To Gain the Whole World

By Robert N. Chan

Finally, the definitive story of the 2016 presidential election and the inside-the-beltway details about the falsely convicted rapist who seeks the Republican nomination and the political operative whose overweening ambition to be First Lady has such momentous consequences, both intended and unintended.

The unfortunately named Baudelaire seems the least likely of presidential candidates. To Jezy Vici, however, the National Sex Offender Registry is merely another means to increase name recognition. Via a hilarious cascade of dirty tricks, chutzpah, and strategic masterstrokes, she guides her lover through his election to Congress. In the Republican presidential debates, he is the only candidate to present a coherent program to help the economy, create jobs, and reduce political polarization, but when he shoves an opponent, who falls breaking his coccyx, Bauds campaign takes off. With wing-nut billionaires targeting him, evangelicals convinced hes the Antichrist, and a Democratic congresswoman, married to Jezys ex-fianc, pressuring him to switch parties, Baud comes up with a scheme too reckless even for Jezy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475965889

Robert N. Chan

Robert N. Chan, a founder of the New York City boutique law firm, Ferber Chan Essner & Coller, LLP has been litigating for thirty-five years with appalling success. His six prior novels—Apparitions, Axe of God,, Science Fiction, Bad Memory, and Painting A Burning House—have been hailed as transformative underground classics of unparalleled brilliance…and people actually enjoyed them. Visit www.robertnchan.com

Book preview

I

A NICE LITTLE BASTARD

His mother did Baudelaire no favors when she named him. Doing favors wasn’t her thing. A drug-abuser, a whore, a poet, and a rebel without a pause, she didn’t have a thing, she had many, and she carried them all out to their illogical extremes. Perhaps she foresaw that three decades hence he’d run for high office and that having a single name, and an odd one at that, would be a perverse sort of political asset. Or perhaps she never shook the spell of Les Fleurs du Mal.

At a young age, Baudelaire adjusted to being left alone overnight or even for several days on end. The more his mother ignored him, the more intensely he loved her. Once he started talking and displaying preternatural intelligence, inquisitiveness, and wit, she began to find him amusing. She’d speak to him as if he were an adult, baring her shrunken soul, sharing amusing stories about her customers’ quirks, and extemporizing on her alienation, angst, and ennui.

Mommy, why don’t I have a daddy?

He’d been asking the same question in different ways for several years, but by the time he reached first grade, she’d tired of deflecting his inquiries.

You do have a daddy. We just don’t know who he is.

Little Baudelaire screwed up his face.

Why?

What do I tell you about that question?

I ask it too often. It’s tedious and annoying, he said, in the sing-song tone he used for reciting. But I want to know.

Okay, you asked for it. She lit the joint in the ashtray, took a deep hit, and after holding it in for almost a full minute, exhaled. You know how I tell you it’s good to experience new things? Well, one day I decided it would be cool to be a mom.

Why don’t I have a daddy, grandparents, or cousins, like my friends?

That’s a long story.

He cuddled into her on the couch.

I love it when you tell me long stories.

She smiled. His smile back looked so much like one she’d been practicing in the mirror that she wanted to laugh.

You won’t love this one, she said.

Please, Mommy.

Well, let’s see… where to start? She squinched up her face and stroked her chin, making him giggle—he was an easy audience. My parents were very strict and very religious and they sent me to an all-girls Hassidic high school, in Brooklyn. Obviously, I got sick of that shit.

"Why is that obvious? What is Assidic? Isn’t shit a bad word?"

You want to ask or listen?

"Listen, but one day will you tell me about Assidic?"

Of course.

She picked up the joint, then put it back in the ashtray. He smiled and she shot him a short but intense dirty look, so he’d know her recent relative abstinence was his fault.

So, to liven things up, I brought a homeless black man home for Passover, she said. That’s a holiday that celebrates freedom from slavery, so it seemed…sort of appropriate. Because he was dirty and smelly, I took a shower with him. Then at the Seder—that’s a family dinner where men and women aren’t even allowed to touch—the guy and I started kissing and feeling each other up. My parents totally lost it and threw us out. The next day, they sat shiva for me. That means they acted as if I were dead, and they never relented, not that I ever asked them to.

His upper lip quivered.

Will you ever do that to me?

No, of course not.

She tickled his tummy just enough to draw a single giggle.

But didn’t you give me away once? His face turned serious, making him look several years older.

That was a long time ago, when you were a little baby. You were really boring then, and you had a depressing effect on my business. Probably wasn’t your fault, the market for lactating whores had dried up. But also, your crying sapped my poetic creativity, interfered with my sleep, and screwed up my drug buzz.

