The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 8: The Seduction
Previous Chapter: Chapter Seven (The Particle Zoo)
I went back to the office after the handjob to pick up my car and then went home without stopping by the mailroom to see how Mike was doing. I needed to mentally prepare for my dinner with Humphrey the next day, suddenly worried I didn’t have anything appropriate to wear. I wanted to call Debi to have her take me shopping and pick something out for me, but we couldn’t arrange to meet on Friday nights because it was “date night” with Clark, so instead of going shopping at the Burbank Mall I sat in my apartment all night eating Cheerios and watching Columbo. (I suppose I could have asked Angel for help in picking out clothes, but something tells me her taste is slightly different from the Landmark executive-class taste of Humphrey that Debi is familiar with and wears herself and, besides, Friday is Angel’s busiest work night. I was also sensing a slight undercurrent of tension between us and in my anticipatory state of anxiety I wasn’t up to trying to figure out why she was upset at me.)
Eventually, I decided I didn’t need to wear anything new for Humphrey, I mean, he was the one who was trying to impress me, I didn’t have to impress him. Sure, I might get a haircut at the Tommy Michellini Hair Salon instead of Supercuts and ask for the latest trendy cut and, sure, I would take an extra long shower (using a special chamomile body shampoo I purchased from Bath & Body Works) and put on the cologne I had received 2 Christmases ago from my girlfriend and only wore for special occasions and, sure, I might break out my nice loafers and do the appropriate manscaping during my extra long shower, but new clothes, come on, there are limits.
The directions to Humphrey’s Malibu place were in my email that night and during a slow point in Columbo I began to plot my drive for the next day. The drive from Glendale to Malibu is a little more difficult than one might expect. And I was 20% sweat drenched and 80% acclimatized to the wealthy surroundings of Humphrey’s estate by the time I arrived at his front gate in Malibu and got out of my ‘96 Mercury Tracer and pressed the intercom button. I was let into the grounds of the mansion without any fuss and was soon driving in circles around Humphrey’s gigantic circular driveway looking for an open parking space. Bentleys and Jaguars and Porsches and Range Rovers and an odd Buick took up all of the available spaces. On my third trip around to see if anything had opened up, I noticed a well-dressed gentleman standing on Humphrey’s front steps. He was holding a silver tray with a flute of champagne on it. He gestured to me with his non-trayed hand to stop my car in front of the front steps, which wasn’t an appropriate parking spot, but he looked like he had the authority to make such decisions so I stopped my car and got out.
“Is it okay to leave my car here?” I shouted entirely prepared to get back in and keep circling.
“That will be fine, sir.” He had an English accent.
I walked up the steps and took the flute of champagne and followed the man inside to the giant whitewashed open foyer.
“Mr. Humphrey will be down in a minute. Is there anything else I can provide?”
I thought about this question for longer than I’m sure I was supposed to before thoughtfully providing my answer, “no, no, thank you.”
“Very good, sir.”
The butler vanished like a Cheshire cat leaving behind only his English accent to dangle in the air as I began to wander around the giant open foyer and drink my champagne. Carefully placed artwork abounded, most on the walls, a few on pedestals like the ancient death mask that was peering out the left front bay window at my misplaced car.
I stopped underneath the largest painting in the large room that dominated the largest wall as I’m sure every first-time visitor to Humphrey’s Malibu mansion does. That painting was unignorable, which isn’t a word (okay, it actually is), but that painting deserved to have words made up for it because it was the most hideous painting I had ever seen in my life. I wondered if that was the point of it, maybe it was supposed to be so hideous no one could ever forget the sight of it like seeing a dismembered body or maybe it was supposed to represent the hideousness of some atrocity like Guernica. But this thing wasn’t Guernica, it was more like… like… it was so hideous I can’t come up with a simile, or a metaphor, this painting was too hideous for similes and metaphors because there is nothing in the world that can match its hideousness.
“My god,” I muttered in astonishment. The butler, Wilson, had reconstituted himself and was standing next to me again.
“Quite,” he said quietly in a way only an English butler can. “Mr. Humphrey paid 20 million for it,” he then said in a louder more normal voice.
