The Unfolding, page 21
Bo’s face drains. His expression implies that he could easily have shit himself. “What the fuck?”
“My pussy,” Metzger the smoker says, straight-faced. “I can’t open a window because my pussy will get out.”
And Bo, who looks like he might kill someone, busts out laughing. “You are fucking demented.”
Metzger pours him a drink from a decanter.
Bo knocks it back and does a spit take. “What is this shit?”
“I call it ball water,” Metzger says. “I make it myself, bourbon poured over marijuana and left to steep. I drink it before bed; puts the hair back on your balls.”
“I fucking love you,” Bo says, offering the glass up for a refill.
“What’s the story?” Metzger wants to know. “What are you shopping for? I assume it’s not magic tricks.”
“We’re looking for someone who thinks along the same lines as we do,” the Big Guy says.
“Cut to the chase,” Bo says. “Postelection problem. America is in the crapper and we need to do something about it. We’re not going to stand by and wait to see what happens; we’re going to make something happen and we need someone to put that idea out there in front of people.”
“You want to spread ideas like a virus,” Metzger says. “You want them to be comforting like peanut butter and jelly, like Sunday dinner. You want to lull and seduce, to numb them, so in the end it’s not a surprise because they saw it coming and they want it too.”
“Yes,” the men say, nearly jumping up and down. “That’s exactly what we want.”
“And if I told you that’s not what I do?”
“It is what you do; you just did it to me,” Kissick says.
“I told you what you wanted to hear,” Metzger says.
“Exactly.”
There’s a long pause.
“You know what my father did during the war?”
They shake their heads. “It may still be top secret, so let’s keep it between us. He was in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. They were a ghost army. They had inflatable tanks and jeeps and radio trucks. Basically, they were like a circus that played near the front lines.”
“Sorry, say that again?” Kissick says, stumped.
“He thought he was going as a mechanic, but they put him in covert programs. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand how he managed to have so much fun in the war. All the other kids’ parents were totally traumatized. When he came back, he got a job selling cars—used cars, because he thought that was kinder than talking folks into buying new. I watched him sell; the key to his pitch wasn’t to pitch. He was a listener. Because he listened to their stories and got to know the customers, they felt as though they’d made a friend and they’d buy a car off him. And then in a year or two, they’d come back and get another car.”
The men nod.
“Good listener,” the Big Guy says.
“What I like to do is drive. He sold cars; I drive cars. I drive to think. I drive across America like an anthropologist. I get my jollies looking at people. I go to big box stores and follow people while they shop. I like to see what catches someone’s eye. I like to see what feels helpful or off-putting. Anticipating desire, need, a place for something. Old-school, I guess you could say.” Metzger picks up a lighter and flicks it. “Flint-wheel ignition. You know why people like lighters?”
“Cigarettes,” Bo suggests.
The Big Guy is lost in thought, remembering the man at the bar in Phoenix, the man who kept rolling his finger over the flint and saying, “Windproof.”
“Nope.” Metzger shakes his head. “The capacity to summon fire. It’s about power and mastery, man’s conquering of the physical world; that’s what Dichter said, among other things. Did you ever read Ernest Dichter’s The Strategy of Desire?”
They all shake their heads no.
“Absolute genius.”
“I’m open to bringing him in on this,” Kissick says. “If you think he’s good.”
“He died about seventeen years ago,” Metzger says, taking a deep drag and holding it longer than you’d think possible. “What’s in it for you boys?”
“We don’t go out limp,” Bo says. “We worked like dogs, we built empires, or whatever came after empires.”
“Kingmakers,” Kissick says. “Pillars of society.”
“Titans of industry, fat cats, industrialists, tycoons, entrepreneurs,” Metzger says.
“The Man,” the Big Guy says.
“Panjandrum,” Metzger says. “The big cheese.”
“Do you have family?” Bo asks.
“Where?” Metzger asks.
Bo laughs again. “Exactly!”
“After the second wife, I gave up. I can take a hint. I’m not exactly fit for human consumption.”
“In the end we want to do whatever we have to do to make things right again,” the Big Guy says.
“The same words can mean different things depending on when they are said, and by and to whom,” Metzger says. “Radical Republicans were a faction of the party from 1854 to 1857, and what did they want? The eradication of slavery. And yet that wasn’t what brought about the election of Lincoln in 1860; he got only forty percent of the votes. It was the split between Northern and Southern Democrats. Now you say the words Radical Republican and what do they mean? Do we even know?” A pause. “My point is that there are always forces at play that one doesn’t anticipate.”
“I can tell you right now, there’s a set of fresh-faced yahoos out there who call themselves Republicans, but they’re not like Republicans I know,” Bo says.
“Charting sociocultural evolution, tracing the processes that increase the complexity of a society, while at the same time monitoring the degeneration/degradation of systems—that’s the way we do it.”
“I have no idea what he just said,” Eisner says. “Sounded more like math than advertising.”
