Read the book: «The Crash of Hennington»

THE CRASH OF HENNINGTON

Patrick Ness

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Flamingo 2003

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2003

Copyright © Patrick Ness 2003

Patrick Ness asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Photograph of Patrick Ness © Steve Double

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Source ISBN: 9780007292028

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2011 ISBN: 9780007390342

Version: 2017-01-03

‘Souls have complexions, too: what will suit one will not suit another.’

GEORGE ELIOT Middlemarch

For Marc Nowell

And in memory of my remarkable great aunt, Ingeborg Utheim 1915–1999

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue. In.

Part I. Welcome to Hennington.

1. The Solari.

2. A Confluence of Nudity.

3. The Crash on the Hill.

4. Luther in Limbo.

5. Maggerty.

6. The Mayor’s Office and its Discontents.

7. Father and Daughter.

8. Mathematica.

9. Hospitality.

10. The Crash at the Bridge.

11. Orthopediae.

12. The Melting Sanctuary.

13. Maggerty Eats.

14. Peter on the Move.

15. An Offer.

16. Why Archie Banyon Feels the Way He Does About Women.

17. ‘The Tale of Rufus and Rhonda'.

18. Mingle, Mingle.

19. Duty Calling.

20. In the Hours Before Morning.

21. The Crash Before Dawn.

Part II. There Are No Ends, Only Changes.

22. Marmalade Leviathan.

23. Comfort for the Uncomfortable.

24. Closing the Deal.

25. Maggerty in the City.

26. What Do You Want?

27. ‘Cleave’ Has Two Meanings.

28. Digitalis.

29. The Crash at the Pond.

30. It Always Comes Out Somewhere.

31. A Basic Question.

32. Opening the Deal.

33. Unsentimental Journey.

34. A Shot Across the Bows?

35. The Story of Cora, Jon, and Albert, as told to Eugene by Jon.

36. Max and Talon Discuss the Ramifications of the Weight of Cultural Pressures and Also Buy a Dog.

37. What Happened Between Luther and Archie.

38. Maggerty on the Move.

39. The Frustrating Aspects of Prophecy.

Part III. All Bets May or May Not Be Final.

40. Considering Variables.

41. The Lonely Hunter.

42. Refuge for the Weary.

43. Max Has The Same Conversation.

44. The Crash and The Injured Calf.

45. Class Reunion.

46. He What?

47. In Which Much News Is Confirmed.

48. Jarvis’ Sermon About the Brandon Beach Massacre.

49. An Unexpected Intransigence.

50. A Tentatively Happy Bleakness.

51. Post-Coital Powwow.

52. A Casualty.

53. Fallout.

54. Max and Talon and The Emu.

55. Sometimes It’s Just Sorrow.

56. And What of Eugene?

57. Fever Dream.

58. A Most Delicious Proposal.

Part IV. Commodities.

59. The Foster Downs.

60. How to Serve Man.

61. Ambushed.

62. Maggerty in Purgatory.

63. The Reasons Why We Do Things.

64. Rest.

65. I’m Begging You.

66. Young Man’s Fancy.

67. Old(er) Man’s (and Woman’s) Fancy.

68. The Prodigal.

69. Want.

70. The Worm, Aching to Turn.

71. Paradise Interrupted.

72. The Swinging Gates of Opportunity.

73. A Rush and a Push and the Day is Ours.

74. Banyon Enterprises.

75. Listen.

76. An End and a Beginning.

Part V. Hopeful Campaigns.

77. The Furniture Cave.

78. Letter To The Editor.

79. The Inevitable Disappointment By Those We Love.

80. How Things Add Up.

81. The Smell of Blood.

82. The Hard Bit.

83. Re-linking.

84. Triumph of the Will.

85. Getting to the Bottom.

86. The Debate.

87. Old Love.

88. The Immobile Journey.

89. The Schism, Arriving on Schedule.

90. Cracking Skulls.

91. An Invisible Threat, Real Nonetheless.

92. Not the Highest Bid, but the Earliest.

93. What We Wish For.

94. A Cold Dish.

95. Unprecedented Measures.

96. The Living River.

Part VI. Election Day.

97. One Up, One Down.

98. The Faces in the Distance.

99. Thrust, Parry, Feint, Touch.

100. The Message to the Light Wind.

101. In the Last Quiet Hours.

102. The Journey of Faith.

103. The View From Here.

104. War It Is, Then.

105. A Kindness.

106. Three.

107. Father and Son.

108. A Lover’s Hand, A Lover’s Breath.

109. Outside City Hall.

110. An Albert and Cora.

111. The Field of Battle.

112. The Messenger.

113. Who Are You?

114. Lair.

115. To The Faithful Departing.

116. Ashes, Ashes.

117. Out.

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Prologue. In.

She smelled dawn even before the sun looked over the horizon. A low mist clung to the sleeping bodies surrounding her at intervals across the lea. Breath clouded up from her great nose in increasing puffs as wakefulness filled her body. She raised her head and glanced around the sloping green of the meadow.

The first one awake. Usual and expected. The way it should be and was.

She turned her head to the sunrise coursing down from the hilltop. A low flood of light illuminated the mist and cast the dozing members of the herd as gray, rocky islands in a sea of white. She breathed in as the morning reached her lips and, leaning back to gather the proper force of weight, hoisted herself to her feet.

Time to move into the daybreak.

Part I. Welcome to Hennington.

1. The Solari.

The front lobby of the Solari was made entirely of marble, even the sunlight. Any hotel guest – say, this one here, with the inappropriate clothes and the reminiscing smile – standing at the entrance to the second most opulent and expensive hotel in Hennington could see in detail the shiny yet persistently flat white-flecked black marble that made up the sprawling floor, though he would be hard pressed to find a seam, the expense apparently having been poured into the material’s quality rather than its beauty. Given that the outside of the Solari was as shiny and edged as a precisely folded piece of foil, it might be surprising to this particular visitor, though perhaps not, that the interior, with its deep black expanses peppered with spots and streaks of white, could be so ominous and still. A blanket of the universe wrapped up as a present, perhaps.

Stepping inside the lobby’s marble rhombus, the visitor would see marble planters, marble doorways, a marble waterfall tastefully placed beneath a marble sculpture (of a marble-worker), a marble bellhop stand (currently vacant), marble directional signs and an enormous single marble front desk, fully twelve meters long, in the shape of a sperm whale beaching itself seemingly because of unfathomable heartbreak in the deep, deep sea. Looking behind the behemoth, the guest, if he ventured further indoors, which it seems he has, would lay his eyes on the first organic thing he would have seen so far in the lobby of the Solari, representational whales notwithstanding: a person in the form of Eugene Markham, Solari front desk clerk.