I don’t cry much anymore.

"Yes, you’re a wonderful little boy. Almost makes me think I’ve discovered a whole new parenting technique. Maybe I should write a book, The Stoned Whore’s Guide to No Sweat Mothering."

I could draw the pictures.

She ran her fingers through his hair.

"I’d thought I had an elegant solution when I traded you for a pre-owned BMW. But the best laid schemes Gang aft agley, An’ leae us nought but grief an pain, For promised joy. That’s Bobby Burns, a poet I’ll read to you sometime. You’ll enjoy his rhythms and his funny Scottish words. Anyway, when you were taken away from me, I found out you were crying more than ever. You didn’t realize you were better off, and the car turned out to be a lemon. So I reversed the trade."

His eyes teared up.

I told you you wouldn’t like the story.

I do like it. He crossed his arms and put on his tight-lipped defiant face.

"I dropped some primo LSD and read Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy with one eye and the Bhagavad-Gita with the other. Struck by the similarities between the Hindu cycle of birth-death-rebirth and capitalism’s creative destruction, I had an epiphany: accepting the responsibility of parenthood would be cool. Having rebelled against every convention, I now had to rebel against rebelling and thus begin the cycle anew."

That’s…good, he said, even though he hadn’t understood. "It is good, right?"

Sure.

She again picked up the joint and again was about to put it down. Instead, she took a long slow hit, pleased that rebelling against the tiny tyranny of a six-year-old didn’t make her feel ridiculously childish.

Actually, I liked the car very much but I liked you better.

But you didn’t answer my question about why I don’t have a daddy.

Getting there. You want a break, maybe some milk and Cheerios?

I just want to be here with you and listen.

She got him some milk in a sippy cup—he had an unfortunate tendency to cry over spilled milk.

Okay, so, while I wanted a child, quite obviously dealing with a father would’ve been a stone drag. As you know, I can’t tolerate my intellectual inferiors—or my moral superiors—and the odds of meeting someone who didn’t fall into at least one of those categories were so long that if I waited for lightning to strike my biological clock would’ve probably ticked down to oblivion. After all I only had approximately ten million minutes left.

"That’s a very big number."

Yes, it is. Do you know how many zeroes are in ten million?

Concentrating, he stuck his tongue out between otherwise closed lips.

I’ll give you a hint, there are four zeroes in ten thousand.

Seven.

She kissed him on the forehead; she’d been doing a lot of that lately. He sucked down almost half the milk.

No one else in my class would’ve known that.

I suspect you’re right.

Then what happened?

During the week before I was due to ovulate—

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.

I’ll explain what that means some other time.

When you’re straight or when I’m older?

Older. She smiled, and he smiled back at her. Anyway, I had unprotected sex with Harvard’s Porcellian Club, Yale’s Skull and Bones, and the Johns Hopkins lacrosse team. I wanted you to have a smart, accomplished, athletic father but I didn’t want to know who he was or to be able to find out.

He yawned.

Are you sleepy?

No, I want to hear. His voice took on a tell-tale rhythmic undertone.

He rested his head on her lap and was soon asleep. Good timing as she had a customer on his way over. More good timing, the customer paid for an hour, took half an hour, and left long enough before Baudelaire woke for her to drop half a tab of psilocybin and fix dinner. She didn’t get all those women who bitched about how hard it was to be a working mother.

Baudelaire ended his nap, calling for her and crying.

Please stop crying, it’s really annoying.

I will if you tell me more of that story. He sniffled.

She set on the table a goat cheese, poached pear, and prosciutto salad—one of his favorite meals.

So, when I was pregnant, I rented a small studio apartment in a tenement on Avenue A and supported myself by dealing drugs. That was 1976, when the Lower East Side of Manhattan was at its most grungy, dangerous, and hip. I got a job in a massage parlor and worked on making my poetry obscure to the point of indecipherability.

Will you read me some of your poetry when you put me to bed? Please.

Of course, I love reading to you, which one would you like?

He squinched up his face.

The one with the fighting lesbians and the shimmery, shiny shaft of fire. He grinned. But now tell me the rest of the story.

In spite of my efforts at obscurity, I had several well-received readings and my work began to be published in journals so anti-capitalist that they found it politically abhorrent to pay for product. On the verge of literary success, I realized that being hip was a trap against which I had to rebel.

You do an awful lot of rebelling. In all your stories…

She shrugged.

