by Scott Carter
The number immediately sparks an idea, and Richard hustles down the hall, looks to see if his mom is in the living room, and grabs the phone. Three deep breaths give him the composure to punch in the number. Every ring seems like minutes, and with each one his heart flutters until he feels a wave of dizziness that almost makes him hang up when a man answers.
“Hello?”
The voice is rich and confident, like someone used to being in charge.
For a moment, Richard freezes. He knows what he wants to say, but he can’t will his tongue to move.
“Hello?” the man tries again.
And then finally the words come out. “Can I speak to Malcolm, please?”
“Malcolm?”
“Yes.”
The question is met with a dial tone, and Richard almost drops the phone. Either his father is there or the man knows him, and either way he has to call back. He hits redial and within seconds the phone rings again, only this time no one answers, and no voice mail ever picks up. He lets it ring twenty times until it’s clear that no one will answer.
Richard hangs up determined to go to Midnight. He searches for an address online, but the only midnight is a nightclub in Amsterdam, so it takes the phone book to get details. After finding a Midnight paintball range and Midnight massage parlour, Richard finds the Midnight lounge, writes down the address, and heads for the top drawer of his desk where he keeps his money in a Ziploc bag. The last time he checked, there was twenty dollars and seventy-five cents.
This mission requires precision, so just to be sure he takes it out and counts it again. Three fives, eighteen quarters, twelve dimes, and a nickel. The smell of metal makes him wince but this is no time to be fragile.
A light rain greets him as he steps outside. He tries to hail a cab, but the first two just drive past him. They ignore him because of his age, so he walks closer to a man with a briefcase in one hand and a cell phone in the other. This is the consummate businessman. With a dark suit under a trench coat, freshly cut thick hair and a clean-shaven face, this is the type of man cabs look for. Sure enough, the next one stops, and when Richard slides into the back seat, the heavy-set driver with only tuffs of hair left on his head turns to him with a scowl.
“Just you?”
Richard holds up the money for credibility and passes him Midnight’s address.
“Here, please.”
The driver examines him for a moment, seems impressed that he maintains eye contact, then hits the meter. The cab smells like tuna, so Richard opens the window a little. The driver looks at him in the rear-view mirror with a smile that reveals two missing bottom teeth.
“You’re a little young to be going to a bar, aren’t you?”
“I’m meeting my dad.”
The man nods, pops a cigarette between his lips, and turns onto the road. Midnight is only ten minutes away by car, but ten minutes into the city’s core, where neighbourhoods and parkettes give way to buildings and traffic.
They drive past the homeless begging and smoking other peoples’ cast-away butts, squeegee teens splashing dirty water on the windshields of unhappy drivers, and a seemingly never-ending flow of people walking down, up, and across the streets. The driver honks at a jaywalker in a mini-skirt and stops in front of Midnight. Richard looks at the meter: eleven-fifty. He keeps a dollar fifty for bus fare and passes the driver eighteen and a quarter.
“Thanks kid,” the driver says, genuinely impressed. Richard steps out of the car to see a woman sitting in front of Midnight on a wooden stool with many chips in its brown paint. Her head wobbles on her neck, and she smokes a cigarette as if the nicotine is oxygen. Scabs cover the pale skin of both forearms and a burn disfigures the top of her right hand, leaving what should be a network of veins and tendons a thick mass that resembles window caulking. Richard looks up and admires the black font against a grey backdrop that looks three-dimensional on Midnight’s hanging sign.
The woman on the stool erupts into a coughing fit as he walks past her. He’s approaching the door when a teenager with pale skin, a shaved head, and a jacket with a fur hood stops him.
“Where are you going, little man?”
Everything about this guy makes Richard nervous. The anger in his tone, his vacant eyes, and the aggression in his body language.
“To see my dad.”
“In there?”
Richard nods and the teen laughs.
“You know what goes on in there?”
Richard nods again.
