Pike's Folly (24 page)

MARLENE: No, here's fine.
(She looks expectantly into the
camera, as if waiting for further instructions.)
What do you want me to do?

HEATH: Whatever feels good.

(As directed, she opens her legs and starts to masturbate.
Her mind quickly wanders, though, and she comes to
a stop.)

HEATH:
(Prompting her.)
Marlene?

MARLENE: Hm? Oh—

(She resumes, but with the same empty look in her eyes.
Again she slows, and again she stops. Black.)

Fragment #17b—“Vive la Trance” (:34)

(Pike, Heath and Stuart are riding around North Conway in
Pike's SUV. It is early in the project, judging by the winter
colors outside. Pike sings “I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy” as he
drives. Heath has the camera, and he points it at Stuart, who
sits alone in the backseat.)

HEATH: Hey, Stuart? What're you thinking about?

(Stuart looks out the window. His eyes don't move, even as
the SUV slows, stops and speeds up again.)

HEATH: Stuart?

STUART: (Shifting his gaze toward Heath.) Mm?

HEATH: What're you thinking about?

STUART: Oh . . .

(He stammers, shakes his head and goes back to staring out
the window.)

Etc.

6

They came from all directions: Stuart from the south, Cathy Diego and Alice Shepperton from the north, Henry Savage and Celia Shriver from the west, and a whole team of PIRG activists from Augusta, Maine, seventy miles east of Mount Independence. All parties converging on Nathaniel Pike.

Stuart had spent most of the previous afternoon sitting by the phone, waiting for news from Marlene. The call finally came at 7:00 p.m., some ten hours after he'd last seen her. A voice informed him that she'd turned up in New Hampshire and was resting safely in Pike's camp. When he asked to speak with her, he was told this wasn't a good idea.

She'd left him without a car, so he rented one in the morning and drove north to White Ledge. When he arrived at the trailhead, he was surprised to find Cathy Diego and Alice Shepperton, who'd come down from Pinkham Notch, where the Appalachian Mountain Club operated a shelter for hikers. With them were a handful of AMC recruits, along with two armed rangers.

“We're moving in on Pike today,” Cathy told Stuart as a crowd gathered at the foot of the trail. “I ain't playin' with this creep anymore. He doesn't own the whole frickin' mountain. We've got a right to know what's going on up there.”

Stuart looked toward the parking area and saw his car, which Marlene had abandoned. He approached the car and peered inside. The doors were locked, but he could see his keys, a bag from Dunkin' Donuts and a pile of laundry in the backseat. This last item caught his attention, and he squinted for a better look.
That's not laundry,
he realized, and backed away from the car, nearly tripping on his own feet.

“Hey,” Cathy called. “You coming with us?”

“S-sure,” he said, and hurried to rejoin the group.

If Cathy seemed particularly on edge, her past twenty-four hours had been hectic. Rumor had it that Pike was entrenched, David Koresh–style, with fifty of his supporters, whose own mental conditions were unknown. In addition, one of Cathy's assistants had seen Henry Savage at a Bickford's in Concord the night before. Something was up, and Cathy didn't like the smell of it.

The motley assemblage started up the mountain just before one o'clock, wanting to surprise Pike in the middle of the afternoon. Both Alice and Cathy were adept at handling the trail, which varied between long, muddy stretches of nearly flat terrain and steep hills of broken granite, where the hikers had to use their hands.

Coming out of a deep, brooding silence, Cathy said, “I can't
believe
that Reese girl is actually working for Fuckface.”
Fuckface
was her nickname for Pike, which she also used to describe many of the men in her life, including her husband.

“Really? Who told you that?” Alice asked.

Cathy glanced at her over the rims of her purple-tinted sunglasses. “Who do you think? Pike only calls me on the phone every five frickin' seconds to brag about it. I should've seen it coming. She bailed on us back in Concord, and now she's completely flaked out.”

“I'm sure she's just confused,” Alice said. “Men like Nathaniel Pike have very seductive personalities.”

The trail became steep and rocky, and they took turns hoisting one another to a higher level before going on.

Back on flat ground, Cathy said, “I am
so
over these snotty Ivy League kids. They get the nonprofit bug, and once I've gone through all the trouble of training 'em, they're on to the next thing.”

“Surely not all of them.”

Cathy scoffed. “Don't even—I deal with it every frickin' year. As soon as the novelty wears off, they're on the next plane to Cancún.”

