The Failure (7 page)
S
he left, right through that door. Didn’t even say anything to me, didn’t look back. Clinging to that strangelooking fellow. All kissy-eyed and tulip-faced. Does she not know how much that hurts me? Does she not care? Violet McKnight, I love you. I get such joy out of looking after you. Buying you clothes, taking you out to lunch and dinner, lending you cash—as if I don’t remember what it’s like living from paycheck to paycheck. And the reluctance with which you ask—it breaks my heart. I have to practically drag the words from your mouth, which to be honest I would prefer to do with my tongue, but I agree, it’s better to wait, because waiting heightens the anticipation, and sex only muddles the emotions. I will wait until you’re ready.
Who could not respect the fact that, however much I plead and argue, she refuses to give up her job, despite that the long hours and the stress, which keeps her away from me intolerably long, and delivers her to me too tired to do anything but collapse on my bed? I happily cede you my bed, dear Violet. The couch is fine for me, because it’s close to you, but not too close, not so close that we would fall prey to our natural instincts. I need only nearness, proximity, the aura of your umbra, and I understand and approve of your need for space. When I hear your hesitant knock at my door, late at night, if you knew with what febrile glee I leap from my seat at the dining room table, where I’ve been writing another of those letters you cherish so much, but that cost me so little effort, because they pour straight from the source of my longing for you onto the page, and open the door to see your hesitant smile—if you knew that, dear Violet, why would you walk out the door of the Smog Cutter, which is a ridiculous name for a bar, in the first place, and in the second place, karaoke?—with a complete stranger, who is first of all obviously gay, though he may not be aware of it, which I find to be a common condition in Los Angeles, without a word of explanation?
The answer is of course obvious: she’s testing me. It’s true that my jealousy does at times get the better of me, and that jealousy, as Violet once said, is an allergic reaction to the presence of ego. But there are only so many rum and Cokes a man can sit and drink by himself, listening to some god-awful blonde twig butcher Supertramp’s sublime “The Logical Song,” before he takes it upon himself to investigate your disappearance.
So I fail the test.
Mea maxima culpa
, darling. I am human after all, it turns out. A thorough search of the parking lot turns up nothing but the hurried rustling of two lovebirds I accidentally disturb
in flagrante
, but soon thereafter a car engine starts, noisily, and is that, could that possibly be your silhouette, Violet McKnight, in the passenger seat of some carbon-belching rust-bucket, driven by the same clearly gay stranger with whom you’d walked out the door half an hour before?
You’ll forgive me for stating the obvious: I got in my Prius and I followed you. Which was not an easy thing to do, because you did not appear to be headed anywhere in particular, and in fact kept circling around the same few blocks in Silverlake, where there was not enough traffic for me to keep anything but a discreet distance. Until you stopped at a red light on Vermont, a two-lane road, at last. I cautiously pulled alongside, and at first I didn’t see you, dearest. And then I did. And then I didn’t. And then I did.
In that moment I became Sven Transvoort. In that moment I became a monster, a caricature, a vengeance-minded machine. In that moment I understood everything about Guy Forget, even though I didn’t yet know his name. I understood his cheap appeal, his reckless ways, and the unavoidable fact that he must die. And that I must kill him.
My hatred of Guy Forget flowered in my heart like bougainvillea: fragrant, bright, beautiful, but poisonous as any viper’s venom. Obviously, bougainvillea isn’t poisonous, but the hatred in my heart—pure neurotoxin. An atomized drop of that hatred breathed in by Guy Forget from one hundred yards away would have killed him instantly. The only problem was, there’s no way to extract the poison from my heart without slicing open my chest, and there are some things I am not yet prepared to do in the name of revenge. That’s one of them.
I can’t think of too many others, however. For instance: things that I am totally prepared to do in revenge w/r/t G.F. would include but are not limited to: setting him on fire, shooting him in the face, and dosing him with incredibly high levels of LSD and leading him blindfolded to the top of the Capitol Records building and then taking off the blindfold and telling him he can fly.
But why deal in theory when you can deal in praxis, is my current motto, so what I did instead was 1) convince Guy Forget that I had invented a form of subsensory Internet coding that cannot possibly exist in any of our eleven dimensions, and 2) help set up the Korean check-cashing debacle and then sabotaged it.
Following the fiasco, I followed the hapless duo, discretely, in a car completely unlike the one I told Guy I would be driving. I watched them stop, and get out, and have a heated argument, and I watched them roll down the hill, and then I got scared and went home.
Oh sure, there’s a flaw in every plan, no matter how brilliant or at least inspired and well thought out. I did not foresee that Guy would leave Billy, climb back up the hill, get back in the car, and drive at unsafe speeds toward wherever he thought he could find me—I assume that’s where he was going, though perhaps my ego here overrides my reason—and in so doing crash the car and more or less die, by which I mean suffer damage to his cerebral cortex that effectively ended his conscious existence. I am not responsible nor do I care much about other planes of consciousness on which Guy Forget may or may not be able to function. I am, however, directly or at least directly indirectly responsible for his current comatose state, and I’m pretty sure that makes me an attempted murderer, whether or not he lives for years and years with tubes sprouting from his body like a potato. If he dies, either naturally or via some kind of state-sanctioned euthanasia, I am a murderer. This thought does not trouble me.
