Gojiro (26 page)

The Thinker

I
F ONLY HE WERE COMING TO TELL HER
about her father’s death, then he’d know what to do. Komodo knew Death, was accustomed to its somber nuances, its terrible finality. But someone coming alive? What words were right to herald the rolling away of
that
stone? Should he charge into the oceanside Turret House blurting, “Wonderful news, Ms. Brooks! Your father is alive!” Or should he approach quietly, matter-of-fact, so as to minimize the potential shock? Besides, what assurance was there that Sheila Brooks would deem news of her father’s continued existence to be “wonderful”? Komodo felt ill. The idea that his unending bungling might cause Sheila Brooks more pain was a dagger in his heart.

As it was, however, he never made it to that brooding Turret House. There was no time, Shig informed from the driver’s seat, his comportment tighter than the whole KGB. They were already late for a “very important meeting.” As was clear from the thick document prominently displayed in the limo’s magazine rack, Shig had exercised the power vested in him as the sole bargaining agent for King of Monsters, Friend to Atoms Productions and finalized a deal with Hermit Pandora Productions to make
Gojiro vs. Joseph Prometheus Brooks in the Valley of Decision
. Eyes glazing over, Komodo thumbed through the legal sheets. Nearly every item was crossed out, the wholesale deletions reducing the once lengthy contract to a few sparse paragraphs. The heavy editing came as no surprise. In business, as in all else, Shig, ultimate man of few words, pursued only the short and (not) sweet. Should he meet with any resistance, the neoteen wasted little time puncturing the old saw about the pen being mightier than the sword. But what struck Komodo about the contract were the initials “OK—BZ” scribbled next to every obliterated clause and subclause. Bobby Zeber had agreed to every change.

Komodo stared uncomprehendingly. The possibility of actually making a film entitled
Gojiro vs. Joseph Prometheus Brooks in the Valley of Decision
never entered his mind. The most unsettling item, however, appeared on the contract’s final page. There, in Shig’s clipped hand, was written: “Existing footage, if any, is to be destroyed if said movie is not completed to the absolute satisfaction of ALL concerned within ninety days from the date of contract completion.”

Ninety days? Komodo counted quickly.
August sixth!
His birthday—the date the Triple Ring Promise Amendment fell due!

The whole thing seemed incredible. There was no time. Why, they hadn’t even begun casting yet. Bobby Zeber would have to know that. But he’d initialed this last clause as well.

Before Komodo could inquire about any of this, however, Shig had the limo spitting gravel up the wideflung oval of Albert Bullins’s Bel Air driveway. “You are awaited in the garden,” said a Filipino super-Jeeves in a sarong, ushering Komodo up a marble staircase. Circumnavigating the outside of the house with numbed obedience, Komodo was led between a series Macedonian columns, which according to the antique dealer had once resounded with the plinkplunk of Apollo’s lyre. From there he walked out onto a splendid terrace overlooking a great lawn dotted with low conical shrubs that could have started moving at any time, like gumdrops in a Czarist ballet.

“Komodo! You son of a Jap. Come on down!” It was Albert Bullins, the mogul’s voice staccatoing through the heavy haze of honeysuckle and other aromatic transplants. He was wearing a nineteenth-century British field commander’s uniform and had a pearlbutted rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Mr. Bullins,” Komodo said, bowing.

“Bully bitchin’ you could make it over!”

“Mr. Bullins, it is to my great shame that I have as yet to apologize to you for the destruction of your beautiful automobile. I will do everything in my power to make proper restitution—”

“What? You kidding?” Bullins bellowed. “Haven’t had so much fun since I shot Hemingway in the ass by mistake back in Rwanda. You see all those jackasses run for cover? You couldn’t duplicate that in million years.” Bullins turned and landed a heavy arm over Shig’s linen-clad shoulder, eliciting a bloodcurdling sneer from the odd boy. “Duke here and I been discussing an honest little test of eye-hand coordination. So if you’ll excuse us, I understand you and Bobby have some business.”

Bobby Zeber was seated at a white wrought-iron table wearing a washed-out burgundy sweatsuit and dirty running shoes. “Something to eat, Mr. Komodo?” Zeber offered, gloomily indicating several large wooden bowls on the glass tabletop. “Designer lettuce, all organic. Grown from custom seeds by formerly codependent dirt hippies up in Mendocino, flown in daily.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Zeber,” Komodo said, patting the pocket of his black pajamas. “I have packed a sandwich.”

