After being fired by the poker news site for asking relevant questions, talking to the wrong people and not Him, I sort of fell into the whole subject: I mean, what else is more important than the very future of the economy and how can I can get involved when I know so much and have so many contacts because of all the things that I wondered about, you know, what the notes said, what the whispers in the office were, and what not and so forth, I wouldn’t want to bore you. It was long after SBF and honestly he was a hero to many of us especially those who had gone very long and were still on certain non-fungibles although we don’t call them that anymore and we will be reintroducing them long after the next fork and so that’s why I wanted to know what happened to Him, and I don’t mean SBF but our SBF, the man the you know who took on Chanx, he manned up to Chanx, and I suspected that despite the protestations of my former organization over the institution of certain standardizations within the sub-economy we study and perform upon, I did find myself on the elevator to the top of the only skyscraper in town, one with many businesses but above all law offices because where we sin we need the law. You’ve seen the great placards competing with the sky. The law is god here and I suspected that He had been interested in god, having run out of chips dice bluffs deodorant jokes and all the things that the two of us have in common.
As the text came that I was fired only six months after being hired I felt the lift come to a close and saw the doors open directly into the offices of Aénele & Partners, just like on the billboards with the dark haired woman and the CLUBBING-INJURY LAW-CRYPTO. They had recently changed their motto to WE FUCK which I think really gets more to the point and summarizes a lot of the incantations I would imagine we would hear had I ever been put before a judge or even a parent who could have helped and straightened me out but now I was at least assured in part that He was here and he would hear me, that he was too a partner to Aénele whose face was painted like Soviet god, a Georgian avenging angel, a moustache rider of Niagran possibility in a flowing liquid land running out of water above the twin secretaries who both asked me who I was here to see and while I was tempted to say take me to your leader and hug the wall and smell her hair, I was on a mission from god, having as I said been fired for talking smack about Bryn Kenney and how he forgave people for having been hurt by him. I too have only positive energy and like to keep things real. I will kneel and admit before Him I could have won like him, like Bryn, because because…
“Mr. Chad your appointment is ready, boiling, really,” they both laughed in unison and pulled me through a maze of lackeys and tie-stand noodle men and dress rack donkeys, talking bleating talking and such and so on. No one asked me for my autograph or even a telephone message but they did stare as I hobbled, dragging my leg which I had broken in the hurry to escape my employer so I followed the secretary’s bouncing blond hair through them all, clicking tapping shuffling staring whispering winding and there was glass and light and the rays of the sun, blessing all here in the garden. One twin pushed me into a room and the light was gone, and I heard Mike’s narration like it was the nineties all over again, as if we two champions had never aged.
“You are injured, we will find all of them, the driver the passengers the medics the ambulance staff the nurses the doctors the administrators the major and the council people and we will fuck them.”
“I’m sorry I was, uh, just faking it to get away from my desk you can see I can stand normally without much effort but I was fired for questionable reasons, you see I was talking smack about Bryn…”
“Silence, we do not do employment law at Aénele and Partners, of which I am one. A new one but a long term one who has studied the way of crypto law and its inception in public communications, fiscal derivatives, computations, rocket science and its origins in the leader’s will to exert himself over Londonites and tea drinkers and all kinds of scum who would stand in the face of order.”
“That’s just perfect, because I am here to find Him, the one who took on Chanx and who left our game and is rumored to have something to do with the downfall of the poker economy.”
My eyes adjusted and half-recognized his pale New Jersey face, the Garden Stater, the world beater who had left us in the lurch so long ago. He was older, but because I could count, that I had always been an expert at counting and memorizing cards which is why I play mix games. As an autistic, my marriages tend to fall apart but I had paid for so many plastic surgeries that I had the doctor’s numbers on my flip-phone and I could tell that my man had indulged in all the procedures a self-respecting aging boomer could find the Rhinoplasty the Blepharoplasty the Bephometoplasty, and then there was cheek extension the chin rejuvenation the ear constriction, as well as the usual lifts and tucks and folds. He was a god then and now, it had to be Him.