It is with surly, unhappy Eugene that this story truly begins.

Eugene sat on his back-paining swivel chair behind the whale, thinking about suicide. Not seriously considering it, just mooning over the act in the manner of many a pale twenty-something with a broken heart. His girlfriend had left him for another man, a non-Rumour no less, but that had happened so often in life it was an insipid topic of insipid pop songs. Speaking of which, Eugene’s band, Dirges For Betty, hadn’t written any, pop songs that is, or at least any good ones or for that matter even any insipid ones, and Eugene was beginning to believe no one ever slept with the bass player anyway. Then there was the scaly chrysalia which had suddenly broken out all over his genitals and which was shaping up to be the only lasting legacy of his now-former relationship. And, oh, yes, he had just been demoted from catering to front desk. So one might forgive Eugene for being less attentive than usual when the shimmery-haired stranger – the selfsame guest who had sized up the Solari, now having made his way to the front desk – checked in. He (Eugene) was too caught up in wondering whether you slashed your wrists parallel or perpendicular to your palm and whether, since your palm was more or less square, this was even the right question to ask.

—Do you have any rooms available?

Eugene peeled back the skin from a hangnail on his thumb. The strip pulled off all the way back to the first joint. It bled and it hurt like hell, but it was also kind of impressive in its own macabre sort of way. Though he was unaware of it, Eugene cracked a smile.

—Now why would you want to go ahead and do a thing like that?

Eugene teleported back from his languor and at last noticed the man standing before him.

—Can I help you?

—I might very well ask you the same thing, my good fellow.

The man was dressed entirely in black, incredible given that Hennington was in the thick of summer, when Hilke’s Winds blew off the Brown Desert, turning the city into a humidity-free place of chapped lips, bloody noses and queer tempers, where the heat rarely dipped below forty during the day despite the best efforts of a calm, cool ocean that seemed as intimidated by the heat as those unfortunate Hennington residents without air conditioning, which, oh yeah, was another of Eugene’s problems. The man in black looked like he was either approaching or leaving behind fifty, but he exuded health like a pheromone. His skin was bronzed almost to the tan of Eugene’s own Rumour hue, but this man was no Rumour. His nearly black hair was clipped short and neat and contained, Eugene was surprised to find himself thinking, a well-nigh dazzlingly handsome sprinkling of gray. The man’s eyes were a green so light it neared pastel, contrasting, even highlighting, his long black coat, black shirt, black pants, black belt and black boots. All in all, a preposterous outfit in this weather. There was another thing. This man had, what was it?, an aspect about him, a warm calmness, a smile that invited, a glance that seemed to show patience as well as an invitation. Maybe it was something as simple as charisma. Maybe he was just an exceptionally good-looking man. Whatever it was, the result was this: Eugene liked fucking girls (a lot); nevertheless, he was aware of the erection pressing against the crotch of his uniform, causing the chrysalia to itch all the more.

—Let’s start again. I’d like a room.

The spell dissipated. Eugene’s confusing hardness faded. Something lingered, though, and Eugene’s mind, in its own ham-fisted way, toyed with the something that hovered around this man. If it hadn’t been for a single red pimple near the bridge of the man’s nose, Eugene might have convinced himself he was seeing a vision. Or even a god, maybe.

—How long will you be staying?

—I’m not sure. Just got off the train and I’m here. A week. A month. I’m not sure. What’s your name?

—Eugene.

—Tybalt Noth.

Tybalt Noth offered a hand. Eugene, surprised again, accepted the shake.

—Unusual first name.

—A ridiculous name given by ridiculous, if loving, parents. I go by Jon.

—So an open-ended stay is what you’re looking for?

—You have summed up the matter admirably.

Jon né Tybalt smiled.

—I’m visiting an old friend, you see. I don’t know when I’ll be leaving.

—An open-ended reservation ought to be fine. We’re not that crowded.

—Because it’s so damned hot.

The man betrayed not one drop of sweat, despite having recently arrived from the oven outside. Eugene took his identification and credit card and entered them into the computer.

—You might want to change clothes, sir. The heat doesn’t look to let up anytime soon.

—Call me Jon, please, and I know about the weather. I’m from here. I can remember many a pressure-cooker summer.

—Really?

Why was it so surprising that this man was a Hennington native? Yet it was, most definitely.

—I just haven’t been back in a long time. These are my traveling clothes. Trust me, Mr Eugene, I brought appropriate attire.

He took the card key Eugene offered him.

—Room 402.

—Thank you, Eugene.

—And my name’s Eugene if you need anything else.

Jon blinked.

—Thank you again. I’ll remember that. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, Eugene.

He grabbed his bag, hitherto out of Eugene’s sight below the rolling back of the sperm whale. Eugene started making sounds about getting a bellhop, but Jon waved them off.

—I like to carry my own bag.

He smiled again, warmly and, it struck Eugene, incongruously for being dressed like a fallen angel. He turned and walked to the elevators. He seemed shorter than at first sight, but he moved with a sense of balance so sure and smooth that he seemed to glide. At the elevators, he turned.

—Is The Crash still hovering about town?

—Of course. They never change.

—Ah, that’ll be something to see again.

The elevator arrived. Jon disappeared into it. Eugene looked back at his computer screen. Jon Tybalt Noth’s return address was in the Fifty Shores, which meant that he had traveled three and a half thousand miles across the widest expanse of the Brown, by train, dressed in black. Eugene entered a note reminding the evening staff to check if Jon needed any other cooling amenities. He thought for a minute, erased the note, and decided to ask Jon himself at the end of his own shift.

Poor Eugene. He never knew what hit him.

2. A Confluence of Nudity.

Many years before she became the Cora Larsson, legendary Mayor of Hennington and remembered in a generation of matronymics, Cora Trygvesdottir went sunbathing in the nude and met the man who would become her husband. The scene: infamous Conchulatta Beach, that prime piece of land hooking its way over the southern entrance to Hennington Harbor, its crescent stretching from calm harbor to violent strait to calm ocean. Cora went alone, a not uncommon occurrence during a final year at college spent fleeing the daily catastrophes of two flatmates. Her natural inclination for serenity left her unable to really enjoy the boom crash of college life. That she excelled at it and later at law and still later at politics seemed to Cora to be the same sort of infuriating fate joke as penguins being such great swimmers: you did what you were good at and tried to ignore the fact that your flippers were really handicapped wings.

