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“Let’s be clear about something, Aaron. I’m not quoting Emma Lazarus in this speech.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s cheese, that’s why. They will laugh at you.” 

“So patriotism is dead. Is that it, old boy?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying patriotism has its time and place. It has to be pulled out sparingly. Otherwise, it’ll get as watered down as Christmas and become one more sacred thing lost to the Madison Avenue crowd.” 

“My, aren’t we a sensitive soul. Fine, Hayden. You win. We’ll go light on the patriotism. Hayden, let me ask you something.” 

“Sure.”

“Are you going to write a kiss and tell about this when it’s all over?”

The question took Hayden off guard. It was a particularly prescient question considering that after only a few months on the job Aaron had asked Hayden if he would help him write a book. It was unclear what kind of book it would be, or what title they would give it, or even what the book would be about, but Aaron felt he was working on something big and he wanted it chronicled. Having agreed to work with Aaron on the book, Hayden found himself regularly scribbling in a small notepad or dictating voice notes into a handheld micro-recorder.

“No, Aaron. Kiss and Tells aren’t my style. I’m going to write the book that you say you want to write – the one that’s causing me to follow you around like a Labrador.” 

Aaron smiled a knowing smile. “Good man, good man.” Aaron’s cell phone rang. He looked at the incoming number. “Gotta take this one. Back in a second,” he said with a wink. Aaron walked out of the room. 

Hayden couldn’t remember ever seeing Aaron in anything other than a suit — expensive suits. He almost exclusively wore Armani or Cerruti. Hayden wondered what it would be like if the tables were turned; if he were the rich guy and Aaron was the wordsmith. Why not? Not too long ago, Hayden had seriously thought about starting a dot.com. Who hadn’t? He had written the business plan and sweet talked a couple of friends who were working at banks on Wall Street, but in the end, it didn’t feel right.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have salesmanship in his blood. His family came from a long line of low-country rice entrepreneurs on his mother’s side back in Charleston. Sure, he could sell when he needed to, but he couldn’t imagine doing it on a daily basis, and that’s what it took to be someone like Aaron. You had to get off on “the deal.” You had to relish haggling. You had to be the most vocal sonofabitch at the bazaar. Most of all, you had to consistently care about these sorts of things, and Hayden just didn’t care that much about these things, at least not consistently.

Hayden could understand how deal making could become addictive, but it wasn’t the kind of juice that got him going. What got Hayden going were words. That was the road he had chosen. And not just any kind of road, either. He didn’t have much patience for the meandering country paths of the navel-gazing romantics. And although they had their place, he didn’t have much stomach for the angst-ridden curves inherent in the exhaustive social commentary he found with some writers. No, what Hayden liked were the straight-aways —the long stretches of uncomplicated scenery that most people could agree upon.

He sensed that in Aaron he had finally found a client that felt the same way. Although for Aaron, leaning too heavily at all toward the examination of things was detrimental. Contemplative observation and empire building didn’t mix. No, a guy like Aaron needed to focus on one thing, and one thing only - business, no diversions. At the end of the day, Hayden was confident that he and Aaron agreed on the basics. Maybe that was why he found it relatively easy to find Aaron’s voice when writing for him. Though their backgrounds and ages were different, and though they had never traded notes on their biases, Hayden was pretty sure that they looked at the world through a similar prism. In a nutshell: government was a thing designed to help people improve themselves, not a maid service to clean up after everyone. Technology was a tool for mankind, not its savior. Mediterranean food was art. Life was to be attacked, not viewed on television. Americans needed more holidays. Brazilian women were hot. Russian women, on the whole, were not. Jazz was medicinal. The three best smells in the world in no particular order were rain, bacon, and Tiger Lilies. God was happy the day he created Italy because he lavished it with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, parmesan cheese and cannolis. Frank Sinatra had a great voice, but was a punk. People should not eat while walking down the street or riding on the subway. People who don’t listen or who use words such as “like” and “you know” must be destroyed. Confidence was not something to be ashamed of. New Year’s Eve was not fun. Cigarettes should be good for you. Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism were the world’s varsity religions; everything else was JV. Capital punishment was a failure of human imagination. Airlines - all airlines had an extra hot seat reserved for them in hell somewhere in the middle of a five-seat row next to a very large man with bad breath who liked to talk.

