Part 11 (1/2)

-Oh, just leave the poor guy alone.

-Does he know about me?

-Most likely. He's kind of the obsessive type. He probably followed us here and copied your license plate and put a trace on it.

-What, he's a cop?

-No, he just knows how to do spy-type things. I don't know how. He's like some kind of tech genius. The kind who fancies himself an ”artist.” Which explains, I guess, his fascination with me.

-When did you dump him?

-The night I met you. Except I didn't actually dump him. We weren't going out or anything. I never even f.u.c.ked him. I don't think. But you know how some guys can be ... or maybe you don't.

-So he was there, at the Smog Cutter? What, you just left him there without telling him?

-Pretty much.

-Great. An enemy I didn't even know I had.

-He's harmless. Borderline nuts, but harmless.

-We're all borderline nuts. Borderline nuts I can handle. I just like to know when I've made a new enemy, witting or unwitting.

-What's that mean?

-It means ... I don't know. Pa.s.s that over here, will you?

32. THE VILLAIN SVEN TRANSVOORT DESCRIBES HIS FIRST MEETING WITH GUY, SITTING COWARDLY IN HIS UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER THE KOREAN CHECK-CAs.h.i.+NG FIASCO.

What's a little white lie between friends? I realize I'm a.s.suming quite a lot, calling you my friends, but you see I have no others, just at the moment, and I could really use some.

The white lie was that Violet McKnight was my girlfriend. I am many things in addition to a sociopath, but I am not delusional, at least not in a Humbert Humbert way. I'm not anywhere near that predictable. Or, to put it the way I twittered just ten minutes ago, I am the most interesting person you will never meet. I thought that was rather clever, given the 140-character constraints of the form.

I was seeing her, yes, but only in the sense that one sees another person who might be described as a casual acquaintance. In fact, she was using me, or more specifically using my connections in the art world, which are really no more than a function of the money my adoptive parents left me when they died (tragically, in a car accident, which some of my new friends, that is to say you, might find ironic). My father, unlike Guy's, could never handle his liquor. And my mother didn't know how to drive. But psychoa.n.a.lysis will get you nowhere, my new friends, because I did not love my parents. Or, if you like, I loved them, but in the way one loves a favorite piece of furniture or an apartment. When the furniture is stolen, or you move, you're sad at first, but you get over it fairly quickly. You don't necessarily, with parents, acquire a new piece of furniture or move into a new apartment (please try to keep up with the extended metaphor, you in the back!), but you do move on. You forget.

As for our other Forget, if Hannah Arendt was right about the ba.n.a.lity of evil, and I see no reason to argue the point, then my subsequent encounters with Guy Forget represented probably my first encounter with pure evil. I am not equating Guy with Eichmann, I'm simply saying that had Guy been in Eichmann's place he probably would have acted similarly. He had no appet.i.te for questioning received wisdom, no apparent talent for original thinking whatsoever. In this he was, of course, not all that different from anyone you might meet at any time in any place or especially watch run for elected office, but what distinguished Guy, what snapped my head to attention, was his self-awareness.

He walked into the after-party like he was walking onto a yacht. I should first explain that I almost never give parties in Los Angeles, not anymore. I should secondly explain that I am aware when I am paraphrasing or even stealing old song lyrics. There is intentionality to everything I say or do. There is will. There is almost always execution.

I gave this party because Violet asked me to, though it's true I had in fact manipulated her into asking me to, because as part of my elaborate revenge plan I had ”let slip” to Violet about my spurious Internet coding breakthrough, which I knew she would not fail to determine could be a useful thing for Guy to try to exploit. I pretended to give the party, therefore, under protest, with a bad att.i.tude, determined not to have fun, determined to sulk in a corner slumped against a wall or if possible glowering in an easy chair with my legs outstretched so that people would either have to step over them or trip. As you can imagine most people tripped, because most people are incredibly unaware of their surroundings even when sober, but after two or three drinks my legs acquired the kind of invisibility I'd dreamed about as a boy.

Drunk as he was-and he was-self-absorbed and arrogant and ent.i.tled and rangy and tall and good-looking in an ordinary way, as he also was, he looked down as he approached, with a drink in both hands, and saw my legs. And stepped over them. And then turned, or gavotted, almost, and looked me directly in the eye.

This was, whether he or I knew it at that second, a crucial moment in Guy Forget's life. It was the moment I could have turned back, forgotten the elaborate revenge plan, decided he was an okay guy, or Guy, and let the whole thing drop. Instead, it was the moment that confirmed to me in the core of my being that I was doing the right thing. He should not have turned. He should not have looked me in the eye. He should have tripped over my legs like everyone else and spilled his drink, and laughed the whole thing off. Had he done so, I firmly believe, I would have let him be.

I waited a few minutes and then approached him. Almost immediately I began my well-planned counterplot, spurred on-had there been any lingering doubts in my mind before the after-party-by blind rage at his insipid manner, at the way he had of talking down to me, to me, whose IQ on any measurable scale towered above the collective IQ of the entire houseful of tweeting and tumbling deadheaded mannequins like the snow-capped peaks of the volcanic range of mountains in the Puy-de-Dome serenely keeping watch over central France.

You know how sometimes you just develop an instant antipathy toward someone? Instant and unexplainable but deep and ineradicable as a vein of fool's gold in (for instance, to pick a random example) volcanic rock? That's what happened-over and above walking out of the Smog Cutter with a girl he in no way deserved, that's what provoked his end. He did enough to warrant that end, I suppose. He dug his own hole. But I filled it in.

I'm not confessing for any particular reason other than the thrill of confessing. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm just saying let's work out what's worth saving and what's not in this crazy two-bit town called life.

33. GUY AND BILLY DISCUSS VIOLET BEHIND HER BACK, SITTING IN THE BAR TWO DAYS BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CAs.h.i.+NG FIASCO.

She'd been crying, is what I'm trying to tell you.

-She does that. Not cry, but pretend to have been crying. It's one of her most effective tools.

-You're absolutely heartless.

-Me? I'm full of heart. If my heart were any bigger we'd have to find a larger booth.

-Then why are you always putting her down?

-Listen to me, Billy. No one on this greenish-blue earth loves or cares for Violet more than I do. No one, in fact, loves or cares for her half as much as I do. I'm not really sure how you quantify loving and caring for someone, but ”half as much” is not meant as a precise measurement. Don't trap me with words, Billy. I know the twists of your sophistry. You could make me believe the opposite of what I say or mean with a few well-turned questions.

-I could?

-There you go! d.a.m.n you!

-I didn't know you had such strong feelings.

-About Violet?

-About anything.

-She's misunderstood by everyone except me. I put her down out of love, you see. I don't fall for her tricks because she's better than her tricks.

-I don't know ...

-Anything. You don't know anything. That's the Socratic method at work, old boy. Good for you. In two shakes of a lamb's tail, you'll have me believing that p.o.r.nography is immoral. You're amazing!

-All I'm saying is that she's very unhappy about Plan Charlie. She doesn't want us to go through with it. And I don't like to see her unhappy. I guess I have feelings for her too.

-Of course you have feelings for her. Feelings of brotherly love, complicated by irresistible incestuous urges. We've all been there, old boy.