the bottom of it all. Past all the worries and the factors and schemes and the judgements is a breath of air that ruffles tiny flower petals.
The idea arrives fully formed. As if it has a will of its own. It is not completely accurate to say that the idea had Edwin, but that’s the way it feels. Endorphins rush through Edwin’s brain, confirming the joy of this Eureka moment.
“Ed, are you okay?” asks Topper.
Edwin walks. He brushes by Barry, who is still hunched over his flowers. Edwin approaches the Spackster building as any penitent might approach any temple of commerce on any day. The entrance is boarded and covered in graffiti. The remnants of a revolving door litter the sidewalk. But Edwin is not interested in the inside of the building. He is interested, for once, in the facade of things. And there, among the dirty stones, he finds what he needs.
A brick tumbles and grinds across the sidewalk. Before it comes to a rest, it shears the tiny flowers off at their base. Barry jerks his head up in outrage. And there stands Edwin pointing at the building as if, somehow, the building has just spat the brick on Barry’s precious flowers.
Barry doesn’t think much. Barry doesn’t think often. And it goes without saying that Barry doesn’t think very well. So when he sees that the little flowers have been crushed by a dingy yellow brick, and that there is large pile of dingy yellow bricks right in front of him, it’s not hard for him to put two and two together and come up with – well, not four, exactly, but a really, really big two. Which isn’t the right answer, but for Barry, it’s close enough. He comes up swinging.
‘MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGAHHHHHH!”
Fist hits bricks. Bricks lose. In fact, the bricks of the Spackster building lose so badly that they can’t even qualify as bricks anymore. They are demoted to hot and highly confused dust so fast that the effect is indistinguishable from an explosion. Pieces of building whiz by Topper’s head at a frightening velocity. Everybody runs. Even Edwin puts on an uncharacteristic hurry.
WABOOOOM! The west wall of the Spackster building gives way. Barry is buried in bricks and debris up to his neck. From his vantage point on the top of a police car, Topper can see Barry’s head moving through the rubble like a periscope. Barry wades in deeper and takes out another support pillar. The earth shudders as another section of the building comes tumbling down. “YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! WRECK THE JOINT!” Topper yells.
Topper’s high voice carries through the noise of destruction. It is just the right pitch to be heard over the scrape of thousands of bricks upon thousand of other bricks, the tinkle of broken glass, and the basso profundo bellowing of Barry himself. Topper’s voice reaches the spectators. The ordinary folk of the city, who are sneaking a few moments from their lives with the expectation of seeing an implosion. They were expecting a quick orgasm of violence. But this is something different. This is something much better. The kind of thing many members of the crowd might order on Pay-Per-View. This is an orgy of destruction.
Topper’s cry infects the crowd. Now thousands of people join in, “WRECK THE JOINT! WRECK THE JOINT!” as if the demolition is some kind of perverse sporting event. Topper feels the wall of noise pressing him forward before he understands what the crowd is saying. He turns and plays cheerleader.
Edwin does not take his eyes off Barry. Edwin now has a fear. It is too late to do anything about it. Another section of the building crashes down sending up a tremendous wall of dust. Edwin covers his face with an immaculate handkerchief. Unable to see, the crowd falls silent.
“Aw c’mon,” Topper shouts, “It was just getting GOOD!”
“Topper,” says Edwin.
“Yeah,” replies Topper, looking down on his friend from the top of a police car.
“I have a question.” Before Edwin can give voice to his fear, he is interrupted by a deafening sound. It’s a sound that one might describe as an impossibly large chandelier falling from its anchor point on the moon. But Edwin is far too practical of a man to make this mistake. He knows what the sound really is. He puts a hand to his brow and bows his head.
As the dust parts the crowd erupts in a roar. There is Barry, laying into one of the newer, sleeker, tremendously more valuable buildings.
“WRECK THE JOINT! WRECK THE JOINT!” Topper screams as he smashes the blue lights on top of the police car.
“Topper please,” Edwin says, not looking up.
“C’mon E. You gotta see this. This is awesome!”
Edwin watches Barry tip Lemahi Center Tower #3 into Lemahi Center Tower #4. Both buildings come raining down in an avalanche of shattered glass and twisted metal.
“HORAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!,” yells Barry as he destroys millions of dollars worth of real estate.
Topper says, “I know those are the wrong buildings, but you gotta admit, the kid’s got talent.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Blackjack Toting Angel
“You moron! You incompetent! You, you, you complete toothless GOOB! I am going to break you. I’m going to break you and then I am going to have you ground up into little pieces, brewed into tea, drink you down and piss you out onto your own grave.”
Edwin turns his face and catches a fleck of spittle on his cheek. It is not often that Edwin gets yelled at. The novelty wears off quickly. As Mr. Lamahi continues to vent his spleen, Edwin wipes the spittle from his face with a handkerchief.
Intellectually, Edwin is aware of the idea of sympathy. He can understand that Mr. Lemahi has poured all of his hard work and dreams of real estate success into this project. A project that had just been destroyed by the drooling, ham-fisted man-child that is Barry. He can understand that Mr. Lemahi is upset. He just doesn’t care. Besides, all of this yelling is giving him a headache.
Edwin tries to calm Mr. Lemahi. “It’s not a total loss is it? You have insurance. Acts of God and such.”
“Damn it! There’s not an insurance company on Earth that will cover what happened. Acts of Superpersons are not Acts of God. That goddamned clause just killed me! No, NO. You just killed me!”
“Please Mr. Lemahi, for your own good, you need to calm down. Perhaps some tea?”
“Calm myself! Are you threatening me!?! Are you THREATENING ME?”
“No, I am offering you tea. I—”
“No, shut up. You don’t get to talk Windsor. You screwed it up. There’s no other way to say it. So SHUT UP. Only I get to talk.”
Edwin activates the intercom. “Agnes, we are in need of tea and scones.”
The angry man doesn’t stop talking. “25 years of my life poured into that project and 55 million in escrow isn’t going to cover it. C’mon, c’mon say something. I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”
“I—”
“SHUT UP! I’m not through yelling at you yet.”
Edwin pushes his chair back from his desk, crosses his legs and cups his chin in the palm of his hand. Truly, Mr. Lemahi is turning out to be a barren form of amusement. In the background Agnes shuffles in with a carefully prepared tray. “Would you care for tea, Mr. Lemahi?”
“Tea? TEA! Aren’t you people listening? The only tea I want is made from his ground up BONES!”
“I’m afraid all I have is Darjeeling,” says Agnes.
“Well you can take your Darjeeling and shove it up your dusty old — !”
From behind the teapot, Agnes produces a stun gun. Before Lemahi can finish his foul sentence, she gets him right in the neck. Lemahi goes from outrage to shock to a kind of vibrating fish face. His eyeballs roll back into his head and he slides out of the chair like a sack of meat. Which, given the trauma his nervous system has just endured is pretty much what he is.
“Thank you Agnes,” says Edwin.
