Chapter One: The New Introduction

Chapter Two: The Mailroom

Chapter Three: The Offer

Chapter Four: The Reply

Chapter Five: The Lunch

Chapter Six: The Assistant

Chapter Seven: The Particle Zoo

Chapter Eight: The Seduction

Chapter Nine: The Night Before

Chapter Ten: The Decision

Chapter Eleven: The Clowns (Part One)

Chapter Eleven: The Clowns (Part Two)

Chapter Twelve: The Confrontation

Chapter Thirteen: The Pigeons (Part One)

Chapter Thirteen: The Pigeons (Part Two)

Chapter Fourteen: The Hitman (Part One)

Chapter Fourteen: The Hitman (Part Two)

Chapter Fifteen: The Meeting

Chapter Sixteen: The Pancakes

Chapter Seventeen: The Plan

Chapter Eighteen: The Bowling Alley

Chapter Nineteen: The Seduction Redux (Part One)

Chapter Nineteen: The Seduction Redux (Part Two)

Chapter Twenty: The Maxwells

Chapter Twenty-One: The Apartment (Part One)

Chapter Twenty-One: The Apartment (Part Two)

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Job

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Trade

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Setup

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Mansion

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Foyer

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Deal

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The End

But Mike was a perfectionist so he just couldn’t stand God’s plan. He was a tea pot with a low boiling point, or maybe that meant he was a small tea pot, whatever the comparison should be it didn’t take much for the stream of curses to begin flowing from Mike’s mouth. If Anderton received the mail for Anderson, or if he returned to the mailroom with an extra stack still in the outgoing bin of his cart because he had accidentally passed by a row of cubicles on the 57^th floor, the curses would flow with proficiency and a brutal kind of elegance. His vocabulary of curses was so impressive it made me blush, and if I wrote down even half of what he said right now I would be arrested. (I chalked this all up to the famous Irish temper Mike obviously inherited from the Shaughnessy side of his family.)

At lunchtime, instead of being invited upstairs to the magically reappearing corporate dining room, the mountain came to me, trailed by VP’s. As they approached the mailroom, all of us raised our heads like impala in a particularly dangerous game reserve. We could hear Humphrey and his court laughing, boasting, bragging, laughing, selling; a prep school lacrosse team roving down the hallway ready to inflict themselves on the freshmen in the locker room.

Humphrey noticed Mike first. This wasn’t an accident because Mike had strategically positioned himself near the doorway as soon as Humphrey and his five groupies could be heard.

“Mike!” Humphrey said as the chorus of 5 repeated the word “Mike” excitedly in the background. Even though Mike was the first to hear Humphrey and his group in the hallway and even though he used this to his advantage by making sure he would be the first face Humphrey would see when he walked into the mailroom, Mike had made the mistake of looking down at the mail he was sorting in the minute or so timespan between first noise and contact. In looking down at the mail he noticed he had accidentally filed the mail for Jan Illith in the J’s instead of the I’s, so he was in mid-curse when Humphrey finally came around the corner.

Humphrey slapped Mike on the back as the “unt” of Mike’s last curse escaped from his mouth.

“How’s it going?” Humphrey asked, and he actually looked like he was curious about Mike’s week in the mailroom instead of asking to make a show of kindness and concern for the benefit of the other mailroom employees who stood around watching this display unsure if they should be watching or instead working harder than usual to show the CEO of the company they shouldn’t be fired. (This look of interest was one of Humphrey’s many talents, he wasn’t actually curious, he was just good at faking curiosity.)

As Humphrey’s hand released from Mike’s back and the lingering reverberations of his last curse died away, Mike’s body and face instantly transformed like a superhero changing from their regular nondescript alter ego to their caped form. It’s a shame he didn’t wear glasses (Mike had had Lasik surgery two years earlier around the time of the Variety profile) to take off to highlight the transformation. First, he stood up rigid and alert, not in the impala way, but in the predator in a pack taking orders from the alpha male way, the sweat disappeared from his forehead and the teapot steam stopped whistling from his ears. He was Calm Mike, Obedient Mike, Impressive Mike. I was all the more impressed with Impressive Mike because this is a transformation I’ve never quite been able to pull off myself in the face of a superior.

Mike began to talk in clipped tones that reminded me of an old teletype machine, giving Humphrey a more detailed report than I knew anyone could ever give about sorting and delivering the mail. After he was done with his brusk yet informative two-minute report, I wanted to promote him back to his old job. But Humphrey was used to these kinds of reports, so he seemed less impressed with Impressive Mike, or at least nonplussed (I may have used that last word incorrectly but it feels like it’s the way it should be used).

Humphrey nodded a few times as Mike reported his news, he took in the information, appearing to deliberate on every word while still being able to furtively make eyes at me. With a second slap of the back to let Mike know it was time to return to the sorting and delivering of mail, Humphrey and his rat pack roved through the room to my desk where I was still seated with a copy of Elle magazine in my hands that featured a profile (and demurely lewd photos) of an appealing actress I had a crush on at the time. (And was in the process of promoting a new film from Landmark Studios she was starring in.) Humphrey noticed the cover of the magazine and the naked actress whose sexual organs were obscured by a strategically placed swimming pool and gave an “I fucked her” smile and then once again made eyes at me. (To be fair to the 22 year-old innocent-seeming, despite nudity alluding magazine pictorials and years as an actress in Hollywood, actress, I don’t think Humphrey fucked her in the carnal, literal sense of the word, but I have no doubt that he did fuck her in at least one, if not more, of the other meanings of the term.)

 Humphrey had come down to the mailroom for the first time in his decade long reign as Chairman and CEO of Landmark to take me out to lunch. I was somewhat disappointed by this because the French-Canadian in white tails had told me the day before that one of the entrees was going to be Chicken Kiev the next day, which unlike the other versions of fish or chicken or beef and potatoes I had not only heard of before, but absolutely love. However, I had to give up my Chicken Kiev dreams to go out with Humphrey to the newest trendiest restaurant in Los Angeles. Humphrey said the food wasn’t that good, but there would be a lot of famous people and other Hollywood executives and agents in attendance and he could do business and I could get a taste of glamour and power.

We rode to the restaurant, which was more Century City than Beverly Hills, in Humphrey’s limousine, the two of us in the back alone and the five VPs crowded in the front seat next to the chauffeur. I must say, even though the last time I had ridden in the back of a limousine was the night of my senior prom when my date and I shared a limo with four other couples so I shouldn’t take such things for granted, I was rather unimpressed with Humphrey’s limousine. It was just a long long black car. There was no hot tub, no television, not even a minibar in the back. If Humphrey wanted to seal the deal he was going to have to do better.

We arrived at the restaurant and the five clowns tumbled out of the front passenger’s seat and Humphrey exited from the back before me making sure to hold the door open. (Who says chivalry is dead.) The restaurant was called Particle Zoo, which made me a little desperate because I wanted to put a “The” in front of the name and referred to it as “The Particle Zoo” all throughout my first meal there and ever since. (At least until the preceding sentence.)

The Particle Zoo was founded by Ray Davies (not the one from The Kinks), a former physicist at UC-Irvine who had spent 20 middling years on the faculty there before deciding the real money was on Wall St., and then moving to New York to work at a hedge fund in the early 90s. He made his first million at that hedge fund (that was named for some biblical character I can’t remember, which may or may not make it the same hedge fund that Mike worked at) during the tech bubble of the late 90s by exactly matching the rate of return of the Dow Jones Index. Luckily for Ray, he got bored before the bubble burst and left for Silicon Valley and began to play around with electronic gadgets.

This is when he realized the real money wasn’t on Wall St. but in the tech world and he came up with one of most popular games for the new breed of cell phones emerging in the new millennium. The game itself was not that fun or impressive on a technological or creative scale, it was more the equivalent of pong in its rudimentary design, form, element of skill involved, etc.., but Ray was smart enough to get it included on all of the new Blueberry phones that were so popular from noon on December 12, 2001 to 9:51 a.m. on August 21, 2003.

The game itself was really a simplistic digital representation of the motor skills and brain development test where toddlers (and various of the more intelligent ape species) are asked to put the correctly shaped object (star, rectangle, square, circle) into the correctly shaped hole, but it was a great time waster and Ray had created an intensely complex scoring system that no one (not even he) could understand, so it caught on helping to propel Blueberry sales into the stratosphere for the time period given above, which made Ray an eight-digit millionaire who pretended he was really a nine-digit millionaire. By the time of our lunch at The Particle Zoo in the year of 2004, Ray’s game was so passé it was no longer included on most phones (even the now limited number of Blueberry phones that were still being put out by the bankrupted parent company of Blueberry, Testosterone Inc.) and no one who actually frequented his restaurant would be caught dead playing it or talking about it or referring to it; a collective amnesia descended upon Ray Davies and his “little game history” and now he was a restaurateur who must have made his money in “physics or something.”

Ray greeted us right after we had been seated at Humphrey’s usual table near the back of the nucleus of the atomically shaped dining room (the VPs were exiled to the outer spaces where electrons roamed). Ray and Dave literally rubbed elbows as I ordered my drink, a French Martini. I had never had a French Martini before and this seemed like the time and place to do it. I may have been subconsciously influenced since Ray and Dave were talking about the previous year’s Cannes Film Festival as I looked at the quark-shaped drinks menu.

“Our food products division has come up with an edible plastic that can solve the world’s hunger problems. It’s cheap, it’s tasty, did I say it’s cheap, good profit margins.”

In the half-minute it took me to say the words “French martini” to the waiter, they had moved from last year’s Cannes Film Festival to a wannabe film mogul’s yacht at last year’s Cannes Film Festival to a delightful buffet table on the wannabe film mogul’s yacht at last year’s Cannes Film Festival to food in general, which gave Humphrey a chance to plug one of Landmark’s potential future products. “The only problem is the damn thing causes mice to go infertile.”

“Infertile?”

“The edible plastic, which is marvelous, it can take on the taste of any food, creme brulee, prime rib, carrots, anything, apparently it does something or may do something to the sperm of the mice, that’s what the food scientists say, so when we introduce it into a population of mice that population stops reproducing completely and dies off. But it’s not a major problem. I’m sure it can be fixed.”

“Interesting.” It wasn’t apparent if Ray actually thought this was interesting or if he was humoring David Humphrey because he had noticed an extraordinarily famous actor who was even more extraordinarily temperamental than the extraordinariness of his fame. The actor had just walked in with a very beautiful heavily-tattooed woman and been seated at a neutron 15 yards away.

“I say it’s a small price to pay to solve the world’s hunger problems.”

Ray nodded a distracted nod and said, “interesting,” again having definitely mentally moved on to the famous actor.

I would physically describe Ray Davies to you but he left our table to give encouraging words to the temperamental actor and his gorgeous mate before I noticed what he looked like. He existed more as a fast-moving cloud formation I never bothered to notice than as an actual person to me. This may be because I was distracted by all of the sumptuous people watching as the nucleus of the atom was filled with 5 of the 13 most famous people on the planet (according to me), 4 of the 12 most powerful people on the planet (according to Forbes), and roughly 21 of the 50 most beautiful people on the planet (according to People Magazine).

Much to my disappointment my pool-covered current crush of an actress was not one of these people, but her objectively more attractive yet vaguely sluttier rival that she pretended to be friends with but really hated was there with her new boyfriend, who professionally made music of some kind. (I’m not familiar with his genre of music, but just pretend that whatever music is currently the coolest, most talked about, downloaded and sampled form of music at the time you are reading this is the type he made and you’ll get the idea.)

