Manhattan Loverboy (23 page)

Suddenly it all fit together; she was getting even. “Amy, I’m sorry about our night of love and pain, but I don’t deserve this!”

“That wasn’t me. We never had conjugal relations,” she said.

“Deny if you must…”

“Remember that middle-aged lady in the waiting area?”

“What waiting area?”

“Of the optometrist’s office.”

“No.”

“Well, there was one there. Didn’t you wonder why I insisted you had to get an eye operation just as I was coincidentally coming down with laryngitis?”

“What about it?”

“That case of laryngitis left me completely mute two days ago, remember?”

“So?”

“Do I sound like I have laryngitis now!?” she hollered.

“No, but you could have gotten over it.”

“You couldn’t see me, and I didn’t have to speak to you. A body-double made love to you.”

“But why did Whitlock…”

“You’re Whitlock!” she hollered.

“You’re confusing him!” Whitlock yelled from across the sea of darkness. Members of the board were parting now; others roamed absently, perhaps senilely, around the darkened floor.

“My parents were a trade agreement,” I reckoned aloud.

“You were not neglected,” Amy interjected.

“Everyone in this room had some hand in your upbringing,” said the Ngm trustee affectionately. “We all had real concern for you. We would meet on a regular basis and review your life to try and find ways to generate and funnel love to you.”

“We reviewed video tapes of you,” said another misshapen slab of humanity. “We tried to get the right meals into your body.”

“Flintstone over here,” the Van Dyke pointed to the bow tie, “worried about your sex life. He tried to engineer a romance. He gave you a choice of girls.”

“What? When?”

“At a bar near Herald Square shortly after that phony-operation escapade,” Flintstone replied. I guess no one had ever told him about the children’s cartoon of the same name.

“You mean those three girls who weren’t
Charlie’s Angels?
”

“Yes, and you rejected all three.”

“They were paid for?”

“Actually,” Van Dyke snickered, “I commend the boy’s instincts.”

“Instincts?”

“In fact, you could resolve a small wager. How did you know they were all transvestites?”

“I refuse to believe this!” I yelled. “You’re all a cartel of out-of-work actors.”

“But I was your legal father, was I not?” Ngm approached.

“You ran a failing bonsai plant company.”

“That was a front. You never saw where I really worked.”

“Yes I did, I saw the warehouse—on Seventh Avenue.”

“We rented that space just to substantiate the lie.”

“Where’s Mother?” I asked anxiously.

“There, I had some problems. It’s difficult hiring a woman for a lifetime role. The woman who played your mother till the age of seven moved to Baltimore. The second lady who played your mother felt the entire idea of deceiving you was disgusting, and quit just as you reached puberty. The last person who played your mother died suddenly.”

“Ma died?” I asked. I had liked the last mother most of all.

“No, actually, she quit. Her name was,” he opened a notebook and checked a page, “Laura Burrell. She died shortly afterwards.”

“Amy, I beg you, tell me how much Whitlock paid you to make you all do this.”

“Not a cent, he didn’t have to.” There was a strange mixture of sadness and panic in those soft, moist eyes. Quietly she explained, “No one outside this room knows this, but my real name is Amy Whitlock. Dad and I…well, I am your older sister.”

“But, but…I love you.”

“I love you, too, brother.” I should have recognized it before; it made complete sense. After all, all love is merely a narcissistic projection. It was inevitable that I would fall in love with her. What else was Amy but me in a dress? Admittedly, the operation had brought out the beauty that was hidden within me. As I reckoned with the thought that she was my sister, I tried to neutralize the sexual feelings I had, but it was confusing.

“You are a full trustee member of Whitlock Incorporated,” Whitlock said. “Just sign some documents and then you can go.”

“You’ll be given an appropriate income, based on dividends, and a portfolio we’ve been keeping for you. Its worth is comparable to that of any other member, save my own, of course.”

“Why the job as a refrigerator repairman?” I asked, still trying to tear holes in their conspiracy.

“You needed a livelihood,” Ngm said.

“And you are hostile to corporate America. That’s the great irony. We truly tried to prep you for a place here. Hell, we tried to prep you for the presidency of the company…”

“Right!” I whooped. “And Whitlock yanked me out of the graduate program.”