And so here was Cora, hatless and tanned, humming to herself, marching down to the beach, having parked her hasty in the last available slot. She carried a law coursebook, but even she knew that it was more or less a pretext. Henningtonians were not an especially beach-worshipping bunch, but neither were they beach-foolish. There were rules. The beach was a place where she could expect quiet and calm, especially if she read from an unattractive book of laws and even more so if she removed her bathing suit, de rigueur as the beach edged west. A naked sunbather was a serious sunbather, and Cora could wear her nudity as a shield against bothersome, over-friendly beachwalkers.

Along with her law book, Cora carried her hasty keys, a tube of sunblock with a much too low defense level, a small bottle of water, and a Mansfield U beach towel. She wore only sunglasses, sandals and a bikini, more appropriate attire having been left in the hasty’s trunk. For a Wednesday, the beach was crowded, but Cora made good time heading past the unseemly hordes of casual visitors. As she got further west, the families thinned and solitary sunbathers became more common. No one was in the water. It was hammerhead season and even with the iffy safety nets, you only swam if you were suicidal or drunk.

She grew faintly aware that the female-to-male ratio on the beach was beginning to tilt in favor of the men. She was a confident young woman, but still she relaxed a bit as the number of muscled, oiled bodies covered in the tiniest of suits began to grow. She removed her bikini top, bunched it in her hand, and received nary a glance from the men baking in the sun. Still further and the tiny suits shrunk all the way into not being there at all. She began to glance an impressive variety of penises in an ever-more impressive variety of states of excitement. Slowly, the lone sunbathers became pairs of sunbathers who now paused in their activities and watched Cora curiously as she passed. Seeking only solitude, Cora followed etiquette and kept her eyes to the middle distance, pausing just long enough to remove her bikini bottom once the danger of any male who might leer had thoroughly passed. Now on the ocean side, she selected a spot at the edge of some brush that led back to the base of the cliffs. She spread her towel, piled her belongings, and lay down to read.

She was awakened some time later by a voice.

—Good God, you’re about to burst into flames.

Cora opened her eyes, and the pain began there.

—Ow.

—No shit, ow, are you going to be able to walk?

Cora forced her eyelids the rest of the way up and saw her future husband, Albert Larsson, for the very first time. He was clothed only in sandals and a concerned expression. Cora turned a little and reached for something to cover herself up, but the excruciating pain from the burn quickly overtook any notions of modesty. She croaked out a question.

—Is it as bad as it feels?

She felt her lips crack as she finished the sentence. She tasted blood.

—I think you’re going to live, but we’ve got to get you inside somewhere.

And so Albert referred to himself and Cora as ‘we’ in the third sentence he ever spoke to her. Whenever she told this story in the years to come, both less and more often than you might think, Cora left out how suddenly comforted Albert’s simple ‘we’ had made her feel. If, as she believed, every story needed a secret, Cora’s was that she had loved Albert from sentence number three.

—Let me help you up. Slowly, now.

With much care and the lightest of touches, Albert got her to her feet. He gathered her few wayward things and delicately placed a hand on an unburnt spot to help her walk.

—You’re going to have this two-tone problem for a while. Your backside is as white as virgin pearl.

—A moan will have to suffice for a witty rejoinder.

—I’ll pretend to be dazzled.

She still could only barely see him, but her painful squints revealed first his nudity, second that he seemed Cora’s age or a bit younger (she was right but only just; when they met, they were twenty-two and twenty-one), and third that the reddish-blond hair on his head matched exactly the reddish-blond hair that led down from his belly button. What made a bigger impression was the kindness she felt in his hands. They were so gentle on her skin that they seemed to be the only thing keeping her from spontaneous immolation as they trudged back up the beach.

—How did you get here?

—I drove my hasty.

—Well, you’re not driving it home.

—Clearly.

—Do you have anyone who could come get you?

—My flatmates, I guess.

—I recognize that tone. Don’t worry. I’ll drive you, and let’s talk no more of it.

—Ow.

—We’re getting there.

Step by painstaking step, Albert supported Cora, and they walked, naked as a bridal bad dream the night before the wedding, past staring groups of volleyball players and disc throwers. Cora’s burn was so awesome there weren’t even any catcalls. The onlookers knew they were in the presence of something tremendous.

—Pavement.

Cora’s step jarred on the stone, sending a canvas of pain up her front.

—Ow.

—My car’s just right here.

—So close? You got here early.

—I’m not very proud to say.

Something occurred to Cora.

—Did you come to the beach naked?

—No. I was having sex with a man in the bushes behind you. We dozed, and when I woke up, he was gone and so were my clothes, towel and all various and sundry, save for the sandals I had somehow managed to not take off.

Cora let out a surprised laugh in the form of a grunt.

—I’m laughing less at the story than at your candor.

Through another squint, she could see him grin.

—I’m Albert.

—Cora.

—How about I take you to my lonely apartment, cover you with aloe, and put you in a cold bath, Cora?

—I’m in no position to decline.

Albert slipped off his left sandal, lifted up a flap, and pulled out his car key. Cora watched him with burnt eyebrows raised.

—You know, that’s a really good idea.

Some time later, after Albert more than made good on his promises, he wrapped her in a sheet, laid her on the couch, and fed her with bits of melon and cool water.

—I want to take you out to dinner to repay your kindness.

—Are you asking me on a date?

—You had sex with a man on the beach today. Are you askable on a date?

—It’s a big world. I like lots of things. I’m askable.

—All right then, I’m asking.

They married four months later. Though they occasionally indulged in sharing a boy, theirs was a rock-solid, faithful, and devoted union. Such was their bond, in fact, that by the time Cora was elected Mayor a surprisingly short seventeen years later, local Hennington argot referred to an especially strong contract as an ‘Albert and Cora’ to demonstrate its solidity.

3. The Crash on the Hill.

She was concerned about the dust.

The air smelled heavily of it, but it should have been too early in the year for there to be dust, although the last rains were well gone. There was ash in the dust as well and a distant smell of burning. She paused before she led the herd up to the top of the hill that marked the northern entrance to the descending fields, a place completely lacking in the malodorous homes of the thin creatures. This was just a grassy area, and she shouldn’t have been able to smell dust at all.

(An Arboretum groundskeeper leaned against his rake, watching The Crash from behind a stand of trees. He could see them grazing in the field, Maggerty mooning along after as usual, and he also had a pretty good guess where they were going to head next.

He frowned.)

She looked at the rest of the herd behind her. A lightness of mood permeated the group but left her unaffected. She was the only one who bothered at the dust in the air. The rest of the herdmembers shuffled aimlessly about, pulling at the grass with agile lips, some of the younger calves even playing, gamboling on the lea, if anything so bulky could ever truly be said to gambol. Lush green surrounded them. Families of birds sang to each other in the trees and to those symbiotic brethren who made a meal of the ticks and other annoyances in the herdmembers’ hides. A breeze teased its way through the glade where the herd was gathered, and to every herdmember there, save one, all was well.

