It all came down to shrinkage.
“The world we see is but a sliver! But because it’s all we know, we confuse it for the whole!”
I sat back and soaked in it: the stink of someone smoking his own ideas.
He must have caught a whiff of my disgust in my expression, because he caught himself, eventually. “You must forgive my enthusiasm,” he said, beaming like someone who had asked for the letter E on Wheel of Fortune.
“No worries,” I replied. “It’s just us stoners.”
The guy was a fucking first-class wanker, no doubt about it. The weird thing was that the more he talked, the more harmless he began to seem, the more my suspicion began to wane. Sure, I wanted to grab him, shake him, scream, Are you fucking kidding me?
But ...
He had convinced me he was a believer. Albert’s drunken revelation from the previous night, that he had taught a course on cults at Berkeley and so knew too much about cults to honestly participate in one, had me convinced the whole Frame thing was nothing more than a self-serving fraud. So the enthusiasm which should have implicated him—the man, after all, had just learned that his missing lover was in fact dead—actually had the opposite effect. Xenophon Baars was a true, talk-you-blue-in-the- face believer.
And if he was a believer, then he really thought she had gone to a better place.
I was losing perspective. I could feel it. Leave it to Baars to give me a reality check ...
“I could show you,” he said. “Hypnotize you ... “
“I was sexually assaulted by a hypnotist as a kid,” I said, thinking of Jennifer and her father and not liking it one bit. “I’m sure you’ll understand if I pass ...”
I’ve known more than my fair share of psychologists—certainly enough to know that suggestion is the cornerstone of hypnotic trances. Suspicion of murder aside, there was no way in hell I was letting Baars muck around with my head.
“Of course,” he said, frowning, knowing that I was lying and not knowing how to deal with it. “Tell me, Disciple. What do you think about this? I mean, really think.”
I studied him for a moment. Given my memory, I had become acutely aware over the years of all the small cues that establish hierarchies between individuals. I knew by now that Baars, for whatever reason, had accorded me the status of an equal. That he respected me.
What I couldn’t figure out was why this made me feel gratified..
“She’s with Xen ...”
“What do I really think?” I shrugged and made my favourite face: a crooked smirk that said whatever, and eyes that asked if it was bedtime yet. “Honestly? I think you’re a fraud. I think you’ve used your talent for sincerity to hook these people, and your training as a philosopher to reel them in. Now you’re living the high life, a miniature king of a miniature religion, filling young minds with ancient horseshit, and tender pussies with old cock—which is pretty much what this is all about, isn’t it? Living out your guru-porn-star fantasies.”
Baars leaned forward in his wicker chair as if winded. “Oh, my ...” he gasped.
“You asked,” I said, leaning my face back to soak in the sun.
“You really think—”
“You say my memory’s miraculous?” I snapped without looking at him. “Not half so miraculous as the consistency of old perverted pricks like you. You a// invent a religion of some kind, don’t you? Something to cover your horny old asses. A cult of misogyny. A cult of beauty. A cult of privilege. But somehow, magically, miraculously, it all comes back to fucking ... ”
A smile creased the sun-hot skin of my face. The glare illuminated the backs of my eyelids. I realized I much preferred talking to him with my eyes closed. He unnerved me too much otherwise.
“You sound pretty certain of yourself,” Baars said, his voice taut.
“Occam’s razor, Professor. You know the drill. All things being equal, the simplest explanation is generally the best.”
I could hear the breeze whisking through the willows in the near distance. Somewhere, a small radio piped the blues. The taint of driveway dust hung in the air.
“If all things are equal ... ”
My smile broadened. I could feel the sun across my lips, close enough to kiss.
“So you tell me, Counsellor, how many initiates have you banged?”
I turned to appraise his answer and saw old-man horror—the signs of a body that had lost faith in its structural integrity. He seemed to shrink and to age at once. Fawk. You would think I had just kicked his dialysis machine or something.
“Only Jennifer,” he said in a hollow voice.
