts with the dogma of a self-help guru. “That bitch has been trying to catch my sales since my second book.”
“A former cleaning lady, any one of the journalists you refuse to grant an interview. But that isn’t the right question. The question isn’t who would do this. The question is who found out that you’re Russell Niles?”
“So what do we do?”
Sidney runs a hand over his face. This is what he does every time he needs a moment. The agent game taught him early that saying the wrong thing isn’t an option, so he developed a few physical crutches to buy time in crucial situations.
“I don’t know entirely. Get me your security tapes and we’ll see if we can find the delivery kid. For now, we start with getting someone from IT to set up this website on the sly, and we go to your fan club to see if any wackos have been making noise in the last few weeks.” He hits the speaker phone with a middle finger. “Molly, I need you to call Rebecca at the Russell Niles fan club and let her know I’m coming to see her.”
Barrett isn’t listening. He’s too busy examining a framed group photo on Sidney’s desk like the extortionist could be any of them. The seventy-something man with sun spots where brown hair once flowed, the Chinese man with a goatee, and an aging man with capped teeth that give him a smile like a donkey. Any of these guys could be responsible. If they have access to Sidney, then they have access to him.
Sidney lights another cigarette just a beat after putting out his last one. “I’ll tell you this much,” he says before a deep inhale. “This is definitely personal.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sidney holds the extortion letter to eye level.
“Because you have millions of dollars and millions more in property, and there’s not one mention of wanting money in this letter.”
Eight
Richard hasn’t been on a subway since his father left. The lack of light, the confined space, and the incessant rumble of grinding metal in an underground vehicle all unnerve him. The last time he rode the subway he thought he was going to faint. The car was packed with riders squeezed shoulder to shoulder, and when a sound like the car might come off the tracks prefaced a jerk that made people scramble to hold anything to keep them on their feet, an intense dizziness made him want to leave the t
rain. That day, he got off a stop early and vowed never to ride a subway again.
His mother still gives him fare but he puts it in an empty pickle jar every morning instead. Not taking the subway means he has to cut through the nature trail to be on time for school, and despite his disinterest in the building, being on time is very important to him. So important that just the thought of being late makes him anxious, because lateness means attention and questions about his home life that he doesn’t want to answer.
His mother told him explicitly that she didn’t want him in the nature trail. A few kids have been robbed there in years past and a dog was found decapitated, and the press those incidents received was enough for her to deem the heavily wooded area off limits. He doesn’t like disobeying his mother, but he doesn’t want to go on the subway or be late, so every morning and afternoon he cuts through the nature trail.
Sometimes on the way home he just sits and enjoys being outside. His favourite spot is on the side of a hill beside a large tree that was split in half by lightning a few years back. From the tree’s girth, he figures it would take five people holding hands to circle its circumference, and yet lightning destroyed it in seconds.
Everything about the broken tree and splintered wood is violent, and the image makes him wonder what happens when lightning strikes a person.
Today, he sits on the hillside with a can of Coke. As he lets a mouthful fizz against the roof of his mouth a man walking on the path below catches his attention. People walk, jog, and ride by him regularly, but something about this guy forces him to take a closer look.
Both the physique and stride trigger something in his memory, something familiar. Richard stands up to get a better view, and shock tingles through him as he gets a glimpse of the man’s side profile and realizes it’s his father. The muscles in his forearms twitch. His father. A part of him wants to charge down the hill and wrap his arms around the man, but another part is too afraid to make contact, so he pushes his way through the brush and follows his father from above. The terrain is overgrown off the path and branches scratch at his hands, but the need to watch his father keeps him focused. Despite his racing heart, despite the blur of trees, he notices a lot about his father’s appearance. His hair is cropped short just like Richard remembers, he wears the same style of blue jeans and black jacket that were his staples for years, and his stubble is at least a few days old. Richard assumed he would look different since leaving the family. Maybe a brighter coloured jacket, maybe a ponytail, or maybe a shaved head. But he looks the same, and if he looks the same as before, if he didn’t want to be different, then why did he abandon his family?