“I sure did.” A voice from behind us said from the top of a grand staircase that was roughly the length and height of the Golden Gate Bridge. Humphrey was walking down the staircase regally like a business casual Scarlett O’Hara. Wilson vanished again and now Humphrey was standing next to me as we both “admired” the painting.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Humphrey said and then slapped me on the back, loosing another one of my fillings. It was time to go out to the veranda.
A table had been laid out for us. There were candles on it. How sweet. Humphrey’s hair swayed beautifully in the breeze as we sat down. He was talking, in mid-description, he was always in mid-description, of a recent Landmark acquisition, or was it an expansion, or maybe it was a joint venture. I was distracted by his beautiful hair. I had to refocus on his words to catch up. He was now pretending to hold something in his hands. He was describing some sort of new gadget I wouldn’t be able to afford.
“It’s the Handy Andy, it slips underneath the skin in the wrist like this, it should be on the back of the wrist, it’s apparently dangerous to put in underneath on the soft part by the veins. No, it’s not dangerous, I didn’t mean that, nothing we do at Landmark is dangerous, it’s just not as effective. We suggest parents wait until their child is two. We think anything younger than two is a little young, maybe one and a half, but it really is the parents’ decision, we only give them guidelines, but we couldn’t in good conscience have them put it in one year-olds. Okay, maybe one year-olds would be fine, but the point is parents should at least wait a few months. We’re going to say two on the box, for legal reasons and all of that.”
“The screen projects through the skin. We had a little trouble at first because it was designed for Caucasian skin, so it took a while to make it compatible with all races, but eventually our engineers made it work, our engineers are the best, they’re brilliant, we couldn’t put it on the market unless it worked for everybody. Once it’s in the wrist there, it’s a video screen for the child to watch, little Andy or Andrea can watch whenever they want just by flexing their wrist like so, we’ve pre-uploaded our entire cartoon library but of course the parents can add additional plans and entertainment tiers if they want. Most importantly, it’s a safety device, Ben, it allows the parents to know where their child is at all times, constant monitoring of pulse and heart rate and brain functions and the tracer can be tied to any cell phone, hopefully, Landmark brand, but at least in the beginning we’ll be open to other carriers, so just by looking at their phones the parents can know everything about their child. But the cool thing, do you want to know the coolest part of the Handy Andy, Ben?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. “When the child grows up and they’re ready to have their own cell phone the parents don’t have to do anything, no going out to the store and finding a model for their tween, none of that, it’s a built-in cell phone, a built-in mobile device that can grow with the child. It’s brilliant, just brilliant. We hope to ship a few million of these by Christmas of next year. We think once consumers, once parents see all of the possibilities, there’s absolutely no limit. We could have a billion customers between China and India alone in ten years. Isn’t it a great world we live in?”
“Yes?” I looked at the back of my wrist and tried to envision a cartoon character glowing from my skin. I wasn’t having any success.
“You see we’re not just an entertainment company, Ben. We’re so much more. We’re branching out, not just into software and e-commerce and mobile technology, but banking, we’re now the largest holder of student loans in the country, which is great because there’s no downside, they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy like other debts so we never have to worry about the bubble bursting. That was after our deal with Fred Lord, Inc. When that deal went through we had the second largest market capitalization in the world, only behind a certain company I won’t name, the fuckers. But we’re going to pass them and soon.”
“I have my eye on several other industries they’re not even thinking about. Our telecommunications department just made a contract to take over the diplomatic functions of the State Department. We think we can do it more efficiently, it could be a real growth market for us, Ben. The mail, one day soon, we’ll not only be the portal for your email, for your television, for your internet, for your mobile device, for your everyday conversations, but we’ll run the physical mail, too. If there still is any, that is. And then there’s clothing and all the merchandising, frankly, it’s nowhere near as profitable as some of these other industries, but it’s important for our profile, our street cred.
