FOOLS CLUB
by
Craig Mallery
First Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Craig Mallery
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/33668
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Chapter — Prologue (1985)
Jacob Miller knew there were faster ways to walk home from school. Sixty-eight to be exact. Because Phoenix’s street system was laid out on a grid, the number of direct routes was simple to calculate. Last week during Ms. Holly’s fourth grade math class, he had drawn the streets in his notebook and then systematically traced his pencil over the lines until he had counted all the possibilities. But none of these direct routes would have taken him through the Sunderland Citrus Orchard. It added another three blocks to his walk, but it was worth it. The smell of the oranges reminded him of his mother.
When he was six, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Every day for the next five months, until the day she died, Jacob and his father made her breakfast. His father would slice the oranges while Jacob, standing on a step stool beside him, would press the orange halves against the juicer, quickly soaking his hands in juice and pulp. Once the glass was full, he would carry it to her room. Because the medications made her eyes sensitive to light, the blinds were left down. Breakfast was served in darkness. After placing the glass on her bedside table, he would let his hand linger beside it, his heart racing with anticipation. On the good days, before taking the glass, she would pat him on the wrist, her weak smile and fragile touch making his heart sing. By her last month she was taking all her fluids through an IV drip, but he still brought her the juice because its scent reminded him of her touch.
But today the scent of oranges was suffocating him.
Reed Higgins was mashing an orange against his face. Seconds before he had jumped out from behind a tree and shoved him to the ground. Behind him a group of boys swarmed in the shade of an orange tree, yipping and giggling with delight.
“Beats eating shit,” Reed grunted.
Jacob jerked his head away and sucked in a breath of air. The scent of oranges made him think of his mother and he waited to feel her touch on his wrist. Reed gripped his face and the image vanished. Jacob screamed for her to come back, but when he opened his mouth, Reed hawked a snot ball onto his tongue.
“Yummy, yummy in your tummy,” Reed laughed as he held Jacob’s mouth shut.
The other boys squealed and chanted, “Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!”
“Swallow it, doofus,” Reed giggled.
Jacob gulped and the warm phlegm slid down his throat. With his mouth pinned shut, he had to breathe through his nose. Again the scent of oranges assaulted him. Memories of his mother rushed toward him—
This time he willed his mind to stop thinking about her. Rather than lose her again, it was easier not to let her in at all. Hadn’t he learned that the day she died? The day he discovered he could always just think about other things — like the clouds.
Jacob looked past the dark green leaves of the orange tree swaying behind Reed’s hideous face and peered deep into the cumulus mediocris cloud billowing in the sky. Within the cloud, droplets of moisture were rising higher and higher, approaching the stratosphere. Soon the cloud would blossom into cumulonimbus calvus and the rain would come.
A gust of wind whipped through the orchard, rustling the leaves. But Jacob — his mind aglow with the imagined light of the sun’s rays striking the droplets of moisture — did not hear the sound. Nor did he hear Reed as he unzipped his pants and snickered, “Hey, dork, you want something to wash that snot down? How about some lemonade?”
**
When Colin Schaefer was five, his mother took him to the Goldwater’s Department Store at the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall where she worked as a sales clerk in women’s apparel. They rode the escalator to the top floor, walked through the changing rooms, past a door marked “employees only” and stopped outside the store manager’s office. Beside the door hung a bulletin board that ranked all the sales associates. His mother’s name was at the top of the list. His heart boomed with pride.
“That,” she said jamming her finger at her name, “is the secret to life: stay on top.” She kneeled in front of him, so close he could smell her Chanel No. 5 — the perfume of choice for her wealthiest customers — and said, “Anything else is a loser move.” In his mother’s universe, there was nothing worse than a LOSER MOVE.
B-plus on a spelling test: LOSER MOVE.
Striking out to Michael Pederson: LOSER MOVE.
Not being the most popular kid at school: LOSER MOVE.
Not wearing the coolest clothes: LOSER MOVE.
And that morning she had made it crystal clear that anything short of Jacob Miller having an awesome time with him at recess would be considered a LOSER MOVE.
But recess had ended with Jacob running off the playground in terror after spastically colliding with Reed Higgins during a flag football game. Colin had spent the rest of the day with his stomach in knots. Jacob Miller hadn’t messed with just any kid, he had humiliated Reed Higgins, the fourth grade’s resident psycho. While Mrs. Foley droned on about the state capitals, Colin could only think about all the nutty shit Reed had ever done — like putting Pete Merkel in a head lock and pounding his face for saying his shorts looked kind of Daisy Duke, or kicking Joey Peters in the balls for cutting in line, or chucking a dirt clod at Sarah Gelson and giving her a black eye because she called him her little Simon Le Bon. If Colin didn’t do something, Jacob was toast and his mother would never forgive him for screwing up her chances with Jacob’s dad. Talk about a LOSER MOVE. His face burned with shame.
He should have told his mother the truth about Jacob: that any kid who wore a puke green Le Tigre shirt tucked into yellow running shorts didn’t belong on the football field. Hell, the kid didn’t even eat with the other weirdos in the gifted class; instead he sat alone in the corner of the cafeteria looking out the window taking notes in a book. Couldn’t she just find another guy to date?
Colin watched the clock’s second hand come around. He reached for his backpack and was out the door as the bell rang. After retrieving his bike, he tried to figure out where to start looking. His mom had mentioned that Jacob lived near Squaw Peak Mountain. There were a dozen different ways he might have walked home, but Missouri Avenue was the most likely. He hopped on his bike and pedaled fast down the street.
When he reached 20th Street, he turned and headed north toward Squaw Peak, checking each side street he passed. No Jacob. His sweaty palms started to stick to the rubber grips of his handlebars. He pedaled faster and faster, panic now setting in. Three blocks ahead, the street dead-ended at the Sunderland Citrus Orchard. There he saw Michael Carmichael and another kid race their BMX bikes into the orchard.
