Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

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.”

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.

“Yeah?”

“And you’ve always got some gorgeous model hanging off your arm.”

“So?”

“So where do I get an arm like that?”

Oscar laughed and looked at me for the first time. His eyes were coffee-colored and motionless.

“What’s your name again?”

“Jasper.”

He nodded, apparently agreeing that my name was Jasper.

“So how does it feel to be always watched?” I asked.

“You get used to it.”

“But don’t you feel restricted?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t miss the freedom?”

“Freedom?”

“Let me put it this way. You couldn’t take your penis out and wave it on a public train without it being front-page news. I could.”

“Why would I want to wave my penis on a public train?” Oscar asked me. It was a good question. Why would anyone?

Reynold Hobbs coughed, but it was no mere lung-clearing exercise. That cough was meant to put me down. I smiled. You may have all the money in the world, Mr. Hobbs, I thought, you might own the whole universe and its particles thereof, you might gain interest on the stars and reap dividends from the moon, but I’m young and you’re old and I have something you don’t- a future.

“I’ve heard about this place. It’s a labyrinth, isn’t it?” Reynold said as we hiked through the dense bush.

“How did you hear about it?” I asked, and he looked at me as though I were a shrunken head in an Amazonian exhibit. To him, my question was the same as asking God how he knew Adam and Eve had taken the apple.

“Your dad’s sure going to be surprised,” Anouk said, smiling at me.

I didn’t smile back. I was dreading a scene. Normally Dad didn’t like surprise guests, which ordinarily was fine because he never once had any, but there was no way of knowing how he was going to react. What Anouk didn’t understand was that just because Dad had once written in a notebook that he wanted to whisper ideas into an enormous golden ear didn’t mean that he hadn’t forgotten writing it two minutes later or that ten minutes later he didn’t write in a separate notebook that all he wanted was to defecate into an enormous golden ear. You couldn’t know.

We went inside. Luckily it wasn’t a disgusting mess, it was only mildly vile: books, scattered papers, a couple of days’ worth of rotting food, nothing too off-putting.

“He really is a genius,” Anouk said, as if preparing them for the type of genius who goes to the toilet on the coffee table.

“Dad!” I called out.

“Piss off!” came his throaty answer from the bedroom. Reynold and Oscar exchanged a silent dialogue with their eyes.

“Maybe you’d better go in and get him,” Anouk said.

While Reynold and Oscar made themselves uncomfortable on the couch, refusing to recline into the cushions, I went to find Dad.

He was lying on his bed, facedown in the starfish position.

I said, “Reynold Hobbs and his son are here to see you.”

Dad turned his head toward me and gave me a pretty sneer. “What do you want?”

“I’m not kidding. Anouk thought you were going into another suicidal depressive phase and was worried about you and so she went through your journals and found the bit about you wanting to whisper big ideas into an enormous golden ear and so she convinced me to go with her and find the biggest, most golden ear in the country and amazingly she pulled it off and now they’re waiting for you in the living room.”

“Who’s waiting?”

“Reynold Hobbs and his son, Oscar. They’re waiting to hear your big ideas.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Take a look for yourself.”

Dad lifted himself off the bed and peered around the corner. If he thought he’d do it without being seen, he was wrong. Reynold turned his head slowly to us and scratched himself listlessly- who knows if he was really itchy or merely playing a part?- and as we approached he shaded his eyes with his hand, as if Dad and I were glowing apparitions too bright for the human eye to bear.

“Hey,” Dad said.

“Hey,” Reynold said back.

“Anouk’s been telling us you’ve got some great unrealized ideas you thought we’d be interested in,” Oscar said.

“We’re not wasting our time here, are we?” Reynold asked.