The Devil's Analyst (7 page)

One of the waiters walked into the kitchen. It was clear he was looking for the four of them. A moment later, Kenosha followed. The game was up. She walked up to Danny, “We’re looking for you. Josh says you need to mingle with the rest of the guests.”

“I guess that’s a summons,” Danny said. “But I say let Josh entertain this circus himself. “

Kenosha put on that reproving look at which she excelled. “Danny, this is a business event. You know that. Help me do my job. Be part of the party. In fact, I could use all of you out there.”

Danny wanted to enjoy himself his own way, so he rebelled. “Francesca, you’ve been here so many times, but you’ve never really seen our entire house. What do you say to a tour?”

“Why not? After everything others gossip about this house, I can’t pass up the chance to see it myself.”

For a moment, Danny thought Josh would be pleased to know that people talked about their home. After all, the decorators had done a wonderful job, and the restoration fully showed the house’s marvelous bones. Kenosha’s glare grew more severe. Danny was reminded of Josh’s more immediate desires and that Kenosha wasn’t going to let him get away with his little rebellion.

Francesca continued, “Maybe I’m a bad guest to say so, but this house has quite the reputation among a certain Hollywood set . . . you know, those who are into the ghostly and mysterious.”

“What?”

“I’m not joking. In my line of work, you hear all sorts of behind-the-scenes talk. Now, I don’t know whether it was at Spago or Michael’s. More likely at Musso and Frank’s. It’s an old-fashioned, noir kind of place. The story I heard was all about a crazy old director and his house filled with secret rooms.”

“There are no secret rooms,” Danny said.

Francesca just laughed. “Not that you found. Otherwise how could they be secret? Imagine what might be buried in this place! I heard everything that mattered was in the basement.”

Kenosha and Danny exchanged looks. Each knew what the other was thinking. Maybe someone
had
tried to break in.

Danny heard Josh
exuberantly call, “There you are! I was beginning to think you abandoned me. Left alone to swim my way through an ocean of sharks.” He flashed his big smile to the surrounding circle of admirers to show that he was letting them all in on his silly jest. They might be predators, he seemed to acknowledge, but they swam together.

After Kenosha forced the four friends out of the kitchen, Francesca touched Danny just as they reached Josh, “There’s someone from the paper I need to greet. It was so nice talking in the kitchen.”

“Don’t go yet, Francesca,” Josh said. Surrounded by Linsky, Lopez and Endicott, Josh sported that happy grin of a man about to win a game. If only Danny could enjoy life as much as his boyfriend did. “I have to brag a little. Barbara just asked me to speak at her next BLINK talk.” Francesca, Stephen, and Wally murmured their congratulations. Danny knew this was a major deal.

“And what would all those posers want to hear from Josh Gunderson?” Stephen asked. It was meant as a light-hearted jibe, but it annoyed Josh.

Kenosha quickly jumped in. “Barbara thinks Josh has interesting insights on how the web is changing people’s decision making. She thinks that will change commerce.”

“Indeed, I do,” said Barbara as she slightly tipped her glass toward Josh.

Kenosha couldn’t help but show a self-satisfied smile. As the public relations lead, she originally pitched the idea to Linsky. The invitation was a coup for the company and for her. The financier Colby Endicott was also smiling broadly. His investment firm, Endicott-Meyers, had bet big when they provided second round financing for Premios. No doubt he saw Linsky’s invitation not only as an endorsement of the company but also as a promising indicator of a big IPO payoff. Orleans just seemed relieved, which made no sense whatsoever to Danny. Sometimes he didn’t understand her. And he disliked that Jesus Lopez was hanging around this group. He didn’t belong, and it chafed Danny that he still found the man attractive.

Lopez spoke, “Barbara, couldn’t you extend an invitation to this minor novelist? It would be so interesting to hear what Josh might say.” Now Kenosha was annoyed. She didn’t want someone horning in on her triumph.