First French Martini drained and second one recently arrived, I let Humphrey order food for me because I didn’t see Chicken Kiev on the menu. After the food arrived and as we continued to eat or more accurately drink because I don’t think either of us liked the food (although Humphrey repeatedly insisted it was because he was watching his weight because he was on a new diet named after one of the geologic time periods when dinosaurs roamed), Humphrey received a steady stream of people from the lists I had named earlier. He made short work of most of them, a quick in-joke, or talk of the day’s market or some new film opening and the famous and/or powerful person would leave and Humphrey would return his attention to his date, me. He knew the power this would have over me of blithely dismissing the type of people that are constantly fawned over, autograph sought and sucked up to. He knew how to show off his influence and friends while still keeping the focus on the object of his affection. I no longer felt like sexual prey, now I was being seduced by a master seducer: Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, George Clooney.

Speaking of such stars, [redacted by publisher] stopped by our table after I finished my third French Martini. [redacted by publisher] was by his side and they were both dressed in tuxedoes, which I thought a little excessive for an early Friday afternoon. Humphrey invited them to sit as I ordered my fourth French Martini. (Even Humphrey had a limit to the amount of sheer luminescent star power he could resist.) The seduction was now a Menage a Quatre.

“I didn’t know you guys were friends in real life,” I said to [redacted] and [redacted], slightly buzzed, now holding my fourth French Martini. They gave each other a knowing look before politely saying they were and then quickly calling the waitress over.

Humphrey leaned in to me while [redacted] and [redacted] were occupied with their drink orders and whispered into my ear. As he leaned and whispered my body instinctively shuddered expecting sweet nothings to be said, but instead of sweet nothings Humphrey was giving me discreet information. “They’re actually closer than friends.”

“Closer than friends?” The words bounced through my alcohol-saturated skull not connecting with the parts of my brain that are able to turn abstract hints into concrete thought. If Humphrey had anything it was an Einsteinian EQ and he could tell I still wasn’t getting it. “They’re, y’know, together.”

“Like?”

“Like, y’know, together.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

We had reverted to junior high speak.

“Aren’t they both in relationships? I mean, he’s dating…. and he’s with…”

“It’s for their careers. You know how it is.” I think Humphrey was a little embarrassed by my naivete.

“I honestly had no idea.”

“They’re good actors.”

“Yeah, they are.”

I think [redacted] caught the last part of our conversation and blushed a little at the awkwardness but [redacted] saved us as he told a story from one of his last location shoots that involved an oil painting, a labrador retriever and 5 members of a remote Arctic tribe who were extras in the cast and had been accidentally set adrift on an iceberg. This made me think of the 5 VPs as they floated electron-like on the edge of the atom and it wasn’t long before David and I had left [redacted] and [redacted] and joined up with the VPs to leave the restaurant. This was probably for the best because as the conversation and alcohol flowed over the time of our extra-long lunch hour, [redacted] and [redacted] were getting a little handsy with each other and David and I figured they might want to be alone.

*

The French Martinis fought the sunlight as best they could when we stepped outside to the valet stand, but I began to sober up anyway as Humphrey was talking animatedly about something and the VPs were looking on jealously huddling with each for warmth because they weren’t getting any heat from Humphrey.

The fucking valets are taking forever, I thought to myself in my sobering up in the afternoon extremely irritated state as a hangover was in the process of instantly blooming above my right eyebrow. I stared into the sun in an attempt to reclaim my buzz. Not the best of ideas, I know, and now my pupils hurt in addition to my forehead and I heard the words “Malibu place” coming from somewhere in front of me, probably Humphrey, and I desperately desperately desperately wanted a cigarette.

“What?”

“You should come by my Malibu place this weekend. We’ll have dinner by the ocean.”

“That sounds nice,” I squinted, thinking about laying down and resting on the Malibu beach in my current state.

I wanted to shout at the unemployed actor who was valeting our limo, the power of the contact high from our lunch and the angry throbbing of my temples, both going to my head, as I tried not to think of the absurdity of the need to valet a chauffeur driven automobile. (The chauffeur was standing next to Humphrey and myself and the 5 VPs waiting for the valet like everyone else.)

Humphrey must have noticed the annoyed look on my face because he shifted into concern mode.

“Is there anything wrong? You look tense.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth.

“No. You look tense. Take the rest of the day off. Mike can handle the mail.”

Humphrey reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a laminated card. “Here’s the address of my masseuse, go see her this afternoon. I’ll have Polly let her know you’re coming.”

“No, seriously, I’m fine,” my teeth clenched harder, “I don’t need a…”

“I insist.”

The card somehow ended up in my hand like a magic trick where the magician puts strange coins, playing cards, little bunnies into your pockets without you realizing.

The limo showed up and the chauffeur and the gang of five piled in the front and Humphrey moved towards the back. “I’ll have them send the other car for you.” Humphrey said to me as he sat down and the valet closed the door for him. Humphrey methodically lowered the tinted automatic window the way old rich guys do in films about oil tycoons and Wall Street titans and looked up at me as I stood next to the hustling valets on the sidewalk outside of (The) Particle Zoo.

“You need to relax and enjoy life.” Humphrey told me and I nodded or something, I don’t know, it was all a French Martini blur. “Just wait, a car will be here in less than 2 minutes,” was the last thing he said before the glare of the tinted back window of his limousine got into my eyes, reminding me of my growing soon to be cantaloupe-sized headache.

I didn’t have to wait 2 minutes, the other car, a Town Car not a limousine, pulled up to the valet stand in less than 90 seconds and a chauffeur, a mild-mannered sort named Pete, ambled out and opened the back door for me.

“Can I sit in front?”

“Whatever you want,” Pete said and ambled back around to the driver’s seat as I got in the passenger’s side.

I gave him Humphrey’s laminated card because it had the address on it. Pete looked at it, and then looked at me and smiled and handed it back to me. “I know where this is.”

We were off to an anonymous office building one block off a major thoroughfare in West L.A. that was filled with doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, chiropractor’s offices and an office for M. Rose situated on the top floor, the 4^th floor.

Pete dropped me off at the front steps, telling me he would be back in a half an hour but I convinced him his services were no longer needed for the day and I could get back to the Landmark building myself. This was important because I felt strongly that behind his placid dopey Dodger-loving demeanor, Pete was silently judging my trip to the “masseuse” and I didn’t need someone waiting for me and morally evaluating me and giving me a deadline I needed to finish by as I tried to relax by having a stranger rub their hands all over my body because the mere fact I was aware of Pete and his waiting Town Car would suck all of the relaxation out of my body like a jet turbine sucking a pigeon into its engine. Normally I wouldn’t have said anything out of a misplaced sense of politeness and just toughed it out and not enjoyed my massage at all, but my lingering ¼ buzz ¾ soberness and 4/4 hangover didn’t have time for politeness so Pete would have to be sacrificed.

I made my way up the 1970s era elevator to the 4^th floor of the 1970s era building that had never bothered to change its 1970s era yellowish brownish orangish carpet and walls. The dentists and doctors and chiropractors must have occupied the lower floors or the directory in the lobby was shamelessly out of date because all but two of the offices on the 4^th floor were empty. 401 housed an accountant by the name of Halfpenny; Steve Halfpenny, C.S.A. is what it said on the name placard affixed to the wall next to the door.

Number 402 had a more temporary thin piece of transparency someone had obviously printed out on their home computer and cut themselves using a scissors and shaky hands and then slid into the nameplate holder; M. Rose, Massage Therapist.  The doors were made of solid oak or some kind of solid dark brown wood with no windows so I wasn’t able to see inside as I buzzed the little buzzer underneath the transparency and waited. And waited.

Mr. Halfpenny, or who I can only assume was Mr. Halfpenny, emerged from behind his solid oak door with a giant plastic mug in his hand that bore the Landmark logo on the front and jauntily passed me in the hallway humming an old Lionel Richie song on his way towards a door at the end of the hallway he punched a three-button code into and I assumed was the bathroom. As I watched the closed bathroom door at the end of the hallway waiting for Mr. Halfpenny to return, there was noise and movement behind 402 and the door opened revealing a young woman in a canary yellow t-shirt (also with the Landmark logo on it) and blue fairly short shorts and white tennis shoes with short fluffy white socks sticking out of them. She was staring at me unenthusiastically. “You must be rabbit.”

“Yes,” I answered hesitantly, my brain slowly working out that she probably said Abbott instead of rabbit.

“David told me you were coming. Take off your clothes and get on the table.”

It was a small dark room with a massage table in the middle and little else. There was no way the original 1970s architects of this building designed 402 to be its own suite, it must have been annexed from a conference room or storage closet of 401 long ago.

“I’ll be back in a sec.” M. Rose said to me, as the oak door shut behind me and she went for an identical door on the other side of the massage table that probably went into another of 401’s old conference rooms or closets. I was standing and looking down at the massage table, eye’s readjusting to the darkness of the room from the fluorescentness of the hallway and heard the metallic click of the second door shutting, leaving me alone.

My buzz was now 0/5 and my hangover was 10/5 as I briefly contemplated escaping and playing hooky for the rest of the day by finding a West L.A. movie theater and passing out in the pleasant darkness of the back row of a hopefully unpopular and sparsely attended film.

There was a fluffy white towel that reminded me of M. Rose’s fluffy white socks on the massage table folded in the way they do at the finer hotels. The towel I suppose was for me and I suddenly felt bad that M. Rose had gone to so much trouble of neatly folding it and putting it on the massage table I realized I had no choice and began to undress.

I haven’t had many professional massages in my life. Most of my massages have been more of the reciprocal kind given in relationships. I’m not exactly prudish but I’m not one to walk around nude or semi-nude either. I was never a beach person, I don’t do well in the sun, I don’t tan and my physique is average I suppose which means I’ve always generally thought of it as inadequate. I’m not fat, I’m quite skinny by modern standards, but when I take off my shirt I can still detect the beginnings of a middle-aged man’s gut that one tends to see when you leave your late twenties and enter your early thirties. I definitely do not have a six-pack. Sometimes it seems every male in Los Angeles has a six-pack. At that moment as I looked at the fluffy towel thinking of fluffy socks and my naked body prone on a table that many other naked bodies (including Humphrey’s?) had laid on before, I wished I had a six-pack.

I was thinking all of this, clothes still on, still waiting for M. Rose, still desperately wanting a cigarette or at least a couple of Advil. There were dark wood cabinets (that matched the oak door) on the far side of the room and I went foraging for some medicine. I figured a masseuse is in the medical field, is kind of in the medical field, so I started opening cabinets expecting to find nothing but hoping against hope there would be something for my headache.

The first cabinet didn’t contain anything except for a few pellets that may have been mouse droppings. Time to quickly close the cabinet door without thinking about the pellets, moving on to door number 2.

Door number 2 had a stack of the fluffy white towels all folded neatly like the one on the massage table, a box of powder-free latex gloves (unopened) and some gauze. I was getting closer to actual medicine, so I was hopeful as my right hand moved to door number 3, but I heard a metal click of the opening of the back oak door that M. Rose had earlier disappeared into before my hand could reach the U-shaped handle.

“Shit.” I don’t think she heard me as the click was followed by the sound of the bottom of the door brushing over carpet. “Just a second,” I said panicked like she was opening a bathroom door on me as a I sat on the toilet. “One more minute.” The brushing stopped and then retreated and I began to throw off my clothes with abandon.

A few seconds earlier I had been worried about all of my inadequacies but now the sweet imprisonment of a deadline cleared my mental hard drive and I found myself standing naked next to a massage table clutching a fluffy white towel and thinking of the Statue of David for comfort and reassurance. There was a full length mirror at the head of the massage table and this started to bring back insecurities, so I leapt face down on the table, trying to reach behind me to strategically place the fluffy white towel on my ass (with limited success, covering only one and a half cheeks) in the way I thought it is supposed to be placed during professional massages and shouted, “I’m ready!” to the dark brown door that M. Rose was hiding behind.

I rested my chin on the edge of the massage table and watched through the mirror as she came back in wearing a different, now white, t-shirt that also had the Landmark logo on it, and carrying an open can of Diet Coke.

