“So how do you want to tackle this?” I asked Anouk.
“We should attack on two fronts. One of us takes the father, the other one the son.”
“This is never going to work.”
“You want to try Reynold or Oscar?”
“Neither, but I suppose I’ll try Reynold. I want to ask him something anyway.”
“OK. But what should I say to the son? What kind of opening do you think will work?”
“I don’t know. Pretend you met before.”
“He’ll think I’m trying to pick him up.”
“Then insult him.”
“Insult him?”
“Dissect him the way you always do. Tell him what’s wrong with his soul.”
“How do I know what’s wrong with his soul?”
“Make it up. Tell him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”
“No, that’s no good.”
“All right. Then tell him he’s so rich he’s cut off from reality. That’ll get him going. Rich people hate that.”
“But he is so rich he’s cut off from reality.”
“Anouk, believe it or not, financial hardship is not actually the one official reality.”
“Let’s not argue. Let’s just get going on this.”
“OK. Good luck.”
I went over to the table where Reynold Hobbs was hunched, but there were no empty seats. I stood around, breathing on the players’ necks. A security guard eyed me suspiciously, and with good cause too. I was acting suspicious, muttering to myself, “What the hell am I going to say to this media giant? How can I convince him to see my father? As an act of charity? Reynold Hobbs is a famous philanthropist, sure, but his is the kind of charity you phone in.”
A reporter sitting next to Reynold finished an interview, stood up, and shook his hand. I took the opportunity and squeezed in beside him. Reynold smiled cordially at me, but I immediately sensed his discomfort. Some people are just no good talking to anyone under twenty years old, and the closer you are to zero, the greater their discomfort. He turned away from me and became instantly engrossed in a conversation with his lawyer about the average point size of small print in a legal contract. Reynold wanted to put in some clause in Times New Roman but drag it down to four points. His lawyer was debating the ethics of the proposed move, and argued that any print needs to be no smaller than seven points to be “all aboveboard.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Hobbs?” I said.
He turned slowly, as if to say “Everything I breathe on turns to gold, so I’m doing you a big favor just facing in your direction,” and when his eyes reached me, they did so with an infinite stillness that told me in no uncertain terms that despite our proximity, he was inaccessible.
“What is it?”
“You own some of our newspapers, don’t you?”
“And?”
“Well, I thought power was supposed to corrupt, Mr. Hobbs. But what you do isn’t corrupt- selling diarrhea isn’t corrupt, it’s just a baffling waste of power. With all the influence you exert, with the infinite choices you have up your sleeve, you could print anything, and yet you choose to print armpit sweat. Why?”
Reynold didn’t know what to say. I looked over to see how Anouk was doing. She seemed to be faring better than I was. Oscar had an embarrassed look on his face. I wondered what she was saying.
Reynold was still ignoring me. I said, “OK, you want to sell papers. I get it. You sell fresh phlegm because the public has an indefatigable taste for fresh phlegm. But can’t you make your papers a little bit liberating? What about sticking in a quarter page of Tibetan wisdom between the rehashed headlines and the daily horrorscopes? Would it kill sales?”
The security officer’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“It’s OK,” Reynold said, without taking his eyes off me.
I pushed on. “Take the shamelessly sensationalist rehashing of the Frankie Hollow story. You don’t have any more insight than you had on the first day, but you plop it on the front page anyway, turning it round and round, now from the point of view of the turd in the hotel toilet, now that of a bird flying past the window. Honestly, Mr. Hobbs, it’s like reading dick cheese. How can you live with yourself? You must hire someone to look in the mirror for you.”
“Listen to me, sonny, whoever you are. A newspaper is there to report, not to enlighten men’s souls. Tabloids are sensationalist because men’s lives are not sensational. That’s the long and the short of it. The death of a celebrity is the best paper-seller we have. Do you know why? Because it’s as if the headline reads: ‘Gods Die Too.’ Do you get me?”
“Sure. Can I borrow thirty thousand dollars?”
“What for?”
“To wander aimlessly over the whole earth. Ten thousand would get me started.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“You shouldn’t be looking for handouts. You should be inspired to do it on your own.”
“There’s nothing inspiring about minimum wage.”
“Yeah, well, I started on minimum wage. I never got a handout. I worked for what I have.”
“That’s a good speech. It’s a shame you can’t give your own eulogy.”
“OK. My patience has run out now.”
He nodded to the security guard, who helped me to my feet by squeezing my neck.
“One more thing!” I shouted.
Reynold sighed, but I could tell he was wondering what I was going to say. “Make it quick,” he said.
“My father wants to meet with you.”
“Who’s your father?”
“Martin Dean.”
“I never heard of him.”
“I didn’t say he was famous. I just said he wants to meet you.”
“What about?”
“Why don’t you let him tell you in person?”
“Because I don’t have time. My plate’s full right now.”
“You’re rich enough. Buy a bigger plate.”
Reynold nodded again, and the security officer dragged me from the table. Someone took my picture as I was “escorted” outside. I waited for Anouk on the casino steps for an hour, and to pass the time I swung by the car park to check for suffocating children. There weren’t any.
I came back up just as Anouk was coming out. I had never been flabbergasted before, so I didn’t know what it felt like to be flabbergasted and I didn’t even really believe people could be flabbergasted outside of books. That said, I was flabbergasted. Following closely behind Anouk were Oscar and Reynold Hobbs.
“And this is Jasper,” she said.
“We’ve met,” Reynold said, with an ephemeral sneer.
“Nice to meet you again,” I said, and I threw Oscar the warmest smile in my smile repertoire, but his eyes didn’t find my face worth dwelling on, so he missed it.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Anouk.
“They’re coming with us,” she said, making her eyebrows wiggle.
“Where?”
“Home.”
VIII
In the stretch black limousine, both Reynold and his son spent the ride staring out their respective windows. Oscar’s three-quarter profile had me transfixed most of the way. What a burden, I thought. Imagine being filthy rich and impossibly good-looking. For all that, he exuded a sadness I was unable to account for.
“I’ve seen your picture in magazines,” I said.