“You’re thinking of someone else, someone probably long dead, our names are just a coincidence, I’m just an attorney, Mr. McDermott, Esquire, a man of the law, of cryptologically secured liquidity and its administration in the empire of finance, which I love and serve. I am one of the Tripods of the Aénele Partners. Unless you have a concern in the unfiated lands and hallows, I cannot help you. I will call Angie and Angel.”
I said nothing for I sensed this man, this legend of the game, was lying to me like his face was lying to everyone. I walked behind the desk to get a new look at him but he scurried to his right and hunched behind a pile of magazines and folders and files filling the floor.
“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Grandma?”
I had found him. “No, the poker people sent me, the ones who never gave up, who didn’t disappear. They want to know what happened to you and why you did it. I was fired for seeking the truth today but I am, above all, a journalist, I only pretend to be a comedian.”
“Well, I agree with that.”
“Listen,” I told Michael and locked the door. “I don’t have all day. Stop crying, tell me what happened.”
And I took out my cassette recorder and pushed the thick red button.
“Look, mister… mister Chad, I got in over my head. It’s just a classic story, no one needs to hear it. I had won a little and thought I could play with the big boys. And I was right! I won but, you know, it’s not easy hanging on to money and there were my friends who always needed help and then there were loans and you know not all the gangsters have left our beautiful desert city so I need a way out and that’s when I found the coins and I started tucking away a few BTC here and there, and some EXT and PrimeCoin and some other stuff but I also started getting paid and then it was 2017 and I had everything. I was on top again, I met Steven Miller before he was Steven Miller, you know, I had it all but we started manipulating the markets, first it was the token, I pitched everyone and everything on the tokens because the public needed a face on an investment, a cartoon, a spiderman for bankers and dad-types but I had leveraged everything to get it. The players tried to cash out but by the twenties it was over and everyone was broke. I killed the poker boom, Mr. Chad, god I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t live with myself.”
The man, our man, Him, flew to his desk and ripped out a black pistol.
“Don’t do it, don’t kill yourself! I just wanted to know the truth!”
“Kill myself? I’m going to kill you! I shouldn’t have told you all that, but I’m weak and guilty and I’ve been chasing clients in clubs for Aénele. She calls me Tripod and puts her hands on my thigh but I’m old I’m a boomer now. And she is too! I am old! I failed! I represent rug munchers.”
“Christ,” I heard myself say for the first time in my life. The messiah will come but he will tarry and I don’t really like the gospels much, not enough family history. “Don’t you mean pullers?”
He looked up at me, snarling like a worm and aimed the small pistol. I ran out of the room and heard a stumble and a gunshot. I pulled a fire alarm and exited the firm with a hundred men in ties and earpieces, all talking to someone. I made up some jokes about going down but no one listened.
As I walked out I expected the cool Atlantic air of my youth, the air I had breathed with Him, now just a dusty law partner who had possibly shot himself in his once most important organ, but the day would not end so fortunately because the air was hot and there was no humidity because I was in Las Vegas, without a job and only a story. I needed to start a website, begin a new life, have a podcast, get plastic surgery, do shit winners do. The sun was low but not setting. The day was young and I had a future after all this and everything. Like a god.
I loosened my tie and squinted around. There were the blondes, Angie and Angel, black like wraiths in the fingers of the sun, like sullen game show hosts, each pointing to me, and there was Aénele herself, tall as an electric pole, her earrings dangling like traffic lights, rumored to be married to a certain high stakes poker player and I made the connection as the Lambo pulled up to the new clean concrete curb poured for the Arabs and steering fans and fabulous Monaco sports bettor cheekbone aficionados, his bald round head rising out of the bright yellow doors like a new son, unshaven and powerful and immune to negative energy and standard accounting. I try to unbreak my leg and run while beautiful old people surround me. They don’t know that the recorder is still running. I am doing my job. I will need representation.