Liar, I smiled.
I got up, made to show myself the way out. Amanda Bonjour came crashing up through my memory: “The whole thing is a murderous con! ”
“Mr. Manning!” Baars cried. “Do you really think that this—what we have built, and more importantly what we have discovered—is as small and as sordid as ... as what? A libidinous ego trip?”
A Gallic shrug. “Isn’t everything?” I replied.
I paused before rounding the courtyard threshold, spared him one final glance. I could see anger crawling into the gap his confidence had left behind. He even held one fist out, not in defiance. If anything, he seemed to be miming the act of seizing something—a bug, a coin, or even a wisp of smoke—from the open air.
“She’s dead, Baars. You know that.”
“No, Mr. Manning. Quite the contrary ... What I know—know, Mr. Manning—is that mankind conquered death long, long ago.”
I lay on the hard board that was my motel bed, eyes fixed on the dust- furry blades of the ceiling fan above me. And I also sat carefully in my office chair, watching Amanda and Jonathan Bonjour struggle with what always should be a simple question and yet somehow never is.
“He wants to know whether the cult was just an excuse to escape us,” Jonathan Bonjour said.
“Troubled,,”Amanda said stiffly. “Troub— “
“Not abusive,” Jonathan Bonjour interrupted. “There’s troubled and then there—”
“I’m sure Mr. Manning re—” Amanda began, her face slack with something—something.
“I just didn’t want him to get the wrong idea! “
A pause directed at me. A request for confirmation, reassurance— certainly not more questions. “Andwhat idea wouldthat be, Mr. Bonjour? “
“Jon slapped her,”Mrs. Bonjour said in a clear, broadcasting tone. “The last... fight we had. Jon slapped... her. “
“I... ah ...” A fat thumb wiping tears. “I... I don’t know what to say. “ A hand raised as a hood. A breath squeezed to the limit of manly self- restraint.
“Jonny blames himself,” Amanda said.
That clinched it. Hearsay or not, Jonathan Bonjour was a lying fat fuck. And what choice did he have? Even the best of us are moral cowards at the best of times. And this guy was a lawyer, which meant he had cashed in his ethical chips a long, long time ago. He spent his every day wringing advantage out of ambiguity.
The only real question was how far would he go.
“I have one last question—for you specifically, Mr. Bonjour. Your law firm regularly contracts private investigators, does it not? “
A moment of shock. Not because I had guessed his profession—what I had thought originally—but because he suddenly understood that he had inadvertently grabbed a steak knife—me—when what he really wanted was to spread some more butter.
“I’m not sure I understand.. “
“Stufflike this... personal stuffwith consequences that are, well, as big as you can imagine ... such stuffrequires trust. Why wouldn’t you go to people you know? “
“This wasn’t Jonny’s idea,” Amanda said. But it was his idea. He might have led her to it, rubbed the back of his neck and complained about how so-and-so had fucked up this-or-that, hemmed and hawed until, inevitably, she suggested they go with someone else.
“Even still...”
Jonathan Bonjour literally squirmed. How co
uld I have missed that?
“No offence, Mr. Manning, but my opinion of your profession is rather... jaded...” Fucking lawyers.
“And?”
“Well, let’s just say that I’ve come to that opinion through long experience. “
“But it’s not just that,” Amanda quickly added. “You see ... Jonny’s already gone down there, asking questions and all, and the people are ... well, more like you.. “
Fawk ... The implications of this were just beginning to soak through my deductive hide.
“Like me? “ I replied, smiling. “You mean socio-economically disadvantaged.”
“We thought that you might be able to talk their, uh, language. “
“My ad in the Yellow Pages that bad, huh? “ They both laughed. Only one of them sincerely. Had Bonjour hired me because I smelled like a reliable fuck-up? I could see it all. His wife was jamming him to do something, throw some of that morally dubious cash around. And I—apparent loser that I am—
was exactly what he thought he needed: a way to go through the motions of finding his daughter, all the while ensuring she would never be found ...
