RealLife Rum Read online

  Nobody passed through Mr. X’s gates quickly or easily. Mr. X liked us to give his visitors a hard time. This enhanced his aura of exclusivity. It helped him remain true to his own ambiguity.

  Everybody in the area knew about the privately held island off the coast of east Dusky. Nicknamed Free Island, the estate remained shrouded in mystery. There was a lot of conjecture and bragging as the town gossiped to itself about the strange glass high-rise Mr. X had built for himself. Townsfolk told tales about the unimaginable wealth accumulating inside. The maids were our classmates who’d dropped out to have babies, the lawn service guys were our friends from soccer and peewee ball. I remember hearing about Mr. X when I was a kid because my friend’s dad delivered pizzas to the lonely guy in the security guard booth.

  Then, in the blink of a digital eye, I was the guy at the gate ordering a pie at four a.m. Now, another blink, and I’m the guy hiring the guys who get fast food delivered in the middle of the night. When the only sound is the distant crash of waves on the beach and the lash of coconut palms in the wind. When you’re so alone you need to hear a set of bald tires smacking the warm asphalt, the jaunty timbre of a friendly voice, the crunch of your teeth on an over-baked crust.

  There’s no front entry to the estate, no front door to the tower. The front of Mr. X’s estate faces the infinite. The tower where Mr. X resides looks to the east, and only the sea waves back.

  It is the back gate that faces the sole bridge onto this nine-acre island. Once a wooden plank bridge built in the early 1940s, now there’s an automated drawbridge with its own control tower and bridge tender. I hire the guys who man the bridge from the updated and air-conditioned guard box.

  Being head of security for Mr. X’s island has taught me a lot about human nature. Over the last two decades, I have evolved from a hardworking dreamer into a cynical shell of a man. I can’t help myself. I see nothing but evil in just about every clear eye I stare into from behind my mirrored shades. I smell the weakness on their damp skin. I hear the lopsided way their mean hearts pump. I know what these people are like, and I detest them for their soulless natures.

  Sensitivity is a historical artifact. Nobody values soul anymore.

  You might say my job has made me into an aloof, unloving person. But that’s not completely true. I do have feelings, strong feelings, for someone. I am in full possession of my powers of love.

  I love her. The woman who has made this job tolerable for me for so many years. The woman who has made my life livable.

  I know more about this woman than she knows about herself, yet I love her with everything I’ve got.

  Which isn’t much, but it’s all I’ve got left.

  Chapter Three

  I looked away from the computer and its disembodied voice and stared into my lap. My hands were folded, but I was squeezing them together. It was just so sad. Poor Harry. I felt touched by his words. The guy spoke like a poet. He was observant, philosophical, lyrical. He’d been a true romantic, despite a life of isolation and the development of what sounded like a serious case of intense misanthropy. When Harry talked about his love for the woman, you could tell he had a vulnerable heart.

  Listening to his rap, though, had made me feel kind of sick. What a fuck all. I wondered if he’d told his beloved how he felt about her. Before it was too late.

  Officer Handsome was shaking his head. When I looked up, we locked glances. Wordless communication of a shared sorrow?

  That, and a wee bit of flirting.

  We kept listening to the digital voice of the dead romantic.

  ****

  The sunlight dances on this digital recorder clasped in my hand. Behind me is Mr. X’s gleaming tower, a postmodern minimalist monument to excess wealth. A symbol of the narcissistic waste of the one percent. I may look calm, but on the inside I’m a wreck. My guts wrap themselves around themselves in a lover’s knot.

  I’m standing outside the Italian black marble foyer, waiting in the gimlet strike of early autumn sun, watching the entry bridge rise in the distance.

  This woman I love, she has no idea who I am.

  I am fear. I am desperation. I am willing to do anything.