Linsky didn’t care. “Don’t put me on the spot, Mr. Lopez. Guest invitations are never sent before May. But don’t consider yourself a minor novelist. Didn’t the
New York Review of Books
just call you a major voice for the outcast society?”

Lopez beamed. Maybe some element of the former homeowner’s directorial aura infected Danny, but he had flashes of being transported into a film. It wasn’t the first time he felt like a trapped character in a staging directed from off-screen. In this instance it was some scene from
All About Eve
, Bette Davis, and every other arch story about social climbers, but as in all of his disorienting flashes, Danny had no clue as to what character he was playing.

Danny blamed his overactive imagination on Pete. After his mother died, his only confidante was Pete, who once owned the only movie theater in Thread. He befriended Danny, gave him small odd jobs, and occasionally convinced him to watch old movies.

Those old films introduced him to a world beyond Thread and were treasured moments. Even though finances had forced Pete to close the Thread Theater more than a decade prior to befriending Danny, he continued to own the building and the projectors still worked. Tattered publicity posters for
Cabaret
still hung in those days in the glass cases on the building’s exterior, but only Danny was able to see a movie inside the building.

Because Pete loved films and couldn’t let them go, he’d occasionally rent an old print to view by himself in the empty theater. He would sit on a stool in the projector’s booth, watching the scenes unreel on the dingy screen, peering through the booth’s small window, and letting the sound echo in the abandoned room with its missing seats and peeling paint. The theater was fading away but in the transforming light of the cinema, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the film.

It took only a few months of Danny doing odd jobs around Pete’s house, before Pete made a daring decision to share his passion with Danny. He tentatively asked him if he’d like to see a real movie. That afternoon Pete projected a W.C. Fields flick that also starred Mae West. The two laughed together, and Danny no longer felt so forgotten. He had a friend and he had a life of imagination.

When Danny’s mom was still alive, she and his dad used to talk about the movies they once saw. In Milwaukee when they first met, a theater had been their customary weekend date. After they moved back to Thread, his mother stopped working to care for Danny, and somehow Danny always knew his parents’ lives changed. But when Danny sat on a stool in the projection booth with Pete and watched the flickering shadows play across the large screen at the end of an empty room, Danny felt a lingering of his mother and life seemed bearable. He owed Pete for that.

What would his mother think of his life now? Would she approve of how he lived with a man in a mansion near Hollywood, slept in the same bedroom used by a once-famous director, and entertained famous faces that most people only knew from photos in a fan magazine? If she could have foreseen his future, would it have been enough to keep her alive?

“Premios is expanding,” Josh declared.

Still encircled by Colby, Orleans and Kenosha, Josh was pimping himself to Barbara. Stephen and Wally had wandered over to the other side of the room. Danny wanted to follow, but he knew Josh expected him to stay. He owed him that.

“New York is our next big market,” added Orleans. “Last year, we signed all the major restaurants, hotels, and venues on the West Coast. And we built a set of curated content with potential for national interest. It only makes sense to move East.”

“Of course,” said Barbara. Colby was nodding his head in full agreement.

“The idea,” said Josh, “is to duplicate the same connections we provide our western customers, but in the East. Access to all the best restaurants, shopping deals to hot stores, rooms at great hotels. This is our prime mission: to be the best-connected concierge the country could ever have.

“And,” he added, “you’ll be surprised how we plan to accomplish that. We’re scheduling a big announcement at the ABC Studios on Times Square this April. Barbara, you should come to the press conference.”

“Of course, I’ll be there with bells on,” she replied. Kenosha clapped her hands in appreciation.

Suddenly Danny felt tired. Neither Josh nor Kenosha ever mentioned an upcoming press conference, or even plans for an East Coast expansion. Where had the money come from? He didn’t pay enough attention. Even back in Thread, even with Pete, he had always been that way. Whatever happened to Pete and that crazy hat he used to wear? After that summer when the bank finally foreclosed on his theater and he lost everything, Pete’s spirit crashed in upon itself. Danny always felt a little bit responsible. Sure, he was only fourteen then, but he could have helped the guy.

