“Sayonara,” said Chess, now standing.
“If you think you’re gonna win the lawsuit lottery and hump Kellie Pickler, cool. Knock yourself out. Be the Payback Poster Boy. But remember: chicks dig guys with jobs. Chicks dig guys with jobs and new cars who don’t sit around their apartment smoking weed and popping pills like Lenny Bruce, building their case against the world.”
“Fuck you!”
“I get it,” said Maurie, backing down. He was halfway out the door now. “That’s cool. Namaste, Chester,” he said snidely. “Namaste. Gassho. Call me when the swelling goes down — of your ego. In the meantime, try not to leave any severed fingers in the chili at Wendy’s. Though there’s big money in that too, if you don’t get caught.”
THAT night, Chess watched a tsunami doc on MTV. Surfers and real MDs went over to help. Their T-shirts said MALARIA SUCKS. Rock songs played during amputations, to hold the attention of the demographic.
He switched the channeclass="underline" another Big Wave Anni show, with the same recycled shots of killer tides engulfing the infamous hotel pool. (Some guy really must have got rich off that footage.) There was a segment on these nerdy bureaucrats in Hawaii who kept saying they wanted to warn people but didn’t know how. One of them said they probably could have if they’d been able to find phone numbers of the embassies. Chess thought that was sort of funny and disarming. The pinhead suddenly gets a “miraculous” call in the middle of the night, “a real lifesaver,” from the State Department — and then he thinks to ask, Can you give me the numbers of the embassies? By the time he starts his round of wake-ups, it’s too late. Not that it wouldn’t have been anyway. The documentary was pretty engaging but they eventually ran out of stuff to say and it got crazy. People began theorizing about 50-story waves being generated by simple landslides or how a volcano blowing its top in the Canary Islands could basically wipe out Manhattan. The nerdwatchers said the chances were “slim” but such events were “imminent.” Basically, the whole Pacific coast, from Vancouver to San Diego, could be wiped out as well. Each time, the size of potential waves grew: from 100 to 200 to even 300 feet. Why didn’t they just say the waves would be a mile fucking high? You’d have to be in a goddam 747 to be safe. They kept cutting back to this butched-up pseudoseismoscientist dyke saying, “It could happen anytime. It could happen…today.”
Right. About the same odds as you going down on Anne Hathaway. You fucking whitehaired diesel. Weasel diesel crock.
Chess swigged down Percocet and Soma with a diet Dr Pepper. He flipped to a series on AMC called Film Fakers. The premise was a bunch of unknown actors cast in lead roles in genre films (there’d been a similar thing a few seasons back starring people who got famous on reality shows), the reveal being that everything was bogus, from script to director to crew. An extended, low-rent version of Punk’d, except with unfamous people. Kinda funny.
He lit a joint. Maurie’s words stung and Chess wondered if he was being a poor sport. Maybe the pain was in his head. But how could that be? In grade school, he was “a whiner.” Even his kid sister called him that. No, this was different. It wasn’t an ego thing — he’d been injured for real. Take these Film Fakers kids: they were all young, desperate, aspiring actors, and however pathetic it turned out, happy to have the exposure. Whereas Chess was a grown man, just like Remar said, fighting the good fight against getting older, struggling to pay bills and join the union. No, fuck that — fuck Maurie Levin and his manipulative bullshit. Fuck your bosom buddy madres at Friday Night Frights. I’ll sue the shit out of em and slap a suit on your kinky-haired ass if I have to, Superjew! Fraud and misrepresentation. Emotional fuckin distress. You blew it sky-high today, Rabbi! Comin over here runnin your namaste mouth. Try to buy me off with your chicks-like-
guys-with-jobs-and-new-car-smell fucking horseshit. Chicks like chicks with dicks! he thought, laughing out loud. I’ll fuck your pimped-out hippie girlfriend too.
SHE dropped by again, and gave him a New Age bookstore pamphlet about Ganesh, her father’s patron.
Laxmi said that years ago her dad broke his back and finally had something called spinal fusion, where they screw a metal rod in your spine. The surgery was done in New Delhi. Chess thought she was sharing the anecdote to make him feel better — as if whatever was wrong with him would never be that bad. Her heart was in the right place. Her pussy too. But I wouldn’t know.
After she left, he went online. He was stoned and curious. Fusion stuff was all over the place. The technology had recently been in the news because the doctor who invented it won a patent suit against some manufacturing company for infringement. He was going to get a settlement of one-point-
3,000,000,000. In a peace-and-love prescripted press release, he said there were no hard feelings — he really liked the company that tried to steal from him, and even announced he’d be doing business with them in the future. Well who the fuck wouldn’t. A lot of experts said that half the 250,000 spinal fusions done in the States each year were totally unnecessary; statistics said that instead of fusion, you could have the far less invasive laminectomy or even no surgery at all and do just fine. A little Pilates or even a walk around the block went a long way. But Medicare had bought into the game big-time and everyone was brainwashed into thinking that the more money a procedure cost, the more effective it was. The American way: $$$ = Best. Docs got kickbacks, free trips to Hawaii, and 6-figure consulting fees from whoever made the hardware, and hospitals quadrupled their fees, leaving the crippled, infected, and dead in their wake. Money kept talking even if it didn’t end up walking.
Chess went into some of the blogs and chat rooms. People were beginning to wake up and smell the litigation. But you had be carefuclass="underline" a lot of class action suits had fraudulent underpinnings: big drug companies were being extorted, and they were starting to fight back. Reading about this shit was like staring at one of those Bosch paintings. Gave him the willies. He would never let someone cut into him, that’s for damn sure. He’d be on a beach somewhere counting his money before that would happen.
Slurping daiquiris.
Watch me, Maurie. Watch it happen. Fuckin Jew.
XXXII.Marjorie
LUCAS Weyerhauser was late.
He laughingly asked if she’d spent the $1,863,279.47. She told him she had the money order, the 11½-thousand-dollar “marker.” He thanked her and said he’d be sending that to the New York State Attorney by special courier, the same folks who flew out jewels for Academy Award presenters, and “trucked” Federal Reserve gold bullion. “Your money order,” he said with a smile, “might very well be sharing a ‘pouch’ with Scarlett Johansson’s Harry Winston tiara.”
He asked how it went at the bank, wanting to make sure she hadn’t “shared” with friends or family members just yet. (She decided not to tell him about her close call with Joan.) He showed the old woman the contracts she’d signed, now notarized and stamped with official-looking seals. Marj asked when she could expect the 1st payment and he laughed again, sweetly, and said sometime in the next 6 weeks, as soon as the tax was paid on her winnings. That was standard, he said, showing off a cashier’s check — not the “marker” monies, he clarified — from the family in Ojai who “were unfortunate enough to win a bit less” than her. The amount was for $335,000, which meant, he said, they’d be able to “liquefy” within the next 10 days. Mr Weyerhauser didn’t think Marj wanted to “cash out” that quickly but if she “so desired,” arrangements could always be made. A minor hassle but he’d do anything for his Sisters. She said no — she didn’t want to be pushy — and the young man thought that prudent.