1.

The sun fell down on California. Inside a large beach villa, lights flared. The place belonged to Pete Dagger, all-star American writer.

Dagger was among the biggest of the writers, perhaps the largest of the era. He was a top multi-millionaire popular artist who was loved by the critics. He was huge with the academics, who sucked from his marrow, and with the underground, which was hot and bothered by his slashing, ripping style and bottomless defiance.

Like many of the greats, Dagger was no genius-come-lately. He had been recognized only after years and years of surviving on ketchup soup and kool-aid, after years and years of struggle up mountains of scorn and indifference. He had survived the painful years of short-story writing; the dabbling in “journalism”; the job stints as dishwasher, data-input man, and motel clerk. He had overcome the harrowing years of hostility and suspicion from friends, colleagues and family. He had prevailed despite his stabbing bouts of doubt; his frightening drunk sprees; a general case of self-loathing.

I had known this girl in college and now she was getting married. Wally drove us out in his car. Wally worked two or three cities down, doing something for the school district. He had got his degree in Education, but he was no longer interested in it, if he ever had been. He “loathed” teaching the “little brats” and would not do it. Instead, he had wormed his way into a job in the head office of the small town school district. I believe it had something to do with counting textbooks.

Samantha, when she had been 18 or 19, beginning college, had seemed fresh and lively and I had really wanted to bang her something frightening. She was on the tall end and slender, boobs the size of pomegranates, buck teeth, lips that were always curling back with a smile. What it had meant was that I had spent many hours talking to her, trying to find the right combination of words that would persuade her to get drunk with me. I had been highly unsuccessful. Several times I found myself bringing a 12-pack over to her dorm room. I would end up drinking them all myself. I would tell many lengthy stories about myself and people I claimed to know during these sessions, downing one can after another, leaning out the fifth floor window to blow smoke from my cigarettes, the ashes spiraling down. Sam would sit there smiling and laughing, seemingly entertained. Her thick and serious roommate, Jeanna, would be in the corner sighing, nose scrunched over a Zoology textbook. Eventually Jeanna would figure out I wasn’t leaving and storm off to the Library. I’d finally come to the end of the beer and try to kiss Sam. I’d sit next to her on the bed, laying kisses on her chin, her cheeks, the corners of her mouth, putting my hands on her hips, massaging her pantie elastic, rubbing upwads towards her tits.

A festive atmosphere enveloped the crowd. Carefully made banners waved through the brisk November breeze, signalling the end of another successful Pop Warner Youth Football League season. This was the big day, the so-called “Bowl Day” in which the best two teams in the area squared off in a mock “Rose Bowl.”

But to many, it was nothing close to fake.

This was football country, in the heart of Pennsylvania. The packed high school stadium rocked to the chorus of the cheerleaders as they rhetorically chanted their cheers. The snack bars were overflowing. Young children hungrily lapped dripping ice cream bars, adults crammed their faces with relish-infested hot dogs. Leathery grandparents sat in foam chairs, infants screamed from their carriers. Parents nervously chatted with one another, opinions running rampant.

I wound up writing again, newspapers and magazines. The market was mainly in war or business, the financial world. There wasn’t much of the other, at least not enough to get by on.

I had packed my gear and taken the train. I had been doing some work for a mid-level outlet in The States, Business & Investment Express. They were willing to pay 425 dollars, plus reasonable expenses, in exchange for a 3,500-word profile of Michael Wethie, the Virginia entrepreneur. I’d already written most of it. Wethie was 36 years old, a stock trader and futures man who’d quit on a lark and moved to the ex-Communist states. In only a few years, he had allegedly become a major player in the East, parlaying what had been a modest nest-egg into significant holdings in asphalt and cardboard, fertilizer and pesticides, industrial real estate and Black Sea transport, as well as a firm that specialized in “investment and personnel protection services,” according to the official brochure. The consensus storyline said Wethie had moved in fast and early, courageously wheeler-dealering his way through the frenzy of “privatization” and asset-seizure that had occurred in the “wild” and “dizzy” years immediately following the collapse of the Communist regimes.

7:30 at night and the goon is standing in the street, shouting into a mobile phone.

“I never want to see your fucking eyes again!” he screams in some toilet swill of Czech and one of the better-known Balkan tongues. “Understand!? UNDERSTAND!? I never want to hear your fucking name again!”

The thug’s eyes are bugging out, black leather jacket stretched across ditch-digger shoulders. Spittle flies in the dim lamp light as he struts around like a chuffed-up chief chicken with a tough-guy buzz-cut. Everyone on the street watches rapt, suddenly stricken by the horror – groggy older men walking dogs, mothers lugging shopping bags and children, haggard teens in ballcaps and draggy pants, brisk little bearded men in suits whisking by clutching briefcases. . . .