“It isn’t real,” Whitlock uttered.
“Please, let’s avoid that cliché. It’s real, and I’ll use it if I have to.” Amy and Whitlock stared at me.
“Get on your fucking fascist knees,” I commanded both of them.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
My nose was bleeding. Many little things were shattered and in pain. I ached as I walked. I was penniless, title-less. And things made little sense.
“How did you get Ngm to participate?” I asked, bewildered.
“People will do anything for the right sum of money,” Whitlock replied.
“That’s not true. It’s not what you think,” Amy cried out.
“If you hurt me, I’ll have you killed,” Whitlock swore.
“Then I better kill you.”
“If you kill me, there are people who have instructions to torture you for the rest of your natural life.”
“I have nothing,” I replied. “I had it all, then lost it in a matter of minutes. My life matters little.”
“Let it all end here,” Amy appealed. “Let us leave with the money, and you’ll never see us again.”
“I plan to kill him, and rape and kill you,” I revealed, and added as an afterthought, “Maybe I should rape him, too. Then I’ll leave you alone and never see you again.”
“All right, just listen,” Whitlock said, rising to his feet.
“STAY DOWN!” I screamed. He fell nervously to all fours and talked out of the side of his mouth. I walked over and put the nose of the pistol to the back of his skull. Leisurely, I cocked the trigger. “Pray!”
“Oh my God!” Whitlock started weeping. I saw that I was standing in a puddle of piss; the man had urinated on the floor. The man was worth in excess of a billion, and I had him on the floor in his own urine. Holding the power to end his life in my hand, I felt good. But I couldn’t murder him. It wasn’t a question of morality (killing certain people is moral), but I wasn’t prepared to end my life there. As poor as I was and as rich as he was, I still wasn’t prepared to make that trade. (Besides, at that moment I remembered that the gun didn’t work.)
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at him. He rose, thanked me, and scrambled out the door, curiously mumbling, “Keep the tramp.”
“Out! It’s all over now,” I said to the tramp.
“Let me just explain what happened here,” she replied nervously.
“I killed my father and raped my mother. Spare me the bullshit. Just leave.”
“Fine, neither of us have anything to gain or lose. I just want you to know we did fuck that night. You were supposed to fuck the body double, but…”
“Bullshit.”
“Whitlock planned all this long ago. He wanted to drag you along much further. He wanted to get deep inside your head. He had a screenplay writer working on this. Planting clues and stuff. He wanted to string you along for years.”
“Bullshit.”
“What he didn’t anticipate was that he’d fall in love with me, and even more, he didn’t anticipate that I’d fall for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit. But all that despair he went through for me, that was real. And that night you and I fucked, that was real.”
“More bullshit.”
Without a word she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled down the upper part of her right bra cup. There it was, my rodent-tooth brand, the love-hickey I implanted in a passionate frenzy.
“Do you want me to tell you what else you did to me? Do you want me to tell you why you repulsed me and why I’ll never be interested in you anymore?”
“Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to…”
“I liked you. I fell for you. And you took advantage of me.”
“I didn’t meant to, I just thought humiliation and pain were necessary parts of truly great lovemaking,” I replied, slowly seduced into her crap.
“Bullshit,” she replied. “Anyway, that body double told him that you fucked me instead, and he went nuts. That’s when he paid to get me back. Then when he ransacked your place and couldn’t find the cash, he realized he had to pull the plug on this early. He was planning to continue this delusional torture for years.”
“He’s worth billions!”
“He’s worth millions, not billions. He lost a lot by the end of the ’80s. Hell, he can’t afford to just throw away a million. Besides, the rich are misers. Didn’t you see his face when you threw his two hundred bucks out the window? He was prepared to jump out after it.”
“How did he get to Veronica?”
“He didn’t. She just got sick of you.”
“How about Mr. Ngm?” He couldn’t have gotten to him.
“He half-bribed and half-extorted him. Don’t be hard on that poor guy. He was very worried about you. Whitlock really worked on him. He made him all these promises: he’d free your transcripts, not have you arrested for larceny, and so on.”