She sniffed again, reaching with her nose, even squinting her eyes, their weakness more than compensated for by sensitive nostrils and nimble ears that now also turned and grabbed at any evidence that might linger in the air. Nothing. There was the usual amount of thin creatures scattered in the fields, easy to sense with their eerie strangled cries and halved footfalls, oddities not excepted by the thin creature who constantly followed the herd, also present in her catalogue of senses. Nothing out of the ordinary but the dust.

She snorted and waved her great horn to get the others’ attention. The message communicated itself through the group, and the herd began to file behind her. Yet even as they crossed into the ever more verdant gardens that leapt their way down the hillside, she could still smell the dust, its persistence meaning only one thing.

Hard times were coming.

4. Luther in Limbo.

Luther Pickett, beloved foster son of Archie Banyon and heir apparent to both the Chairmanship of Banyon Enterprises and the Banyon family fortune – though there was the matter of the last name – kept an immaculate desk in the middle of an overwhelming office. Taking up fully three quarters of the forty-fifth floor (the leftover fourth given to elevators and Luther’s four secretaries), it contained a conference room, a lengthy reception hall, a full bathroom with shower, an exercise room with spa and relaxation tub, a dining room, and a whole separate apartment where Luther could quite comfortably spend the night if he chose, which he never had, not once. Luther’s desk sat in the office’s main chamber, a room whose vaulted ceiling reached so high it took up a sizable portion of the forty-sixth floor, giving Luther a two-story wall made entirely of glass. In late afternoon, the sun poured in, filling the office to the brim with a spectacular view of Hennington out into the Harbor and beyond. Aside from Archie Banyon’s own office (the three-story penthouse with the pool, driving range, and ice rink; Archie was an athletic man), Luther’s office was the most impressive, most talked about, most envied, and to the extent that smaller budgets would allow, most copied in the city.

So it should surprise no one that Luther Pickett was desperately unhappy. Really, just look at his desk. A notepad, a file, a few papers, neatly stacked. A blotter, a telephone with intercom, a computer to one side. Barely anything else. No personal photos, no mementos from company milestones, no sample Banyon Enterprises products. Even the coffee mug was black and unmarked by logo or design. Most definitely not the outward reflection of an unfettered soul.

The minimalism (some would say sterility) reached to the gray carpet and on up the undecorated walls. After three years in this office, the intended inoffensive-yet-very-expensive abstract expressionist paintings were still packed in crates thirty stories below, waiting futilely for the day when Luther would finally allow them to breathe fresh air. And there was the silence, too. No bustle, no music, not even a hum from the air conditioning, just Luther’s pen scratching across a paper or the fading click of typing on the keyboard. Yet the atmosphere was not cold but melancholic, a funeral parlor’s viewing room rather than a prison cell, Luther the grieving relative and not the angry inmate. Luther at thirty-eight (grapevine verdict: ‘looks younger, seems older') appeared at once tense and exhausted. His tanned, handsome face rarely smiled, his broad chest rarely expanded into laughter, his step never betrayed any lightness. His secretaries worried frantically about him.

The intercom lit up.

—Yes, Lois?

—You’re going to be late for your 9.30.

Luther glanced at the clock.

—Shit. Call Jules, please, and tell him I’m on my way.

—I already have.

Archie Banyon and Luther Pickett had a thrice-weekly tennis match, played on the grass court Archie had installed on the uppermost floor of his own office. It was meant as a friendly game between friendly rivals, father-son in intent, if not perhaps in genuine feeling; still, it was not the corporate death-saga it might have been. Luther was strapping, tall, muscular. He was bald across the top and kept the rest of his hair cropped extremely short, a trompe l’oeil that made his head seem like a single sleek muscle as well. His tightly compacted litheness paired with a set of small silver-rimmed spectacles to make Luther look for all the world like a terrifically strong man trying not to appear so. In spite of this – and spite definitely entered into the equation – Archie Banyon had an impressive game and a more impressive tenacity. Luther usually lost two out of three, even given Archie’s extra five decades.

What the matches amounted to were three opportunities a week to speak with Archie. Three times a week to deliver the prepared speech that Luther had written and rewritten, the prepared speech that laid it all in the open at last and forever, the prepared speech that would probably kill Archie Banyon, not merely because of what it meant for Luther, but because of what it meant for Archie’s biological son, Thomas, a distasteful little caveat that helped matters not at all.

Luther gathered his tennis clothes and bolted to the elevators. He shot up through eighteen floors of computer banks and safes, film libraries and records, corporate histories and hidden crimes, eighteen floors of valuable information that Archie had placed between himself and Luther because he only felt comfortable if he was on one end and Luther on the other. —To protect it, Archie said, like sentinels. The elevator doors snapped open. Luther spotted Jules, Archie’s assistant, arranging Archie’s equipment off to the side of the court. Jules flashed Luther a wan, impish smile.

—Piss off, Jules.

—Is that any way to greet your umpire?

—Where’s Archie?

—Here!

Archie called from the far end of the court, behind Luther. Luther turned. One week. One week, and there would be no turning back. He would either give the speech or he wouldn’t. In one week, if he hadn’t said no, his silence would have answered yes.

5. Maggerty.

Maggerty the Rhinoherd was not the rhinoherd, but the misnomer served a humane purpose. Though the resolute, quiet and massive Crash needed no tending, the presence of Maggerty could only otherwise be explained by madness, an explanation with which the polite citizens of Hennington privately agreed but publicly tended away. The Crash offered no product, neither meat nor milk nor leather; their eating patterns were too erratic and wandering to be a real benefit to agriculture (there were no farms in the city anyway, which was where The Crash wandered more than half the time); and the individual animals were impossible to tame, ignoring Henningtonians with a determination that would have seemed like arrogance had The Crash not also asked so little in return: a few hay bales during drier times and the right to free range. The Rhinoherd did nothing but follow. He was more disciple than caretaker. Hennington sensibilities to the side, it was an occupation for a fanatic or an imbecile. Fortunately, Maggerty was both.

He was born in the farmland to the south of Hennington, the only son of middle class rent-farmers. Odd from the beginning, his destiny was set at six years old when he was kicked between two ribs under his left armpit by a goat he tried to suckle. This – the attempted suckling – was not done out of hunger but out of simple entrancement with the goat and its wheaty, dirty, shitty goat-smell. Crawling past the small, electric dairy works; past the Rumour farm-maidens tending to the hens and the sheep; under the nose of the giant Rumour overseer asleep in his chair, head cocked towards a computer terminal, one hand somnolently gripping the erection that raged in his pants as he (the overseer) dreamed; moving quietly through the gate, held fast so the latch didn’t clatter; literally following his nose to the furthest pen, Maggerty came face to face with the bored she-goat, munching her hay, distracted and oblivious.