“Good idea. It’s smart to bring your own. It establishes control. Isn’t that what everyone wants, control? I shouldn’t be eating this stuff either.” He chomped on a radicchio leaf. “No one should. It’s like what you said at the party.”

“Pardon?”

“About Gojiro—‘The green that men have created.’ I’ve been thinking about that.”

“You have?”

“It makes a lot of sense. You know that expression ‘You are what you eat’? Really, it should be the other way around: ‘Eat what you are.’ And what’s that? Snails and puppy-dog tails?” Zeber laughed mordantly. “Nah, I think we’re lower, much lower. If there was real justice, we wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything except totally chemical foods—not one natural thing, only stuff squeezed from tubes, ejected by fluorocarbon aerosols. That’s the proper diet, all we deserve. Men’s food.”

Zeber stopped, put down his fork with a sigh. “Then maybe you’re wondering why I’m eating this, if that’s how I feel. Because it costs, Mr. Komodo, that’s why. You see, I’m a prisoner of my class.” Zeber laughed again, took a drink of his mineral water. “You read over the contract?”

Komodo felt dizzy. “Well, just briefly.”

“Funny thing. You know, we—Sheila and me—we’ve never done business with outsiders. But still, I had that contract made up—just in case. It’s a ball-breaker, too. Half of it is just in there for spite. That’s the game here: Speak glibly, carry a bigger dick. Maybe that’s why it was so liberating to cross all those clauses out.”

“But, Mr. Zeber, didn’t you tell me that such a project was not possible before—”

“Before I said a lot of things. Let’s just say, when the right deal comes along, the exact right deal, you’ve got to go for it. Your arrival here has put a whole new outlook on things.”

Across the vast lawn Albert Bullins raised his rifle. “Pull,” he shouted, blasting several clay pigeons from the sky.

The gunfire only served to underscore Komodo’s discomfort. “My arrival? I’m not quite sure what you mean, Mr. Zeber.”

Zeber watched Bullins shoot a few targets, then turned to Komodo. “Have you ever felt trapped, Mr. Komodo? Like somehow you’re all knotted up and there’s no way to get out? It’s an awful feeling—you’re just there, suffocating, and you don’t know how it happened. Or maybe you
do
. Maybe you even saw it coming. Maybe you walked right into it with your eyes open, maybe you even
liked
it for a while. Except one day it dawns on you that the lies you thought were necessary weren’t necessary at all. That this thing you’ve built, it isn’t good and it isn’t safe, that everything you thought you were protecting . . .

“You don’t have a clue about what I’m talking about, do you, Mr. Komodo?”

“I regret to say that I do not.”

“But you care about Sheila, don’t you?”

Komodo’s throat cramped. “Yes.”

“You’d like to help her? That’s why you answered her letter.”

“Yes. I want to help. I must see her, tell her that—”

“Tell her what?”

Komodo never got to answer. Right then, Zeber’s head spun around. “Oh, shit.”

Victor Stiller, spiffed out in a natty seersucker suit, his gold-rimmed glasses and Rolex glittering in the sunlight, was coming across the rose-bedecked garden. With him was a large man with a blond crew cut wearing a silk suit tailored to stretch across his wide shoulders. Komodo started to get up, to go into his bowing routine, but Stiller cut him off with a curt show of palm. “So happy to see you again, Mr. Komodo. A beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Komodo nodded vigorously. “Yes. Not a bit hot.”

“Usually I retreat to the mountains at this time of year, but this is quite wonderful.” Stiller leaned over, sampled one of the exotic fruits piled in one of the wood bowls. He made a small appreciative sound. “These papayas are perfect.”

Bobby Zeber looked at the large blond man standing impassively on the grass, his bulky arms folded in front of him, then turned to Stiller. “They keep issuing you bigger and bigger models, huh, Victor. I should have known you’d turn up here.”

Stiller smiled. “I like to keep abreast of my major holdings.” He indicated the copy of the contract lying on the table. “Bobby, you can’t be serious about this.”

“Never more,” Zeber said tartly. “As I was telling Mr. Komodo here, I’m a go-for-it kind of guy. Hermit Pandora’s a go-for-it kind of company. When you see daylight, you run to it. And this particular project, Victor . . . it’s
talking
to me.”

