Cult Classic(75)

We all die facing in a final direction, even if we are confined to beds. Perhaps with the exception of certain circus performers, who are afforded the opportunity to die spinning. You died facing east, toward the river. Apparently, it was painless. You hit your head when the elevator dropped, which knocked you unconscious. By the time you were smothered by your own creation, you were already gone. I know all this to be true. Still, it’s hard to believe in a painless death. There is pain, it’s just that your body doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

I don’t know why you came back or when. By the time the police retrieved the security tapes, all footage older than forty-eight hours had been automatically erased. Vadis knew I wasn’t coming in. Max was headed home and you had no plans to meet. Your army of fanatics didn’t convene in the middle of the night. None of us were supposed to be there. Had you forgotten something? Were you fighting with Chantal? Did you know I was there? Maybe you died satisfied that your scheming had been, in some roundabout way, effective. Maybe you just loved what you’d built so much, you woke up in the haze of the city’s small hours, desperate to crawl inside.

You ran out of money. That’s the other thing that happened. Zach couldn’t believe how much money you had and he was right. It was not believable. Your investors had cut you off and you’d burned the remnants of your war chest on apps and crystals instead of tedious little details like wiring. You were personally bankrupt, financially overextended. You were in the process of putting your apartment on the market. You’d borrowed money from Chantal. You were extorting obscene membership fees to defray increasingly absurd expenses while you held investors at bay with false promises about biofeedback that didn’t amount to much. Turns out that, despite all that glorious free labor, cults are a bad business model. In the traditional sense. You’d never in your life had something not work out, not had events break in your favor. Then the Golconda itself broke.

So now, on top of mourning you, I am left to explain the ridiculousness of your death to you.

Your official obituary was as dry as the coroner’s report. The picture they ran was from an old editor’s letter, the somber one of you sitting at your desk behind an actual human skull. It could’ve been worse—you could’ve been holding the skull. But for the tabloids, you were a dream: Guru Glenn Gets the Shaft. Cult the Red Wire. Glenn of Iniquity. And the saddest one, somehow: Clive in an Elevator. Here was the event for which the gossip world had been unconsciously waiting: A privileged dick had gotten what was coming to him after hoodwinking investors and viewing the world’s philosophies as his personal tapas bar. Even you have to admit you were an easy mark, a Fitzgeraldian figure with a horrendous carbon footprint. The media had a field day, trying to piece it all together before they lost interest. And yet, vicious as the papers were, you got off easy. I mean, not easy easy. You’re dead. But I imagine part of you, the old part, would have enjoyed seeing your name in the inky pages of local papers, exploding from sidewalk kiosks once more. That’s the part of you I will always miss.

But I missed it when you were here.

Clive 2.0, who died early that morning, should find relief in the fact that the Golconda never went public. Financially or physically. All the Google searches in the world wouldn’t reveal anything about who the members were or anything about me or Max. Even the business cards didn’t have words on them. All anyone knew was that your mutant clubhouse had killed you, Ex Machina–style. And they knew that much because of Chantal. She posted two photos within a day of your death. The first was from the night you went to see Hamlet, the two of you smiling with your Playbills as if they’re college diplomas. So many broken-heart emojis, rippling out as they do when a heavy stone is dropped into shallow waters. Then she added a stealth photo she’d taken during her tour.

I’m in it, actually, but just my elbow.

Errol arrived before the paramedics and the cops. He tried to maintain an air of professionalism, but he was blotting his eyes with a pocket square. Max and I took one look at his face and helped him get everything incriminating out of there. All the binders and folders, all of Jin’s equipment, all the tapes. Well, almost everything. Max shoved a laminated menu up his shirt. Errol could not do the same with the coffee machine. That was sold at auction, along with the furniture.

The Golconda would not become a nightclub. It would become an office space—several office spaces, actually, occupied by mid-tier companies, none of which I’d ever heard of. It would be used by people who’d never set foot inside the place when it still resembled a temple. The Magritte painting went back to whoever had lent it to you, to be hung on some private wall where it would no longer be imbued with nefari ous meaning, where it would just be a rich person’s prize, its men floating, unaware, as they’d done for generations.

And here’s what I really wish I could tell you, because I know how much you’d enjoy this part: Amos, Willis, Dave, Jonathan, Howard, Cooper, Oscar, Aaron, Phillip, Knox … I heard from every last one after you died, their avatars popping up in little circles on my various screens. None of them called, I didn’t know any of them well enough anymore for that. But also, none of them knew me without you. Even if they knew me before I knew you, they had an inkling that I’d worked at the magazine, that there might be a connection. They were sorry for my loss.

I thanked them, said you were special, and hoped they were having a good summer thus far. Xo. Some of them, the ones with whom I hadn’t even interacted, reported that they’d just been thinking of me when they heard about what happened to you. Wasn’t that strange? They’d seen something that had made them want to reach out again. A song had come up on their playlist, a photo on their feed, or the wrong book had been sent to their home. They’d already forgotten whatever it was that triggered those thoughts, but what were the odds? What were the chances?