Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

There were days when Dad weakened, when he wondered aloud if maybe professionals might take care of her better than he could, when he wondered whether he and Margaret didn't deserve a little happiness for themselves. But Margaret stayed strong. You don't walk away from your obligations for mere happiness, she said. She loved him because he was a better man, a more honorable man, than that.

Then one day-Margaret told me in Starbucks-one day, my father said a terrible thing. He was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed to go home. He was staring at his shoes, thinking. She was lying naked under a single sheet, looking up at his profile.

And he murmured, "It would be better for everyone if she were dead."

It wasn't just the words, Margaret told me. They'd both said almost as much any number of times. But the tone of his voice, the awful, serious tone, and the awful, serious look he turned on her-she could tell he was saying one thing but that he meant something else, something much worse.

Their eyes met and they understood each other. For a long moment, they were together in that strange world of emotional logic where to escape the horrible prospect of wronging someone, you contemplate the thought of murdering her instead.

The moment passed-of course it did; they weren't monsters, obviously. But they couldn't deny it had happened and that it might happen again-and again, until the idea began to seem almost reasonable to them.

They held another of their precise, judicious discussions of the moral issues. They both agreed: They had to end their affair. It was making them miserable as things stood, and the only way to change the situation was to act cruelly or do what was wrong. They wouldn't. They would act kindly. They would do what was right. They would separate from one another forever.

So they did. They did the moral thing. The responsible thing. The honorable thing. They parted. And the meaning went out of my father's life, and he went into the garage and sat in the Lexus and gassed himself to death.

It's an object lesson, you see? Because it raises the question: What's the point of it all? All this morality, all this restraint. Doing right and depriving yourself of so many vital delights. We're here only a day or so-alive, I mean, a dawn, a hurried day, a remorseful twilight before the impenetrable dark. How can we deny ourselves even a single moment of passion or joy or pleasure? Why should we transform ourselves into dismal church ladies when look what we could be doing with each other, just look, right there, on the TV! The wife with her ass in the air now and her face between the girlfriend's legs and hubby going at her from behind and everyone's happy. I mean, if the hole is sweet, dude, stick the peg in, yes? Why all this fuss and feeling about it, all these rules and regulations? A peg in a hole. A life and a death. What difference does any of it make in the long run?

"Anne," I groaned quietly.

Then out of some combination of-I don't know-call it lethargy and self-disgust, I took another swig of wine and changed the channel…

To The Justice Room -where MacNamara was prosecuting a Christian minister who'd murdered a man to keep him from euthanizing his brain-dead wife.

Anne… I went on thinking about Anne. But without the porn to distract me, my thoughts slowly returned to what she'd said to me on campus. What if it was the truth? I wondered. What if Serena went into The Den that night looking for Casey Diggs?

I changed the channel…

To Undercover -where- kerpow! -petite, sexy Jillian Blaine punches the traitor Robert right in the kisser, knocking him ass over teakettle, yeah!

What if Serena had actually delivered Casey to Jamal and his friends? What if she had brought him to them so they could take him out to the Great Swamp and murder him?

I changed the channel…

To the news-where some Middle Eastern rabble-rouser with a name like Kaka al-Iraqi was screaming to a cheering crowd, "This is Holy War! We will not rest until we bring the foul disease of freedom and rationalism to an end!"

And what if Diggs was murdered because he was right? Because he knew Rashid was at the center of a planned terrorist attack on the city?

I changed the channel…

To Missing: "You see a Saudi national who might be a terrorist," spat the heroic Agent Magruder. "I just see another overambitious FBI agent profiling a man because of his race and religion."

If no one believed Diggs, why would anyone believe me? I wasn't even sure I believed me. I had no proof of anything.

I changed the channel…

To The Inner Circle -news commentary-where a pink, bald newspaper columnist who looked like a cartoon pig was saying: "I think Mr. Kaka is simply trying to communicate his frustration with American foreign policy…"

Lies, lies, lies, I thought. It's all lies. It's all about what they don't say.

My thoughts returned to Rashid pacing the platform in that lecture hall. I recalled my moment of fear and certainty. Of course he's a terrorist. Of course he is.

Who could I go to? What would I tell them? How could I stop this thing before people died?

I changed the channel…

And there-there, so help me, God-was Patrick Piersall!

"You gotta be kidding me!" I said aloud.

It was a local news program out of New York. The scene was somewhere near City Hall Park. There was a wild, pudgy figure on screen, stumbling around the middle of the street. It was a fuzzy amateur video, taken from some distance. You couldn't really make out the guy's face, but there was a helpful caption on the bottom of the screen: UNIVERSAL STAR PATRICK PIERSALL ARRESTED FOR DUI AND WEAPONS POSSESSION.

I watched, dumbstruck.

The pudgy little figure went on raving, leaping here and there beside a silver BMW he'd apparently run halfway up onto the sidewalk. He waved his hands insanely in the air. He threw back his head and howled at the sky.

Then four cops swarmed over him and wrestled him to the ground.

Andrew Klavan

Empire of Lies

Under the Influence

I went on staring openmouthed at the television as they showed the video again and again. And again. Not to mention again. As if urging us to drain the drama of the moment down to its dregs, a magic elixir of vicarious life to warm us in our lassitude. Even when the newswoman came back on, they split the screen and kept running and rerunning the video to the right of her. The newswoman-a smart-eyed street reporter with brown hair and white-coffee skin-talked for a few moments into her hand mike on one side of the screen while Piersall confronted the cops again and again on the other. Then the newswoman was replaced by a head shot of Piersall in his prime. It was a nice effect. There he was to the left as we knew him best, chisel-featured and coiffed, with the silver shoulders and sparkly collar of his space admiral's unitard just visible at the bottom of the picture. Meanwhile, on the right, where the video kept replaying, there he was as a fat crazy man screaming in the middle of the street until the four officers tackled him, shoved his face into the pavement, wrenched his arms behind his back, and slapped the cuffs on. The two sides of the screen formed a sort of living mug shot, only instead of showing the suspect full-face and profile, they showed him past and present. Handsome TV star here, drunken has-been nutcase under arrest over there. A nice effect, as I say. It's a very pleasant sensation to watch a successful person fall from grace.

Anyway, here's what had happened to the poor bastard-here's what the newswoman told us, I mean, while, oh look! they ran the video of Piersall's violent arrest three more times.

The day after having his True Crime America show canceled during its first broadcast, Piersall, according to police and eyewitnesses, stormed into the cable network's Manhattan headquarters just north of Times Square. Witnesses described him as "drunk and irate." Barging into the office of network president Cole Hondler, he brandished a. 38 caliber revolver.