HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (16 page)

Larry looked at me as he sipped his coffee.
“I’m not slow, Lawrence.”

“Larry, do you have any sense of what you
spent on your trip up to Sacramento?” I watched with a sense of
triumph, banking on his inability to track cash to win my
point.”

“Up? Back? Or both ways?”

“Uh,” I said.

“Let’s see,” said Larry, pouring a bag of
curly fries onto his tray.

“Up; gas, three stops, $41.80, $36 and $42
even; Harris Ranch, sort’a pricey, but December saved us $420 on
the package; snacks, $51.50, plus tax. Morton’s. Is that part of
‘up’ or ‘back?’ “

“I take the question back,” I said.

“I may not have money much of the time,”
said Larry, “but it’s not because I can’t count, or track my
cashflow. Dude, when my grandmother makes her deposit to my
account, it only goes one direction.” Larry ate a curly fry. He
reached in his pocket and handed me a slip of paper without looking
at it. “Just look.” I did. An ATM receipt. “Now give it back.”

“Okay, what was that about?” I said. “So
long as we can arrive at a system to track cashflow and it works,
is all that matters to me.”

“What was the balance?”

“What?”

“The receipt you just looked at.”

“Huh?” I said. “Oh, I don’t remember.” Larry
handed the slip back to me without looking at it.

“$4,218, after a withdrawal of $6O, of’
which $54 is in my pocket,” said Larry. “I get cashflow. If I
didn’t, I’d have to go to my dad for help and I would rather starve
then ask my father for money. Actually, I have. So tracking my
money it is sort of a life-or-death thing.”

.

Ed Lossé, Emily Kashabara, Larry, Lori and I
managed to fill an entire table at Jack-in-the-Box with opened
wrappers, sandwiches, starches, coffee cups, Lori’s unsweetened
iced tea and – for Larry and Emily – desserts. Lori dipped her
fingers into the tea and pulled out a slice of lemon, which she
squeezed and dropped back into her drink. I watched her put her
lips back around the straw as she sipped. I cleared my throat.

“Thanks, everyone, for coming,” I said, as
Ed dipped an egg roll into a sauce container. “Based on calls with
the lottery office and the state Controller’s office, we’re looking
at another two weeks or so before the check is cut for Larry’s
winnings. Based on that information, we’re going to need to take
some immediate strategic steps on day one to shield the winnings
from tax loss and to guide the bulk of the asset into safe harbor.
I know this will mean each of us doing work while we wait to be
paid, but we can think of these two weeks as waiting for a
paycheck.” Larry cleared his throat. “And, Larry has some things to
say.”

“Okay,” said Larry. “so, yeh, do your best,
and all that, but remember, this money, and I don’t think it’ll be
on a pallet or be shrink-wrapped, it’s gonna get handed out, and
that’ll be me; I’m the decider, so I know Lawrence will be making a
lot of calls, but if you have questions, yeh, okay.”

Lori sipped her iced tea, the sound of the
straw finishing the liquid sounding about as eloquent as Larry’s
comments.

“Can I talk?” ask Emily. Larry nodded.
“First,” she said, reaching to shake Lori’s hand, “I’m Emily, Emily
Kashabara.”

“Hey,” said Lori, meeting the handshake.
“Lori Lewis.”

Ed reached out, shook Lori’s hand, the two
trading first names and sparking a round of hand shaking, which
Larry joined, including his shaking my hand and Lori’s.

“I know you want to give this money away,”
said Emily, “and I would be very happy looking up charities and
outlining a giving strategy that steers clear of the 35-percent
federal rate on gifting. But before you take possession of the
asset, we should create some trusts and philanthropic funds which
could become vehicles for distributing dollars and also safeguard
the asset. That will mean more to hand out over the life of the
asset.”

“Are you going to eat that?” Larry asked
Emily, pointing to her untouched cheesecake. She looked down and
quickly covered the slice with her hand. Emily looked down to her
dessert and held it up to Larry, who waved it off.

“I have churros… just hadn’t tried the
pumpkin cheesecake,” said Larry. “On the money, not everyone I’m
gonna give money to is a charity, and probably some who get money
will make people mad, but I’m the decider, it’ll be what I
want.”

“Purely for tax purposes, I’d stick to
organizations that meet the 501 section of the tax code,” said
Emily, “and obviously (c)(3)s, but others, too, if you want to
engage in advocacy or giving that’s not deductible. Gifting that
fulfills your heart sometimes comes at the cost of
non-deductibility.”

