“You’re a minor,” said Burroughs. “Your father needs to countersign, or Belt’s unprotected.”
“Did I miss something?” Trip said. “You Belt’s driver, now?”
“Belt feels unprotected, the work could suffer.”
“I know. I’m kidding. You know I’m kidding, right, Belt? I definitely want you to feel totally protected. Still, I want this to happen today, okay, Burroughs? I want this in motion. So does Belt. He wants to get paid.”
“Working on it,” Burroughs said, and then, into the phone: “Mr. Baker, thanks for holding. My apologies for having to bother you on a Sunday, but we need a notary public at the compound ASAP…Frankly, I find that question surprising. Perhaps I failed to make myself clear. This is Burroughs Archon, calling on behalf of Mr. Pellmore-Jason, who would like you to send a notary to the compound ASAP…Now you’ve asked the same surprising question twice, so how about I give you two answers? Answer the first: you’re who we’ve called. Answer the second: no, we did not try the mobile notary service before we called you, and we’re well aware they’re available twenty-four/seven, but here at the Pellmore-Jason compound, what we’re betting on is that your ASAP will be a lot ASAP-ier than would be that of the mobile notary service, which, after all, has no real stake in maintaining our cliency, let alone an eight-figure stake in maintaining our cliency…And we’re pleased that you’re pleased to help us, Mr. Baker…Yes, that would be great. And you can assure them that, it being a Sunday, there’ll be a generous gratuity—the sooner they get here, the bigger…Bye, now.”
“Burroughs,” Trip said. “You’re such a bully.”
“Your bully, young man. Yours, too, Ms. Henry.”
“True enough,” Fon said. “But I think you enjoyed that.”
“What can I say?” he said. “These jerkwater bankers…They act like they never learned the words ‘How high?’ Like doing their jobs is some favor to the world.”
“It is a Sunday,” Triple-J said.
“Interest doesn’t accrue on Sundays?”
“Touché,” Trip said.
Burroughs touched his own ear, then, into his collar, he said, “I’ll let him know. Thank you.” To Trip, he said, “Some kid just nearly tied you at Ulysses. He’s in line to go again three rounds from now. I guess you want to see that.”
“Of course I do,” Trip said.
“Alright,” Burroughs said. “There should probably be time before the notary gets here, but come and find us as soon as it’s over. Don’t keep your father waiting. Office House One.”
“You want to come with me, Belt?” Triple-J asked.
I tried to say something tentative, something along the lines of “I guess I could do that,” but I hadn’t spoken in such a long while—at first, I’d stayed very deliberately silent owing to the fear that if I said the wrong thing I might lose the $100k, and then, just as that fear had started abating, I’d been rendered speechless by the dawning realization that Jonboat, who I’d believed had fled the compound in order to avoid me, was not only back, but would, momentarily, grant me an audience—I hadn’t spoken in such a long while a clot of binding mucus had developed on my vocal cords, and although I, in response to Trip’s question, attempted to say, “I guess I could do that,” or, “That might be nice,” or something else along those lines, all I produced was a wet, gaspy crackling, like zaps of static, or the snapping of paling, overchewed bubblegum.
I cleared my throat explosively, rued my lack of handkerchief, swallowed and swallowed.
“Belt’s gonna come with us,” Fon said.
Triple-J saluted, said, “Crunch-a-tize me, Cap’n,” and made his exit.
And then, just like that, like it was all of a piece (and, on reflection—perhaps owing to reflection—I suppose it was), I followed Fon and Burroughs to Office House One, which, despite what it sounded like, was neither a house composed mostly of offices, nor an office the size of a house, but a standard three-bed/two-bath raised ranch thats lower-level den had been turned into an office, i.e. Jonboat’s office, where Jonboat received us.
JONBOAT SPEAKS
A COUPLE OR MAYBE three years earlier, I’d plucked an issue of a men’s glossy monthly off the rack at White Hen because Jonboat—gracing the cover in a tux, one of his legs encased to the knee in the bottom of a space suit otherwise crumpled on the floor behind him—was the subject of its featured in-depth profile, “Jonboat on Mars, Jonboat on Venus.” Unable as I was to find the table of contents amidst all the ads for cars and watches, I began fanning pages, and I probably would have, from mounting impatience, soon given up searching for the profile anyway, but, as it happened, what arrested my efforts was my coming across a photo of a chef, the mononymous Clem, who was stirring a pot in the kitchen of Heather, his most recently opened and celebrated restaurant. Though I was not a fine diner, nor a fine-dining aspirant, nor had I, before then, heard of Heather or Clem, this photo managed to intrigue me at a glance.
Clem was eggplant-shaped with limbs like noodles, a waxy brow and Fields-grade gin blossoms, balding unevenly, sloped of shoulder, pocked of cheek, all but chinless, and pouchily jowled, yet he emanated mastery, quiet virility, something almost leaderlike. Furthermore, a patently bicepsy line cook—a teeth-flashing, pompadoured, cleft-chinned stud—was chopping some carrots in the lower-right corner, and, despite his badboy-Ken-doll hunkiness, and despite his uniform’s matching Clem’s, he appeared to be somehow clumsy in contrast, somehow unfit.
I couldn’t make sense of it—not at first.
The shot, it seemed, was candid, authentic. Had its candidness been staged, I doubt the chef would have (or for that matter could have) produced so convincingly camera-unconscious a slackjawed and wet-lipped facial expression; had the photo been touched up later in the lab, the up-toucher would have—or so one would think—whitened, or at the very least lightened, the yellowy pit-stain-like shadows (and maybe they were pit stains) in the creases of Clem’s ratty chef’s jacket’s underarms. Or blurred out his acne scars. Or blunted the oily shine of his forehead.
Perhaps, I thought, Clem subtly resembled—in bearing, if not also in bone structure—somebody world-historically important, and exuded, by way of that subtle resemblance, some of that person’s world-historical charisma. Who could it have been, though? Mahatma Gandhi? Not Mahatma Gandhi. Joseph Stalin? Not him either. Nor Margaret Thatcher, nor Muhammad Ali. Hitler/Kevin Spacey? Not remotely. Maybe…maybe Ringo Starr/Yasser Arafat a little, but…
It turned out I was wrong. Or partially wrong. Not wrong about his slight resemblance to Ringo/Arafat—that was definitely there—but about that resemblance being the source of the impression he gave of mastery, etc. According to the article on the facing page, which I read about half of (I would have read the whole thing, but Pang, before I could get beyond half, had asked me whether I thought his name was Marian, and when I told him that, no, I thought his name was Pang, he asked me why I, who had just admitted to knowing his name wasn’t Marian but Pang, was behaving as though he were a librarian, a librarian called Marian whose place of business was not a convenience store but a public library, a question to which the only simultaneously civil and face-saving response was, I knew, to purchase the monthly, but since that was a purchase I couldn’t afford without forgoing the Quills I’d come for, I, losing face (however civilly), reracked it instead, and never dared attempt to read the article thereafter), Clem—who, for years, had refused the courtship of numerous investors, and was “nearly as famous for his foulmouthed, misanthropic totalitarianism as he [was] for his maverick approach to gastronomy”—had agreed to take on partners when opening Heather only on condition that those partners build him a kitchen “bespoke top to bottom,” i.e. the kitchen depicted in the photo.