Colin stomped his pedals and his bike lunged forward. He reached the towering bougainvillea plant at the orchard entrance and jumped his bike onto the dirt path. In the shade of the trees, the temperature dropped and his skin cooled. He rounded a bend. Twenty yards ahead, a group of boys had gathered. Through the gaps in their legs he could make out Reed kneeling on the ground. Sticking out beneath him were Jacob’s scrawny legs.
Colin skidded to a stop, dropped his bike, and charged through a break in the pack of boys. He lowered his shoulder, dove into Reed’s back, and tackled him to the dirt. Before Reed could fight back, Colin punched him in the cheek and in his hand he felt something break. Ignoring the pain, he snapped back his fist and drilled Reed in the nose, which went mushy against his hand. Blood gushed from Reed’s nostrils and he tried to squirm away, but Colin grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.
“This is what you get!” he screamed as he rammed Reed’s head into the ground. “This is what you get for fucking with me!” Again and again he slammed Reed’s face into the dirt until his moans grew faint and his body went limp. But even then, Colin could not stop himself. Harder and harder he smashed Reed’s bloody face into the ground, until a dozen pairs of hands dragged him away.
Colin collapsed back against the tree trunk and looked up for the first time. Jeffrey Carmichael was standing in front of him, his face drained of color.
“Jesus Christ, Colin,” Jeffrey said. “Reed was only messing with him.”
Colin looked at Reed. He was curled into a ball, clutching his face and moaning. Then he looked at the other boys standing around staring at him. Someone whispered the words total freak-out and he realized that they were afraid of him.
No, he wanted to scream, I’m not the kid who did that. I’m still Colin Schaefer, the coolest kid in 4th grade, your buddy that can throw the long bomb like nobody else. Little Dan Marino you guys call me.
Jeffrey Carmichael offered Reed a hand and as he reached out to take it, Colin caught a glimpse of Reed’s bloody and beaten face. His stomach churned at the sight: Reed’s front tooth was missing and his nose was broken, smashed to the side of his face. Colin wanted to tell Reed that he was sorry, that tomorrow at recess he could be on his team and he would pass the ball to him on every down.
Without saying a word, Reed wiped the blood from his face, picked his bike off the ground, and, along with the other boys, he retreated into the shadows of the orchard.
A breeze rustled the leaves and then it was quiet except for the sound of water flowing through the irrigation canal a few yards away. Colin looked over at Jacob. Blood dripped from a nasty cut on his chin. A mixture of snot, tears, dirt, and orange pulp covered his face, which was scrunched up like he didn’t want to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Jacob said, choking on his words.
You should be sorry! Colin wanted to shout. My friends hate me and my mom’s gonna kill me and it’s all because you don’t have a clue. Instead he tore a piece of fabric from his shirt and handed it to Jacob. “Press that against your cheek,” he said. “It’ll stop the bleeding.”
**
Jacob knew the cut wasn’t a big deal — the pressure had already stopped the bleeding — but he accepted Colin’s offer to have his mom look at it because he was afraid of walking home with Reed and the other boys still lurking out there.
Colin’s bike had a pair of bunny pegs screwed to the back axle. At first it was difficult to balance while holding onto Colin’s shoulders, but after awhile he got the hang of it. Colin turned onto 18th Street and pedaled hard up the hill. The bike slowed and started to sway. Jacob loosened his grip on Colin’s shoulders and was about to jump off.
“I got it,” Colin said through clenched teeth as he drove his legs down, forcing the bike up the slope. When they reached the top of the hill the bike steadied and Jacob could see the massive black and gray cumulonimbus thundercloud approaching from the south. Colin coasted forward and the bike rolled down the hill, quickly gaining speed. Jacob dug his hands into Colin’s shoulders and was about to ask him to slow down. And then a funny thing happened: Jacob giggled. Speeding down the hill was kind of — no, it was really fun.
He liked the feel of the wind on his face, especially now that the air smelled of the coming storm. He liked moving fast. He liked the sound of the tires humming over the asphalt. He liked how it made him forget what happened in the orchard. And he liked not being alone. With this thought, he grew nervous. He had always thought he preferred to be alone. Weren’t books more interesting than other kids? If so, why did he like being with Colin?
Jacob stopped smiling. Best not to get carried away. Tomorrow at school he would be alone again, which was fine by him. If the weather wasn’t interesting, he would start work on his map of the school. Or, better yet, he could fake a stomach ache so he could stay home and take apart the washing machine. That would be fun.
**
With his swollen right hand, Colin could barely grip the handlebars. Somehow he managed to keep his bike stable and pedal forward even with Jacob’s extra weight. It was hard work, but it kept him from thinking about how his mom would react.
He turned onto his street. His mother’s silver Mercedes 280SE was parked in the carport. An old boyfriend of hers had been a salesman at the Mercedes dealership and had given her a sweet deal on it. It was her favorite possession in the world. Every Sunday afternoon, Colin cleaned and waxed the exterior and then rubbed conditioner into the beige leather seats. All the other houses on the block had to suffer the embarrassment of butt-ugly Fords and Chevrolets parked in their garages, but not his. He pedaled up the driveway and stopped alongside the Benz. Jacob stumbled off the bunny pegs.
Colin gestured at the car. “Power everything, even the sunroof.”
Jacob looked nervously at the car, but did not say anything. Apparently, in addition to sucking at football, the kid didn’t know crap about luxury automobiles. He probably was a big fan of Duran Duran too. Hopelessly lame.
Colin’s right hand was killing him so he had to use his left to open the back door. “Come on,” he said leading Jacob down the hall to his mother’s room. “She’s probably getting ready for work.” He knew this was true because the sharp scent of hair spray mixed with Chanel No. 5 filled the house.
He stopped at the doorway to her room. His mother was seated at her vanity, putting on her makeup. She was wearing an Yves Saint Laurent trouser suit and her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail because that’s how the models in Town and Country magazine wore it.
“Mom...”
“Your dinner’s in the fridge,” she said, applying her eyeliner with the precision of a surgeon.
“Mom.”