“My name is Melrose,” she said not looking at me and then took a sip of the Coke, setting it down on the counter near the cabinets and began doing some massage preparatory business. She opened a cabinet, I hoped she didn’t notice I had slightly disturbed the stack of fluffy white towels, and took a bottle out from behind those towels I hadn’t discovered in my earlier inspection. Something glooped into her hands and I heard rubbing. More rubbing. There was a second gloop and she turned around and met my eyes in the mirror. I smiled. She did not. She whipped the towel off my ass and went to work with her gloopy hands.

“Do you work with David?” She was doing something with my left ass cheek that was somewhere between mildly irritating like a persistent itch and downright painful like torture.

“Kind of.” We were moving up the pain scale when she decided to stop and move to the other cheek, bringing me temporary relief.

“He doesn’t usually send coworkers here, you must be special.” Now my right cheek was under interrogation.

“He wants to buy something from me.”

“Do you own a company or something?”

“No. A screenplay. He wants to buy a screenplay I wrote.” The rubbing stopped. And I heard and felt and saw hopping as Melrose made her way to the front of the massage table. What had been a terse, bored, slightly put-out young woman moments earlier was now bright-eyed and hopeful.

“Can I do a speech for you?”

“Excuse me.”

“Can I do a speech for you?” Maybe the buzz was coming back because the words didn’t make complete sense to me, I had never had anyone offer to do a speech for me before, or maybe I didn’t understand the question because a large percentage of my gray matter was still focused on the painful burning of my ass cheeks. (And the rest of my gray matter was overtaken by my near debilitating headache.)

“Aaaaah.” I opened my mouth and let air escape not even forming intelligible syllables.

“It’s from Ibsen.” Melrose offered hopefully, which didn’t help because I couldn’t think of any politicians from history with the last name Ibsen. Maybe it was the first name. Nope, still no famous politicians.

“It’s from A Doll’s House.” Oh, that Ibsen. My mental hard drive was rebooted as I now desperately tried to find the folder labeled “excuses.”

“I was kidding about the screenplay. It was a joke. I’m not really on the talent side of the company.  I work in the mailroom.” I smiled weakly. Melrose put out her bottom lip and looked like an adorable (and now sad) puppy.

“I’m sure it’s great. You can still do it if you want. It’s just there’s nothing I can do for you.” I’ve always had a soft spot for puppies. (I’m not a fucking monster. Who doesn’t like puppies?) I couldn’t stand to see that look of disappointment. I was ready to listen to her do a one woman show of Ibsen’s entire oeuvre if it would get her to cheer up, or at least return her to the terse, business-like Melrose who was torturing me a minute earlier. This whole experience had quickly turned from the awkwardness of a stranger vigorously rubbing my ass to the awkwardness of a blind date that our mothers had set up for us and I was failing at. “I want to see it. Please.” I was now begging and she looked kind of pissed off and I hadn’t even done anything wrong. (So exactly like a blind date.) Her left hand made a fist and went to her hip, her elbow at a 90 degree angle. She let out a sigh.

“So are we going to have sex or not?”

“What?”

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

“No, I’m sorry. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Humphrey, I mean David, I mean, Dave, sent me here for a massage.”

“Hah!” she laughed dramatically, a mocking false laugh one usually gives when a lover is lying to you and you both know it. Just as rapidly as we had moved to a blind date, our relationship now progressed to the breakdown of our engagement stage. I sat up on the table looking around for my towel, feeling a little exposed, hoping Melrose wouldn’t let out another dramatic laugh. I found my towel and covered myself and smiled weakly again. “I’m kind of seeing somebody right now, so…”

“David’s married and he comes here all the time.”

“I don’t think I would feel right about it?” The question mark at the end of that sentence is not a mistake because it was a question. But it was a question Melrose didn’t want to answer for me, I was going to have to answer it for myself. I could hear game show music in my head counting down the seconds as I jumped down from the table still holding on to the now slightly less fluffy white towel.     

“I should probably get back to work?” (Question mark still not a mistake.)

Our relationship now went from the angry breakup stage to the regretful sad stage. She looked at me with her puppy dog eyes again, disappointed, like she had failed at the task Humphrey had given her and he was going to scold her the next time he saw her like he scolds one of his vice-presidents after their division has a particularly bad quarter.

“Don’t you at least want a handjob?”

Next Chapter: The Seduction
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Well, I should say that Mabel still lived in the Vinegar Hills section of Brooklyn when Gil arrived in New York, but Gil’s great uncle, Daniel, no longer did because he was dead. He had been killed while serving in the line of duty the previous year. This may conjure visions of shootouts with Lucky Luciano or of trying to stop a bank robbery while in progress, but unfortunately for Daniel, or perhaps fortunately for Daniel (it probably doesn’t matter to him either way at this point), neither of those dramatic scenes were the cause of his demise. Daniel was a traffic cop by trade and while working as a traffic cop he had been run over by a brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost recently imported from England and driven by the chauffeur for some kind an Astor. (Even though no Astor was in the car because the chauffeur was late in picking up said Astor from his drinking club.)

Although the Silver Ghost was the fastest car of the time, automobiles of that age didn’t go quite as fast as they do now, especially when they were driving the streets of New York City, even when it was a chauffeur who was late in picking up his employer, so David O’Callaghan, the chauffeur (an Irish immigrant from the previous decade), was only going 20 mph when he hit Daniel O’Leary knocking him backwards onto the pavement.

The odds of dying when being hit by an automobile going only 20 mph are quite low, it is only when the mph get up to 35 or 40 mph that the odds of death become greater than the odds of survival. But David O’Callaghan, not to mention Daniel O’Leary, was quite unlucky in that it was a cold and icy December day in New York City, and despite what I said earlier Daniel didn’t fall backwards onto the pavement (partly because the streets of New York weren’t paved in the year of this incident), but onto a patch of ice fracturing his skull.

Alone for nearly a year in an empty Vinegar Hills apartment because all of her children were grown, Mabel needed company. And once she had company, she put all of her hopes into her recently arrived energetic, bright-faced and chipper-spirited great-nephew. Either because of, or perhaps in spite of, her husband’s death, Mabel wanted Gil to honor Daniel O’Leary’s memory by following him into the New York City police force. But much to Mabel’s disappointment, Gil had no interest on that side of the law. To be fair, he didn’t join one of any number of Irish-American gangs that tried to recruit him throughout his teenage years. He became a businessman instead.

A very good hardworking businessman even if he was a little amoral. Luck is a necessary mistress to any great fortune and it was lucky for Gil that his great-aunt lived in New York City because New York City of course houses Wall Street. Gil took advantage of this stroke of geographic good fortune and began working in various brokerage houses and investment firms from the age of sixteen. (When by all rights he should have been engaging in petty crime with one of the local neighborhood gangs.) By the time he was 23, Gil had made and lost more money than Daniel and Mabel O’Leary had seen in their lifetimes and by the time he was 25, some individuals insisted on calling Gil a confidence man, a trickster, a fraudster, and whatever other 1920’s terms people used, and this is what the small-to-medium sized crowd outside his office window were shouting in the weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929.

But this only mildly annoyed Gil, just as the crash itself had only mildly annoyed him because he was diversified in both portfolio and temperament and saw the economic downturn not as an economic downturn but as a way for those who were smart enough and strategically well-positioned enough to make a small fortune. And this Gil did throughout the years of the Great Depression. However, unfortunately for Gil he was Irish and Roman Catholic and these were the years before 98.5% effective birth control (and Vatican II), so a small fortune is exactly what he needed to ensure his family of 13 children (and 1 wife) lived in moderately upper middle-class comfort.

The exact middle child of Gillian (Gil had reverted to Gillian after 1931. He told all of his friends this was because he was getting in touch with his heritage and the “old country,” although many of those same friends speculated it was actually for legal reasons that are too complicated to get into here) and Beatrice Shaughnessy was a small otter-like boy who had inherited none of Gillian’s vitality and confidence, named Darby. Most everybody who met Darby put his mild-mannered to the point of not being there personality down to the fact he was the compromised and compromising middle child in such a large family with so many strong personalities.

This certainly may have been a factor in his development, however, more likely the reason Darby was nothing like Gillian was that he wasn’t actually his biological child, but instead the product of one of Beatrice’s many affairs while her husband was away working many hours making a lot of money and generally ignoring his family. (The 3^rd, 4^th, 9^th and 13^th children of the Shaughnessy clan were also products of Beatrice’s affairs, although none of them as obviously different in temperament from their supposed father as Darby.)

Darby didn’t stay in New York City or New York state. And Darby did not go into the family business like all of his older brothers. Instead, Darby moved to western Massachusetts to become a librarian at a small liberal arts university. It was at this university and at this library he fell in love with his vivacious and warm assistant librarian, Constance. And it was in western Massachusetts where Constance and Darby would raise their only son, Michael.

Michael Shaughnessy was a natural-born salesman. This was always attributed to the genes passed on from his larger-than-life grandfather and not from those passed on from his smaller than life father (these things skip a generation, y’know). However, Michael’s strong personality and overabundant energy were not inherited from the man he knew as his grandfather not only because he wasn’t related biologically to his grandfather because of Darby’s hidden illegitimacy, but also because he wasn’t biologically related to Darby, either. Although, unlike the perennially distracted by business and unaware of the internal family goings on Gillian, Darby was perfectly aware that Michael wasn’t his son because Michael was already a very small child when Darby married the warm and vivacious Constance after the real father, some good-looking boy named Johnson, ran away and joined the army upon hearing the news of Constance’s pregnancy.

Michael grew up unaware of all of this previous family drama and perhaps because he never had any brothers or sisters he never felt the urge to delve into his family history where he would have found out such things as the slight discrepancy in dates between his birth certificate and his parent’s marriage certificate. A more inquisitive and philosophical sort like his father Darby would also have picked up on at least one of any number of hints throughout his childhood of his real paternity, but Michael was truly his grandfather’s grandson and didn’t have time for such things because he was going places.

He was the star running back and captain of his high school football team and the prom king and valedictorian and voted most likely to succeed. All of the signifiers of a young man who is not only going places but will end up in places. And Michael ended up at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he was still on his inevitable path to one day become President of the United States. Unfortunately, during Michael’s sophomore year, he found out he wasn’t going to become President, not because of the insurmountable odds against any one individual obtaining the highest office in the land but because he found out he would rather make money instead.

Michael kept to his original plan of going to Harvard Law School, and this was quickly augmented with a degree from Harvard Business School, soon Michael was working on Wall Street like his grandfather once had for a hedge fund that was named for some sort of biblical character out of the Old Testament. Michael stayed at this hedge fund for several years, making the money he had always dreamed of making but not satisfied with the imprint he was making on the nation at large (after all, he had given up the Presidency for this), so he moved to Los Angeles and began to work in the marketing division of Landmark Communications.

The marketing division was full of many competent workers who were going places just like Michael was, but Michael was going there faster and he was quickly promoted up the corporate ladder and named Vice President of Marketing by the time he was 40. After several years he moved to take over the struggling Speculative Products Division, which he quickly turned around much to the satisfaction of his boss, David Humphrey. He was so successful as the head of the Speculative Products Division that Daily Variety named him an Executive to Watch and then the next year did a profile on him, trumpeting him as a possible candidate to run one of Landmark’s smaller competitors.

Michael didn’t get that job, but there was still time. David Humphrey knew this and Michael Shaughnessy knew this, so David Humphrey moved Michael once again, now to head the Customer Profiling Division and hopefully turn that around as well. This would all be head-spinning for someone who hadn’t expected to be the most powerful man in the world by the time they were 45, but Michael still thought he had done quite well for himself; a house in Pacific Palisades, a beautiful five to ten years younger former attorney wife with two beautiful private schooled children who wanted for nothing, not even affection, like Michael’s father was left wanting for affection from his successful father. Michael had made quite a success of himself and he was still going places as he hit his late forties. And he was sure he was going to end up in those places by his early 50s.