Trailing his fingers on the wall, Maggerty circled the goat slowly. She took no notice of him after her initial sizing-up, exuding the offhand confidence so peculiar to farm animals who weren’t also sheep. She was a greenish brown with white bony legs and sharp – Maggerty was soon to discover – hooves. With caution, or rather, with reverence Maggerty placed a hand on the goat’s hide. The goat jumped a little, but it seemed to Maggerty to be more out of surprise than abhorrence. When he touched her again, she didn’t move.

He began to stroke her, slowly, like a pet. She had birthed a litter less than three weeks before, but her kids had already been taken from her. Her udder, plump to the point of hardness, glistened with a liquid Maggerty assumed to be sweat. He knew, as all farm children knew, that udders issued milk, and he was deliriously overcome with a desire to drink, to sup rich sustenance from the goat, to bring the pulsing, thrumming warmth of another existing aliveness into himself. A contempt was there, too, for the goat’s refusal to regard him, to notice his need, but that did not stop his desire for the milk.

He knelt. Heat buzzed in the air. He felt his heartbeat in his temples. A tingling spread over his body along with a sort of ecstasy, if he had known the word at six, but it was like the ecstasy of those screaming streetcorner preachers who haunted Hennington’s desolate east side and who would shit right out in the open and leave it stinking in the sun for want of interrupting their sermons. Maggerty leaned in and put his lips to one of the long teats. He had not even properly gotten his mouth around the nipple when the goat kicked him, slicing a deep, precise cut between two ribs just below his left armpit, leaving a wound that never healed. Never.

This was the unacceptable thing. A child ridiculously exploring a goat could be explained, heaven knew such things and worse had happened on southern Hennington farms since time immemorial, but a child with a wound that never stopped bleeding, never scabbed nor scarred, now this was a thing to be wary of. The expected ostracism and isolation followed ruthlessly in the farming community, ringing outwards from friends to schoolmates to teachers and onward, until finally Maggerty’s own mother regarded him only grudgingly on the rare occasions when she regarded him at all.

As he stumbled down the road after The Crash, Maggerty distractedly put his hand to the wound. Years and years and years had passed. The wound never got worse, but it never got better either. It also never stopped hurting, and it was this, the never-ending pain coupled with the oddity of the never-healing wound, that had driven Maggerty irretrievably into madness sometime in the teenagedom when he had picked up with The Crash, still accompanying them all these many long years later.

He ate grass and roots with them. He drank from the streams and canals and lakes as they did. He rarely approached them – the experience with the goat had taught him not to meddle with an animal that weighed one hundred times as much – but he also never left them, nesting with them through winters and storms, famines and droughts. He began to be called Maggerty the Rhinoherd not long after taking up his patronage. At first, municipal thought considered forcibly separating him from The Crash, but as he apparently did no harm to the animals and as they did not seem to mind or indeed acknowledge his presence, he was left alone.

And so it stood. Maggerty the Rhinoherd. Before the year was out, he would have a second never-healing wound, but only because it would first take his life.

6. The Mayor’s Office and its Discontents.

The speakerphone on Cora’s desk crackled.

—Mayor?

—What can I do for you, Adam?

—The Arboretum just called.

—Let me guess. The Crash bruised a blade of grass and molested a squirrel.

—More like trampled a rare species of terrestrial phalaenopsis. The botanists are screaming about irreplaceability.

—Adam?

—Yes, Mayor.

—'Terrestrial phalaenopsis'?

—That’s what they said.

—They couldn’t say ‘orchid', like normal folk?

—I guess they figured you’d know.

—On the basis of nothing.

—What should I tell them?

—That they shouldn’t have planted terrestrial phalaenopsi where one hundred rhinoceros could tread on them.

—Well, they are terrestrial phalaenopsis.

—And it is an equally terrestrial Crash. Surely there are paths The Crash doesn’t take. The botanists can plant their orchids there.

—I think all they want is a fence.

—In whose lifetime do they see that happening? The Arboretum’s been an open park for ninety years. That’s not going to change on my watch just because a bunch of botanists are crying over orchids.

—I like orchids.

—I have another call, Adam. Issue settled.

She released his line and pressed another flashing light.

—Yes?

—Deputy Mayor Latham on the line.

—Put him through. Max? Make me happy.

—Unlikely, I’m afraid.

—You can’t make the fundraiser.

—I can’t make the fundraiser.

—This is my thought, right this second: ‘Why do I even bother?’

—Talon is sick.

—Oh. Well, all right then. What’s wrong with her?

—Battery Pox.

—Poor thing. Started the shots?

—We’re driving home from the doctor’s office right now. She’ll be fine. She’s just throwing up all over everything.

—And a sitter is out of the question?

—Cora …

—All right, all right, all right, I’m civilized. I’ll just have to work myself up for a sparring match with Archie Banyon.

—He can’t be too upset if I have a sick daughter.

—He won’t be upset at you. He’ll be upset at me.

—You can handle Archie Banyon.

—I know I can handle Archie Banyon. Doesn’t mean I look forward to it. Where are you now?

—Driving down Eighth. Just about to cross Medford.

—Look out for The Crash. They’re around there somewhere.

—The Arboretum called, didn’t they?

—I don’t want to talk about it.

—Sorry about tonight.

—I don’t want to talk about it.

But she did.

—How can you expect to be elected if I do all your campaigning for you?

—You got elected four times. Why fix something that’s not broke?

—Don’t be cavalier. They’re not going to make you Mayor just because I tell them to.

—They might.

—Well, yes, they might, but still, Max—

—I’ll make it up to you.

—So you say. Are you even going to vote?

—Mercer Tunnel. Breaking up. Gotta go.

—Liar.

She cut him off and pressed a private speed dial.

—We’re flying solo tonight.

—Hi, sweetest. Max pulled out again?

—Yep.

—How does he expect to get your job if he never shows up to anything? Politics is nasty and brutish, but you at least have to play at it.

—Talon’s got Battery Pox. Apparently, she’s vomiting everywhere.

—How vivid. All right, whatever, we’ll pull in the dough for him once more.

—He says thanks.

—No, he doesn’t, but at least he means it.

As was his wont, Albert disconnected without saying goodbye. Cora dialed her secretary.