She slapped down the eyeliner and faced him. Colin moved his right arm, hoping she would notice the injury to his swollen hand. Her eyes shifted to Jacob.
“Jacob, sweetheart,” she said rushing up to him. “Are you all right?” He nodded and then she whirled around. “What happened?”
“Reed Higgins jumped him after school. By the time I got there—”
His mother huffed and then took Jacob by the arm and led him into her bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
For at least a minute he stared at the closed bathroom door. He knew he should walk away but he couldn’t bear the thought of his mother’s disappointment a moment longer. Desperate to tell her of his bravery, he walked up to the door and opened it. The sight was like a punch to his gut. Jacob was seated on the toilet, his mother kneeling in front of him, gently wiping his face clean with a washcloth. He should have let Reed piss in the douchebag’s mouth.
Her eyes shot over to him and noticed how he was cradling his swollen hand. “Get some ice on that and fetch me a glass of water for your friend.”
Colin found his way to the kitchen. He got out a plastic cup, yanked the ice tray from the freezer, and banged it against the counter until the cubes tumbled out, half of them falling to the floor. Tears dripped down his cheeks and he squatted to pick up the ice. His mother stormed into the kitchen.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked. “Your friend’s face is starting to swell.”
He tried to put the ice cubes in his swollen hand but they kept slipping out, which made him cry harder. He kept his head down to hide his loser tears.
“Oh, for Godsake,” she said, her angry breaths filling the room.
He wanted to wrap himself around her legs. He wanted her to hug him. He wanted to cry in her arms. He wanted to tell her that they were a good team and didn’t need Jacob’s father. He wanted to tell her about what he had done to Reed. He wanted to tell her how scared he was about how good it had felt to hurt him. And he wanted her to say that he wasn’t that kid who smashed in Reed’s face, that he would never hurt anyone, that he was a good kid, and that everybody loved him.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her pick up the cup he had taken out. “Plastic for a guest?” she said. “Honestly, Colin.” She tossed the cup in the sink, found a crystal glass in the cabinet and filled it with water from the tap. Then she opened the refrigerator and took out the lemon-cream pie. Every Sunday she baked a different pie. Because she had to watch her figure, she only ate one slice, which left the remaining seven slices for him — one for every night of the week. She placed a slice on a plate and returned the pie to the refrigerator. Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she stepped up to his side. He kept his head down.
“Did you win the fight?”
He nodded.
“At least you did something right. Now get yourself together and come ask your friend to play. No more loser moves for the day. Okay?”
He nodded and she squatted down beside him. When she spoke again, her voice was hushed and sweet, exactly how he liked it. “You know Jacob’s dad takes him to San Diego for a week every summer. Wouldn’t that be a blast?”
“I guess so.”
“You could learn to ride that board thing. What did you call it?”
“Boogie board.”
“Right, boogie board. You should ask for one for your birthday.” She kissed the top of his head. “You can help yourself to some pie when he leaves.” She smiled and walked out of the room with the glass of water and the slice of pie for Jacob.
Now she was taking care of him, cleaning his face, making him feel better, feeding him his slice of pie. No, he did not want to ask Jacob to play. He wanted to sock the Le Tigre wearing geek loser in the face.
His hand throbbed and he rested it on the ice. The refrigerator clicked on, rattling beside him. He looked up and caught his reflection on the oven’s glass window. His eyes were red and puffy and his cheeks were wet. He looked like a baby. No wonder his father left him. And no wonder his mother hated him. He hated that baby, too.
He closed his eyes and pictured the Colin he wanted his mother to see. That Colin was not a crybaby. That Colin didn’t whine about a hurt finger. That Colin would put a smile on his face. That Colin would ask Jacob to play catch. That Colin would spend a week riding the waves in California. That Colin his mother would adore.
**
Jacob sat on the couch eating the slice of pie and watching a Little Rascals rerun. It was the one with the He-Man Woman-Haters Club. Ms. Schaefer sat beside him laughing a little too hard at the funny parts, touching his leg each time, which made him uncomfortable. He checked his watch. It was 4:32. Ms. Schaefer had said his dad would be there by five.
Colin walked into the room and smiled. This made Jacob feel better because he was worried that Colin might have hurt his hand.
“You want to play catch?” Colin asked.
No was the smart thing to say and not just because he sucked at throwing any kind of spherical object, but because tomorrow at school Colin would be back with his friends, pretending he didn’t exist.
“We better hurry,” Colin said. “Storm’s coming.”
Through the living room window, Jacob studied the darkening sky and the eucalyptus trees bending in the rising wind. His weather journal was in his backpack. Had he been home, he would have been perched on his front step, his wind gauge and barometer beside him, jotting down observations. A part of him wanted to get his journal and forget about Colin Schaefer, forget that he liked riding on the back of his bike, forget that he liked his smile, forget that he kind of liked being with him.
Jacob studied Colin, his warm smile whispering, Trust me, bud, I’m with you in this mess. From the TV, a burst of laughter filled the silent room. He glanced at the screen. Alfalfa was eating a cream puff filled with liquid soap. It might have been funny the first time, but he had seen the episode before.
Jacob looked at Ms. Schaefer to make sure it was okay. She smiled and he smelled the odor of menthol cigarettes on her breath when she spoke.
“Go for it, sweetheart.”
“The pie was good,” he said, standing.
“Come on,” Colin said, draping his arm over Jacob’s shoulder and ushering him outside. A gust of wind whipped across the backyard, the air charged with possibility.
Colin picked a football off the grass, wincing as his hand curled around it.
“Is your hand okay?”
“It’s nothing,” Colin said and gestured for him to run. “Go deep.”
Jacob didn’t move.
“Go on,” Colin said, “I’ll put it on a silver platter for you.” He clutched the ball to his chest and waited. With each passing second, Jacob became increasingly aware that as much as he feared dropping the pass, he did not want to disappoint Colin Schaefer.
Jacob ran across the lawn, his legs feeling surprisingly light. A scattering of raindrops began to fall.