And now he was my assistant in the mailroom.

*

“Where would you like me to begin, Mr. Abbott?”

“I really don’t need any help. Mr. Humphrey…”

“Dave.”

“What?”

“He wanted me to make sure you call him Dave, not Mr. Humphrey. Where should I begin?”

What was I to do, insist that I sort the mail, deliver the mail, pick up the mail, when I had such a capable man offering to help. So I sat back down at my desk, yeah, I had a desk now, too. It used to be Richard’s desk, but he had been downgraded to a small folding table and folding chair and now I had his desk.

I watched Mike and my coworkers for the rest of the day with my feet up on Richard’s, now my, desk. (As important as it is to put one’s feet on top of the desk to signify nonchalant power, it becomes unbearably uncomfortable after only 15 minutes as the flow of blood to your feet  is cut off and soon they are tingling and you have to stomp them on the floor repeatedly to bring them back to life, which kind of destroys the whole nonchalant power thing that putting your feet up on the desk was supposed to give off in the first place, so when I say I watched Mike and my coworkers sort, dissect, inspect and deliver the mail all day with my feet on the desk I’m speaking metaphorically, no, figuratively, no metaphorically, whatever, just picture me sitting there relaxed watching them slave away with my feet up.)

Every day at 11:58 exactly, Humphrey’s minion would come down to escort me up to the 179^th floor to have some version of fish and potatoes and every night Debi and I would continue our affair in the honeymoon suite of the Park Royale Hotel. Humphrey had put me up there for the rest of the week. I assume he put me in the honeymoon suite not because he knew about Debi and me, but because it was the best suite in the hotel, I mean, he couldn’t have known about our affair, could he? Actually, he absolutely could have known about our affair, but the thought is too horrifying to contemplate. Let’s move on.

Anyway, Debi and I would lounge around the suite (which was bigger than the glass coffee table that was bigger than the couch that was bigger than my apartment, although you probably already assumed that since it’s the honeymoon suite at the Park Royale Hotel) in plush complimentary robes eating Landmark financed room service and watching Landmark subsidized movies on the SUV-sized television that was bigger than my apartment (but smaller than the coffee table that was bigger than the couch that was bigger than my apartment). Debi’s morning sickness had passed so she wasn’t throwing up after the sex anymore, which was another plus, so we could lie in bed afterwards like 2 normal lovers talking about normal lover things.

“I think you should name him after me.” Debi had just found out it was going to be a boy.

“I don’t think Clark would like that.”

“How would he know? Benjamin’s a perfectly lovely name. There’ve been many impressive Benjamins throughout history: Ben Franklin…”

“And?”

The momentum of my thought had surprisingly slowed before it ever really started. Benjamin is a very common name so there had to be many famous Benjamins, it would only logically follow, every common name has a lot of famous historical figures attached to it, but as I laid there my head resting against Debi’s belly, I couldn’t think of a single other important Benjamin in the history of humankind besides Benjamin Franklin. Time passed. Debi seemed to enjoy my flummoxed state of mental paralysis. I’m a talker after sex, so usually I would regal her with elaborate theories or plans or ideas or just talk about random things like how she should name her kid after me, but now that I was trying to think of famous Benjamins, any famous Benjamins, a prolonged rare aftersex silence descended upon us like a warm soft down pillow smothering my thoughts. She continued to let the silence linger as I mentally searched through the past and the present trying to come up with anybody.

“I think there was a president named Benjamin once.”

“Who?”

“He was related to the one who died in office after 100 days.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s the guy on Law & Order.”

“Yes.

“The one that dated Julia Roberts.”

“I know who you’re talking about.”

“I think that might be it.”

“That’s quite a list. I’m not persuaded.”

“Come on, it’s a nice name. I have the name and I’m the most impressive one. I’m going to be famous.”

“You’re not going to be famous, Ben.”

“Humphrey wants to make me famous.”

“He wants to buy something from you. He’s a businessman. You have something he wants. He’s going to use different methods to try to get it from you. If he can get it by flattering you, he will flatter you. If he has to use other methods, he will do that. You don’t know much about business, do you, Ben?”

“I know enough,” I said defiantly and quickly changed the subject back to the important topic at hand. “I like the sound of Benjamin Jr.”

“Aaaaah!”

That shriek was me. Her stomach had punched me.

“He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”

“Yes?” I lied. She took my hand and placed it on her stomach and I felt young Benjamin as he thrashed about inside of her. I gazed at her naked belly marveling at the miracle of life and wondering what the future would hold for the young child.

Okay, that’s not true. I wasn’t marveling at the miracle of the alien lifeform gestating inside my lover and I wasn’t thinking about the future this boy would face when he was pushed out into the world. I was thinking of my future. Not my future with Debi, my future with Humphrey. It was Thursday night. One more day and my week of freedom would be over. Our courtship was entering its final delicate stages. I would have to decide if I was going to give myself to Humphrey or not.

When this whole thing started my plan was to take advantage of his generosity for a week and then take the deal. It was the intelligent and sensible thing to do. But young Benjamin seemed to be trying to tell me something in his kicks. His vigorous knocking against a world that had encaged him communicated to me there might be a better path. Or maybe I was just overthinking things again. I hate when I do that.

Next Chapter: (The) Particle Zoo
Previous Chapter: Chapter Five
Table of Contents

I was sorting the mail the next day desperately preparing for my pre-lunchtime mail run when a boy called my name. He had red rosy cheeks and was dressed in an outrageously expensive suit from Lora Piana. He must be one of Humphrey’s new hires, I thought to myself. The new hires, the ones straight from business school, always dressed in the most obscenely ostentatiously expensive suits. The veterans like Humphrey dressed in obscenely normally expensive suits. The difference in obscenity between the two displays was like the difference between the obscenity of the old softcore sex films they used to show on Cinemax late at night and the hardest of hardcore European depravity pornography. You were only mildly embarrassed by one, the other reminded you in explicit detail of man’s most basic urge to dominate.

“Could you please come with me?” The boy with the MBA asked.

“No?” I still had a lot of mail to get through if I wanted to be able to go to lunch on time.

“Mr. Humphrey requests your presence for lunch.”

“I’ll have to check with my boss,” I said rudely.

“I’ve already told him.” The boy said more rudely. “Come with me.”

I apparently didn’t have a choice, so I followed the young man to the elevators. He had a special key card I hadn’t seen before. He pressed it to the pad in the elevator and we lifted up past the 177th floor, past the 178th floor, to the 179th floor, which until that moment I didn’t know existed. I’m pretty sure if you count the floors of the Landmark Building from the outside you will only count 178 floors, so I don’t know where the 179th floor came from, maybe they had it flown in each day, but no matter how it got there I was now about to have lunch on it.

The elevator doors opened and we were greeted by a maitre d’ who was behind a stand and looking down at a reservation list. His head raised to greet us in the snobbishly polite way of maître d’s the world over, hedging his bets because he didn’t know who we were and what guests we would be dining with. Once the boy said Humphrey’s name, the snobbish part of the snobbish politeness went away and it was just politeness as he showed us to the dining room and Humphrey’s table.

Humphrey’s table was located along the windows in the back. He was looking pensively at the Los Angeles skyline when we found him. I think he was posing again. There was a team of five executives in the appropriately normally obscenely expensive suits sitting at a table next to him in silence. It looked like they wanted to talk, that they didn’t want to sit in silence and look expectantly at Humphrey as he looked pensively out the window, but I think they were under orders to stay silent, or maybe it was like the rule for those of us in the mailroom, that they could only speak when spoken to first. They were waiting for Humphrey to speak so they could laugh at his jokes or say repeated ‘yes’s’ as they nodded along in agreement, but Humphrey wasn’t going to speak to them during this lunch, he would only have eyes for me.

He saw me as I disengaged from my two chaperones and bounced up from his seat and came charging over. “I thought you’d like lunch in the executive dining room today. It’s the best restaurant in the city.” He slapped me on the back again. Another filling came loose. “I hired the chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. He’s going to have his own reality show on our network next year. That was part of the deal. But it’s worth it. It’s definitely worth it. Who knows? Maybe the show will be good, too.” Humphrey smiled winsomely.

I could feel the eyes of the 5 VPs on me as we sat down at Humphrey’s table. Humphrey’s eyes were still on me, too. The winsome look was gone and now that we were seated he looked more rapacious (maybe it was the way the light from the window hit his eyes), he was looking at me with the look of a sexual predator, or how I assume a sexual predator looks at whoever they are about to take advantage of. There was a menace mixed with tenderness mixed with unadulterated desire. (Again, maybe it was just the lighting.) I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with all of the attention.

An older gentleman in white tails came by with a gleaming silver cart that had three gleaming silver dishes on top of it. He lifted the lids one at a time and told me the name of each dish in horribly mispronounced French. At least I think it was French. It might have been French-Canadian. I chose the one in the middle. It was the fish.

“I hope you enjoy your Sole Meuniere,” Humphrey said when they brought my fish, trying to impress with his impeccable French-Canadian pronunciation.

“It’s better than the vending machines downstairs.”

Humphrey laughed. I wasn’t joking.

We ate and Humphrey talked. I listened or looked out the window, trying not to pay attention to the jealous executives at the table next to us. I think one of them was ready to shiv me with his lobster fork.

“So we just bought the BBC, but that’s not the big one. The big one is the national channel of India. That’s a billion eyeballs we’ll be programming for across all platforms. It’s a great opportunity for our mobile division and for our electronics division. In a few years we hope the entire nation of India will spend their entire day on Landmark products or Landmark affiliated products. The affiliation is important because we’ve found if we give the products diverse brand names so the consumers don’t know that everything comes from the same company they feel better about purchasing products from us.

“Don’t worry, the Landmark name is still prominent, it’s just not on everything we do. It creates the illusion of diversity. This illusion is important because our ultimate goal is a fully integrated experience that is siloed completely within the Landmark universe. People can visit different planets in that universe. They can engage in all of the experiences that life has to offer, it’s just that we own all the planets. It’s like the giant casinos in Vegas, where once you’re inside it’s impossible to find an exit, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is, the casino becomes your life, your room is there, the pool is there, all of the gambling and shows are there and there’s no reason to ever leave. And even when you think you are leaving the casino, you’re really only entering a different part of the casino. That’s what we want Landmark to be to the world.

“We know that a large part of this is the new ‘social media’…” He used air quotes the way one of my old (actually young and female) professors used to use them in my Politics of Latin America class whenever she referred to the United States as a ‘hegemon,’ which she roughly did every third sentence.

“We’re exploring ways to make it profitable. My son, Ryan, the other son, the one that didn’t pass away, God rest his soul, that’s his life, so I’ve tasked every single person I know in my organization…” (except the mailroom employees apparently) “…to find a way to monetize this. Some of them…”

He gestured dismissively to the 5 VPs next door who were growing ever more restless, the one next to Lobster Fork had resorted to building elaborate napkin sculptures (swans, peacocks, a bust of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith) in an attempt to draw Humphrey’s attention away from our talk. “…think it can’t be done, but I know it can. The beauty is we don’t need to create the content, the consumer does it for us, they consume our product and then they consume their own products that they created from our products and that act of consumption is the making of our content, which is the product. How beautiful is that?” I think we were going in circles. “We call it the sharing economy. This is the future. I feel it. Deeply. In my gut.”

He looked like he was feeling it in his gut. He also looked like his Filet de Maigre Parfume au Ras-el-Hanout Fenouil et Riz Rouge de Camargue didn’t agree with him. But he didn’t feel it in his gut because no one feels anything in their gut, except for the indigestion Humphrey may or may not have been feeling at that moment. We don’t feel love with our hearts either. We have created these terms because they make us think we are something more than our brains. But everything about us is the brain. All of our feelings, emotions, instincts, come from the brain. We could just as easily say I love you with all my spleen, or it was an instinct, a reaction from my big left toe, and it would make as much sense as how we refer to the heart and gut.