At the Oak Room bar in the Plaza Hotel, I met a senior VP at Lockheed Martin who had a thing for pregnant women and a large expense account. One thing led to another, he set me up in an apartment, and I had you right here in Syracuse.

This may be your best story ever.

Known in school as Baud, he was a quiet content child. Testing off the charts, he skipped kindergarten and fifth grade and thus was always surrounded by bigger, more physically adept and emotionally mature children, which encouraged him to keep to himself. His mother never punished him and rarely raised her voice, but she clearly articulated her expectations: There’s only room for one troublemaker in our little family, and tough shit, I got here first. When he acted up, she’d either leave or get so stoned that she barely knew he existed. Given the limited time she devoted to him, her cutting him off was the worst punishment of all. So he learned to be well-behaved, quiet, and thoughtful and developed a sardonic sense of humor Mom enjoyed.

Although well liked, particularly by the girls who treated him as a pet, he had no real friends at school. In a third-grade discussion of what the kids’ parents did for a living, Baud proudly announced his mother’s profession. Several of his classmates went home with questions for their parents, causing Baud to become play-date persona non grata.

The other kids in class say their parents yell at them when they don’t do their homework. Why don’t you? he asked at some point during the following year.

It’s your homework, not mine. Why should I give a shit? She rolled a joint. I already made it through fourth grade.

He curled his lips, part of an ongoing effort to persuade her to stop smoking dope in his presence. He had to conduct such campaigns subtly, as she didn’t like to be told what to do. If he hid her drugs, she’d hide his toys. After he’d called her attention to a commercial featuring two eggs being fried under the caption This is your brain on drugs, she served him raw eggs for breakfast.

Okay, then I’ll stop doing homework.

Fine by me. She wet the joint with her tongue. But I thought you enjoyed school.

I do, but I’d rather spend more time with you.

Not going to happen.

Your hands are shaking. You need me to light that for you?

She rolled her eyes but put the joint on the coffee table for later. As pains in the ass went, her son was an amiable one.

I got two B’s on my last report card, he said, tone taunting but not so much as to cause her to zone out.

I saw.

You’re not mad?

I’m mad, but I’m not angry. She scowled at him. She had to put up with borderline illiterates at work; she didn’t need to do so at home. It’s your report card. You’d be happier, though, if you worked harder and got A’s. All work is meaningless bullshit, but unless you blow it off entirely, it’s more fun to do it well than half-assed, and B’s are half-assed. Given your intelligence and the collection of jerk-offs and morons you’re competing against, you should get all A’s.

That made sense to him.

Are you a good whore, Mommy?

Very good. All my customers come to me via word-of-mouth—her face contorted as if she were struggling to construct a pun but couldn’t within the time restraints of the conversational flow—and usually become regulars if I want them to. By not having to be out there soliciting, I keep a low profile and avoid being arrested. She picked up the joint, but under the force of his stare put it back down. Often, in the throes of ecstasy, they propose to me. Sometimes they even say it after they come.

Are you ever going to marry one of your customers? You seem to like some of them.

I like them once a week or maybe overnight, then I like them to leave.

I wish you wouldn’t leave me overnight so much.

I get paid while I sleep, that’s a pretty good deal. And then I’m often too stoned to come home.

Wouldn’t you do it better if you took less drugs?

"Fewer drugs, she corrected. Probably, but I need the challenge."

Maybe I should do my schoolwork stoned.

Try it, see how you like it. She lit the joint, stuck it in his mouth, closed his lips around it, and pinched his nose. Breathe in.

He had a major coughing fit.

Doesn’t look like you like it much. Try the all-A route, then we’ll talk about spicing it up.

May I watch you work sometime?

You’ll have to promise you won’t let the customer see you—unless I’m charging for your presence.

Watching was enough to make him vow that when he grew up he’d find more interesting work. He appreciated her athleticism and she seemed to enjoy making peculiar noises, but it was awfully repetitive.

Baud was high school valedictorian and although not a natural athlete, lettered in wrestling, track, and cross country. A friendly but quiet student, who didn’t drink or date, he nonetheless was elected student council president after delivering a rousing campaign speech. He revamped the honor code, negotiated an upgrade of the cafeteria food and decor, instituted a system by which students graded their teachers’ performance, and transformed the presidency and the council from sinecures for popular kids seeking to improve their college prospects into respected positions for kids who genuinely wanted to improve the school community. To the limited extent he’d thought about a career, he planned to break out of his shell when he grew up and get into politics, maybe even run for Congress. Applying for early admission, he was accepted to Harvard on a full scholarship—1993 was a good year for diversity, and his college essay about being the illegitimate son of a drug-abusing whore struck just the right chord.