The risks one takes in the name of love. The things one does. Crazy, right? Sort of even death-defying. And for something so definitively transient, that passes the moment—the actual moment—it becomes realized …Well, I don’t need to tell you good people the foolish feeling that washes over you after you’ve done something reckless and embarrassing, in the clear light of day, when you’ve regained your senses.
I do not regret what I did. He had to pay. He had to pay for what he did: he stole my dear, darling Violet, the one human being on earth to whom I offered my unconditional love and support. Stole her as easy as St. Augustine picked the peaches off a tree that did not belong to him, and then wrote a whole book about how sorry he was. Stole her and did not even love her, or
possibly
did not love her, at least I imagine he did not, because creatures like Guy seem to me incapable of love.
Having said that, even considering Guy Forget separately from his transgressions, dispassionately, with an open mind, it took me less than five seconds to realize that he was the most evil person on the planet, deserving both of unfettered disgust and the full and undivided attention of my bloody-minded revenge.
L
ook at me. I’m bleeding in like a million places.
-You got a few scratches.
-A few scratches? We just fell all the way down that fucking hill! Look up there. Look!
-I’m looking.
-That’s a pretty long way.
-It’s kind of impressive, actually.
-Did you roll all the way? I feel like I maybe flew through the air a little bit. Like maybe I hit a clump of roots or a bush and actually went flying for a few feet.
-I don’t know. It happened really fast.
-But it seemed to take forever.
-Weird.
-Yeah. Anyway, sorry about that. I kind of provoked you into pushing me, I think.
-I shouldn’t lose my temper so easily.
-Well, I know how to push your buttons. And I know that I know. And I shouldn’t do it.
-In a perfect world.
-Which we can agree that this is not.
-Yes.
H
e looks peaceful.
-Well, most dead people do, Mom.
-You’re not the kindest person in the world, are you, Marcus?
-I’m my father’s son.
-Also your mother’s son.
-No, that’s Guy. Guy’s much nicer than me. He got all the nice genes from your side of the family.
-I didn’t say nice. I said kind. There’s a difference. You’re a very nice person, Marcus. You’re responsible, reliable, even-keeled. You almost never lose your temper or snap at people.
-I get it. Guy’s not really a nice person in that sense. But he is kind.
-Yes. And I think your father understood that, somewhere deep down.
-What makes you say that?
-The money he left Guy.
He left Guy money? After all those years of refusing to loan him anything?
-Exactly. I think he always planned that after he … passed on, Guy would get the money he wanted, and then your father wouldn’t have to watch him—potentially—fail at whatever it was he wanted the money for.
-His last thing was something to do with some kind of new web-based technology. I didn’t exactly understand.
-For getting rid of spiders?
-The Internet kind of web, not the spider kind.
-The kind that requires a loan from his brother.
-He seemed really keen this time. Or desperate. I’m not sure there’s a big difference.
-And you said no.
-Yes. I said no.
-Well, now you can tell him yes. If not for yourself, at least on your father’s behalf.
-You want me to tell him?
-I think it’s appropriate.
-What’s appropriate would be for him to be here, now. What’s appropriate would be for him to have acted, just once, like a member of this family, like we weren’t simply people he called when he was in trouble or needed something.
-He’s never been good about remembering birthdays. It’s not one of his strong points.
-I’d like to know what are his strong points. Other than annoying the hell out of Constance …
-Who’s not here …
-Mainly because she was afraid Guy would be here.
-So now you’re saying you’re glad Guy’s not here, because if he had been here, and your wife too, that would have caused a problem.
-She hates Guy because Guy never brushes his teeth. I mean, not brushing occasionally, that’s forgivable, but never? That’s just gross. But it’s not the point, Mom. He should be here. And maybe Constance had other reasons for not being here. We’ve been having some issues lately and I didn’t want to drag her into some big emotional family drama.
-Money or children?
-Those aren’t the only things couples fight about, Mom.
-Then it’s sex.
-Oh God. Please stop.
-I’m right, though. Do you want me to talk to her?
-I think I’ll call Guy. How much money is he getting?
-Fifty thousand. After taxes.
-He’ll be thrilled. That’s exactly what he was looking for.
-He’s not picking up.
-He’s probably busy.
-Yeah. Hey, it’s me, listen, good news—bad news thing. Dad’s dead, but he left you a bunch of money. Fifty grand, to be exact. I figured you’d want to know. About both things. You won’t call me back, but if you want the money you’ll have to call Mom at least. Bye.
-You really are not a kind person.
No, Mom, I’m not. But who would be right now? Given the circumstances.
-Maybe you’re right.