You may say such talk is harmless, but there’s a pernicious side effect to the way we use these words. It makes people believe that if they are thinking, that if they are actively using their brains, they are then necessarily being rational. This is of course not true. Some of the most batshit crazy insane ideas have come from people thinking really hard for a really long time. Using one’s brain doesn’t equal thought or intelligent thought, it just means you are using your brain, which is what we do when we pretty much do anything, deliberative thought, instinctive reaction or deep emotional feelings. And this is what I was using my brain to think about as Humphrey continued to talk about stock prices and market capitalizations and mergers.

Soon, I had finished my fish and potatoes and the hour was over. The maitre d’ informed Humphrey that his receptionist had called to let him know his first afternoon appointment was downstairs, some people by the name of Bayer, Strong and Pimple, who were either from a law firm, a hedge fund or a European Football Club.

As we said our goodbyes at the elevator, Humphrey’s right arm moved towards me and I flinched because I didn’t want to lose another filling, but he didn’t pat me on the back this time, he knew how to vary his physical manifestations of bonding, and lightly touched me on the arm. “I’m worried you’re working too hard down there in the mailroom. You’re an artist, and it’s important for an artist to have time to collect his thoughts so I’ve decided to give you an assistant.”

“I don’t really need an assistant, Mr. Humphrey.”

“Please, call me Dave. I think you need an assistant and I am the one running this company, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are, Dave.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re not going to fight me on this. I’ll have someone report to you this afternoon.”

Next Chapter: Chapter Six (The Assistant)

Previous Chapter: Chapter Four

“Yes, here we are.”

I was sitting across from Humphrey again. It was ten in the morning. The bite-sized Snickers/Milky Ways had been replaced by bite-sized Three Musketeers and Mars Bars.

“Have you picked out a new car yet?”

“What happened to the old one?”

“I’m sure a new car is far down the list of things you plan to buy. What’s first? A house, a new laptop, a nice vacation in Hawaii.”

“Yeah, the offer.” I took a Three Musketeers from the porcelain dish and bit into it. I was wrong. It was a Milky Way. “I’ve been thinking about the offer.”

“That’s good.” Humphrey was imitating my stepdad again with his condescendingly encouraging manner.

“It is quite a generous offer, and I am deeply grateful for it, and I’m flattered that you like my screenplay, but…”

“But?”

“This story, it’s so close to my heart, it’s such an important part of me. I spent so long working on it…” (A weekend, I think.) “…I just don’t know if I can give it up so easily.”

“You got another offer.” Humphrey stopped being my stepdad, he was a CEO again and smiled his salesman’s smile.

“No, it’s not the money. I know this is a cliché and all, but I think what I really want to do is direct.” I popped the second half of the Milky Way into my mouth.

“Oh.” Humphrey’s face deflated under his still inflated hair. We entered one of our lulls as he tried to pump himself back up. I could see his cheeks go from thin to medium to full the way a bike tire inflates when one is using a slightly rusty old hand pump. It was a good lull. It lasted a minute.

“Are you sure you want to direct, it’s a lot of fucking work, early mornings, late nights, constant complaints and harassment, and just between you and me most directors are lunatics, nah, you don’t want that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Humphrey took in more air, he was in danger of bursting from over-inflation.

“Do you have any experience behind the camera?”

“Absolutely none.” I said this with a wide smile.

“Not even in high school or college, AV club, anything like that.”

“Nope.”

Humphrey stood up abruptly and turned to his floor to ceiling window. There wasn’t any blue light at this time of day. He looked over the city, down at all the little ants below, trying to recreate the impression from when I first walked in the day before. Or maybe this was the pose he actually used when he was thinking deeply over a problem. Some people go for long walks. David Humphrey looks down on the city like he’s Napoleon inspecting the battlements.

He turned to me, suddenly full of confidence, “I think I can see it. The script is already so visual it’s a natural fit. Of course, we’d put a veteran producer on the film, someone with experience to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

“I want my brother to produce.” (Point of fact: I don’t have a brother.)

“Oh.” Humphrey held the ‘Oh’ a little too long, letting out too much air, his cheeks were back to medium on their way to thin.

“So, uh, do you have anybody in mind for the lead roles?”

“I think I want to go with all unknowns.”

“You mean people from television?”

“No. Complete unknowns. Fresh faces. Maybe a little theater experience.”

“Theater actors?” Humphrey spat the words. He closed his eyes and put his forehead into the vice of his left hand, his thumb on one temple, his index and middle fingers on the other temple. He massaged his temples as he thought out loud.

“Okay. I can see the kid as an unknown, there aren’t that many famous kid actors anyway, and the blind nanny, we can give that to some old Broadway legend, but the part of the recovering alcoholic father, that would be a movie star, right?”

“A star of the theater.” My hand moved across the open air like I was unveiling a marquee.

“Who has also been in films.”

“Who has never been in a film.”

“So you have someone in mind?”

“No.”

Humphrey was staring at me like I stared at the chimp the day before. I could have played Ping-Pong with his eyeballs and he wouldn’t have noticed. Then I heard a loud growl. I thought it was my stomach. I hadn’t had breakfast, my regular bowl of maple and brown sugar oatmeal, because I didn’t want to eat before our big meeting and now my stomach was letting me know it wasn’t happy about the change in the daily schedule.

But it wasn’t my stomach. There was another rumble. It must be Humphrey’s stomach. I peered at his slim for a 55-year-old belly. The third rumble didn’t come from that belly, or it did, but it came from his mouth, too. It was a laugh. The kind that movie villains let out right before they kill someone, or maybe right after they kill someone, either way there’s usually death involved. I was getting a little worried as it grew louder, hoping the receptionist or his next appointment would come in and save me. I could see red flames in the window behind Humphrey where there used to be blue light.

“Well, Ben,” he said much too loudly, “you certainly drive a hard bargain. But you’re an artist, I respect that. I may be crazy, but I think we have a deal here.” He had called my bluff.

I bit my top lip. It’s a nervous habit. Then I grimaced like Grimace and gave him the bad news. “Mr. Humphrey…”

“Please, Dave.”

“Dave. The offer, it’s flattering, it’s awfully kind of you, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if now is the right time for The Legend of Sparkles & Timmy: The Emerging.”

“What?”

“I think the cultural climate is wrong for it right now. I don’t think the subtleties of the work will be completely understood. And honestly, I’m not so sure I can let it become a movie.”

“But you wrote it as a screenplay.”

“Yes, I did. There’s no denying that.”

“Are you selling it to someone else?”

“Like I said before, no.”

“C’mon, who’s on to you? Fox? Disney?”

“Just you, Dave.”

“Then why won’t you sell?” Humphrey’s ping pong ball eyes showed incomprehension at my incomprehensible rationale. They were pleading with me to make even a little bit of sense.

“I guess I’m not the kind of person who rushes into major decisions.”

“Okay. Okay.” This he could work with. “I’ll tell you what, Ben…” I found myself standing up and walking like I did the day before, nodding along with Humphrey as he showed me to his office door. “It’s an important decision, I understand that. And maybe a day wasn’t long enough to think about it. How about I give you a few more days, a week, how about a week, think it over, think of the nice new car you’ll be driving and the new clothes you can afford and the women, don’t forget about the women, Ben. And then we’ll come back on Monday and talk about it again and see what your decision is. Does that sound like a plan?” He slapped me on the back so hard one of my fillings came loose.

I had to give it to him. He certainly didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I’d always taken ‘no’ for an answer my entire life. It seems like the polite sort of thing to do. But not Humphrey, I guess that’s why he was running the company and I was in the mailroom.

“It certainly does, Dave.” I had no choice. I agreed to his plan.

Next Chapter: Chapter Five (The Lunch)

Previous Chapter: Chapter Three

“Uh, Benjamin.” He was holding a piece of paper in his hands. It was an interoffice memo. I’m telling you, this place still typed up memos on their memo template on their PCs, printed them out and put them in goldish-brown interoffice envelopes with a little red string that tied around a little red button on top, to be shipped from department to department, instead of sending emails.

“I have a strange message for you.”

“What’s up, doc?”

“We’re not at Warner Bros., Benjamin, no Bugs Bunny humor.”

“How about some Disney humor?”

Richard didn’t say anything. He kept looking at me with the same Richard look of droll concern for my sanity.

“Okay, what’s the news?”

Confused by the words on the paper he was holding, Richard started reading from the memo very slowly as if he were reading a foreign language he had just started to learn. “It says you are to report to David Humphrey’s office at 2:30 today.”

“Hmmm, that is interesting.”

“You know who David Humphrey is, don’t you?”

“Of course.” (I didn’t know who David Humphrey was.)

“He’s the head of the company, Benjamin.”

“I knew that.”

“Why does he want to see you?”

“No idea. But I would say it is about time we met.”

“You’re odd, Benjamin. Even for Los Angeles, you’re odd.”

And that’s what finally set my plan into motion. An interoffice memo dropped from the sky, actually, the 178th floor, from one of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hell, any business.

At 2:25, I took the elevator to the 177th floor. (You couldn’t take the elevator directly to the 178th floor unless you had some kind of special key card.) I told my name to the receptionist on the 177^th floor and she gave me a laminated badge with Benjamin Abbott spelled in black letters to pin to my shirt and then she gestured to one of the goliaths serving as a security guard who was standing by a special elevator. He pressed the special button to the special elevator and used his special keycard and the elevator doors closed leaving me inside.

The elevator doors opened one second after they had closed and there was another receptionist sitting at a desk that was identical to the one on the 177th floor. I briefly thought the elevator hadn’t moved and the doors only closed and opened again. I peered at the receptionist behind the desk trying to tell if she was the receptionist who had given me my name badge or if someone had taken her place. The elevator doors started to close again with me still in the elevator, so I had to think quickly and wedged my hand between the closing doors at the very last second. The beeping that accompanies trucks as they back up into alleyways and elevator doors that have stayed open too long started, so I felt I had no choice but to step out of the elevator hoping that I was now on the 178th floor.

The receptionist looked up at me and smiled as I approached her desk, still unaware of who she was or what floor I was on. I fingered my name badge as I introduced myself, “my name is Benjamin Abbott.” She nodded approvingly, which meant I was on the right floor. “I have a 2:30 appointment with David Humphrey.”

“Yes,” she said smiling politely at me even though I was dressed like a mailroom employee and not one of Mr. Humphrey’s normal high-powered appointments. “We were expecting you. Please have a seat.” Her left arm opened towards the couch like one of the beauties on a game show presenting a prize to the contestants. The couch, which was empty (must be a slow day for appointments), was bigger than my apartment. I tiptoed across the marble or maybe fake marble floor afraid of making too much noise because the reception area had the general feeling of a library where everyone spoke in hushed tones, walked in hushed tones and thought in hushed tones, with only the quiet hum of the industrialized air conditioning serving as the soothing backdrop.

Once seated, I looked down at the glass table that was in front of the couch and was bigger than the bigger than my apartment couch. Magazines were spread over its glassiness. (Like newspapers, magazines still existed back then as well. For the benefit of future generations, I would love to include a footnote describing not only what magazines were in a factual sense but their general overall importance to society during the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, after the last footnote got completely out of control, my publisher has insisted that for “space reasons” we can’t include any further unnecessary notation.) David Humphrey was on the cover of every single magazine that was on the table. I counted fifteen magazines in total. There was Daily Variety and Weekly Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, of course, and there was also Time, Fortune, Newsweek, US News & World Report, American Sportsmen, Cigar Aficionado, Loaded, GQ, Esquire, Slap and a few others I can’t remember.