My point is we’re a growing company, Ben, and a key part of that growth is the movie industry. We’re not forgetting about movies, we’re not forgetting about entertainment. That’s how we started, that’s our life blood, we’re never going to abandon those industries. We believe that your movie, your beautiful sad heartbreaking uplifting movie, can be the crown jewel for our movie business, it will be the beacon not just for next summer when we’ll release it, but for years to come, an example to inspire marketers and filmmakers and artists and humans of every kind for decades, centuries. We need Sparkles and Timmy to be that crown jewel. You need Sparkles and Timmy to be that crown jewel. It’s going to change your life. It’s going to change my life. It’s going to change the world, Ben. It’s going to change the world, I truly believe that. But only if you sell it to us.”
He was giving me the hard sell and it was working. I had to admit that Humphrey could be a pretty persuasive guy. The table started vibrating as I was about to fall completely under his hypnotic spell. I was saved by Humphrey’s cell phone. He pulled it from his pocket and looked down at the screen. The phone was so thin it wasn’t even there.
“I’m sorry, I need to take this. There might be trouble in Asia. I’ll be back in a sec.” Perhaps the Mongols were on the move again.
Humphrey walked inside the house. I stared at his empty seat, looking at his echo. I hadn’t fully pulled out of the hypnosis. The blue light in his office had never really worked on me, but this, this, whatever was happening to me on that veranda was having its desired effect. I turned to my left to look at the ocean and try to recover and saw a man standing next to me holding a giant green club.
“Awww,” I screamed and jumped in my chair.
“More champagne, sir.” It was Wilson with the champagne.
“You scared me.”
“Sorry, sir.” Wilson poured the champagne into my empty glass. My heart was still beating fast from the surprise.
“Where did you come from?”
“The servant’s passageway, sir.”
“The servant’s passageway?”
“Yes, the house has a servant’s passageway that allows the staff to quietly and efficiently meet Mr. Humphrey’s needs throughout the grounds, sir.”
“The servant’s passageway?” I had had too much information in the past five minutes, my brain was on overload.
“Quite.” Wilson disappeared when I looked away. I jumped when I turned back to him to say something else and he was no longer there. I was pretty sure Humphrey had somehow hired Jeeves to be his butler. I’m not sure how since I’m fairly certain Jeeves is a fictional character, but Humphrey had definitely hired him. Wilson was Jeeves under an assumed name. This was all getting to be a little too much. Even for me.
I stood up and strolled. I looked into the marble architecture down the veranda stairway that leads to the ocean and could see a crack in the wall. This must be the servant’s passageway. I’m a naturally curious person so I decided to investigate. The nearly invisible door was unlocked. I pushed on it and I was in a dark passageway. After a short time, I came upon a small room with a bank of monitors that showed all of the various areas of the house and grounds. I could see Humphrey talking on his phone, pacing like a pacing businessman on a business call, I could see Wilson pouring himself some champagne and having a glass, I guess he wasn’t Jeeves after all, I could see various other empty rooms laid out like rooms in a palace and I could see my shitty car parked inappropriately blocking the front steps.
Then I could see Humphrey ending his phone call. Shit, I had to get back to the table. I sprinted down the passageway, twisting my ankle slightly as I bolted through the invisible door. I got to the table just as Humphrey came out again. I was breathing heavily from my run. I think Humphrey thought it was from the excitement of the speech he delivered a few minutes earlier.
He sat down across from me and took a small white box from his trousers. He set it down on the table between us and smiled nervously.
There was a pink, maybe red, no pink, no, what’s between red and pink, color bow around the box. It looked like a ring box.
“Open it,” Humphrey said.
Scared at what I might find inside, I pulled the fuchsia string and opened the box. There was a gold key in it. I was confused. I think he had given me the key to his heart.
“It’s a key for this place, my home away from home, my vacation and weekend home. I want you to feel free to use it whenever you want, whenever you feel the need to get out of the city, to write or to relax or to impress somebody. This house is empty most of the time, so please I want you to use it. For me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, Ben, say yes.”
Still, despite the hard sell, despite the beautiful gesture of the key and the possibility of a nice payday, I hesitated.
“Technically, this place is owned by the company, so think of it as a family retreat. And you are part of the Landmark family, Ben.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.”