“You better leave,” I replied. “I can’t bear hearing any more of this.” When Amy started to leave, I spotted the briefcase of cash. “Hey, take that. He’s just going to send his thugs to get it. You might as well give it to him.”
Amy picked up the briefcase and was about to walk out the door when she stopped and put it down. Taking out her checkbook, she scribbled something. She handed me a check for ten thousand dollars.
“What’s this?”
“That is some of what I made on this assignment. You have my work number, you can call me if you have any further problem with Whitlock.”
“What are you, a private detective or something?”
“Hell no. In fact, you picked me on this one. You picked everything.”
“I picked what?!”
“When Whitlock saw you had a crush on me, he brought me in on this. Then he developed a crush on me, then I went for you, but now I’m back with him.”
“More bullshit.”
“We weren’t supposed to screw. That’s why you became blind and I was mute, but things don’t always turn out as they’re supposed to, do they? Anyway, you picked everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“All the bullshit that this was built on was bullshit we heard you say. Bullshit that we knew you’d have a weakness for.”
“What bullshit do I have a weakness for?”
“Like the tendency to believe in complex and ridiculous conspiracies. Also, your belief that beneath all the iconoclastic garnish, you are a chosen son, waiting for some powerful person to pull you out of your rut in life. Do something with yourself. No one’s going to rescue you but you.”
Without reply, I saw the only woman I ever loved take the briefcase, which held the only thing I ever loved, and head downstairs to join the only person and thing I ever truly hated.
For a long time, I sat amongst the ruined and renovated, and felt an incredible sense of loss. So I really did make it with her; that was small consolation to losing possession of the world.
Suddenly I heard someone scrambling up the stairs. I feared the worst—Whitlock or one of his infernal agents coming to extract final revenge. With broken-gun in hand, I ducked behind the door. Mr. Ngm entered.
“Mr. Ngm, freeze!” I said, still regarding him more as an enemy than a friend. Mr. Ngm ignored my command and grabbed me, giving me an angry shake.
“Are you insane!” he screamed.
“Fuck you!” I punched him in the face. He kicked and punched, and I kicked and punched back.
“You’re an inscrutable idiot!” he yelled.
“You’re a fucking cold-hearted reptile!” And on the insults flew, back and forth, as blows were exchanged.
When we were both exhausted, we each crawled away, like two fought-out alley cats just sitting, panting on the floor.
“How did you meet a madman like that?” Ngm finally asked.
“At least he wasn’t dead inside like you.”
“Look, I gave what I had.”
“How the fuck could you do that? How could you play along with him?” We both went to the kitchen sink and washed and bandaged ourselves among the dirty dishes.
“This Whitlock man approached me quite suddenly and said that my son was in deep trouble. He said you stole a large sum of money from him. He said that his attorney was pursuing a warrant for your arrest. He implied that he was going to do something terrifying to you. I tried to call you, but your phone was disconnected. Your mother was worried sick.”
“So she wasn’t dead? She didn’t get sick and wasn’t replaced?”
“Of course not! In fact, I kept trying to say things that were deliberately outlandish so you would eventually see the ridiculousness of it all and come to your senses! But you didn’t! You just kept believing that nonsense! How could you be so gullible?!”
“Everything you said was something I had doubts about.”
“That explains it,” he said.”Whitlock gave me a list of ten lies that I was to repeat and play a role in.”
“He did that?”
“We actually rehearsed it several times. He had a theatrical director, and I had an acting coach. They were unemployed, non-union actors.”
“I can’t hear this anymore. I’m getting vertigo.”
“Joe, I had no idea that you felt that way about me. I mean, I thought the whole thing was so absurd that you would never believe it. Did I really raise such a susceptible child?”
“YOU DIDN’T RAISE ME! YOU TREATED ME LIKE A GODDAMNED PLANT.”
“But I’ve treated plants very well. They’ve been the very center of my existence.”
“You weren’t a Dad! I never saw you!”
“I tried teaching you self-reliance!”
“Do I seem self-reliant? The very first memory I have was you and mom saying that you adopted me to fill a parenting urge. What the hell was I supposed to think? Who were my real parents?”
“I have the file at home.”