I waded through the magazines, briefly pulled beneath their undertow and came back up for air, picking up the American Sportsmen in the process. I stared at the cover. David Humphrey was dressed in full khaki with an outer covering of bright orange like a piece of taffy that had been turned inside out.

He was holding a shotgun in one hand and the head of a deer in the other. It was a six pointer. I think they had photoshopped out the blood that should have been dripping from the neck of the severed head of the deer. Or maybe when you sever the head of a deer, it stops bleeding rather quickly. Or maybe Humphrey waited until the blood stopped flowing before holding up the severed head. Even though I’m from Minnesota, and despite what the citizens on both coasts would like to think about my home state, I have never handled the severed head of a deer or any other wild beast, so it was difficult for me to process what exactly went on behind the scenes of that photo shoot. Wait. It was a photo shoot.

I looked closely at the background trying to determine if it was a stage or if they really were in the woods somewhere. Did they bring a deer to Los Angeles and kill it and chop off its head in a studio so Humphrey could look rugged? The more I looked at the cover the more questions I had.

“Mr. Abbott.” A hushed voice floated to me on the wings of doves with still attached heads. I didn’t look up, fixated on hunting David Humphrey. Now I was focused on his look of satisfaction, his broad manly grin. Was that photoshopped, too? “Mr. Abbott.” I looked up as several men, better dressed than I was, exited the office behind the receptionist. It was my turn.

I entered David Humphrey’s office cautiously like I was moving through a haunted house. I was hit by blue sunlight. It was shining through giant floor to ceiling windows that were located behind Humphrey’s desk. Even with that giant window it was darker in the office than an office should be at that time of day. The overhead lights weren’t on and the blue sunlight had a haze filtering through it even though no one was smoking. I looked to the half-drawn blinds that covered the giant window wondering how the rays of the sun had been turned blue. I was hypnotized by the blue. I had no idea if anybody else was in the room. Finally, I forced myself to blink and readjust my sight. Now I could see David Humphrey, his back to me, as he stared out the blue window down at the city below. It was a dramatic sight. I wanted to turn around and find the cinematographer and the production designer to congratulate them on a job well done.

“Have a seat.” David Humphrey’s back spoke to me.

I sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. It felt like a child’s chair or that the legs had been shortened. My chin barely cleared the top of his desk. It was an old salesman’s trick, or an old asshole’s trick. Like the cover of American Sportsmen, it told me something about Humphrey. His back was still to me, the silence now uncomfortably long. There was a bowl of bite-sized Snickers on his desk. Or maybe they were Milky Ways. There was no way of knowing without taking a bite into one because they had been removed from their wrappers and placed carefully into a porcelain dish. I examined them closely since they were at eye level. All of the curiosity about my visit was gone. I really wanted one of those chocolate bars.

There was movement. Humphrey slunk along the wall like a lounge singer making his way onto stage. I still hadn’t figured out if they were Snickers or Milky Ways. Personally, I prefer Snickers. I really really really wanted a Snickers. Instead, Humphrey offered me a drink.

“I probably shouldn’t. I have to return to work after this.”

“Oh, come on. One drink between friends won’t hurt. How about some scotch.” It wasn’t a question. The bar was along the far wall. That’s why he had slunk there and before I could respond to the word, ‘scotch,’ ice cubes were clinking into glasses, liquids were flowing from bottles, and, eventually, a tumbler was thrust into my face. I was at crotch level. Humphrey stood over me smiling. I took the drink and smiled back up at him.

“I’ve seen your work.”

I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

I didn’t really like where this was heading. Did they have cameras in the mailroom? Yes, yes, they did have cameras in the mailroom. They had cameras all over the building. Perhaps Humphrey’s been watching them, maybe that’s how he gets his kicks, maybe he’s been watching me. I don’t know why he would watch the mailroom, there’s plenty of other employees he should be checking up on before us. Is this sexual harassment? Maybe he likes my ass. I suppose that’s the most likely answer. He takes advantage of the mailroom employees, we’re expendable, who’s going to take our word over his?

I wondered if I was going to let him take advantage of me. My head was still at penis level, Humphrey was still smiling down at me. I mean, I’m not gay, and I’m not especially curious either, but we all have our price. If he made it worth my while, I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement. Now, what did I want from Humphrey?

He walked away and sat down behind his desk. Maybe he didn’t want to have sex with me after all. I could clearly see him for the first time. He seemed kind of normal and small. He was definitely shorter than me, which explained the chair trick. But the hair, my god, the hair. It was silver and beautiful. I admired its fluffiness, its structure, a man with hair like that should run a large corporation. I think I was having second thoughts about the sexual favors.

He was still smiling at me. We had hit another lull. I smiled back and despite the immaculate hair, the rest of him kind of reminded me of my stepdad. He looked at me the same way my stepdad used to look at me over the dinner table, with a forced smile as I forced a smile back and we sat there in silence waiting for my mother to present us with roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.

Humphrey leaned over his not-fake marble desktop, “I have a friend who’s on the screenplay committee of the Malibu Film Festival…”

Aha, a screenplay! That’s why he wanted to see me. Now which one did I send to Malibu?

“…and if he sees something that looks promising he’ll slide it over to me.”

Was he talking about the superhero cop movie?

“It’s a little arrangement we have and when I saw your work, well, I was just blown away.”

Definitely not the teen sex comedy.

“In the final scene when that young boy gets on the back of that dolphin…”

Aaaaa, the terminally ill boy and his dolphin.

“…and they ride into the sunset out in the Pacific, well, I never cry, ever, not even at my son’s funeral, but I’m not ashamed to admit your story got to me more than I can even describe.” He was tearing up as he talked about it. He took a white hanky out of his suit breast pocket that I thought was there for decoration and blew his nose with it. “It’s such a touching piece of work.” And then dabbed his eyes with it and put it back into the pocket.

Amazingly, the script didn’t have a happy ending. Unless you consider an annoying young boy drowning in the Pacific Ocean to be a happy ending. I suppose I didn’t describe him actually drowning, but I think it’s fairly implied. I always thought Humphrey couldn’t stand anything that doesn’t have a happy ending. I don’t think his studio had made a film without a happy ending in over five years.

“I know I always tell our production people that our films must have happy, upbeat endings.” He pounded his fist on the marble for emphasis. I think it cracked a little. “That we can’t have any of this depressing artistic shit. I’ve worked tirelessly to get that kind of film out of the industry. But sometimes a special work comes along that breaks all of the rules. We can sell this. I know we can. I think it can be a franchise.”

Humphrey took out a gold pen from his gold penholder and started writing something on a gold piece of paper. It didn’t take him long. He folded the paper in half and slid it over to me.

“I think you’ll agree this offer is more than fair.”

I took the piece of paper and opened it. I stared at the lines on the paper but they didn’t make any sense. They were numbers, I was pretty sure they were numbers, but I couldn’t figure out how they related to each other. I looked to Humphrey, who was reclining confidently in his chair. Ten seconds passed. I looked down at the paper again. Twenty seconds passed. I looked up at Humphrey again, we were approaching a full minute of silence.

Humphrey began to fidget in his chair. I looked down at the number again. I finally decided these were not individual numbers, that it was one long unbroken number. I wasn’t sure of that at first, how could I be sure, Humphrey had scratched out an incomprehensible code to a better life and handed it to me on a golden piece of paper and I was supposed to decipher it. It felt like I should have to decipher it, that there had to be more work involved than simply saying ‘yes.’ But that’s all I had to do, my life could irrevocably change simply by reciting the number back to him like I was a second grader solving the simplest of math problems as I stood in the front of the classroom. (A math problem with a dollar sign at the end of it!)

Humphrey was leaning forward again, his elbows now on the marble desk, waiting for my inevitable, ‘yes.’ I looked deep into his eyes and tried to move my jaw and say that simple word, but my jaw wouldn’t move, it remained stuck, bottom lip stapled to top lip in pursed thoughtful posture. I brought my hand up to help it move, which probably made it look like I was thinking even harder about my answer since I was now unconsciously reenacting “The Thinker” pose when in actuality I was just trying to pry my own jaw open. Still, it wouldn’t move, locking tight in the delirious delirium of the confusion that accompanies good fortune.

Humphrey broke the impasse I had unwittingly created. “I’ll tell you what, Ben. You don’t mind if I call you, Ben, do you. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off to think it over, talk to the wife, to the girlfriend, to the boyfriend, whoever, make sure that Landmark is the right place for your screenplay.”

He stood up and walked around his desk. My right hand was still unsuccessfully trying to open my mouth. Humphrey stood me up like a cornerman does with a boxer in the later rounds when the bell rings. “After all, you are part of the Landmark family. This is your home.” He smiled. I was unable to smile back. We walked to the door of his office. I think we shook hands. I think I walked out of his office, his reception area, his building, and into the street. I do remember standing on the sidewalk outside the Landmark Building clutching a golden piece of paper, the sweat from my fingers and palms smudging the gold numbers on that golden paper.

I wasn’t playing with him in there. I wasn’t negotiating, either. When he first slid me that piece of paper with all of those zeroes, all I could think about was all of the things I could do with all of that money. How I could buy anything I wanted. How I didn’t have to worry about next month’s rent or next month’s phone bill or next month’s water bill. The amount he offered probably didn’t mean anything to him, it was a fraction of his annual salary (not to mention stock options), but to me, to me it meant everything. I was going to accept the offer, I really was. I’m not a total idiot. But he took my silence as hesitation instead of the awe it was. To Humphrey’s mind my silence was about leverage and playing the odds and psychology. When he’s presented with an opening offer that looks too good these are the things he thinks about, so he only naturally assumed it’s what I was thinking during those seconds, minutes, when I couldn’t get my jaw to move.

I said, “yes,” to no one in the street. I said, “yes,” a second time and nodded emphatically as people in suits moved by me, around me, through me. But no one was listening now. I was five minutes too late. Humphrey was in his office probably in another meeting or on a conference call with London. I had missed my chance.

After saying my ‘yesses,’ my mouth froze again. This time into a smile, the ends of my mouth tearing into my cheeks, the muscles in my face burning from the intensity of my grin like they had just completed a triathlon without the help of the other muscles in my body.

I walked for miles with that Joker-sized smile on my face. I walked from the Landmark Building to Wilshire Boulevard, which runs from downtown all the way to the ocean. I didn’t make it to the ocean, but I walked down Wilshire quickly making it out of the skyscrapers and past the deteriorating neighborhoods west of downtown where I parked my car for $5 a day during my first week at Landmark before they gave me a permit to park in the building ramp. I walked through McArthur Park with a song in my head avoiding the homeless and drug dealers and student film shoots. I kept walking into Koreatown where I picked up a BubbleTea and some frozen yogurt and kept walking, picking up my pace, past the faded lime awning of the Wiltern Theatre where I had yet to see a concert, where I still have yet to see a concert, the streets got busier and the cars flowed like mice in a building that had been abandoned for many years and I saw 7-11s and Radio Shacks and the type of squeezed in strip malls that have Radio Shacks and 7-11s and food places that serve chicken and hamburgers and Chinese food and fish and pizza all out of the same kitchen that I’m sure I would never want to see the inside of.

There were bland office buildings and squeezed in houses that made the squeezed in strips malls look like Hampton-sized mansions. I ended up in the area they call Miracle Mile (I had read that somewhere, although I have never in my life heard anybody refer to it as such), which wasn’t very miraculous but more suburban or as suburban as L.A. gets, walking past the Koo Koo Roo to LACMA and the La Brea Tar pits, where I watched dinosaurs drown and saw art that looked like dinosaurs drowning, all the while the grin still on my face, the golden paper still held tightly between my two hands, dark splotches from my sweat now near completely obscuring the number I didn’t believe was real and now when I looked down maybe I could convince myself wasn’t real, maybe I had misread a zero or two.