  Out here in the soft ocean breeze, I feel weak. I’m sweating, airing out my anxiety after venturing from the claustrophobic comfort of the security office on the twelfth floor. I’m like an overlooked statue, a mythic art form, a mime. I stand without moving, perfectly silent as cars pull up to the tower and disgorge their familiar contents.

  One by one, the super-rich file past me, their shaded eyes avoiding my own. They do not know who I am, nor do they care to know. And they have no idea what I know about them. If they thought about me, which they don’t, they would think I know nothing about them. But I know everything about them. All their dirty little secrets.

  For years, I have been intimate with each of them, these elaborately wealthy individuals from all over the world. I know everything. But they have no clue. More money than God, but no clue.

  These people are the RealLife Shares investors, arriving today for the annual shareholders meeting with Mr. X. One by one they walk up the smooth shiny steps, file past me, and say nothing. As if they do not see me. And they don’t. See me. Yet I see them. I see everything. I know more intimate details about each of them than anyone else in their lives. It’s like I am their secret lover.

  And I’m like a lover to each of their investments. Their human investments. Their RealLife Shares.

  I care nothing for the investors. For them, I feel nothing. They are like a reality show to me, a series of meaningless images from a dumb world, now trapped inside my head. I watch their antics with distance and distaste.

  But I do worry for their human investments. The RealLife Shares. I have deep concern.

  However, it is only Marina I have real feelings for. Only her.

  Marina is a human investment for these ultra-rich gamblers. She’s a RealLife Share, and I love her more than anything else in this lopsided, soulless world.

  ****

  At this point, I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was all so bizarre.

  The police officer paused the audio. “Did you know about this? His fixation?”

  I didn’t, but I wasn’t surprised. Obsessive guys often targeted me. In high school, the strangest kids had followed me around, trying to chat me up between classes. In restaurants, at football games, on the bus. At college, the weirdest geeks and misfits always seemed to track me down. On Facebook, I attracted a lot of lonely guys who wanted to friend me. Friend. Yeah, right. So yes, it happened all the time. Maybe because I was nice to everybody. I didn’t go ballistic on them, tell them to screw off. Even when I would really feel like it. Maybe they could sense how I was the type of girl who wouldn’t hurt them too much.

  Anyway, I didn’t want Officer Handsome to think I was stuck on myself. So I didn’t go into all that. “I had no idea about Harry’s feelings for me. How could I? I’d never met him before my arrival at Free Island. The poor man.”

  My policeman snuck a quickie. I caught him peeking at my legs. I’d crossed and uncrossed them while I was talking. I covered my grin with my hand and eked out another small, fake cough.

  He turned away and pressed the pause button. Harry resumed talking.

  ****

  Today, Marina will come here to Mr. X’s private island. I will meet her face to face for the first time in our lives. I will meet her right here on the back steps. I will be standing here above the pink cherub fountain in the center of the long gravel driveway. Waiting nervously in the humid salt air, smelling the metallic fumes of my own fear.

  I am so full of fear.

  When she arrives, I will go down to meet her cab. I will feign a removed calm as I guide her inside the grand foyer. She will marvel at the sun coming through the blue windows, the blown glass chandeliers hanging from the thirty-foot ceiling. Cool, polite, I will escort her to the burnished rosewood elevator, and we will rise up together to Mr. X’s top floor
conference room. Where he will be in the middle of hosting this year’s farcical RealLife Shares shareholders meeting.

  When I lead her inside that marvelous room with its museum artwork and million dollar view, I will interrupt the meeting. When I barge into that conference, something I have never done in the two decades I have been employed here, when I introduce my surprise guest, everything will come to an abrupt end. First, the shareholders will fall silent, then they will explode. Everything will go up in smoke.

  And I can promise you this: I will be doing the right thing. For Marina. Because I am doing this for her.

  And for the other RealLife Shares. For all future RealLife Shares.

  For all of us who believe we should be the masters of our own destiny.

  ****

  Officer Handsome gave me a look. I must have had duh all over my face because he paused the audio again.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s this guy talking about?”