“That sounds nice, but not everything I give
will be like that,” said Larry, “like there’s some artists who I
want to encourage, and some actresses and singers and models,
too.”

“Singers and models?” said Ed.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of Ewa Sonnet,
but she’s from Poland.”

“If you wanna call her a singer,” said Ed.
“Isn’t she just a tit model?”

“Excuse me?” said Emily.

“That’s just how she got her start,” said
Larry. “I’m sure December’s got stuff going on, too, and my friend,
Anekee, in Italy, and that woman on Spanish TV with the candid
camera show....”

“Odalys Garcia?” asked Ed.

“Exactly!” said Larry.

“Incredibly short mini-skirts,” said Ed, in
a matter-of-fact tone. “If you wanna do Spanish TV, why not throw
money at Don Francisco? His numbers are bigger then anything on
English-language media.”

“I suppose.”

“Larry, you know, this isn’t really the sort
of direction... owww,” I said, cut off mid-sentence by a kick to my
shin that, based on expression and proximity, came from Lori. “Is
this where you wanna go? Are we just going to be team players on
your fantasy cruise?”

“I got feelings about these things,” said
Larry. “There’s talent there and if someone with money treated
these artists seriously, I think there is real money to be made.
Not all of the projects will hit it big, but it’s not like this
money is real. It’s all a fantasy, so why not climb on and go with
the ride?” Larry looked to Lori and smiled.

“I could do that for awhile,” said Emily.
“Honestly, it’s hard out there, and the money you’re offering for a
one-third-time gig is better than the full-time offers I’ve gotten.
Can’t believe I’m out’ta law school and this is my best offer, but
if this is the direction you’re headed in, then I’d be signing on
with the intent of finding another gig.”

“That’s the nature of the gig economy,” said
Ed. “Welcome to the new normal.”

Larry offered churros to Ed and Lori, who
each declined, and then to Emily, who took one.

“Those
are
good, wow,” she said,
after biting in.

“Well,” I said, “again, Larry, there will be
cashflow, and then there will be long-tern asset protection and
growth. Why don’t you start looking at your own priorities,
including... including your... artists, and Emily and Ed will go to
work on their end of the bargain. We know there is a short delay
for the payments, so I appreciate everyone’s willingness to start
building a path for the next quarter. I think that will keep us
busy until the money comes in.”

“Is that December Carrero you’re talking
about?” asked Ed.

“Yes,” said Larry. “I know her. She’s
nice.”

“She is smokin,’ “ said Ed. “And she’s like
24. Kind’a raw, but if you can Henry Higgins her, you’d be able to
bottle gold on her.”

“Who’s Henry Higgins?” asked Larry.

.

Larry lined up his pool cue and badly missed
the nine-ball-in-the-side-pocket shot he had called. Emily moved up
to shoot, as I watched from the bar. Lori and Ed, each holding a
cue, talked while they waited for their turns to shoot.

.

Lori uncovered her face and sipped from her
water glass, as she and Larry lay in the sun.

“So what’ta’ya think of Lawrence’s new
team?” asked Larry.

“It’s your team,” said Lori, “and, honestly,
I think they’re good. I think you’ll be able to tell them what you
want and they won’t fuck around.”

“I kind’a think so, too,” said Larry. “Wanna
burrito?”

“Too much salt,” said Lori, turning on her
belly. “You will lose Emily, though, if you’re too much of a
pig.”

“Pig? I’m not a pig.”

“Bixie, if you’re pouring money into women’s
g-strings, that isn’t going to inspire loyalty in a smart, talented
young professional woman,” said Lori. “Isn’t that kind of
obvious?”

“You know, some people like Picasso’s by
Rembrandt. Me, I like the other side of the canvas.”

“Larry, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“W’ull, like December... I’m sure if she
didn’t have to pay the bills with web diva stuff, she’d be able to
find a project that allowed her to grow as an entertainer.”

“Larry, I love you, and I like the girl,
but, I mean, c’mon.”

“Remember at Harris Ranch, when we were
eating and she said the reviews are in? What was she focusing on?
Her public. Don’t you think someone who knows that the fans can
always tell is someone who would be thinking about the fans when
she considers a real part?”