“Heads up!” Colin shouted.
Jacob looked back at the ball spiraling through the air. A drop of rain fell on his cheek. He stretched out his arms and the ball landed perfectly in his hands.
A thunderclap boomed and the cold rain poured.
Chapter 1 (2010)
Colin Schaefer eyed the blueberry muffin. He knew he should avoid the calorie bomb— especially now that the U.S. Attorney had finally decided not to indict him. Without the guillotine of ten-years-to-life for securities fraud and embezzlement hanging over his head, the eating had to stop, for the sake of both his self-esteem and the Senate campaign that was now inevitable. All his positive attributes would be irrelevant if the voters thought he was a gluttonous fatso. Not that he was fat, but six months of shoving Kettle Chips and Godiva Chocolate ice cream down his throat whenever he panicked about life in an orange jumpsuit had softened his athletic figure.
He pushed the muffin to the edge of the table and thought about his future. Some diet discipline and a few weeks with a personal trainer would return his body to its pre-investigation chiseled condition. He had been a three-sport varsity athlete in high school and knew how to push his body hard.
Colin glanced around Buck’s. Christmas ornaments, plastic reindeer, and purple tinsel now accompanied the restaurant’s kitschy decor. In the corner booth, under a stuffed shark, five tech bloggers were hunched over their laptops—a veritable 21st century portrait of a gaggle of gossiping spinsters. No doubt they were already twittering online about his presence in the restaurant. He was about to give them something real to talk about.
A few minutes later, Henry Meacham, Colin’s breakfast date, entered the restaurant. He was wearing a pinstripe Armani that on his pear-shaped doughy body looked like a reject from the Men’s Wearhouse clearance rack. And the visual travesty’s clincher: A Santa tie. The man could groom a candidate to perfection, but didn’t have a clue how to present himself. In Silicon Valley, if you wanted to flaunt your wealth, you imported an artisan from Italy to lay mosaic in your swimming pool or you entered a yacht in the America’s Cup. You did not buy an expensive suit.
Meacham walked through the restaurant, passing the bloggers. One snapped a photo with his iPhone. Colin pictured the chain of events that was about to unfold. By now the blogger had already posted the photo on his website or a link on his Twitter feed. His readers would quickly identify the man in the photo as Henry Meacham, one of California’s top political strategists. When Meacham sat at his table, the blogosphere would figure it out in an instant: Colin Schaefer was running for Senate, which meant the Feds had ended their investigation.
Meacham stopped in front of Colin and studied him as though he were a thoroughbred on the auction block. His eyes rested on Colin’s undershirt collar. One corner of his mouth turned up, his expression teetering between amusement and contempt.
“What’s with the t-shirt?” Meacham asked.
In the last week, Colin had taken to wearing tight-fitting undershirts to hide his burgeoning man-boobs, but that was hardly something he could tell Meacham.
“It was cool out this morning.”
“Then put on a jacket.” Meacham sat and his gut banged against the table. “Men who sweat profusely wear t-shirts. Voters see perspiration as a sign of sleaze. The Nixon-Kennedy debates ring any bells? “
“Should I take it off now?”
Meacham grinned, which meant he liked the response. Good. For six months, Meacham had been privately working with the Schaefer Foundation. Ostensibly he had been giving Colin’s nonprofit media strategy, but in reality it had been a courtship period.
“Keep your shirt on,” Meacham said, “but I got a guy that can fix the sweat thing. Has something to do with Superglue in your pores. Pretty sure it’s non-toxic. He did some work on Nancy Pelosi’s upper lip. I’ll get you his number.” Meacham snatched a muffin from the basket and peeled off the paper. “I can only stay a minute. Any longer and everyone will be convinced you’re running for Senate.”
“Isn’t that why we’re meeting?”
“You’re thirty-five years old.”
“So was Kennedy.”
“He served in the House for six years before running. Your political experience is limited to running a successful ballot initiative. If you get out in front now, people will think you’re arrogant — which of course you are, but that’s something I’d prefer to keep a family secret. We want it to seem like you were asked to run. Let the people come to you.” Meacham shoved the muffin in his mouth. “Let’s talk investigation.”
“It’s over. No charges will be filed. It’ll be on the news tonight.”
Meacham grimaced. “Tonight? Who gave them the story?”
“My lawyer.”
“What?” Meacham sputtered and nearly choked on the bite, crumbs spewing.
“I told him to—”
“Shut up.” Meacham gulped down the rest of his muffin and leaned in, speaking quietly and slowly. “From this second forward, everything you do and say will be scrutinized as if you were the bastard mulatto love child of Barrack Obama and Sarah Palin. All news about you, your wife, your kid, your non-profit, your gardener, your nanny, your housekeeper, your bowel movements, goes through me first. Got it?”
“I thought you’d want the story out ASAP.”
“It’s Friday. You know who watches the local news on a Friday night? People who don’t vote and don’t give money to campaigns.” Meacham tapped the table with his butter knife. “I got to get you into the weekend news cycle. By Monday I want to make sure there’s not a person in California that doesn’t think you’re the second coming of Bobby Kennedy. This state’s full of egotistical billionaires that treat politics like a mid-life hobby—write enough checks and you get the moose head on the wall. I want to clear the field and keep those rich bastards out of the game.”
“I can be available all weekend for interviews.”
“They’ll ask about the investigation. You better have a response.”
“Simple enough. The U.S. Attorney ended his investigation because there was nothing to investigate. No crimes were committed. The real crime is how much more we as a society should be doing to end homelessness. For example—”
“Nice, always come back to your issue and remember to hit both sides. Your ballot initiative won not because it taxed the rich to fund affordable housing and shelters, but because it cleared the streets of beggars, derelicts, and bums.”
“Chronically homeless,” Colin said. “That’s what we call them.”
“You should reconsider that. Your numbers would get a nice little bounce if you added the word bum to your lexicon.”
“I don’t bash the mentally ill, I help them.”
“What about derelict?”