—Angie, get me Archie Banyon on the phone, please.

—Max canceled again, didn’t he?

—Just get Archie on the phone and let me out of my misery.

She clicked off and saw lines lighting up as Angie tracked down Archie Banyon. Cora steeled herself. He would let her off, but he wouldn’t do it without making her pay.

7. Father and Daughter.

Max Latham was trying to become Mayor of Hennington, but he wasn’t trying very hard. He still wasn’t sure if his heart was in it, which he often thought should have been proof enough that his heart most definitely was not in it. There was the sticky question of destiny, though. He had worked for Cora nearly thirteen years, since he was fresh out of law school, first as an intern with a brilliant mind for policy – if a little less so for politics – then as an advisor, then as Chief of Parks, until his current position as Deputy Mayor, the youngest person ever to have held such a post. Now, with Cora retiring after twenty adored years in office, everything had crystalized, just at this moment, for him to fulfill an awaiting slot in history, to step forward and seize the waiting gold ring, to set so many records atumble.

If elected, and as there was no present credible competition and as he was riding on Cora’s enormous popularity, getting elected seemed almost foregone, he would be Hennington’s first Rumour Mayor, quite a coup when Rumours were still, if you believed the census takers, a minority in the city. He would also be the youngest Mayor ever in the Recent Histories, beating the record by the two years he was younger than the previous recordholder, Cora, on her first election. Max had yet to even breach forty. More esoterically, Max would also be Hennington’s first unmarried Mayor, the mother of his daughter having drowned before plans for their wedding could be finished. All these impressive footnotes that would be for ever attached to his name.

And yet.

He looked in his rearview mirror for a glimpse of Talon, piqued in the back seat.

—How’re you feeling, sweetheart?

—My head weighs a hundred pounds.

—We’re almost home. Let me know if you need to throw up again.

—Okay.

Talon at ten was the spitting image of her father, high cheekbones, dark wavy hair, skin on the lighter side of the usual Rumour tan. But she had her mother’s chin cleft, a mark that could still spark fresh pain in him when he saw it, even all these years later. Max slowed his car to watch The Crash, still so magnificent after uncountable sightings, wander across to a side street. He idled to a stop as the last animals lumbered through the intersection. The Rhinoherd shuffled along with them twenty paces behind.

—Look, honey. The Crash.

—I can’t sit up, Daddy.

—Of course, sweetie, I’m sorry. We’re almost home.

Was not being sure if you wanted to run for Mayor a good sign that you shouldn’t run for Mayor or a good sign that you had enough self-doubt and introspection that you were in fact a perfect candidate for Mayor?

—Daddy?

—Yes, sweetie?

The sounds of coughing. Max turned around and stroked the back of Talon’s head while she retched into the bag the doctor had given her.

—Just take your time, honey. It hurts less if you relax.

He felt sweat dampening her hair as he stroked it.

—Take all the time you need to, sweetheart. We’ve got all the time in the world.

8. Mathematica.

Jacqueline Strell sat in her office and bathed in numbers. They flooded her desk in wave after wave, pages of numbers blocked in charts, scraps of numbers scribbled in pencil, computer analyses of numbers bracketed and cross-referenced to other rivers of numbers filed away in the cabinets behind her, numbers on cards, numbers on machine readouts, numbers on computer screens, numbers on the desk itself put there when, in a flurry of activity, Jacki chose not to flip over a page but continued onto the hard wood. Even her fingernails sported numbers, whimsically painted there this morning when she was in a whimsical mood. The time was rapidly approaching when she would need more whimsy. Oh, yes.

Her office nestled in the back half of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort Administration Building. She loved it. Spacious table tops flung out from her desk in wings towards her office door, room enough to keep the flood of numbers churning and churning in their never-ending whirlpool. Cabinets lined the three walls behind her and to her right and left, streams and cauldrons of bubbling, stirring, steaming numbers. She had fourteen different clocks decorating her walls, all set to the same time but all with different number fonts.

This was the reason Jacki was an accountant: she, alone among everyone else she had ever known, understood infinity. This understanding was innate. No epiphany, no trumpet blast of the everlasting had ever filled her brainpan. The eternal had always whiled away its time in her gray matter. She had been intimate with the infinite from the time she could even speak such words. The human mind was not supposed to be able to truly grasp the never-ending, but she could close her eyes and set her mind running off into forever, tripping lightly away on a line with no beginning and no end.

This was the reason Jacki understood infinity: she understood numbers. Infinity, aside from its unfathomable physical existence, could only and would only ever be expressed in numbers. Jacki looked scornfully on the small-minded ‘appreciation’ of the layman towards an infinite set. ‘Really, really big, then even bigger'. They didn’t see it. Jacki saw it. More, she felt it, smelled it, could almost touch it. Numbers adding and adding and adding and adding exponential upon exponential upon exponential and then all those numbers were still as nothing because infinity remained, brightly spilling itself infinitely forward.

Jacki leaned back in her chair and sighed. She was tall, generously boned, with loopy brown hair that matched the gawky, unconfined sprawl of her body. She rubbed her hand across her high forehead, inside which was an increasingly throbbing ache. Yes indeedy, it was time for whimsy again, most definitely. She opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a vial and syringe. With practiced movements, she filled the hypodermic, tapped it for bubbles, raised the hem of her skirt, and injected her thigh with 50ccs of the purest Forum you could get anywhere in Hennington.

Because there were three more things about Jacki:

1) Besides being an accountant with a comprehension of infinity, she was totally, utterly, wholly, paralytically and absolutely addicted to Forum.

2) Because of this, Jacki also worked as a prostitute for her boss, Thomas Banyon, biological son of Archie Banyon and general manager of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort, lent out to clients to feed a specific need, thereby pleasing Thomas and causing him to provide her with more Forum, although of course never quite enough. These shifts were in addition to the full day’s work she put in as Thomas’ Head Accountant. Never let it be said that Thomas Banyon lacked a darkling sense of humor.

3) And all of this was true because, at age forty-one, with her youngest child fifteen years old, Jacki still produced, on a daily basis, nearly two pints of breast milk, and there were a surprising number of men who would pay a surprising amount of money for just such a delicacy. Thomas Banyon was not a man to let potential income go unexploited.

Her phone rang. Alone in her office, she mouthed an expletive.

—Hello?

—Jacks.

Jacki frowned, but the Forum was already dribbling its way through her veins and she began to feel her consternation melt away, butter in boiling water.

—Yes, Mr Banyon?

—I have a clip for you tonight. Are you up for it?

As if there was a choice involved.

—Of course, Mr Banyon. It would be my pleasure.