  Doing the right thing? Doing it for me? I hated when guys thought shit like that. Like all females needed protection, and men were the only ones who could give it to us. Please. And I didn’t understand how I was involved in the RealLife Shares thing. Whatever it was.

  The policeman winced. He wasn’t about to explain. “Keep listening. See if you learn anything.”

  Sounded like something my freshman English Lit teacher might’ve said. Remote, superior, always so knowing. I’d had a bad case of the I-want-you’s for my English prof. He’s the one who introduced me to daiquiris. And blowjobs.

  The cop frowned and pressed play.

  ****

  So, let’s define our terms here.

  A hedge fund is a funding strategy that allows a private group of accredited investors to generate an ample return on their investment with a limited amount of regulation. What’s not to like? To get in on most of these private, very elite funds, you have to be able to put up at least a million bucks and lock it in. Sometimes for years. And you can’t be all that needy regarding transparency. With hedge funds, the investor may be kept in the dark. You gotta have faith. You gotta believe in your destiny, that it is your fate to be a rich guy. A richer guy. You gotta feel like a lucky punk.

  Net Asset Values are, typically, in the billions.

  Assets Under Management are controlled by the fund manager, who receives a management fee to pay for operating expenses, say one to two percent, plus a performance fee of maybe twenty percent. Some managers ask for and receive fifty percent of the fund’s profits.

  Hedge fund profits tend toward the massive. Mr. X’s is not an economy of loss.

  High water marks, soft and hard hurdle rates, surrender changes—I stay out of all that. Mr. X is the fund manager. My job is to tell him what his investments are doing on a day-to-day basis. My job is to give in to what I have grown to despise.

  I’m not very good with numbers. What I am very good at is gaming. That is, monitoring and controlling the RealLife Shares Prize Fund investments. I am skilled at taking something, emptying it of itself, and remaking it my way. I guess this makes me a post-postmodern man.

  Do you see where we’re going with this? RealLife Shares is not your average hedge fund. In addition to a variety of high-yield traditional investments, managed by Mr. X, RealLife Shares investors have made a single massive unhedged bet. One bet per person. Each of the investors has bet the farm, the whole enchilada, the entire nut. This is the RealLife Shares Prize Fund.

  Who are the RealLife Shares investors? They are women and men of great means and no soul. These are deeply superficial individuals who have spent their lives in love with their own grand destinies. They are here today, upstairs in the thirteenth floor conference room.

  These are ineluctably ignorant people. And they have no idea what I have planned for their annual shareholders meeting today.

  I’ll check in on them now.

  I take out my smart phone and click around until I’m in the in-house system. Through six overhead cameras, I am able to watch the conference room. I turn up the volume and listen to the dead air space of another meeting of the empty-hearted people who run our world.

  Yours, mine, Marina’s.

  I’ll tell you how I’m seeing it. Exactly what goes on in the annual shareholders meeting.

  The guests are seated around the twenty-foot Brazilian cherry conference table. A sterling silver tea set has been brought in by the secretary, an elderly woman in a simple shift and flat shoes. A familiar figure over the years, she could be Mrs. X. None of the guests know her name because Mr. X has never introduced any members of his staff to the investors here today. The guests know precious little about their evasive host. Not that they care.

  Like I said, they don’t know me either, don’t have a shred of interest, while I know quite a lot about each of them. My daily reports to Mr. X include updates on each of the RealLife Shares investors as well as their investments.

  At this moment, the nine guests are drinking a rich dark coffee. Some are nibbling on crustless sandwiches or delicate pastries while they wait for Mr. X to join them. The penthouse conference room is a vast, high-ceilinged ballroom large enough for a Greek wedding reception. An art deco chandelier with neon tubing is reflected in the massive tabletop, and sunlight bounces off the alabaster sculptures of marine animals clustered in each corner. The guests ignore the priceless art around them. They do not look at the magnificent view of the infinite sea. Beauty is not tangible to them. There are so many coins in their eyes they are blind.

