Newman

Newman watched the second hand scale the face of the clock on the cabin’s yellow pine wall. You always think there’s enough time. The thought sparked an ironic smile and a weary shake of Newman’s head. His fingers itched for a cigarette despite 12 years of abstinence. He drummed them on the tabletop. The craving eased. But not the anger.

The hollow wail of a siren in the distance warned him he’d be leaving soon. Right now, he needed a pair of pants to put on, a clean shirt—this one was filthy—and a phone. A shower? Yeah, that would be nice. But, it can wait.

Waiting was a penalty that Newman wilfully imposed on others. But not in the early days. Thirty years ago, he was young, smart and hungry. Wealthy people value these traits. Newman’s name headed a shortlist. They monitored his budding agency. His appetite tested. Due diligence complete, contact was made and a meeting with a cabal of powerful men arranged.

The cab dropped Newman off in front of a behemoth of steel and glass, arisen on what was once a virgin forest. Newman had already grasped what the prize awaiting him within the crystal palace meant. His stomach rumbled for it. His pulse quickened for it. And his legs propelled him forward, eager to seize it.

“Charles Newman to see . . .”

“They’re waiting for you,” the receptionist pointed toward the elevators, “on the fifteenth floor.” Her corporate smile followed him until the doors glided shut and the ascending whoosh heralded Newman’s appointment with power.

Newman knew one man in the room, and he was sitting in the far corner. It was only by reputation that he knew the men eyeing him across the tabletop. A few featured on the covers of entrepreneurial magazines—applauded for donating at charity balls—and sought for their opinions by fawning anchor-men. The rest shadowy. But never phantoms. This was a table populated by equals, aside from Newman. Equals in ego, equals in avarice, and equals in their ability to influence events. Newman listened intently, took notes, offered advice, discussed strategies, and finally, shook hands; his allotted time spent.

As he zoomed towards the ground floor in the elevator, his thoughts landed on a passage from a novel he was gifted by a passionate girlfriend at college, by the name of Laura: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” He never completely understood it back then. But now was a different story. He’d just met the controllers.

A twinge of conscience was quickly overruled as he climbed into the cab. A few doubts crossed his mind, but this inspired him. Because he knew that doubt, and the sowing of it, was the cornerstone of the campaign. “Take me to Bolero Drive.” He knew it was foolish, but so what he’d earned it. The cabbie gave Newman the thumbs up. “I’ll tell you where to stop when we get there.”

The driver pulled up beside a grandiose window, shining as if a thousand squeegees had succumbed to its gleaming surface. It was on a golden turntable, center stage, highly polished and rotating lazily on a gold embossed turntable. Newman knew he was buying envy. That’s why he wanted it. That’s why they manufactured the Ferrari 328 GTB. For people like Newman. The contracts hadn’t been signed, but it didn’t stop Newman from writing a cheque for $28, 000, with a matched balance to pay on delivery. For Newman, they’d sealed the deal on the strength of a shaking of hands, a knowing wink, a pat on the back, and what his guts told him.

Newman knew how to flatter, how to convince, and how to close a deal. What he didn’t know was how this would play out. For now, he didn’t care. He stopped to admire his purchase on the way out. Not so foolish really, he decided, a Ferrari’s an investment: The rational part of the sale. He ran a finger down the lustrous bodywork—after all, who doesn’t want to be envied? The sale closed—so the theory goes—based on subliminal desires.

It’s easy to disseminate your ideas when you’ve got plenty of dough to spend. And Newman’s campaign wallet was overflowing. Bucks to burn, he joked to his inner circle. He asked Laura to join them, but, strangely, he thought, she refused. But no matter, he didn’t lack female company. Adman did a double spread article on him embellished with an image of Newman steering a rocket into a twinkling stratosphere. Acolytes materialized from corporate and collegiate wormholes willing to work for zilch. Newman was truly a “mover and shaker.” Someone to be admired, emulated, and even—envied.