“Bobby, I think you’ve—”

“No, it’s hot . . . in this business, you’ve got to go by feel. And I can
feel
this—like, for instance, you walking in right now. Could anything be more perfectly timed? Your input could be invaluable. After all, you knew him, you were his
only
friend. The only one he ever
trusted
.”

Stiller reached for a rambutan, dropped the hairy fruit into a bowl in front of him. “What do you think this is going to prove?”

“Prove? I’m not trying to prove anything. We’re in business to make movies, create product. And this is
the
product. Sheila’s masterpiece. Her life’s work. Decades in the making.”

Stiller frowned. “Let me see the script.”

“Not written yet.”

“If you were thinking of her, you wouldn’t be playing out this impotent charade.”

“You’re one to say that.”

“Someone has to look out for her interests.”

“I suppose that’s you?”

“Don’t you care about her at all?”

“You’re really a sick bastard, Victor.”

“Please stop!” Komodo didn’t realize the words were out of his mouth until he saw both Stiller and Zeber staring at him. He hadn’t meant to say anything. Back in the White Light Chamber, Gojiro had told him to forget trying to make sense of why Joe Pro Brooks was alive when he was supposed to be dead. The apparent subterfuge was no doubt the product of “some Tri-Lateralistic trickeration,” the monster maintained. There was no percentage in trying to sort out the cross-purposes. Even the shortest walk in that thickest forest was bound to lose an unsuspecting zard or boy in that house of mirrors that is the naturally selected habitat of spooks. No doubt Stiller was in on it, the reptile remarked. But why? To what end? “Who knows, the old fuck’s got more twists than a barrel of psychotronic pretzels.” Did Zeber know too? Komodo couldn’t bear to consider the possibility. Zeber was the keeper of the safe place; how could he withhold such information from someone he loved? But then again, Komodo thought, who was he to make judgments on the responsibilities of love?

No, he hadn’t planned to speak. But he couldn’t stand to hear Stiller and Zeber argue about Sheila Brooks, bandy her name about in some clandestine tug-of-war.

Stiller looked up, regarded Komodo. Suddenly, he was the genial grandfather again. “Mr. Komodo, I must tell you how much I enjoyed our conversation the other day. If you only knew how invigorating it is for an old man to hear such impassioned talk. I sense you are a man who seeks to temper the metaphysical with the rational and vice versa. Therefore, I am certain that you are well aware of the dialectic between magic and science.”

Immediately, Komodo returned to the role of the eager student. “Why, yes, I find it a fascinating topic.”

“Of course you do! Then I’m certain you’ll understand what I’m trying to say. You see, for me, enlightenment stretches out as a great grid, an endless chessboard, each square a Chinese box, the contents of which are unknown and unexplored. There are two separate entryways to these boxes: one belongs to the magician, the other to the scientist. Most often the magician will arrive first. He is the psychic adventurer, the sorcerer touched by otherworldly insight. He uses his special capacities to shed a private, incorporeal light. This affords him Power—for what he knows can be known only by him. However, for progress to take hold, the magician must be followed by the scientist. It is the scientist who seeks knowledge on behalf of the society at large. He is a social man, a democrat. He makes accessible the magician’s gift, creates from it a public boon. It is from his work that civilization is established.

“To me, Joseph Brooks was both a magician and a scientist. He stood alone, astride a specific juncture of history, possessed by the supernatural, yet determined to exercise the democracy of science for the good of all mankind. That is the image I prefer to keep in mind of my great, dead friend.”

Zeber hooted, banged the table. “What a performance, Victor! You’ll say
anything
!”

Stiller shot Zeber a hard look, turned back to Komodo. “It is for this reason, Mr. Komodo, that I will do everything in my power to keep Joseph Brooks’s name from the soil of exploitation.”

“But—but—I would never do anything like that.” Komodo felt sick.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Stiller said reassuringly. He reached over, grabbed the sleeve of Komodo’s black pajamas. “You have such a willing, open face, Mr. Komodo. I feel you may be one of the few people who really knows how to listen. It is an indispensable trait, Mr. Komodo. I don’t know how you came upon it, but you should treasure it. Listen now, Mr. Komodo. It may be said that technology purchased in a dimestore or received in a movie house also serves to merge the forces of magic and science. But that is faulty thinking. There’s nothing there except the mediocre fantasy of the mob, a carnival for the rabble. Mr. Komodo, I appeal to you, do not reduce that moment when Joseph Brooks stood alone, pushing together the twin hemispheres of knowledge, into what Bobby refers to as
product
.”