you.
And right now, he’s playing golf.
Topper waddles up to center of the tee box and stabs a tee into the ground as if putting the finishing touches on a back-alley murder. He clutches his driver as if he is afraid it’s going to wriggle free from his grasp and abscond with his wallet. He waggles forward. He waggles backwards. He heaves the club at the ball in a bizarre jerking motion that only the most generous observer would call a swing. The club misses the ball completely.
Standing at a safe distance, Edwin says, “One.” Topper does not hear him. Topper is already swinging again. And missing again. And again. After surviving three of Topper’s attempts, the ball takes on an air of invulnerability. Topper searches for a way to play the whole thing off.
“Are you giving me strokes on this hole?” Topper asks.
“If it will help, I won’t count those last three,” says Edwin.
“What? Those were a practice swings! Practice swings!”
This illustrates the most fundamental difference between Edwin and his lawyer. To Edwin’s way of thinking, if you are going to cheat at golf, why bother playing at all? The way Topper sees it, if you’re going to play a game, you should go the extra mile and cheat at it. Winning is way more fun than practice. And the best way to win without practicing is to cheat. Ergo… It is the simple, irrefutable logic of Topper’s overcooked little brain.
Topper lines his left eye up on his ball and closes his right. He thinks he’s doing this to maintain alignment at the point of impact, but it reads as a bad Clint Eastwood impersonation. “Okay ball,” Topper says, “Time to go for the big ride.” Somehow Topper connects with the ball. It squibs along the right side of the fairway and comes to rest within bounds. Barely.
Topper turns and holds up his club. “You know. I don’t think it’s me. Seriously, I think this club is warped.” Of course, Topper is deluding himself, but that’s more fun than dealing with reality.
Edwin takes the tee. He always gives Topper the honor of going first on the first hole. For the rest of the round, the order is determined by who had the lowest score on the previous hole. And, for the rest of the round, that will be Edwin. As Edwin surveys the hole, the wrinkle in between his eyebrows disappears. Something inside him unclenches. This, more than anywhere else, is where the tall man is at home. There are no low door frames, no undersized chairs. This is a game on his scale. It is not measured in feet and inches, but in yards. And every shot is accounted for. That is important to Edwin. Everything must be accounted for.
The tall man stays within himself as he swings. The hinges of his tall form all conspire to describe a perfect arc with the head of the golf club. As the club makes contact, Edwin can feel the ball compress against the face of the club. The ball climbs into the long light of the afternoon, seeming to defy physics.
Topper mutters, “Nice drive.” As they make their way down the fairway, Topper asks, “So what happened with your meeting?”
“Complete waste of time. He was an idiot.”
“Hey, hey,” says Topper, “complete idiots are some of my best clients. Excepting you of course.” There is no joke here. Edwin is so smart that sometimes Topper gets a headache just from standing next to him. Topper doesn’t want to think anymore than he has to. Not anymore. He’s done with all that.”
“He had no talent whatsoever.”
“No superpowers!” protested Topper, “Was he in the wrong office? How can somebody expect to be a villain if they don’t have superpowers? Was he an idiot?”
Topper is so Topper that sometimes Edwin gets a headache just from standing next to him. Mostly from Topper’s voice. It is a high, shrieking, Long Island patois that increases in pitch with Topper’s excitement. Topper is crude and uncouth and loud. Very, very loud. Edwin is not sure why he enjoys Topper’s company.
If you asks Edwin about this, he will tell you that he maintains his association with Topper because the little man is such a good lawyer. A man in Edwin’s profession certainly needs a good lawyer. But Topper is very emotional. Edwin does not want to snub him in any way. Topper’s destructive potential is enormous, and Edwin wants to be sure that Topper is harnessed for his purposes. But this is all rationalization. The smarter we are the more we trick ourselves.
The truth is, Topper has learned to suck every last drop of joy from the marrow of life. Edwin doesn’t even know he is supposed to crack open the bones. You and I would call it depression. Edwin thinks it protects the clarity of his analysis. But however it is described, Topper’s happiness, though often misguided and destructive, is infectious.
Edwin is silent for several holes. But then he says, as if it is a great unburdening, “It’s always the same.”
Topper is taken aback by this uncharacteristic display of emotion. “The same?”
“Yes, the same thing always happens. They never listen. They never listen to me.”
“I get that a lot as well. But, I figure, so long as they got the money to pay me, they must be doing something right.”
Edwin shakes his head slightly, “I’m not sure that’s how it works.”
Topper heads off into the woods in search of his ball. When he returns, countless strokes later, Edwin asks, “Do you like your clients?”
“Aw big fella, are you sweet on me,” says Topper. Edwin winces a little, anticipating the headache that surely must be close at hand.
“Not me, I mean in general, do you like your clients?”
“I like it when my clients pay,” says Topper. “What else is there?”
“I just…”
“Ah, you’re just having a bad day. It will all blow over by Monday. You’ll go back to work and everything will be fine.”
“What if I don’t want to go back to work on Monday.”
“Then don’t,” says Topper with a violent shrug, “it’s not like they can take your birthday away.”
“I’m not sure this is the life I wanted,” says Edwin. Topper has never had such a glimpse into his tall friend’s inner workings. He is stunned by this admission. He is at a loss for words for nearly .03 seconds. For Topper, this is an eternity.
“What is this bullshit? I’m sorry my friend, but it’s bullshit. You got no time to be second-guessing yourself. You gotta be like a shark. You gotta be like me. You want something? You go take a bite out of it. You don’t like it?” Topper’s face goes eerily blank as he pantomimes a dead-eyed shark spitting out a bit of chum.” You go find something else to take a bite out of. And seriously, how bad can your life be? When you get upset, you get to go play golf.”
“It’s worse than you can possibly imagine. This morning, as I’m going over the financials of Dr. Loeb’s operation, I point out that not only has he lost money, year-over-year, but even if all his nefarious evildoings and schemes work, he will only make a 5% return on his capital investment.”
“Oooh.”
“It’s awful.”
“Horrible.”
“He didn’t get it, and when I told him he could be making an 8-10% return in the market, his expression never changed. He just kept smiling. Do you have any idea how much money he wants to waste on a secret lair?”
“Hey, a man’s got to have a nice pad. Place to call home, to bring the ladies back to.”
Edwin ignores this. “That’s not even my point. I just can’t take it anymore. They’re all so inefficient and dangerously irrational. Stupid, that’s the word I’m looking for, stupid.”
Topper asks the obvious question. “If they’re so stupid, why don’t you just become a villain and force them all out of business.”
“Me,” Edwin laughs, “I’m no supervillain.”
“Edwin, you are the smartest, unhappiest person I know. If that’s not a breeding ground for villainy, I don’t know what is. Did you have an unhappy childhood?”
“My childhood was wonderful,” Edwin answers in a way that does not invite questions.
“Bullshit, bullshit. You must have gotten picked on because of your height.”
“No Topper, they don’t really pick on the big kids.”
“A cheap shot? From you? Edwin, I expected more. Look, seriously, I think you should try it. Part-time at first.