“Again, I mean, c’mon,” said Lori, flat on
her lounger, speaking with her face smooshed into the towel under
her. “Is Hollywood knocking on her door? As great as the money
thing is, it’s not like you have contacts with filmmakers who’ll
put Dee in a movie just cuz you wave dollars at ‘em.”

“No,” said Larry, slowly. “But...
maybe.”

“Bixie, it’s good you hit this jackpot,”
said Lori, “cuz your head has always been in the clouds. Part’a why
I love you. But money doesn’t change a person’s fiber. It just
magnifies everything.”

“She’s asking about you,” Larry said
absently.

“Tell her I’m not here.”

“She wants to give you the gift she
got.”

Lori grunted. “There’s all sorts of things
she says she wants to give me.”

“She likes you.”

“She’s a nice girl,” said Lori. “But she’s
really young.” Lori reached for her water, dipped her fingers in to
grab the lemon, which she squeezed and dropped back into the water.
She licked the juice from her fingers and sipped from her glass.
“But she’s more than I can deal with right now.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Charleston

“How much do these film people know of my
mother and father?” asked Emma, as she sat, after having laid out a
table with a baked pate, a cooked roast on a wide platter with
crackling fat glistening, dark-amber sugar-glazed
skillet-caramelized potatoes, a bowl of steaming red cabbage, a
tureen of fish bisque, and a platter of sliced breads, crackers,
cheeses, cold salads and condiments.

“What they say doesn’t match what you’ve
told me,” said Larry. “I think they’ve been fed lies.”

“And sometimes facts are lies,” said
Emma.

A loud knock at the entry to the suite
boomed into the dining room. Emma asked Larry to answer the door,
where Calvin stood in a white tuxedo shirt, wrinkled pants and a
red bow tie. “Don’t even start,” said Calvin, walking past Larry,
through the studio and French doors leading to the living quarters
of his mother’s suite. Larry went to the Victrola, cranked the
handle, lifted the needle and dropped it onto a disc of orchestral
music. Another knock came and Larry opened it, revealing von
Sommerberg circling the Thorvaldsen, and Lena, silently pointing,
and mouthing “Thorvaldsen,” as the director filmed. Larry
nodded.

Von Sommerberg entered the studio with a
sweeping pan of the camera, and circled the space where Astrid
Ullagård had danced for maestro Harald Lander, and for the citizens
of the day, where Lander had Astrid as his dancer modeling his
words as he outlined his thoughts on dance in an interview as he
awaited passage to return to the Royal Ballet.

“Lander would spend long months during the
off-seasons throughout the 1930s with pairs of Troupe members, at
once even five dancers with him,” Lena said in a loud whisper to
Larry.

“Bullshit,” he replied. “That’s just… that’s
just…. Just bullshit.”

“Members of the Royal Troupe, in California
with Astrid, prepared the core structures of Lander’s work for the
coming season,” said Lena.

“That’s… that… when she danced in the ‘30s…
she did come back each year – and was here most all of the year –
and other Europe dancers came, too…,” said Larry. “Until Carl and
Astrid moved when Carl got transferred because of the Army, up to
the Presidio in San Francisco. My grandmother stayed in the Suite
and her parents lived in commander’s housing until he died and then
she went back and stayed and Emma got the Suite, but her dad is
buried up at the Presidio.

“We met there,” said Lena, flatly. “So you
see it is the connection of the Maestro and Dame, it is
long-standing, and what follows….”

“… is bullshit… speculation… bullshit,” said
Larry. “You can’t prove that.” Larry turned and walked to the
silent Victrola.

Emma Mathilde came to the French doors as
Tres von Sommerberg filmed Larry flipping the orchestral piece and
winding the Victrola.

“I hope that your journey was a safe one,”
said Emma.

Von Sommerberg smoothly glided to Lena, as
he kept his camera’s enormous unit aimed at the French doors. He
handed the camera to Lena, its light aglow red, he straightened,
extended his hand, and, without breaking rhythm, approached Emma,
smiling. “Hel-lowww,” he said. “Tres…, wait, you speak Danish?
Hello, Tres von Sommerberg, the director, from Denmark. I didn’t
think you would speak in Danish. Is this for us that you have
learned?”

“It was for my mother,” said Emma. “Come.
You’ve met my grandson. Come meet my son, and join us for lunch.”
Emma walked the two filmmakers through the studio, pointing out
several photographs on the walls before stepping into the main
quarters, where Calvin sat quietly at the main dining room table,
behind him a line of thriving potted plants.