Yeah, he and Aaron had a lot in common, but somehow he knew that Aaron wouldn’t hesitate to cut him loose and kick him to the curb when he was done with him.

Aaron returned from the other room with a cat-ate-the-mouse look on his face.

“You look pleased about something,” said Hayden.

“I am. Let’s call it quits on the speech today. Can I show you something?”

“Sure.”

They walked through several ante-chambers until they came to a high-ceilinged room decorated with black granite tables, halogen lights, and brushed steel. It was Aaron’s media room. A wall of flatscreen TVs stood in the corner, 10 across, 10 high. None of them had the volume on. 

Screen one: rage in the streets of Gaza. 

Screen four: two teenage daredevils scurrying down a hilly San Francisco thoroughfare on street luges. 

Screen seven: a well-coiffed couple with cocaine smiles attempting to sell the public a fragile-looking rotisserie. 

Screen eight: a polyester-clad minister leading his congregation in bowed prayer, only
his
eyes are open. 

Screen ten: a lion mating with a lioness on an African plain. 

Screen three: a talk show host supervising a brawl between two clans from the same trailer park. 

Screen six: enormous man stirring a pot of spicy crawdads.

 To the left of the TV wall was a large computer screen with several images broken up into grids. One of the images looked like a live shot of London.

“That’s Trafalgar cam,” Aaron said, smiling. He pointed to other images on the screen. “That there is the Machu Picchu cam. And that ... that’s my favorite ...K2 base camp cam.” Aaron had installed his own private Internet cameras in these places - the planet’s most beautiful sights at his fingertips.

“You’re allowed to set up cameras on K2?” Hayden asked incredulously.

“
I
am.”

Kshanti was one seriously wired place. A handful of graphics work stations were lined up along another wall.

“Those are for the boys,” Aaron said. He always referred to the posse of software geniuses who worked for him as “the boys.” Sometimes when he’d wake up in a sweat late at night with aspirations of changing the world, he’d summon them to crank out code over bottomless plates of toro and sushi rolls.

“Come in here,” Aaron said, leading Hayden through a woodpaneled corridor with heraldic coats of arms, medieval broadswords, claymores, targes, axes and dirks. Hayden called it Aaron’s “Rob Roy” hallway.

They came to a grand room. One entire wall was made of glass. Through the glass, the splendor of the Wasatch spanned in front of them. Hayden had never seen a mountain panorama quite like it. A western sun splashed into the room, casting shadows over the dark wood, peach-colored vases and viga ceiling. Navajo rugs lay strewn across the brick flooring. Coyote skulls hung on the walls. In the corner was a desk that looked like a pilot’s cockpit. Parked in front of it was a single chair. Aaron sat down. It was one of his favorite toys another remote-controlled console that allowed him to command things from a distance without having to see them or interact with them directly.

“Watch.” With a flick of a switch, the glass facade began to open.

The smell of wild sage and dry air flooded into the room. Aaron flicked other switches. On a series of TV monitors, Hayden could see hidden doors open, book shelves turn, lights go on and off, and paintings change within their frames. 

“That’s all very close to home,” Aaron said boyishly. “But what about from afar?”

Aaron hit more buttons. On one of the TV monitors Hayden could see the front of Aaron’s home in Hamilton. Aaron tapped something. Suddenly, the lights within the Bermuda home turned on.

Aaron tapped again; the lights went off. Another screen, another image, this time cattle far down in the valley beneath Kshanti. They began to herd and run off in the same direction.

“Audio herding,” Aaron said, laughing. “I had them put speakers down there.”

A satellite phone hung on the side of the console. Aaron picked it up, dialed and pointed to an image on a monitor. It was his 10-acre place at Martha’s Vineyard. Hayden had never been there, but he knew from conversations that it was as high-tech as Kshanti. Among the bells and whistles were a bowling alley, a virtual reality room, and one wing devoted entirely to paint balling. Hayden had heard that Aaron had also installed vending machines in just about every room where you could order a drink from your cell phone. On the monitor was an image of a flag pole in front of the house with Old Glory waving in the sunlight. Aaron played with the console. The flag began to lower.

