Then I heard a voice. “Knock knock,” the voice said.
That put me instantly on edge. I shouted back. “Don’t stand at the door and say ‘Knock knock’! If I had a doorbell, would you stand there saying, ‘Brrrring’?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Anouk asked, entering.
“Nothing.”
“You can tell me.”
Should I confide in her? I knew Anouk was having troubles in her own love life. She was in the middle of a messy breakup. In fact, she was always in the middle of a messy breakup. In fact, she was always breaking up with people I never knew she’d even been seeing. If anyone had an eye for the beginning of the end, it would be Anouk. But I decided against asking for her advice. Some people sense when you’re drowning, and when they step forward to get a clear view, they can’t help putting their foot on your head.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I want to talk to you about your dad’s depression.”
“I’m not really in the mood.”
“I know how to fill his emptiness. His notebooks!”
“I’ve snooped enough in his notebooks to last a lifetime! His writings are the stains of dripping juices from all the tangled meat in his head. I won’t do it!”
“You don’t have to. I already did.”
“You did?”
Anouk pulled one of Dad’s little black notebooks from her pocket and waved it in the air as if it were a winning lottery ticket. The sight of the notebook produced in me the same effect as the sight of my father’s face: an overwhelming weariness.
“OK,” Anouk said, “listen to this. Are you sitting down?”
“You’re looking right at me, Anouk!”
“OK! OK! Jesus, you’re in a bad mood.”
She cleared her throat and read: “ ‘In life, everyone’s doing exactly what they’re supposed to. I mean, look closely when you meet an accountant- he looks exactly like an accountant! Never did there exist an accountant who looked like he should have been a fireman, a clerk in a clothing store who looked like a judge, or a vet who looked like he belonged behind the counter at McDonald’s. One time at a party I met this guy and I said, “So then, what do you do for a crust?” and he said loudly, so everyone could hear, “I’m a tree surgeon,” just like that, and I took a step back and gave him the once-over and I’ll be damned if he didn’t fit the image precisely- he looked like a tree surgeon, even though I’d never met one before. This is what I’m saying- absolutely everyone is as they should be, and this is also the problem. You never find a media mogul with the soul of an artist or a multibillionaire with the raving, fiery compassion of a social worker. But what if you could whisper in a billionaire’s ear and reach the raving, fiery compassion that’s lying dormant and unused, where empathy is stored, and you could whisper in his ear and fuel that empathy until it catches alight, and then you douse that empathy with ideas until it’s transformed into action. I mean, excite him. Really excite him. That’s what I’ve been dreaming about. To be the man who excites rich and powerful men with his ideas. That’s what I want- to be the man who whispers thrilling ideas into an enormous golden ear.’ ”
Anouk closed the notebook and looked at me as though expecting a standing ovation. Was this what she was excited about? His megalomania was old news to me. I’d learned the same when I’d helped him out of the asylum. Of course, it was just a lucky break that time- taking the contents of those insane notebooks literally and using them on its owner was a very hazardous business- as we were about to find out.
“So what?” I said.
“So what?”
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get it?”
“Stop repeating everything I say.”
“It’s the answer, Jasper.”
“It is? I’ve forgotten the question.”
“How to fill your dad’s emptiness. It’s simple. We go out and find one.”
“Find what?”
“A golden ear,” she said, smiling.
VII
That night, on my way over to Anouk’s house, I thought about her plan. The golden ear she had decided on belonged to the head of Reynold Hobbs, who, in case you live in a cave that doesn’t get cable television, was the richest man in Australia. He owned newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, movie studios, and television stations that recorded sporting events that he broadcast through his cable networks. He owned football clubs, nightclubs, hotel chains, restaurants, a fleet of taxis, and a chain of record companies that produced music that he sold in his music stores. He owned resorts, politicians, apartment buildings, mansions, racehorses, and a yacht the size of the Pacific island of Nauru. Half the time Reynold lived in New York, but he was so secretive, you never knew which half. He was the rare sort of celebrity who didn’t have to worry about the paparazzi because he owned them. I tell you, Reynold Hobbs could take a shit off the Harbor Bridge and you’d never see a picture of it in the paper.
I don’t know how long Anouk had been planning this unpromising mission, but she showed me an article that said Reynold and his son, Oscar, were going to be in the Sydney casino that night to celebrate their purchase of it. Her plan was for us to go to the casino and try to convince Reynold Hobbs, Australia ’s richest man, to meet with Dad, Australia ’s poorest.
At this time Anouk was back living with her parents in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice cul-de-sac with a nice park next door and lots of children playing in the street and neighbors chatting over fences and big front lawns and big backyards and swings and a nice comfortable family car in every driveway and dogs who knew where to shit and where not to shit and in nice symmetrical piles too, like a Boy Scout’s campfire. It was the kind of middle-class exterior people love to peel back the layers of, looking for worms- and the worms are there, sure. Where aren’t there worms? And yes, Anouk’s family had a worm. They had a big worm. A worm that wouldn’t go away. It was Anouk. She was the worm.
Her father was working in the garden when I turned up. He was a healthy man in his fifties, so healthy that the sight of him always made me resolve to do fifty push-ups every morning. Muscles bulging, he was bent over the flower bed ripping up weeds, and even his workman’s crack was taut and glowing rosily underneath strong, virile tufts of bum hair.
“Hey, Jasper, what are you all dressed up for?”
“Anouk and I are going to the casino.”
“What the hell for?”
“To break the bank.”
He chuckled. “You can’t beat those corrupt bastards. They’ve got it rigged.”
“There aren’t many corrupt bastards you can beat.”
“Too true.”
Anouk’s mother, a beautiful woman with streaks of gray through her thick black hair, came out with a glass of water that she might have intended for her husband but that she gave to me.
“Here you go. Hey, am I shrinking or are you still growing?”
“I think I’m still growing.”
“Well, don’t stop now!”
“I won’t.”
I liked Anouk’s family. They didn’t make a great effort to make you feel welcome, they just looked at you as though you’d always been there. They were honest and earnest and enthusiastic and cheerful and hardworking and never had a bad word to say about anyone. They were the kind of people it’s impossible not to like, and often I’ve felt like marching them up and down the street, daring people not to like them.
“Where’s Anouk?”
“In her room. Go on in.”
I walked through the nice cool house, up the stairs, and into Anouk’s bedroom. Anouk always returned here after unsuccessful outings into the world- usually after jobs or relationships went bust. They kept it for her. It was strange to see her here in her family home, and in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl. Let’s be clear- Anouk was now thirty-two, and each time she moved out, she swore she’d never return, but things always had a way of going sour for her, and she was never able to resist going back for a while, to take a breather.