We took a seat in front of the stage and ordered drinks and sipped them slowly.
“I don’t like it here,” Jasper said.
“Me neither,” I answered. “Why don’t you like it?”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t understand the logic of strip clubs. Brothels make sense. Brothels I understand. You want to fuck, you go there and you fuck, you orgasm, you leave. Sexual satisfaction. Easy. Understandable. But strip clubs- at best, if you don’t find them disgusting, you get sexually excited, then because you can’t actually fuck these women, you leave sexually frustrated. Where’s the thrill in that?”
“Maybe we’re not as different as you think,” I said, and he smiled. Honestly, with all the noise a father makes about demanding respect and obedience, I don’t think there can be a father in the world who doesn’t, at the bottom of his heart, want a simple thing: for his son to like him.
“Oh my God,” Jasper said. “Look at that bartender.”
“What bartender?”
“That one. Isn’t he one of the millionaires?”
I took a good look at the thin Asian man behind the bar. Was he or wasn’t he? I wasn’t sure. I don’t want to say anything racist like “They all look alike,” but you can’t deny the similarities.
“Look at him,” Jasper said. “He’s working his arse off. Why would a millionaire be doing that?”
“Maybe he spent all the money already.”
“On what?”
“How should I know?”
“I know. Maybe he’s one of those people who have worked so hard their whole lives they don’t know how to do anything else.”
We sat there for a while thinking of people who need hard work to give them self-esteem, and we felt lucky we weren’t one of them. Then Jasper said, “Wait. There’s another fucking one.”
“Another fucking what?”
“Another fucking millionaire! And this one’s taking out the garbage!”
This one I recognized, as he was in the first batch of winners. It was Deng Agee! I’d been to his house! I’d personally tormented him!
“What are the odds that…” My voice trailed off. It wasn’t worth saying. We knew what the odds were. Like a horse race with one horse in it.
“Bastard,” I said.
“Who?”
“Eddie. He’s fucked us.”
We drove straight to the Hobbs building and grabbed the files of the millionaires. We read them and reread them, but there was no way of knowing how many friends Eddie had made rich through my scheme. He’d screwed me. He’d really screwed me. There was no way that eventually someone wasn’t going to find out about this. That snake! That’s friendship for you! It was a truly annihilating betrayal. I wanted to pull down the night with my bare hands.
As we hurried over to Eddie’s house, I assumed that Eddie, my so-called friend, had dropped me unceremoniously into the shit on a whim. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that it was so much worse than that.
We were halfway up the path to his house, hidden behind a jungle of fern, when we saw him waving from the window. We were expected. Naturally.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Eddie said, opening the door.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“We went to the club! We saw all the goddamn millionaires!”
Eddie was silent for a minute before saying, “You took your son to a strip club?”
“We’re fucked! And you fucked us!”
Eddie walked into the kitchen and we followed.
“It’s not the end of the world, Marty- no one knows.”
“I know. And Jasper knows. And it’s only a matter of time before someone else knows!”
“I think you’re overreacting. Tea?” Eddie put the kettle on.
“Why did you do it? That’s what I want to know.”
Eddie’s explanation was poor. He said, with no hint of shame, “I wanted to do something nice for my friends.”
“You wanted to do something nice for your friends?”
“That’s right. These guys have had a really rough time of it. You can’t imagine what a million dollars means to them and their families.”
“Jasper, do you think there’s something not right with his explanation?”
“Eddie,” Jasper said, “your explanation sucks.”
“See? Even Jasper thinks so, and you know we don’t agree on anything. Jasper, tell him why his explanation sucks.”
“Because if you made all your friends millionaires, why are they all still working at a strip club?”
Eddie seemed unprepared for this excellent question. He lit a cigarette and wore an industrious expression, as if he were trying to suck the smoke into his right lung only.
“You got me there.”
He’s guilty as hell, I thought, and there’s something sinister he’s not telling me. He was oozing the worst kind of bullshit- obvious, but not transparent enough to see the reason behind it.
“Answer the question, Eddie. Why the fuck are these millionaires all working in minimum-wage jobs in a sleazy rundown strip club?”
“Maybe they spent all the money already,” Eddie said.
“Bullshit!”
“Christ, Martin, I don’t know! Maybe they’re the kind of people who’ve worked all their lives and don’t know how to do anything else!”
“Eddie. Twenty million people are sending in twenty million dollars every week, and when they find out their money isn’t being distributed fairly but is going into the pockets of your friends, whom they will consider my friends, what do you think will happen?”
“Maybe they won’t find out.”
“People will find out! And we’ll all go down!”
“That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?”
“Eddie, where’s the money?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have it!”
“Honestly, I don’t.”
None of us said anything. Eddie finished making his tea and sipped it with a dreamy look on his face. I was getting madder and madder. He seemed to have forgotten we were there.
“How can we bury this?” Jasper asked.
“We can’t!” I said. “We just have to hope no one figures it out.”
As I said this, I realized my mother was wrong when she once told me no matter how far down a road you’ve gone, you can always turn back. I was on a one-way road with no exits and no room to turn around. It was an entirely justifiable feeling, as it happened, because two weeks later everyone figured it out.
Chapter Five
Enter the cannibalistic vigor of the press into my life once again. The story broke all at once, in every paper, on every radio and television station. I was masticated, and good. Leading the charge was none other than Brian Sinclair, the has-been current affairs reporter whom I’d seen with my son’s girlfriend.
Caroline and I were eating dinner in an Italian restaurant, at a table by the window. We were digging into an enormous slab of veal in lemon sauce when his slick silver head popped into my line of vision. We locked eyes through the window. As a public figure, I was accustomed to the odd camera pointing at me like a judge’s finger, but the slippery eagerness on Brian’s face had an effect on me similar to the sudden drop of cabin pressure in an airplane. He signaled furiously at his cameraman. I took Caroline’s hand and we bolted out the back door. By the time we got home, the phone was ringing off the hook. That night we saw our backs disappear on the six-thirty news.