“What kind of crimes?”
“You’ll see. But for now, we have other matters to discuss.”
“Other matters?”
“Do you like the GEAs?”
Why was he asking me about the Global Entertainment Awards? “I’ve never watched them.”
“Why not?”
“Not interested.”
“My whole life, I grew up watching them. We were forced to. You see, we were told our hair was being shorn off to make hair for the rich and famous. We were told our lives were worthless apart from making the wealthy look more beautiful and handsome than they were. So every year, we had to watch these celebrities show up with hair cut from our own heads. I was envious of them. So envious.”
We watched footage from the GEA opening ceremony, the stars arriving on the red carpet. We arrived at the airport shortly afterwards, driving around the side to Larry’s private airplane in his private landing strip.
Voltaire went off to talk with his brothers and sisters. Another member of his family let me into the airplane, a huge jumbo jet with two floors. Larry often used this plane to ship his film crews. Multiple compartments had been installed for his private parties. It was a slick silvery color, a hybrid between a commercial plane and a military space jet. I was given one of the bedrooms and lay down to rest.
I wished I could have talked to Larry, asked him what was going through his mind. It was strange to think of myself as one of the richest men in the world. Memories from my childhood flooded me. I thought of my biological father beating my sister and me. My mother would scream, “Shut up! Shut up! You both deserve to die for crying so much! You idiots! You’ll be killed and no one will care. Do you think anyone will miss you? No one will care!” More blows, blood spilling everywhere. We’d both be punished by having our meals taken away for days at a time. I remembered competing with my sister to see whose stomach could make louder grumbles. It was always a happy event when my biological parents went traveling for business. Cousin Baochai would bring cans of Spam and we’d cook them, pretending they were a grand feast. Spam pizza, Spam steak, Spam burgers; we imagined what the food would be. We paraded around the house and made all sorts of noise, not having to be afraid of waking anyone. I used to be jealous of other kids who’d get nice lunches packed for them. I’d be even more jealous of the students who could afford to buy whatever they wanted at the school cafeteria. There were so many things I wanted when I was younger. I pretended like I didn’t care about anyone or anything, hiding behind the camera, recording all the things I’d never been able to enjoy. It was my only comfort.
Gene Liang was the name I was born with, the name I cursed. That name came to represent everything I hated and despised in my life. I wanted to shed it. When I joined the army and they gave me a chance to input any name I wanted, I picked Nick Guan, mainly because Guan Yu, a hero of Chinese literature, was one of my favorite characters. According to history, Guan Yu formed a new family with Liu Bei and Zhang Fei and swore a blood oath in the Peach Garden to become brothers. He was a warrior who valued loyalty and honor above all.
I swore to myself that I would start over, make my own way in the world and never look back on the past. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with my sister, Kelly. But the onus of shedding the past became an albatross in all my relationships. I’d gotten so used to family members treating each other horribly, I had no idea how to do it properly myself. Even when it came to eating, I’d greedily eat as fast as I could, afraid someone else might eat it. Little kindnesses could be seen as vulnerabilities. As for hugs and warm embraces, they were absent and I had a hard time showing affection to women, even Linda. She basically had to retrain me in the art of family, what it meant for people to love each other rather than be at each other’s throats.
I struggled so hard to make it in the world. Working on Larry’s movies took up too many hours. But when I turned to a company job, I found out climbing up the corporate ladder and becoming a good automaton was beyond me. I couldn’t get used to the instability of it all and hated the miniscule cubicles with managers who’d yell at us for every infraction. “You think you deserve a job. There are a million people out there who would kill for your job!”
I failed at being a husband and a worker. I was laid off like all the other employees, hired and fired at the whimsies of corporations that didn’t care. Rather than opening up to Linda, I hid in a shell, got petty and cruel, argued with her over nothing instead of being grateful for what I had. Linda was a saint. I was so thoughtless, so unnecessarily mean in my verbal attacks. It was what I’d grown up with and I latched onto it as a defense mechanism. Poverty brought out the worst in me. Where Spam had been a welcome boon in my childhood, when we resorted to artificial meat under different brands, I got sulky. How could it be that after all these years, Linda and I couldn’t eat whatever we wanted? The travesty of it made me angry and I refused to eat anything she cooked. She couldn’t understand, thinking she’d done something wrong. I felt too petty to tell her what I was feeling. The misunderstandings compounded.
On TV, everyone paid lip service to the American Dream; the affordable suburban house with a decent job and the ability to raise a family in a safe environment. There were even some who complained that middle-class life caused disillusionment because it was too easy and boring. I had to wake up at five every morning, strap on armor, hope I didn’t get shot, and seal up our apartment so we didn’t get robbed while I was out working at a minimum-wage job which I’d gotten solely because I was a war veteran. Meanwhile, celebrities were worshipped and sports stars were treated like Olympians while the poor were hidden away so the media could project an image of invincibility to the world. Us, the indentured servants of the world, in plain sight, paraded when spectators came by, then told to get into place and play our notes in an insane harpsichord of broken chords. No one minded that the symphony sounded like a tune from hell as long as they were getting fat.
And now, an unexpected twist in things.
An irony of life.
Larry willed me everything.
I was rich. Richer than anyone I’d known or envied. And the odd thing was, I’d never aspired to it. Never even imagined it.
I kept on wishing Larry was there so I could talk to him, ask him what he was thinking. I tossed in bed, unable to fathom what he’d done for me. I couldn’t believe it. No one ever did kind things for me. No one. I mean, I used to dream that someone would come along when I was young, tell me I’d accidentally been abandoned by a great family who had now come to claim me. But that never happened. The only people who had ever shown me true kindness were Linda and her family. They treated me like I was one of their own and I’d betrayed them with my insecurities, pushing Linda away when I should have held her in my arms. I was an idiot and accepted a life of solitude as payment for my idiocy. I didn’t deserve a family. But for Larry to have done this. I–I just couldn’t believe it.
This inheritance would have conditions like Voltaire and the Colonel. This was not bloodless money. But Larry’s act was more than I deserved. There was so much more I needed to find out.
VII.
Voltaire and his white-haired army were raptly watching the GEAs on a holoscreen in the middle of the plane. They’d removed many of the chairs and about fifteen of them were present. The screen was state-of-the-art technology that made it seem like the celebrities were right there in front of us, even though we were on deck and they were in Los Angeles. The ceremony had just begun and audiences could swap through one of the 30 live hosts, each with a distinct style. The same applied to type of music, type of scenery, as well as camera angles that could be customized by all for their viewing pleasure. “In the category of best naked body, we have—” the broadcaster was saying.