Baud’s mother helped him move into the dorm. His suite-mate’s mom was also helping her son move in.

Skinny and 5’10", Justin Potter had an unhealthy tan, green eyes, and neat but long black hair. He and Baud vaguely resembled each other. Baud was slightly taller, paler, and broader but also had black hair and green eyes, although he’d been cursed with a large semitic nose.

Justin’s mother wore a plaid jacket, gray pleated skirt, and tailored white shirt, and had her hair tied back in a severe bun. Baud’s mother had on radically cut-off jeans, a tight Life is the farce we are all forced to endure T-shirt, and four-inch heels.

Hi, I’m Baud, you must be Justin, my suite-mate. Baud smiled and extended his hand before his mother could say something that would permanently alienate the guy. Clinging to his mom’s side, Justin stuck out a tentative arm and shook Baud’s hand. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, but his lips didn’t part.

I’d like you to meet my mother, Loretta Potter, Justin said. She’s a senior vice president at UBS in charge of international derivative trading. He stuck out his chest as if expecting a metal to be pinned on him just for being the child of such an illustrious person.

And this is my mom. Baud unfurled his arm.

I’m in the fucking and sucking game.

Justin’s draw dropped. Mrs. Potter looked as if she’d just swallowed an oyster in a month not containing an R.

As a banker maybe you could answer a question about LIBOR? Baud’s mom said breezily.

In a tone of withering condescension, Ms. Potter said, It stands for—

London Interbank Offered Rates, but here’s what’s bothering me. It doesn’t correlate with financial risks. When risks spike, LIBOR doesn’t rise correspondently. Looks to me like the London bankers are pulling a fast one.

I…

Well, check into it, she said.

Justin’s mother sniffed the air and made an angry—angrier—face.

Do I smell marijuana?

Don’t worry, Ms. Potter, I don’t do drugs of any kind, Baud said, cutting in front of his mother.

It’s me, Baud’s mother said, moving around her son. I have a serious medical condition, have to smoke the stuff continuously.

Oh, I’m so sorry.

Yeah, it’s awful, I can’t bear self-righteous assholes when I’m straight. It’s a particular problem at work.

Ms. Potter wrapped a protective arm around Justin’s narrow shoulders. As the silence became uncomfortable for her and her son, her lips moved as if rehearsing a change of subject, one that wouldn’t lead to an offensive comeback from Baud’s mother, who seemed totally at ease.

Finally she asked, Why the name Baudelaire?

Names are bullshit, that’s why I never use one, but someone told me that pets like names, and I thought kids were the same way. I narrowed it down to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, then took a poll among my customers.

Justin cuddled into his mother, like a four-year-old being read a story. Baudelaire buried his head in his hands to hide the fact that he found the scene hilarious. Someone as intent as his mom on telling the world to fuck itself would hardly draw a line when it came to the mother of her son’s new suite-mate. Hopefully, Justin and his mother would conclude that Baud had turned out quite well, considering the parent he had to contend with. Baud himself thought he’d turned out fine because of his mother’s parenting style, coupled with her brilliance. Teaching by example, she showed him what not to do.

I’m sure the boys will become fast friends, Baud’s mother said, cheery and upbeat.

She kissed Baud’s forehead. They hugged, and she strode off, putting plenty of sexy hip sway into her walk. She was justly proud of her long legs and round ass, but Baud had mixed feelings on the subject of her body parts.

Justin doesn’t drink. Standing straighter and appearing taller, now that she was the only adult in the room, Ms. Potter punctuated her statement with a finger point. Doesn’t do drugs. Another point. And is very serious about his studies. Yet another.

Not to worry, Ms. Potter, I’m the same way.

She gave him a squint-eyed look.

I had eight hundreds on my SAT’s. He pointed. Lettered in three sports. Another point. Was president of the student council. Another. And I love my mother totally and unreservedly. Yet another.

She held up her hands.

Baud grinned at his new suite-mate, and Justin grinned back.

That was amazing, Justin said, after his mother left. I never saw anyone stand up to her like that and actually face her down.

Yeah, my mother’s…unique.

No, I mean you.

Baud shrugged. Other people’s parents are easier to deal with than one’s own.

Is your mother really a…

And proud of it.

A moment of thoughtful silence.

We might be good for each other, Justin said, both of us having mother issues and all.

Actually, I don’t.

You should.

Probably. Baud smiled. Maybe he’d come to like this strange sensitive person.