“Don’t lie. You’re lost, aren’t you?”
As confused as Richard feels, instinct tells him to stay quiet.
“Are you giving me attitude, you little shit?”
The increased aggression is confusing, so Richard takes a step back. The woman on the stool stares into traffic as if they don’t exist.
The teen gestures to Richard’s wrist. “I like your watch.” Everything about the teen’s tone suggests this isn’t a compliment. “Do you like it?”
A verbal response feels necessary so he manages, “Yeah.”
The teen removes a metal baton the width of a soup spoon from his pocket and flicks it so that it extends in length. “Enough to get cracked on the head for it? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t take it off and put it in my pocket in the next minute.”
Fear shoots through Richard and suddenly he feels like he might throw up, cry, and faint all at once. The teen steps closer to him. Midnight’s door opens and a slight man with blond hair and a white dress shirt points at the teen with a baseball bat.
“What did I tell you about coming around here?”
The teen hustles off down the street and Richard hears a trail of “Fuck you fag.…” before turning to the blond man, who now faces the woman on the stool.
“Let’s go, honey. There’s better places for you to hang than in front of this bar.” The woman wobbles off on cue and the man turns to Richard. Looking at the man’s face, Richard realizes this isn’t just a man, it’s the man he saw kissing his father on the bathroom floor. The man speaks, but all Richard can do is look on in shock.
“The asshole that approached you has been robbing kids all year around here. You’re better to just run when you see trash like that coming,” he says.
Richard hears the man, but he isn’t listening anymore, because this isn’t just a bar owner, it’s the man partly responsible for his father leaving.
The man exhales in frustration and lowers the baseball bat. “You recognize me, right?”
Richard nods.
“I know why you’re here, but you need to go home, kid.”
Richard doesn’t move, partly because he has too many questions to ask but mostly because he is overwhelmed.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?”
Richard shakes his head.
“Okay.” The man sits on the bar’s stoop, sets the bat down, and removes a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. “Look, I don’t know what to say to you, but you’ve made your way here, so if you have questions, ask them.”
He lights a cigarette and Richard watches him for a moment. The man looks younger than the image in his memory, and his eyes are warmer.
“What’s your name?” Richard asks.
“Kellen.”
“Is this your bar?”
“Hell, no. I’m a bartender. I’ve been working here the past five years.”
“Does my dad come here?”
“He used to. All the time for a while, but I don’t see him as much anymore.”
“You’re not together?”
“Together?” Kellen lights his cigarette, draws deep, and exhales a steady stream of smoke. “No, we were never together.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Now? Somewhere in Brazil, I guess.”
“Where’s that?”
“South America.”
The words sting. He’s not sure where South America is, but he knows it’s another part of the world. “
When did he go there?”
“A couple days ago, I heard.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. It’s not like he told me. I heard it from somebody else.” Kellen looks at the consternation building in Richard’s eyes. “I imagine you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” Richard says. “I hate that he left.”
Kellen grabs the front door’s handle. “I’ve got to get back inside. How are you getting home?”
Home. Richard can care less about home at this moment. “The bus, I guess.”
Kellen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bunched-up twenty dollar bill. “Take a cab.”
“It’s okay.”
“I insist. You deserve it for coming here.”
Richard takes the money and Kellen disappears inside. Brazil. A part of Richard wants to earn the money and go there, but another part of him knows better. That part knows that this is only another chapter in a longing that will last a lifetime.
Eleven
Barrett puts on the starfish’s pointy headpiece and looks at his reflection through the costume’s basketball-sized opening for his face. Monkeys in miniature sports uniforms don’t look this ridiculous. With white tights to his knees, a white kilt, and Styrofoam points covering his arms and legs, he looks like he should be greeting guests for some seafood franchise or leading a crowd through cheers as a team mascot.