“Funny you say that,” Metzger says. “It’s a little like the work I do for the quant funds. By tracing evolution and recognizing patterns—we can identify a vision of the future and drill down on how that, along with cultural, social, economic, and environmental shifts, will affect consumer behavior. That’s why I stay here; I’m the Big Noise from Winnetka, the Einstein from the Dance. I am embedded with the American consumer.”
The fat cat jumps back onto the table, meowing loudly, its tail curling around the decanter of ball water.
“You are all that and more,” Bo says, standing up. “But seriously, thank you.”
“Sometimes you have to just say yes and not resist,” Eisner says.
Kissick checks his watch. “Told the family I’d be home for dinner. Can I ride back to the airport with you?”
“Really great to see you again, my friend,” the Big Guy says.
“Tell Tony I said thanks and that I look forward to seeing him in person next time we meet.”
“Do you think your pussy would let me pet her?” Bo asks.
“Not a chance,” Metzger says. “She’s vicious. Bit me once and I came down with cat scratch fever. First time in fifteen years that I had to go to the doctor.”
Bo laughs. “I like that; she’s a real bitch.”
“I’ve called her worse,” Metzger says.
“How do I reach you?” Bo asks.
“Here’s my fax number. I assume you’ve got a fax machine.” Metzger opens the china cabinet in the living room. Inside is an ancient fax machine so old that the ivory plastic has turned piss yellow.
“A man after my own heart,” Kissick says.
“Thanks for making time,” the Big Guy says.
“The Forever Men,” Metzger says, shaking their hands as they go. “That’s who you are. I might have called you the Great Awakeners, but it’s too evangelical. The Forever Men feels right,” he says, standing inside his front door.
“See you soon,” Eisner says, wiping snow off his windows before getting back into his car. “I promised my mother I’d be home in time for dinner.”
“Of course you did,” Bo says.
“Forever Men is good,” the Big Guy says, climbing into the Lincoln Town Car, which has been idling at the curb for hours.
“If ever there was a man I’d trust to get the message out, it’s that guy, the Big Noise from Winnetka,” Kissick says, joining the Big Guy in the back seat.
“I like him,” Bo says, squeezing into the back next to Kissick.
“You’re giving me the hump?” Kissick says.
“I paid for the car,” Bo says. “What’s good about that guy is that he understands how people think, what they need but aren’t saying. He’s like an undertaker. He knows what box to put you in.”
“All three going to Midway?” the driver asks.
“Yes, thanks,” the Big Guy says.
“I figured it out,” Bo says.
“What?” Kissick asks.
“Who he reminds me of.”
“Who?”
“The undertaker, the smoker, the candy man, what’s his name,” Bo says.
“Metzger,” the Big Guy says. “Twitchell Metzger. Twitch for short.”
“He reminds me of William S. Burroughs,” Bo says. “When he was talking about Ernest Dichter, the guy who knew about fire, I got a twinge; it meant something to me.”
“Burroughs, the guy from Firing Line? The guy who talked like this.” Kissick starts talking through his nose. “The one who got everyone to think that to be a true American conservative you had to have gone to Yale. ‘Conservatism is rooted in tradition.’ ”
“Opposite end of the fishing line,” Bo says. “I’m talking about William S. Burroughs. You’re thinking of William F. Buckley. The guy I’m talking about was a junkie who shot his wife in the head—accidentally. I spent July 4, 1997, in his backyard watching fireworks, drinking Coke with vodka, and smoking pot.”
“What are you talking about?” Kissick is so baffled that he seems on the verge of being frightened.
“I have lived many lives; you know only the tip of the iceberg. William S. Burroughs wrote a whole slew of books and had one character named Dr. Benway. That Twitch asshole reminds me of Benway, a surgeon who smoked cigarettes while leaning over open bodies, flicking his ashes into slick, wet cavities.”
“Who the fuck was Burroughs if he wasn’t Buckley?”
“He was a fahncy boy from a fahncy family, went to Harvard, then medical school in Europe. He was also a military man who wanted to work for the OSS but got turned down; I believe he actually got kicked out—they thought he was nuts. His glasses were like Twitch’s, old G-man-style heavy black frames from the 1950s. Burroughs was like that—dressed like the straightest arrow and then was off his rocker, completely off his rocker. The quintessential weirdo. Loved cats and drugs, and had the driest, drollest voice, a WASPy aristocratic groan. When that cat jumped on the table, holy mother of god, my reflexes kicked in and I almost hurled it across the room before I knew what was happening. I had the sensation of an incoming grenade, fire in the hole.” Bo is positively invigorated by the later part of the day.
“I wish I had any idea of who you are,” Kissick says.
“I am who I am,” Bo says.
“That belongs in only two places,” Kissick says. “Exodus and Popeye. What’s he going to do for us? That’s the question.”
“What are we going to do for ourselves?” the Big Guy says.
“Who are you now, John Fucking Kennedy?”
“He’s going to figure out how to sell it, that’s what he’s going to fucking do,” Bo says. “He’s going to take our plan and turn it into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that Joe America and his whole fucking family will be willing to die for. Whoever the fuck that weirdo is, he is now mission essential as far as I am concerned.”
“You saw his car?” Kissick asks.
“The old green thing?” the Big Guy asks.