“Yes,” Whitlock replied, “because we discovered you were about to drop out. We were hoping to create a frustration, to renew your drive to finish school.”

“How about Veronica, the Dean’s secretary? Why’d you…”

“Oh, we had reason to suspect that she was a member of the MOSAD, so we had to disengage you. We bought her off.”

“The MOSAD? The Israeli secret service, MOSAD?”

“If not them, then the Israeli lobby. We have reason to suspect they stumbled over the secret of your true identity while you were in Israel.”

“That’s insane!”

“Operation Turkish Delight was a strategy designed to defeat the Armenian Memorial Day Bill introduced by Senator Bob Dole,” Whitlock said. “I don’t know who Veronica was with, but once I agreed to use my political clout to kill the bill, she entirely lost interest in you.”

“The operations then! How about the corrective surgery?”

“There were no operations,” Amy replied, repressing a smirk.

“What?”

“Since birth, you had this self-concept of being small and ugly.”

“But look, the scars!” I showed her my wrist and ankles.

“Those are only scars. Your height hasn’t changed, nothing really changed. You were given a facial and haircut.”

“How about the weight loss?”

“The weight loss was due to the so-called rehabilitative workouts afterwards, and the special diet.”

“We tried to make you healthy!” Whitlock appealed.

“Be real,” Amy said. “Do you really think I would force you to have an operation, or, for that matter, that doctors would operate on a non-consenting patient? It disappointed me that you were so gullible to this whole scheme. I actually thought it was quite amateur.”

“I found out about the Bismarck operations,” I shot back.

“What Bismarck operations?” Amy asked.

“You’re from Bismarck, deny it!”

“I am, so what?”

“I found out all about the operation to take nerds of the ’70s and turn them into corporate execs of the ’90s.”

“That’s insane,” Whitlock replied, rolling his eyes.

“But the Merlin Corporation is doing a clean up there!”

“What do you know of Merlin?” Ngm looked to Whitlock.

“I know it’s a division of Whitlock Incorporated,” I replied. They looked nervously back and forth.

“Hey, if I’m a trustee, I’m entitled to know what’s going on!”

“It’s nothing, just a nuclear waste clean-up unit,” Ngm said.

“Are all these fuck-ups just an accident?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everything from Vietnam and the Savings and Loan bankruptcy to nuclear waste clean-up.”

“What are you talking about?” Whitlock asked.

“He’s a trustee,” Ngm replied, “and he’s also your son.”

Whitlock sighed and said, “Government debacles are America’s chief booming industry, son. Learn that first and foremost.”

“It’s essentially what we do here,” Ngm replied.

“That’s great,” I said, admiring the stench of it. It had finally sunk in. After a lifetime of despising these people, these modern day destroyers of Rome, it turned out I wasn’t just one of them, I was a general of the Visigoths.

“It’s only a fraction of what we made with the Reagan deficit,” muttered Whitlock to Ngm.

“What?” I asked.

“In the words of Augustine,” said Ngm, “do not seek to know more than is appropriate.” I didn’t think it appropriate to reveal that I had heard that same quote on Jeopardy the night before.

“This is only the executive committee of the board of trustees. The full board is meeting next Monday at 10:00 a.m. to vote on several strategies regarding the President’s new national health insurance proposal. Try to come on time and look sharp,” Whitlock called.

“But Dad, you still have to finish the last detail of the test, remember?” said Amy.

“What’s that?” I inquired.

“The return of the money.”

“Oh, gee, it’s late,” Whitlock said, checking his costly wristwatch.

“Now Andrew, it’s imperative that you see this thing to its end,” said the holder of the double-headed eagle cane.

“We are very particular about the rules here,” Ngm added.

“Very well, son. Let us seal the final bonds of this contract.”

“So be it,” said Amy.

A limo was waiting for us downstairs. Dad, sis, and I got in.

“Actually,” I said, “this really does make complete sense.”

“It does?” asked Dad.

“Sure, this is what was missing from my life all along. A strong, supportive father. We could be one of the great father-son teams in history, joining the ranks of Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great; William Frederick I and Frederick the Great.”

“How come the fathers are never great?” he responded.