“No.”
“Let me do some polling on the word bum.”
“Forget it.”
“How about a focus group?”
“Not a chance.”
“Fine, I’ll put it on the shelf for now, revisit it during the campaign if need be.” Meacham paused, his brow knitted in thought, and flicked the crumbs off the table. When the table was clean, he wetted his lips and asked, “How badly do you want this?”
The truth was that Colin had never wanted anything as much as this. Two years ago, Defiance Corporation, the software company he had founded and built into a tech superstar, had collapsed. The loss had nearly destroyed him. For weeks he could barely manage to get out of bed. And then his wife suggested he accompany her to an event held by Soup and Salad on Sundays, a small non-profit that handed out — you guessed it — soup and salad to the homeless at a park in downtown Palo Alto. But the idiocy of the well-meaning endeavor inspired him. The last thing those people needed was a free meal. Half of them were bat-shit crazy and should have been tossed in mental institutions while the other half needed a kick in the pants, an affordable place to live, and some assistance finding a job. For a month, Colin threw himself into learning everything he could about the homelessness epidemic plaguing California. Then he established the Schaefer Foundation, dedicated to eradicating homelessness. Nine months later he succeeded in passing Proposition 264, which treated homelessness for what it was: a human tragedy and an urban blight. Ultimately, his all-consuming mission to pass Prop 264 not only saved him from the loss of Defiance, it helped him find his calling.
Politics.
Colin thought about the night he made that discovery: election night, one year ago. The voters had passed Prop 264 by an astounding two-to-one margin and his team had gathered at the Stanford Park Hotel to celebrate. When he stepped onto the stage, the volunteers went insane. Colin was no stranger to the love of the crowd. His senior year in high school he had started at quarterback and would have led his team to state had he not torn his rotator. But hearing the roar of the crowd after throwing a touchdown pass did not compare to what he experienced that night. Standing on that stage, the love of the crowd pulsing through him, he knew with complete certainty that he was destined for greatness. His life was special. Before that moment he had never considered a career in politics — money had always been his goal — but after that night, his dream was set:
Senator Schaefer. Governor Schaefer. President Schaefer.
Colin looked into Meacham’s eyes and answered his question: “It’s all I want.”
Meacham pressed his lips together, thinking. Then he lowered his voice and spoke: “We need to talk about Howard Segal.”
A pit hardened in Colin’s stomach. Howard Segal was the former Chief Financial Officer of Defiance. A year ago he had fled the country after it was discovered he had embezzled over a hundred million dollars in a little under three months; the news outlets had described his crime as a white-collar “smash and grab.” The U.S. Attorney’s office had tried to build a case connecting Colin to Segal’s scheme, but had failed to come up with a shred of evidence. Because there wasn’t any.
“What’s there to talk about?” Colin gave his shoulders a casual shrug.
Meacham tilted his head to the side as if to say, How unfathomably stupid do you think I am?
Colin sat quietly, feeling a little lightheaded.
Meacham reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photo that he slid across the table. “That was taken yesterday in Troncones, Mexico.”
Colin’s heart pounded as he studied the photo. A tan, but still painfully recognizable Howard Segal was lying on a beach talking to a voluptuous woman in a bikini.
“How did you find him?” Colin asked.
“It wasn’t hard. My guy spent fifteen minutes chatting up his aunt. Your boy Howard sent her a Christmas card with a picture of himself standing in front of some local church.”
“Do you think the Feds will try to find him?”
“Should I be concerned if they do?”
Colin was debating whether an emphatic or nonchalant response was best when Meacham cut him off.
“Don’t bother answering,” Meacham said with a smirk.
Colin looked back down at the photo and studied the face of the man who could send him to prison for a long, long, time.
“Look at me,” Meacham said, his voice soft and comforting.
Colin looked into Meacham’s understanding eyes.
“I have never met an A-list politician who didn’t have a skeleton or two in the closet. It’s the nature of greatness. Great men are not afraid to dream. Great men see opportunity. Great men get shit done when your average Joe is too afraid to even wipe his ass. Sometimes that boldness — that willingness to disregard boundaries — can get a great man in trouble.” Meacham reached out and rested his hand on Colin’s wrist. “You built an empire and lost it. That would have crushed most men, but you saw a way to end homelessness and used your money to make it a reality. This year your ballot initiative was responsible for generating over one billion dollars that was used to keep bums off our streets, subsidize low income housing, and provide treatment for the mentally ill. You changed California. You changed lives. Profoundly. That is greatness. Unequivocally. And I know that was only the beginning for you, otherwise I would not be sitting here.” Meacham looked down at the photo and then continued. “Maybe they find Segal next year. Maybe they find him when you’re in the Senate. Maybe you make it all the way to the White House before they track him down. Maybe Howard Segal ends up dying of old age or drinking too many margaritas and drowning in his own puke. Or maybe I’m talking crazy and you have nothing to worry about. Only you know the answer to that. All I know is that if you have a skeleton in your closet...” Meacham leaned across the table, his lips an inch from Colin’s ear...
“You bury it.”
Colin jerked his head up and stared into Meacham’s unblinking eyes.
“Bury it?” he asked quietly.
Meacham pulled out his Blackberry, typed a message, and set it on top of the photo. Colin glanced at the screen:
To: pimpmyride8@hushmail.com
From: JohnDoe48@hushmail.com
Subject: Things to do
___________________________________
Honey, don’t forget to take out the trash.
xx oo
Colin’s throat tightened. Instead of using the usual Blackberry email interface, Meacham was sending the message on a Hushmail Web based account to avoid leaving any record of it. Colin was looking at Howard Segal’s death warrant.
“This is your future,” Meacham said. “This is your decision.”
Light glinted off the Blackberry screen. A dull ache spread behind Colin’s eyes as he saw his two futures unfold. In one he pressed the send button and heard the crowd cheering each of his victories until he stood in the oval office, his destiny fulfilled. The other future was not so clear. Would Meacham still manage his campaign? Would there even be a campaign? Would Segal reappear as a witness against him? Would he end up in prison? He had no way of knowing.