“Hayden, I’d like you to come to Brussels with me next week. Cancel whatever you’ve got. I need you on this one. That call I took, it was from a Belgian friend. Name is Timmermans. Smokes a lot. He has started a company. It’s going to be big. He’s looking for money. I intend to get in on the ground floor. Remember something, Hayden.” 

“What’s that?”

“Wabi/sabi.”

“Wasabi?”

“No, wabi/sabi? It’s Zen. It means that the value of something comes from its imperfections. Timmermans is a good businessman, but I guarantee you that he won’t be able to bring as much value to this new company as I can. Come with me. I want you to get some color for my book. I may also want to give an unannounced talk at the American Chamber of Commerce on this whole bandwidth issue.

The Euros are hapless. Come with me, Hayden. It’ll be fun.”

 “I don’t know.”

“Come on. Let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“You like to get inside the heads of the people you write for, right?”

“As much as I can.”

“You want to get to know them – the soul inside the suit, that sort of thing, right? You want to know what gets them jazzed, what bores them, what scares them, who they hate, who they love, who they want to disembowel. Am I right?” Aaron seemed to have a sixth sense – an ability to relate to whomever he was talking to on that person’s terms, regardless of the subject.

“That’s exactly right,” Hayden said, a bit spooked.

“Well, that’s what I’m offering you, a chance to ride along — a front row seat on the Cannondale Express. What do you say?”

 “Fine, Aaron, I’ll go.”

“Excellent.”

Aaron returned to the screen with the flag at Martha’s Vineyard. “Charlie,” Aaron shouted into the satellite phone.” I thought I asked you to lower the flag promptly at 5:00 p.m. every night? Well, you’re 15 minutes late. I thought I’d help you out. Send someone out there to get it. And hey, check the vending machine in the living room. I just bought you a Coke.”

God, Aaron’s staff must hate that
, Hayden thought. He watched as Aaron continued to play with his toys, controlling things from a distance
.

According to the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam, the water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The three atoms make an angle; the H-O-H angle is approximately 104.5 degrees. The center of each hydrogen atom is approximately 0.0957 nm from the center of the

oxygen atom. This molecular structure leads to hydrogen bonding, which is a stabilized structure in which a hydrogen atom is in a line between the oxygen atom on its own molecule and the oxygen on another molecule. The human brain is 70 percent water, blood is 82 percent water, and the lungs are nearly 90 percent water. Contrary to popular belief, raindrops are not tear shaped; they look more like small hamburger buns.

A black Mercedes sped through Brussels. Hayden sat next to Aaron in the back seat, looking out on the Flemish facades as Aaron spoke on his cell phone. The car turned onto Avenue Louise, one of the city’s grander streets. Aaron hadn’t told Hayden much about his friend, Timmermans, or about the company the Belgian was starting. What little information Hayden was able to glean came from Henry Neville — a small, strange man who acted as Aaron’s personal research assistant. At least that’s the label that made the most sense to Hayden.

Neville was bookish, in his 50’s, and prided himself on mnemonic feats of intellectual strength - the ability to recite long Kipling poems, or to play several games of chess simultaneously while blindfolded, or to memorize batting averages for the entire American League
.
Hayden had heard these Neville stories from Aaron and dictated them into his micro-recorder for Aaron’s book.

Neville was employed by Aaron primarily because Aaron had an annoying habit of questioning the facts of someone’s story. He had no shame in putting the person on the spot, in front of others, in the middle of his dinner parties. He’d throw down the gauntlet, saying, “Are you sure about that?” or “I doubt that very much - going to have to get my man, Neville, on that.” And with that, he’d scribble something on a napkin and have one of the wait staff take it down to Neville for analysis. At some point during the dinner, the staff would deliver a note to Aaron, who would impishly announce to the room, “By the way, Neville looked into that minor detail we were discussing earlier, and you were wrong.”