I finally stopped near a dollar store on the other side of the art museum and caught my breath and looked around. I was underneath a billboard for Bakers Grocery Stores that occupied the northwest corner of Wilshire and Fairfax above a diner that wasn’t really a diner, that was only used by movie studios to pretend to be a diner so was vacant most of the time serving mainly as an additional parking lot for the very busy dollar store. There was a Bakers a few blocks back right before the tar pits and the Koo Koo Roo, my mouth had watered Pavlovianly as I passed, briefly thinking not about the gold in my hands but about one of their delicious deli sandwiches I could no longer afford.

Or could I? I looked down at the piece of paper again, the sweat stain now blotted out the number completely like an unhealthy bacterium that had overtaken a healthy cell. I looked up to the colorful billboard. It starred Bakers’ mascot, an aggressive smiling chimp who was holding a bag of potato chips and screaming the chain’s slogan of “Buy More Food!”

I had seen that chimp’s face on billboards and television commercials and heard him screaming on radio so many times since I had arrived in L.A. (they don’t have Bakers in Minnesota, their largest grocery chain is Bear Grocery, “The Home of Comfort”) that he was my second closest friend in the city, after Angel. I stared deeply into the face of that screaming chimpanzee trying to find the meaning of life. He blinked. So I did, too.

Frightened at what I saw, the meaning of life, I turned away and looked at the line of shops on the other side of Wilshire Boulevard. The shop directly across from me was The Truth, a clothing chain I had never had the courage to enter because I didn’t have enough confidence in my body image. Posters of several barely teen models lined the window posing in Roman or Greek inspired clothing. The chain’s tagline, “Don’t Judge Me By What I Wear” was emblazoned on the tops of each one of those posters in fire red block lettering of the type Bolsheviks used on their old posters during the Russian Revolution. The cries of the models briefly overtook the shouts from the Bakers’ chimpanzee, but then I could hear him again so I looked back up to the billboard and stared harder into the chimp’s soul. I could see my reflection.

And you know what? A funny thing happened as I stared at that monkey and tried not to judge those adolescent models of indistinguishable gender by what they were wearing. I thought. And kept thinking. And had my second epiphany. Here was this man, one of the most powerful people in the country, hell, on the planet, who shaped the opinions of millions, maybe billions, and I had something he desperately wanted.

A moment of Zen washed over me. It must be the way Buddhist monks feel before they start moving stones around with their minds. It was a powerful feeling. A feeling I didn’t want to lose.

Next Chapter: The Reply
Table of Contents

The air mattress remained intact for the first couple of weeks and I found it to be as comfortable as any other bed I’ve had in my life so I had no plans to buy a real mattress when I still had enough money to do so, however, as soon as my funds diminished to the point where the purchase of a real mattress would be a splurge instead of a necessity, my air mattress developed an impossible to find leak that meant it deflated every night all throughout the night, which meant I woke up cocooned in a half-inflated, half-deflated mattress hugging me like a clingy overweight Great Dane every morning.

After rolling from my semi-hard partially deflated air mattress to the actually hard floor of the early male pattern baldness thin dorm-room style carpeting of my floor, I walked the eight steps through my living room to my kitchen area.

I call it a kitchen area because it was really just a patch of linoleum set aside from my gray carpet with a sink, an oven with stove, and half-size refrigerator, all running along the wall underneath shelves which stocked various liquor bottles I had originally purchased in the hopes of having some kind of housewarming party with my neighbors that never materialized, or, to be fair, got to the stage of asking or, talking to, or, in most cases, even seeing my neighbors. After two months, I only knew one person on my floor by sight and that was the guy who always dressed in black and lived at the end of the hallway and bore a surprising resemblance to a young Johnny Cash.

I poured water into my coffeemaker I didn’t use to make coffee but instead to heat up water for my daily breakfast of Quaker Instant Oatmeal. (Usually maple & brown sugar flavor, although for some reason I couldn’t get over the childhood habit of always getting the variety pack which left me with packs of begrudgingly used apples & cinnamon and never used cinnamon & spice. Purchasing an entire box of maple & brown sugar seemed greedy somehow.)

I ripped open two packets of maple & brown sugar and poured them into a paper disposable bowl (all of my utensils were of the paper disposable kind) and then poured orange juice into a paper cup while waiting for the heated water to pour down from the top of my coffeemaker into the machine’s round glass bowl that reminded me of a corporate mascot from my childhood who jumped through walls to frighten little kids and offer them sugary drinks. Once I had “made” my bowl of oatmeal I took the orange juice and oatmeal to my computer which looked out the window to the back alley where cats fought and mated with each other and tried to catch the rats that lived in the walls of my building. I fired up my computer and finished my breakfast while waiting for my dial-up Internet to log on. This was my morning routine.

Most of the job listings were still affiliated with newspapers back then. I should also mention that newspapers still existed back then. So I went to the classifieds section of the Los Angeles Times website and began to scroll through it looking to see if I could find anybody I could send my resume to. I had put my name in with several temp agencies during the previous couple of weeks but they never called me back.

Even though I was too poor for a cell phone, I did have a phone in my apartment with an answering machine. Yes, an answering machine. (Remember, this is 2004, essentially Victorian times) This worked fine for me because I never received any calls and, besides, I couldn’t receive any calls while I was logged on to the internet because I didn’t have broadband or wireless or whatever the state of the art was at the time, so if somebody wanted to call me to offer a job while I was on the Internet looking for a job they would only get a busy signal, which meant the longer and harder I looked for jobs the less likely it was I would actually get one. This had a type of beautiful circular logic that appealed to me at the time.

However, my rent was about to come due and my credit cards were maxed out, so I would soon have to cut back from my regular two meals a day to one meal a day, which would mean my morning bowl of instant oatmeal would have to be eliminated and replaced by a slice of white bread with raspberry jam on top. I would have liked jam on toast, but I wasn’t able to afford a toaster. (I had purchased the coffeemaker instead.)

My food rationing had already altered my nightly meals, as they had migrated from lush yet affordable sandwiches from the deli at Baker’s Grocery Store that could be split into two meals, to Marie Callender’s frozen dinners that could be purchased two for one with my Bakers Club Card, to bowls of cereal for my dinner every night during my time in Los Angeles. This is why I was now having oatmeal every morning for breakfast because I figured it was more nutritious to have a bowl of oatmeal and a bowl of cereal each day than to have two bowls of cereal every day.

Thinking about the devolution of my eating habits usually began to depress me around 9:50 a.m. as I hit my mid-morning lull. My head would be increasingly drawn to the gravitational pull of my keyboard as it bobbed lower and lower until I knew I couldn’t fight it anymore and had to get out of my apartment and head to one of the 3 coffee shops (all Starbucks) within walking distance.

Now, you may question my fiscal judgment since I was spending a few dollars on coffee each day while I was being reduced to eating cereal as my one and only meal and I had a coffeemaker in my apartment begging to be used in the appropriate way. I would say in my defense that, first of all, you are much more sensible with money than I am, and, second of all, my daily interaction of ordering and paying at Starbucks was my only regular form of human contact. This is how I justified the absurd expenditure of $2.50 for a cup of coffee I could have made at home for less than 10 cents.

Because the state of my pre-caffeinated motor skills aren’t exactly at peak capacity and because my doorframe didn’t align properly with my deadbolt, I would spend an inordinate amount of time locking and unlocking my door in the morning until I was satisfied the deadbolt had completely engaged and my computer and air mattress and coffeemaker were secured safely inside.   

On this morning, I could feel a presence over my shoulder as I performed the ritualistic maneuvers with my key. It was my next-door neighbor. Whereas I was just leaving my apartment to begin the day they were obviously returning to their apartment after a long night out. I could smell the remnants of alcohol, cigarettes, of sex, the general smells of late-night carousing. I was still fumbling with my key and lock; turn, click, tock, that meant it hit the wood and didn’t make it into the slot. Turn, click, phhet, that meant it was unlocked again. Turn, click, tock, shit, this was getting tiring. Turn, click, tock again, maybe my hearing was all wrong, maybe the ‘tock’ was the deadbolt sliding into the hole and not hitting the wood. I was becoming obsessive. My foot pushed on the bottom of the door just so, not too far or the deadbolt would miss on the other side; turn click, the nearly imperceptibly brief sound of a waterfall. The deadbolt was engaged.

“Fuck.” Keys metallically chimed off the hallway floor. My neighbor bent down to pick them up. With involuntary curiosity I turned my head. She looked up at me mascara-runned, bleary-eyed, annoyed that she wasn’t the only one in the hallway.

“Ben?”

“Angel?”

Apparently, Angel lived in Glendale and worked in Hollywood.

As I look back on this random coincidence, I can’t help but feel there has to be some kind of lesson here. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m sure it’s something. Or maybe not. Anyway, I was glad to see Angel and she was happy to see me, even after a long night of work. We decided to get coffee at the IHOP around the corner and picked up our conversation from where we left off earlier in the evening.

“I was born in Texas. When I was six we moved out here to Reseda ‘cause she married this jerk.” Angel was shaking a sugar packet with an unnecessary force as she talked preparing it for the cup of coffee in front of her. “I guess you could say I’m a Valley Girl. My mother had a drug problem, meth and coke, she would switch back and forth, doing coke for several months and then she would say she was quitting, she’d get religion and that wouldn’t last, and then she would start doing meth for five months or so and get bored with that and go back to coke and the pattern would repeat itself.” Angel shrugged at the mysteriousness of her mother’s decision-making in a way only a child can shrug about the decisions their parents made when they were young, like the way I shrug about my parents’ decision to take me to the local amusement park for my golden birthday when I was seven instead of going to Disneyland like we had originally planned.

“My step-father,” Angel’s eyes scanned the room to the front door of the IHOP, the bell had just run signaling another customer and she wanted to make sure it wasn’t her step-dad, “he was pretty bad. I wish the worst I could say about him was he was an addict. I never knew my real father, so when I ran away I didn’t have anywhere to go. I survived on the streets for months, a year, I don’t even know how long. Eventually, I had to make a choice.”

“A choice?”

“Between working for a living or going to some kind of group home. It wasn’t much of a choice. I started working in the only industry I could.”

“And I’m still upset at my dad for not co-signing my graduate school loan.”

“It is what it is.”

Yes. It is.

So Angel and I became friends. Since we lived next door to each other we could hang out almost all of the time, except of course when she was working at night or when I was looking for work during the day. That gave us mornings at IHOP and early evenings to do whatever we wanted. It’s weird. I had never been friends with a prostitute before and it was surprisingly…. normal. Everything about it was normal. We felt relaxed in each other’s presence. It was like a love affair without the sex; it was a friend affair, and we did all of the typical lover’s activities: picnics in the park, walks along the beach, going to the movies, renting bad movies from the local video store1 and watching them curled up on Angel’s couch and making fun of them. We even fulfilled my thwarted childhood ambition of going to Disneyland when she took a couple of days off during a slow week.

It was good to have a friend during this time because I was still looking for a job and not having any luck. My screenplay binge from my first few weeks was over and now I was just trying to find a job anywhere from anyone. I was getting worried I would never find employment in Los Angeles and I’d have to return to Minnesota a defeated man, as Angel originally suggested. My dreams were on the verge of extinction.

Then luck hit me. One of the agencies called and had a placement for me. It was a straight-to-hire job in the mailroom of Landmark Communications. I didn’t even need to interview. Apparently, they liked my resume. I knew my master’s degree in ancient Eastern Philosophy would pay off eventually.

*

Now, some of you may have heard of the Hollywood legend of the mailroom, that it’s the place where many titans of the entertainment industry began their journey to titanic status and it is true the mailrooms of the most prestigious talent agencies are staffed with young go-getters, relatives of the famous, Ivy League graduates and generally the types of people that are going to go places. But this was not the case with the mailroom at Landmark.