They'd reached a difficult stretch of trail, where they stopped talking and concentrated on getting up the mountain. Cathy was never much of an outdoors person, unlike her husband, who loved hiking and camping and fly-fishing with his friends in Manitoba. As she climbed, she paid little attention to the surrounding scenery, which, as the forest thinned out, had begun to show itself through the trees. It wasn't that she disliked the outdoors, just that working for the NHPIRG had spoiled her enjoyment of it. Where other people saw rivers and snow-covered summits, Cathy saw hills of paperwork and flowing streams of red tape. She was one of those permanently aggrieved women who was always running twenty minutes behind schedule. She thought of the men she worked with as morons; the women— if they were younger—as Barbie dolls, and if older as merely invisible. She wasn't unlikable per se, just impossible to warm up to. Having a conversation with her was like watching a sarcastic comedienne do her routine, only with all of the funny bits taken out.

At the tree line, she stopped the group and told the two rangers, “You guys go first. Let's give him a good scare.”

“We don't want to provoke him,” Alice warned. “We still aren't sure what he's got up there. He might have weapons, too.”

A worried voice from the back of the group spoke up. “No one said anything about weapons.”

To a general din of dissent, Cathy said, “Come on, we're wasting time. For all we know, Henry Savage has already beaten us to the punch.”

Before she could give the rangers any more instructions, Stuart intervened. “Let me go first,” he said. “I know this place better than anyone else.”

Cathy still preferred her own idea but reluctantly agreed. With Stuart now in the lead, they left the trail and continued across a rocky, alpine meadow. Seeing the meadow brought back memories, and Stuart reflected on the first time he'd taken this path, in those pre-Kmart, pre–parking lot days. What would've happened if he hadn't started working for Pike? He didn't even want to think about it. He'd given a year of his life to this folly when he could've devoted it to something more constructive, like writing another book or spending more time with his wife.

On the other side of the mountain, Henry Savage and Celia Shriver were also closing in on Pike. They'd taken the western route, which wasn't as steep and wouldn't be as demanding on Celia's old legs. They walked in tense silence, stopping every few hundred yards to comment on what they saw: crowded thickets of zebra-white birch trees; giant slabs of rock embedded in the muck and gravel; blue and yellow blazes painted on tree trunks by volunteers of the AMC; sections of trail where emerald moss formed a slippery carpet under their feet; pellets of dung lying in neat pyramids that resembled piles of musket balls; a length of rubber tubing that ran between the maples where some crafty entrepreneur, legitimate or otherwise, had set up a makeshift syrup factory. Other than the dung pellets, the only evidence of an animal presence was an occasional rustling in the shadows, a furtive movement that could've been the wind or a black bear or another person.

“I like your style, Mr. Savage,” Celia said. “You're decisive, and that's a good thing. Most D.C. bureaucrats wouldn't have the guts to confront Pike all alone.”

“I'm not confronting him, Celia. I'm initiating a dialogue. If he feels under pressure, he'll balk,” Henry explained for the third time that afternoon.

“Let him balk. Pike's a dog, a mangy mutt. What he needs is a good kick in the ass.”

Henry put his canteen to his lips and drank. They still had another hour to get to the summit, but the air was thin and his lack of physical fitness was starting to slow him down. It would be so easy to give up and go back to Washington. His actual presence wasn't required here; he could've sent Pike a letter or called him on the phone, as he'd done many times before. He was curious, that was all. Out of sheer interest, he wanted to see the Independence Project for himself.

They finally reached the summit at three o'clock, and from a quarter mile away they could barely distinguish Pike's hideout through the forest. Even with his binoculars, Henry discerned no clear path to their destination. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

They listened again for the sound to carry across the valley. There it was: people talking, laughing, shouting happily, a radio playing loud, jangly, sixties pop/rock. It sounded like a party.

Celia obstinately stuck out her chin. “What's wrong with
silence,
Mr. Savage? They're ruining a perfectly good summer afternoon. Are we so neurotic that we can't enjoy a moment's peace?”

How 'bout one right now,
he thought as he squinted through his binoculars. “I'm not seeing a parking lot—more like a warehouse, or an airplane hangar. I'm not sure.”

He handed the binoculars to Celia, who had a look for herself. She scowled. “That prick. That little
prick.
Come on! Let's go get 'em.”