“It’s not some old green thing—it’s a Gran Torino,” Kissick says. “That’s the new Clint Eastwood movie. I mean isn’t that weird that your weird friend has the car from the Clint Eastwood movie?”
“You’re losing it,” the Big Guy says.
“I’m going to spit something out,” Bo says to Kissick. “I felt like you were almost mocking me when I was talking about Burroughs. I didn’t like it. And I don’t especially like you, but you already know that. When I told you about Burroughs, I was telling you something about myself. I have lived more broadly than you, and because I haven’t driven down the little narrow lane of tax law and banking regulations doesn’t mean I should have to dumb it down when I’m with you. The problem is yours not mine.”
“What Kissick was saying was that we should get Clint Eastwood in on this. He’d be a good spokesperson for our plan,” the Big Guy says, stepping in as mediator. “Think of Eastwood in a commercial at 9:49 p.m. on CBS. Close in on his face. ‘Are you worried about what’s going on in America? This is Clint Eastwood here to tell you that we’ve got your back. People for the Resurgence of the American Way is waiting to take your call, your money, or your complaint about your neighbor’s landscaping. If you pay in cash, we offer a punch-in-the-nose service and will come over and fuck up anyone you want—for a price. Be prepared to bleed. Operators are standing by. Call now.’ ”
“You’re actually pretty funny,” Bo says, laughing at the Big Guy. “I had no idea.”
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Palm Springs, California
5:00 a.m.
No rest for the weary and then some.
There is a brief period between Thanksgiving and Christmas where business still gets done; call it a limited-capacity portal surrounded by a dead zone. The dead zone has been growing in recent years; now it starts the Friday before Thanksgiving and goes until the Monday after New Year’s Day. Ten years ago, it was a day off. Then it became a three-day weekend, then a week off. And finally it became impossible to close a deal between November and New Year’s if you didn’t catch the fumes of the first ten days of December despite the financial implications of December 31 deadlines.
Now they’ve got their communications and misinformation man, Metzger from Winnetka; Frode, an eccentric doctor from Bethesda brought in by Kissick; and Doug Keyes, the judge from Texas the Big Guy knows through Charlotte’s father. And things seem to be progressing with the General. At Bo’s suggestion, the Big Guy recently sent him a “thinking of you” gift and got a vintage Denny’s postcard in the mail with “One day we’ll celebrate with a Grand Slam” written in red block letters on the back.
That said, the Big Guy needs to bring them all together one more time to make sure they’re ready to start the clock just after the new year.
More important, he wants to get it done while Charlotte is still at Betty Ford and before Meghan comes home for the holidays. Some men might find this a lot, a double-whammy stress ball, but he kind of likes it, yin and yang as he used to say; it is the balance or unbalance of things that keeps him on his game.
From Palm Springs, he makes the calls, inviting the boys to a “hunt club” weekend at the ranch.
“What’s a hunt club?” Kissick wants to know.
“If anyone wants to go hunting, I’ve got a couple of guides who will take them out on horseback for a day.”
“Live ammunition?”
“Yes, Kissick, real men don’t hunt with Nerf guns.”
“What about paintball or rubber bullets?”
“That’s called play fighting; this is called hunting,” the Big Guy says.
“But it’s optional, right? It’s not like the balloon thing where we all have to go?”
“One hundred percent optional. You can stay home and take a bubble bath if you like. I’ll put you in Meghan’s room; you’ll feel right at home.”
“I’m not a gun person.”
“I know. And listen, Kissick, I want you to present your findings on the composition of the project, and we need to discuss the price of the buy-in and sharpen our expectations.”
“What am I supposed to say to my wife? Every time I’m running off on one of these weekends or to meet with the guys, I’m likely to miss one of the girls’ holiday spectacles or a ballet recital. Do you know what it costs me in family currency?”
“Kissick, you are a businessman; they spend the money faster than you can make it. Tell them you’re traveling for work; put your lovely wife on the phone—I’ll tell her myself.”
Kissick declines. “Is Bo coming?”
“Yes. Bo is coming and bringing a special guest. I can’t say more at the moment, but I want to be ready to push the big red button the day Obama takes office.”
“When you say ‘big red button,’ what do you mean? Are you talking rogue nuclear?”
“No,” the Big Guy says. “I’m using it as an expression—a synonym for launch.”
“And when you say ‘General’?”
“I didn’t say ‘General.’ ”
“I know about the General,” Kissick says. “I’ve been doing the work.”
“Whatever,” the Big Guy says; he’s not about to confirm or deny.
“Is he really a general or just a guy who likes to play dress-up?”
“Good question,” the Big Guy says. “In theory he is a general. Or as I like to say—in general.”
There’s a silence. Then a little kind of crackling on the line, like someone fumbling with a candy wrapper. “And, Kissick, we have to stop meeting like this.” The Big Guy hangs up.
The Big Guy gets in touch with Sonny, the ranch hand, and arranges for Sonny and his wife, Mary, to prepare what is needed for the guests. He tells Sonny to line up the hunting guides and any extra help they’ll need.