Colin looked up at Meacham. “Can this ever be traced to me?”
“Yeah, tomorrow there’ll be a billboard on the 101. Or maybe I should see if the Fuji blimp is available.” Meacham sneered. “Of course it can’t be traced to you.”
Colin thought about Howard Segal. Even by Silicon Valley standards he was an uber-geek; a quiet man with bushy red hair, pale skin and a body so scrawny it made you question Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory. Push the button and the world would lose a pencil-pusher wasting away in a Mexican beach town and gain a public servant who had already immeasurably improved the lives of tens of thousands of working poor and mentally ill. And there was so much more he would do. He had already decided on the signature issue of his Senate campaign: transforming the nation’s disgraceful elementary schools. Unlike all the failed reforms of the past, Colin Schaefer would not throw money at the problem. Two decades of increased expenditures on education had shown the folly of that thinking. His plan would attack the source of the dysfunction: teacher’s unions and apathetic parents. He would give administrators the power to fire under-performing teachers. He would give parents the right to choose which school to send their child to. And for those parents that failed to make their child’s education their top priority, he would deny them access to their governmental benefits. The days of subsidizing bad teachers and bad parents were over. His proposal would infuriate the unions and they would pull out all their knives to defeat him, but the voters would love him. With so many schools and so many parents failing so many children, the nation could not afford to wait. Colin Schaefer’s time had come. The crowd was waiting.
Colin pressed the send button and blinked. The ache behind his eyes slipped away and he felt the weight of the room lift. The voices in the restaurant faded to a soft hum and for a moment he felt untethered from the world, as if he were drifting away from his table. Desperate to feel normal, he snatched the muffin and took a bite. The still-warm blueberries oozed across his tongue.
Meacham slid the Blackberry into his pocket, exposing the photo of Howard Segal. Colin tried to swallow the bite of food, but his mouth was too dry. He sipped his orange juice and his stomach churned.
“Everything okay, Senator?” Meacham asked, amused.
Colin noticed one of the bloggers staring at him. Their eyes met and the blogger raised his coffee, toasting him.
“Yes,” Colin said and took another bite. The dry lump scraped down his throat and settled in his stomach. “Yes, everything is fine.”
“Glad to hear it.” Meacham flipped over the photo, revealing a stanza of words taped to the backside. “That’s a quote from Theodore Roosevelt — now there’s a man who knew how to get shit done. Tonight I want you to read it and then don’t spend another minute thinking about this. I need your A-game from here on.”
Meacham pushed the photo across the table. Colin slipped it into his shirt pocket.
“Now,” Meacham said, clasping his hands together, “let’s talk shop. Have you spoken to Jacob?”
“No,” Colin said, still trying to focus his buzzing brain. “I was going to call him tonight.”
“Don’t break a sweat on the way to the phone. Why not wait until tomorrow? Or maybe next week? Or a month or two? After all, he’s only your former business partner and brother.”
“Stepbrother.”
“Whatever, just call him. The guy’s a cult hero around here. The last thing your campaign needs is him blasting you. Call him.”
“All right,” Colin said as his lingering unease drained away, replaced by an intoxicating feeling of power.
Chapter 2
Before arriving at his monthly Fools Club meeting, Jacob always made a point of stopping by 3000 Sand Hill Road. He never went inside, just pulled into the same parking space in the lot next to Building 3. That afternoon a Prius was parked in his usual spot. Probably some Gen Y newbie, fresh out of college, pitching yet another social networking tool.
Eight years ago Colin had parked his BMW M3 in the same space and the two of them had rehearsed their pitch for Acorn Capital. The genesis for that pitch had occurred while Jacob was at Stanford working toward his PhD in Electrical Engineering. Starting in his second year, he had begun working part-time for Stanford’s IT Services Department. His primary responsibility had been developing and maintaining the university’s junk email and virus filtering systems. To combat the rising tide of spam email, he had created a series of incredibly effective heuristics to sort the good email from the bad. Every IT department in the world had similar (although far more basic) techniques to combat spam. Jacob, however, believed there was a better way to filter out spam. Rather than attacking spam at the email server level, it would be far more effective for institutions to outsource their email security to a third party, which would scrub the email and then deliver it to the client’s email server. All the client had to do was change its DNS entry to contain the IP address of the third-party email processing service. Not only would a third party be far more effective at scrubbing email, but by outsourcing this responsibility, IT departments would free up bandwidth and server space that had previously been jammed by spam. One night over beers, Jacob had mentioned this idea to Colin. Colin had seized on the idea’s potential and together they had developed a business plan.
But up until that meeting with Acorn Capital, their pitch had bombed. Acorn Capital was their tenth meeting in a month and they were coming perilously close to tapping out on potential VC funding sources. The VC community was still recovering from the dot-com crash and was struggling with the idea of IT departments outsourcing something as mission critical as email security. However the meeting at Acorn had been different. The Acorn VC had been confident IT managers would embrace a product that reduced their costs and improved their email filtration. He was willing to make a bet on their idea.
A month later, they had secured three million in A-round financing. Colin quit his job at Childress Securities, Jacob dropped out of the PhD program and Defiance was born. Six month later their service was up and running and they had their first customer. Three months later they had a dozen customers and more importantly they had the raw data to show how effective the product was at blocking spam. With that compelling track record, new customers were practically pounding down the doors: over night they had become the undisputed email filtration king. Not particularly glamorous, but incredibly profitable. By the time they went public, Defiance was processing more than 400 million inbound SMTP connections every day from over ten million distinct IP addresses. Two years after going public, following the stock market crash, the company was bankrupt, a casualty of competition and IT departments strapped for cash in the recessionary economy. Defiance’s market cap had fallen from a peak value of $15 billion to zero.
Since then, Jacob had made a monthly pilgrimage to the parking space. It was his way of telling himself that it would happen again, that someday soon he would step out of his car with another brilliant idea, enter Building 3, and walk out with financing to launch another company—his company. However, over the past two years he had come up with dozens of ideas, but he had never mustered the nerve to pitch a single one.