Someone moved up behind him. Josh looked over, startled. When Danny turned around, he was equally surprised.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I wanted to check things out in person, and talk to you guys. Hope you don’t mind that I crashed your party. I told Cynthia I wanted to surprise you.”

Chip Grant was in their house, uninvited, without Cynthia. From the look on Josh’s face, it was clear that he was not pleased.

The next day
Josh happily submitted himself to Barbara Linsky’s lunchtime reign. As queen of the table at his company’s New Loon Town Café event, she demanded the attention of all. Josh invited the technology guru so she could meet several people from his firm. Somehow Chip appeared as well, without an invitation and now sitting right next to Barbara. Both were engaged in a fast-paced conversation, which put Josh on edge. But he wasn’t going to show it.

Like any restaurant of the moment, the place was crowded and unduly noisy. The plate glass window facing Hollywood Boulevard framed a large mechanized black bear; the taxidermist’s creation continually swatted at a cartoonish diving loon fashioned out of flashing neon. The bear paw batted back and forth in a never-ending volley that brought neither satisfaction to the bear nor safety to the bird.

Josh never understood what the cafe’s diorama was meant to suggest, but somehow it epitomized the hip and ironic northwoods feel of the place and gave cover for people to order bratwurst and potato pancakes instead of organic salads or free-range chicken. It also evoked memories of old beer signs from long forgotten taverns on quiet wooded lakes, which seemed to mesh nicely in the patrons’ minds with the place’s broad array of on-tap microbrews and ales.

The Loon Town’s reasonable prices and tasty food attracted steady crowds, even as it approached its tenth anniversary, and everyone knew restaurant years were even longer than dog years. But as Josh looked around the room, he was dismayed. He saw no dining guest to excite the paparazzi, assuming any still hung outside the front door—which they did not. The absence of the famous was just another talisman of the need for Josh’s money to move on.

One long-term regular walked over with excitement to tell Orleans how much he missed her as the hostess. Josh found the presumptuous guest more amusing than he knew he should. The fool. He had no idea that Orleans was now an executive at a major Internet company who could soon be worth millions. (On the other hand, it was a distraction from wondering who tipped off Chip about this lunch.)

Orleans was embarrassed by her fan, which Josh found delightful. Barbara barely noticed. Although Barbara lacked fame among ordinary folk, she would have attracted her own swarms in a different kind of place. There were those who thought she provided an inside channel to the future, or at least an advance indicator of market turns. Such folks were as unwelcome as any celebrity fans. When money was to be made, Josh knew there were always the uninvited. But when it came to Barbara, Josh and his company were in a different category. She was attracted to them. That made him glow.

While forking through the wild rice salad, Barbara was dispensing a wild garden of ideas that sprouted from her fertile mind. Josh was tiring from the sheer effort of keeping up. Kenosha had begged off attending the lunch, but he thought back to what she had told him in the office. She claimed big thinkers like Linsky blossomed only when safely separated from other well-known analysts and beyond the ears of publicists. In isolation, they grew comfortable saying whatever rose to mind. No one was there to either prune or propagate them. As a result, on this day Barbara was in full bloom.

That would have been fine, except Chip wiggled his way into the business lunch. Initially, Josh was afraid Chip would dampen the camaraderie he needed to build, but it was worse. He discovered Barbara and Chip knew each other from Chip’s earlier days in New York when he worked as an investment banker before returning to his tribe. Even though he was an investor in the firm’s second round financing, Chip didn’t need to be around. He hoped Barbara would divert Chip from paying any more attention to Premios.

“Chip, you’d appreciate this thought I’ve been having lately,” Barbara was about to break into a free run of thinking, “especially given your former life in New York working for hedge funds. Think about how today’s markets seek to value these new Internet start-ups. But take a step back and approach it as though it were a problem in quantum mechanics. Hypothetically, can a firm’s value be two things at once?”