Scientists couldn’t compete with PR men. White lab coats were no match for the swagger of Madison Avenue’s Armani suited scholars. “Theory—well, that’s all it is—a theory,” Newman pontificated. Scientists’ voices were the tame squeak of cloistered mice compared to the global bullhorn of Newman’s PR campaign.

Advertising is all-pervading. Discover an indigenous tribe in the densest regions of the Amazon Basin. Within a month, they’re wearing tee shirts grooming the reader to “drink coke.” You get no rest from it. Jingles rattle your brain like the flap of your overflowing mailbox. It’s relentless in its efforts to harass, pursue, browbeat and finally subdue you into accepting its message. Adverts greet you in the delivery room and wave you goodbye at the graveside. It’s ceaseless. And Newman understood this and capitalized on it. “Disinformation? Hell no. Choice is what we’re offering,” Newman told skeptics. “Surely that’s what we built this great country on.”

Newman blitzed the naysayers. Advertorials, in prestigious newspapers and the braying voices of distinguished politicians and so-called experts collaborated in the promotion of doubt. Lobbyists colonized, perceived, democratic institutions, and overwhelmed the bureaucracy of conferences. Buzzwords circulated. Meaningless slogans were invented, and media folk parroted them. But Newman grew weary. He liked a mirror, but lately, he spent less time in front of it.

He went hiking. Something he’d never done before. Concrete was his terrain. He dispensed with his disciples. Embraced solitude. His ego deflating as he wandered along mountain trails. I’m basically a good person, he told himself. I was only doing what I thought was right. If I hadn’t gotten the ball rolling, someone else would have. It grated on him. One moment feeling guilty, the next defending himself. Ashamed, then unrepentant. He came to accept that the essence of his life was the creation of illusion. So he sought reality.

Reality came in the shape of a mountain retreat. A bolthole, a hideaway, somewhere PR and advertising couldn’t find him. No TV, radio or phones. Whenever he fled the city, he felt immune to its maladies. It started out as a three-bedroom property but soon grew to an eight. Despite his craving for isolation, old habits clung to him like a hair shirt. He filled its ample rooms with the baubles of success but shunned the limelight of award ceremonies. Newman valued the greenness of the forest but was still a victim of the greenness of the dollar.

* * *

It was kind of warm. A cool wind toyed with the emerald-colored leaves of the cedar trees that encircled Newman’s property, rustling the seed cones like maracas. The sky held a tinge of orange towards the east. Too far for Newman to notice. But then, Newman was asleep in his underwear in his favorite chair following a heavy lunch and three brimming glasses of Sassicaia 2017. From the distance, the crackling turned into a roar and the roar into a thunder-like crescendo. Newman awoke to a toxic orange atmosphere so thick with smoke that it blotted out the sky. For a few moments, the sheer power of the fire and the acrid smell of scorched timber mesmerised him. Flying embers like angry snowflakes danced in front of his eyes masking the leaping flames advancing towards him barely a hundred yards away.

He grabbed his shirt, draped over the armchair, looked for his pants, but the resounding crash of branches bouncing off the ground caused him to run as far and as fast as he could away from the canopy of flames and into a forest of smoke-filled darkness.

Rescue workers found him the following morning. He’d dragged himself along a dry creek bed, burying his face in the dirt as the flames swirled above him. He’d had the foresight to dip his shirt in the rainwater barrel and use it as an air filter. The young guy who drove him to the Ranger station told him it probably saved his life. On the way, through drowsy eyes, he glimpsed a row of pine trees coated in white ash. Just like the cover of a Christmas card, he thought.

The cabin door opened wide and Newman focused on the gaunt smoke-blackened face of an ageing firefighter, a walkie-talkie precariously balanced in the top pocket of a grimy yellow turnout jacket. Newman was about to bum a cigarette off him. Instead, he sheepishly said: “You know, I always wanted to be a fireman when I was a kid.”