Jacob parked his Accord beside the Prius. Through the windshield, he had a clear view across the 280 Freeway. In the distance, a massive nimbostratus cloud hovered above the Santa Cruz Mountains, casting a shadow across the dark green hillside. It was supposed to rain that night, which he was looking forward to. All day he had been feeling uneasy. Hopefully the storm would clear his head.
He pushed aside the melancholy feeling and took out his brainstorming notebook. He was about to start jotting down some thoughts on how to combine high speed computing on the same backplane as high speed routing, when his phone rang. He had no intention of answering it. That morning the news about Colin had broken. All day he had been bombarded with text messages, emails, tweets, and phone calls from friends and the media asking for his reaction. His reaction? What was there to say? The U.S. Attorney had decided not to indict Colin. Case closed. The phone stopped ringing. A second later the ringing resumed. Irritated, he checked the caller ID. It was Colin.
Jacob debated whether to answer. The last time they had seen each other was two months ago at Jen’s birthday party. They had only spoken for a few minutes, polite chitchat interrupted a dozen times by the pack of screaming two-year olds running around the indoor gymnasium.
Jacob would have preferred to think about his concept for a super router, but if Colin wanted to talk that badly, he might as well get it over with.
“Congratulations,” he said, answering.
“Big day, little brother,” Colin said, his voice resonating with joy.
Jacob felt the muscles in his neck tighten and knew a migraine would soon follow. “Are you and Annie going out to celebrate?”
“Not tonight. The nanny has the night off. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Well,” Jacob said, looking for a way to end the call, “congratulations again.”
“Here’s a thought. Why don’t we meet up in the city tomorrow for dim sum?”
“I think I’m busy.”
“You think or you know?”
“I am busy,” Jacob said, the lie straining his voice.
“Oh, come on, little bro, I’m sure Annie could join us.”
A lump formed in Jacob’s throat at the thought of seeing Annie.
“The Lichee Garden at one good for you?” Colin asked.
When Jacob opened his mouth to speak, he intended to reject Colin’s offer. Only a chump would have said yes.
“I guess,” Jacob said, “I could rearrange my schedule.”
“Excellent. See you tomorrow.”
The line went dead. Jacob tossed the phone on the seat beside him and rested his head on the steering wheel.
“I did not just do that,” he said out loud. He leaned back and looked through the windshield. Strands of mist were creeping down the mountain and into the valley. Again he felt the unease ripple through his gut — a faint tremor of sadness. He cracked open the window and inhaled the air, infused with the cool moisture of the gathering storm. Then he cranked the ignition, backed out of the space, drove through the parking lot and turned onto Sand Hill Road.
Five minutes later he pulled up to the Dutch Goose. It was ten to five so he had some time before the other members of the Fools Club arrived. Time enough to have a beer or two and forget about Colin.
He entered the bar and made eye contact with the bearded guy who worked the register. The man smiled and Jacob felt himself grow uncomfortable. He had been going to the Goose since his senior year at Stanford and had probably seen the bearded guy several hundred times. It felt weird and more than a little awkward that he had never had a conversation with him. He didn’t even know his name. Wait, he did know his name. It was Mike. Colin had told him.
Fuck Colin.
Jacob looked around the beer and burger dive for a place to sit. There were two open booths. Both had their problems. One was directly beneath the television, which on the plus side meant he would not have to see Colin’s face on the evening news, but if the volume were up it would be impossible not to hear him. The other booth was at the opposite end of the room. Volume would not be an issue, but it had a clear viewing angle of the television screen. While Jacob struggled with the decision, a pair of frat guys sat at the booth beneath the television, settling the dilemma.
At the bar, Jacob ordered a pitcher of Anchor Steam and a plate of devilled eggs. Then he sat at the far booth and shoved an egg in his mouth. The disgusting but oddly satisfying mixture of egg yolk, mayonnaise, and paprika spread across his tongue. He washed it down with a sip of his Anchor Steam and tried to forget about his conversation with Colin. I guess I could rearrange my schedule. Jesus, how hard was it to say no?
He ate another egg and studied the top of the wood table. It was carved up with names, Greek letters, and obscenities—a prehistoric version of MySpace. Jacob searched for his initials and tried to find something else to think about. He listened to the sounds of the room: the frat guys arguing about who should be Stanford’s shooting guard, the rumble of the cars out on the street, Jeopardy! playing on the TV, and a rattle coming from the fan over the grill that started and stopped at random — or so it seemed.
He concentrated on the rattle. A few seconds passed and then — thump — the back door slammed and the rattle stopped. Jacob counted the seconds — one, two, three, four — and then the rattle resumed. A man walked toward the back door and Jacob waited for his second data point. The back door swung open and then slammed shut — thump. Again the rattle stopped and Jacob counted the seconds — one, two, three, four — until the rattle resumed. He grinned. Chaos was merely a synonym for ignorance.
Jacob
considered how one would mathematically express the relationship
between the vibrations caused by the door and their effect on the
rattle. The rattle noise was essentially a standing wave where v
was the speed of the wave, f was the frequency and
was the wavelength, so if the vibration caused by the slamming of the
door—
A hand waved in front of Jacob’s face and broke his concentration. He looked up at Austin Lin, decked out in fluorescent Lycra biking gear and dripping in sweat. Austin had been Defiance employee number 20. Back then he had been an overweight, out of shape programmer that lived on Red Bull and Power Bars. After Defiance’s collapse, he had suffered a minor heart attack, which induced a near death experience with what he described as the “Shining Clear Light Void.” Immediately thereafter, he became a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, went cold turkey on junk food, adopted an obsessively earth-friendly lifestyle, trading his Celica for a Trek road bike and swearing off toilet paper. Outside of Austin’s two obsessions — Buddhism and the impending environmental catastrophe — he had zero interest in the news. Had Colin been accused of embezzling from the Dali Lama, Austin would have been camped out at the courthouse, but corporate fraud was a non-story.
