Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

Barry picks himself off the ground. Topper stands right in front of him and holds his open palm as high in the air as he can manage. “C’mon. You’re a monster. You’re an animal. WHOOOOOOO-ugh.” Topper’s high spirited rant is cut short when Barry high-fives the little man and sends him rolling across the pavement. Topper comes to rest at Edwin’s feet. He looks up and says, “We gotta get this kid in a boxing ring.”

“Only if you can get him to throw the fight,” says Edwin, “Otherwise we’ll get no odds.”

The Sergeant looks at Barry. Then he looks at Topper. Then back to Barry. Then at Edwin. It makes him seem less a person and more like some kind of spastic, over-caffeinated pigeon. When he realizes that both Edwin and Topper are staring him he says, “Are, are, are you sure you can control that thing?”

“Him, he’s a pussy cat,” says Topper, rubbing a spot on his head where it slammed against the pavement. “Hey, dumbass, get over here.” Barry smiles and lumbers towards Topper. The Sergeant flinches again. He thinks about calling for a S.W.A.T. team, just in case. But then he realizes that if this went wrong, there’s probably nothing a S.W.A.T team could do. It would be out of his hands and nobody could blame him.

“Come on dumbass, let’s go mess up this building. Then we’ll go get a double helping of pie.”

“PUH-EYE!,” bellows Barry.

“Yeah, yeah, pie. I know you like pie!” And with that Topper goes into a fit of verbal and physical gymnastics. He simultaneously curses and praises Barry. He moves quickly and erratically and incessantly, like the end of a piece of string dangled in front of a cat. All of this serves to keep Barry’s attention. In this frantic manner Topper moves Barry towards the doomed structure one gesticulation at a time.

Edwin can not imagine how this communication is possible. It is as if Topper has a gift. The kind of a gift attributed to horse whisperers and snake charmers and wild-eyed mystics who spend most of their time in the dry, empty places of the world. There is only one way to say it. On some, animalistic level, Topper and Barry have a connection.

As Barry nears the building, he becomes distracted. He looks down and sees two tiny flowers that have managed, against all odds and logic, to claw their way through a crack in the sidewalk. Their existence is impossible, but, as so often happens with nature, no one has bothered to tell the flowers. It is enough to move a person with even the slightest amount of imagination to tears. One could see the flowers as a metaphor for beauty’s eternal struggle to prevail in harshest of conditions. Or as an example of how the gentler emotions can take root in even the rockiest and most uninspired of places. One could, but not Barry.

“Pretty,” he says as lumbers to a stop. And there Barry, vicious brute with forehead villainous low, stoops to adore two tiny yellow flowers.

“Hey. Hey! HEY!” Topper stomps over to the flowers. “What is this? Flowers? What are you, some kind of sissy boy? Stopping to pick flowers? C’mon, we got buildings to mess up.”

When Barry doesn’t even look up. Topper gets mad. He slaps Barry across the top of his head. “C’mon, dumbass, leave the flowers alone.” Barry still doesn’t look up. With uncharacteristic gentleness, he caresses the petals with one sausage-like finger.

“Pretty,” said Barry.

“Well piss in a parasol! If you like the flowers so much we’ll take them with us.” Topper reaches down to rip the flowers out of the earth, but he doesn’t quite make it. Barry drops one of his meathooks on Topper’s head. Topper is compressed into the ground. As the air escapes from his lungs he says, “Awk.”

Barry lifts Topper off the ground. Legs flailing wildly Topper commands, “Put me down. Put me down DUMBASS.”

“Flowers pretty,” says Barry. Then he tosses Topper over his shoulder. Once again Topper tumbles across pavement and lands at Edwin’s feet.

“E, I don’t like this job anymore,” says Topper.

“I’m not sure I can care about that Topper,” says Edwin, not taking his eyes off Barry.

“He squeezed my little brain,” says Topper.

What an apt turn of phrase, thinks Edwin. “I am sorry Topper, but we have a schedule to keep and a building to destroy.”

“Oh yeah, well I’d like to see you do better. Beanpole!” Edwin ignores the strange insult. Clearly Plan A is not working. Edwin is never without a Plan B. But Plan B and C and all the other secondary plans are always messier, riskier and less profitable than Plan A. So Edwin does something remarkable. He lets go of all his plans.

He quiets his thoughts and simply observes. He sees the building. He sees Barry. From the corner of his eye, he can see the Sergeant. He can perceive the Sergeant’s indecision. Edwin can feel the situation becoming untenable. The moment has developed its own urgency. Something must be done.

Edwin pushes passed this noise. He allows himself a greater calm. He uses his will to clear his mind. And at the bottom of it all. Past all the worries and the factors and schemes and the judgements is a breath of air that ruffles tiny flower petals.

The idea arrives fully formed. As if it has a will of its own. It is not completely accurate to say that the idea had Edwin, but that’s the way it feels. Endorphins rush through Edwin’s brain, confirming the joy of this Eureka moment.

“Ed, are you okay?” asks Topper.

Edwin walks. He brushes by Barry, who is still hunched over his flowers. Edwin approaches the Spackster building as any penitent might approach any temple of commerce on any day. The entrance is boarded and covered in graffiti. The remnants of a revolving door litter the sidewalk. But Edwin is not interested in the inside of the building. He is interested, for once, in the facade of things. And there, among the dirty stones, he finds what he needs.

A brick tumbles and grinds across the sidewalk. Before it comes to a rest, it shears the tiny flowers off at their base. Barry jerks his head up in outrage. And there stands Edwin pointing at the building as if, somehow, the building has just spat the brick on Barry’s precious flowers.

Barry doesn’t think much. Barry doesn’t think often. And it goes without saying that Barry doesn’t think very well. So when he sees that the little flowers have been crushed by a dingy yellow brick, and that there is large pile of dingy yellow bricks right in front of him, it’s not hard for him to put two and two together and come up with – well, not four, exactly, but a really, really big two. Which isn’t the right answer, but for Barry, it’s close enough. He comes up swinging.

‘MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGAHHHHHH!”

Fist hits bricks. Bricks lose. In fact, the bricks of the Spackster building lose so badly that they can’t even qualify as bricks anymore. They are demoted to hot and highly confused dust so fast that the effect is indistinguishable from an explosion. Pieces of building whiz by Topper’s head at a frightening velocity. Everybody runs. Even Edwin puts on an uncharacteristic hurry.

WABOOOOM! The west wall of the Spackster building gives way. Barry is buried in bricks and debris up to his neck. From his vantage point on the top of a police car, Topper can see Barry’s head moving through the rubble like a periscope. Barry wades in deeper and takes out another support pillar. The earth shudders as another section of the building comes tumbling down. “YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! WRECK THE JOINT!” Topper yells.

Topper’s high voice carries through the noise of destruction. It is just the right pitch to be heard over the scrape of thousands of bricks upon thousand of other bricks, the tinkle of broken glass, and the basso profundo bellowing of Barry himself. Topper’s voice reaches the spectators. The ordinary folk of the city, who are sneaking a few moments from their lives with the expectation of seeing an implosion. They were expecting a quick orgasm of violence. But this is something different. This is something much better. The kind of thing many members of the crowd might order on Pay-Per-View. This is an orgy of destruction.