Nathaniel Pike was sitting alone in his manager's office, staring out a window at the Kmart's giant, single-room sales floor. The smile lines that normally creased his face were gone, and his eyes lacked their usual sparkle. Now that the store was up and running, he felt like the Independence Project had finally exhausted itself. It just wasn't interesting anymore. He missed his brownstone, and his favorite restaurants and having dinner with his high-rolling friends on Federal Hill. He wanted to go back to being good ol' Nathaniel Pike, local eccentric.

Not that he wasn't proud of what he'd accomplished here, because he was. His goal had been to create an utterly vacuous monument, an ode to nothing, and he'd done it. Even the
Village
Voice
had little positive to say when they'd reviewed his “installation” piece (as they'd laughably called it) back in May. Most of the popular press had written him off as an incorrigible loony, right up there with Jim Jones and Charlie Manson.
Entertain
ment Weekly had downgraded his report card to a C—, while the
New York Times
could only marvel at what had happened to the same artist whose Independence Project, Phase One, “had demonstrated all of the elements of simplicity and restraint that this new, super-sized version lacks.” Given his stated objective, the Independence Project was a success. It was time to move on.

But to what? The building would fall apart without him. Weeds would push through the floor, and mold would gather on the merchandise. Left in ruins, the store would inevitably take on a metaphoric dimension, as his parking lot once had. The only way to preserve its basic meaninglessness was to keep it running. It had to remain as it was—just a Kmart, just a Kmart, just a Kmart.

This is crazy, he thought. Look at yourself! You've been living in a dream for the past ten years. You're sitting in a fucking
Kmart
in the middle of the fucking
White Mountains
and you've spent a fucking
fortune
on fucking
nothing,
and all those people out there—he got up from his desk and looked down at the sales floor—all think you're a total
wacko.
And they're right! They're absolutely right. Someone should put you in straitjacket, man. You're a fucking
freak.

When Heath knocked on the door and let himself into the office, Pike brightened. His birthday surprise had been a hit, and it was good to know he could still make someone happy.

“Do you have a minute?” Heath asked.

“Of course.”

Pike waved at him to close the door. Heath did, and both men took a seat.

“I've been thinking about our video,” Heath began. He'd practiced this speech before, about fifteen minutes ago, but found it harder to say with Pike looking right at him. “I know that you were kind of hoping that I'd have it finished by now, and I'm sorry about that. Every time I get into the editing lab, the computer keeps crashing.”

“Don't worry about it,” Pike said. “What's important is that you're learning something and having a good time.”

“Is it?” Heath asked, now skeptical, since Pike wasn't always this accommodating.

“Come on, Heath, you know me better than that. It's
your
show. Personally, I don't care what you do with it. I won't interfere.” As if one subject necessarily implied the other, Pike asked, “What do you
really
think about this place?”

Heath didn't know what to say. “Gee, Mr. Pike, I love it up here. I feel like we're doing something different, something worthwhile.”

Pike took this in. “Go on,” he urged him.

“That's it, I guess. I've always been interested in things that most people think are just weird.”

“Do you think
I'm
weird?”

“No, I mean . . . maybe weird's not the right word. Whatever. I get the same vibe from Brian. He says that you're a really good drummer, by the way. Just like his brother.”

This answer still didn't satisfy Pike. “You don't think I'm, you know, crazy, like a mental case?”

“Oh, no! Not at all.”

“You're not afraid of me, are you?”

Heath shook his head, and Pike let it go. Turning to the window that looked over the store, he asked, “Do you think
those
people think I'm crazy?”

Heath glanced behind him, out the window, then back at Pike. He lied. “No, they all think you're really cool.”

The phone rang, and Heath retreated to give him some privacy. As he waited, he studied the backs of his hands, his palms, the bluish tangle of veins in his wrists. Brian's hands were larger than Heath's, stronger, more distinctive. His fingernails were sharp and almond shaped—more like Count Dracula's than Frankenstein's. By contrast, Heath's fingernails were chewed to nubs, and he'd written someone's e-mail address on his left palm.

Pike slammed down the phone and snarled, “That was your girlfriend. Thank God she had her cell phone on her. She just saw that Diego bitch coming up from White Ledge. Looks like Henry Savage is with her, and about twenty others.”

“I thought those guys didn't like each other,” Heath said.

Pike shouted, “Damn it, Heath, don't ask me questions when I don't know the answers!” Shaking, he pulled his manager's jacket off the back of his chair and thrust his arms through the sleeves. “Let's see what's going on.”