  Jimmy Whang slams his coffee cup into its saucer, breaking the irritable silence. “Where the hell is he? We need to catch a four o’clock flight out of West Palm.”

  Mrs. Whang, a bitter woman with fluttery hands, kicks her husband under the table. Jimmy frowns, his parchment paper skin flushing slightly.

  The other guests smirk, eye one another, look down into their tiny silver cups. No more private jet for the Whangs? No wonder he wants the meeting to begin. And end. Jimmy Whang needs his share of their annual distribution more than he did last year, it seems. The others gloat while Jimmy seethes and his wife glares at him.

  Jimmy Whang is angry because his horse has long been out of the running. His investment in the RealLife Shares Prize Fund did not perform up to expectations. The kid he bet on dropped out of high school and now works in a motorcycle shop, sometimes dabbling in street drugs. A normal loser kid but to Jimmy Whang, an investment that has caused dire losses.

  Mrs. Whang’s investment is also a loss. Her bet on a brilliant Asian-American kid from Dallas has also failed to live up to expectations. Unfortunately for the Mrs., the boy went to college on a baseball scholarship, only to strike out by the end of his freshman year. Mrs. Whang’s losing investment is currently living at home, babysitting his younger sibs on weekend nights, and watching too much daytime TV. He prefers the comfort of the family nest to the pressures of college life.

  These are not unique kids. They are typical twenty-somethings caught half-assed in the middle of the Great Recession. But the Whangs were doubled down. They both went big on the big prize. The Whangs selected their RealLife Shares carefully, then watched helplessly over the years as these two children fell behind. Bad choices, learning disorders, athletic injuries, maturity issues. Life had a way of decreasing the value of their RealLife Shares.

  At this point, the Whangs know they have no hope of taking home the grand prize. They attend the annual shareholder meetings in order to pick up their dividends. They rarely smile. The Whangs are poor losers.

  There are winners and losers in the RealLife Shares Fund. Mr. X, of course, always wins because he is the fund manager. He wins no matter what happens with the investments. Or the RealLife Shares. He will receive a healthy percentage of the RealLife Shares Prize Fund.

  Mr. X is why the terrorists hate us. He is Capitalism. He is the giant hammer, the rest of the world his puny nails. We are all his soft-skinned nails.

  When he arrives late to the conf
erence room, Mr. X will announce the AUM and estimate the total amount of individual investments while passing out the annual dividends. No one has been allowed to cash out of the fund, but some have sold shares to one another, depending on personal and business needs. Mr. and Mrs. Whang, for instance, have a smaller investment at this point, while Beth Anne Freedmont holds a larger share.

  Beth Anne Freedmont has all her chips on Marina Winston.

  ****

  What?

  I started coughing. This time I wasn’t faking it. Beth who? Who the fuck was she?

  Officer Handsome paused the tape and fetched a paper cone of water from a cooler in the corner. When he handed it to me, our fingers touched. I wanted more. Of him, not the over-chlorinated water. Don’t they believe in Evian in Florida?

  “I don’t know any Beth Freedmont,” I said after I stopped choking on my own shock and awe. “Am I part of some big bucks scam?”

  “It sure sounds like that, doesn’t it?” my policeman said. “Group of bored wealthy folks toying with kids’ lives. Making wagers like they’re betting on the upcoming Dolphins game.”

  I liked the fire in his eyes. His face blushed a little, like he was getting all steamed up over it.

  I wanted to be able to make his eyes light up like that. Not by discussing my involuntary involvement with a conference room of creepy old farts. But with my body. With my flesh. My skin on his skin. His naked skin.

  I smiled when he asked if I was ready. If only he knew just how ready I was.

  He clicked on the audio.

  We listened again to the poetic, melodramatic voice from the morgue. Telling this wacked story that seemed to have something to do with me. With my whole freaking life.