Becausehe had murdered her? His own daughter?
Now that was a big pill to swallow, even for a veteran popper like me.
The funny thing was, the longer I whiled away the afternoon poking and prodding everything I had seen and heard, the more Xenophon Baars returned to the fore. As impressive as he was in real time, he was proving to be a persistent fuck in my memory as well.
Again and again, no matter how hard I struggled to focus on the implications of this latest twist, “Quite the contrary ... What I know— know, Mr. Manning—is that mankind conquered death long, long ago ...” would rise into the thicket of possibilities ...
No such thing as death. Fawk.
But why would I find the idea so despicable? I mean, aside from the fact that it so obviously catered to human fear and vanity—like the things we’re typically inclined to believe.
If you’ve ever been dumped by someone you loved, then you know the feeling, the tooth-tight, eye-alert, ear-pricking buzz of needing something to be true. Somehow Baars, as insane as he was, had managed to leave me with that beehive of sensations. For the first time in my life I realized that I needed death to be absolute—as final as video review, as irreversible as a frontal lobotomy. I needed it the way composers need silence.
I know it terrifies you, but then you’re pretty much normal. This is me we’re talking about. How could someone like me not look at it as a sanctuary, a promise?
Death ... The one thing that does not repeat.
Unnerved, I called the motel office and asked for Molly’s room. I had heard her bumping around, so I knew she was back from whatever.
When she picked up, there was a curiosity in her voice: like me and most everyone else, she was accustomed to talking exclusively on her cell when on the road.
“The motel phone?”
“Ah,” I said in a faux dismissive tone, “I was feeling old-fashioned ... You know, romantic.”
“Don’t you worry about germs? You know, phone germs?”
“I pulled a condom over the talking end.”
She graced me with one of those drowsy, late afternoon laughs. “What’s up, Disciple? How was your day at the infamous Compound?”
Something plucked me in the gut. I get caught like this all the time, striking inappropriate tones at inappropriate moments.
“A cataclysmic revelation.”
“Woooo,” she drawled. She was warming to my verbal game playing. “Do tell.”
“Jennifer Bonjour was sexually abused by her father.”
A pause, then, “Ooof” The thought occurred to me that her sunny New England upbringing hadn’t been so sunny after all. Even people without skeletons have at least a bone or two in their closets. Erections have a way of fucking things up.
I gave her the quick skinny on what Anson had said regarding both his relationship with Jennifer and what had happened between her and her father. I also mentioned my previous suspicions: the fact that Bonjour, a lawyer with his own private investigative contacts, would turn to an outsider as dubious as myself.
“So what are you saying? That the man who hired you is a suspect?”
I was beginning to like this, the two of us lying on opposite sides of the same wall, staring off into multiple directions of nowhere, trading questions and observations to and fro. The fact that we were so close yet physically connected with a thousand looping miles of wire struck me as ... well, erotic.
But then, so does most everything.
“This is serious stuff, Molls, and serious stuff requires serious attention. At the very least, Amanda Bonjour needs to know her husband is a scumbag, don’t you think?”
An even longer pause.
“Disciple ... You can’t say anything. “
I understood what she meant: there was a sense in which telling Amanda would simply multiply the number of victims. What was truth compared with the misery such a disclosure would cause? What was justice?
In the subsequent silence, I thought I glimpsed a small fraction of the genuine Molly Modano. The one who tidies herself in the mirror after crying ...
That means something, doesn’t it? Glimpsing another’s centre of emotional gravity?
“Don’t, Disciple. Please don’t say a word.. “
Track Nine
MR. DINKFINGERS
Saturday ...
Once, when I was eleven years old, my parents brought me to a pig- roast-slash-family-reunion hosted by my uncle Tony. Even though Mom and Dad were vegetarians, they allowed me to dig in with the rest of my cousins. They were already troubled—terrified would be the better term—by their little boy’s peculiarities, so they were loath to do anything that might further segregate him from his peers. I remember that pork sandwich like it was yesterday. As the forbidden fruit, Meat simply had to be the best thing a boy of eleven could eat. Knowledge of grease and evil.