“You what?!”
“They were a young couple from the midwest somewhere. They were killed in an auto accident.”
“They were?!”
“You weren’t in the vehicle,” he explained.
“Why didn’t you tell me this long ago?”
“You didn’t ask. If you like, you can have the file. You can check it out.”
“I believe you.” I paused, letting it all sink in.
“Joe, what will you be doing now?” he finally asked.
“Piecing together my shattered life.”
“I didn’t know you…I had no idea you had lost your grant to graduate school. Would you like to finish your education?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Well all you had to do was tell me. You’re my only son, you know. A child’s education is his parent’s final responsibility.”
“I appreciate that.” And then I tried to explain my mindset of the moment: “After all the histories I read, I came to realize that fate picks a handful of men who guide and decide for all others. Tonight, for about twenty minutes or so, I really thought I was one of those men—Bane Whitlock. I really thought I was someone consequential, truly corrupt.”
“Yes, and so you were rich for that short time, and that’s a feeling few people can know, even under deception. It should carry some value, some wisdom.” He started walking around Amy’s half of the apartment.
“But…”
“This apartment is nice,” he called from Amy’s room, “but why did you only have it half-renovated? And how could you afford it?”
“Amy lived in there. It’s a long story.”
“Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee; you can tell me all about it.” So we went to an all-night coffee shop, and I told him the whole enchillada, about how Whitlock cut my grant and how I ended up scaring the hell out of him; how we then became best buddies and later sworn enemies. I explained how I got work as a proofreader and met the high-strung Amy, who became my psycho roommate; the court battles that ensued; the faux enhancement operations; and finally, how I actually deduced I was Whitlock’s lost son, something we both laughed at. I also told him how I first thought I had made love to Amy and then I thought I hadn’t, and then I learned I did, but I still wasn’t sure.
“A regular loverboy, aren’t you?” he joked as the sun rose, and the waiter finally brought over the check. He paid it, I left the tip, and we stepped outside. We silently, tiredly meandered south down Lexington Avenue as the city slowly awoke before us.
“I’m truly sorry, Joe,” Ngm said out of the blue.
“No big deal.”
“I don’t mean that; I mean I’m sorry for failing you as a father. The truth of the matter is, I lost faith in humans long ago. I suppose that’s the reason I turned to flora.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, searching for a quick and unsentimental departure.
“Joey, can you come over for dinner tonight?” he asked in a woebegone tone.
“I’d like to,” I replied in a devil-may-care manner. “But I really fell behind ‘cause of Whitlock and all, and I really do have to catch up on my history tonight.”
He got the message and nodded a bit, looking off. I started receding, like one of night’s shadows.
“Did you know that in 1581,” he called out, “Ivan the Terrible accidentally killed his son and spent the last of his days in severe depression.” I could see his sadness rising like steam through his grating attempts at reconciliation.
It was olive branch time: “Well, if you put it that way, Mr. Ngm, what time’s dinner?”
“I’m not the great Whitlock, but I’d be honored if you called me Dad.”
I did so and offered the man a handshake. He grabbed me and gave me a hug. For a minute I panicked, but then I hugged him back. And, for the first time ever, he kissed me on the cheek. A desperately unoccupied cabby screeched to a halt, unsummoned, compelling us to unhug. Dad smiled, I nodded, and Dad got in.
From out of the rolled-down car window in the backseat, before the cabby could zoom madly away, he pondered aloud, “Maybe all this wasn’t so bad, son.”
And poof! Dad was….
“All I asked was ‘Did you make love with her?’” interrupted the fiftyish-year-old scion I was explaining all this to some sixty years later.
“All I told you was the answer,” I replied, scanning the cherry-wood paneling that lined his private library.
“No one could remember all those tiresome details. Your senility must have embellished.” Although I was old, my memory was still Viagra-erect.
A butler had just entered and stood behind me, alongside two brutish bodyguards. The rich prick, who resembled someone I couldn’t place, waved him forward. The servant handed him an envelope.
“What is that?” I asked.
As the rich prick read its contents, he enlightened, “The only reason I let you ramble on like that was to hold you here for the results of your blood test.”