Befitting its status as a galactic soulless hegemon of a corporation that moved slowly and promoted even more slowly, there were no future CEOs or power players in the Landmark mailroom. When I entered on my first day it was obvious the place wasn’t a stepping stone of any kind but more an escalator on the way down for those who had given up on Hollywood dreams or never had any to begin with.

This made it all the more odd that the manager of the mailroom, my new boss, didn’t fit this description at all since he had previously achieved quite a high level of success in the industry but now had the misfortune to find himself supervising two dozen dead-enders who were literally doing a job trained monkeys could do in delivering packages and letters from floor to floor to the various officed and cubicled employees who worked in the Landmark Building.

And I bet my new boss was used to working with trained monkeys, or I can only assume he was used to it (perhaps that experience was the reason they hired him to manage the mailroom) because he was a magician in his previous better remunerated life. My new boss was Richard Kay, the famous magician and some-time actor.

You may not know him and I don’t know how he found himself to be working as the manager of the mailroom at Landmark, but he must have hit hard times, maybe an accountant stole all of his money and the acting and magic gigs had dried up, or maybe he just liked working in mailrooms. No matter what had happened, he seemed to take it in stride, Richard took everything in stride, his face and countenance rarely if ever changing from a slightly serious, slightly bemused, very droll impersonation of how I pictured a new age guru would look if they had been raised in Queens or the Bronx. (I have no idea if Richard was raised in either of these places.)

Richard knew things about life that you didn’t but were afraid to ask about and it didn’t matter if you asked him about them or not because he wasn’t going to tell you anyway. I took all of this as a type of benevolent kindness as Richard explained the rules of the mailroom to me on my first day.

“We dress business casual here…” I don’t know if Richard usually starts off with this as his first rule, he may have done this especially for me since I showed up embarrassingly overdressed on my first day in a Calvin Klein suit I had purchased on discount at TJ Maxx the previous year before I knew my life was going to take such drastic changes in such a short amount of time making me wish I had a couple of extra hundred dollars in my pocket instead of a deep navy blue suit I always suspected didn’t fit correctly somehow. (I think the sleeves were too short.)

I was sitting on an empty overturned mail bin in front of Richard’s desk. There were no available chairs so I had to be creative. Richard looked out at my new co-workers as they slotted and re-slotted and de-slotted and counted and sorted and did other mailroom things. The look on his face almost changed from mild amusement to mild discomfort like he had just realized he was living a particularly bad dream he wasn’t going to wake up from anytime soon, but he caught himself before anything really showed and continued giving me the list of rules.

“You get two breaks of five minutes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch is twenty minutes, you can eat in the lunchroom,” he pointed to a storage closet, “there’s vending machines in the hallway with sandwiches and candy bars in them. Don’t under any circumstances ever get the ham & dijon mustard sandwich from the vending machine, it’s always off…”

“Off?”

“Expired. Even when they put in new sandwiches. We lost two workers last month to food poisoning from the ham & dijon.” (It was unclear whether the lost workers had missed several days of work and then returned or whether they were lost permanently and died. Maybe that’s why there was an opening in the mailroom.)

“You can’t go out for lunch. You don’t have enough time and there aren’t any restaurants in the area you could afford anyway. You’re a little overdressed today, we don’t have to wear a suit and tie, you work in the mailroom, Benjamin, a nice white shirt and khaki slacks is enough.” (I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had already covered this.)

“What else is there? I’m going to have you train with Paul. Follow him and do what he does. Unless he talks to the employees. When you’re on a mail run do not talk to the employees, ever, unless you are spoken to first. This is important, Benjamin, it is the number one rule of the mailroom. Actually, it’s best not to talk to any of the employees at all even if they ask you a question. Only talk if you absolutely positively can’t avoid it and only then talk about the mail, no non-mail topics can be discussed, do you understand, Benjamin?”

I must have looked uncomfortable because Richard started looking uncomfortable. I’ve never been good at following rules and it must have showed in my forced smile or slouching posture or my ever-adjusting bottom on the turned over mail bin.

“These aren’t my rules, Benjamin, I’m just doing my job, I don’t like enforcing them but I will if I have to, do you understand?”

I nodded and looked to my right, to my future, present coworkers. I tried to find Paul, my trainer, my new friend who was going to show me the ropes at Landmark, who was going to take me under his wing and help me maneuver through the treacherous waters of mailroom etiquette, but I didn’t know what Paul looked like, so I couldn’t find him, so I returned my look to Richard.

“Do you understand?”

I nodded again, my chin reaching my chest and bouncing upward.

“The job isn’t all bad, you can wear headphones and listen to music as you work, but not too loud and not those big earmuff headphones, the small ones that go in your ear, you can wear those like Paul over there is wearing.”

I looked to my right again looking for Paul one more time but over half a dozen of the male workers who could conceivably be named Paul were wearing the tiny earbuds that Richard was talking about.

“Okay?”

“Okay?” I turned back to Richard.

“Okay?” I think he was done with the rules.

“I do have one question, Mr. Kay.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t all this mail going back and forth in interoffice envelopes a little, I don’t know, obsolete. Everybody here has email, don’t they?”

“Of course they do, Benjamin, but this is a big corporation, there are a lot of documents that need to be signed, countersigned, sent to one department and then back to another… “ Richard stopped himself. Then he chuckled a little. “I don’t know why they have all this paper going back and forth, that’s for them to worry about. You should only worry about delivering it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And remember, no talking to the employees.”

I shadowed Paul for the next two days. He wasn’t going to take me under his wing. We weren’t going to become friends. We journeyed in silence from one cubicle to another cubicle and then to rows of offices and then back to the mailroom where we sorted in silence and then back through all of the floors where we delivered mail from one cubicle to another cubicle and then to rows of offices and then…. I think you get the picture.

Paul was wearing his headphones the entire time. He didn’t speak to me so much as nod or give animated gestures when he wanted to communicate vital information. I went outside to smoke during my afternoon break on the third day, the first day I was on my own, hoping to meet and bond with coworkers either from the mailroom or perhaps from some of the other floors, but there wasn’t anybody else outside in the three-foot smoking zone located near the bike racks in the courtyard by the institutionalized shrubbery. I went back the next day for both my morning and afternoon breaks, still no one showed. When I came back in from the afternoon break I gestured to Paul using his version of sign language. He turned his music down.

“Does anybody here smoke?”

“Marijuana?”

“No. Cigarettes.”

Paul looked at me like I suggested cannibalism. “Man, no one smokes that stuff here, this is California. Get with it, dude. What are we, savages?”

Apparently, my smoking experience was regional, or maybe generational, maybe what was a great way to meet people had become obsolete in only a matter of months, like those pieces of paper we were passing back and forth in our carts. I once knew someone who kept their job at a Fortune 500 company during massive layoffs because she became friends with the CFO as they both stood outside smoking every day. How was I going to make friends with any of these people now?

Nobody in the mailroom talked to each other, half listening to music on headphones, half too shell-shocked from life experience to want to communicate with coworkers. I had no choice. I began to talk to the employees on my route. I started simple. “Hello,” I said to each employee as I dropped the mail into the stacked plastic trays in each cubicle. I didn’t say anything to the overworked jittery slyly dominant alphas who had residence in the offices. I’m not that dumb, or maybe I’m a little classist or something, but I wasn’t going to let Jon Davidson, VP of Bollocking, stop me from talking to the employees before I had a chance to make a few friends, and I knew the overstressed, over-caffeinated becubicled employees were less likely to report my transgression of Landmark rules to Richard.  

On the first day of my new plan, Monday, I got three hellos back. The second day I got the same three hellos and two more. The third day, there were five hellos, two hi’s, one grunt, and one person asked me how I liked my new job. The fourth day I had a conversation with the woman who asked me how I liked my new job, her name was Debi. The fifth day we had another conversation and I stopped saying hello to those that had never responded to me. The sixth day, the next Monday, Debi and I chatted for about five minutes. The seventh day we slept together.

My intention hadn’t been to sleep with her. Not for the first three days. Four days actually. But by the fifth day I was feeling some chemistry there and she was feeling it, too. I think we both thought about each other all weekend, so by the time Monday rolled around there was a lot of flirtation and then on Tuesday I invited her for drinks after work. Well, for me it was after work because I finished at six, for her it was her dinner break from six to seven-thirty before she returned to her cubicle to finish reports or something.

We went to get drinks at the Hotel Figueroa, which was a short walk from the Landmark building. They had (still have?) a beautiful pool/bar area with palm trees and mosaic tiles and wealthy people who don’t have to work for a living and can lounge by a hotel pool all day, and I suppose we both knew why we had chosen a hotel bar instead of a regular bar or McCormack’s where they had (still have?) great happy hour deals and a large loud suited post-work clientele. I suppose all of this is true because it wasn’t long before we left our second round of drinks at our tiki-lit table near the pool (the décor is much nicer and more consistent in theme than I’ve made it sound like, it really is a nice place) and had reserved a room upstairs on the seventh floor (well, Debi reserved the room) and I was on top of her and she was on top of me and we were both on top of the sheets of the bed. It was all very nice. Better than nice. At least it was better than nice until Debi threw up afterwards. But that part wasn’t my fault. It was the morning sickness.

Don’t worry, the baby isn’t mine. Obviously, it isn’t mine. That was the first time we slept together. She was, oh, I don’t know about these things, four, maybe five, months pregnant and she was just starting to show and I guess her husband didn’t find her attractive anymore, he’s a real jerk anyway, and she was feeling a little lonely and unloved and I found her extremely attractive so we had sex. And, no, I don’t have some kind of fetish for pregnant women. I liked her and her only, not pregnant women in general. I’m actually quite particular in who I fall for. And the fact that she was pregnant wasn’t a bonus, it was more a side issue that could be overlooked like bad taste in clothing or a pageboy haircut. (Neither of which Debi had.) Besides, the kid couldn’t be mine, even if we had been having sex with Scandinavian regularity for the last four, five months, because I’m sterile.

What? It’s not that big a deal. Honestly, it’s not. I never even think about it. It’s never bothered me one bit. Never ever ever had any effect on my life. At all. In fact, I had completely forgotten about it until the preceding sentence. I know I sound like I’m protesting too much, but it’s more common than you think, plenty of men have to deal with it. Back when I was in the suburbs living an undead life, my girlfriend and I tried having kids. We thought it would improve our relationship because we had started to live out the lyrics to the Tammy Wynette-George Jones two-story house song without the actual two-story house (it was a condo). And after months and months of trying we finally decided to get checked and it turned out I wasn’t quite the sperm machine I always thought I was. Just think all those years of wearing condoms for no reason. Well, I guess disease but still. (And I don’t want any armchair psychologists suggesting the reason I want to take over the world is because I can’t have kids of my own. You’re better than that. Don’t do it.)

I figured there wasn’t much harm in a sterile guy making love to a pregnant woman. It gave us both something in our lives we wouldn’t have had otherwise. And after that first night, it kind of became a regular occurrence, although at cheaper hotels than the Hotel Figueroa but not as cheap as the motels where Angel plies her trade. Debi’s regular nighttime shift after her dinner break gave us a nice excuse for her husband, Clark. (Did I mention he’s a jerk?) Many nights she wouldn’t return to Landmark for her second shift, she said she never got any work done at that time of night anyway, she was just putting in face time so she would eventually get promoted from Jr. Analyst in whatever division she worked in to Sr. Jr. Analyst, but now that she was pregnant there was no chance of that happening, not unless she gave the kid away after it was born and never saw it again and she wasn’t going to give away her kid even though it is half Clark DNA.

So things were looking up. I had made a good friend, found a job and a lover. Everything was going not quite perfectly, but good, certainly good. A solid B+. And that’s when a rather surprising development occurred.