He drops himself onto a leather recliner in the yacht’s master bedroom and acknowledges that most people don’t have bedrooms this large in their main residence. A picturesque sun draws his attention through the side window until the reflection of his giant, pointy headpiece sparks a series of memories. Three of the best nights of his life happened on this yacht. Coming in third is the night he had sex with two Parisian supermodels after the yacht provided the background for a photo shoot. That night he lived for every young man that was ever hypnotized by a swimsuit issue. Number two on the list brings a smile to his face every time he thinks about the evening. After hosting yet another night of debauchery, he found himself lying on the deck staring up at the stars when a man with a thick Russian slur asked him for a cigarette. Only this wasn’t just a man, it was renowned math genius Sergey Tsakoev. That was his first night in the country, and he held a bottle of Scotch in his large hand like he planned on dying with it. Barrett gave him half a pack of cigarettes, and as they smoked and drank, Sergey explained that Russians only received surnames in the population census of 1897 and that the last names were based on the father’s first names. For example, if the father’s name was Ivan, than the last name would be Ivanov, which was the appropriate answer to the question, “Whose are you?”
After their fifth drink, Sergey convinced Barrett that numbers are not just the universal language but the spark of modern civilization. They calculated the odds of existing and then Barrett passed out. When the sun woke him up the next morning, Sergey was gone, but there was an empty bottle of Scotch beside Barrett’s head. Cigarette butts half-filled the bottle and the symbol for pi was written on the glass in black marker. The bottle now sits in Barrett’s home office, and he enjoys looking at it as much as anything else in the home.
But his favourite night on the yacht stands alone. That was the time he met emerging porn star Jenn Kutz, aka Amber Breeze, the night before her mainstream debut in a horror movie. With shocked blonde hair, a lean body, and a beach tan that east coasters can’t pay enough to replicate, she was a fusion of all his most satisfying fantasies. And they hit it off immediately. Her laugh inspired him to be charming. Somewhere between throaty and mischievous, her voice made him want to keep her talking. Their rhythms flowed, and then she offered him an 80 mg Oxycontin. Thirty minutes and three tequila shots later, they sat cross-legged in their underwear with a Scrabble board between them. Deep in the muck of their high this felt appropriate, and he has never enjoyed words as much. Stripped of pretense, etiquette, and norms, they laughed with the purity of children. One turn he spelled “apple” while thinking of an “orange” and another he stared at his tiles with a grin for fifteen minutes before she poked him in the stomach, and in the end he spent one of the greatest nights of his life with a porn star and didn’t have sex.
Barrett lights a cigarette, peers through the cabin window at a crowd of kids entering the deck, and hates the extortionist with an anger that makes him want to throw a tantrum. To yell and whine and tell anyone that will listen that it isn’t fair, until someone tells him he can keep the yacht.
Barrett never intended the Sindu character to be so popular. As part of Mil’s imaginary world, Sindu represents the years when stuffed animals soothed him, and while he has little interest in the character, Sindu has developed a huge following with kids. He is cute, loyal, and relatable, and as a result, in three of the last five years, Sindu dolls have sold almost as much as Mil Bennett, so as Barrett looks at the pointy head of his reflection and exhales a cloud of smoke, he wonders what those fans would think of Sindu now.
The youth centres accepted Barrett’s invitation and brought kids from their programs. These are not well-manicured, well dressed kids. These are kids that wear faded T-shirts. Their bodies are either skinny from a lack of food or flabby from cheap food. Kraft dinner, canned ravioli, grilled processed cheese, and two-for-one pizza slices contribute to the jowls belying their youth. They sit cross-legged on the floor and fill the deck. Some poke others in the ribs, others wait patiently, and all of them are excited. Small, dirty footprints smudge the white floor that is usually walked on by high heels and manicured feet. Barrett winces from his spot in the doorway where he can see them without being seen. To him, they look as out of place on the deck as a toy stethoscope in an operating room. He takes a final drag, butts it out in a crystal ashtray the shape of a hexagon, and walks slowly onto the deck. The kids cheer wildly and he absorbs their enthusiasm for a moment before nodding at Sidney, who begins recording the event with a video camera in the far corner.