—It’s Councilman Wiggins. You remember the good Councilman, don’t you?

Remember? She had to put salve on her nipples for nearly a week after the good Councilman displayed a tendency for toothiness. This memory too, though, floated away into the shimmering mirage of the drug.

—Certainly, Mr Banyon. What time?

—Say ten?

—All right. Ten it is. Usual place?

—Usual place.

—I’ll be there.

—I truly appreciate that, Jacks. I’ve got some really wonderful merchandise here that I had been hoping to share with you. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity.

—I’m grateful for your indulgence, Mr Banyon.

—You’re a good girl, Jacks.

He clicked off. Jacki closed her eyes. She was deep into butterscotch warmth now and glorious waves of light and color filled her head. The anguish, thank the heavens, was winding its way clockwise down the drain, spiraling blissfully out of her presence.

God bless Forum. Forum’s name be praised.

9. Hospitality.

—Mr Noth?

Eugene Markham knocked again. After a lengthy pause, Tybalt ‘Jon’ Noth opened the door. He was wearing one of the Solari’s bathrobes. His hair was wet, and he held a towel in his hands. Still, he smiled when he saw Eugene.

—Eugene! What can I do you for?

—I was just checking to see if everything is to your satisfaction.

—Slow day for you then?

—Yes.

—And you still have yet to manage a proper smile.

Eugene almost smiled at this, but not quite.

—That was pitiful, Eugene. And enough of ‘Mr Noth'. I told you to call me Jon.

—All right, then. Jon. Is everything to your satisfaction?

—I’ve only been here long enough for a shower, but the bathroom fulfills most accepted definitions of nice.

Jon smiled again, more warmly this time. Maybe he was a preacher. Maybe that was it.

—Are you some kind of preacher?

—How is it that I just know this surliness is something you’re trying to overcome and that there’s a perfectly personable individual in there somewhere struggling to get out rather than just plain old dour Eugene?

—You smile a lot, is all I mean.

—Your perception is bizarre, Eugene, but somehow, perhaps accidentally, it may even be correct. Interesting.

Eugene blinked. He wasn’t sure if he was being agreed with.

—So …

—I have been called a preacher in my time, Eugene, but even then, it could have been wrong. As for now, definitely not.

Eugene blinked again.

—'Why don’t you come on in and talk for a while, Eugene’ is what you’re waiting for me to say, yes?

—I don’t mean in any male-male sex kind of way, but—

—I didn’t think you did. Why don’t you come on in and talk for a while, Eugene?

Eugene, surprising even himself, smiled, stepped over the threshold, and entered Jon’s room.

10. The Crash at the Bridge.

Once, early on in her time as leader, the search for food had forced her to take them across the bridge that flung itself over the bay away from the city, a difficult, frightening and lengthy journey. The whole way along she could only smell salt water and the noxious metallic scent of the boxes that the thin creatures rode in. The wind drowned out all sound as the herd picked its way through the stopped boxes, the thin creatures inside staring out impassively. It was slow going, with much nervous lowing and braying among the members of the herd until, perhaps inevitably, disaster struck. About two thirds of the way across, some of the older animals started to panic, the confinement of the bridge causing a claustrophobia unknown to them even in some of the city’s starker alleys.

She attempted to keep some sort of order, firmly shaking her head, stepping forward and back. She snorted and affected a prance to try to hold their attention, but the wind snuffed her out. An old male began to get aggressive in his fear, knocking some of the smaller animals out of his way. An old female stumbled, accidentally pushing over a pregnant mother. The final stroke was the appearance of a flying box carrying some of the thin creatures. (— … so avoid the Firth Roundabout if you can at all. And finally, it looks like we’ve got a serious traffic jam on the Harbour Bridge, caused by The Crash of all things. As you can see from SkyCam5, cars are just at a standstill. Looks like rush hour’s going to be even longer tonight all over the city. Back to you in the studio . . .) Hovering to the side of the bridge, the box brought a swirling roar that proved too much for the more nervous animals. They turned and charged, running full gallop back the way they had come, leaving her and more than half the rest of the herd standing near the far end of the bridge.

The herd must not divide.

She ran to overtake the fleeing animals, to try to get in front of them to lead them again, to get them off the bridge and back into a calmer state. She arrived too late for some. The aggressive old male had given himself a mortal wound charging into the scattered boxes over and over again, his horn cracked, his ears bleeding. The old female who had knocked over the expectant mother had been turned against and was being forced over the side by a cadre of enraged herdmembers blinded by fright. She reached the group only in time to see the old female vanish over the edge with a low, terrified moan.

She quickened her pace, passing charging herdmembers on her right and left, weaving through the thin creature boxes, some of which were trying to move out of her way and only causing more problems. Her mouth foamed at the effort, her ears filled with the roar of her blood, but near the end of the bridge, almost a mile later, she was in front of the herdmembers that were fleeing. Assuming her entire authority in what she did next, she turned, faced the entire herd, and stopped right at the line where the bridge returned to the soil. Astonished, the escaping herdmembers careered to a halt in front of her. There were pile-ups as those charging behind were slower to stop, but eventually she faced the herd in its entirety, save for the two now lost. Even stopped, chaos still rattled the members as they jostled and tussled, some still panicking to get off the bridge.

She paced in front of them purposefully, walking back and forth, back and forth, until all heads were turning following her movements. With a loud snort and without slowing her step, she turned and headed away from the bridge. The animals followed her in shaky unison. In a short amount of time, the bridge was cleared of all animals except for the dying old male, who thankfully had knocked himself into unconsciousness before he died.

It was difficult to lead, but she led them once more.

11. Orthopediae.

Thomas Banyon was born with legs so bowed he was said to have been straddling his mother’s womb rather than resting in it, that his mother had wished for a boy and had given birth to the wishbone instead, that his parents had copulated on horseback, in a tunnel, with pliers, et al. Fortunately, his parents had been – his father still was – very, very wealthy: erstwhile Hennington City Council Members, owners of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and half of everything else in Hennington, stables full of horses, maids in the houses, unused yachts. These remarks about his legs were never said to Thomas Banyon’s face. This did not mean he was unaware of them.

Before Thomas had been alive a year, his parents had paid for five surgeries to correct his legs. He had three more by the time he was six and had not actually learned to walk until he was seven. He attended rigorous physical therapy on up into adolescence with Joe. Joe, ‘Just Joe', the therapist, was a former soldier who had served with Thomas’ grandfather in the Gentlemen’s War nearly fifty years previous and was purported to be the best physical therapist in Hennington. But Joe, and there’s really no getting around this, was an out-and-out sadist. His stated goal from day one was to get Thomas to cry.

