Leroux had a seventh sense.
He was a Hollywood assistant with no future who’d attached himself like a barnacle to an old ship. Fuller was his one shot.
Leroux had an almost preternatural sensitivity to moments when his hold on the old man was threatened.
There’d been other guests who pinged off Leroux’s seventh sense.
The ones who wouldn’t leave.
The ones who’d stolen memorabilia.
The ones who’d take advantage of Fuller for the sake of social media.
Leroux knew that Fuller was a man who collected stray dogs.
But none of the others had carried a sharpened sword forged in the fires of Fairy Land.
Fuller made introductions between his guests and Leroux.
“They were just asking me the most wonderful question,” said Fuller. “They asked me how the people who made Wonder Woman had heard the story of Princess Diana and the island of the Amazons.”
“I haven’t seen it,” said Leroux.
“We just came from a screening at the Vista,” said Fuller.
“How was it?” asked Leroux.
“Moronic,” said Fuller. “But you know, at my age, and in this town, I don’t expect much.”
There was more small talk, with Fuller and Leroux explaining the magic of moviemaking to Celia and Rose Byrne.
These efforts failed, as both men relied on the expectation that the women were conversant with Hollywood’s shared cultural history, which was an American religious mythos that had penetrated every recess of the globe except Fairy Land and some remote tribes in South America.
Fuller’s bladder, which had dogged him for several years, again demanded voiding. He excused himself and went to the bathroom at the back end of the house.
“Francis is older than he looks,” said Adam. “He gets tired very easily. People don’t realize how much these conversations take out of him.”
“It is said that aging past usefulness is the worst thing that can befall a person,” said Celia.
“He’s still useful,” said Adam Leroux. “He’s working on his memoirs.”
“What is a memoir?” asked Rose Byrne.
“His personal history,” said Adam Leroux. “He’s known some very interesting people. There’s a whole chapter about Joanna Cassidy.”
The women of Fairy Land didn’t respond.
“Francis is too kind to say it himself,” said Adam Leroux, “but you should probably get on your way. It’s close to his bedtime.”
“We have nowhere to go,” said Celia. “We are newly arrived in Los Angeles.”
“I don’t see how that’s Francis’s problem,” said Adam Leroux.
“Are you telling us that my queen should leave?” asked Rose Byrne.
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Rose Byrne stood up from Francis Fuller’s shabby couch, took out her sword, and chopped off Adam Leroux’s head.
He tried to defend himself but he was a mortal and Rose Byrne was an old hand.
All his military training and killing of Muslims were for naught.
He didn’t stand a chance.
His head rolled around the living room.
His body twitched out its last bioelectric moments of life.
Rose Byrne stormed to the bathroom, where Fuller was sitting on the toilet with his penis tucked between his legs, struggling against age to void his bladder.
She drove her sword into his chest.
“Oh,” said Francis Fuller.
Chapter Eight
Gentlemen Prefer Blood
On the very same day that Rose Byrne chopped off the head of Adam Leroux, HRH Mamduh bin Fatih bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was guest speaker at the Lunch Series put on by Harvard University’s Program for Constitutional Government.
The title of the talk was this: “Teaching Foundational Classics to the Mid-East: What It Means and Why It Matters.”
It was held in room K354 of the CGIS Knafel Building on Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was a satellite city across the Charles River from Boston.
Harvard University was a hedge fund that masqueraded as an institution of higher learning. It was one of the places where the world’s upper classes enjoyed grade inflation as they became economic war-lords of the technocratic elite who mouthed platitudes about equality while crushing the global poor.
The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield introduced HRH.
Mansfield explained that HRH was an alumnus of Harvard, having received a Master’s in Public Policy at the Kennedy School before earning his Doctorate of Philosophy from the London School of Economics.
Mansfield explained an initiative funded by HRH’s non-profit wing.
It was a multi-disciplinary program that brought promising students from the Middle East and funded their undergraduate education at Harvard, with a focus on a broad liberal arts education and exposure to the foundational influences of Western thought.
After Harvey Mansfield finished speaking, HRH addressed the room.
HRH talked about education being the cornerstone of liberal democracy.
HRH talked about the paucity of books in Arabic translation.
HRH said that while a great many students from the Middle East were receiving educations in America, their focus was on STEM, and that this had left them disconnected from ideas underpinning the basic political philosophies of the Twentieth Century AD and Twenty-First Century AD.
HRH talked about how it was impossible to expect events like the Arab Spring to resolve productively if people in the Middle East weren’t exposed, in advance, to a diversity of ideas about governance.
HRH finished with this: “I am not an expert like some of the people in this room, but I am resolute in my belief that if human rights are to emerge, we must first educate humans, and then teach them what is right.”
The audience applauded.
Harvey Mansfield opened the event to questions from the audience.
The first question was familiar.
The questioner told HRH that she had Googled him and found his interviews refreshing and unexpected. Then she asked: “I was wondering if you could speak about the reaction of the Saudi government to your more provocative statements?”
HRH smiled.
His bridgework was fucking fantastic.
“Madame,” said HRH, “I was raised in the hotels of Europe and America. I hold citizenship in Malta. I do not speak as a member of my family. I speak as an inhabitant of the world.”
The next question was also familiar.
It was being asked on every American campus by people who were terrified of college students.
“I don’t know if you’ve followed any stories,” said a man in a suit. “There’s been a thing happening where the students at our universities have been asking for safe spaces. If you’re not familiar with the term, and I wasn’t until a few months ago, a safe space is a place where the students can be coddled away from hearing ideas that they don’t like, and it’s disguised under the idea of oppression. You’re from a region beset by conflict. I tell my students that there are no safe spaces in Aleppo. Do you have an opinion on this phenomenon?”
HRH smiled.
His bridgework was fucking fantastic.
“I always err on the side of generosity. If people require safe spaces, then I see nothing wrong with providing them, as long as the institution tempers their presence with a robust environment of educational rigor.”
When the questions were over, pleasantries were exchanged.
HRH texted his manservant Dmitri Huda.
“HEY NONNY HEY, ARE THINGS IN ORDER?????” asked HRH.