Barrett should start speaking, but he can’t take his eyes off the chocolate staining the corners of the mouth of a fat kid to his left. He wants to toss the kid a wet-nap, but he knows he is running out of time, so he clears his throat and steps to the microphone.
“It’s my pleasure to, uh, to be with you today to announce that I am donating one million dollars each to The Child Labor Project and the Big Brothers Program. And, that ...”
For a moment, he imagines tossing himself over the side and into the water. “And that the proceeds from the sale of this yacht will be divided among your centres evenly.”
Everyone screams and the kids begin to chant. “Sindu song! Sindu song!”
Barrett begins to turn from the microphone, but Sidney offers a quick shake of his head to keep him on track. Barrett curses the marketing people for creating the jingle, but there is no escaping the tune. Between toy commercials and the cartoon, the Sindu song has successfully burrowed into his subconscious like a bad pizza jingle.
He thinks about the beach house in the Canary Islands and the way the azure water looks like glass at dawn. He thinks about the banana chocolate chip crepes he eats at a one-hundred-year-old-picnic table at his place in Paris. He thinks about the adult award show after party that he hosts every year at his Vegas compound. He thinks about all of these luxuries, and the words spill out of his mouth.
“S.I.N.D.U. Sindu’s about love and ...” With the microphone extended towards the crowd, the kids take over. Their collective voice is more a movement than a sound.
“We are too!”
Barrett pivots and leaves the deck as fast as possible. Back at the mansion, he stands in his massive backyard and passes Sidney a photo of him dressed in the Starfish suit for the Once Upon a Hypocrite website.
“I never claimed to be a role model. All this just happened.”
“I know.”
Barrett knows this isn’t Sidney’s favourite part of being an agent, but he also knows his friend understands how important it is to be a soundboard, a
source of reinforcement.
And as Barrett carries the Starfish costume’s mid-section to a metal drum beside them and drops it inside, he knows he has never needed Sidney more.
“I loved that yacht.”
“I know,” Sidney says calmly.
Barrett hustles back to the patio and picks up the Starfish costume head, tights, and boots so that his arms are full as he heads back to the drum.
“I drank Scotch with Sergey Tsakoev on that yacht.”
“I know.”
“Not vodka, Scotch. With Sergey Tsakoev.”
“I know.”
Barrett stuffs any overflowing material into the drum, picks up a can of fuel from the ground, and dowses the costume. He attempts to spark a lighter and grows increasingly frustrated with every failed strike, until Sidney extends a match.
“Thank you.”
The flame only promises a small measure of revenge, but he’ll take it. He drops the match and the drum bursts into orange, leaving the two of them to watch in silence as the Starfish costume burns.
Thirty minutes later, Sidney tries to focus Barrett with a few pints at one of his favourite pubs. As an agent, his job is to think ahead, and he knows they need his foresight more than ever. People have been trying to find out who Russell Niles is since the publication of his first book.
A few angry journalists bent on revenge after being snubbed for interviews even tried to claim that Russell Niles was actually a famous athlete that hides behind a pseudonym because no one would take the writing seriously otherwise, but as the copies pushed into bestseller numbers, the rumours faded under the power of success. For a while, it was common to read tabloid articles about Russell Niles sightings around the world. One picture of a beer-bellied man with a sunburn and a panama hat covering most of his eyes had the caption: RUSSELL NILES SPOTTED ON TOBAGO BEACH. Another photo of a dashing young man at a London pub had the caption: FAMOUS AUTHOR REVEALS HE’S JUST AN UNDERGRAD. But Barrett’s personal favourite is a picture of an elderly East Indian man with a caption that claims that he uses the pseudonym Russell Niles so that his ideas will be accepted by North Americans.