As we drove, Dad and Amy discussed details of my ascendancy to the throne. While they talked about where I should live, who my support team would consist of, and a possible news conference announcing my mighty elevation, tears started coming to my eyes. Amy must have noticed the watering, because she commented, “You know those blue pupils you’ve got? They’re actually extra-fine, extra-soft contact filters. You can take them out.”

“Contact filters?!” I replied aghast.

“I’m sorry, but I was terrified at the thought of being mauled by my own brother,” she replied meekly.

“I’m ashamed of how I acted before.”

“Actually, the sex surrogate said you were wonderful,” Amy replied.

“Did she really?”

“She absolutely did.”

“God, I feel almost ashamed when I think about it.”

“Well, all is forgiven.” At that point, I noticed Dad gritting his teeth while staring out the window.

“Any problemo, Pop?”

“It just disgusts me that you have to go back to that shit-hole another night. Ngm should have provided you with better living conditions. Amy, I want you to get Joe a room at the Waldorf tonight.”

“Will do.” She was on the phone immediately.

“Joe, after a lifetime of stress and strain, I have one question to ask you.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Are you happy?”

“Truth?”

“Truth, son.”

“I’m still in disbelief. I just can’t digest all this.”

“Well I wish there was something I could do.”

“Well there is,” I replied.

“Just say it.”

“Do you have any money on you?”

“Well, not much on me,” he replied, and opening his wallet, he offered ten freshly minted twenty dollar bills. Taking them out, he asked, “What do you want to get?”

“Nothing.” I took the money and flipped down the window.

“What are you doing, son?”

“Something I always wanted to be able to do,” I replied, and as we slowed down at an intersection, I looked around for homeless, but could only spot middle-class swine.

“Hey!” I yelled out to the bourgeoisie, “Grovel, you pigs!” I tossed the money out the window. It swirled in about a million different directions, and they didn’t seem to notice at first, but finally one noticed and then the next. Looking through the rear window as we headed north, I watched a crowd scrambling and scratching.

“Now I believe it,” I replied. Whitlock’s bloated and bloodless face was fixed in comic horror.

“Relax,” I counselled.

“Well, anything for you, hon,” Amy replied. “After a life of destitution, I would have done the same thing.”

“Hey, I don’t care about the cash,” Whitlock replied. “If you want, you can take the suitcase of money we’re getting and toss it off the top of the Empire State Building.”

“I’d like that,” I replied gleefully.

“Fine, we’ll do it,” he ratified.

The limo pulled up in front of my place, and out we zipped. It was strange as I climbed the steps, six at a time, thinking, I left here a pauper and I’m returning a prince. My gal, or sis, and pal, or pop, were fast on my heels.

“Hurry, and let’s get out of here. Go somewhere and celebrate,” Dad said.

Racing into the bathroom, I pushed the toilet aside to reveal the sacred hiding place. As I pulled out the cash-filled briefcase, I noticed Sis and Pop standing in the bathroom doorway, staring at me.

“So it was here all along,” Dad said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“God, we searched the place looking for it. Who would have thought of a movable toilet?”

“Yeah, well. Here is most of it,” I replied. “Let’s go hurl it off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.” Grabbing the suitcase, Pop punched me in the solar plexus. I went down hard.

“Sorry, my friend, this is where it all ends.”

“Ba…da…da…”

“Don’t be absurd, you little shit.” Whitlock hit me again, a chop to my neck. I heard something inside snap like a rubber band.

“All right, we got the money. Let’s get out of here,” Amy appealed to him.

“No, after what he did to you, I want
you
to hit him, too!” Whitlock barked, and grabbing both arms behind my back, he shoved my head forward, a punching bag for free slaps.

“I’m not hitting anyone.”

“Sis! Pa! Wuh?”

Grabbing me by my hair, Whitlock pulled me up. When I tried to turn to take a swing at him, he tripped me backwards into a bunch of boxes.

“You promised you wouldn’t hurt him,” Amy pleaded.

When I struggled to my feet, he punched me in the face. He seemed to be holding some kind of tube in his fist to intensify the blow. When I collapsed backwards on my bed, I realized it was all a fraud. He wasn’t my father, she wasn’t my sister. Then I felt it: the cheap handgun under the pillow. When I pulled it out and pointed it at my pseudo-Dad, his face turned white.