Baud and Justin took non-abstinence pledges—vowing to lose their virginities ASAP. Although confirmed loners, they became friends. Neither confided in the other or felt that they had much that would benefit from confiding, but they joked around during study-breaks and signed up to be suite-mates for the following year.

When not studying, they hung out together, often trying to meet girls and sometimes succeeding. Put off by Justin’s air of despondency, the young women homed in on Baud, laughed at his jokes and directed their conversation to him, while pointedly or casually ignoring Justin. When uncomfortable Justin resorted to strained, nasty attempts at humor that made him yet more undesirable. When a girl showed overt interest in Baud—and it had to be pretty overt for him to notice—and ignored Justin, Justin went into an emotional tailspin. These episodes often led to orgies of self-deprecation after which he locked himself in his room, sometimes for as long as twenty-four hours. Baud desperately wanted some of the girls they met but couldn’t bring himself to pursue any who’d inflicted such trauma on his friend even as he recognized that they’d done so inadvertently.

Over the summer after their freshman year, Baud vowed to be more aggressive with women—at least to the point of asking one out—regardless of whatever anguish it might cause Justin.

Justin returned for sophomore year skin pale and hair worn short and parted like Baud’s. He even copied Baud’s slouch and the way he swung his arms when he walked. They now looked so much alike and spent so much time together that people assumed they were related. Justin never said a word about this transformation other than to announce: My mom hates my hair this way. Baud took that to mean he’d taken a baby step away from his mother’s domination. Surely a good thing for Justin, though it made him cleave yet closer to Baud, which made him feel responsible for him. When Baud left a class, he’d more often than not find Justin waiting for him. When Baud went to the library, if Justin hadn’t gone with him, he’d turn up in the neighboring carrel. Baud didn’t know whether to be flattered or appalled, but he’d long wanted a friend and had no idea how to go about making another one, so he went with the flow.

Baud’s vow to be more aggressive in matters romantic foundered on the shoals of Justin’s failures with the fairer sex and his concomitant binges of self-loathing. Loyalty was one of the few traditional virtues Baud’s mother prized. He liked being Justin’s emotional support, enjoyed feeling responsible for him, and loved their late-night conversations where Justin held forth on philosophy, politics, and anything else that happened to catch his fancy.

The noise from Baud’s slamming his book shut reverberated in the hitherto silent dorm room. It was late and his eyes burned.

I need a break. I’m seeing double, Baud said. Talk.

Let’s see…how to turn this into one of those times when we get to talking and suddenly it feels alchemic, turning shit into existential gold? You know, when time seems to soften and almost but not quite fold in on itself and hours disappear? Justin returned Baud’s smile at his grandiloquence. Poof! Suddenly, it’s sunrise and for a brief moment we are the gods of our destinies. He flung open his hands, a wizard dispensing pixie dust. According to Kierkegaard, happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.

Far as I’m concerned it can keep hiding, Baud said.

Each of us is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. Despair happens when there’s an imbalance in this synthesis. Too much of the expansive factor and you’ve got a dreamer who can’t make anything concrete. Too much of the limiting element gets you a narrow-minded asshole who can’t imagine anything more important than bottom lines and spread sheets.

Your solution? Baud asked, knowing that Justin’s interpretation of Kierkegaard would be a jumping-off point to an inspired conclusion.

The key is to cultivate equanimity, not like that Kipling bullshit of treating those two imposters just the same, more like rising above it all and taking the long view while understanding that meaningful happiness comes from inside and is only tangentially dependent on what happens to us. Justin frowned. I’m not quite expressing it right. I need to think it through a little more.

Sounded good to me, Baud said.

What I had in my head was profound, but when I try to express it, it comes out sounding…sophomoric.

Well, we are in our second year at college, Baud said. At least it’s not freshmanic.

Justin smiled, strange and crooked. His smiles tended to be awkward, as he hadn’t had much practice.

What did your mom say when she called earlier? Baud asked. You seemed to be having an uncharacteristically animated conversation.

Oh, nothing. He waved a dismissive hand. She went on one of her rants about Hillary and Whitewater, how the First Lady somehow caused Vincent Foster’s death and made it look like suicide.

You didn’t agree? Baud asked.

I’m starting to like Hillary. She’s smart and works hard, and that so many people hate her with so little real reason makes me…maybe I relate to her. Another smile, this one more comfortable.

Last year everything you said about politics could’ve come from your mom’s mouth.

"I still think Bill will step on his dick. Paula Jones wasn’t a