Said Joe, in that indecipherable accent of his: —No pain, no advancement.

Years passed, and Thomas’ pleas to his parents fell on four deaf ears. The sessions grew longer and longer, with Thomas holding out for as long as he could against the onslaught of drills, weights, endurance tests, water exercise, and on and on. If Thomas had been able to fake crying, if Joe had taken even one small modicum less of obvious pleasure in inflicting the torture, Thomas might have grown up to be an altogether different person. But being of a spiteful, resentful disposition, he had developed the two natural and inevitable results.

Thomas Banyon had grown very strong, and Thomas Banyon had grown very mean.

At sixteen he was asked, because of his family’s position, to escort one Rebecca Turkei to Rebecca’s coming-out cotillion. Thomas, whose now vaguely straighter legs had the muscular mass of an elephant, could not dance, would not dance, and scorned the very idea of dancing. Rebecca, being a nice girl if a bit unobservant of behaviours human, responded by smiling, saying things like ‘Oh, pooh', and ‘You old grouch', never imagining for one moment that Thomas might be serious. On the big night Thomas, thinking the matter clarified, squired Rebecca down the winding staircase to the adulation of the white-gloved crowd below. When, at the bottom of the stairs, the crowd parted, the music began and Rebecca turned to Thomas to begin the traditional dance, he was sure he had been duped. Thomas Banyon, already most of the mammoth size he was working to become, loudly yet clearly spouted at Rebecca Turkei a most foul four-letter word that reached the ears of every guest and sister-debutante at the cotillion. To punctuate the oath, Thomas took his boutonniere and crushed every last carnation petal in the palm of his hand. He left Rebecca standing stricken and alone. She moved out of Hennington not three weeks later. ‘Medical school’ was the given reason, but everyone knew the most Rebecca Turkei had ever expressed about medicine was ‘Ouch'.

As punishment, because cotillions – however ridiculous to even Thomas’ father Archie – were not to be taken lightly, Thomas was made a gardener at the golf course. Delivering an astonishing blow to precedent, Archie Banyon even declined to send Thomas to college. Said his father with a wan smile, —You can pick up the trade on the job. Externally at least, Thomas took the hint from the gardening assignment, but he knew just exactly how much he would pick up about business from tending to a golf course. Ever the surprisingly smart son, though, he kept his opinions to himself. Not coincidentally, this was the time Luther Pickett arrived on the scene. Suddenly, Thomas had a pre-teen younger brother, an orphaned son of some fucking shipping clerk in some obscure fucking Banyon Enterprises satellite investment. Luther was described by Archie to Thomas as having ‘promise'. The implication was obvious. Well, so fucking what? Thomas would learn all about fucking ‘promise'.

Despite the unstated intentions of his father, Thomas did learn quite a bit from the golf course. Important things like where and when to seize what power and for how long and just how to use it once you got it. Gardening turned into supervising turned into course designing at a rapid and bloody rate. Privately, Thomas’ father approved of the casualties left in Thomas’ wake, admiring the ambition of an otherwise thwarted youth, but Archie Banyon blanched a little at the glee Thomas seemed to feel in it. Publicly, though, the father simply smiled and kept promoting his son. Inside of ten years, brief but still too long for pretty much anyone but Thomas to work at a golf course, Thomas Banyon, bandy-legged, bad-tempered, debutante-insulting son of a billionaire, was CEO of Hennington Hills Golf Club and Resort and loving it. What should have been a dishonorable, low-salaried (for an heir), do-nothing job had somehow morphed into a private fortune and personal pleasure, because nepotism or no, Thomas was very good at what he did: mainly terrifying his subordinates and keeping his members happy. Surprisingly, Thomas found the latter as entertaining as the former. He gained a reputation for providing for the illicit tastes of the richer and seamier sides of Hennington, which as usual were often one and the same. Drugs? Thomas could purloin a selection to fill a convenience store. Inside information? Thomas could make and break fortunes simply by frowning instead of smiling. Sex? Now, sex was where Thomas flourished.

Sex, oh, could Thomas acquire all kinds of sex for whatever persuasion was requested. Whilst a mere gardener, Thomas had already seen the perks that a quick hand job received from a grateful married man in a sand trap. You only had to do the actual act a few times before the more delicious avenues of blackmail opened. Thomas didn’t need the money, but he discovered quickly how having power over someone turned into other advantages. When those men and women thought they were taking something from the bulky, muscular, smiling, friendly teenager, Thomas knew otherwise.

Nowadays, the locker-room jerkoffs and sauna blowjobs, the limousine pussy-eating and private apartment fuckings (of pussy and ass; opportunities were opportunities) were left behind as mere child’s play, the youthful desire to put in the personal appearance. Almost all of his employees at Hennington Hills had extra, special duties that Thomas required of them now and again. Peter Wickham, the waiter with the delightfully elegant sexual organ; Jacki Strell, the milk-bearing accountant; Maggie Bonham, the gift shop manager about whose head-giving epic poems should have been written; silver-haired chief chef Hartley Chevalier, who appealed quite dramatically to equally silver-haired women; Paul Beck, assistant mechanic, whose sad eyes and cunnilingual talents left him very little time to actually fix any of Hennington Hills’ vehicles; Tracy Jem-Ho, barmaid with a whip. And so on. All of these people owed Thomas something, and none of them would, should ever think of leaving. Besides, Thomas thought, he treated them well, paid them well, never asked them too far over the edge, certainly not to any point where they couldn’t come back. He cared about them, he thought. Any of the entertainment might disagree, but Thomas was sure that was beside the point.

Upon his perch in the golf cart from which he surveyed his grounds and shook the hands and caressed the egos of its utilizers, Thomas Banyon was offering JH Williams Roth VIII an imported cigar of the highest purity and utmost illegality.

—Taste good?

—Exquisite. Like a young girl just having smoked the finest cigar.

—I can arrange for you to make the comparison first hand, if you’d like.

—I was unaware that I had to ask any further than I already have.

JH Williams Roth VIII raised his eyebrows haughtily. Thomas smiled. This prick would get his cigar-smoking girl. He would also get a raging case of the Mud. Maybe Thomas was a gofer and a pimp, but you didn’t treat him like one. The mobile phone in the cart rang. He lowered his voice, turning away from the prying ears of the soon-to-be-oozing JH Williams Roth VIII.

—Thomas Banyon.

—It’s Luther.

—Hello, brother.

—I was wondering …

A long pause. Thomas liked making him wait.

—He’ll be there at the usual time, Luther.

—Thank you.

Luther hung up. Thomas smiled to himself. Wasn’t providing what people wanted all the power you ever really needed?