Before the Fall(39)

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” he says.

“They found bodies.”





Chapter 16


Ben Kipling





February 10, 1963–August 23, 2015


Sarah Kipling





March 1, 1965–August 23, 2015




People use the word money like it’s an object. A noun. Which is—that’s just ignorance.”

Ben Kipling stood at a tall porcelain urinal in the wood-paneled bathroom of Soprezzi. He was talking to Greg Hoover, who stood beside him, swaying, pissing against the concave sheen that shielded his dick from view, speckles of piss drizzling down on his six-hundred-dollar tasseled loafers.

“Money is the black vacuum of space,” Ben continued.

“The what?”

“The black—it’s an easement, yeah? A lubricant.”

“Now you’re talking my—”

“But that’s not—

Kipling shook his dick, zipped. He went to the sink, put his hand under the soap dispenser, and waited for the laser to sense his warmth and spritz foam into his palm. And waited. And waited.

“It’s friction, right?” he said without pausing. “This life of ours. The things we do and are done to us. Just getting through the day—”

He made increasingly insistent circular gestures under the sensor. Nothing.

“—the job, the wife, traffic, bills, whatever—”

He raised and lowered his hand, looking for the mechanical sweet spot. Nothing.

“—come on with this f*cking thing already—”

Kipling gave up, moved to the next sink, as Hoover stumbled over to a third.

“I talked to Lance the other day,” Hoover started.

“Hold on. I’m not—friction, I’m saying. Drag.”

This time, when he put his hand under the sensor, foam fell gently into his hand. Kipling slumped with relief, rubbed them together.

“The pressure brought to bear on a man just getting out of bed in the morning,” he said. “Money is the cure. It’s a friction reducer.”

He moved his hands under the water faucet, blindly expecting (once more) the sensor to do its job and send a signal to the switch that turns on the tap. Nothing.

“The more money you have—goddammit—the more—”

Enraged, he gave up entirely, shaking soap from his hands onto the floor—let someone else clean it up—and moved to the paper towel dispenser, saw it too was operated by a sensor, and didn’t even make the attempt, choosing instead to wipe his hands on his eleven-hundred-dollar suit pants.

“—money you have, do you see what I’m—it alleviates the drag. Think of the slum rats in Mumbai crawling around in the muck versus, like, Bill Gates, literally on top of the world. Until, ultimately, you have so much dough your whole life is effortless. Like an astronaut floating free in the black vacuum of space.”

Hands clean and dry finally, he turned and saw Hoover has had zero trouble with any of the sensors, soap, water, paper towels. He tore off more sheets than he needed, dried his hands vigorously.

“Sure. Okay,” he said. “But what I’m saying is, I talked to Lance the other day, and he used a lot of words I really didn’t like.”

“Like what? Alimony?”

“Ha-ha. No, like FBI, for one.”

A certain unpleasant clenching sensation hit Kipling right around the sphincter.

“Which is,” he said, “—obviously—not a word.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a—never mind—why the f*ck is Lance talking about the FBI?”

“He’s hearing things,” Hoover said. “What kind of things? I asked. But he won’t go into it on the phone—we had to meet in a park. At two o’clock in the goddamn afternoon, like the great unemployed.”

Kipling, nervous suddenly, went over and checked under the stall doors to make sure there were no other designer-suit types crapping in silence.

“Are they—did he say we should be—”

“No, but he may as well have. You know what I—because why else would he—especially when—especially because if you think of the trouble he could get in—”

“Okay. Okay. Not so—”

He couldn’t remember suddenly if he’d checked under the last stall, checked it again, straightened.

“Let’s table this,” he said. “I wanna hear it, obviously, but—we need to finish with these guys. Not leave them hanging.”

“Sure, but what if they’re—”

“What if they’re what?” said Kipling, the scotches working like a time delay on a 1940s long-distance phone call.

Hoover finished the sentence with his eyebrows.

“These guys?” said Kipling. “What are you—they came from Gillie.”

“That doesn’t mean—shit, Ben, anyone can be got to.”

“Got to? Is that—are we in The Parallax View suddenly and no one bothered to—”

Hoover worked the wet wad of paper like it was a ball of dough, kneading and squeezing.

“It’s a problem, Ben. That’s all I’m—a major f*cking—”