The hitch—and there’s always a hitch where I’m concerned—was that Uncle Tony’s nearest neighbour happened to be a pig farmer, which is why he got the pig dirt cheap, and why his property reeked whenever the breeze blew in from the south—as happened to be the case the day of the Manning family reunion.
As a result, every time I smell roasting pork, I quite literally smell pig shit—and salivate.
So when Molly and I found our way to the backyard of the humble white frame Church of the Third Resurrection, my nostrils flared even as my mouth watered.
“Do you smell anything?” I asked her.
“All stuffed up,” she said, fluttering a hand around her small freckled nose. “Hay fever.”
The church was situated just outside of town on a small lot fenced with trees and bracken. The lawn was redneck lumpy, but lush and green all the same. Around forty people or so threaded the expanse, forming a web of laughter and conversation. Groups of screaming children bobbed in and out of the fringes, some chasing balls, others chasing one another. The barbecue stood near the back, set perpendicular to a number of tables, most of which were covered in potluck delicacies. A keg of beer gleamed invitingly from one, accompanied by stacks of red plastic cups. The barbecue was one of those homemade jobs: metal drums cut in half then welded together end to end. The pig had been spitted whole. It gleamed and sizzled and smoked—and smelled like mouth-watering pig shit.
“The head?” Molly murmured beside me. “Who eats the head?”
“First pig roast, Molls?”
“They don’t really eat it, do they?”
“Sure do. Actually, it’s something of an honour to eat the cheeks. So if someone offers you the cheeks, whatever you do, make sure you act gracious and eat them ... “
“What?” She smiled, but with that furrow in her sunburnt brow that told me she worried I was serious. “Fuck that, Disciple. I’m not eating a pig’s face.”
“They’ll take offence. Remember, we’re here for Jennifer.
Jennifer..”
“Fuck that,” she repeated, her tone more uncertain, more chastised.
I grinned and sorted through the crowd, the homely congregation of Reverend Nill’s Church of the Third Resurrection. A good mix of men and women, old and young. A lot of fat-asses. Several butt-crack cowboys. A couple of so-so attractive women—I’ve always had a thing for chicks who dress sexy for church. I suppose Molly and I were conspicuous for our good looks, because I counted more than a few curious glances. I even recognized a couple of faces from our canvassing. Waved and smiled. Most everyone sported a red plastic beer cup, always a reassuring sight in a community of believers. I was also relieved to see a fair number of smokers blowing contrails into the motionless late afternoon air. So much so that I took the opportunity to spark a Winston of my own.
Number 99,933.
They were working people, by and large. My kind of people, truth be told. Construction workers. Retail employees. High school dropouts like me, with humble skills, warm laughs, and defensive hearts. Suddenly Jonathan Bonjour’s choice of Manning Investigations didn’t seem so out of sorts after all.
Did he know something I didn’t?
I glimpsed a guy swearing and laughing, flicking liquid from his fingertips—beer, I realized. The spill had shrink-wrapped his red T around his gut, and I was just about to glance away when he pulled the shirt off in a single fat-armed motion.
A flash of winter-pale skin. I found myself blinking at the black arms of a tattoo swastika flexing across the flab of his gut ...
Uh-oh.
The guy mimed a striptease, swinging his shirt, wagging his hips, and slapping his ass to uproarious laughter. Apparently the Holocaust was no big deal around here.
“You gotta—” Molly began.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from our right. It was Tim. “Hey, Disciple!”
“Remember the cheeks,” I muttered to Molly.
“I told you. Fuck that. No way. Besides, what the hell—”
I tuned her out. Tim jogged up to us wearing baggy blue jeans and a vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt. His face was flushed with something akin to relief. He had been talking about me, I could tell.