Lucas Van Lewig sits in the living room, in Fred’s easy chair. He’s got the air of an ex–college quarterback gone on to corporate success based on family connections and a firm handshake: sandy hair, great teeth. He wears a distressed bomber jacket that, despite looking like it belongs to midcentury American action abroad, retails, I know, for four figures at Saks. His eyes roam the length of me, as if this Scantron-style assessment will bear weight on our conversation. I’m conscious of my poor posture and dad-bod. The song ends and another begins. This one I recognize.
“Freddie Mercury was a genius,” Lucas says, as if it’s an inarguable fact that pertains to our encounter. “He never got the critical admiration he deserved, but critics are scum, as I’m sure you understand, and if a flamboyantly gay man’s ability to make aggressively hetero sports fans chant and weep isn’t a sign of true iconoclasm, then I don’t know what is. You’ve got to remember this was pre-Drake. Mercury never saw the dawn of the metrosexual or the sensitive asshole. He never knew the Poptimist movement. But history will be kind. I can feel it in my bones. Is this real life or is this just fantasy? Profound? It’s almost biblical.”
“Is Wendy here?” I say.
“I thought you’d be taller,” Lucas replies.
His voice is deep as a leading man’s and flirtatiously deadpan. It’s like he’s got popcorn caught in his throat. Like he’s getting rimmed through a hole in the seat cushion as we speak.
“And better-looking,” he adds. “But look at you. You’re losing your hair.”
He waves as if swiping a dating app, replacing me with someone more to his taste. I instinctively raise a hand to cover my scalp.
“The Rogaine’s not working as advertised,” I say, unsure how we’ve arrived at this discussion of my failings.
“Propecia?” he offers.
“Kills the libido.”
Lucas gives an understanding nod despite the fact that his hair is thick as bear fur, effervescent as chemical sunset, coiffed and berry-smelling as Baywatch-era David Hasselhoff’s. It’s possible his erections suffer for this vanity, but it seems unlikely. He sips from a tiny bottle of Coca-Cola using a pink children’s twisty straw. When he’s done sipping, he puts the straw in his mouth, rolls it around on his tongue.
“Cuban Coke,” he says. “It’s the new Mexican Coke. Very refreshing. Want one?”
I shake my head.
“The Mexicans switched from cane sugar to high fructose a few years back. People still buy by the caseload. It’s these tiny bottles that sell the product, their nostalgic appeal. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the public to ignore the fine print. It’s how your industry got in the mess it’s in. Luckily for me, the Cubans are still uncompromised. If there’s one thing Castro instilled, it’s a belief in the superiority of raw cane. I respect him for that, if nothing else.”
“You haven’t told me where Wendy is.”
“She left already. The keynote starts in an hour. I need to head down there myself. I just stopped by to drop off some Cuban Coke for Fred. The guy can’t get enough. I mean, at his age. But a man needs a vice. I stopped smoking a year ago. I still get the craving.”
He opens his mouth and lets the straw drop. We watch it flutter to the carpet.
“You’re wondering what it was like to grow up under my father. Most men have a story that begins: The most important thing my father ever told me, and whatever that thing is, it’s almost universally some idiotic lesson gleaned from his experiences in love or war. My father never told me anything.”
“What keynote?” I say.
“Greg’s keynote speech at DisruptNY. I hope you’ll join me. It’s really a good one. I wrote a lot of it myself, though your wife read it this morning and threw in some bon mots. We’re launching the product and I think you should be there. I expect it will clarify some things.”
“What things?”
“The future of the human race, for one. The end of unemployment. The dawn of augmented man. But we should start smaller.”
“The suit?” I say, remembering my G-chat with Greg.
“Ah, so Ricky told you.”
“Just the name,” I say. “I only know the name.”
“Well, did he tell you that you’re the sole benefactor of his Sykodollars? All his SD will be passed on to you, Michael Mixner, and after tonight, there will be quite a lot of it.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes the bracelet from his pocket and puts it in my hands. The item’s heavier than I imagined. Ricky’s initials are engraved on the case’s back and a small curly hair is caught in the clasp. I wonder if the hair is his, if it got pulled loose when Broder ripped the bracelet from his wrist.
“GPS,” Lucas explains. “I like to keep track of what I put into the world. The pawnbroker let it go for fifty bucks. As for the anonymity thing: I mean, it’s true, for the most part. The government has no idea who’s holding these assets. But I do. Once people started getting deep in SD, I needed a way to track where it was. The real question is why I’m choosing to tell you when I could have kept this information to myself. But I’m a rich man, Michael, I don’t need the money. If I’d kept it, then what kind of guy would I be?”
“A bad one?”
“One of the first conversations I had with Cortes was about you. He was telling me about his trader friend, how his guilt about the crash had turned him into a half-assed Marxist. We had a good laugh about that. Cortes thought it was positively hilarious. You, with your loft and your Porsche, singing the Internationale. Ha-ha, am I right? So we’re laughing and laughing, and then there’s a pause. And Cortes turns to me and says, you know, I’ve thought a lot about it, and I’ve decided