“Let me guess,” Austin said. “You were pondering whether black holes really radiate energy and evaporate the way Hawking predicts?”
“Try the mystery of slamming doors and rattling fans.”
Austin sat in the booth and unslung his Camelback water pouch. Alcohol, which he deemed a waste of agricultural resources, was strictly off limits. On paper, Austin might have come across as a strident bore, but in reality he was so resigned to the inevitable environmental apocalypse that his attitude was more of calm bemusement. And besides, his anti-alcohol stance meant the Fools Club always had a designated driver. Austin sucked on the tube hanging from his water pouch and then said, “I guess the cretin didn’t do it.”
“Guess so.”
“You talk to him?”
Jacob raised his hand and cut him off. “We’re not talking about him. I’ve got a new idea I want to brainstorm.”
“Relax much?” Austin took Jacob’s hand and pinched a point between his thumb and index finger. “Keep the pressure there, it increases the blood flow to your brain.”
“What if I want to decrease it?”
Austin shrugged and said, “Hold your breath.” He was about to sip his water tube when he paused and inhaled deeply. “Patrini’s here.”
Jacob looked outside. Stephanie Patrini was climbing out of her 1960 Buick Electra Convertible, a.k.a. “Fang.” Fang had once been a beautiful boat of a car, but after four decades of service, the canvas roof had deteriorated into a patchwork quilt of holes mended with dental floss and duct tape that leaked like a sieve when it rained. As a result, the interior resembled a Petri dish, infested with various molds and mosses. To hide the musty smell Fang imprinted on its inhabitants, Patrini had taken to wearing copious amounts of French perfume. She stepped through the door looking like an extra off the set of Xena: Warrior Princess — black leather mini, black leather bra, black leather boots, and black leather Blackberry case.
Everyone in the bar stopped to watch her strut across the room. At UCLA she had been an All American volleyball player. And as the only Caucasian female in the Mechanical Engineering Department, she had fine-tuned her ability to use her sexuality and barbed tongue to make geeks excruciatingly uncomfortable. Since Defiance’s implosion, she had become a minor local celebrity for her Twitter feeds commenting on Silicon Valley style, Geek Chic Tweet.
Patrini sauntered up to the table, placed her hand on her hip and eyed them seductively. “Goodness me,” she said, “Would either of you two strapping engineers be interested in posing for my latest Flickr slideshow: Geek Physique of the Week?”
“I’m happy to do nude,” Austin said, “provided it’s tasteful.”
Patrini fixed Jacob with a seductive stare. “I guess that means you get to wear the crotchless Kris Kringle outfit.”
“I’d be honored,” Jacob said.
Patrini sat on his lap and draped her arms around his neck.
“Twenty bucks for a lap dance,” she said.
Austin rolled his eyes. “How does it feel to be at the vanguard of enslaving your gender?”
“Depends on what kind of enslavement we’re talking about — I prefer rope.” She kissed Jacob loudly on the cheek and then slid off his lap and poured herself a beer.
“So,” she said, “looks like the shithead didn’t do it.”
“We’re not talking about him,” Austin informed her.
Confused, Patrini looked at Jacob. Since the U.S. Attorney had initiated his investigation, the subject of whether or not Colin was guilty had increasingly dominated their conversations. It was time to get back to discussing start-up ideas.
“When Richard gets here,” Jacob said, “I want to talk about a new idea. Not Colin.”
“Suit yourself Boy Wonder,” she said. “I’m only here for the beer and hot engineers.”
Finally the last Fool, Richard Volokh, stormed through the front door, charged up to the booth and gripped the table. Jacob braced himself for the tirade.
“A pox on cloth diapers and the environment!” Richard screamed.
Everyone at the booth traded glances, unsure what to make of Richard’s blasphemous outburst. Richard was exactly what any Rush Limbaugh listener imagined when picturing a Northern California Liberal, except he didn’t have body odor. Other than that, he had all the boxes checked: Republican-hating, Yoga loving, hemp-clothing wearing, paranoid conspiracy-spewing, tree-hugging, and tofu-eating (not to mention he only used cloth diapers and his kids, five months and six years old, had never been vaccinated and slept with him and his wife in the family bed). Before joining Defiance, Richard had been part of an underground Shakespeare troop that staged impromptu scenes in public places. Since Defiance’s bankruptcy, he had been staying at home with the kids while his wife slaved away at a blue-chip San Francisco law firm.
Richard held up his fingers, covered in Band-Aids. “Cursed safety pins, I lost a pint of blood changing Baby Che’s diapers today.”
“You haven’t heard?” Jacob asked.
“I thought we weren’t talking about him?” Patrini said.
“Heard what?” Richard asked. “I’ve been with Baby Che all day. Do you think I’m one of those dads who obsessively check his iPhone instead of interacting with his child? Think again, Fools, think again.”
Jacob looked at the other Fools. Nobody wanted to be the one to break the news to Richard. Their freshman year at Stanford, Jacob and Richard had been roommates. About once a month, Colin, a freshman at Cal, had driven down from Berkeley to supposedly hang out, but spent most of his time crashing parties and hitting on every cute girl that crossed his path. It was no secret that Richard considered Colin a hateful scumbag who should be cast into the ninth circle of hell and tortured for eternity.
“What?” Richard said. “Spit it out.”
Austin dove on the grenade. “The U.S. Attorney isn’t going to indict.”
Richard’s nose flared and his chest heaved.
“Merry Christmas,” Patrini said.
Everyone waited for him to erupt. Instead he grabbed the pitcher and gulped down the remaining 30 ounces of Anchor Steam. After a disgusting belch, he slammed the pitcher onto the table, struck his thespian pose — one hand behind his back, the other stretched out to the audience — and bellowed, “O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should, with joy, pleasance, revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!”
“Falstaff?” Austin asked.
“Cassio,” Jacob answered. He knew all of Richard’s lines.
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